How do you do Jennifer, it is such a pleasure to hear from you. Rowdy Kittens seems a long time ago now. Thank you very much for staying with me!
Thank you all so very much. I continue to think about all your insights concerning the unbelievability of Innermost House. This is such a help to me, and I hope it is to you.
A couple of days ago Ember's and Pam's responses led me to feel that it makes much better sense to think of the "we" of my marriage as the "me" of my self. Then the Conversation becomes an internal dialogue, which I think is both more true and more useful.
Today I want to address Pam and Sherry. Pam, here are the aspects of life at Innermost House you believe may sometimes appear unbelievable to others—
1. living a life that has an absence of grasping or desire for outer things
2. experiencing self-born contentment that appears to be constant, without fluctuation
3. feeling an harmonious and integrated connection with all aspects of life in a seamless way, so that you are consciously aware the movement and stillness coexist within each other, even in the simplest acts
4. staying anchored in the present moment without reference to the past or future
5. having a one-pointed vision and intention for your life that cannot be swayed or compromised
6. stubbornly refusing to settle for the fractured life of contemporary society that the rest of the modern world has been taught is 'normal'
7. being able to easefully remain centered and at peace with the notion of being no one in particular and wanting nothing more than what the present moment holds
8. having a relationship with another person that is unguarded because it is unconditionally accepting of the other as one's own self
9. coming home to yourself in a way that most people will never know
Reading over your kind words I think to myself, I must be a pretty amazing person! Then I look out our little window on the street scene below. There a father stands holding his baby girl. She has a pink ribbon miraculously suspended in her few little wisps of baby hair. She is the picture of contentment, and her father with her.
As I watch, I think, here is a perfect absence of grasping for outer things, a true self-born contentment, a seamless connection with all aspects of life, a living present without future or past, a vision that will not be swayed, a refusal to settle for a fractured life, a being no one in particular, an unconditional acceptance, a constant coming home.
I am not really an amazing person at all. I am exactly like everyone else was once, only I am crippled in a way that prevented me from becoming different. I know I do not look crippled, but I am. You would only have to meet me to know.
Then Pam you go on to say, "you can be sure that IH is the perfect foil for the ego's defense mechanisms in both blatant and subtle ways, and most people don't want to look at the defense mechanisms that help keep them feeling safe and in control."
Yes, safe and in control. I must say the last thing I ever expected to be in my life was a threat to anyone's defense mechanisms! Maybe having so few defenses myself is why I have been willing to let the rest go.
I know that such a life is not for everyone. But the Innermost Life to me is the most secure whole life I know. I may outwardly gain it and again lose it, but the truth of it remains, nevertheless secure.
Sherry you ask the question—But what would I do without my husband? I have often been asked that question at presentations. My answer is always the same. I do not know. I am not prepared.
How can one such as I, who has never been able to prepare for tomorrow, prepare for the unimaginable end of existence? I am not safe and I am not in control. And that is acceptable to me.
What my husband and I have and are together is not quite the love between us—of course there is that too—but more the consequence of love, like that little girl.
Or maybe it is more like the inward unity that comes sometimes to an individual soul in consequence of perfect self-acceptance. After all, everyone is born of a man and a woman together. We must all have both in us.
I do not think of my husband and myself as an extraordinarily close couple, but more as an extraordinarily separate individual. It is unusual to have two bodies!
I look again at that little baby. A thousand joys and a thousand sorrows await her, but she neither seizes on them nor recoils. She does not prepare.
I do not know what I shall be given or what I shall be required to give away. I have never known. But I feel a feeling.
Next time I would like to try to address Dewey and Al.