View From the Top > Esteemed Reader

Allow your life to unfold naturally
Know that it too is a vessel of perfection
Just as you breath in and out
Sometimes you’re ahead and other times behind
Sometimes you’re strong and other times weak
Sometimes you’re in a crowd and other times alone
—Tao Te Ching

Esteemed Reader of our magazine:
It wasn’t a dream but something more real than waking. I slipped into one of those wormholes in consciousness that allows the accustomed views to appear new. There, in that silence, everything was crimson. Something like a womb, only brighter. I looked around and there was only this pervasive sense of satisfaction. Not the kind that is the result of having filled a void. Not dissatisfaction reversed. I knew that completion is not something to be attained, but is already present. All the efforts to fix and seek and strive barely scratch the monolithic difficulties of being born human.

But a vision of completion is cheap if it isn’t realized in the mundane events of ordinary life. No kind of striving or seeking would make it real. After all, seeking is for those who still vainly believe that the objects of a heart’s desire are to be attained, rather than fulfilled. Striving to change oneself is more vanity. For we are already the perfection we envision. We are already perfectly realized, perfectly fulfilled. Our needed effort is not to change, but refine, like the alchemist and his lead becoming gold.

So where, I wondered, is ever-present perfect happiness to be found? Studying my inner life I found that each moment is a juncture at which I can choose between life and death, relaxation and constriction, heaven and hell. These forks in the road are perpetually opening. One path leads to the repetition of all the painful patterns that have prevailed even with the first tentative steps away from the nest. The other path leads to what is real. It is an openness to find a reality beyond dead ideas. It is the story that unfolds when I open myself to a new possibility, humbly and, above all, wakefully.

I found myself on the couch reclining with my lover. We embraced and spoke in an atmosphere of tenderness. Basking in the glow of her regard I was caught off guard as she made a comment that stung. It was something about my ability to love, or lack thereof, suggesting a congenital psychological defect. Shocked, I took a sip of that old familiar narcotic, hopelessness. A venomous glob of animosity made its way toward my throat. I felt the pull to react, and was about to speak…but remembered.

Summoning all the attention I could muster, I looked again. There she was, still gazing openly. Seeing her I understood her utterance was innocent. She had intended no harm. So instead of turning down the dark, lonely road of resentment, I reached up and caressed her face. I felt the softness of her skin, saw it in her eyes. The pitfall of negativity had been circumvented. I had taken the less tortuous path.

It is precisely in these relationships that are most intimate, most rife with struggle, that we encounter these opportunities to move beyond the jails of habit. It is when we are tempted to react and become resentful or enraged that we can take a different road. Rather than taking things ever-so-personally we can face the reality of what is entering the senses. In discovering where the other person is coming from, we find that our habituated reactions may not be applicable, and we are free to dance with the living moment. For this is our life. Our life is not some abstract past and future. It is now. Fulfillment is present—waiting for us—when we are present to receive.

—Jason Stern