Transparency

I chanced across these words today:

"When the eye finds nothing to see, that no-thingness is perceived as space. When the ear finds nothing to hear, that no-thingness is perceived as stillness. When the senses, which are designed to perceive form, meet an absence of form, the formless consciousness that lies behind perception and makes all perception, all experience, possible, is no longer obscured by form." Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 218

I've read these three sentences several times, with long pauses in between, and every time new layers of meaning float up. In a way the senses seem like openings that become wadded up with the "stuffing" of sensory stimuli that actually blocks or distracts from a deeper perception. This is quite a flip-flop from my normal way of thinking: seeing and blindness have reversed places.

But more to the point and what really interests me, is this question: What is there to be aware of when there is nothing to be aware of; that is, when the slate is wiped clean, so to speak, and there is nothing plugging up the nervous system- no sensations or thoughts- then what is there left to be aware of? This is a hypothetical question, because as long as we're alive there are some sensations and/or thoughts present in every waking moment. But what is there to be aware of in those moments of profound, alert, quiescence when there are almost no thoughts or sensations present? Franklin Merrell-Wolff talks about attention-without-an-object, and this interests me.

When there's nothing to be aware of, then awareness is aware of itself. Awakeness is awake to the fact that it is awake. It sounds a bit garbled but to me it's the most beautiful thing in the world- it's the cosmos becoming awake to itself through this human consciousness that I am. There is a boundless transparency to this consciousness awake to itself, and it is possible to rest in this transparency.

(Gratitude for image above, from  coachaljohnson.wordpress.com/.../

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"The Eye Was Placed Where One Ray Should Fall"

In 1841 in his essay "Self-Reliance," Emerson wrote these words:

"The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify to that particular ray."

I was 15 when I first read these words and they burned into some place inside me with an indelible blaze.

Meanwhile, like most everyone, I underwent a divorce from myself. I came down with the "disease to please" and a sickening sense of inauthenticity pervaded my days.

Lately I'm looking toward an amiable reconciliation with myself, good, bad, and ugly. I'm interested in the power of autonomy without separation. Standing in the truth of my own experience, without closing down to other viewpoints, is the strength of autonomy.

I find it increasingly invigorating to look through my own eyes, and to see what is to be seen.

LaKeidra Kemp

I can't stop thinking about LaKeidra. Her warm eyes, her shy, beautiful smile, her gentleness and dignity. Yesterday I found out that LaKeidra died in a car accident on Saturday, December 26, while a passenger in a car that was driving through the same snow storm in the same area that I was driving through at exactly the same moment that Lakeidra and her 3 three friends died. A coroner pronounced them dead at the scene of the accident. Lakeidra and I worked together at the hospital, she was a social worker. Her disappearance is so sudden. She was 32 years old.

In honor of LaKeidra, I would like to post a haiku poem by Basho.


The temple bell stops -

but the sound keeps coming

out of the flowers.

.

Relaxing

Relaxing, the ache comes back. Relaxing opens the door that blocked out the ache.

It's the ache without a name, the ache without a reason, it's in the sternum and there is a tugging sensation. Birth pains? The heart a womb, a birth canal, and something is trying to get through.

I don't know what.

But for perhaps the first time ever I notice joy under the pain, for the pain is sharp with life, and it feels so good to be alive.

Wasting Time

It's funny I used to think that doing nothing was wasting time.

Now it seems that all the frantic activities I engaged in were the real waste of time.

In doing nothing I stumble upon riches upon riches.

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays! Just testing to see if I can get anything to post in this blog...