A Glorious Kingdom

A GLORIOUS KINGDOM

Many teachings now speak of 'bridging the gap' between the absolute and the relative, between the human and the divine, between awareness and all that arises and dissolves in awareness, between spiritual enlightenment and 'ordinary human life'.

But - I've always thought - it doesn't really make sense to try and bridge a gap that never existed, heal a wound that never was.

Ordinary life is the miracle, as it is, the ebb and flow of things. God shines through the mundane and the everyday. Every joy, every pain, every moment of profound doubt is none other than That which we have always sought.

No special revelation is required here. We never need to wait for grace. This blessing cannot be transmitted by special beings, taught by enlightened gurus, bought or sold. It is simpler, closer, more freely available, more intimate.

It is the look in your child's eye. It is the gleam of sunlight in a shop window. It is the aching pain in your heart when your loved one dies, the surge of excitement as you contemplate a possible future, a world that may or may not come to pass. It is breathing, in and out, the expansion and contraction of the chest. It is the words and the spaces in-between, the songs we sing and the silence between them. It is never knowing, and in that, knowing. It is the simple feeling of being alive, present to this brand new day.

It is doing the dishes, perhaps for the last time, on your last day, on this last planet before the dawn.

You came from mother, and to mother you return.

The gap was bridged long ago.

We are heirs to a glorious Kingdom.

- Jeff Foster