Sleeping On The Doorsill

I found this wonderful quote from Rumi on the web today:

For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself.
From within, I couldn't decide what to do.
Unable to see, I heard my name being called.
Then I walked outside.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.

Rumi

A lot of people talk and write about that doorsill where the two worlds touch. One of them i have recently been revisiting is Joseph Campbell. He understands that threshold very well and i can't get enough of him. Try either his The Hero With A Thousand Faces or The Power of Myth. (His spellbinding interview with Bill Moyer is on Google Video if you have a few free hours some night.)

As Rumi says, it is when you reach the threshold that life takes on new meaning. On one side you are asleep; content to live an uninvestigated life, content to let habits run your life, content to accept 'truth' as what is learned from a book or in a class, content to do things because 'that's the way they're done.'

On the other side, truth is everywhere around you, at all times. You see truth in the rising sun and the black of night, you hear truth in a Tibetan chant and a beggar's request for coins, you smell truth in a bouquet of roses and in a fart on the train, you taste truth in the most delicious and the grossest of foods, and you can feel truth in the lightest of your lovers touches and in the aching pain of a broken body.

The inside and the outside. This side and that side. Me and us. Between these is that threshold, with existence on one side and life on the other.

Another way of looking at the threshold is to say that on the inside, people are looking at the deficiencies in their life and trying to find ways to overcome them. To fill the holes. To plug the gaps. To pay whatever it takes to get what they are missing.

On the outside, however, there aren't any deficiencies, only abundance. On the outside you see everything there is to be and to have. If you worked your entire life you couldn't accept all that is available and all that will be offered. There are no holes to fill, there are mountains to climb — willingly. There are no gaps to plaster over, only gaps that allow us to peer into a greater reality. On the outside life is vastly bigger than your ego can ever imagine.

But there's a catch to crossing that threshold. It isn't easy. Why? Not because it's hard work, but because to cross to the other side you have to accept that getting there means you stay where you are. There is nowhere to go — you are already where you need to be — you simply need to learn how to be, just be, right were you are. Once you understand that being, not becoming, is the key, the door opens and the threshold beckons.

Don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean just sitting and staring at the wall and hoping for the best, although if done correctly, sitting in front of that wall will work. You can't just give up seeking all the while blindly assuming that if i'm here now all will be well. You have to be here now AND expand into everything that is in that eternity that is here and now. And even though you can expand forever, you will never get to the end. The search, the expansion, is never ending because as your consciousness expands, and the consciousnesses of millions of others expands, the consciousness of the universe expands. It is an ever-moving and ever growing target.

You are a part of a collective awakening, and have a part to play in life's growth, so don't go to sleep. Sit right here now, and expand past that doorsill into everything and more than you can possibly imagine. And fasten your seat belt when you sit down because it can be a life changing ride.