The sense of balance and perfect peace which comes with finding one's center is pure joy. Eckhart Tolle quotes the phrase This, too, will pass to point the way through adversity and unanticipated changes. My Mother's preferred version was And it came to pass. The key, here, is in not getting hooked into roller coaster emotions, but maintaining a sense of perspective. In A New Earth, Tolle wrote:
Once you see and accept the transcience
of all things and the inevitability of change,
you can enjoy the pleasures of the world while they last
without fear of loss or anxiety about the future.
He went on to say that it is through detachment that we gain a higher point of view which allows us to see and experience the wholeness of life as a journey rather than as a specific event. Last Sunday I talked about making choices without expecting or demanding the cooperation of others. If I choose to arrive at work early and get organized for opening, co-workers may choose to let me do all of it. I can get angry and self-righteous at being "used". Or I can acknowledge that my choice is just that--my choice.
Tolle defines nonresistance, nonjudgment and nonattachment as the path of true freedom and enlightenment. And in a helter skelter world, it is also the path of peace, a life focused on the journey rather than the destination.
Rev. Claudia Naylor
