A Window is Where the Wall is Absent

The life impulse to express and to connect arises in me and in all of us. This blog is a celebration of these life impulses. Please feel free to join in the conversation or to just visit. There is a Family Photo Album beneath the posts so you can "meet" my family and I. Welcome!

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

A miraculous field



 "Never bother naming an emotion again.


Just feel the energy of it."     Scott Kiloby




We think it's the emotion that hurts, when what actually 


causes the most pain is the word, the label, the name, the 


story we put on the emotion. 




An emotion experienced nonverbally is actually quite benign, 


even wondrous- one of the many colors of the rainbow of 


emotional experience.




Try it and see for yourself, experiments are fun.  It is 


possible to meet emotional experience with silent interest 


rather than fear.








It's so depressing to label sadness as sadness, but without 


the label... it's clear and sweet.



No emotion is an enemy, it's just a transient energy pattern 


in the miraculous field of being.






~


Gratitude to Scott Kiloby for posting the above words on Facebook. Scott's website is http://kiloby.com/

Monday, June 13, 2011

What is the well that never runs dry?



"Have you ever noticed that the present moment never abandons you?

It's the well that never runs dry."       Sara Exley




You are this moment, you are the well that never runs dry.























~
Gratitude to Sara Exley of Present Moment Parenting: http://lawofattractionparentingparty.com/
Gratitude for photo: http://springvalley.govoffice.com/

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Imaginary burdens



   

Imaginary burdens.

The mind imagines many burdens.


Life is not a burden.

Death is not a burden.




~
Gratitude for image: http://www.seakayakalaska.com/

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Hidden Addictions



I was having an argument with my husband today that we'd already had a thousand times before. The same argument. I just couldn't stop spinning out all the reasons I was right, couldn't stop trying to convince him of the validity of my point of view.

Then it hit me: I am addicted to being unloved. Or, more accurately, I am addicted to the story of being unloved. I am addicted to the story of being separate. I am addicted to being right. The addiction to being right is also the addiction to the peculiar satisfaction of being wronged. I am addicted to the story-of-me...drunk on it (without a drop of alcohol).

Way back when I got this notion of being unwanted. The story of lack, the story of not being enough, had been bought into long before I got married.

Now the template is there. My husband has to somehow fit into the story of "Colleen is unloved. Colleen is a unfairly treated."

The deck is stacked and without even realizing it, I am bound and determined for him to play his role of proving the continuing saga of "Colleen the Unloved."

Wow- what a strange addiction. The addiction to suffering. How could I have been so blind to this drama playing itself out again and again in my life with a changing cast of characters? How could I have been so hoodwinked?

And separation seemed so obvious, but is it? Sun, space, air, tree are all separate words; but are they separate things? The sun is in the tree. The air is in the space. Nothing is separate. Separation is a word-created, mind-created mirage. Everything is connected to everything. There is one thing (no-thing) and we are all it appearing with infinite variety.

Seeing my addiction to suffering, my addiction to being separate and unloved, acts as a lever lifting me out of the story.

With enormous joy, the mind in this instant is empty.

I apologized to Greg for type-casting him in the crazy drama of my stories. He accepted my apology and forgave me. The eye contact between us was as clear as the sky. Greg and Jack are warming up for Jack's baseball practice this afternoon, and I'm settling in to enjoy a bit of doing nothing. Sending all love to my friends known and unknown through this medium of cyberspace.

"Touch that in you which does not need to be satisfied by the world of form."  Eckhart Tolle

Realizing our shared divine nature, that which underlies all experience, is what we're here for.

There is one argument: insufficient love. There is one resolution: recognition of the reality of abundance underlying all the stories of lack.
~



Friday, April 22, 2011

Nowhere I'd rather be


Nowhere I'd rather be, nothing I'd rather be doing.

On some level, this is always true.

On the surface there is complaining and resistance and judgment, wanting to be somewhere else, wanting to be doing something else.

At the same time, at a deeper level, there is absolute alignment with what is exactly as it is.

Nowhere else I'd rather be, nothing else I'd rather be doing.


Monday, February 7, 2011

Saturday, January 8, 2011

All of a sudden

"...all of a sudden the heightened awareness popped in that I'm not a something; I'm emptiness looking out of this form."

Mukti















~
http://www.adyashanti.org/index.php?file=mukti_teachings                                                                    

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Light

"I remember once being in a place that was so dark I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. My emotional reaction was, 'I can't see anything! I don't know what is there!' But then I thought, 'What is it, then, that sees darkness? I am looking at darkness; my eyes are functioning and seeing darkness.' Then suddenly it became obvious to me that consciousness is light, that even in the dark there is light if you rest in conscious awareness. What your eyes see is darkness, but that is still seeing, isn't it? We usually think of light as coming from outside-- from the sun or an electric light bulb-- but consciousness is light, isn't it? But this is a light that is coming from within.

"Enlightenment is natural to each one of us; it is nature, not conditioned, not to be claimed as a unique gift that 'I have because I am a special kind of human being.' If you start operating in that way, you will be operating from delusion, won't you? But see that everybody is this; recognize it in everybody."

Ajahn Sumedho, Don't Take Your Life Personally, p. 394- 395.






~

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Suffering as fuel for awakening

For a long time I've wondered what it means for the energy of unhappiness to become transmuted into the energy of increased consciousness. This morning I had a tiny taste of what this means and I'd like to share it with you.

There was a subtle, barely detectable sense of boredom, a very mild discontent somewhere in the background of my awareness. This kind of slight discomfort is normally shoved out of the way, to the periphery of awareness, like an annoying insect being shooed aside.  This pushing away or ignoring of minor unease generally happens automatically, without even being noticed.

But today there was a movement in the opposite direction. The boredom wasn't avoided or evaded in any way.

It became a kind of invitation to a gentle, non-judgmental, interested, and quiet awareness.

I wrote in my journal: When there is boredom or any flavor of discontent, notice it, observe it, witness it, allow it, be present with it.

Then I sat quietly for a while and this is what happened.  The energy of nonjudgmental awareness, the energy of the witnessing presence grew. Simultaneously, the energy of discontent and boredom subsided.  In this way, unhappiness was transmuted into a keener awareness. Discontent became the fuel for awakening.

It's fun to play with this transformation of suffering into consciousness when the suffering is very tiny. The same process applies to large emotional upheavals, but for me it seems easier and more effective to go through this process at first with a very mild inner turbulence. Hope you enjoy your own experiments of spinning straw into gold.




An hour after I posted this I stumbled across these words from Nisargadatta:

All happiness comes from awareness. The more we are conscious, the deeper the joy. Acceptance of pain, non-resistance, courage and endurance - these open deep and perennial sources of real happiness, true bliss.

(from Non-Duality Highlights, # 4121)



~

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