FISH ON FRIDAY AND AN ADVENTURE INTO CONSCIOUSNESS!

Great mystics and also novices like myself will tell you that the great mysteries of lide are waiting for anyone who seeks them. Jesus said, `Knock and the door will open.` When the door opens we discover we are already where we need to be - right here and now.

I knocked and the door

opened-

but I found I has been

knocking from the inside

Rumi

Sufi Mystic

There is nothing to change. Everything is perfect just the way it is. We didn't need to find our `Way`, only to get out of the way - to transcend our preoccupations with our separate self and realize that God has been right next to us all along. Closer than that - God is our very self. That is after we have jettisoned our ego.

This is the humour of our predicament. Each one of us is God playing a cosmic game of hide and seek with Himself. Many choose to play this game and find as they start a set of rules applying to a specific philosophy or spiritual faith. For others and in this I include myself - as a universal mystical being - our search is wider and deeper. It is all of the life we are living. Each moment on the journey from birth to death is a fantastic opportunity to awaken. We will be faced with many troubles and difficulties along the way, yet we have no cause to worry, for each life of each one of us is designed to lead us to our destination. Sometimes we have to take our hands of the steering wheel, our feet of the pedals, letting go of control and letting God take over.

The mystic experience take us beyond our worries, fears and reactions to a place where we are simply in love with lide itsel, in all its variety. There is a good and bad - and that is perfect. There is meaning, but it can never be expressed. There is love which can never be exausted. There is knowledge, but no opinions. There is happiness, but for no reason other than it is good. There is equanimity in the face of changing fortunes and compassion for all beings. Everything is God. Everything is the ebb and flow of the Tao - ever - changing and ever the same as its always been.

Just to catch this moment with an open heart is all it takes to transform a troubled life into an extraordinary journey of awakening. Zen master Zuigan would greet himself each morning and request of himself, `Today please try to wake up`. to which he waould answer, `Yes, indeed I will.` This awakening cannot be learned, but it is real and it is possible. This is ultimately all that the great mystics can reveal to us.