An excerpt from Falling Into Grace by Adyashanti.

[Tobin S.]

From pages 198 to 200:

"Take someone like Jesus. His life was an expression of love- both its ups and downs, and in the wonderful miracles and the very challenging moments. All of it was life's expression of love, and human beings have benefited from that story for more than two thousand years. Jesus's life was a gift, and yours is a gift just as much. It doesn't mean you are going to be a great teacher, or that you're going to be well known. It doesn't have anything to do with becoming a celebrity or being remembered in history. That may happen. That may not happen. As long as you care about being remembered or being significant, you haven't totally let go. What if you found out that the way spirit wanted to manifest through you was as a simple, ordinary person, but a person with great love, great compassion, and great wisdom? Maybe nobody would even recognize you. Nobody would acknowledge it in you, but it would simply be who and what you are. What if that were the way life wanted to manifest through you? Would that be okay with you? Would you allow that to happen?

It's only our egos and our minds that think of this whole notion of autonomy in egoic ways. It's obvious that someone like Jesus or Buddha didn't care how people viewed them. They didn't care about being remembered. They weren't trying to accomplish any of that. They were dynamic forces of love and spiritual enlightenment in the world of time and space. They had surrendered and let go to the truth within us all, and their lives were dedications, expressions, and embodiments of that realization of love. Remember, Jesus wasn't loved by everybody. His teaching got him killed! He didn't walk around having everybody fall to his feet. Far from it! So any idea of what an awakened life should look like is just an idea, just an imagination, and as long as we're trying to make our lives look like anything other than what they are, then we're lost. We're just spinning in our own imagination.

The true significance of any of our lives is something that's very, very close. It's in each breath you take. It's the manifestation of that stillness within you. It's the unborn birthing itself moment to moment. There's no "how to" and there's no such thing as what it should look like. I can't teach anybody how to do it. I can only tell you that it's possible. You can feel it. You've felt it your whole life. You've always known there's something inside of you that's sought to be born, fresh and real. You know there's something inside you, far beyond your imagination, that's been trying to break out and be. Everyone feels this inside. But to allow life to express itself in that way, with that much abandon, requires a true surrender into the unknown. We must let go of even the great realizations or awakenings we have. Even the greatest wisdom that comes to you, the greatest "Ah-hah!" was meant for that moment and that moment only.

The invitation is for all of us to stay in beginners mind, to always stay in touch with the unborn, the undying, and the uncreated, because it's from that potential that something in us awakens that is free from strife and suffering and has been waiting in every single one of us to express itself. The great sages of our collective history have all told us that what they realized is meant for each one of us, that it's not unique to them. It's not something they own. It's something they realize is inherent within everything and everybody, because really, it's not you or I who wake up. It's life that wakes up. Your life becomes an expression of that which is inexpressible, unexplainable, and indefinable."

Now my words:

This passage has come to me at a time when I've understood my greatest source of suffering. It's not that I've wanted to be famous or adored. I've just wanted to be something other than a truck driver. I've gone to great lengths to try to make that happen, but I just don't seem to be able to effect change in that regard. Buddhism defines suffering as a desire for something other than the way things really are in the moment. If we fully accept what is here and now we stop suffering. Trucking has gotten a lot easier for me in recent days. This is the way it is right now. It might change. It might not. I just needed to accept that.