Are you dancing

Prem Rawat, or Maharaji,  has a useful call to be mindful and to be present. He says:

This life is a beautiful dance
But if you haven't danced it
It's academic

Are you one of those who isn't dancing? Is this making your life academic?


We are surrounded with so much beauty, happiness and love. Yet many people - maybe most - don't get to see it. They're looking at a world characterised by ugliness, misery and hatred. How do they get to miss what else is going on? In Awareness, Anthony de Mello puts this down to being hypnotised, or brainwashed. - rather like a stage hypnotist getting us to see what's not there.


There is no doubt that there is suffering in life. It's the first of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. And it's a paradoxical truth: the moment we fully concede that life IS suffering, we cease to suffer.


So, my problem in engaging fully with my life - as it happens - was that I identified too much with what I had learned, by using my old, faulty, experience I held myself back from having a new experience. I stayed stuck in the sleepwalking phase. Why? Because I would rather keep all the things I thought were important to me, all the things I was convinced I needed. It seemed as if I thought survival was impossible without my cherished ideas about myself and my life. But they locked me out of any experience of this real and present moment.


A friend in Tennessee, Bob, when asked how he is replies:" I'm above ground, I'm not thirsty and I'm capable of taking in solid foods unaided." Now here's a man in touch with the present and who accepts the notion that it's just possible we have everything we need.


The belief that I have everything I need keeps me from the idea that something might be missing from my life, from wanting something I haven't got. I once read (I think from Fr Paul D'Souza but cannot verify) that it is impossible to predict anybody's future except the person that believes he will find happiness in gaining something he hasn't got; that person's life will always be the same - a constant search for something to make him happy.


Is it possible that you have the wrong ideas about life and living it that are influencing you so much and keeping you asleep? A useful symptom is looking at how difficult it is to listen to somebody who challenges our ideas about ourselves - does this hurt your pride, rather prick your vanity?


The hardest thing I found was listening to new ideas - to see. Because I might be changed.