Be A Disciple Of The Rain

Be A Disciple OF The Rain


All the big time mystics tell us to surrender. I’m certainly not going to contradict them. But a lot depends on what is meant by surrender.

To surrender to the place of the Infinite can be a frightening statement. When people hear it, it often implies to them a loss of themselves. When the teachings speak about a loss of ego, people often translate this as a destruction of something they have become very fond and familiar with.

But in essence what is frightening is the implication that we may find ourselves and know ourselves. The spiritual path is not really talking about the loss of anything except the loss of those things that create ‘hell’ in our consciousness. Specifically the angers, the covetings, the hatreds – everything that creates hell in our heart.

For it is the small ‘I’; the place of ego, (called the ‘ani’) where hell resides. When it is gone, even for a minute, we are in paradise.

Only when we surrender ourselves, only when we become a disciple are we truly knocking at the door, are we entering the garden. This is the key. When we feel that the garden is gone, where can it be found? It is found here, in the heart. It is found, in the interaction of person to person and in the compassion and love we are able to feel and make in our daily life. As our teachers give over:

Love one another from the heart, and if anyone sins against you, speak to them in peace. Expel the venom of hatred and do not harbor deceit in your heart. If anyone confesses and repents, forgive them.
Testaments of the Twelve Fathers. Gad. 6:3. Apocrapha.

Life is not something that can be understood, it must be lived. It is not a problem to be solved, but an adventure to savor. But parables, stories and jokes help. Imagine life like a wheel. There are spokes, an inner circle and an outer circle, all tightly held in place by a rim. The rim holds it all together. The rim for us is the rigid circle of custom and genetics. The assumption of self – this is the hub. But at the center of the hub is - nothing. The void. Yet this emptiness is the very center and essence of the wheel.

Ultimately to surrender to the spiritual, is to surrender to this center which has no definition. This is the matrix through which all the hubs of self and the world, pass through.

I have heard a story:

Once a woman went on a search for truth. She ran into a fellow sitting under a tree and asked him where she could find a teacher. He told her that her teacher would have a certain aura, and would be sitting under a certain tree, and he would say certain things. She thanked him. And she began exploring. 30 years later she came that way again and saw he was under the tree, he was teaching these teaching and he had that aura.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”she said. “ This past 30 years, what a nightmare it has been!”.
He replied: “I explained it perfectly to you, in great detail. But you didn’t look at the tree.You didn’t listen to the teachings, you didn’t look at me. You were not ready. Everything was HERE, but when I looked into your eyes, You were not There.”

It is important to surrender for to experience life fully requires this. And as we are co-creators wit the divine, we are asked and desired to move ever forward into greater joy, greater consciousness.

This is what is means to be a true disciple. Always we must look and remember, what are we a disciple of? Not of anger or despair. Not a disciple of the obsession for acquisition. But of sun and rain. Sky and dance. Song and peace. Joy and forgiveness. Be a disciple of the seasons as they pass. Be a disciple of hope in each situation that arises. Be a disciple of each other and community. Be a disciple of the suffering that all of our fellow creatures endure. Be a disciple of alleviating that suffering. Be a disciple of grace and generosity.

My beautiful friends, indeed, be a disciple, but be a disciple of the spirit of ever enduring, ever expanding, compassionate truth.