Hello Dear One!

A visitor to the Café recently asked whether enlightenment could be maintained forever.

The question lingered long after the tea had cooled.

Many spiritual traditions describe awakening as though it were arriving somewhere.

A summit reached.

A lesson learned.

A destination attained.

Life, however, seems less interested in destinations than in dances.

A wise person once observed:

Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.

After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.

The beauty of the observation lies in what it does not say.

The wood remains.

The water remains.

The dishes still need washing.

The bills still arrive.

The dog still needs feeding.

The difference is not in what we do.

The difference is in how we inhabit what we do.

Perhaps enlightenment is not a permanent state at all.

Perhaps it is a relationship.

A continual remembering.

A dance performed on a moving carpet.

The carpet shifts.

Circumstances change.

We lose our footing.

We reorient ourselves.

We begin again.

The Café's Archangel of Thresholds,and Mistress of the Brew, Larissa, understands this well.

She does not push anyone through a doorway.

She simply reveals that the doorway exists.

Phineas, Archangel of Transformation, waits on the other side.

Not to reward us.

Not to test us.

Simply to welcome the person we become when we finally choose to cross.

The old symbols seem to have known this all along.

The serpent swallowing its tail.

The yin and yang.

The circle becoming spiral.

Endings becoming beginnings.

Again and again.

Perhaps the awakened do remain awake.

Not because they never fall asleep.

But because they have learned how to wake.

And perhaps that is enough.