You'll find a selection of Miranda's recent articles on spirituality and awakening below, as well as the 'Ask Miranda' Awakening Dialogues archive. To join the dialogues and ask Miranda your own question, click here: info@awakeningwithmiranda.com
- Stand At Zero
- Rest In God
- In Conversation With Miranda - Miracle Network Newsletter
All the while a silent laughter sings, like wind through an open window saying:
be deeper still, stand at Zero
Rumi
Within each human being lie reservoirs of limitless peace, profound connection to the whole of life and a love that can fill our heart. Yet the common human tendency is to expend great energy seeking for fulfilment in external things, in trying to control life to manifest our desires and keep away our fears. These twin dynamics of the ego mind - chasing after something we believe will fulfil us, and resisting that which we believe would threaten us, turns our life into a frustrating search, with pilgrimages to false gods that seduce us with strategies of how to get what we believe we lack. It is exhausting and ultimately unsuccessful. At some point we need to just stop. Then we can see that what we have been chasing after has been here all the time, and what we have been resisting does not even exist. Then there is freedom, and usually gentle laughter. We can be our essential self, relaxed and at home in our own skin.
So much of western culture from our advertising to our education systems promotes this trance of external seeking and attempts to control the flow of life. Along the way we become lost to our own essence, lost to the natural innocence of the heart. We forget what it is to simply be ourselves. We begin to feel more separated from others, and we grow hardened, defensive and more self-oriented. Without even being aware of it, we slip into living life as if it were a rehearsal for the real thing - some kind of half-hearted performance. A mysterious sadness pervades us although we cannot easily name it let alone find our way out. This us our unnecessary suffering. It is both personal and collective.
There is no one alive who has not bought the idea that happiness, freedom, fulfilment, peace can be achieved through the right circumstances: whether that for us be centred around the right relationship, achievements, power, knowledge, money or possessions. We even subtly transfer this approach onto spirituality - making a path of God, creating conditions and steps to reach the summit in some future time. As noble as this seems, at a certain stage this becomes just another subtle strategy for further embodying the mad idea that what would make us whole and happy is in some other time, state and place.
Perhaps you are tired and dis-illusioned by the search for God, the search for wholeness and freedom. Despite the feelings of despondency this may initiate, this as actually very good news. Only when we begin to drop the search for anything, to relax our grasping, can a depth of awakening that truly delivers on its promise really occur. Then our lives can become a living testimony to real love.
Awakening to a deeper truth may mean that one day, for no logical reason, you simply know that you can no longer play by the rules you may have lived by for years; the unwritten rules of a relationship, the beliefs you have been conditioned to accept as fact, the script you have written for your own life, even the 'rules' of a cherished spiritual teaching. Ultimately, we are asked to step out of line and rest truly open, available to let the mystery of life usher us into new depths. Initially this can feel terrifying, but also thrilling.
This is what it means to stand at zero - the space of deep openness and receptivity. Zero is the cosmic port-hole through which the new can emerge; new freedom, new awareness, new love, new possibility, new peace, new life. It can only emerge when we find courage enough to embrace the empty space, even though it might ask us to face the fear of the void. When we stand at zero, we live magically with the joy and aliveness of little children, who learn so easily because their minds are truly open and uncluttered by fixed ideas.
Any authentic movement requires a break from the past - not because the past is inherently bad, but because it is difficult for a deeper truth to emerge amidst old habits. Often, we are not even aware we are living from habit. However, we notice there has been a dulling of our aliveness, a cynical edge that has emerged in our heart. We recognize that some vital part of us has gone to sleep, we have become closed, and the juice is gone.
I invite you to a radical openness to life, one that asks you to risk feeling everything: moving through life minus the usual insulation that we have been taught we need to survive. Living this alive asks us to meet our own experience more defencelessly, and then to learn to meet the totality of the collective experience defencelessly. Commonly this feels scary because it inevitably involves experiences of contraction, and we have been led to believe this is bad, but it is not - it is natural.
Pain is part of human life, but suffering is optional. Most if not all of our suffering is caused by resistance and defence of pain. Our fear of experiencing heart-break ironically leads us into a living experience of a mild background broken-heartedness. This need not be. Any painful experience met with deep acceptance inevitably finds release into grace. Any positive experience met and lived fully expands into further grace. When we learn to embrace personal pain, sadness, loss, not getting what we want, we can then come to embrace the broader pain of the world with an open and compassionate heart. If you are willing to experience everything with a soft, open curiosity, you discover there is no need for defence. You have no need of anything but surrender, deep honesty and being yourself. This is freedom.
Could you dare to show up to life radically open? Could you find courage enough to be spontaneously available to the present moment? Could you be willing to feel what is here, and dive even deeper to what is beyond all feeling? Could you risk stopping your strategies of chasing after fulfilment even if only for a moment? Could you stand at zero? Could you allow yourself to be free? Would you?
Rest in God
'The One you are looking for is the One who is looking'
St Francis of Assisi
Often people find their way to work with me either in one to one settings or in groups when they are in the midst of a 'spiritual crisis'. This is essentially a shift occurring in the innermost depths of our being that often brings on a crisis of meaning. It seems to de-stabilize our core centre of gravity. We can feel as though we are losing the plot - as though our world is falling apart. Spiritual crisis is often mis-diagnosed as depression and treated with suppressive drugs because it is not commonly understood. It is actually a powerful gateway, a tremendous gift of life into a vast newness. A cross-roads where for some mysterious reason the soul wishes to open into a new dimension. We usually experience fear and disturbance because it rocks what we have come to know as our self, and it shakes that which we have built our lives upon.
Everyone at some point will experience a spiritual crisis - when the soul needs to shed its previous psychic structure to make way for new life and there is little to be done to halt it. This can be triggered by sudden loss, illness, bereavement, a relationship melt-down, trauma or any kind, or for no particular reason at all. Typically we feel deeply out of control, and previous pillars of meaning and nourishment just don't cut it anymore. Most of us come to the spiritual life to find resolution to some great pain or life dilemma. When what once has sustained us spiritually falls away, it hits us at a primary survival level. It can literally feel life-threatening.
I have come to see that there are three primary paradigms of folding back into the Source - whether we wish to call that God or by any other name. I see these as to God, with God, as God. Although I speak of these paradigms in three stages, none is superior to another, and all three want to be activated for the fullest experience of Spirit to be lived in and as us. A shift from one primary paradigm to another often prompts a spiritual crisis, and to have some understanding of the different dimensions of spirit can go a long way towards helping us panic less and surrender more to the opportunity that the bottom falling out of our life brings us.
To God
Simply incarnating into a physical body involves a certain degree of forgetting our spiritual heritage and home. Whether we remember this as a specific point of turning away from the Source of all life, or simply a gradual deadening of our joy and a sense of closing down taking place gradually throughout childhood, it is part of the human experience to apparently 'lose our innocence'. This can be somewhat minimized but not stopped.
If we are fortunate, at some point we hear a calling to return to an echo of something the heart faintly remembers. A Course in Miracles poetically calls this 'the forgotten song'. It is the call of our deepest heart, of our own true nature to return to Itself, like an ancient melody we begin to hear wisps of. In this there is choice - to continue to walk the wilderness or to turn around and follow the melody back to its Source. Many choose to continue walking in the wilderness - better the devil you know than the one you don't.
The story of the prodigal son describes this paradigm beautifully; someone who was given everything, yet wandered away, gradually forgetting his home and heritage. At some point he became tired of walking in the wilderness. He feels the pull to come home, acts upon this pull and turns around. Feeling unworthy of anything but the most basic shelter, he discovers to his surprise that he is greeted with a total welcome and celebration.
In the initial stage of awakening, or of awakening to a new level, we discover that underneath our wanderings are the everlasting arms of love. We are greeted unequivocally and unconditionally by Spirit. We allow ourself to be as a young child held totally in the arms of love Itself. What a celebration is this journey TO God.
Necessary, true and utterly beautiful when we have been unknowingly wandering in the wilderness, lost to ourselves, lost to our Source. It is the experience of being found and profoundly loved and it is enough to utterly change our life. It is this that most hymns and bhajans sing in praise of. The heart opens in deep gratitude and breaths a great sigh of relief. We recognize that despite our fears, we are loved and lovable
With God
If we continue to go deep with this experience of being held and unconditionally loved and not alone in the cosmos, what evolves is an experience of entering into spiritual partnership. Like a mature relationship is one of equals flowing together in co-operation, in this paradigm we learn to operate less independently from Spirit. We foster deep attunement with The Presence, begin to ask for insight with an open mind, and we learn to listen in silence for the response. Thus we begin to walk the world informed by a wisdom beyond our limited thinking based on perception and past experience. This can make our life much more graceful and inspirational, as we begin to tap into resources beyond our conscious mind. We access a profound sense of flow.
The journey WITH God is a very relational, prayer-full and devotional one. It is centrally about cultivating divine obedience. Deeply devotional by nature, for many years I dove very deep with this dimension of the journey. For years I have sat open at the end of meditation sessions with these kinds of questions:
What wants to be received?
What wants to be known?
What wants to be released?
What wants to be done?
Listening for the responses, I learnt to distinguish the difference between the voice of my own wanting and the voice of spirit. Essentially, I recognized that the voice of spirit was always that which re-established the awarenenss of wholeness and oneness - some form of reconciliation or healing that produced greater sense of love and untiy. That my own wanting would be centred around bolstering the story of 'me' and my individualistic agendas. Then the focus of the day would be a challenge to live in accordance with this guidance. I have written much about this in my previous book 'Boundless Love' - in itself a detailed guide on the journey to and with God. The decade I spent training interfaith ministers was centred upon initiating them to this level of partnership with The Divine, so as to extend healing and grace to others.
As God
The third paradigm of awakening is the dimension of Self AS God. It has a much more impersonal quality about it than the first two stages, and thus often marks a quantum change and often the biggest emotional risk. The Self I speak of is not the personality self, but That which gives rise to all personality. It is not the ego running amuck disguising its fears and opinions as divinity. It is actually a core shift in identification from separate ego to collective Self. When we dive deep enough, we discover that there is actually no separate self. Not even a 'higher' self. More accurate would be to call it 'no-self'. It is an opening to a profound humility; a vast horizon when concepts fall away to reveal what eternally IS - vast spaciousness that dances vibrantly through all of life.
All the great sages and spiritual traditions have pointed to this, but it can only be truly known experientially. The way is very simple. It has been spoken of in the Biblical Psalms: 'be still and know that I am God'. This is the universal summary of all spiritual teaching east and west. However, like a zen koan, this cannot be intellectually understood by the mind. Its purpose is to stop the mind - to interrupt the trance of the thinker and open the door back into essence. 'Be still and know that I am God' is an ancient inner doorway that can open of itself if sat with softly.
Ultimately, that which we are seeking is our very Self. It is the God-Self. Not the one we have learned through our conditioning, not the self we think we are. It is the very ground of being upon which all things rise and fall. If we look at the sky, we see that the sun rises and sets, and clouds sometimes appear and dissolve though the canvas of the sky. Using this analogy, our core human dilemma is that we relate to our self as the clouds, when in fact we are the sky in which clouds, sun, rain, sunsets, sunrises all occur within. The sky itself does not move or change. All moves and changes within IT.
A deep awakening begins to occur when we recognize who we are as one and the same as God: that Creator and Created are One. This can hardly be spoken of without sounding like just another nice spiritual idea. It usually stays in the realm of concepts, because to open up truly to feel and live it initiates a profound loosening of all we have previously known. This for most of us this is very frightening. Who wants to face a great possible void? It hits the deep core fear of personal insignificance. The possibility that who you have known yourself to be all of this time is imaginary and in truth does not even exist is not a comfortable contemplation, but it is an immensely liberating one.
I invite you to meet your fear of personal insignificance - of the void: not with emotional aggressiveness, but as a doorway to direct deep enquiry. Don't run from whatever fear you touch upon - just embrace every dimension of the experience. Then you are free to discover what is deeper than your fear. Regardless of what you have been taught, your naked unadorned being is glorious beyond words. You need not be afraid at all.
When you begin to experience the God-Self, a wonderful fearlessness emerges. You know that all is well. You know you are connected. You sense the oneness. In this connectedness, compassion and kindness for the rest of life emerges naturally - you experience that we are really not different from one another. That we all wish for the same happiness, the same freedom, the same love. That we are that love, wanting, needing to love Itself.
A Meditation:
Right now, see if it is possible for you to loosen your sense of self, even if just a little. Instead of seeing yourself as mind contained within a body, framed by name and form, see if your can sense something deeper. Just open beyond the boundary of the mind, the body, and its sensations and ideas. Notice the space around your body - the air, the atmosphere that your body and mind appear in. Feel that air, where it stops and starts …
Now, see if you can widen beyond this a little. What if just for a moment, you could open yourself to be as the air, the space itself that does not move or change - yet all movement and change occurs within it.
Notice how that space includes absolutely everything, not just the body and mind you relate to as you. Notice what else lives within this space - other beings, creatures, life forms. What if you ARE that space - the animating force that pulses through all form? This is your original face, this force that gives life to all that is born, lives for a while and dies to allow new life.
Here you truly are … …the vast, pristine spaciousness that holds it all. Forever free, eternally at peace, at one with all. This is God - this is Self. Know your Self as God. Rest in That which you Are.
In Conversation with Miranda
Miracle Worker magazine talks to prominent people in the A Course in Miracles¨ community. Interview conducted by Ian Patrick.
Ian: Miranda, you have been through big changes in the circumstances of your life over the past year. Would you say something about that to fill people in?
Miranda: Everything has changed in my outer circumstances. My husband, Robert, and I have divorced amicably after 13 years of marriage. I have let go of my spiritual directorship of the Interfaith Seminary, which I thought was my life's work. I am leaving the country. I no longer have a physical home. I am 'living liquid' for a while and there really is nothing in the outer circumstances of my life that has stayed the same.
Inwardly, there are two dimensions. There has been a huge dropping away of things I was attached to, in terms of sense of self and identities that I thought of as me, although I was not aware that was so strong. Yet, I am more in touch with what does not change. The process that I have been through has been in allowing what is impermanent to burn away. I have discovered, more directly, more viscerally, that which does not change. So the teaching that is at the beginning of A Course in Miracles¨, which is: "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists" (T 1), is alive in me at the moment -- not as a nice idea, but as something very alive and real.
Ian: On one level, this change you have talked about could be described as everything falling apart. It could be described in very negative terms. But it sounds as if it has been a huge growth opportunity for you?
Miranda: Yes, it has been absolutely amazing. I would not describe it as remotely comfortable. It has been deeply confronting and uncomfortable, at times, but it has been an incredible spiritual opportunity and one that I have done my best to grasp, fully, and take.
Ian: How do you feel, now, as you are leaving this old life?
Miranda: Excited, complete and peaceful. There is no sense of regret or looking back on the past and wishing it were different from how it is. There are certainly challenges ahead, but there is no sense of clinging to what has been, at all. There is deep trust in the process of what is unfolding.
Ian: From what you have told me, one of the things that has helped bring about this trust is that you have felt guided along the way.
Miranda: Yes, in fact, this process has been one of being willing to follow quite radical guidance. Not radical in that the guidance is 'out there', but the willingness to take Spirit at its word for absolutely everything. The reasons for our letting go of the form of the relationship - of my marriage, as it has been, is not because there is any interpersonal conflict between us, or that we stopped loving one another, or any of the big problems that usually cause a relationship to split. There was just a profound sense that the form of what has been is no longer true. There were various catalysts that brought that awareness to our attention.
I am reminded by what ACIM¨ says about the three different dimensions of relationship: one, where we seem to have chance encounters and there is a connection; another where we seem to have important, meaningful and intense relationships, which have a particular time duration, for the period where there is a particular curriculum to be learned and engaged in; and other relationships that are always there, where the Course says we have limitless opportunities for mutual personal growth.
Ian: So you feel that this relationship did not have unlimited potential for growth?
Miranda: The truth is, I do not know and this comes back to another principle in the Course "I do not know what anything is for." (W 38) What is clear is that the form that was is no longer what is true. So, it has been a big process of letting go of the idealisation of form and honouring what wants to be, now -- whilst holding true to the fact of the love that has not changed. ACIM¨ talks about "only the love is real" and that real love does not come and go. That is definitely the experience that we have had through this journey.
Ian: I think many have seen your relationship with Robert as being an ideal one. It must have been extra difficult to let that go.
Miranda: What was difficult was more in dealing with the fear in the environment, how much it seems to have destabilised others. I think it has shattered an illusion, but it is not that the relationship and the marriage was not beautiful, true and a profound blessing. It was. So that is not untrue. But what is the perfect relationship? Is there even such a thing? I think we are back to the idea of idealising form, rather than loving content. That is the ultimate message of relationships: when we put the content first, the rightful form happens of itself.
Ian: Can you say something about the guidance you got to move on -- the form in which that took? Were you given messages, instructions, or anything like that?
Miranda: For me, the process began when we were in India in March 2005 and I had a spiritual awakening in Ramana Maharshi's cave. I was opened to a profound elevated state of awareness, a state of no-mind, for a number of weeks after. According to Robert, that was the moment when he knew that our marriage was over: that where I was heading was not where he was going and that he struggled with that for quite some time before he was able to communicate it.
Ian: When did you get that message?
Miranda: I got the truth of what was unfolding in early December 2005. There are other things that were going on that were a catalyst for all of this coming to light that I would rather not specify, as I do not think it is necessary. Suffice it to say, the position I was in, at that time, was that I wanted the marriage to continue, did not want to separate and tried to fight for the marriage. I felt I had no choice, control or say over what was unfolding, which was a terrifying and painful experience
I think, for a lot of us, the feeling of being out of control of our circumstances is scary. The personality likes the illusion of control, but in truth, life is deeply uncontrollable.
As what had been was fading away, without me, seemingly, having any say in it, there was only one thing to do -- to help me access some peace of mind -- and that was to go inside and surrender to Spirit, more deeply than I had before. I did not know what else to do. The level of emotional stress and heartbreak that I was meeting was intense. I was having panic attacks every night, so would get up in the early hours of the morning after an attack and meditate, as a way of calming myself and trying to open to something that might help me come back to peace. I was meditating for probably about three hours every night, during that period.
Ian: Is that where the guidance came from?
Miranda: For many years, I have been asking four questions at the end of my quiet time. The questions are: "What wants to be known? What wants to be received? What wants to be released? What wants to be done?" I have always had clear responses to those questions that have been helpful. Suddenly, there was a much stronger and more powerful quality to the guidance I was receiving. It was in another league to anything I had known before: more direct, visceral, powerful and coming through in such volume that I thought I needed to begin writing it down.
My hand was struggling to keep up with how fast it was coming. So, of course, I began to ask questions on the nature of what was happening, why it was happening and how I needed to respond to it in a way that would be helpful. I got the consistent message: "Nothing is going wrong here. All is as it should be. Trust the process. All of this is preparation for what wants to come." I was being encouraged to trust, to be open, to allow the process and to look at the places where I was attached, and to surrender and open totally.
One day, I began to embrace the idea of impermanence, because I seemed to have no control over what was happening and it seemed like I was losing everything that I loved: not just my husband, but the home that I loved, the project and community that I had birthed and had given my whole heart to, the life that we had lived for 13 years -- everything that had meant the most to me. So, I started to face the fact of death of the form. I realized that, as usually women outlive men and Robert is four years older, the likelihood was that, at some point in my life, I would be having to meet what I was meeting now. So, it occurred to me: "Okay, meet it now! It is here, now. Embrace the reality that form is inherently impermanent, and whether it is possible to be free and at peace with that fact."
Then, the journalling started coming: "Who am I without Robert, the Interfaith Seminary, being a person people know, this success, home, body, these friends and thoughts -- all the things of this world that I had wrapped any sense of identity around?" Then, it was: "Who am I without Miranda?" As I wrote that, the pen ran out on the word 'Miranda'. So, I had a huge epiphany of knowing that is how deep this relinquishment wants to go. Virtually every idea I have cherished about who and what I am wants to be burnt on the funeral pyre of truth. It was obvious to me that the choice I had was to, either, resist, have a tantrum, feel sorry for myself and make it a big drama, or to see that this is a spiritual invitation that, actually, is the answer to my deepest prayer. I was told through guidance that this was a quickening, a blessing and designed to shift my being -- my core centre of gravity -- so that I could fulfil my function more effectively.
Ian: You have told me about the ground of being, which is permanent, and the impermanent. This means it is okay to feel whatever you feel -- sadness, anger, whatever -- because that does not change the ground of being. I say that because you seem so peaceful, despite everything.
Miranda: I do feel, at heart, profoundly peaceful, freer than ever in my life, more in essence. Yet, there have been emotional experiences that have been extremely intense.
Ian: How do you hold your peace with these intense emotions?
Miranda: I have come to see that it is not an either/or thing and that it is about where we place our faith. A Course in Miracles¨ uses the term 'vigilance' a lot and I discovered that the word actually means to keep vigil. It does not mean 'control', 'suppression' or fighting against anything within yourself. It means being faithful to what is most real. What I was getting in touch with was this ground of being that does not change. Whereas, in the past, God had been a presence of boundless love and I had conceptually understood this limitless ground of being from which everything arises, I began to experience God in a much more impersonal, yet direct, way. The God that I began to experience was indistinguishable from my own being and from the being of everything and everyone.
This does not sound new, but what was new was this was not a fleeting glimpse or a concept. It was beginning to be experienced as what is core. I learned to rest in that, more and more, in the same way that the Course invites us to "rest in God" . That is why "I need do nothing" because to rest in God so profoundly is to let the mind surrender to its source, the heart be open and undefended, and to be present to what is moving, as well as resting in what is still.
I learned to invite every difficult experience, painful emotion, fluctuating mood, thread of fear, hurt or anger and to rest in God. I did not have to fight the fear, anger and hurt but, the opposite, literally to bring it in to rest in the deeper truth. Suddenly, there is no fight, or conflict. I think that the way people often understand spiritual principles can lead to what psychology would call superego battles with one's self, such as: "I shouldn't feel angry. I need to get rid of the anger because anger is un-spiritual'. Or 'I need to get rid of the fear," etc. And that does not help any of us to surrender. Even 'surrender' is too much of a 'doing' word. Actually to realise that the fear has no substance is not a doing, but a gentle rising of awareness which we can thus rest in and find the peace that is inherently always here.
Ian: That is being in the world but not of it.
Miranda: When I was in the Ramana cave, I heard an inner voice, clearly, which was like an inner mantra that came and it was: "Be nothing. Do nothing. Get nothing. Become nothing. Seek for nothing. Relinquish nothing. Be as you are. Rest in God." That stayed with and fed me, time and time again. It has been a shift from walking the spiritual path to get somewhere in particular -- enlightenment, peace, or whatever -- to just resting and melting back into what is always there, inherently.
Ian: You talk about three stages: 1) the path to God, 2) with God, and 3) as God.
Miranda: I also began to see that there are three core dimensions to waking up that seemed to be generic.
The first stage is about the journey to God and it is best summed up by the story of the prodigal son, where we have wandered away, have been leading our life on our own, in negation, or denial, of a deeper reality, beyond our physical senses. Suddenly, for some reason, there is a tug that says: "I've lost something. I'm missing something. I want to find it." So, that is the beginning of the path home. In that stage, there is doing and seeking, which are appropriate and necessary. When we begin to come home, we are greeted with an eternally, boundless love. That unconditional embrace is there for us with joy, grace and celebration.
If we continue to deepen in that experience, another dimension begins to open up: the journey with God. At this stage, we know there is a presence of boundless, unconditional love, we know that we are in relationship with that presence and that it is not wise to try to live our lives independently of that presence. So, we learn to turn to that presence, more consistently for everything -- ultimately, to make no independent decisions. We learn to turn to God, to ask and listen, to discern what is our ego speaking and what is the Voice of Truth. The journey with God is like walking the world holding the hand of the Spirit. It is a devotional and beautiful journey and we can go deep with that.
All the work I had done with the Interfaith Seminary was predominantly about to God and with God -- literally, helping people have a deeper, more direct experience of the reality of God, helping them to take His hand and to build an intimate relationship, from which to be of service in love.
Yet those two stages are still relational. They are both, still, God and me. The third stage is being as God, where the experience of God becomes more impersonal and, yet, more all-encompassing. It is where the distinction between self and God begins to soften and we begin to experience God as the ground of being in which we all dwell. The easiest analogy is of the sky. The problem is most of us identify ourselves as the clouds that pass through the sky. In reality, we are the sky, with the clouds passing through. This is about the core shifting of identity from self, as a separate personality, to becoming more empty of self, more transparent.
Ian: Do you think that is the ultimate goal, here, in the world?
Miranda: I do not want to make it into a hierarchy, because the truth is: who knows? What is interesting is that most spiritual paths point to all three of the dimensions. We could have a tremendous awareness of self as God, next day, have an argument with our best friend, colleague or lover and have fallen straight back into feeling separate -- and all the fear, guilt and lack that comes with that -- and be knee-deep in our fixations and patterns again, in which where we are is on our knees and in the wilderness. Then, there is a need to say: "Hey, I want to come back" and, there we are again, to God. There is a realisation of having wandered, so we come back to the practice of true vigilance and what that really is: keeping vigil with what is true, not about resisting the stormy weather that arises or judging ourselves for that. It is about nurturing and feeding the deeper truth, repeatedly -- not in a way that suppresses, but in a way that helps expand our container, so that we do not have to be afraid of anything that arises in life.
I would not describe my life circumstances, at the moment, as comfortable, but I cannot imagine anything much that would seriously derail me now. I do not feel afraid of anything.
Ian: Because you go back to that ground of being.
Miranda: Yes, and because I have met what has most frightened me and realised: "It's all going to go anyway." Everyone I love is going to die, this body is going to die, all form is going to change. They are the simple facts of life, so why continue to be in resistance to those facts? The Buddhists talk a lot about this, the importance of embracing death, and I intellectually understood it, only now I really see the value of it, because then you are free to live in the present, fully. You cannot control the events and the circumstances of your life. You are not in charge. Spirit is in charge of your curriculum.
Ian: The Course talks about death a lot. I think one reason is that it wants us to embrace these things you are talking about. It does not skirt around the subject. It gives lots of graphic details.
Miranda: And that is what 'rocks my boat' now. Why skirt around anything? The only reason for avoiding certain subjects is if we are afraid of them. To skirt around is to continue to buffer the fear, rather than meet what is afraid and enquire into the reality of what is afraid. As soon as you genuinely enquire into what and who is afraid, the whole cover is blown, because you realise: "nothing and nobody", literally"! You 'get' why the Course says: "There is nothing to fear". And, furthermore, there is no body, there is no one. Who we think we are is, literally, nothing. It is made up. This sounds depressing, but it is the deepest liberation.
Ian: It seems simple and obvious when you talk about it like that.
Miranda: It is. What is challenging, for me, is to be able to convey this as an experience, because everything I am saying has been said before. So, I am excited about exploring how to help facilitate people to experience this ground of being, the essence of God and who we really are.
Ian: How are you planning to do that? It seems like you have some books in the pipeline. Is that the plan?
Miranda: There are few plans. I am, literally, living in a way that is quite radically obedient to the guidance. I had the guidance to go away for two months to integrate, be, relax, write and not to think too far ahead. Writing? Who knows what will happen? I might start writing and it might not be publishable. You do not know. This is where I am at: You do not know anything about anything. Could we be willing to live with such radical open-ness? "Yes" is my answer. What is there to be afraid of? Nothing! Who even is there who is afraid? No one. You do not exist, really. I am not saying I am fully integrated in this awareness. I am not, but this awareness is grounding itself through the minnutiate of moment to moment life all the time.
In my workshops, I am clear that the only real conversation we have is: "Who am I, really? And how can I live that through all the dimensions of human life? How can I live the truth of who I am, the Truth of God -- in the way I walk down the street, make love, greet a friend, relate at work, relate to myself, or handle what is difficult in my life?" All I am doing is sitting with people with as much openness as possible and joining with them in the willingness to experience, more fully, something deeper of the truth. It is much simpler than we have all been led to think.
Whatever problems are presented look different when you are resting in the truth of who we are. When things need to be worked out, the clarity emerges, naturally. It is obvious what to do about practical things. It comes -- like the grass grows by itself; the hair on your head grows of itself. You do not have to tell it to grow. Spirit moves of itself.
Ian: So, all you know, at this point, is that you are traveling the world and open to share and serve as inwardly directed?
Miranda: Yes. I will sit with people in large and small groups and open to facilitating them into this experience for themselves. I am very clear that this work is not about talking about God, it is about helping people directly experience the God-Self, and letting hold habits of suffering find freedom in that awareness. It is effortless and beautiful. So much joy.
Ian: Is it scary and exciting?
Miranda: I do not feel scared. As the past year of my life has been so liquid, I have learned to stay with what is, let it unfold, keep listening and trust. I was reading the first Characteristic of a Teacher of God recently in A Course inb Miracles. The one on which all the other characteristics hinge is trust. It talks about the stages a Teacher of God develops in their capacity to trust. I can see how that describes, perfectly, in an impersonal way, the process I have been going through. It feels like preparation to fulfil the function of love more effectively. That is the deepest prayer of my heart. I do not really care, so much, what happens to Miranda. I care about the sharing and propagation of love and truth, because that is where the deepest joy is -- and, actually, always has been.
Ian: I am sure there will be many people who will be watching out with interest to see how that does manifest itself.
Miranda: I want to encourage people not to be afraid of change. There is a passage in the Text: "It takes great learning to understand that all things, events, encounters and circumstances are helpful" (M 10). If we could approach everything that is happening with that openness, all of it will serve as a gateway to God -- even the thing that breaks our heart the most. There is nothing to get rid of.
Ian: Thank you.
