Oracle of Consciousness
#112 - Taking Shortcuts
There are no shortcuts to awakening!
Perhaps you've noticed, maybe in the city, a park, or on a suburban corner where there's an open plot, that instead of following the designated path, very often people will make a short cut across the open area, or across a lawn area even when it says:
“Please don't walk on the lawn"
or
"Please keep off the grass”.
It seems to be in our human nature to take shortcuts and perhaps it could be termed,
'The easy way out'.
Rather than having to walk around the corner, or the designated way, just take a diagonal or quicker route across.
You might see this around bus stations and railway stations, where people are in a hurry.
Now, this can also be a great attribute, because we don't necessarily want to delay ourselves in some circumstances.
However on the opposite side of the coin, it can often distract us from where we're going.
If we're treading our path of life, our spiritual journey, the road 'Home', sometimes taking shortcuts can stifle our ability to overcome the challenges and lessons learnt in order to get where we want to go.
So looking at our way forward:
The way out is the way through!
There are no shortcuts to awakening ourselves and the collective human family, the work has to be done.
There's no quick fix!
These days, we seem to be in the era of instant everything, we have instant coffee, instant gratification, instant gram - Instagram (play on words there).
And many other things that we can get an almost immediate direct result.
Look at our texting, we can text across the globe, almost instantaneously.
If we haven't immediately received a reply, we can get a little bit agitated or irritated,
"Oh no, they haven't replied to me yet, it's been a whole two nano-seconds"!
Our true path consists of doing the inner work, rolling up our sleeves and diving into whatever these feelings are, eliminating our sabotaging behaviours that are emanating from the ego, really knuckling down and doing the work.
Anything else can be avoidance, procrastination or a distraction.
Just be aware that on this path, there are no shortcuts!
Undoubtedly, there are people that have had an instant awakening, but the reality is, most of us have to slog through the process.
The wonderful Indian masters of old would sit in a cave or meditate, virtually for years to get there.
Somehow I don't think to many of our younger generation would entertain this idea as a viable solution.
Now, it's an observable fact that things are speeding up and we don't need to take ourselves away from our family or society and sit in a cave in the Himalayas for two or three years, although that sounds like a very appealing idea on some occasions!
It's a question of getting down and doing the work.
We have to be thoroughly committed, patient, persistent and most of all, courageous.
As we do the work, our true entity, consciousness, will arise and reveal itself.
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