All Are the Best Sanctuaries

© 2011 by Will Joel Friedman, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

An excerpt from his forthcoming book
Awakening to Sanity: Being Sane in an Insane World
—A Traveler's Guide
 

"If you can't see God in all, you can't see God at all."
—Yogi Bhajan

In the wake of mid-life re-visioning and awakening, a striking realization dawned: somehow this house had not only become a home, but actually a place of stillness, calmness and infinite worship. This experience crystallized in the felt sense of having helped create a sanctuary, a most uplifting vision indeed. Here is sanctuary, a feeling of being truly blessed. This deep knowing of Home is surely the very best sanctuary.

Not stopping, there was the further noticing that travel time became a prayerful time of holy communion. This car, now a moving ashram, became another sanctuary, just as the office did, now becoming a peaceful refuge of Awareness, sanity and healing.

In fact, every place I went, whether to the cleaners, bank, or stores, had become its own heart-filled home and place of holy encounter with the One. The felt sense of being in a moving meditation and letting each moment of activity be precisely what it is-without thought, belief, role, or distraction-wholly here and now, was unshakable.

"Which one was the best sanctuary?" Everywhere "the One" shows up is now a sanctuary! Every one of them is the best sanctuary! The "Self" and "One" are Divinity, Original Nature, Being, This!, That! and "I AM." Each was now a sanctuary.

George Demont Otis         Trees in the Evening Light

This narrative is a lived version of a story told in many wisdom traditions. The recognition of everything as Home and Sanctuary is recognition of the Truth of I AM, Presence, Love and God all being present. Author Gary Zukav recounts parallel experiences in asking for the best flower among many, and all are the best flower, and in discovering the summit among numerous peaks are all summits. In commenting about winter's snows and the first signs of spring with daffodils coming into bloom, Gill Eardley notes, "Every season is the best season."

German mystic Eckhart Tolle recounts the Zen master Banzan sharing a timeless Zen tale of a man at an outdoor market requesting the best piece of meat from a meat seller and being enlightened upon hearing that they were all the best meat. As all are the best, all are the One without separation or division, all unified, whole and integral. A modern rendition asks, "What do you call the candidate ranked dead last in a graduating class of 500 at a medical school?—"Doctor." The same applies to the first.

People call me Maharshi and treat me like this. But I do not see myself as a Maharshi. On the other hand, everyone is a Maharshi to me. —Ramana Maharshi, Talks with Ramana Maharshi