The Chef and the Guest
El Chef y el Invitado
A gentle invitation to slow down and fully taste every experience, discovering that even what feels unwanted was prepared with love.
The Chef and the Guest
The choice is, in a sense, to celebrate what is,
or to judge and fight with it,
and those are two completely different universes.
And then everything we talk about is, in a sense, ways to point
to what's in the way of the celebration choice.
And ultimately, you realize it's not a choice.
It's just that the celebration is what remains.
We can get really stuck fighting,
resisting,
and then everything else is just a way to unlock that,
to free that up.
And you can also say it's to see that you weren't stuck in the first place.
Something is stuck, but not really.
Free motion
Right now it's all completely in free motion.
Playful.
A dancing of experiencing.
It's all moving.
If you notice known patterns of contraction or reactivity, if they're happening now,
like thinking patterns, sensations that are unwanted,
unliked.
Just taste them.
Not only the sensation that is disliked or unwanted,
but dislike itself.
How is this experience of not wanting a sensation,
not wanting a thought pattern to be present?
Tasting everything
So part of the buffet:
you're the chef and you're the guest.
What if you're creating these dishes,
the contractions, the reactions,
the rejections, the resistance,
so that you could taste them?
Not as a self-punishment,
but rather a deep love of knowing all kinds of experience.
You savor everything very deeply and directly.
You will recognize it's made of the same substance.
Light and darkness, the same substance.
Pleasure and pain, the same substance.
What is this substance?
It's mystery,
emptiness,
love,
beauty,
a substance with no particular nature,
free to be anything.
What is unwanted
When something is unwanted, just consider the possibility:
you as the chef prepared that lovingly.
If it's too spicy,
eat it slowly, slowly,
as subtle, present attention.
You need to discover all the flavors.
Then you might see the chef creating and the guest experiencing
are kind of the same.
The taste and the tasting are the same.
And it's just the tasting,
just the tasting.
What is versus what could be
The mind imagines better experience,
experience where something that is now is not,
or something that isn't yet, but could be.
But if you taste things deeply and profoundly,
especially that which is rejected now,
you will see that richness of flavor
is in the sensation, the perception.
And what the imagination creates is lacking in flavor.
It does not compare.
Don't just believe me.
You can find this out in your experience.
We're in illusion and ignorance and misunderstanding
that what could be tastes so much better than what is.
Then suddenly, or gradually, we wake up
and see that all the value is in what is.
The depth,
the beauty,
the richness of all flavors,
including the flavors of thought.
All the cooking ingredients are love and beauty.
That is nowhere if it's not here and now,
no matter what is.
If it sounds like something you know, something that resonates
to be true, then you're close.
If it sounds distant, impossible, unimaginable,
then you are lucky.
You have a rich journey ahead.