TODAY'S PRAYER: MORE WILL BE REVEALED
Everything we think, say and do are prayers. We are in constant contact with the divine of our understanding. Therefore let everything we think say and do reflect the wisdom, love and understanding we desire to experience in the world.
I don't remember the exact moment I first heard "more will be revealed" in program but I know I have heard it a lot over the years.
Sometimes it is just one of those things we say when we don't know what else to say and "I don't know" would be too simple to say.-- Even from the garden of good hearted intentions we want to be deeply helpful in the things we say and do to each other.
Other times it reflects the wisdom that comes with having lived a lot of years and walked blindly and fearfully into experiences only to find out as more was rvealed they contained pearls that proved to be of value to our lives.
It also has acted as the carrot on the stick for seekers like myself and just about everyone I know. We walk with shovels ready to dig and dig until the secret in the soil before us reveals it's hidden jewel that leads to an epiphonic shifting from the comfortable plateau we've been currently working to the steps that take us to the next level.
Of course, hopefully, in the effort to grow as helpful people and not just for public applause - which isn't always bad but that tends to works better for most of us if it happens as a by product of doing the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing.
I remember, when I first began my conscious participation in my spiritual journey in recovery over some 30 years ago, being introduced to the idea of meditation as a part of the process I would need to engage in in order to stay sober.
I wanted to be a good meditator. To be guru-like. I wanted to be special. To have amazing spiritual stories to share with others and at meetings.
The instructions I had at the time, from program as well as spiritual/religious practices was to sit and get quiet and stop thinking.
Most of the sources of these instructions gave them in a way that suggested (and still suggests) that silence and non-thinking were possibilities.
In one of my early sittings I remember having this moment when I became conscious that I had not been thinking. It might have been for a minute or more or even less. But it was a revelation. More was revealed. I could be in the space in between thoughts. It's when I learned that meditation isn't something you do but what happens to you when you do certain things.
The silence part was a plague for me for a long time. In my earliest memories of sitting there has always been this high pitched, static pressure like noise in my ears. Not hurtful but there when I stopped to notice it. Even when trying to sleep I could hear it.
So a lot of my effort in the meditation process was trying to turn that off in order to fully be in the silence I heard and read about.
The effort itself has produced some wonderful results but it hasn't resulted in the silencing of these lambs. And so I never had the sense of achieving full buddha-hood because I never had the sense of achieving perfect meditation.
I have tried to talk about it albeit half-heartedly because I never thought of the noise as a problem problem. I had just assumed it was a natural thing everyone dealt with and few were able to succeed in turning off because, you know, most of us just were not buddha material.
However in my few efforts at trying to talk about it I didn't get the sense that anyone really knew what I was talking about. And so "more wil be revealed" was about the best anyone could offer and I would just have to be inwardly content with not being buddha material.
Years and many life events later and I found myself back in school going for my Bacchelors Degree while also feeling consumed by overwhelming cultural world events. This manifested as an incessant level of chatter in my head - beyond the usual self chats. By this point meditation efforts had morphed into just taking moments to try and quiet the chatter as opposed to my starting focus of the silence.
Then as I was approaching my 19 year anniversary and the end of my final semester I was in such stress to get the work done to graduate that that overrode the world chatter and when I finished and finally got confirmation the work was done and I would graduate and not be held back something weird happened.
I was sitting at my computer and I realized there was nothing to do. I just sat, quietly. That is when I realized the "gotta do and world events chatter", a huge level of noise, just stopped. A silence I could both hear and feel came over me.
It was the high pitched pressured static. I sat and felt like a weight had been lifted. Not just the weight of school but something else hard to define. There were similarities to when I did my first third step prayer - right before I heard the voice of my higher power but not exactly the same.
This time I sat and allowed myself to be in the sounds of my silence.
Sometime later I happened to speak to a family friend I hadn't spoke to since childhood. She was more a friend of one of my sisters than mine. She was also a Vet. We talked and she told me some things that surprised me and rang the "more will be revealed" temple gong. That sound - the high pitched ringing static was tinnitus. And this was something some Vets experienced as a result of their service.
I'm going to get it looked at but am sure there is no cure. While injuries are never good things this was great news.
Now when I meditate I can stop trying to stop what can't be stopped and just allow what can happen to happen. This has literally shifted my practice up a level. Also gave me another sense of the depth of meaning of the Serenity Prayer.
I mentioned earlier my first third step meditation/prayer. As I look back on it now I can see how the way silence was for me made it an almost tangible experience that when it happened, it was something I could not only "hear" but also "feel", I had to pay attention to it and paying attention I was fully present for the voice of my higher power - so much so that it is a moment that I still remember as if it were yesterday - a pearl that still adds value to my life even today.
Staying sober, staying in the process, continuing a spiritual/religious practice no matter what has allowed another of the pearls hidden in the soil of my life to be revealed and for that I am grateful.
Today take a moment to contemplate "more will be revealed". See how that has been true in your life.
Sitting in gratitude with that knowingness makes it even more valuable when you pass it on.
May you be blessed to continue to be a blessing.
Amen. Aho. Ase.Amin. Hotep.