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Universal Harmony
She who is centered in the Tao can go where she wishes, without danger. She perceives the universal harmony, even amid great pain, because she has found peace in her heart.
You don’t have to think in order to be okay. We’re not doing the thinking; we’re being thought. There’s nothing to know, so you don’t have to pretend that you know anything. You’re absolutely safe. There’s nothing you can do to live, and nothing you can do to die.
If you’re centered in reality, you can go where you wish without danger. It’s not an act of courage. There’s no risk involved, because danger happens only in the future, and the future can never come. Nothing is ultimately real, so when people talk about violence, I notice the violence that they’re using, right now, against reality. Why would you be afraid of reality? Reality is benign for those who can see clearly.
Once, not long after I woke up in 1986, a Christian minister said to me, “You’re too open. You don’t have any boundaries or resistance, and that’s dangerous. Evil entities could walk in and take you over, because all your doors are open, and they could do you and the rest of us terrible harm.” I was like a baby in those days: I almost always believed people. But when this man spoke about evil, I knew that what he was saying wasn’t possible. I believed him when he said there were such things as entities, because at that point I had no reason not to. But to me, “evil” meant “confused.” Anyone who thinks that evil exists is frightened and therefore confused. And I knew that everything is welcome here—everything. This body isn’t mine, and anything that needs to enter is welcome. I delight in that. What could possibly enter that could survive the truth? Truth is the power that sets us free, and there is nothing anyone can do about that. There is nothing terrible in the world. Evil is just one more story to keep us from opening to love. What I know is that God is everything and God is good.
I can go anywhere, because everything is a metaphor to me; it’s all internal. The external is my internal. There’s no way I couldn’t live a fearless life. I’m rooted in reality. I love it, and I can’t project anything but love.
Jerusalem: I get an invitation to Gaza from a Palestinian man who has just attended one of my events. Yes, of course I’ll go, I don’t know why not. My Orthodox Jewish Israeli friends say, “No, no, you can’t, it’s very dangerous, the poverty is appalling, they’re desperate, violent people, they won’t like it that you teach Jews, you might not be allowed back into Israel.” They are very attached to their stories, and they think they’re trying to rescue me. They don’t realize that their stories are all about a non-existent future. None of them is valid for me. I listen with an open mind, and because I can’t believe what they believe, I continue to make arrangements to meet my new Arab friend on the other side of the wall.
And, oh, what a wall and a checkpoint it is! I enter Gaza, and the sewers are running open in the streets, there are twenty or thirty people living in a two-room apartment, some of the buildings have huge gaping holes in them, and it’s all good. I walk everywhere. Barefoot children come out to greet me with big smiles, I’m welcomed into homes, I have wonderful meals in the street, I talk to people as my friend translates, we do The Work. One man says he has seven bullet holes in his body; he shows me some of them and says he was shot for throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers. When he talks politics, he seethes with confusion and despair. He still believes that throwing rocks is the way to bring about change. Bullets haven’t convinced him otherwise. That’s the power of believing our insane thoughts.
I am free to walk anywhere in the world, with anyone, at any time. I can’t project danger. There are no limitations to where I go. I love going, because I love what I travel with. Sanity doesn’t suffer, ever. A clear mind is beautiful and sees only its own reflection. It bows in humility to itself; it falls at its own feet. It doesn’t add anything or subtract anything; it simply knows the difference between what’s real and what’s not. And because of this, danger isn’t a possibility.
A lover of what is looks forward to everything: life, death, disease, loss, earthquakes, bombs, anything the mind might be tempted to call “bad.” Life will bring us everything we need, to show us what we haven’t undone yet. Nothing outside ourselves can make us suffer. Except for our unquestioned thoughts, every place is paradise.
This is an excerpt from the best selling book; “A Thousand Names For Joy: Living In Harmony with the Way Things Are”, by Byron Katie with Stephen Mitchell
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