Our true potential

I am teaching a Sunday morning class during Lent at St. John's Church entitled, "The Dynamics of Change". I do that with some trepidation because I'm aware that many people think they need to re-invent themselves and want help to do that. It is very common during Lent for folks to embark on some sort of self-improvement project and they then take themselves hostage with an idealized image of themselves that they can never attain. That's actually not the sort of change I have in mind and so it's rather daunting to set out teaching about it since I'm aware of the secret agendas many will have in attending class.

So I want to share another passage with you today from Rob Nairn's Tranquil Mind. Here he talks about who and what we really are and what we can aspire to - freedom rather than taking ourselves hostage:

The premise we begin with is that every human being has great potential which can be realized. Each one of us is capable of experiencing a permanent state of total joy, love, clarity, openness; a state usually referred to as being beyond description because our ideas and concepts of human experience are inadequate to encompass it. This state is the experience of our true nature: of liberation; liberation from suffering in all its forms and manifestations. It is towards this end that for thousands of years people have been meditating.

When I read that I experience such a wonderful sense of relaxation, acceptance and delight. This aspiration will give us the motivation to meditate that will go the distance for us. And the vision of "total joy, love, clarity, openness" is a far, far better possibility than a mere self-improvement project. For those of you who observe Lent, I want to recommend making a commitment to get free rather than making yourself over. Yes, that does involve change but not the kind of change that is based on judging ourselves unworthy or inadequate to start with. Rather we see that our true nature is pure and luminous and all we really need to do is get out of our own way.

Try picking one day a week to come to daily meditation at the Center as your Lenten discipline. The Center is there for you - 365 days a year! Sometimes I want to call it "Liberation Center" because that is what we're really about.