In my college days, I was in a band that played at small nightclubs. We had a trumpet player, who sometimes would start out on a solo sounding awful. He’d stop and turn to me, and ask, “Hey Man, what key are we in?” I’d tell him and then everything would be beautiful.
In life, some people start out just as awful because they too, don’t know what key we’re in. The key of life is a reality and it’s our job to become attuned to it. This is the goal of consciousness.
If you are one of the two million plus people watching the webinar “A New Earth,” with Eckhart Tolle and Oprah Winfrey, you probably remember seeing a young man from the Bodhi Tree bookstore in West Hollywood. The man said he “had to worry” or else he wouldn’t ever be prompted to take the necessary action to make a living and pay his bills. He elaborated to basically say that if he cultivated presence and consciousness, he wouldn’t get anything done. He had the misperception that a life of awakened living is a life of passivity.
This is a common misperception about the spiritual life. Perhaps it comes from stories people hear about yogis going into caves to meditate and find inner peace. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Awakened living, the opposite of living life through unconsciousness, entails heightened awareness of actions. It does not mean living a life of inaction and passivity. It is a life of focused action. It means performing actions which are not only a means to an end, but are an end in themselves. They are an end in themselves because each action, when performed with consciousness, is a celebration of life. For what is life but consciousness. What is the purpose of life but for consciousness to know itself. That is the key of life.
If you have ever been on a jetliner that was making a landing in heavy cloud cover, you know that it is only possible because of radar. Otherwise, the landing would be one of high risk.
That is how it is with navigating your life. If you are aligned to your inner purpose, you are much more likely to succeed. With consciousness, life creates joy. With unconsciousness, we create suffering. How so? Because when unconscious, we are out of tune.
Any group of musicians will tell you that the first step before any performance is getting in tune. Otherwise, instead of beauty and harmony, you get nothing but discord. So it is with life. Establish harmony within and you will resonate with life. You will find inspiration in the work you do. Your words will communicate more clearly. Even in silence, you will be able to communicate the essence of your being.
But how do we tune our lives? We do it with love. With loving thoughts, with loving words, and with loving actions. A musical composition will be performed in a certain key. In Western music, it will be in one of 12 keys. But in life, there is only one key. And that key is love. For love is the essence of who we are. All forms of discord are in reality nothing but impediments to our ability to love.
The musician who receives the standing ovation one night but not the next night is an example of a musician who is in tune with love the first night but not the second night.
In sports, sometimes on television, before a big game, you will see the coach give an inspiring talk to the team. The purpose is to get the players in tune with their highest abilities, through love, beyond the limits of the mind.
The mind is great on putting limits on what we can accomplish. Love is great at transcending limits. Why is this? Because love, in its pure essence, is unlimited. When great upsets happen in sports, it is because of love, through inspiration, transcending limits.
When we do what we love, we are creating opportunities for love to take us beyond limits. We are creating an opportunity for consciousness to enliven with consecrated action, what otherwise would be routine and habitual. That is the key of life that unlocks infinite possibilities.
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