Heavenletters

Or perhaps the "best" Heavenletters are those that come from the funny side of the street:

You think you cannot be an enlightened being because you carry around a physical body, and you equate yourself with your physical body. You think you can't be enlightened because you bite your fingernails or take the biggest piece of cake and do not always feel loving every minute. You think you can't be enlightened because you are too gregarious or too reclusive. You have a million reasons to doubt your enlightenment.

As if in a nutshell, this Heavenletter appears to capture and echo (well, it's the other way around, of course) my growing suspicion that with all our different brands of quest for enlightenment/salvation/happiness we may be pulling the wool over our own eyes, as if our seeking was really about not finding. We insist on doing where there is nothing we are required to do.

In your mind, you have been working from the bottom up. You have come from the premise that there is much you have to change before you can be enlightened. You have a long to-do and to-be list, filled with imposed regulations. And, time and time again, you don't fulfill your list, and time and time again, you feel enlightenment getting further and further away from you, as if you are on a treadmill and getting nowhere.
…
Start from where you want to be. Already enlightened, all you have to do is to recognize it. This idea alone will melt blocks you have held on to.
…
There is nothing, nothing you have to be in order to be enlightened. You do not need someone to show you how. You do not have to look a certain way. You do not have to eat a certain way. You do not have to be celibate or not be celibate. Surely, enlightenment is beyond your physical propensities.
…
I give you permission to be the human being you are. I have not told you to be someone else. I have not told you to imitate anyone. I have not told you to force anything or to pretend anything. I have told you to aspire to greatness because that is the truth of you.

"Aspire" is about breathing, isn't it?