The Stainless Purity Of Our Higher Self

"Only the ego makes mistakes. None of our faults, crimes, or ignorant choices affect the stainless purity of our higher Self, our buddha nature, our Christ consciousness - or any conceptualization we use to describe the larger life in us that transcends ego. That life beyond conditions remains sane and infallible in us all our lives. It is accessed in moments of mindfulness and compassion. It cannot be usurped by anyone or anything. This reliable inner life is a form of protection and makes for an immense trust in our basic goodness. This is another way that the conditions of existence lead to the joy of spiritual maturity.

Things are not always as we would like them to be, nor do plans always work out our way. The fact that we are not in control means that the proper bearing for life on the raft of this world is surrender to what is as it is, how it is, when or where it is. We can fight with all our might for what can be changed, but only surrender works with what cannot be changed. The fact that we are not in control and that things happen that we neither sought nor planned means that there are forces at work bigger than our egos. This given is thus an intimation of divinity, as Emerson says: "So nigh is grandeur to our dust."

What is the divine? Something - we know not what or whom, we know not how or when - that is always at work, but we do know why: so we can fulfill our destiny to become unique exemplars of love and wisdom. The divine is the life force of the living universe that yearns to articulate itself in all of us. The finite is a unique moment of focus on the timeless infinite. We exist because of a beatific vision: The divine is focusing into time and space, and we are focusing back. When the divine arrives here, it is I, and when it reaches there, it is you, and when it lands outside my window, it is that fig tree under which Buddha was enlightened, sitting quietly in an attitude of yes for a long time."

~ David Richo, The Five Things We Cannot Change...and the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them, pp. 22-3. Shambhala Publications, Ltd. 2005.