Walking Through The Open Door

This  is a season of moving to freedom, leaving pain, confusion and despair behind. But how to do it?We search for the answer, when all the time there is an open door right in front of us, a perfect way to go forward, new possibilities, a different life.   

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Good morning, good morning, good morning. How are you today? Good morning. Welcome to the next episode of our podcast, Zen Wisdom for Your Everyday Life. And every day, every Tuesday, here I am, day by day. So the name of our podcast for today, our episode for today is The Way Out Is Through the Door. How come nobody takes that method? I'll repeat that again. I I love this quote. It has so many ways to help us enter where we want to go, which is just to go through the open door. The way out is through the door. How come nobody takes that method? You know, we look for things to complicate our lives to make it an adventure interesting, dynamic, confusing, strategic. And all the while the door is open right in front of us, but no one really even knows there's a door or that it's wide open. You know, this is a season, first of all, a holiday season, a powerful week of walking through the door, really, escaping from pain, sorrow, leaving behind that which has tormented us. Both Passover and Easter come with really this, in a sense, the same kind of message. We have a story of a lot of suffering and pain, plagues. Maybe we f many of us might feel we're in the midst of all kinds of plagues now. Plagues, warnings, betrayals, blindness, suffering, a lot of suffering, a lot of suffering. And then of course the wonderful, wonderful conclusion of release, ascension, rebirth, and walking through the seas which part, same as the open door. The way is made clear. The seas part, the suffering ends, rebirth comes. We go to a new land, we go to a new consciousness, we go to a new state, a new level, an important, important journey. What a what an incredible time this this week is, and what an incredible way to to understand our life itself. Our life itself. We are so enslaved to so many things we suffer. We are so attacked for so many things that perhaps we there's no reason to be attacked for. We didn't do. Just to follow, just to obey, just to leave. Obey the call. There's a call. We all have a very deep call in life. This was a week about a call. Are we going to listen to this call? But rather than listen to the call to our lives, what we do is think of ways, how am I going to achieve it? How am I going to go from one spot to another, from one place in my life to another? How am I going to become enlightened? That's another way of expressing it. There are many, many ways of expressing the same journey. What we don't see is that we are recycling what's keeping us stuck, what's keeping us from listening, what's keeping us from moving, is that we are recycling old pain, old memories, and old relationships endlessly. And I mean endlessly. That's the concept also of karma, again and again, on the wheel. The wheel goes around and around and around. Or in psychology, it's the concept of the repetition compulsion. Again and again, we repeat the same traumas over and over. You would think if we've been through a trauma, we wouldn't want to go through it again. However, if it's unsolved, if it's unfinished, our being recreates it. Maybe the same painful relationship, maybe the same situation. We recreate it in order to heal it, in order that it turn out differently this time. There is the thought and the wish and the hope. Well, if I go through this again, this time it's going to turn out differently. That's the hope, an eternal hope. So we repeat a situation or a relationship or an effort to do something in work or whatever the area is, then underneath it is the wish. This time it will turn out differently. Mmm, such a deep wish and indeed, indeed, no reason why it shouldn't turn out differently. Let's heal it. Let's understand what went wrong. Let's grow. However, unfortunately, until we really hear the call of that experience to us, what it really was saying to us, what it was asking of us, until we've learned the lesson the trauma has embedded in it, and take the lesson to heart and grow from it, it will not turn out differently. It's up to us. We have to make a different response. But we're so afraid to let go of our old ways, of our familiar patterns, of our attachments, of our habits to the way things are, thinking the way things are, or maybe our our attachment to the way things were. Oh, that's how it was. I don't want it to be any different now. Well, this is a week and a time and a journey which says you must let go of the way things were, of what you believed, of whatever it was that was causing you pain, and listen to a new voice, a new message, a new way. You could call that faith, but you could also call the message coming from within your own consciousness too. This is applicable to all of us. This is a universal truth. You know, there's a beautiful saying which says, We are like a man in water, swimming in the water, crying in thirst. Here we are swimming in the water, but we're thirsty. How can I how can I quench my thirst? All the time we're swimming right in the water, but we're dying of thirst. Swimming in the water, crying out in thirst, like we're crying out now in confusion. We're crying out in pain, crying out from all the different suffering. But we I mean all the while we're right in the water. We're swimming right in the water, which means we have all our answers, we have all our guidance, we have all our resources. It's the very essence of our life. We're swimming in it, we're breathing it in every moment. We're living in the great, great intelligence of the universe, the love of the universe is we're right, a part of it. But we don't just swim. We don't just see it, we don't just accept it. We're crying out for something else. So the first step in making our journey to freedom, because that's what this is about, a journey to freedom from suffering, and a journey to new possibilities, to rebirth, to a new land. The first step in making this journey is to see that we are all already swimming in the water. Right now, right where you are, all that is needed is provided. You haven't been abandoned, you haven't been left without resources, you haven't been left without ears to hear or eyes to see. It's just that we're not using them, we're not listening, we're not watching, we're not looking. But we're always being cared for and we always have the possibility of that open door, which is another way to say the open mind, the open heart. The space in our life, it's right there. So instead, this is a very interesting and powerful journey. But instead of trusting, you know what we really don't have anymore, or very few of us have, is a deep trust. Such an important word. Trust in ourselves, in the journey, in our lives, and in the wisdom and guidance that is right here for us. We don't trust it. We don't trust it. Trust is very important. And it takes courage to say, yes, I will trust. But instead, what we do is we blame one another for every bad thing that happens. We trick one another, we try to get revenge, we want to get back on someone, we're happy if something bad happened to someone. We're closing our hearts. We're not seeing the beautiful water that we're swimming in, we're not seeing the jewel that's right in front of our eyes. So it's we ourselves actually who are keeping ourselves stuck by grasping that which feels safe and familiar, by being unwilling to let go, open up and trust. Let go, open up, listen deeply, listen deeply to the messages, to the wisdom from the deepest part of yourself, the deepest part of the teachings, whichever whatever way you contact that deepest wisdom, which is always, always, always surrounded by love. If it's not surrounded by love, it's not the deepest wisdom. But we have to trust that which is new and unknown. When the Israelis were asked to leave Egypt, leave a place of familiarity, of comfort, of pleasure, and go, just follow, go into the unknown, complete unknown, new land, they were very, very frightened to, in fact, many didn't go. They didn't go. It says they died in the plague of darkness, and what that means is blindness, blindness, not being willing to follow, to go, to follow the call, to leave that which is familiar and comfortably, even if it even if it enslaves you. But freedom asks us to trust and to be willing to let go of that which is temporarily familiar, because that's not where your true security lay. You know when spring comes, a seed is planted and a flower blooms. That flower has no idea what's going to happen when it blooms. It doesn't care. It trusts that the inevitable life that it has been given as a seed will continue as a flower and it just blooms. We are like that. We're like that. We're seeds that have been planted in different soils. And at a certain point the seed is ready, and a brand new life comes. Out of that seed, the flower of our lives bloom. But we have to trust. We have to trust. We can't hold on to being a seed forever. The greatest really act of courage and faith is to let go and listen and hear and open one's eyes and see, and allow the greater wisdom to guide us to where we naturally belong, and to what is naturally right for us. That moment of allowing, of welcoming a new way, a new path, of taking a fresh new step, trying it, just trying it. It's a moment of great faith, great trust, and great courage. Now, it may not be possible to do it all at once. It's not even necessary to do it all at once, but step by step. In Zen we always emphasize just one step completely taken, honestly, truthfully, wholeheartedly taken will inevitably lead you to the next. You don't have to go running, running, running. Just one step, wholeheartedly taken, will lead you to the next. They say that in the theater too. For an actor, one moment really truthfully played, beautifully acted, will take you right there to the next moment. And that's true of all of life. So it might be too frightening when we look at the big picture to let go and move forward and walk through that open door. Take that walk, open the door. It's open. Just walk through, away from the pain, away from the suffering. But one step in that direction is a step well taken too. So before I end for today, as I always do, I like to offer some exercises. These this is for so that we can take this material, these ideas, because it's all that this is, are just ideas, and make them real. Once we live them, once we actualize them, once we make them real, then we're really on to something. So let's make it real. Let's take an exercise and do it. Take a look. Where is the open door waiting for you in your life? Where is it? And what is it you really are suffering from and want to get away with? Well where is the time for you to have a new chapter, a new era, a new way of being in the world? Just take a look. Again, and I always say don't judge yourself, don't blame yourself, just look, just notice, just become aware. Become aware of what the possibilities are. Where is this open door? And take one step, just one step towards it. No more, just one step. Then tomorrow you can take one more. You know, we don't have to overwhelm ourselves with grand plans, one step truthfully taken, fully taken, but we have to see what it is we're holding on to, how we're recreating our suffering over and over, and where we can actually find that open door. So I thank you again very much for listening. It's lovely to be I love being here with you all and talking to you and receiving your emails and a wonderful visit this week, actually, from someone. It's it's all very, very beautiful. And thank you for being along on this journey. Um the the website for these podcasts are www.zenwisdomtoday.com. My email, if you want to contact me, is topspeaker at yahoo.com. Love to hear from you. And also I will be out at the Inesfata Zen Center on Wednesday, April 24th in Manhasset at the Unitarian Universalist Church, wonderful, wonderful Zen group. And I'll be offering a talk and some exchanges and talking together, and it's always a very beautiful evening. If you're anywhere around and you're free, it starts at 7.30. You're most welcome to come and be there as well. And so for now, as we approach the week and as we approach all of the different aspects of our journey, I say I wish you everything wonderful. I really do.