Ashton.Gustafson

…beyond role,

…beyond form,

…beyond effort,

…and beyond perception is the you you’ve been looking for within all the myriad forms of the above little ‘yous’.

Most of us can’t imagine a time, place, or plane of reality that operates outside of personality, role, form, effort, or another’s perception of us. But what if this is the truest and highest form of reality? What if this is the good news?

And what if we’re the ones that have constructed our snow globe worlds that are stuck in neighborhoods on Halloween Day just waiting for someone to shake the fake snow off the ground and into the unclouded air?  What if that’s the not so good news?

Walk with me….

Can you recall the split seconds of transcendence that you have experienced in your life when you first step into the ocean? You’re there, but you are pulled into the echo of another realm. Just to be ankle deep in something so vacant and vast makes a surrender to mystery Plan A without a thought of what Plan B could even be. Or perhaps something similar happens in your soul as you sink your fingers into a garden? You’re the one that drops the seed and covers it with soil, but you joyfully know not to claim any responsibility for the backstory of the seed itself or the algorithm that is needed to be breathed and cried into the dirt for the seed to become what it is meant to become. Or maybe it’s at a table with bread and wine and friends and laughter. Your breath is taken away at the holiness of it all and you get the sense that you’re practicing for something much bigger and there will come a time when unity will have the last say. If you’re honest with yourself, in any of these moments, you’re probably just grateful to be a small participant in the wonder of it all.

These are the sacred moments where you come to see that your life is not about you, but you are about life. It is in this space when opinionated perception and constructed personality vanish and all you’re simply left with is the form and realm of reality where everyone shares the name Beloved.

Back to where we started.

Somewhere beyond our illusions is a place that does not boast, it keeps no records of wrongs, it takes pleasure in flowering truth, it doesn’t keep score, it always looks for the best, it never gives up, and it keeps going in the end.

I just so happen to believe that you have come from such a place, you have been cut from its cloth, and it’s where you shall return. If this is true, imagine what your stems, buds, and blooms are capable of.

Let’s be grateful participants in lieu of unfulfilled avatars.

Only then will we enjoy in joy.