Joy. Peace. Freedom.
Are these simply beautiful ideals somewhere out there in the distance, something we spend our lives reaching toward, but that most people will never truly experience?
We search.
We long to understand.
We long to know.
We read the books, listen to the teachers, explore the practices, do the healing, examine the patterns, and keep reaching toward something that can sometimes feel incredibly elusive.
And yet, once you have touched it, once you have truly experienced what it is to live, even for a time, from a place of deep joy, peace and freedom, you begin to realize something almost startling in its simplicity.
The way is not nearly as complicated as we have made it.
Perhaps the most difficult thing we are asked to do is also the simplest:
Lay down everything we think we know.
Lay down our identification with who we think we are.
Lay down the stories about why we are here.
Lay down the endless attempts of the mind to understand, predict, manage and control the unfolding of our lives.
Empty the cup. Completely.
And allow Spirit, God, Source, I Am Presence, the Divine Intelligence that moves through all things, to begin filling it again.
We are called to lay down our plans for a higher plan.
To lay down our thoughts for a higher thought.
To surrender the limited perspective of the conditioned mind so that another way of seeing, feeling and being can begin to emerge.
A simpler way.
And I want to be very clear about something here. This does not mean laying down your highest visions, dreams and desires for this life.
It means surrendering them to something greater. It means saying:
This is what lives within my heart. This is what I see. This is what I desire. And still, I surrender it into the hands of the Divine.
Not because there is some distant God deciding whether or not you are worthy of receiving what you desire, but because there is an Intelligence within you, and moving as you, that sees far beyond what the conscious mind can see.
A Presence that knows the whole when we can only see the fragment. A wisdom that may already be guiding us toward something far greater than what our limited imagination has been able to conceive.
We are called to trust the unseen mysteries that cannot be fully understood by the conscious mind as we walk the path toward wholeness, toward Union, toward Oneness with All That Is.
And somewhere along that path, something extraordinary happens.
We remember that we were never actually lost.
We were never truly separate.
We were never outside of God.
We simply forgot.
In our need to know, to protect ourselves, to control outcomes and to make sense of what has happened to us, we became deeply identified with the mind and its stories.
Our wounds became beliefs.
Our beliefs became patterns.
Our patterns became embedded so deeply within us that eventually the body itself began carrying what the mind had learned to believe.
And then the journey back to remembrance became something we called healing.
We began to see ourselves as something that needed to be repaired. And healing became this enormous, heavy, difficult road we somehow had to survive in order to become whole again.
And yes, it can feel that way. Especially when we believe we must walk that road through the same mind that created so much of the struggle in the first place.
There comes a point when another invitation appears:
Surrender.
Let something greater walk with you.
Let something greater move through you.
Let something greater show you what the mind cannot yet see.
Those of you who have walked with me for any amount of time know that I do not ascribe to one spiritual path, religion or dogma.
I have always had a curious mind. I love exploring many traditions and looking for the threads that connect them rather than becoming consumed by their differences or trying to determine which one is “right.”
In fact, I believe one of the darker expressions of the human mind occurs when we take one path, one revelation or one expression of Truth, filter it through fear and power, and then declare that it is the only way to Truth, Love or God.
Separation finds its way even into our search for Oneness.
And there is something about that which has always felt deeply contrary to what I have experienced of God.
Sometimes, simply for the joy of exploration, I will allow Spirit to guide me toward a teaching. Often I begin in the Bible. Then I wander.
I may explore how that same truth appears within Buddhist teachings, New Thought, Christian mysticism, yogic philosophy, contemplative traditions, or even what science is beginning to reveal about consciousness, the mind and the body.
Again and again, beneath the language, culture and religious frameworks, I find the same sacred threads. And I love that.
Because I am far more interested in remembering how we are the same than proving how we are different.
You see, when you have experienced Union, what the yogic traditions call samadhi, something within you knows.
Not intellectually.
Not because someone taught it to you.
Not because you read it in a scripture.
You know.
You know that we are One.
You know that we arise from the same Source.
You know that beneath our personalities, histories, religions, politics, identities, wounds and beliefs, there is something far more fundamental connecting us.
We are brothers and sisters within the One Heart of Love and Light.
And once you have touched this remembrance through your own direct experience, it becomes very difficult to see humanity, nature or life itself in quite the same way again.
Something shifts. The spiritual journey stops being solely about finding God. It becomes about learning how to live from the remembrance of God.
How do I live from this?
How do I love from this?
How do I see another human being from this?
How do I move through challenge from this?
How do I create from this?
How do I allow joy, peace and freedom to become the ground beneath my life rather than fleeting experiences dependent upon whether everything around me is going the way I hoped?
And yes, we wander. We forget. I still forget.
There are moments when the conditioned mind returns and begins telling its stories again. There are moments when fear feels compelling. When the future feels uncertain. When the mind begins grasping for control.
We may even convince ourselves that somehow we have lost the connection we once felt.
But we haven’t.
We cannot.
The Presence did not leave.
God did not disappear.
Love did not move somewhere else.
We have simply allowed the conditioned mind to become louder than the deeper knowing within us.
And in that moment we are invited, once again, to surrender.
To consciously choose God’s Presence.
To choose the higher thought.
The higher seeing.
The higher feeling.
The higher way of being.
And slowly, or sometimes in an instant, we remember.
Joy. Peace. Freedom.
Not because they are somewhere outside of us that we must somehow convince God to give us. But because they are already woven into the natural state of our Being in and with God.
This is what my own journey continues to reveal to me. Again and again.
My deepest knowing has not come from striving harder. It has come through stillness. Through silence. Through devotion. Through an open heart and an aligned mind. Through surrendering what I think I know long enough to hear something deeper.
And through understanding that while spiritual awakening can contain profound mystical experiences, the embodiment of that awakening happens through some very simple things practiced consistently and consciously.
We notice.
We become aware.
We interrupt the old pattern.
We choose again.
We soften.
We surrender.
We remember.
And little by little, the deep unconscious patterns that have shaped our experience begin to loosen. The mind begins to align with a higher Truth. The body begins to release what it has been carrying.
We stop searching so desperately outside ourselves for the thing that has been quietly waiting within us all along.
And then something beautiful begins to happen.
Joy begins to bubble up.
Peace begins to emerge where fear once lived.
Freedom begins to arise where we once felt trapped by our conditioning.
Not because life suddenly becomes perfect. But because we are no longer asking the circumstances of life to give us what can only be remembered from within.
And I imagine Spirit rejoicing.
Not because we have finally become worthy.
Not because we have finally arrived.
But because, for one beautiful moment, another beloved child of God has remembered:
I was never separate.
I was never outside of Love.
I was never truly lost.
I simply forgot.
And now, I remember.
Much love, many blessings,
Treasure Marie 🌹
