Today's Practice: Mirrors of the Mind

Last night I heard someone say, “Sometimes you have to get off the path in order to get on the path.” 

Did you know, the first person to become enlightened after the Buddha was the assassin who had been sent to kill him? After watching and studying the Buddha's every move for years, he put down his sword and surrendered to Truth. The first to awaken, was not the disciples who had been studying with Buddha, not his students or children, but the assassin. Last week in one of my meditation classes, my teacher asked us to reflect on why it was that the assassin was the first to become enlightened. I sat with it, meditated on it, and this is what I saw - the assassin had already delved so deep into darkness, so deep into distortion and realms with dark beings of illusion, that he had compassion and neutrality for all things. From his neutral vantage point he was able to see the light and the Truth and move into it with grace. 

The students and disciples of Buddha were living in reaction to their lives, what they were running away from, and the levels of Truth that they didn't want to see. Perhaps the Truth would illuminate all the places they were choosing to live in denial and darkness (as deeply lost as the assassin) but not wanting to own it. These students perhaps were uncomfortable with things that were not seemingly peaceful. The assassin was okay with everything. 

So then, how do we find resolve or a deeper purpose in the mundane moments of our lives? How do we awaken from our own denial and hiding? For some it takes extreme moments of darkness for things to shift. 

Sometimes we do have to veer off course, in order to find our Truth. Sometimes we do need to let go in order to realize we are being held. Sometimes the path to the true path is through the discomfort or pain. 

Only then can we awaken to the knowing that there is no path. There is only the here and now, there is only this moment. And we can have comfort in knowing we are exactly where we need to be in life.