life is not an audition

Life is not an audition

This is not a practice. We're not preparing for something else yet to come. This is it: one life, a brief life at that, a life to be lived. When we are young we go to school and we learn, and it's all a preparation for adulthood, so that we can function in society, so that we can earn a livelihood, so that we can be of use to each other later on. It is a preparation. And somehow, if we are not careful, we can get stuck in that childhood relationship with life. As a child we are practising, but it's not the real thing yet.

As an adult, if we carry on with that mentality, then we will miss life. If we are always preparing for tomorrow, if our attention, our thoughts are always of the morrow, we miss today. When we are practising we don't really feel the moment in its full authenticity. It's like a trailer for a movie, a taste, but not the real thing. 

If this is our attitude, we will miss. We will miss the whole of life. For life is lived now, today, in this moment. This moment is not a practice for tomorrow. It is not a preparation. This moment is complete in itself. This moment is alive. This moment has the whole of eternity in it. The whole of existence is here right now.

But if in our mind we are merely practising, as if we are in an audition, if we are thinking this is a sort of test for something yet to come, if that is our approach, there is no way we can feel thee enormous potential of existence, that is pulsing right now in this moment here. And it's only when we are feeling this, only when we are a part of this, in fact, when we lose ourselves in this, when we realise we are this existence, the totality of it, the enormity of it, the grandeur, only when we feel this, only when this is our lived experience, not tomorrow, not in the future, today, right now, only when we feel this now are we truly alive. The rest of the time we might as well be in an audition, acting out some part in a way that we think others might appreciate and value. But that is not life. That is not how to live life. So if that's your approach, I urge you to drop it right now. Don't feel life as a practice. Don't think of it as an audition, a preparation. 

Come home to yourself, right now in this moment. Relax into your being. This way you too will feel this potential, alive in the moment, the source is here manifesting through us, in us. We can feel it now, only now. So live this moment fully as the real thing, not as a preparation, not as an audition. Be yourself, and enjoy, enjoy this life, this miracle.