ECSTASY -- STANDING APART.

Transformation either happens, or it doesn't happen.
It's a gift of grace.
It cannot be manufactured --
It cannot be coerced or made to happen.
Nor will it be forced upon you.
(Saul, on the road to Emmaeus, didn't get anything he wasn't looking for.)

All we can do is prepare to receive it
By opening up
And allowing ourselves to be transparent
To experience.
Any experience in particular?
Yes.The one in your face,
And the ones going on underneath
That you won't look at.
Yes, those ones.

This one -- the one that keeps cropping up time and time again;
This one -- the one we try to push away as unimportant or undesirable;
This one -- the one we won't have a bar of;
This one -- the one we want, but not like THAT!
This one -- the one we'll avoid by going for any distraction instead;
This one -- the one that our addictions allow us to say "No" to --
The one that precedes the urge to escape, the cigarette, the second cup of coffee, the chocolate bar, the second and subsequent drinks, the tablets, the snorting line, the must-have emotion, the must-have belief............
The fear that precedes the snatch for a security blanket,
The disappointment that precedes the shot for sensation,
The anger and grief that precede the grab for power and control.......
The real need that precedes the craving for a substitute.....
Yes, that one;
That's the experience that life stops for
Until we have it.

Transformation happens when our guard is down,
When the incessant yammering of our self-talk falls briefly silent
While we're fully present in an experience.
In such moments of grace
We may begin to intuit, under the experience,
A deeper energy level that's offering to move us along.
That deeper energy may take the form
Of a simple inner urge to finally complete with this experience.
If we've assessed the recurring experience to be undesirable,
We may have become what I call "Divinely pissed off".
"Enough at last!" we cry. "Let me have it!"
We're sick from being caught up in the discomfort and misery that "I" has attached to this experience.

There is more available to living than what "I" is experiencing right now.
Always.
But "my's" resistance keeps us glued
To our limited perception.
By dropping our resistance to this now,
We can have it, and be done with it.
Forever.

In this moment of surrender,
You may become aware of another aspect of your presence,
A witnesser --
That which stands apart and watches,
Un-involved,
In ex-stasis, (ecstasy)
While your "I" is having the experience.

Get to know this ex-static aspect of You --
Ecstasy will begin to infiltrate the reality of your awareness
More often.