Member Reflection: Behind the Curtain

By Jim Koehneke

This path is not unlike the road to Oz— where we discover what’s really behind the curtain. It’s a path to a new reality, a reality filled with love, peace, and joy, a path in which we discover, feel, and live from Basic Goodness. And it begins by our response to a subtle call to go within and find the wholeness we know is our true nature.

There is a different experience beyond our thoughts, outside what we think is true, yet that which inner self longs to know. And we can know it; but it takes a response to an inner call to acknowledge and rediscover this reality. The decision to go there is a decision to make a practice of rediscovering our wholeness and experience the joy of oneness.

In the world we see with our eyes, things all appear as separate. Is that because they are, or is the separation the effect of our naming all things we see, and for the most part have come to agree upon?

The result of our naming is this: we have lost our identity, our true nature, our experience of and connection to wholeness. Must we give up naming to find our true nature of wholeness, grace, peace, and love; or is there another way to go about living “in the world but not of it,” and also come to recognize our true nature from which the world will look and act quite differently?

The purpose of meditation is to quiet our thoughts and seek an interval of sacred silence in which we hear a call to move into the sunlight and temporarily leave the darkness of separation behind. And each time we depart this sacred space of practice and move “back” to our conditioned human mind and beliefs that drive us into daily action, we do so with greater lightness and inner peace along with a grateful knowing that we are all part of the same Goodness.

The good news is also for our humanity, for what arises within us is a quiet drive to express ourselves more compassionately in the world, knowing that as we express love and support to others we are also doing it for ourselves. For what we give is what we experience in greater measure . . . and it feels so good and true. And we once again we find ourselves coming back to the reality of our home in Basic Goodness, wholeness, and peace.