An Open Window

Received on August 10, 2024 Listen to the complete audio on SoundCloud

This transmission was received while serving in a guest temple filled with a variety of deities, mantra text, spiritual art, books, and altars decorating the walls and shelves. 

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So being here in this temple surrounded by all of these saints, I said to our host last night, “It seems we have some friends in common.” [Laughter]. I thought it only right that we sing some mantras that we call in the light like this in the presence here with all these eyes, watching us, all of these beautiful beings in every room of the house. 

And what would it be like for every room of the house to have eyes, the eyes of saints, the eyes of the masters, the eyes of the divine ones, every room of our interior house, every room of our mind, every word that we speak, every heartbeat? What would it be like? Every room of our house to be filled with this beauty, to be filled with this grace to be filled with the light of peace? 

There are so many rooms inside of our house, inside of our home, inside of us in what Saint Teresa of Avila calls the “interior castle”. There are so many guests that come into this house, but if we are not aware, we are not aware.

We are like the space between a window, an open window. Is the space between the open window inside or is it outside? We tend to think that we have our own private universe inside of us. But on the inner planes, everything is open. Part of the spiritual life is turning your life inside out, so that the inside is visible. Because if we live just looking to the external, we hide inside, we hide parts of ourselves.

The spiritual life is shining a light on all those parts, because just as the hymn said earlier “in the light always revealed, in the light all is revealed.” That means nothing can hide. And the spiritual path is to come out of hiding. And somewhere along the way, you might have an inkling, you might think that it is true that we are like an open window a t the inside and the outside, we're not so far apart. And while we think we have a private universe inside, the spiritual life is to turn it inside out, making it visible. Because on some plane,  it is visible. It doesn't mean you have to watch all of the things that come into your mind… Well, it does mean you have to watch all the things that come into your mind. But it doesn't mean you have to be hyper vigilant when you're in the bathroom and your private spaces. Hm? 

This means you have to tend to the garden. You have to tidy the rooms inside of your interior castle, and what better way to do that than to adorn it with the words of the masters, with the pictures of the masters, with altars in every room, with mantras in every room, with songs in every room, with flowers in every room? Because if we don't recognize the channel between the inner and the outer, then we are unaware of all of the guests that come passing by all of the time.

So part of my job  is recognizing guests in the house and those guests are not the way that we normally think of them. The guests that I introduce you to are qualities. Because if you don't understand the quality of peace, the feeling and the place where it lives, how it walks, how it acts, how it feels, then  when peace comes to you, you might just miss it. You might just scroll down your phone. You might confuse it with complacency, with boredom with nothing going on. And so if you want peace in those rooms, you have to know what peace looks like. 

[Snaps fingers and points at the glass door].

Yeah, we get visitors knocking on our door all the time. There's a raccoon plastered up against the window watching us.

[Laughter].

So if we want peace in those rooms, we have to know the way it knocks. If we want joy in those rooms, we have to recognize it when it comes. If you want compassion, you have to welcome it. You have to put the doormat out. You have to dress the table accordingly. But most importantly, when it comes to you, you have to embrace it and say, “Ah this is a great guest, an ancient guest that is felt by millions and has been felt by our ancestors for a long time past.”

When you feel compassion, it's the same compassion that the Buddha and Christ spoke of. And it's the same mercy of the divine mother. When you feel love in your chest, it's not just unique to you. There are many different types of love. When you feel divine love, that is the same divine love that all of the masters in this room spoke of. And so when you feel these qualities of grace passing through the room, passing through your room, don't mistake them for just a breeze, blowing. Welcome them and say, “Hello.” When sadness grips you say, “Wow, hello.” And you'll find that sadness is actually a beautiful guest, a wonderful guest. When there is pain, welcome. When there is beauty, welcome. When there is grief, welcome. Maybe he'll stay around for longer than we wanted him to. 

Some guests  take up residence. Sometimes we forget where they live, sometimes we forget that we have to allow them to find us.  Sometimes we go looking for them in all the wrong places. I said last night, if you want love, you give love and you find that you have love to give. There’s another saying:  if you want the mirror to change, you can't change the mirror, you can't force the mirror to change. It's a losing battle. But if you want the mirror to smile back at you, the first thing you do is you smile and the mirror smiles back at you. And then there you have it. You found joy and you make a special place for it. You make a bed for it in your home. It's that you always know where it is and you can wake it up whenever you want. 

Because I don't know, but some people say life is like that, like a feedback loop, that the inside and the outside are not so far away. We are like an open window, the space between. And the way the world looks depends on the way that we look at it. And so it's very, very easy, especially right now, especially today to look at the world, to look at politics, to look at affairs, geopolitical warfare, to look at suffering, to look at poverty, to look at disease and famine, to look at the world today, it's very, very easy to think that it's all going down the drain. But that's one lens. That's a lens to look at. It's a story to put in our eyes. So the question is: what would it be like to look from a different angle? Because in our house, in our house, there are not just many rooms, there are many windows. And when you look through one window, you see a certain part of the garden. But if you look through the western window or the eastern window, they might have a different view.

So which window do you look through? What do you let colour your glasses? We could say the world is going down the drain, or we could see the world with the flowers in the garden. We could see the beautiful people around us. We could hear the songs, could see the good that is done every single day in every community, and so many individuals, and so many creatures, and the sounds of the crickets [participant sneezes], and the sound of saying, “Bless you.” [Participant says, “Thank you.”] And the sound of “thank you.” [Laughter]. 

And there we found gratitude. And see I said my job is to recognize these qualities, and we start talking about them and they start entering the room. I said in the beginning of the night, “Pay attention to the vibration, not the manifestation.” So see if you can notice what is in the room right now. 

So what would it be like to fill your house, fill the rooms of your house with altars? To fill your house with altars, with wisdom. To fill your heart with songs, to fill your heart with prayers, to fill your eyes with love.

I'm not telling you to do anything. I'm just saying what if? What you do is up to you. 

[Participant sneezes]. 

Bless you. So may you be blessed, and may the rooms inside of you be blessed. May your blessings be blessed, your work be blessed, your health be blessed, all of the ways in which you walk in this life and all of the work that you do in this life, may it be blessed so much. And that you receive those blessings. 

In the Bible it says, “Blessed are they that bless others.” I say, “If you bless everything, everything will become a blessing.” 

Amen.

Así.

Aho.