No return

The most important qualities to possess (or be possessed by) are firstly the nagging feeling that the next stage/level is always pending (the inability to ignore what's staring you in the face), and secondly the courage to enter its world (which is unimaginably different to anything you have ever experienced) with no possibility of going back. The first of these is the rarest, and the most important. The second can be developed but I'm not sure the first can – you either have a feeling for the beyond or you don't. Both are aspects of heart. The first is the quality you have in common with your teacher – it is what brought you together and it is what makes your togetherness so rich and productive – a questing. The second is the quality your teacher hopes to help you develop and it isn't the usual courage. It is all about shedding some aspect of self in order to make yourself worthy of the next level, not leaping into the fray fully armed and ready for battle. To achieve this you need relaxation (to relax the grip you have on your present reality), the energy and passion to shake yourself loose of that reality (this is like an irritable fierceness), and then the humility and sense of wonder to enter the new world naked and pure, at least initially. My teacher has always said that the next level is the most difficult to achieve – closer to the bone – and that as you progress more attention, energy and heart needs to be put into your endeavours in order to achieve that elusive level. If you have the heart to devote your life to the work then, as you age, these levels approach with increasing regularity and with more and more subtly and immediacy until each successive moment of your living is an unfolding of a new world. This is the way reality actually is and it is force of habit that denies us it. When you meet someone who is so connected they have a deep relaxation – the feeling that nothing phases them – but also a childlike excitement at pretty much everything. A seeming paradox – they have managed to settle into a process that denies settlement – the natural process of constant becoming.