We are all born into this world with a human body and it comes pre-equipped with DNA, a certain type of parents and a FATE that each of us must meet in our lives. The human is simply an animal that needs a certain cycle of events and activities to maintain its life based on its own origins and DNA. When we identify with the human we become obsessed by unrelenting compulsive desires for comfort and security, which the human part of us believes will keep it from dying. Our lives are consumed with trying to make the MORTAL into the IMMORTAL.

The fate we all must face is that we are more than merely a human. We are LOVE. This is often regarded as a foolish or relativity simple insight, but I assure you it is not. Love has the ability to minimize our entire life down to ONE MOMENT! One single tick on the clock and our whole life looks different.

Allow me a story at this point to help you. It is an old and powerful Zen metaphor for the practice of awakening.

Noticing that his father was growing old, the son of a burglar asked his father to teach him his trade so that he could carry on the family business after his father had retired.

The father agreed, and that night they broke into a house together.

Opening a large chest the father told his son to go in and pick out the clothing. As soon as the boy was inside, the father locked the chest, then made a lot of noise so that the whole house was aroused. He then slipped quietly away.

Locked inside the chest the boy was angry, terrified and puzzled as to how he was going to get out. Then an idea flashed to him and he made a noise like a cat.

The family told a maid to take a candle and examine the chest.

When the lid was unlocked the boy jumped out, blew out the candle, pushed his way past the astonished maid and ran out. The people ran after him.

Noticing a well by the side of the road the boy threw in a large stone into it, then hid in the darkness. The pursuers gathered around the well trying to see the burglar drowning himself.

When the boy got home he was very angry at his father, but when he tried to tell him the story, his father simply said: “DON’T BOTHER TO TELL ME THE DETAILS, YOU ARE HERE. YOU HAVE LEARNED THE ART.”

Yes, his son had learned the Zen art of living in impermanence – moving within the moment without thinking about “how” to move.

We are here to no longer move against the tides of Life. We are here to become agile enough to flow with the moments of our impermanence within the human body, allowing the mortal to serve simply as a vehicle to transformation.

Impermanence is a law of Life that we are all subject to in this world. So how do we learn how to live authentically within the vastness of impermanence while still living within the mortality of the human body?

We must step outside the “box” and recognize it for what it is – nothing but pure FEAR. We must first question our fear and then dive right into it! No matter what we believe about ourselves, we must abandon our bias and move into the nature of LIFE with a sense of totality by giving up opinions, beliefs and emotional hope for the fulfillment of our human desires.

Simply dive into the thing you “think” that you cannot do. Do it anyway until it becomes the adventure of your lifetime. If you are cautious, if you are hesitant, if you are deluded – you will not be able to mature beyond the “glass ceiling” of your mind. But if you are deeply moved by something you feel, but do not know how to do it…find a way. As the famous Nike slogan states: “JUST DO IT!” The effort alone is the blessing.

Learning to live with the mortal while in the same moment feeling the depth of freedom that exists beyond our mortality is the very gift of impermanence. When impermanence meets immortality we are liberated from ideas of time, substance and space and begin to invite the evolutionary experience of a profound sense of significance that far exceeds the mere human urge for survival.

SEEK and keep SEEKING until your mind falls away and all that is left is the pure moment of SEEKING without cause or reason. Life is about a quality of consciousness in which impermanence and human mortality exist in unison and, through the humility of the cycle of life and death, mercy will enlighten us to a new life that exists within.

When we allow this cycle to bring us into maturity, we no longer engage in childish emotions as a means to incorporate their sorrowful state into our daily living to merely survive. When we enter into the merciful energies of meditation, we live beyond our fears, and this humbling experience helps us to realize that the nature of Love within is the life we have been seeking.

In every moment of our life our sense of immortality is being confronted by impermanence, breaking down our illusions to reveal our human mortality and how we have willfully fed our vanity rather than our compassion within this lifetime. When we are willing to flow with the waves of impermanence, we realize powerful new insights into living beyond the human obsessions of fear as survival.

This is why every moment of our living needs to reflect the LIFE that is alive within us. Living requires a great deal…more through less. Living requires MERCY. When we are willing to embrace the life-giving energy of meditation and a merciful lifestyle, we discover what Lao-tzu refers to as: “inexhaustible.”

I bow to Rumi and his poem, The Guest House. This poem embraces everything that is Life…enough said.

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.