It’s a Question of Life and Death

It’s a Question of Life and Death

The real reason why I urge people to seek joy…

Recently someone unsubscribed from my newsletter, politely and usefully leaving the comment that they are “beyond” what I offer. It made me wonder, did they know what is truly available and offered?

Is Alchemy really only about a warm fuzzy feeling? No.

There is a purpose with far more value beyond that mere band aid.

Perhaps some people have discovered all that they need to know to live a reasonably happy life. Maybe they have explored many different spiritual paths, tools, and practices. Perhaps they know to communicate directly and honestly with their partner, to meditate to calm the stressful stream of thinking, or to walk in nature if feeling stressed.

But what if stress did not even appear, and therefore
walks were not needed?

This is possible.

Feeling comes and goes, is impermanent and so it can appear of little value. Yet feeling, both good and bad, can be used. It can point to your attachments so the light of your awareness can shine on them, so that they can be seen for the false illusions that they are, and disappear.

Even if one has tools to “cope” with life, or if the outer world is arranged as desired (temporarily), still there remains a deep dissatisfaction and longing because there are unanswered questions on the nature of existence, and on life and death itself.

Your life can be so busy that you can distract yourself and temporarily repeatedly feel good, but inevitably, the matters of old age, illness, and death demand your attention.

While you live ignoring these, attached to needing the outside to be a certain way, struggling to manipulate things, people, and events to your liking, you are voluntarily tethered to the uncontrollable winds of change-–in the midst of freedom!

Bound like this, you will perpetually need spiritual paths and practices, meditations, walks in the woods, and other maneuvering strategies–-and sometimes they will work (temporarily), and sometimes they won’t. Whether or not they work, you are still bound.

Final freedom is possible

What I learned is that when you discover the inexhaustible, completely self-fulfilling, inner source of love and joy, turning inward, you turn away from needing the outside. You turn away from attachment; you untether yourself from the world. It will result in:

  1. dropping away of agitating need and want,
  2. the end of worldly seeking,
  3. joy beyond belief, for no reason, and the
  4. unmoving peace of equanimity.

Like what happened to me, that can free you, leaving you with only one of two final questions, with

One single minded purpose, to either know:

  1. God/Source/Divine, or
  2. your true Self; who or what you are

And it will leave you with the focused desire to know this not as a belief, an idea, a concept, not as a —thought about— God or your Self, but with actual and direct Knowing, because nothing else will satisfy.

It is said that when you seek to know your true Self, you discover God, and when you seek to know God, you discover your Self. After all, there is no separation. There can only be imagined, illusory separation. But while you seek the momentary pleasures of the world, you overlook and miss the Eternal.

You can return to infinite, everlasting Truth, sanity, and peace

Compassion for suffering drives me, (even as I know suffering is unnecessary, because while that is true, even still, there it appears). So please do use Alchemy to feel better, even if just as a band aid initially, and you are invited to use it to stop looking outward, and turn inward where you can investigate That which is beyond suffering and non-suffering.

Cindy

Remember: If you are going to seek, don’t seek outer reasons for your pain. Seek joy! Inside.

 

 

 

—-
“We don’t want things, people, or events. We want the feeling we mistake them for.” ~ C. Teevens, Author of Alchemy

 

Comments 4

  1. Well, I’m not among those who believe that they are “beyond” looking for/using a technique that “merely” helps them to feel good. Feeling good is probably something that may add years of (healthy) life, may decrease significantly the occurrence and recurrence of depression, may build up motivation to do new things rather than staying stuck in a boring routine. Not to mention the chance of accessing the limitless core nature with less tribulations and inner turmoil than it often seems to be the case.

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  2. That’s a wonderful article Cindy, and coincides beautifully with a quote I just read today:

    MN 140 Dhātuvibhaṅga Sutta:

    The Buddha said:

    “He has been stilled where the currents of conceiving do not flow. And when the currents of conceiving do not flow, he is said to be a sage at peace.’ Thus was it said. With reference to what was it said?

    Monk, “I am” is a conceiving. “I am this” is a conceiving. “I shall be” is a conceiving. “I shall not be” … “I shall be possessed of form” … “I shall be formless” … “I shall be percipient” … “I shall be non-percipient” … “I shall be neither-percipient-nor-non-percipient” is a conceiving. Conceiving is a disease, conceiving is a cancer, conceiving is an arrow. By going beyond all conceiving, monk, he is said to be a sage at peace.

    Furthermore, a sage at peace is not born, does not age, does not die. He is unagitated, and is free from longing. He has nothing whereby he would be born. Not being born, how could he age? Not aging, how could he die? Not dying, how could he be agitated? Not being agitated, for what will he long?

    So it was in reference to this that it was said, ‘He has been stilled where the currents of conceiving do not flow. And when the currents of conceiving do not flow, he is said to be a sage at peace.”

    so in my own words Cindy, it goes well with the statement “be still and know that i am god”,

    being still is to stop conceiving, to stop holding opinions, to stop taking thoughts, emotions, perceptions as something real or serious, in other words, to stop identifying with them

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      Author

      Thank-you 🙂 . Yes, thoughts, opinions, emotions, perceptions are all “outside” as well, and are also what I refer to turning away from.

      Since they and things, people, or events are what we have been taught is where our happiness is, people can be scared to turn away for fear of “losing” it all. What awaits though, is infinitely more joyful, satisfying, and peaceful.

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