| IOne might be
able to create decisive proportions in life, these having personal, individual-scale
importance. On a larger scale, the mature consciousness that the responsibility for
such awareness and decision implies would make interesting and fruitful connections
between people. It might become possible to re-evaluate guiding principles, as
circumstances changed, and to explore the richness of possibilities that could await
anyone, on each changing day. In doing this one might be certain of very little, but
life would be seen as an unfolding richness. I don’t believe anyone could teach
this. No one could make this happen for someone else. But this can be learned.
Individuals can learn to be engaged in life in ways that make them creative,
unafraid, satisfied, and rich in contentment. There are certainly many ways to
experience this. And Release is just one of them. Release is not a system.
It is an on-going investigation. Release presents the inner perspective of
stillness and the outer perspective of movement, and then encourages contemplation of the
possibilities within any given situation. It does not necessarily lead to any
experience similar to that of the author. Each individual must find her or his own
way regarding the subject of Release, given information and examples from their own life
experiences. All that anyone may have when coming to read this book is important.
That includes what she or he thinks, and what they do; what they remember, and the
future they may project. No one starts from nothing. Everyone has deep
resources that can support and guide them. The interesting thing would be for each
person to use their own vast resources to make serious enquiry into the opportunities that
life offers. This enquiry would have no official stamp, no official guidelines, and
no official right way. But it would depend on the sincerity and devotion of each
person to develop oneself through the whole of life, in thoughtful perspective and
relationship with the whole. This book contains the description of one person’s work
with the concepts of Release, as this work has occurred over more than thirty years.
The hope in this writing is to bring about consciousness and perspective through
the description of one individual’s understanding. The work is not finished.
The author intends to continue to work with the ideas and thoughts of Release.
Perhaps there will be other writing coming in the next thirty years, who knows? One
thing is for sure. The ground is changing every day. boundlessness of the
Infinite. Consider, for a moment, the metaphor of air, trapped within a balloon.
When the balloon is full of air there is a certain magic about it, that is true.
And it is a fine thing, a balloon. It floats. But there is also, in this image of a
balloon, a confinement. If the balloon is burst, if you break your own balloon, the
air is set free and becomes part of Endlessness. Maybe it’s a poor metaphor.
A possible implication here is that, if the balloon bursts, there is nothing left
but an empty sagging balloon. The experience I wish to describe is other than this.
When the metaphoric balloon bursts there is a freeing of contents, but there is no
balloon skin left behind. The metaphor works only with the understanding that the
consideration itself is metaphor, and there is no actual balloon from the beginning.
Now the metaphor works. The boundary of one’s life could be seen to
burst (without leaving anything behind other than the emptiness of a used up metaphor,)
letting in influences from diverse sources, and constantly re-establishing changing
boundaries. This would create endless possibilities for growth and development, an
endlessness of options.Experiencing this endlessness, one might discover that not only are
there many roads to Rome, but that there are many “Romes.” One
might teach oneself to continually evaluate self-learning, playing the part of both the
teacher and the student. Everywhere in life there could be opportunities to open and to
close; to engage and to disengage; to fill, to contain, and to empty. And one might
be able to choose which of these opportunities to use according to seriously constructed
guiding principles. |
