Spirituality and Dentistry

Today I went to the dentist.

There's nothing like having your teeth drilled to make you realize how really real reality is. It's really really real!

And there's nothing like losing what you had to make you realize what you have. What have I lost? A chunk of my tooth, which cracked off after it had become full of tooth decay. Oy! Why did it have tooth decay? It was because of a cavity, and why did I have that? Because of my life-long addiction to sugary food, pop, ice cream, etc. Judgement day - time to pay the price.

Ironically, it felt satisfying to just get to the root of things - no pun intended. The truth is that my tooth was rotten. That's the truth. And the dentist came in there with a drill and blasted away all the garbage. If spirituality is anything, it's really dentistry. And a spiritual teacher is a dentist.

Spirituality in my mind is a general term that is used for the search for the bedrock truth of things. It is only upon that unshakable foundation that any of us can finally rest in peace while alive. In my view, we're all just trying to reach peace, even if we think we have to fight/kill/die for the said peace. We don't want war. We only fight wars in order to reach peace. We fight because we have something within ourselves that obscures our peacefulness.

We're looking to find the bedrock of truth and peace in our lives. We seek to become truly peaceful.

Truly peaceful. Not super chilled out, or mellow, or something else that is just a mood and is bound to come and go. I said truly peaceful; a peace that is based on the truth of things. And if we're based on the truth of things, then we can really rest easy, knowing that all things change, all things come and go, and the truth remains. If we identify with our limited self, we watch in horror as we live and grow old and die. If we identify with the whole universe, then we can rest easy, knowing that the whole universe will live on, even after this character that we are identifying with passes away, as all things pass away - to make space for the newborn babies, newborn stars, newborn universes...

Everything is recycled. Nothing is lost. Everything is a part of the One. Of course, you can either know this or not, and therefore either be peaceful in the Knowing of the Truth, or be anxious in the Ignorance of the Truth. It's really only one way or the other. There's not three ways, just two. And ultimately, I imagine it would be mighty hard for any single aspect of consciousness to remain ignorant for eternity... Maybe it's possible, who knows? But humans are bombarded continuously with the message: You are not separate!

The air you breathe, water you drink, food you eat, thoughts you think. The space, the land, the energy - everything is part of the same continuum, the same flow. All the energy from the sun is powering all the activities on the planet. All the air is shared, going out of your lungs and into mine. We are all intimately connected.

I had a realization recently: this is all God's love. Everything around us is God's love. I know, sounds corny, cliche. But all good things are coming from every angle at us. There's no escaping this grace. It's our very life. Why then do we avoid it? Why do we run from the Light? Because it asks everything from us, including our very selves. And that's the one thing we don't want to let go, this "me" that we're holding onto all day and all night. This "me" that we're projecting into some grand future. This "me" that can't ever seem to find peace.

Why? Because like my tooth, we're full of rot. And we need a spiritual teacher to come along and drill us good, so that only the good stuff remains. 

And we can build our lives from there.

  

The Two Foundations - Matthew 7:
24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 “And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. 26 “Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 “The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”
28 When Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at His teaching; 29 for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.