Success III

(my note: I wrote this for my friends in the local oneness group)

So much is happening in the world, and so much is happening in my own heart and my own life.
What i want to share with you is my musing on success, and peace.

Success: What is success for you personally, and how would success show up worldwide?
What would success look like in the oneness movement?

We usually have a picture of success. In the political arena, it might be that our party wins the election.
I'm thinking that a President who honored people, plants, animals, and the whole planet: that would be a success.
Personally, I would have a deep, intimate partner in my life. And a successful music career.
The oneness movement would be sweeping all around the world, and people would be receiving the blessing
and having big parties of groovy loving energy.

I know that it is popular in the New Age to take these kind of dreams and make them into affirmations.
But affirming something that exists in some other time and place, can be a sure route to suffering.
The divine grace that has brought the Oneness Blessing into my life, has made no promises as to what my life
will look like, and no promises about whether i will achieve "my success". When i was in India, I asked Amma for a successful music career,
and she tapped me on the head, and said, "It is done!" But she didn't say what that success will look like...

Who knows what will happen tomorrow?

Despite the seeming imperfections of my life, Grace has descended into this very moment, into this
slightly dysfunctional, living, breathing, mistake making human being.

Tying our happiness up to the Dream Making Machine, tying it up to whether or not we are successful,
it will drag us up and down. Today it is sunny and warm and calm, but tomorrow the winds may blow dust all over town.
Maybe my allergies will kick in, and my daughter will be grumpy.

Grace is alive in all of that, too...

It is not to say i don't want to be open for change, or have goals and projects. That is human, we have work to do,
and sometimes we have real fun...But don't wait for oneness, don't wait to be successful, don't wait for enlightenment,
or the New Age house on the hill. It may never come, and if we die tomorrow, would you want to say,

it was all a big mistake, i never got what i wanted!

Grace descends into everything right now, just as it is.

Peace is calling our name,
for we all come from nothing, and are returning to nothing all the time.
Grace, falling like a gentle rain, awakening the peace that is already in our hearts.
It was never anywhere else.