A Window is Where the Wall is Absent

Relax and discover what is

2011-11-26T08:29:00.000-08:00

This video has changed my life for the better.

A miraculous field

2011-06-29T18:29:00.000-07:00

"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/

What is the well that never runs dry?

2011-06-13T18:16:00.000-07:00

"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/

Imaginary burdens

2011-05-29T09:45:00.000-07:00

Imaginary burdens.

All burdens are imaginary.

Life is not a burden.

Death is not a burden.

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

Everything breathes

2011-05-15T17:15:00.000-07:00

Everything breathes. I watch the trees breathing in the cool morning air and I feel the lungs in this body breathe as these words are written. The rocks breathe, the clouds breathe, the coffee mug in my hand breathes. Everything breathes, everything has being. Life lives, uncategorized.

~
Gratitude for photo: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://supernaturalbotanicals.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/cup-150x150.jpg&imgrefurl=http://supernaturalbotanicals.com/blog/&usg=__6rIv0ifkyi5NoJCt8mZ6yUszzFk=&h=150&w=150&sz=5&hl=en&start=0&sig2=JlY0GHfBjuEN6obZc0LaHQ&zoom=1&tbnid=if-DIAUfsE--jM:&tbnh=120&tbnw=120&ei=d2vQTaD5Aqrj0QH9q_3yDQ&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dcoffee%2Bcup%2Bbreathing%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D635%26tbm%3Disch0%2C355&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=174&vpy=193&dur=2809&hovh=120&hovw=120&tx=93&ty=80&page=1&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:7,s:0&biw=1366&bih=635

Hidden Addictions

2011-05-01T11:12:00.000-07:00

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.
~

Nowhere I'd rather be

2011-04-22T18:34:00.000-07:00

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.

The difference between self-compassion and self-indulgence

2011-03-01T06:11:00.000-08:00

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/go-easy-on-yourself-a-new-wave-of-research-urges/?src=me&ref=general

2011-02-07T07:18:00.000-08:00

All of a sudden

2011-01-08T14:25:00.000-08:00

"...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

Light

2011-01-06T18:07:00.000-08:00

"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.

Suffering as fuel for awakening

2011-01-02T08:01:00.000-08:00

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)

Gratitude for image: http://www.pangolin.com/powered/index2.htm

Compulsive external seeking

2011-01-01T16:47:00.000-08:00

The only real uprooting of compulsive external seeking comes from directly tasting the subtle current of life in this moment, a current which is always present.

Gratitude for photo:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.estateofharmony.com/images/treekidssunset.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.estateofharmony.com/&usg=__3WgdhaKZppKcItY8VW5amPC4UWU=&h=681&w=1024&sz=142&hl=en&start=21&sig2=4zRLtmXCB6Isy_FjMr-90A&zoom=1&tbnid=69Ku5tkl5yh6OM:&tbnh=125&tbnw=182&ei=dMofTbK_HMirnAeL7vzWDA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsubtle%2Benergy%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D643%26tbs%3Disch:10,366&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=119&vpy=272&dur=85&hovh=183&hovw=275&tx=142&ty=98&oei=QsofTZmLHIGjnQfZm6TTDQ&esq=11&page=2&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:21&biw=1366&bih=643

Alan Watts: A Conversation with Myself-Part 3

2010-12-28T16:05:00.000-08:00

Part 4 of this talk is available on YouTube. These videos by Alan Watts are profoundly mind-opening.

Freedom

2010-11-20T07:49:00.000-08:00

"To accept that our organism is a mere phenomenon, a fleeting emanation from the original source, something of no particular interest, whose individual destiny is quite insignificant, this is to be the originating source of everything."
Hubert Benoit, The Light of Zen in the West, 1955, p. 28.

There is liberation in realizing and accepting one's relative insignificance on the level of form. The story of our lives is ultimately unimportant, no matter how grand or wretched; what does matter is this breath in this moment, the unfathomable fact of life itself.

The story-line, the content, of our lives can be honored, and we naturally will do the best we can on this level, as Eckhart Tolle says. But to feel that the story of my life is all-important is to be lost in delusion. I then overlook the infinite abundance of being that is actually the substance of everything that is.

Losing interest in the story isn't depressing but exhilarating. Consciousness is no longer so entranced by the spell of my-story, and it is freed to be conscious of life now and here.

An infinite sense of aliveness awakens.

Is happiness a disease?

2010-10-11T11:35:00.000-07:00

Depression is called a disease, but not happiness.

Genuine sadness and depression are better than fake happiness.

Sadness may be a symptom of healing from the disease of false happiness. It may be a step in the right direction, closer to truth and reality. We ARE reality, and yet as far as conscious experience goes, we may live in a fantasy world created by the mind that is mistaken for reality.

Who hasn't suffered from the disease of fake happiness? There's a massive epidemic, the whole world is mesmerized by the pursuit of fake happiness, the happiness found through the ego gratification of success, recognition, relationships, acquisitions, etc.

The spiritual awakening happening individually and collectively today is not immune from this error. Spirituality can be fake happiness. I've used (mis-used) spiritual truth myself that way many times, and still fall into this trap. "I am awareness" can become another story used to pretend that I don't feel the sadness and confusion roiling around inside.

All I can do is notice the bigness of not-knowing that surrounds my small story-of-knowing.

Reality is just so real! I know that sounds dumb- but there is this zoom lens that is closer than any cognition- there is this dynamite of non-verbal reality- uncategorized, un-thought, un-tampered with- so abundant and unavoidable- that is equally present in sadness and happiness.

The more I allow the genuine sadness and fake happiness and all the rest to do its dance- the more this Reality reverberates in infinite openness.

Great interview with Tim Freke

2010-10-11T09:38:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opr-1FHqCMs&NR=1&feature=fvwp

Guilt

2010-09-27T12:16:00.000-07:00

I notice that there is a strangle-hold of guilt on every cell in my body and it has been there for decades. Unnoticed. Wow. What is constant becomes invisible and completely unnoticed.

It's a nameless, constant guilt, and it has been choking me for a long time.

And what am I guilty of?

One thing only. I'm guilty of not doing all the things I think I should do.

When I wash the dishes I'm guilty of wasting water by letting the tap run. When I drive through McDonald's I'm guilty of destroying the environment and my body. The drip of guilt in the veins is continuous.

I try to out run it, to throw off the dreadful weight of guilt in a thousand ways every day. I donate to charity. I pay the fine for my transgressions by punishing myself with an internal barrage of self-criticism. I meditate, I pray, I read, I try to find some refuge from the guilt, I rest in the purity of open awareness. I clean the house, hug the children, give undivided, silent, loving attention to the people I work with, look my husband in the eyes and tell him he is the best man I have ever known. I scurry frantically from one good act to the next all day long in an effort to stamp out the feelings of guilt, as if I were stamping out a fire in the house.

Still, the guilt hunts me, it finds me like predator finds prey.

I'm telling you this because I see this circle of running from guilt has been the substance of my life as seen from the point of view of the mind.

Guilt is a mind-created fiction and it drives people nuts, me included. "Might is right" says guilt as it uses whatever tactics of coercion it can to manipulate the body towards the idealized behavior.

Guilt is supposed to be the inner police man that prevents wrong acts. Yet maybe it is the fuel that propels acts of destruction.

I've been running from guilt all my life and now I am looking at it directly. In this looking it disappears.

Being present with pain

2010-09-20T12:32:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid I was horrified to hear that wheat was being dumped in the ocean to drive up food prices while people were dying from lack of food.

Today I wonder if there is a dumping of emotional pain into some inner psychic ocean when that pain holds hidden nourishment that could revive dying parts of the soul. In other words, pain is rejected, run from, hidden, dumped onto some "bad guy", etc. but not metabolized, not received, not acknowledged, not integrated into the whole. Externalized pain turns into paranoia. It turns into blame and resentment, it crusts into mistrust and an intensifying sense of alienation.

What doesn't run away from pain?

What can meet pain truly, remaining unshielded by judgment, condemnation, rationalization, or any other armor of the mind?

I've wondered about this for a long time in my work as a psychiatrist. I've seen and felt my own heart clamp shut in the presence of pain many times, passing the box of tissues, wanting the tears to turn off.

It's shutting out the pain that causes pain. Closing the heart hurts; it doesn't block out hurt. It shuts it inside. When the heart opens wide enough for me to fit inside it I disappear.

Sometimes it seems like we're a planet gone mad in our rush to run from pain-- turn on the TV, turn up the volume, order another helping, plan another project, buy another gizmo, throw another bomb, but for God's sake, keep all the pain at bay however you can. Maybe each day we are being backed up closer against the wall of our own avoided pain.

How do we avoid pain and what are the costs? And what is the alternative? And are we running from a hidden wealth? And can we feel mercy for the way we shrink away from pain?

There's only one thing that can meet pain and it is not a thing.

Let pain be an invitation to the one thing (non-thing) that can meet it.

Gratitude for photo: Steve Satushek/Getty images

Unglued

2010-09-20T12:27:00.000-07:00

Unglued is an apt term, and often, a good thing.

I came unglued during some drama with my family yesterday. My upset-button got pushed, not by my family, but by my believed thoughts.

Un-gluing is painful, like birth pangs, the birth of openness, the birth of nothingness, the void.

My self-image was threatened and a cascade of protective measures shot into action in the form of blaming, accusing, projecting, shouting, arguing. Protecting what? Protecting the cherished idea in the head of who I am. Protecting the image in the mind's mirror.

Unglued, pulled apart, taken off the pedestal in my own mind. Who do I think I am?

Today there's some fasting, some thought fasting. There's a part of me that is sick-unto-death-of-thoughts-about-me.

Those me-thoughts clunk themselves out, self-reflection is an old habit, but at least I'm a bit unglued from the insanity in my head.

And I've apologized to my family, both in spoken and written words, and my apology is real, and I wish to make repairs and amends however I can, and life goes on. And I hope the thought-structures of the imagined egoic identity become more unglued in the usual bumps and bruises of daily living.

Let all the bombs be inside of me not outside of me and let them blow away delusion.

Gratitude for photo: http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2007/10/

Stop trying

2010-09-03T12:34:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in some long meetings today and these words arose in awareness: Stop trying. Below the radar of conscious awareness there was a lot of chronic trying going on. Trying to look good. Trying not to mess up. Trying to stay safe and comfortable. Trying to do a good job.

But does the trying produce a job well done? Perhaps sometimes, but more often the trying seems to impede the flow of energy.

Effortlessness is the valve through which good pours forth into this world.

The words repeated softly a few times throughout the day: Stop trying. Stop trying. This is another way of saying: allow what is to be. There was an upwelling of energy and quietness as the habitual contractions of pointless efforting eased.

I shared these thoughts on Facebook and my friend Vicki Woodyard made this comment:

"One day I will have a needlepoint pillow to remind myself: 'The answer is not Try Harder.'"

Amen to that! The less driven I feel, the more genuinely productive I am. We need a new work ethic where work is experienced as play....

~

The Claiming Reflex

2010-08-31T12:51:00.000-07:00

Watching satsangs with Paul Hedderman on ustream and reading the wonderful wealth of communications here on the internet, there is a noticing of something that has previously been unnoticed.

At lightning speed, there is an automatic claiming mechanism for feelings and thoughts that arise. The possessive personal pronoun "my" is inserted into every arising, and this creates the illusion of egoic identity. The feeling of anger arises and it is immediately clutched onto with the possessive identification of the thought "I am angry." It seems too obvious to question that this anger, misery, excitement, whatever, is happening to "me."

Looking closely reveals that the "my" is tacked on after the thought or feeling arises. It's not really "my" thought or feeling, it's just thoughts and feelings. It's unbelievable what a difference there is between "I am miserable" and "sensations of misery are present here." Without the automatic, unconscious ownership of mind stuff, it becomes quite benign.

The ownership reflex happens so quickly here that it can't be stopped - but that is actually not a problem. What is so astonishing is the simple seeing of this whole process! Now that the seeing is happening, it is simple, effortless, and unstoppable. The ownership or claiming reflex doesn't even need to be stopped-- because in just seeing this process occurring as it occurs- the gig is up! For example, as I'm typing these words, the claiming-reflex may come up. What this looks like in this instant is maybe the ego wanting to claim this note as having something interesting to say....so, okay claiming reflex--- claim away- churn up the usual brew of guilty pride and painful doubt- go right ahead and have a party! It's not a problem, it's just a magic trick, a sleight of hand where the grasping reflex of ownership applied to thoughts and feelings creates the illusion of a personal entity. Watch the whole spectacle- and remain unfooled by it.

Ramana Maharshi said if you are standing on a train there is no point in carrying your luggage on your head. Put your luggage down and let the train carry the load, for the train is carrying the luggage whether you set it down or burden yourself with carrying it. In claiming to carry the luggage myself I may feel very important as an exhausted and dutiful burden-carrier (my whole personal history, etc.). I may love making myself miserable by carrying all this mind-stuff. But the fact is that the train-- life- is really carrying what is.

Carrying the luggage is to clamp onto every thought and feeling and experience as more evidence of "me." Putting the luggage down is to see that there is no "my" story- there are only stories- arisings and passings in awareness. Even when that automatic claw machine of possessiveness claims this experience as "mine", it can be seen for what it is (i.e. as not mine, not evidence of a personal entity), and no longer cause distress. The neuroses, the conditioned patterns of mind, the reactivity, are still here, but they are no longer a huge burden called "me and my life"- they are just part of the dance, and "I" am no longer possessed by them...

Gratitude to Paul Hedderman, satsang can be watched at this link: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/9143973

Home

2010-08-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

I once came across a poem that keeps surfacing in consciousness at odd and expected moments. I read it slowly from time to time, drinking it in, and every time it opens a new doorway within.

PLEASE COME HOME

by Jane Hooper

Please come home. Please come home.

Find the place where your feet know where to walk

And follow your own trail home.

Please come home. Please come home into your own body,

Your own vessel, your own earth.

Please come home into each and every cell,

And fully into the space that surrounds you.

Please come home. Please come home to trusting yourself,

And your instincts and your ways and your knowings,

And even the particular quirks of your personality.

Please come home. Please come home and once you are firmly there,

Please stay home awhile and come to a deep rest within.

Please treasure your home. Please love and embrace your home.

Please get a deep, deep sense of what it's like to be truly home.

Please come home. Please come home.

And when you're really, really ready,

And when there's a detectable urge on the outbreath, then please come out.

Please come home and please come forward.

Please express who you are to us, and please trust us

To see you and hear you and touch you

And recognize you as best we can.

Please come home. Please come home and let us know

All the nooks and crannies that are calling to be seen.

Please come home, and let us know the More

That is there that wants to come out.

Please come home. Please come home

For you belong here now. You belong among us.

Please inhabit your place fully so we can learn from you,

From your voice and your ways and your presence.

Please come home. Please come home.

And when you feel yourself home, please welcome us too,

For we too forget that we belong and are welcome,

And that we are called to express fully who we are.

Please come home. Please come home.

You and you and you and me.

Please come home. Please come home.

Thank you, Earth, for welcoming us.

And thank you touch of eyes and ears and skin,

Touch of love for welcoming us.

May we wake up and remember who we truly are.

Please come home.

Gratitude for photo: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Ask-Deepak-How-to-Quiet-Your-Mind-During-Meditation

Gratitude to Cynthia Bourgeault, author of The Wisdom Way of Knowing, where I found this poem: http://www.contemplative.org/cynthia.html

Volumes of silence

2010-08-16T15:49:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I came across this photo of a 12 month old boy being prepared for burial in 2001 after he died of dehydration in a refugee camp. Looking at the image there is horror at this baby's untimely death, mixed with a sense of profound wonder at the beauty of his peaceful countenance. There is such palpable love and reverence in the many hands carefully preparing this child for burial. I post this photo because it continues to speak volumes of silence within me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's been a chaotic few weeks with tons of stuff happening, and I ask myself if I have an image or expectation of how I'm supposed to weather these stormy seas (hospital and ER visits with Chris, an intoxicated person threatening one of my children, a loved one coping with dementia, and many other experiences)- and the answer is "yes!"- I absolutely have an image of how I'm supposed to weather life's storms. I'm supposed to be unflappable, serene, wise, a cross between Eckhart Tolle and Mother Teresa- NOT! What a strait-jacket it is to have all these images of how I'm supposed to be, and then the secret internal-editor busily deleting all feelings that don't jive with the worshiped image of "how I'm supposed to be."

It's exhausting pretending to be someone I'm not.

And yet the pretending becomes a habit with a life of its own.

The flower doesn't control its reactions or strive to be peaceful, it just is itself. It doesn't have a me. It doesn't need to have a me to be fully itself.

I wonder if people also don't need a me to be fully themselves. Even though I think I have a me, maybe there is in fact no me here typing these words, just as there is no cut-off and separated me in the flower curving in the sun. There is an idea of me, there are plenty of ideas of me all over the planet, but maybe the fact is that there is not a me anywhere in all the universe, there is just life. Life doesn't need a me. It's absolutely complete without a me.

Chameli Ardagh talks about realizing that "this me I have been trying to get rid of is not really a thing. It's not really there so there's nothing to change."

It's a bit hideous to imagine a flower with a me. A flower with an ego. Kind of ridiculous. Maybe it's just as ridiculous to imagine myself or any other person as a me. A me is a mental phenomenon, an idea, nothing more. It's fine and will help me to take Mary out for some errands after I finish posting this. But this mental phenomenon called me doesn't have to consume all my life energy in endless obsessions with protection and gaining.

It's exhausting pretending to be who I'm not, and maybe without realizing it I've been busy pretending to be a me when I'm not and never could be a me. Maybe I'm fine without me. Maybe I'm life here, undefined and undefinable.

Maybe that's easier than I think.

Time to take Mary for back-to-school errands. Chameli says when we forget about me there is a noticing of love...

Indeed, this turns out to be the case. The egoless flower and all of nature- including human beings- are the energy of great benevolence fluxing through form. The child being prepared for burial and his caretakers...

~
Thank you for words from Chameli Ardagh available here: http://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Women-Extraordinary-Wisdom-Awakening/dp/1846940680/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264527334&sr=8-1
And also here: http://www.youtube.com/user/NeverNotHere#p/u/3/SlaHtyyrZtk

Gratitude to Erik Refner for photo, and to the family of the child for allowing his burial preparation to be photographed. http://www.archive.worldpressphoto.org/search/layout/result/indeling/detailwpp/form/wpp/q/ishoofdafbeelding/true/trefwoord/year/2001

Gratitude for flower photo taken by Bahman Farzad

Sound and Light

2010-08-05T12:27:00.000-07:00

Years ago I came across two sentences and they have never left me:

"The spiritual journey," says Thomas Keating, "is not a career or success story. It is a series of humiliations of the false self that becomes more and more profound."

The world stood on its head. For decades I had been seeking accumulation and self-enhancement when in fact all along the deeper longing was for the very opposite: diminution of that heavy burden of an imaginary ego-self .

This morning I was watching a video of Dr.Vijai Shankar in which he asks, "What is thought?"

   I paused to consider this.

Thought is a word, he observes.

And what is a word?

   Again, I stopped to wonder what a word actually is.

A word is a sound.

   Thought is essentially a sound vibration, whether it is uttered out loud or not.

Mind is thought.

Thought is sound.

Mind is sound. It is a vibration, a pattern, an appearance.

There is sound (mind) and light (awareness).

There is sound and light, there is mind and awareness: these are the two indivisible dimensions or aspects of reality.

Sound is form, light is formless, and they are one.

There is sound and the light of consciousness that is aware of sound.

Sound and light occupy the same space and are inseparable.

For much of my life attention has been circumscribed to the thought-trance, hypnotized by the sound of the mind.

Yet the light bathes everything and it has always been free.

This light feels like home, and it does not make a sound. The light loves sound without needing to make a single sound itself.

~
Gratitude to Thomas Keating, quote is from his book
http://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/site/PageServer
Gratitude to Dr. Vijai Shankar
http://www.nevernothere.com/dr-vijai-shankar
Gratitude for photo: http://www.coosacreek.org/way/?m=200910

"If you really knew me..."

2010-08-02T14:16:00.000-07:00

I was very struck by this two minute video.

There are several good related YouTube videos based on an MTV show called "If you really knew me..."

Today I don't want to pretend to be happy. Happiness comes and goes, and there seems to be a tendency to cover over feelings of unhappiness. To hide those feelings both from myself and others.

If I'm pretending to be happy the first step toward happiness is recognizing my unhappiness. Who doesn't live with blinders on regarding their own buried depths of pain?

~

Two way mirror

2010-08-02T08:04:00.000-07:00

Reality is like a two way mirror: looking through it one way everything is meaningless, through the other way, everything is meaning incarnate.

Gratitude for painting by Belgian painter Rene Magritte, titled "The False Mirror", 1928

Saturday morning

2010-07-31T15:52:00.000-07:00

Jack, my ten-year old son and I, were watching Weird Al Yankovic videos on YouTube like "Trapped in the Drive Thru" and just generally hanging out when a natural pause occurred.

"You wanna do a meditation?" I asked. "Sure," Jack responded.

A spontaneous guided meditation appeared that we both enjoyed. I've been interested in sensing what is most immediate and primary, what is closer than any sensation or thought. There are different words used to point to the immediacy and directness of the life that is here even prior to any sense perceptions or mind activity. Words like presence, being-ness, awareness.

So in this meditation Jack and I started with the realms of sensation and thought and then opened to the realm of simply being.

It went something like this, with huge open pauses between each sentence:

Listen to the sounds that are occurring now.

Can you hear the sound of your own breathing?

Can you feel the air touching your arms?

Notice whatever thoughts are appearing. Notice whatever feelings and emotions are present.

Now be aware of what is closest.

Can you feel your own presence?

Can you sense your own being?

Allow yourself to know fully the fact that you are here now.

When you feel your own life force here very clearly, you will notice something very interesting.

You will notice that now you can sense this same life force in everything else.

As you sense your own presence, look at the tree outside the window and feel its presence too. Trees are full of presence.

Feeling your own being, you can sense the being of another person.

Keep feeling the fact that you are here, and now sense the reality, the being, of everything in this room- the table, the walls, everything is full of presence.

Feel the life energy inside of you and at the same time feel the life energy of everything that is here.

This is oneness.

We were silent and still sitting next to each other on the couch for some time.

There was a sense of the mind slowing down, a sense of being alive, present, and real.

Then we went with Greg to see the new Steve Carrell comedy, "Dinner for Schmucks", which we thoroughly enjoyed. Now Jack is calling me so it's time to sign off. Hope you enjoyed sharing this meditation with us.

Essence is everywhere, don't try to find it, just notice the fact that you are alive and aware right now.

Sensing the alive awareness that we are is easy, it just tends to be an underused ability in a mind-dominated civilization. For an instant, stop looking away from this moment into some kind of imagined superior moment. Don't make it hard, simply feel the life that you are now- the life that doesn't need improvement and that couldn't possibly be improved.

~
Gratitude for photo, from this link: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.eastgwillimbury.ca/Assets/Environment/Sustainability/Green%2BTree%2BPic.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.eastgwillimbury.ca/Environment/10_Ways_to_Reduce_Greenhouse_Gases.htm&usg=__kAodJHRmoNrjwfIGFNu781Eluq4=&h=853&w=1280&sz=322&hl=en&start=150&sig2=nnj27xQ1YBjD9vFyCKQhYQ&tbnid=R3nvESuKiiIIwM:&tbnh=157&tbnw=209&ei=W6hUTOKoH8qAnwftjtSTBA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dtree%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D641%26tbs%3Disch:10,3758&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=1050&vpy=214&dur=1259&hovh=183&hovw=275&tx=210&ty=77&page=8&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:11,s:150&biw=1366&bih=641

Internet for Peace

2010-07-29T13:10:00.000-07:00

I enjoy being able to communicate with people all over the world on a one to one basis through this blog, and through email and Facebook and many websites and blogs. There is the chance to speak honestly about things that matter and to see how much we have in common.

Listening to life

2010-07-22T07:14:00.000-07:00

I was getting Chris, my 16 yo son with cerebral palsy, ready for school this morning, and Barney was singing a song on the DVD, "You are my hero."

I told Chris he is my hero, and I mean that 100%.

What is a hero? Chris is a transparent window beaming sunshine effortlessly all day long. He doesn't try to be loving, he can't help but be loving- it's just who he is.

Lately I'm feeling more keenly this formless life energy that I am, that Chris is, that we all are, the invisible spring beneath the body and mind. I'm noticing that it wants to move, to go along in the invisible current of life that is right here now beneath all the mind's stories of unhappiness, and that I can feel its quiet pulse and follow it. I whisper in its ear, "What would you like to do?" and I feel it move within me.

Eckhart Tolle has said that he doesn't ask so much, "What do I want?" Rather, he asks, "What does Life want?" In the end they turn out to be the same question, for I and Life are one and the same. But due to confusions of language and mind, the word "I" is also used to mean its opposite, which is ego, the pseudo-self that is an object made out of thoughts and images, created by mind activity. The true I is anatta, egolessness, the formless being that we all share, that is one.

Chris can't walk or talk, yet he is clearly more productive and contributes more to this world than many CEO's ever will. He is the hero of my heart. Thank you Chris for Being, the greatest gift of all.

~

Uncontrived authenticity

2010-07-19T07:38:00.000-07:00

Meaning is not found in thought, but in an immediacy closer than thought. Meaning is the substance, the clay, out of which everything is made. It is the suchness of what is, before the mind pulls it into the funnel of thought.

Reality is what we are. Not what the mind says. Mooji points out that in a crowded restaurant the cacophony around us is naturally overlooked as we experience the sweet conversation with a friend, and in the same way, all the voices in the mind telling us who we are can become no more than peripheral background noise when attention is no longer fixated on them.

The uncontrived authenticity of being alive is happening right now and every moment without a single word, and it is this above all that we want- to be real. We already have what we want, we already are real and authentic. When the mind starts going (out of habit) with endless notions of "should be more," all that can be like background noise in a restaurant, easily overlooked, while the flow of consciousness is naturally present to the suchness of This Life, felt fully within and without. The flow of aliveness is felt within the body, and awareness plunges effortlessly through the eyes and ears, breath moves in and out, and there is nothing to search for but everything to enjoy and be grateful for.

"...the meaning we are experiencing is not the conceptual meaning; it is the very presence of reality."

A.H. Almass, The Unfolding Now, p. 77.

Seeing the waves and being the ocean is happening right now for everyone, it is the natural state.

The anxious restless energy pattern of "something not right" or "needing to find enlightenment" is recognized as simply a transient energy pattern and nothing more. No energy pattern can disturb the vastness in which it occurs.

Not needing to be special. Not needing to be awakened or saved or enlightened or different in any way from this as it is now. The beauty of anonymity, of being undefined and unseen and image-free even in the mind's eye.

The reality of being- this present wealth- eases the misguided longing for personal specialness or enlightenment.

"The preciousness of being is your true specialness." Eckhart Tolle

~

Anatta

2010-07-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

What doesn't have to be maintained?

What doesn't have to be propped up?

What is here effortlessly?

What doesn't need to know how to do anything?

What doesn't need to know what to do?

What is comfortable not doing anything?

What is comfortable with whatever is being done?

What is all right as it is?

What doesn't need to change?

What isn't going anywhere?

What doesn't need to get somewhere?

What is here when there is no pushing against anything?

What is here in the absence of thought?

What is being here right now without the slightest effort?

~
Gratitude for photo:http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.newark1.com/images/beautiful-flowers.jpg&imgrefurl=http://newark1.com/2009_07_01_archive.html&usg=__OcTg9vGIUIfuK2KlH0ZdCnZ14d4=&h=285&w=409&sz=17&hl=en&start=1&sig2=zJkuNOEJfxnQl78r2KMY0Q&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=rusZ9ttB7BWBSM:&tbnh=87&tbnw=125&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbeautiful%2Bflowers%26tbnid%3DrusZ9ttB7BWBSM:%26tbnh%3D0%26tbnw%3D0%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26ndsp%3D18%26imgtype%3Di_similar%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=ozZCTIftJOWznAeS1oCbDw

`

Pure beingness

2010-07-12T16:30:00.000-07:00

"...there is somebody here, some pulsing alive loving being, that has nothing to do with your life experience or your opinions or your value system."

Jan Frazier

It is possible to inhabit this emptiness of sheer being, even in the tumult of the busiest day.

In any case, this alive being, this true nature, is fully here at all times, whether it is noticed or not.

~

Gratitude to Jan Frazier, quote is from essay, "The New Adventure". http://www.janfrazierteachings.com/blog/index.php?s=The+New+Adventure&searchsubmit=Go

Gratitude for photo, from this link: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://beautiful-garden-waterfalls-screensaver.smartcode.com/images/sshots/beautiful_garden_waterfalls_screensaver_27842.jpeg&imgrefurl=http://beautiful-garden-waterfalls-screensaver.smartcode.com/screenshot.html&usg=__SBGRcCGDUF1uyZ7NKvYgiH5X8K4=&h=768&w=1024&sz=161&hl=en&start=24&sig2=crCsRQLSM2ymUT0JxenKTw&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=kJfTXyAMNv5UOM:&tbnh=113&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbeautiful%2Bimages%26start%3D18%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26ndsp%3D18%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=4qI7TNDcCIv8nAfzuLSbAw

A bird does not sing because it has an answer.

2010-07-08T09:21:00.000-07:00

A bird does not sing because it has an answer.
It sings because it has a song.

Chinese proverb

I used to feel that a moment free from thought had no particular value. I used to feel that thinking was a better way to spend time than not thinking. I used to wallpaper every moment with a million ruminations.

Thinking felt productive, like it was getting me somewhere, finding answers, figuring life out. A blank mind, free of thought, was a wasted moment. It was zoning out, vegging out, goofing off, being frivolous. Thought was the vehicle to wisdom, understanding, and insight.

I was bound and determined to think-my-way to happiness.

And every thought took me away from the realm of no-thought that is happiness itself.

It has also been a surprise to discover that alert no-thought is actually more intelligent than thought. The space of no-thought is the source of any intelligence that shows up in thought. The no-thought that is "upstream" of thought is the source of creativity and wisdom.

While thought can be a beautiful and powerful tool, a lot of thought is unnecessary and destructive. Who doesn't have a merciless voice of internalized self-criticism? Or, even worse, a secret voice of thought that whispers hopes of personal specialness? Self-hatred and narcissism are two sides of a coin that have one thing in common: me, me, me. Which is the point of the bulk of thought: to conjure and perpetuate this huge fiction of separate me-hood. Thought builds up an imagined sense of me that must be constantly maintained and expanded. It is exhausting. It is a parasite draining life energy.

The me-image is fragile and flimsy and insecure by nature, as any image is a frail and evanescent thing. An image (especially the self-image) has a bottomless craving for attention, for without attention, where is the image? Poof! It is gone that easily.

These days there is a treasuring of the space of no-thought, whether thoughts are present or not. In the morning when consciousness opens its eyes on a new day, it savors the glint of silence between thoughts. So many of the thoughts that arise are recognized as unimportant, or as luring conscious attention towards hooking into some new drama of suffering, stirring up a new pot of pain. Sometimes the unnecessary suffering cooked up by thought-stories is caught early on and the drama is side-stepped, nipped in the bud. Other times I'm swept into the waking dream of thought lock-stock-and-barrel and ride out the storm. Either way, all the while the space of no-thought gleams with fathomless presence. Attention opens from the thoughts to the space of awareness in which the thoughts occur. Such freedom here now in this space!

~
Gratitude for photo of Mourning Dove available at this link:
http://www.bird-friends.com/pics/MourningDove/MourningDove3LR.jpg

Feeling feelings

2010-07-05T09:52:00.000-07:00

Both personally and in my work in mental health, I have come to see that the value of feeling our feelings (rather than avoiding or indulging them) cannot be overstated. The "emotion phobic" tendency that seems to be inbuilt in us drives all kinds of addiction, over-consumption, violence, etc. Therefore I love this video (which applies equally to men and women) that invites us to experience our feelings nonverbally. Thinking about feelings is the opposite of feeling them; thinking is a defense and barrier against unpleasant feelings, it is a distancing mechanism which walls us off from our own life energy. When we block out the "bad" stuff (unpleasant feelings), the "good" stuff is equally blocked out. A kinked hose blocks the flow of any fluid equally.

The body and psyche are overstuffed suitcases full of repressed emotional material. I feel this is true to some extent for every human being. How do we "unpack" the suitcase of stuffed feelings? We don't. It unpacks itself. Whatever feelings are present in this moment are all that need to be met. We don't have to worry about whatever accumulation of grief and fear is lodged in the tissues, it will surface of its own accord at exactly the right time and pace. This makes it simple: we need only meet what is here now with openness and silence. I find that the "taste" of even unpleasant feelings can be surprisingly enjoyable when they are experienced on an energetic level without labels or judgments.

Flooding feelings with the energy of consciousness is inherently beneficial.

This is very different than ruminating over feelings or trying to work out a bad mood with the thinking process- this usually backfires and embeds the feelings somewhere in the "suitcase" of body and psyche.

Thought is used as a kind of protective shield to fend off unwanted feelings through analysis, rationalization, explanation, blame, guilt, etc. In whatever way the mind can label, package, shelve, project or otherwise "get rid" of unpleasant feelings, it will do so. This is how we get tied up in knots and drive the brain-engine to an ever increasing and chaotic velocity.

From an evolutionary, biological perspective, the capacity of thought to fend off unwanted feelings through judgment, analysis, repression, etc., may have been useful. But this once helpful survival mechanism has "gone overboard" and hypertrophied to the point where thinking has become a mental disease. We don't need to "throw out the baby with the bathwater"- thinking can still be beautiful and beneficial- but when thinking is used to alienate us from our feelings, it is harmful rather than helpful. The mind and thought processes have swollen to such an extent that they cause much personal and planetary suffering.

Enjoy this wonderful video that invites us to enter the energy of present feelings.

~
Gratitude to Chameli Ardagh. You can read about Chameli in the outstanding book Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom, by Rita Marie Robinson.

What is here.

2010-07-04T10:46:00.000-07:00

Listening to the sound of the dishwasher and looking at the cat napping on the blue chair, something is suddenly clear (it becomes visible as if floating up to the surface of water). It is this: The mind will never be able to tell me who I am. I've searched long and hard in the mind to discover my identity and it is not there. I won't find myself in any thought or story or experience, not even in the experience or story of awakening, enlightenment, or self-realization. Identifying with mind-objects (i.e. seeking my identity in objects such as thoughts, stories, experiences) is the basic confusion that I have suffered from. It's the basic confusion we all suffer from.

Even though I am myself always (it cannot be otherwise), there can be a sense of not knowing who I am, of being strangely lost and disconnected from the reality of my being. Of being out of touch with what is most vital and real within me.

There is a longing to know directly who I am apart from any mental ideas.

What I want is some kind of fundamental, conscious contact with the being, the actuality of the life that I am in this moment.

What is prior to any mental idea of who I am? What is here in the absence of thought? What am I apart from ego, apart from any personal history? What is here right now?

The awareness or being that everything shows up in is prior to any appearance.

In seeing this, sensing this, there is a plunge into immediacy, a wake-up slap of reality.

Attention had been locked on the clouds (thoughts, appearances) and now opens to the sky (presence/essence).

This sky of awareness or presence is here at all times; inseparable from the experiences that arise but not confined to them.

I am in no way separate from my experience, but my experiences are not who I am. There is great freedom in this fact. The sky is not confined by the clouds within it, and no human being is defined by thought.

The sky is not diminished when the clouds dissolve. If anything, the sky is even more present, or more apparent, when there are no clouds. A sky naked of clouds is not less of a sky. Without all the buzz of experience and thought, what I am is not diminished, but unveiled or more readily apparent. Without a big pile of accomplishments and failures and ideas and experiences (without all these clouds in the sky), the true essence of the reality that I am- the sky of awareness- is more readily apparent. The very things I sought to define myself did just the opposite: they obscured "my" reality- the wide open sky. All the things I thought defined me were more like a mask that alienated me from my reality.

What I want to know is not so much what I am but that I am. I want to feel/sense/know my reality, that indeed I am very much alive, aware, in this instant, un-separated from life itself.

I am.

I am!

What could be more astonishing than the am-ness of anything at all, the am-ness that is typing these words, reading these words, the am-ness that is ubiquitous in the single sky that is everything?

There is a sensing/feeling/knowing that I am. I can't wrap it up in a neat little mental package, but I can be what I am- effortlessly, unceasingly, like the space of the sky.

The joy of being is something real and present and accessible, and it is more satisfying than any passing experience. Why pine after a cloud when the wealth of the sky is here?

What I want, it turns out, is what I've got: Life. Life as it is in this moment.

Not a single movement of the mind is needed to be what I am.

Not a single thing needs to be different in order for me to be fully who I am. There is no circumstance that can block the fullness of being.

The dishwasher is quiet and the cat is still napping on the blue chair. The presence that is here is alive and a great wave of benevolence moves through. Thank you for being here and sharing this space.

~
Gratitude to Annette Nibley for pointing out that "without a single movement of the mind" being is known. Annette's extremely lucid writing can be accessed here: http://www.whatneverchanges.com/

Thanks also to the video of Stuart Schwartz on Never Not Here TV, which powerfully points attention to the obvious. Video can be accessed here: http://www.nevernothere.com/stuart-schwartz

Authentic Heart- an interesting documentary

2010-06-27T07:06:00.000-07:00

Authentic Heart from Rafael Stoneman on Vimeo.

"Authentic Heart" is a spontaneous, unscripted travel around North America, to meet with people of all paths and cultures, and to connect in the timelessness of the eternal heart." (description of this film posted on Vimeo)

Thanks to Never Not Here where I learned of this film.
http://www.nevernothere.com/

~

"No need for concern"

2010-06-21T06:48:00.000-07:00

"What is being spoken of here is not any kind of freedom or emancipation in the life of the character- rather it's about this that already is, regardless of any circumstances. No need for concern then about whether there's an 'I' or not, nor for whether any process is underway, finished or not even started. Your true nature is always Being, and the play will take its own course."

(Nathan Gill, Being, p. 95)

There's a relaxing that occurs when I read these words. All the endless attempts to improve life are abandoned, and it is clear that life needs no improvement. There is still a natural flow towards the good, towards "improvement", but it is not fueled by notions of deficit.

If you are not used to reading books on nonduality, the word "character" in the context of the above passage refers to the limited personal sense of self as a separated mind/body. There is more to us than the "character," there is more to any human being than meets the eye.

"No need for concern" does not mean apathy but equanimity, which is lack of excessive anxiety over the ever-changing circumstances of life. The presence of awareness is something real and alive as the "container" of all the changing content of each moment. The presence of awareness itself is the heart of being alive, and it is inherently peaceful.

The image is from Flickr. Gratitude to Nathan Gill, here is a link to his website:http://www.nathangill.com/

Gratitude to Jan Frazier for her writing about the "container" and the contents in her essay Remembering to Notice, available here:http://www.janfrazierteachings.com/blog/?p=1981#more-1981

The thermodynamics of attention

2010-06-17T14:17:00.000-07:00

I am in a dark cave holding a flashlight. The beam of the flashlight is the circumference of my reality.

What moves the beam of attention? What are the thermodynamics of the flow of conscious awareness?

"Most people give their attention to what they don't like. Put your attention on what you love." (Adyashanti)

Recently I read an essay by David Foster Wallace called This Is Water that keeps coming back to mind. I had never heard of Wallace, but here is a one sentence description of him (written by David Lipsky):

"He published a thousand-page novel, received the only award you get in the nation for being a genius, wrote essays providing the best feel anywhere of what it means to be alive now, accepted a special chair to teach writing at a college in California, married, published another book, and hanged himself at age forty-six."*

Explaining his struggle with depression, at one point Wallace said, "I think I had lived an incredibly American life. That, 'Boy, if I could just achieve X and Y and Z, everything would be OK.' "

The essay by David Foster Wallace was the commencement speech he gave at Kenyon College in Ohio in 2005, three years before his suicide in 2008. It's one of the most lucid, honest, and penetrating essays I have ever read. One reviewer said that the essay is "like six Eckhart Tolle books rolled into one."

Here are some excerpts from Wallace's essay (with slight paraphrase).

"There is a blind certainty, a closed-mindedness that's like an imprisonment so complete that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up."

"A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded."

"It is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your head."

"But it is possible to be conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to...If you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliche about the mind being 'an excellent servant but a terrible master.' "

"I submit that the real value of education is supposed to be about: How to keep from going through life a slave to your head."

"Our own present culture has yielded the freedom to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation."

"But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness."

"The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the 'rat race'- the constant, gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing."

"Real value has everything to do with simple awareness- awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us."

Wallace describes a routine trip to the grocery store to illustrate in concrete terms what he is talking about.

Freedom of attention. This makes me wonder about the thermodynamics of attention. Thermodynamics is about the flow of energy, and attention is a kind of energy, for which we have not yet discerned the underlying dynamics.

What are the thermodynamics of attention? Is there a magnetic pull toward clarity? An attractive force towards truth? A gravitational tug of ego? An electromagnetic force field of love? More and more there is a noticing of the flow of attention- what captivates it- what frees it. What does it mean for awareness to be aware of its own presence? Life becomes an adventure in attention, as David Foster Wallace suggests.

(David Foster Wallace's commencement speech is highly recommended and can be read at this link:
http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words)

(* quote about Wallace is from Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky, p. xv and p. 66)

(photo is from: http://zombiestories.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/light-beam.jpg)

~

Awareness held hostage

2010-06-13T06:54:00.000-07:00

This morning I am struck by some words from Huang Po:

"There is only one reality, neither to be realized nor attained. To say 'I am able to realize something' or 'I am able to attain something' is to place yourself among the arrogant. The men who flapped their garments and left the meeting as mentioned in the Lotus Sutra were just such people. (These people THOUGHT they had understood and were smugly self-satisfied.) Therefore the Buddha said: 'I truly obtained nothing from Enlightenment.' There is just a mysterious tacit understanding and no more."

This knocks the wind out of my seeking- it is recognized as a self-fueled obsession that enhances the false notion of separate self-hood, digging deeper the pit of suffering and delusion.

Freedom from the obsession with grasping opens awareness to what is already here.

This breath.

This silence, permeating all the noise, all the thoughts.

Awareness had been held hostage to ideas of more, to ideas of getting free, ideas of being a better me, a happier me, an enlightened me.

The hostage is no longer held hostage when these ideas lose their allure... their falsity is recognized. No ransom to be gained, the 'kidnapper' (believed delusions) lets the 'hostage' (awareness) go.

It's an ordinary day. Sunday mass at 11:30, and then all five of us will go see the new movie, Karate Kid.

Awareness opens outside of the mind and into the fullness of no-thing. Awareness is untethered from the torture machine of external seeking as the futility of the machine is recognized.

Freedom from seeking doesn't mean stagnation. It means movement toward goals is unhindered by anxiety.

THIS floods awareness, this life in this moment.

May we all enjoy the abundance of no-mind. The vastness and real-ness of nonverbal consciousness is here, free for the noticing, whenever attention opens wider than the TV-in-the-head.

(Note: Gratitude to Jan Frazier, author of When Fear Falls Away, for the phrase "awareness held hostage." Here is a link for Jan's website:http://www.janfrazierteachings.com/. The essays on Jan's website are highly recommended.)
(Quote is from The Zen Teaching of Huang Po, translated by John Blofield, p. 45.)
(Gratitude for image available at this link: tomsteel.wordpress.com/ post dated Feb 13, 2008)

~

The attraction of the eternal now

2010-06-04T11:07:00.000-07:00

There is a natural love of life. This love of life may also be called an attraction to the now, for life is now.

Here is a passage from The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle that I came across today (p. 71):

" Question: Even if I completely accept that ultimately time is an illusion, what difference is that going to make in my life?"

"Answer: Intellectual agreement is just another belief and won't make much difference to your life. To realize this truth, you need to live it. When every cell of your body is so present that it feels vibrant with life, and when you can feel that life every moment as the joy of Being, then it can be said that you are free of time."

Life is not primarily about "getting somewhere". It is about being here. When I become overly focused on "getting somewhere" something feels off, like a joint out of socket. This is feedback from an inner thermostat- it is the call or nudge to return to the true vocation of living fully in the eternal now. As life becomes more about being and less about "getting", I still move toward future goals, but with joy rather than compulsion.

There is a stronger attraction to what is present here right now than to even the most glorious possible future.

This is always the case even when the attraction to present reality is obscured by longing for imagined future gain. When I stop running away, sooner or later I feel reeled in by the attraction to the invisible heart of this moment.

When awareness touches the actuality of being alive in this moment there is contentment. Not a static contentment, but a dynamic contentment that blooms and shimmers.

"What to do

but draw a little nearer to

such ubiquity by remaining still."

(R. S. Thomas, excerpt from poem But the silence in the mind in Roger Housden's 2009 anthology)
(Photo is from Flickr public files)

~

Pointers point

2010-05-31T12:28:00.000-07:00

Pointers

point

attention

out of the mind

into free fall.

Pointers are a very different use of language from the normal usage.

Pointers point outside of thought, not further into it.

Pointers are words that lead to freedom from words.

A pointer that I have found to be very helpful is the question: Where is my attention right now?

The capacity to "see" the mind and notice what it is attending to is an astounding capacity that tends to be underused. When this question/pointer arises ( "Where is my attention right now?") and I'm honest with myself, the answer is often: My attention is fixated primarily on the thoughts in my head. My attention is on thoughts of me-and-my-life and on thoughts of me-and-what-will-happen-to-me. My attention is lost in ruminations about past and future.

Surprisingly, it can be a joy to see this stuckness of attention on the "me". Watching the mind-shows called "past and future" and "me" is so much better than being in them. It becomes increasingly obvious that attention, through conditioning and habit, tends to gravitate again and again back to past and future thoughts about this image called "me". Through this gravitational pull of habit, attention repeatedly becomes lost in the trance of thought. It's so freeing just to see this dynamic of attention as it occurs!

Pointers break the trance.

They redirect attention.

Another pointer is the question: What gives rise to the thought 'I am' ?

Resting in this question, "What gives rise to the thought 'I am' ?"... can take awareness into a felt sense of the aliveness that gives rise to the thought 'I am.'

Both Bob Adamson and Eckhart Tolle, and many others, have said- let the pointer do its job. Let the pointer take awareness into the silence.

Nisargadatta had one pointer from his teacher and he spent every waking moment with this pointer for three years, and the shackle of the mind fell off.

Bob Adamson has said that staying with one single pointer is all that is needed to fully realize freedom. There are many powerful pointers, he gave one example of such a pointer:

What is wrong with this moment

unless you think about it?

This is also the title of Bob's first book. Every time I ask the question, "What's wrong with right now?" and pause...the mind-bubble pops. Every time I ask the question, "What's wrong with right now?" and pause...there is the quiet shock of THIS-ness, where absolutely nothing is wrong. Awareness jumps off the diving board from mind to no-mind. Awareness leaps from the finger pointing at the moon to the moon itself. Awareness notices what's closer than any word or thought.

Today there is a wealth and explosion of beautiful pointers, like a huge flock of magnificent birds, flying across the internet and in many books. I am so grateful! My intention is to go deeply into a small number of pointers, such as the ones mentioned in this post, and to let them clear the mental suffering as it arises. Whenever any suffering is undone, the burden is less for all.

Thank you to all my friends on the blogosphere who have shared liberating pointers. The pointer is similar to a koan or paradox that bursts the boundaries of the mind.

If you have some favorite pointers, please feel free to share them in a comment.

There are so many great blogs out there, and I will mention one in this context because nearly every post is titled "Pointers." If you haven't had the pleasure of checking out "Radiance of Being" (Rodney Stevens), you may want to click on this link:

http://radianceofbeing.blogspot.com/

~

Awareness doesn't say a thing.

2010-05-30T09:46:00.000-07:00

Every day I wake up in the middle of the same old mind-clutter: should do this, should do that, don't want to do this, don't want to do that (exercise, diet, clean house, give non-stop unconditional love and attention to everyone, save the world, conserve energy, recycle, etc.).

The mental landscape reconstitutes daily.

Fighting it is the trap of becoming more entangled in it.

Let it be. Let the mind machine do what it does, which is to play out endless internal conflicts.

Yet the magic of awareness is here all the time. Awareness doesn't say a thing. It sees, sees, sees. It is the rays of light that shine away the mind-fog.

~

"How my son ruined my life!"

2010-05-29T05:57:00.000-07:00

I came across this You Tube video by a 91 year-old woman who underwent a transformation of heart at age 89. There is also an excellent article on the Huffington Post written by the son that includes a poem written by the mother. Below are links to both, which I have also shared with Greg, Mary, and Jack. Hope you enjoy as we did. We have agreed to say that little word "AND..." each time one of us gets caught up in some mind-made misery.

Link to Huffington Post article about woman at age 89 and 90:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-baraz/frame-it-with-gratitude_b_484722.html

Note: I looked up the word "JewBu" which is said in the video. A JewBu is someone who is raised Jewish and becomes Buddhist, or has leanings toward Buddhism.

Thank you to Alton Slater of Illuminations blogspot, where I first found this video.

Life Itself

2010-05-28T09:23:00.000-07:00

"Right now there is no one living a life. There is only Life itself. Life breathing. Life looking. Life thinking. Life speaking. Life sitting..."

Unmani Liza Hyde

http://www.not-knowing.com/writings-articles.htm

~
(Thank you to Sharon Ebert for art work, "Breathing Room.")

Seeing through the veil of the mind

2010-05-27T08:14:00.000-07:00

The mind is a wondrous instrument, like a glass to focus the rays of consciousness. But when the mind is seen not as an instrument but as "self", then confusion and suffering result. This was brought home to me today as I read a wonderful book, Only That: the life and teaching of Sailor Bob Adamson, by Kalayani Lawry.

Bob had spent 17 years as an alcoholic, frequently getting into brawls, and, by his own admission, filled with feelings of resentment and self-pity. Bob spent time with Nisargadatta in 1976-77.

Here is a passage from the book:

" 'What Nisargadatta was saying and continually pointing out was that...the images, ideas and imaginings that I had about myself weren't the truth.'

"Bob realized the essence of what Nisargadatta was saying...He understood the mind was the problem and in clearly seeing it he thought he'd never get hooked in again. Then at the end of the session, when he walked out the door and into the street, he immediately got caught up in the mind. It was different, though, because having seen that the problem was the mind, when he'd seemingly get hooked in, he'd say to himself, 'Hey, wait a minute. This was seen through the other day; what's this about?' It would pull him up and he'd have another look and see that it was 'just more of the same old mind crap.'

" 'Those old habit patterns had been there for years and did not immediately stop,' he said. 'When the chatter of self-pity and resentment started up again, there was a remembering that actually there was nothing there and so it wouldn't last.' Each time Bob saw the falsity, it would lose its intensity and the suffering began to ease off." (p.41)

Everyday I find there is a continual process of getting lost in mind stories, and then waking up from those mind stories. Little stories like, "I wish I were somewhere else right now." That's a kind of story based on an unquestioned assumption that something is lacking in this moment. All the little grumblings of the mind are an invitation to awareness to see through the thought-stories. The density of thought is thinned by the energy of awareness. There's an influx of consciousness as the stories of the mind are seen to be thoughts and not reality.

The mind is a wondrous instrument, but the capacity to see the mind is even more wondrous.

What sees the mind, what is aware of thoughts? Who knows? Call it presence, call it higher consciousness, call it Timbuktu...There is a capacity to see through the veil of thought, and to rest in this seeing/being.

Mary, Jack, and I are running out the door to attend an end-of-the-school year party at Chris's school. Whoever you are, wherever you are, I send you all good will, as we together enjoy seeing through the veil of mind.

The book Only That is available here:
http://www.non-dualitypress.com/
Nisargadatta website is here:
http://www.nisargadatta.net/
Sailor Bob Adamson website is here:
:http://members.iinet.net.au/~adamson7/index.html

Empty cup

2010-05-24T12:47:00.000-07:00

Relaxed attention

is the empty cup

that receives

the infinite good

of This Moment.

The pain of mistaken identity

2010-05-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

Pain comes from mistaken identity.

Joy comes from true identity (which some might call no-identity or freedom from all identities, but don't get snagged on the imperfection of words).

No one can tell you your true identity. I looked everywhere for someone to tell me. That was fun, but became a way to avoid myself.

True identity is not something to be memorized in the head, it is felt freshly in this very instant as life itself.

~

The emptying of fear

2010-05-24T07:09:00.000-07:00

Over a week ago I came across some words in a book by Jeff Foster, and I keep coming back to these words again and again. I'd like to share them with you:

In liberation, everything changes and nothing changes.

Everything changes because it's no longer 'your' life, and it's now seen in absolute clarity. Everything changes because it all becomes so wonderfully light and transparent. Everything changes because now life is no longer in opposition to death. Everything changes because everything you rejected, everything you denied, everything you pushed away is now seen to be nothing but an expression of unconditional love.

And yet, nothing changes. Chop wood and carry water. Eat, shit, grow old. Get cancer. Scream in pain in the middle of the night. None of that stops. This isn't about living in some New Age fantasy world. This isn't about taking on comforting concepts and surrounding yourself with cotton wool. This is reality at its most raw. Nothing can be blocked out any more. It's the end of control. It's a free fall into an intimacy with everything. It's a love affair with what is. It's an absolute alignment with life.

(An Extraordinary Absence, p. 100)

While the life energy here that calls itself Colleen hasn't opened up into liberation, there's not much worry about that. It is glimpsed that 'my' life is in no way apart from the one life, that 'my' life is a notion riding along with the one life we all are. I have never been apart from the whole, even when I imagined I was. Whether it's seen or not, oneness is the reality. There is no one and nothing to fear, since I am apart from none of it. While fear still arises, there is a real decrease in the amount of fear in any given day. Less fear. Less fear! That has become the 'direction' of this life: toward less fear. Less fear through recognition of the lack of separation. Life becomes not about accumulating more of anything (there is such abundance in every breath that 'more' becomes an absurd notion) but about a natural shedding of psychological fear. Shedding the erroneous notions that produce fear.

A powerful tool for releasing fear-producing notions is the meditative inquiry taught by Byron Katie. Attending Katie's school and workshops has changed my life profoundly. Here is a link to her website:
http://www.thework.com/index.php

Thanks to Jeff Foster for his clear and powerful words. Here is a link to his website:
http://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/

Babies- a brilliant film

2010-05-23T06:59:00.000-07:00

Greg and I loved this film and highly recommend it. The trailer is worth watching in itself. Here is a link to the trailer:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vupEpNjCuY
We saw the movie in a theater on the "big screen." But it is also available to watch on-line for free at this link:
http://www.watchbabies.net/

Releasing long cherished notions

2010-05-22T11:35:00.000-07:00

Every day ideas gripped tightly in the mind are gripped less tightly.

~

Yes and no

2010-05-20T09:59:00.000-07:00

"There is only complete simplicity: an openness, a consent, to letting happen what will happen, and to letting the misconceptions fall away."

David Carse, Perfect Brilliant Stillness, p. 125

Allowing what is in this moment. Surrender. Alignment. Flow. Oneness with the movement of the Totality.

Consent. Welcoming what is. Making friends with the present moment. Non-resistance.

Sounds good, but....how many times do I bump into the slightest glitch in my day and instantly exclaim, "No!" The "no!" to any unpleasant occurrence is interesting to watch. Muddy shoes on the carpet? In the same instant they're seen the reactive "no!" arises. A hundred times a day there is the inner bracing against what is, there is the knee-jerk response of "this is unpleasant and I don't like it."

It's amazing to begin to become conscious of the amount of resistance to what is. And to see how much stress this resistance to what is creates.

It's as if the light of awareness were sunlight spreading over an inner landscape that had previously been in darkness.

I see the resistance to what is and I don't want to plaster "consent" on top of my feelings of resistance and aversion. I don't want to pretend to surrender when every fiber of my being shouts "no!". I want to be honest with myself. I can see that all the resistance to what is creates feelings of misery. But the resistance seems natural and automatic, so what alternative is there? How can I "not resist" what I resist?

Let me look freshly at this whole dynamic of rejecting or accepting what happens.

What happens happens, with or without my consent. Without my consent, what happens can feel like slamming into a brick wall. With consent, that very same happening may feel like a joyful and flowing dance.

My consent, my willingness, my acceptance is the one vital, indefinable thing I have to give to this life, to "what happens."

How does this work when I feel the knee-jerk lack of consent to every unpleasant happening, whether small or large?

Consent does not come from the ego, but from a deeper level of being than the ego.

Is it possible to say "yes" to the "no" of the ego? In other words, is it possible to accept all the painful non-acceptance that arises to the glitches of an ordinary day? Who says "yes" to the "no" of the ego? I do. The deeper me which is the conscious space of being. I actually feel this inner tilt from no to yes, from resistance to acceptance. There is a sense of stepping outside the thought of "no!" and being the quiet, intelligent awareness that surrounds the thought. There's a sense of the field of conscious awareness enlarging, in the same way that the view of the earth expands when a plane gains altitude.

The conditioned response of "no!" to those muddy shoes is strong and it is allowed to be. Can I be the space for this? (Eckhart Tolle recommends asking this question.) Can I be the space for conditioned reactivity? Can I be the space for feelings of irritation? Can I be the space for this non-spiritual and negative Colleen? Can I be the space for the shoes on the carpet? Can I be the space for what arises in this moment, whatever it may be?

After asking the question there is a gap of openness.

Wow! Space is here! For all of it. For everything. Space has always been here. Now I see it! Now I am it. Yes, I can be the space for muddy shoes on the carpet, I can be the space for feelings of irritation, I can be the space for beleaguered Colleen, that poor ego trying so hard for years to become enlightened when the ego can never be enlightened.

Whenever there is consent for even the least unpleasant occurrence, there has been a shift from ego-identity to deeper being. There has been a shift from thought to awareness. The ego is incapable of saying "yes" to anything unpleasant; when the ego says "yes" to something unpleasant it is faking it. I have felt this many times! My ego says, "yes, those muddy shoes on the carpet are just great" and the ego is lying through its teeth and this is clearly felt as the horrible inner split of inauthenticity.

In authentic consent, there has been a shift from being identified-as-resistance to being identified-as-awareness. Identified as the space of awareness in which the resistance and everything else occurs.

Consent itself is a bridge from the superficial self to the deeper self. The deeper self is the no-self of aware space or presence. Consent is a bridge from object consciousness to space consciousness (see p. 227 of A New Earth). Consent is a bridge from ego to essence, from knowing to not knowing, from form to formlessness. Consent is the thump of power at the heart of each person. Consent is the inborn vitality that is accessed in any moment we live as a Yes! to life.

~

"There is nothing one has to do to be oneself." Stuart Schwartz

2010-05-19T18:01:00.000-07:00

Ramana Maharshi

When you click on the link below you will see the words, "There is nothing one has to do to be oneself." Wait several seconds and a powerful slide show of words and photos will begin. I have watched several times and I am attending a weekend workshop with Stuart Schwartz in Woodstock New York from Aug 27-29, 2010. He spent a lot of time with a direct disciple of Ramana Maharshi, Robert Adams. Hope you enjoy the slide show as much as I have.
http://www.satsangwithstuart.com/

Seeking

2010-05-17T11:00:00.000-07:00

I took Jack to school then came home. I'm lucky I've been able to cut back to working three days a week and today is a free day. These days when I have free time I'm eager to just hang out and pay attention to the fact of being alive.

I'm interested when feelings of restlessness and craving arise. The ancient energies of vague dissatisfaction and boredom have propelled me like a motor through the days of my life. This morning they seem fascinating, and I look at these mind patterns that have been running my life. I love to belt out the words with Mick Jagger, "Can't get no satisfaction!"

The sense of seeking has remained an undercurrent in life even as the object sought has morphed into new forms over time. As a kid it was maybe a toy, as a teenager, romance, as an adult, adventure, meaningful service, fame, enlightenment, whatever. I've even sought for freedom from seeking! Which is just more seeking of course. Different people seek different things, but the energy of seeking is the same.

The seeking is glorified in society as a sign of zest, ambition, drive. To be free of the seeking compulsion would be wimpy, according to some. Without seeking one goal after the next, we'd be rudderless and stagnant, we'd waste our lives, whispers one voice of fear in my ear.

Would I stagnate if I were not in the "seeking" mode? Or is the energy of seeking, which runs me around the same circle of futility again and again, the real stagnation?

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with seeking. Seeking is an inevitable and valid aspect of every human life- we all seek to survive, to care for our loved ones, to be happy- and that's great. I want to do the best I can on the level of seeking. I'm just wondering what else there is besides seeking.

Seeking arises from a sense of lack, a sense of something missing, and in the end it tends to reinforce the sense of lack, the sense of something missing. Seeking leads to brief gratification followed by an intensified sense of deficiency and a renewed compulsion to seek, and so turns the hamster wheel of samsara.

The compulsion to seek need not be fought or resisted, but simply looked at. To fight the compulsion to seek is just more seeking. It only tightens the knot.

So I'm just looking: What is this restless energy of needing to get somewhere? What is this restless of energy of needing to get away from here? What is the restless energy of needing to be somebody? What is this restless energy of needing to get away from being the deficient person I am now? What is this restlessness and agitation that drives so much unnecessary and misery-producing activity (such as, in my case, overeating)? Only awareness can answer these questions, not thinking.

Have you ever glimpsed that the mind-pattern of seeking is like a big decoy that diverts awareness from present being?

To stop seeking even for an instant feels like falling off a cliff edge. I am undefended. I have no agenda to protect me from contact with the rawness and spontaneity of life in this moment. No goal means there is nothing to distract me from the fullness of here. If I'm not seeking I'm not thinking, the mind is quiet, the flame of attention illuminates this moment.

It is possible to step off the seeking merry-go-round for a moment.

All the energy that had been consumed in seeking is suddenly freed. It's disorienting. The energy that had been on a mission to save the world and change others, etc., is unplugged from the imaginary false self. What's left is nothing out of the ordinary. But when the energy that had been consumed in seeking is suddenly freed to flood the present moment, the voltage of consciousness ratchets up: The ordinary is revealed to be a stunning field of aliveness.

When the energy pattern called seeking comes back into view today I may get absorbed into it and become the seeker, that's what happens most days and it's fine. But sometimes I am not completely lost in the mind-pattern/identity of seeker/doer.

Then I am the awareness that sees the mind-pattern of seeking but is not trapped in that mind-pattern, even when activities of seeking are taking place. There is a moving through goal-directed activities without losing touch with the plenitude of being in this moment. Concurrent with goal-directed activity there is a sense of completion. This is living in two dimensions, as Eckhart Tolle says. The dimensions of becoming and being are simultaneous and need not be in conflict.

Sometimes there is doing without any sense of being the doer- such a weightless, free feeling! And sometimes there is doing that is encumbered with a heavy sense of "me doing it, me being the doer, me working very hard and feeling very sorry for myself, etc." Both are fine, it's just interesting to notice the shift from imagining myself as the doer, to dropping that imagined sense of being the doer. It's interesting that doing carries on very well even when the notion of personal doer-ship is absent.

Being has nothing to do with seeking. Being is what is here now. In this moment there is a cessation of seeking. There is a vacuum-like openness. Into this openness there is a gentle burst of sheer aliveness. The aliveness that is always here but rarely fully felt. It's another cosmic joke: not seeking is finding.

~

Hubble looks at deep space

2010-05-16T08:30:00.000-07:00

Greg and Jack showed me this awe inspiring and humbling youtube video, which has been seen by more than 2 million people. I've just learned how to post videos, hope this opens your mind as it has mine.

This video made me want to marry Greg all over again

2010-05-15T17:50:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Shamash of You Are Awareness blogspot and Facebook group for posting this video
http://www.facebook.com/youareawareness#!/posted.php?id=374846741603&share_id=118901261474766&comments=1#s118901261474766
This video has been viewed by nearly 50 million people.

The fulcrum of attention

2010-05-13T12:13:00.000-07:00

     The last few days, like many days, have been rocky. My husband planted a rose bush a few inches from a brick wall and this triggered some discussion. My teenage daughter seemed withdrawn and thoughts arose in my mind that caused turmoil. There are hundreds of lay-offs at the institution I work at due to downsizing, and I may lose my job. You know the drill, from the mundane stressors to occasional intense angst that seems to come out of nowhere and have no cause, life rolls on. And beyond the tiny and sometimes larger travails of this individual life, there is the massive suffering and also joys of billions of people and animals on this planet.

   This morning I read a stunning essay on 'Sailor' Bob Adamson's website. http://members.iinet.net.au/~adamson7/intro.html

   Bob helps me to see that there are basically waves and the space in which those waves occur. Attention is usually riveted by the waves, but it is possible for attention to shift and become conscious of the space in which the waves occur.

   Waves, or vibrations, or patterns of energy, comprise everything that we are capable of detecting. Thoughts, feelings, sensations, all physical and mental objects, are basically transient energy waves that appear and subside in the space of awareness.

   The noisy waves of thought and emotion and sensation are a magnet for attention. Yet there is always the possibility of shifting attention to notice the space in which the waves occur. Why bother? Because this space in which everything occurs is the deeper self. It is the space of present awareness. Some might call it the no-self...the words don't matter. The reality that the words point to is what matters.

   I'm not just my story, I'm the silent awareness that knows the story and without which there would be no story. I'm the silent awareness that knows the story but is not itself a story.

   The story is the dream-like surface of life, and I do the best I can on this level, but remain in touch with what matters most: the deeper dimension of being, which is to say, the space in which the story occurs.

   The space and the waves are no more different than water and ice-cubes.

   Consciousness and the objects of consciousness are in no way separate. Awareness and the arisings in awareness are an indivisible whole. They cannot be separated. They form a seamless continuity. Yet within this whole, it is possible to shift the accent of awareness from the objects to the aware space in which the objects occur. Form and formlessness are one, as the Heart Sutra says. We tend to be lost in form, but it is possible to become conscious of formlessness. This is key.

The space of now is where the waves called past and future thoughts appear. It is the intersection of time and eternity, the intersection of the dream and reality, the intersection of ego and essence. It is the fulcrum where attention can shift from content to space. This is the shift from powerlessness to power.

   Most of my life I have been primarily aware of the objects of consciousness, while I have overlooked the presence of consciousness itself.

   I have been lost in content and I have ignored (been ignorant of) the space in which the content occurs. I have been focused on things and I have discounted the space of no-thing that makes everything possible. I have lived in the mind (thought) and been oblivious of the presence of awareness in which thought occurs.

   No-thing, space, awareness, consciousness, being, stillness, silence, emptiness, life, mystery, love, essence, Self, now, presence, freedom, openness, spirit, formlessness- all these words are synonyms that point to the immediacy of awake space that is the medium in which everything exists. It is the dimension of eternity which is the substratum of all appearances. It is the dimension of the unborn in which the born exists.

   Attention is shifting from the wave to the space in which the wave occurs. Noticing is shifting from "me and my life" to the no-me space of being that is my deeper self.

   There is less interest in becoming and more interest in being.

   This shift in attention feels like new eyes are opening in me, quiet eyes that see what is without needing to comment on it. Quiet eyes that can simultaneously sense forms and the space of emptiness from which all forms emerge.

   The exhausting and delusory effort to improve on the perfection of what is subsides in this moment.

   There is a sense of being one with the unfolding mystery, of joining in the creative energy of the universe in its ceaseless expression of the good. This is a radically different way to live than the ego stance of being a special-someone who is going to manipulate things toward correcting a mentally defined deficiency.

   Einstein said that no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. The level of consciousness called thought has created the problems in the world today. The mind has created the problems and only awareness can solve them, for awareness is a higher level of intelligence than thought.

   In my own experience it is the level of awareness and not the level of thought that solves problems like a rose bush planted close to a brick wall, my relationship with my daughter, and the possibility of job loss.

   It is from this deeper level of consciousness that true solutions can be found for individual and collective problems. Attention shifts to this level of consciousness easily when space is noticed rather than objects. It is possible for anyone to shift the fulcrum of attention from thought to awareness. See Bob's essay for a very clear description of this shift.

   Thank you for being in this space.

~

The man in the chair

2010-05-06T06:50:00.000-07:00

   I sat in the audience with about 200 people last week during 12 hours of talks by Eckhart Tolle over a four day period. I never once felt that Eckhart had the slightest intention to alter me or anyone in the audience in any way, and yet now, as each day goes by, I feel somehow altered in a deep, indefinable way. What is going on?

   I feel reluctant to even call Eckhart Eckhart. It seems more accurate to refer to him as the man sitting in the chair. The man sitting in the chair on the stage was utterly at ease. He had no desire to entertain the audience. The person next to me drifted to sleep and began snoring softly. Several times I felt my eyelids become heavy as I was on the verge of sleep. To the mind, the man sitting on the stage was quite boring. Why then, days later, are waves of transformation continuing to move through this space that I am?

   After a long space of silence Eckhart smiled and said, "Sitting on a stage and not knowing what to say could be a nightmare." We laugh. Eckhart smiles and sits in silence for a few moments. "It's only a nightmare if you think you should know what to say." There is another pause. "If you enjoy not knowing, if you are comfortable with not knowing, it's actually quite pleasant to sit up here." He smiles contentedly and there is more silence. The man on the stage is clearly quite happy. He is not at all worried about what he should say. The three television cameras pointed at him do not faze him at all. He is in no hurry and he feels no need to entertain anyone.

   It's strange to be in the presence of this complete lack of anxiety.

   The man in the chair does not need to change anything. He is comfortable with what is as it is. That is all.

   A woman in the audience is called on to come to the microphone to ask her question. She rushes up to the microphone and gushes out effusively, "I love you!" The man on the stage looks directly at her and says with quiet firmness, "You love yourself." The woman agrees, and then proceeds to ask her question. When people admire Eckhart, when people are drawn to him, he realizes they are really attracted to their own reality. What we crave is direct experience of our own truth or essence.

   The man in the chair on the stage oozes a sense of complete ease and fulfillment.

   Why is this?

   He is completely at one with his deeper being. From this connection with source there is a perpetual overflow of peace.

   Even now, days later, after going through many of the usual small daily dramas at work and at home, I have this strange sense of being on the verge of remembering something long forgotten. The man on the stage reminded me that I too am connected to source, it cannot be otherwise.

~

Is death a problem?

2010-05-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

   Is death a problem?
   No, death is a natural and sacred occurrence.
   It is the way of all form to vanish.

   Only the mind makes up a story that death is bad.

   Why not question this story?
   I'm sure I will weep and feel intense agony when my loved ones die. I will likely feel fear and great sadness when I approach my own death, and this is fine. All of these feelings are fine, and they don't make death a problem.

~

Distinguishing interpretation from actuality

2010-04-30T14:50:00.000-07:00

The drawing is either two faces or a candlestick, depending on how we look at it.

   Yesterday I sat in a room with a few hundred other people as Eckhart Tolle intertwined his fingers and said something like this, "Often people think that their interpretation of an event and the event itself are the same thing. There is no such thing as a dreadful event. All events are neutral. 'Dreadful' is an interpretation that is added to the event." Eckhart disentangled his fingers, saying, "Waking up is when we see that the interpretation is not reality." Eckhart held out one hand to represent the world of the mind, with its interpretations, judgments, opinions, and painful stories. The other hand represented actuality, the event without any overlay of thought. Presence is awareness freed from identification with mental forms. It is who we are beneath our stories of who we are.

   Eckhart was talking with a woman with health problems who had lost her job. "There are no dreadful events," he reiterated. "There are only events, which can be challenging. Challenges are real. Problems exist only in the mind." Eckhart's comments to this woman may sound unsympathetic, but they were the opposite. "Freedom is not dependent on pleasant conditions but on clear seeing," he said, and the woman looked as if a load had been lifted off her shoulders.

   For decades one of my worst fears has been the possibility of becoming obese, as obesity runs in my family. Eckhart also pointed out that what we fear, we tend to attract into our lives. When my husband and I became engaged to be married seventeen years ago, I said to him, "Promise me that you will divorce me if I ever get fat." He smiled and replied, "Okay, I promise."

   Around the time I turned forty I went through four pregnancies in six years (three Cesarian sections and one miscarriage). Gradually my fear of gaining weight became reality.  My sweet husband has also put on a few pounds, and thankfully he broke his promise to divorce me if I gained weight. For years now, every day there is the relentless march of shameful thoughts in my mind for being overweight. Every day there is a ready-made excuse to complain and hate myself and obsess over myself, etc.

   Can I distinguish between the interpretation and the actuality? The actuality is the body weight. According to a medical definition, I am overweight. This actuality is neutral. Further actualities are that I am physically fit, I am pain-free, and I enjoy walking. I have a higher risk for weight-related health problems and I would like to lose weight. None of these actualities produces suffering.

   The suffering comes in from the agony of thoughts of embarrassment, shame, unworthiness, and separation from others. The suffering comes from the judgments, "This shouldn't be. Things should be different. I am a failure." etc.

   I am learning to distinguish reality (body weight) from the mental interpretations (this is a problem, this is unacceptable, this makes me miserable). I am beginning to feel more at peace in my body right now just as it is. I am in fact grateful for this body with its capacities of sight, hearing, taste, touch. I am grateful for the unfathomable mystery of this body that has been the doorway into this world for the three human beings I love most- Chris, Mary, and Jack.

   Problems disappear when they are seen to be nothing more than mind-waves. The actuality remains, but it is what it is, and it is non-problematic. Even when the mind-waves reappear (habitual thoughts pop up again and again) they can be seen as innocent mind-waves rather than as a source of distress.

   This is similar to the shift that can occur when looking at a picture such as the one above; nothing actually changes, but there is a transformation in perception- where there had been two faces there is now only a candlestick. Actuality bathed in transparent awareness free of judgments emanates the peace that passes understanding.

(Addendum: Please see comment # 7 on this post for information about a subsequent talk where Eckhart speaks of dreadful events in the world.)

~

"You either love what's broken or you don't love."

2010-04-26T09:46:00.000-07:00

I came across a poem today by Naomi Shihab Nye and I'd like to share some excerpts with you:

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

   Sometimes I feel I am trying to present a face to the world that will garner warmth, while I hide all the doubt about myself inside.

   The strange wanting to be liked is a cruel master.

   The torsion of incongruency between the social facade and the being underneath is a drain of energy. I am learning mercy of my own fear and of the fear of others. Fear is not shameful and it is not a sin or a failure. Fear is the fabric underlying the mind, it is a layer that we can descend into and pass through.

   Purity isn't the rejection of impurity but the embracing of it.

   Is the energy of fear different than the energy of love?

   There is one energy that takes many shapes, it takes the shape of fear and it takes the shape of love. I have rejected a lot of energy in myself, I have rejected the energy of fear and I have rejected the energy of anger and I have rejected the energy of sadness and I have rejected the energy of selfishness.

   Now I am opening to what I have rejected.

   In being more honest with myself and opening to the magnitude of fear within this body and mind, there is at the very center the discovery of fearlessness.

   I am opening beyond the mind and everything it thought it knew.

   I'm not running away from this moment. I'm standing my ground. I feel the life that is here, the life that I am. The substance of this moment is emptiness shimmering with being.

   Kindness is a living energy within every person beneath the fear. As the poem says, it is what we have been looking for. Today I feel attention physically moving from the region of the forehead to the region of the sternum, right where the heart is beating. Kindness need not be a pretense, it is something vital and real, a medium we feel at home in.

~
Note: The title of this post is quoted from http://wwwaphorismscom.blogspot.com/. Thanks to the blog author, nothing profound.

Clarity

2010-04-22T10:55:00.000-07:00

"Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone. " (Alan Watts)

   "The most significant thing that can happen to a human being [is] the separation process of thinking and awareness." (Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 261-2)

   Muddy water is cleared by leaving it alone. Awareness is separated from thought by leaving thought alone.

   Whenever there is awareness of a thought, there is a separation between that thought and awareness. This separation is clarity, it is freedom from entanglement in thought.

   The separation process between thinking and awareness occurs when the muddy waters of the mind are left alone. Simple rest clears the water.

   Water is always equally clear, whether mud particles are dispersed in it or settled at the bottom. Awareness is always clear, whether it is filled with thought or whether thought is absent.

   However, when water and mud particles are mixed together, the clarity of the water is obscured. When water and mud particles are separated, the clarity of water is easier to see. There is no fundamental change, but the clear water that was always there is more evident when the mud particles settle to the bottom and are separated from the water. Similarly, the clarity of awareness is unobscured when the mind is left alone and the process of separation between thought and awareness is allowed to occur.

   Why is the separation process of thinking and awareness the most significant thing that can happen to a human being?

   Our true nature as awareness is unrecognized when it is mixed up with thinking. When the two are separated the clarity that has always been present shines forth unobscured. There is recognition of essence.

   There is an art to leaving muddy water alone, to not resisting what is. There is an art to true resting and non-interference. Leaving things alone, letting thoughts settle down, requires a high-frequency energy of alertness. Leaving things alone doesn't mean inactivity; it means yielding to the life flow instead of resisting it.

   Leaving muddy water alone means giving up the fight against what is.

   There is a natural attraction to the ease and effortlessness in which freedom is recognized and the sense of being a separate self dissolves.

   We are all one with the unfolding of reality in this instant, every instant, whether we are consciously aware of this fact or not. We can't do it wrong. Only thought says we can be wrong.

   In the ease of leaving thought alone, in the ease of not arguing with thought, there is the clearing of muddy water and there is a separation of awareness from thinking. There is a separation of identity from the thought stream. In this separation is the clarity of freedom, the freedom that has always been here and is now enjoyed.

~

Thinking doesn't solve problems, it creates them.

2010-04-19T10:24:00.000-07:00

A poem fragment I came across recently keeps coming to mind. I'd like to share it with you:

I know that stars are born

only to die

we see the light

of heavenly bodies

long since gone

this also I know:

Your light shines in me

the universe holds no terror

(Gabriel Rosenstock, Uttering Her Name, 2009)

Appearances disappear. There is no getting around this fact. Oblivion is the destiny of every appearance. Maybe it can be stalled a bit by people who make a big splash of some kind, but we will all be equally forgotten at some not too distant point in time. Is this fact depressing or liberating? I've certainly experienced this fact as depressing. From the perspective of great swaths of time, everything seems so pointless and meaningless, at times I have felt the apathy of "nothing really matters in the long run, why bother to care about things that will soon be forgotten?".

What about the second half of the poem, "Your light shines in me/ the universe holds no terror" ? Is there anything other than appearances disappearing and appearing and disappearing? Is there anything other than perpetual transformation and flux? The universe crackles with the dynamic energy of change, but is there anything that doesn't appear and disappear?

The answer to this question is not a fact to be memorized or believed or pondered or mulled over. Reality, the great space of formless being in which everything appears and vanishes, is to be met directly in this moment through silence, not through mental noise.

I dropped Jack at school this morning and did some errands. Driving along the mind was quiet. I once heard Jack Kornfield relate that his teacher one day picked up a cup and asked, "How should you relate to this cup?" After a pause the teacher said, "Relate to this cup as if it is already broken."

For me, this means drop unnecessary worries. Accept impermanence, even celebrate it. Today I imagined the cup as already broken, I imagined a thousand years from now, just a blink of an eye in the cosmic time scale, when there will be virtually no trace whatsoever that I ever existed. Talk about a weight lifted off! There is exhilaration in the furnace of time that burns away every appearance. The essentially illusory nature of separate self-hood is revealed and there is a sense of being unbounded, undefined, undefinable...no longer in need of any self-definition.

This sense of not being encapsulated in a mental definition of self, of not being confined to a million beliefs, doesn't make me feel irresponsible or in any way detached from others. On the contrary, I feel eager to meet this day and my children and whoever shows up in any moment, without all the usual barriers of mind.

Suddenly all my so-called problems seem like just a bunch of judgments in the head, and there's nothing actually wrong with this moment. I'll deal without whatever challenges arise, as Eckhart Tolle points out, but "problem" is just a notion in the head. It's like the chicken - egg mix-up: it seemed that thought solved problems, when in fact it is the other way around. Thought creates the mind-mirage called "problem", and this mind-mirage in turn perpetuates the stream of thought. There is this compulsion to think endlessly about so-called problems. There can still be an appropriate and valuable use of thought to deal with practical, present concerns; but the endless agonizing over past and future is needless thought-activity that produces seeming problems where in fact there is no true problem. I can think of many concrete examples in my own life where I was convinced there was a problem when in fact there was no problem. My first child Chris will soon turn 16, and he was born with an X-linked genetic abnormality that caused brain damage. He is unable to walk or talk. He has needed many surgeries. For years I was convinced this was a problem. Yet now it is impossible for me to see any problem. Where is the problem? Chris is a radiant and joyful human being. He is in fact the most loving person I have ever known in my life. There is no problem, even though thought at one time told the story that there was a problem.

If you have examples in your own life of something that you thought was a problem, but that you then realized was not a problem, feel free to leave a comment to share your shift in perception. Whether you leave a comment or not, thanks for visiting this blog and sharing in this life adventure that we are all part of.

(photo is Hubble Telescope image of The Pleiades)

"Mastery of life is the opposite of control."

2010-04-15T18:59:00.000-07:00

(Vermeer, c. 1664)

"Mastery of life is the opposite of control." Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks, p. 23.

   These words made me do a double take, and then I instantly felt their truth. My efforts at controlling myself and others, my efforts at controlling life have amounted to a fight against life. Control tends to be a fear-based activity, and fear does not lead to freedom or joy.

   Maybe abandon is the opposite of control. Sweet abandon to the movement of life in this moment, in every moment. Maybe it's not a sin to relax and be happy. Maybe that's more genuinely productive than all the grim attempts to arrange everything perfectly.

   Jack, my 9 yo, and I hiked a mile on a nature trail at twilight this evening. Harmony, alignment, connection, oneness- with my deeper self, with my son, with nature, with the Totality- is not a future goal. Harmony is being in alignment with life in this very moment. From this harmony right action unfolds of itself. Right action is mastery.

   For me the key is noticing where there is a sense of being out of harmony. Not to judge myself, but to bring attention to that little (or large) sense of hurry or impatience or dissatisfaction that is pulling me out of sync with the life flow in this moment. The simple noticing of resistance tends to trigger a spontaneous release of that resistance, like noticing a hot potato in your hand would trigger the release of that potato. But there have been plenty of times that I have been so busy running around or so caught up in my head that I haven't noticed the hot potato in my hand, and therefore I've carried that hot potato unwittingly for a long time. Silent, benevolent noticing of what's going on inside the mind is an unspectacular but surprisingly powerful action.

   When I slow down and get quiet I start to feel all the feelings I've been avoiding. Boredom, self-doubt, insecurity, like a flock of little birds they all come out, and they are allowed to breathe. I'm allowed to be out of sorts. I'm allowed to be out of harmony. After all, what other option is there...forbidding myself to be out of harmony has never produced harmony. Harmony can't be forced. But in noticing all the little frictions and mental complaints against what is, there is a softening. The lungs relax and can take in more air.

   In the honesty of seeing and feeling the contractions in the mind and body, something happens. Surrender is the opposite of control, and there is a sense of giving up the fight against what is, giving up the war against myself. There is a sense of noticing and releasing that hot potato so long clutched unnoticed in the hand.

   For me this is a very slow, gradual, gentle process. The contractions are many and deep and they don't become unknotted overnight. Peace is not a quick fix. But harmony is possible, and I have the inbuilt wisdom to feel my way into harmony with the life flow.  There are moments of waking up out of the story in the head and recognizing alignment with life. Everyone has that inbuilt compass pointing toward harmony with the life force. Mastery is the flow of harmony.

~

The Background

2010-04-10T07:56:00.000-07:00

   Lately there has been a noticing of the Background.

   My husband Greg and I were talking about it yesterday, and spent some time in silence relaxing into the Background. Attention moves to a region behind the head, and the mind tends to quiet down effortlessly. Jean Klein and others recommend letting attention rest perhaps an inch behind and outside the lower part of the head. This helps siphon off all the attention often concentrated in the area of the forehead.

   Then let awareness fan out and notice the whole Background area. What helps me to get a feel for this is the analogy of ripples on the surface of Being, ripples on the surface of an ocean. The ripples on the surface are sights, sounds, thoughts, feelings. The surface ripples are wonderful and it is blissful to let them slosh about however they will. There is no need to interfere with the surface ripples at all.

   Now what's really interesting is the Background, that which is underneath all the surface ripples.

   Can you notice and feel this Background?

   It's not hard to do. It seems to help when the awareness is soft and expanded and quiet, and then this field of the Background is sensed directly. For me it feels as if it is physically behind and beneath me, behind and beneath everything I see and hear and think and feel.

   It's so delightful to sense the subtle presence of this field, this Background. As I go about my day, again and again I find myself asking "Where is the Background?", and just like that awareness opens to it.

   Whatever is going on is going on, and at the same time there is this wonderful Background field. I sense it this very instant. There are the surface ripples, and there is that which is beneath the surface ripples and supports them.

   What is this Background? I refrain from the temptation to think too much about it or to try to figure out what it is or to define it perfectly. That's a side-road I've gotten lost in many times. I get pulled back into the mind and the vibrant sense of this Background fades.

   I'm learning to be with it without thinking too much about it. Feeling or sensing the Background becomes increasingly compelling, and it is a source of endless, subtle joy.

   Leaning into the Background, there is a sense of merging with it, a sense of being unseparated from it. It's a vast field in which everything arises and subsides. It makes all experience possible yet it itself is not an experience. Call it the field of being, call it the great impersonal I AM in which everything is steeped, call it emptiness. Call it the Great Silence. Whatever pointer clicks for you, call it that. For me it is the Background.

~

Not knowing

2010-04-09T10:40:00.000-07:00

To the ego, not knowing is frustrating.

To the soul, not knowing is ecstasy.

"Not knowing does not signify dullness, or having no interest or curiosity. On the contrary, I would imagine it to be a condition of unusual aliveness...As if our own small breath became joined to the big breath of the world- which it always is, of course, except now we know it to be so; not as a piece of information, but as a movement of the blood."

(Roger Housden, commentary on "The Mind of Absolute Trust" by Seng- Ts'an)

When I notice the mind clamped down on an imagined "need to know", I step back and take a breath. There is enormous relaxation in the acceptance of not knowing.

What is not known will always be a vaster field than what is known; why not accept this fact? The field of not knowing can be entered and enjoyed. It is a quiet place full of wonder.

Touching peace

2010-04-06T06:57:00.000-07:00

     This morning some words from Thich Nhat Hanh have expanded my awareness outside of the usual house of thought into new spaces.

     "Peace is all around us- in the world and in nature- and within us- in our bodies and our spirits. Once we learn to touch this peace, we will be healed and transformed. It is not a matter of faith; it is a matter of practice."
    (from Be Still and Know, p. 54)

     I take a few minutes to let these words sink in. We can learn to touch peace! That in itself is an amazing fact. What better way to employ the human capacity to learn? Now I am gently dislodging my attention from the usual gallop of thought in the head, and letting it touch the peace in the cloud floating outside the window. Awareness likes to touch this peace. Now I am letting awareness touch the breath as it moves into the body.  Awareness is breathing peace. As awareness touches the peace without and within, healing and transformation occur spontaneously. Still touching peace, I move forward into this day.

~

Trust is true power

2010-04-05T09:23:00.000-07:00

Here is a passage by an anonymous person interviewed in a book called Everyday Enlightenment, edited by Sally Bongers, p. 78. The words struck me deeply, and they point out that seeing through the thought-created sense of identity is not a loss of anything. The integrity of the personality remains intact, even as unnecessary thought-burdens are gently released.

   There's no need to worry and there's no need to struggle.

   Ask yourself who's doing the pushing? Ask yourself who is the one who wants something to happen? Who is the one who wants something? Just be gentle to her, watch her. Don't be impatient with her. Every now and again ask yourself: "Who is the one who is anxious about this? Who is it? Who's there?" The question is also not so much: "Who is there?" but "Where? Where?" Try to locate that person. "Where is that person?"

   It's beyond your power to move you forward. So trust in the process. Trust in the fact that everything's just fine. Don't give yourself a hard time. You're where you should be and if a feeling is still there, it's there for a reason. There's value in it as well.

      From somewhere there is the thought that you are going to lose your very self in the process of surrendering. There's value in the integrity of the personality, in caring about your personality, in the integrity and conception of yourself. There is value in that. It's not as if it's all something to be got rid of. That's the thing, you know? You're not required to give up anything, but you think you are.


   Seeing through the imagined self-image, seeing that any image is only an image, and that it is not who I am, does not mean becoming a spineless wimp. Ironically, realizing my powerlessness to control the universe is empowering. I stop fighting a losing battle and recognize a seamless unity with the power that is flowing through the universe. This is genuine empowerment. Have you ever felt this? The power of trusting in the unfoldment of life as it is occurring in this moment puts me at ease, and from this ease more is accomplished than ever was when I was trying so hard to accomplish something. Let this be a day to relax and to enjoy the flow of power in this very moment.

~

Life in a psychiatric institution

2010-04-03T09:43:00.000-07:00

   I was walking across the courtyard between buildings at the psychiatric institution where I work yesterday. Several people who have lived here for many years sat on benches under shady trees and we waved hello to each other, enjoying the beautiful day. Over the years I've been honored to have many people tell me about their lives. Like most people, I have felt that our life stories largely define us. The story of my life was my life. I have felt that the stories people told me about their lives- the childhood experiences, relationships, successes and failures, health and illness, good fortune and bad fortune- told me who they were: I was riveted by the story. I wanted to do whatever I could to help people have a happy life story. I wanted to do whatever I could to also have a happy life story myself.

   But more and more I realize that life is not a story. Life is not primarily a string of experiences in time. I realize my attention has been captivated by and confined to concerns about the life situation, while life itself has been largely taken for granted, overlooked, and ignored.

   Eckhart Tolle makes the distinction between life and the life situation. We all know what life situations are, we all know what the story of our lives is: but what is life? Not even the greatest scientist, theologian, or philosopher can say what life is. We are alive, we are life, but no one can really pin down exactly what this life that we are is.

   After years of paying a lot of attention to my life situation, I am now beginning to pay more attention to this life that I am. This life that has nothing to do with any story or situation; this present life can be felt, sensed, known directly, inhabited, noticed, attended to, realized. Thinking about the life that I am at this very instant takes me away from it. Every day I am enjoying being more deeply and consciously this life that I am, without thinking about it.

Riveted to the story of life situations, I was blinded to the presence of life itself.

   As I put less weight on the particulars of my own story, I am noticing a shift in my experience of the people at the psychiatric institution. Whether the story of someone's life seemed overall "good" or "bad" had seemed terribly important. The goal in life was to have a happy story. If the story was unhappy, that meant it needed to be fixed. As for those at the opposite end of the story spectrum, those celebrities who seemed to have fairy tale success stories- beauty, wealth, talent, accomplishment, recognition- I was, along with so many others, many pressed up against the "window-pane" looking in longingly through the magazine and television pictures, feeling that my hum-drum life was pale by comparison.

   So it comes as a shock every day that this life that I feel myself to be in this instant is an endless wonder of vibrancy. The story, the situation, is no longer the be-all and end-all of my life. The particulars of the life situation are no longer my primary focus when I talk with people at the hospital. I sense the life of the person I am talking with, I sense who they are apart from their story.

   There is a shift in attention. Attention had once been constantly plotting how to improve the story of my life, how to improve my life situation, and how to improve the life situations of the people I work with. I still want a happy life story and I work to achieve positive situations in my life. I still wish to help people at the hospital to improve their life situations. But attention is drawn more deeply every day into the wordless wonder of being alive, the wonder of life itself independent of the life story. The life force is inherently joyful and it doesn't need to win the lottery to be happy. There is a deeper happiness available in every instant that has nothing to do with the circumstances in one's life.

  When I said hello to the people in the courtyard, the inherent joy of being was present as the life within myself and as the life within the people who live here at the hospital. Our life stories don't separate us from the joy of being and our life stories don't separate us from each other.

~

Achievement

2010-04-01T09:04:00.000-07:00

"A tree gives glory to God by being a tree."

(Thomas Merton)

Sitting outside on a beautiful day there is sunshine, bird song, green earth, and soft breeze. It's a waterfall flowing through the still space of awareness that I am.

I give glory to God by being alive.

Being alive is the gift I both receive and give.

Being alive is the supreme and effortless achievement in this moment, in every moment, and it is an achievement far greater than any measurable achievement, such as money, status, education, etc.

When we realize our true achievement we are freed from the burden of feeling inadequate and chasing lesser achievements. We inhabit our innate and humble dignity as living beings, like the tree.

I wonder how much suffering I have experienced from mental notions about "needing to achieve" something? The obsession with "achievement" is ravaging the earth. Many are enslaved by mental notions of "getting somewhere" that compel a ruthless drive toward busyness. Re-framing the notion of achievement to point toward the stupendous Fact of being alive now, rather than toward some fantasy of future accomplishment, frees the power of attention to unite with the power of present reality. From this unity true achievement emerges.

What we want isn't found in the story.

2010-03-31T16:58:00.000-07:00

Good does not come from the story.

Good doesn't come from good fortune, good doesn't come from things going my way. Good isn't found there no matter how hard we try to find it there.

We all know this on some level. The good that comes from the story is fool's gold. There is transient pleasure and gratification but not the lasting fulfillment that is longed for.
Yet we honor the story and do the best we can on that level, as Eckhart Tolle says. I prefer good fortune over bad fortune as much as anyone, all the while knowing there is no up without a down. Good fortune and bad fortune are inseparable sides of a coin, and the deeper good that we long for is not to be found there.

Good comes from Reality, the current of the ineffable that is always present.

Good is the substance of everything.
Good is the proton and the electron and the space in between. Good is everything that is seen, felt, heard, palpated, thought. Good is that which sees, feels, hears, palpates, thinks.

Good is the air and the lungs and the blood that receives the air and the heart that moves the blood and the cells that are nourished by the blood that carries the air.

Good is death and the dissolution of every appearance. Good is birth and the unfurling of form. Good are all the exchanges between forms. Good is the space that envelops it all with the lightest touch.

Reality is gold.

~

2010-03-31T06:41:00.000-07:00

"Fool's gold exists because there is real gold."

Rumi

"Sitting with uncomfortable feelings..."

2010-03-29T19:10:00.000-07:00

"Yet it is here- at futility's brink- where we can begin to free ourselves. The cycle of craving is interrupted when we learn how to stop. "Sitting with uncomfortable feelings, getting friendly with the hole you really are, you realize that emptiness is not really a problem," says Buddhist teacher David Loy. "It's our ways of trying to escape it that turn it into a problem." When we learn to tolerate this empty feeling within, instead of binge-feeding the hungry ghosts, an important, metanoia-like turnaround occurs (Buddhists call it paravritti), when the "festering hole at our core turns into a life-healing flow springing up spontaneously from we know not where," in Loy's words. "The empty core becomes a place where there is now awareness of something other than, greater than, my usual sense of self- greater than I understand myself to be."

Mark Matousek, When You're Falling, Dive, p. 197

What is denied

2010-03-29T10:44:00.000-07:00

What is denied cannot be integrated.

Denied feelings, thoughts, experiences clog up the energy pipes. What is denied cannot be absorbed, metabolized, transformed.

Fear is the force that pushes things down.

I'm afraid of my anger and I push it down.
I'm afraid of my sadness and I push it down.
I'm afraid of my arrogance and I push it down.
I'm afraid of my insecurity and I push it down.

Fear is a repressive force.

But what is there to fear?
This person I'm trying to protect is not there, this body-mind hurtling like a projectile through time and space from the cradle to the grave is in fact nothing but fleeting images appearing and disappearing on the motionless screen of awareness.

Seeing the insubstantiality of the time-bound self-sense releases long-held fears. The self-image is vulnerable in the extreme, but the core of being that is our reality is rock-solid power.

There is a shift from feeling that my identity is the story-of-me, to feeling that my identity is something real that cannot be described but that is inhabited effortlessly at this very instant and at every instant, whether it is consciously realized or not.

The absence of the me-entity as anything other than images in awareness is not something to be believed or disbelieved.

The absence of the me-entity is discovered by looking a thousand times: the me I think I am is nowhere to be found. While the truth of what I am is fully present. Only direct inquiry reveals this.

What had been denied no longer needs to be denied. It enters fully into conscious awareness and can be felt, accepted, absorbed, metabolized, transformed. Like ice melting into a flash of water, energy flows within.

~

2010-03-29T07:19:00.001-07:00

Sitting quietly
doing nothing,

Spring comes
and the grass grows by itself.

Zen proverb

~

Noticing

2010-03-27T12:38:00.000-07:00

Words topple from the pages of a book
through the pupil
down the neural hatch
of the retina
and through swirling chutes
of the optic cortex
to land with a kerplunk
on a certain piano key
in the heart.

Reading is one of the great delights of my life and here are words that appeared this hour:

One morning in a Dublin
coffee shop my attention was
drawn to a sweet presence,
a radiance of well being

I had the sense that she knew
all of her needs
would always be met

She had strawberry hued hair
and porcelain skin
She was not yet two

The travesty is
that most love and hate
what appears to be
and ignore that which envelops us
in well-being

( from Stuart Schwartz, The Great Undoing, p. 103)

I'm wondering more and more
what is here
that I'm not noticing?

These words go in your eyes as they go out my fingertips
and I'm grateful for all the invisible connections in this world.

~

Damaged and undamaged

2010-03-26T09:47:00.000-07:00

I read a poem by Mary Oliver today that I had never read before. It evoked a sense of the strange harmony between the damaged and undamaged regions within each of us. Here is the poem-

Mysteries, Yes

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds will
never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

(from the book Evidence, 2009)

I have noticed a tendency within myself to hide, minimize, and avoid any sense of hurt or damage. My vanity wants to be flawlessly spiritual and joyful. But lately I"m more interested in honesty and courage and facing with kindness the pain within myself and others. I'm interested in integrating the long rejected feelings, swallowing them in the mouth of nonjudgmental awareness and love.

Mary Oliver notes that both delight and the scars of damage attract a person to the comfort of a poem. On one level, or from one perspective, I have been damaged and I have inflicted damage. On the temporal plane, who has never been damaged or inflicted damage?

It is our universal lot. Yet from another perspective, on another level, every being is wholly inviolate, undamaged, intact. The paradox is that opposite facts are simultaneously true.

Today I'm interested in a new relationship with painful memories when they arise. It is possible to be a space of loving acceptance for what arises. This is something I am learning very, very slowly and gently.

Planted here in the undamaged wholeness of reality, a reconciliation occurs as feelings of shame and damage come out of hiding and are not banned but received. It's time to end the internal holocaust where unflattering feelings were sent to the gas chambers. Let the damaged and undamaged regions within enjoy a mysterious harmony.

(Note: Thank you to Fred Lamotte of yourradiance.blogspot for post 3/25/10 about embracing and honoring wounds and disabilities, which led to these reflections.)

~

Hearth

2010-03-24T13:06:00.000-07:00

Have you ever sat by a gentle fire and enjoyed the warm glow touching your hands and face?

I have many times. After tending to tasks today, I paused to rest in open non-doing. Everytime this is like magic, life whispers a new word through the space that I am in a language that remains forever unspoken. Today as I enter into the sacrament of rest, there is a sense of settling down towards an inward warmth. The life force within is a fire of sorts, and I draw near to this fire, basking in its warmth.

At first there is enjoyment of this subtle thrill of being; it is a sensation that is barely detectable but becomes more pronounced as it is attuned to.

Then a small leap occurs: From enjoying the warm rays of being that emanate from within, there is suddenly a sense of being "a beam unseparated from its Source." I am a ray of the fire of life, and I am that fire. There is no separation.

I sense this is always true for me and for all of us, even when we are looking the other way and forget the life-fire that we are. I'm going to return to working on the next task of this day, revitalized by this warm fire of being that is who we all are in essence. I know I can return at any time to this hearth of feeling the life within.

Oneness with life is not achieved or earned or deciphered...it is enjoyed. It is enjoyed whenever we care to rest in the truth that we are.

(Note: the quote "a beam unseparated from its Source" is from Fred Lamotte, blogspot yourradiance, posted 3/15/10. Thank you.)

~

Mary Oliver: "A bride married to amazement"

2010-03-20T13:04:00.000-07:00

Mary Oliver feels the life that moves through her and she writes a poem. She has voyaged far into the Fact of being alive. She jots down notes with more than scientific rigor. The austere exuberance of the soul takes shape. Inspired, we embark into our own uniqueness. We feel the vessel of being.

Mary Oliver is not trying to manipulate the environment or extract nectar from the now, she is simply voicing the sounds that take passage through her.

What I like about Mary Oliver is she's not trying to enlighten me. She is not patronizing. She does not beam down on me like some paragon of wisdom. She's not trying to change me or save me.

Her words are a fresh shock of life, an ocean wave bowing on the shore.

Truth has no agenda.
It has no agenda because it has no lack.

Mary Oliver feels the truth deep within herself, and she is one with it, and from that oneness words appear. There's nothing extra added, no cartwheels for applause, no hidden plea for approval. No frills, no phoniness, no hurry, and no avoidance. Her poems and prose are solid and trustworthy, and they strike the chord of integrity at the center of each of us.

Because she's not trying to change me, the part of me that is changeless hears her. She's not trying to help me and reading her words I recognize where I am not in need of any help. Intactness lives within me.

There's no extra noise. Mary Oliver says that most people, whether they realize it or not, write because they want to be liked. I can see this in myself, I can be a pick-pocket trying to lift a bit of approval from others. I don't need to condemn this desire for affection. It's part of our humanity and there's nothing wrong with it.

But I'm also interested in tapping into a deeper motivation than the longing to be liked.

Mary Oliver loves her unknown reader. Whoever we are, wherever we are, she loves us quietly, you can feel it behind the words of her poems. The space behind and around the words of her poems communicate too. I'm sometimes startled when reading Mary Oliver by a sudden daring to love myself and others unabashedly.

Mary Oliver has a passion for the real, while remaining keenly aware that the real is not something that can be captured.

Mary Oliver is not trying to tell me the answer, she's not even trying to find the answer. She is enraptured with the question. She lives as the question itself: a bride married to amazement.

Thank you Mary Oliver.

Note: "A bride married to amazement" is from Mary Oliver's poem When Death Comes

Bad day

2010-03-18T11:08:00.000-07:00

Actually, the day is the day, and, like all days, it's a miracle beyond description; however, my mood is moderately miserable. Funny how I tend to blame my mood on the day, when it's not the day's fault.

Moods appear, and it could become a full-time job analyzing them and tracing the intricate strands of causation for every mood that arises. I've certainly spent plenty of time trying to figure out why I get in bad moods occasionally. What thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, hormones, conditioning, circumstances, etc. could be causing the miserable mood?

I begin to realize that excessive analysis of feelings is a tactic to avoid them. And tactics to avoid feelings are a kind of procrastination.

Feelings can't be escaped, only felt. What feels feelings? Awareness. Silent, nonjudgmental, awareness. The silence within me feels my feelings and is not repelled by them in the least. In this silence which could be called love the feelings are embraced. And in the embrace the feelings relax. And in the relaxation the feelings may or may not dissolve. And the energy of flux continues fluxing through the silent space of this moment, as appearances appear and disappear, and moods morph into an endless parade of colors.

I argued with my nine year-old son because he hadn't taken a shower when I wanted him to take a shower. A blister of painful thoughts burst, "Colleen, you should be a better parent. You should be able to have your child take a shower without a lot of drama." I argued with people I love and said things I wish I had not said.

I notice that nearly every speck of my conscious attention collapses down into the tiny space of a few painful thoughts. This shriveling of the vast field of awareness down into such a small space is painful, like trying to compress an ocean into a thimble.

In the midst of my miserable mood, what washes up on the shore? Some words from a kind and wonderful mentor to me, Stephan Bodian, found in his book Wake Up Now. I'd like to share them with you.

"As you relax and let everything be just as it is, the tendency for awareness to fixate on objects naturally relaxes as well, and awareness spontaneously becomes aware of itself. True meditation is a kind of homecoming- you recognize the place immediately, and every cell and fiber of your being lets go and relaxes in relief."

Surprise! There is enough room here for my miserable mood, there is enough room in this world for all the miserable moods that arise in all of us...I am grateful for the room that is available for all that arises. I don't have to be spiritual and perfect. I can be ego-identified and miserable and deluded. Nothing that appears is exiled, and I don't have to pretend to be anything.

"The doors of perception"

2010-03-16T12:49:00.000-07:00

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."
William Blake

Have you ever disappeared effortlessly, with the same kind of effortlessness with which we slip off the cliff-edge of waking consciousness into sleep each night? This miraculous disappearance of ourselves in which everything gleams with infinite newness happens when we're not trying to make it happen.

Tony Parsons says that what we long for above all else and what we fear above all else is the same thing: the disappearance of ourselves. Whether we are conscious of it or not, on some level we long for freedom from the confinement of a narrow and ultimately illusory sense of self, and at the same time we cling ferociously to this sense of self. Now that is the pungent spice of life: our greatest desire and our greatest terror are one and the same! This ambivalence causes inner friction. Seeing that we fear and desire the same thing evokes within me a sense of compassion for our crazy spinning minds on this crazy spinning planet.

When we disappear the doors of perception are cleansed and the awareness "behind the eyes" recognizes its continuity with the infinite being it gazes upon.

Nothing really disappears, there is just a break in the fixation of attention on the self-image. There is just a gap between thoughts.

The moment attention drops the self-image, there is no self-image. That is the disappearance of the illusory sense of self, and that is all there is to freedom.

The doors of perception are cleansed of anyone looking through them. As no one or pure presence or Self looks through the doors of perception there is only infinity seeing infinity. The weightlessness of awareness is inherently blissful and it is our essence.

Seeking completion versus being complete

2010-03-11T10:47:00.000-08:00

Here are some words that gave me pause:

"At the root of a lifetime of seeking was always the assumption that life wasn't complete...And out of this assumption, in a million different ways the individual tried to reach completion, and turned to drink or drugs or meditation..."
Jeff Foster, foreward to Everyday Enlightenment by Sally Bongers

The hamster wheel of futile seeking is highly addictive and I've often felt enslaved to this compulsion to strive toward one mirage of future fulfillment after the next. Secretly I know that the seeking itself is digging the hamster wheel deeper into the mud rut of suffering.

When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging, says Will Rogers. Yet just stopping, just resting, is strangely terrifying. It means I'm lazy or missing the boat or wasting time or sinking into the jaws of stagnation. There is an imagined need to plunge into activity and seek completion through grabbing as much knowledge or satisfaction or recognition or enlightenment as I can before death overtakes me, as it could at any moment.

The mind puts forth many arguments against allowing the nondoing and silence into which it disappears. There is an enormous taboo against "nonproductive" use of time, and this taboo keeps us sprinting after endless wild goose chases. And the mind also thinks, "Even if activity isn't really getting me anywhere, at least it's staving off the dreadful feelings of boredom and uselessness." Meaningless activity is a universal anesthesia for the angst of being alive as a small, separate ego self. It makes the world go round.

There's no recipe or formula for getting off the hamster wheel or for recognizing the presence of wholeness, and that is good. It's not a mechanical process but something unique and spontaneous and creative and it happens by itself when we're not occupied with seeking it or avoiding it.

I had a rough weekend butting heads with my teenage daughter. Now we've worked things out and life goes on, and every day fresh-minted love for her arises in me out of nowhere. There is a strange comfort in not knowing. I can't pretend to know who my daughter is or what life is or what love is. When I thought I knew I was living in a small, cramped room. Not knowing feels so much more honest and unbounded.

Resting doesn't mean literally laying in bed all day. What rests is the anxious voice in the head that says "I have to get somewhere." Resting means moving through activities without attention being completely absorbed by the inner narration of a protagonist-me hacking its way through the neverending obstacle-course of daily life. It means gazing silently into present reality and sensing deeply the awareness in which everything appears.

There is plenty we can do to express the good will that is at our core, but that doing does not spring from a sense of incompletion. It is an outpouring from the completion we all experience on the level of being. There may still be times of feeling like a hamster on a wheel, an ego in samsara, but the dimension of silence is also here, and it is always possible to fall backwards into its arms.

Adventure

2010-03-04T07:55:00.000-08:00

There is the silence between sounds. There is the silence that is the absence of noise.

And then there is another kind of silence.

This is the silence in which both sound and the absence of sound occur.
This is the silence that is the field in which both sound and the absence of sound occur. This silence is deeper than the ordinary silence which is the absence of sound. This silence is the canvas on which both sound and ordinary silence occur. This deeper silence is who I am and it is who you are.

There are two kinds of spaciousness.
There is the spaciousness in a room where clutter or objects have been removed.
There is the spaciousness between stars and galaxies.
There is the spaciousness between electrons and protons and subatomic particles.

And then there is another kind of spaciousness. This is the spaciousness in which everthing arises and subsides. This is an openness that makes both phenomena and space possible. This second kind of spaciousness is what I am and it is what you are.

There are two kinds of light. There is the light of the sun that makes all the colors and shapes of the world visible.

And there is also the light of awareness that perceives the stars at night and the world of sun-illuminated objects by day. Without this perceiving awareness, the light of the stars and sun would be in pitch darkness. I am the light of this perceiving awareness, and so are you.

There are two kinds of peace.
There is the peace that happens when a desire is satisfied.
And there is the larger, underlying peace in which both desire and gratification occur.
This underlying peace is who we are.

The mind is a claw machine that tries to possess thoughts and understanding, yet some things elude possession. Let the claw machine grasp after thoughts, that is its nature, and it is a hardworking and wonderful tool. But it has been a great relief for me to see that the claw machine is not the tool for apprehending truth. Truth is for that aspect of ourselves that is deeper than the mind. There are different words to point to that aspect of ourselves that is deeper than thought: presence, being, awareness, soul, the ineffable. What matters is recognizing our depth without getting hung up on the words used to point to it.

Recognizing this depth in silent ways during the small moments of the day is to me the true adventure of life. Marcel Proust said, "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." May today be a day for new eyes of awareness as I spend time with my kids and my husband, and as I move through all the rich and mundane particulars of this day. I wish you also rich adventures in ordinary living.

A silent crash

2010-03-02T10:25:00.000-08:00

In between tasks on a typical day I stumbled upon some words from e.e. cummings:

"...you've got to come out of the measurable doing universe into the immeasurable house of being... Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else."

I land with a silent crash in the vividness of life now, tingling from head to toe, not knowing a thing, and a fountain of energy in the form of gratitude spouts up out of nowhere.

I have nothing to do today.

2010-02-23T12:53:00.000-08:00

I have nothing to do today.

I have nothing to do everyday.

This is true for all human beings.

I have nothing to do today even when thought says otherwise, even when thought says I have a million things to do today.

Just because I have nothing to do today doesn't mean that nothing will get done. On the contrary, when I feel deep in my bones that I have nothing to do today, nothing to worry about, I tend to have a much more productive day. Productive both on the inner level of accessing a deep well of peace, and productive on the outer level in terms of accomplishing tasks and having positive interactions with others.

I have nothing to do today! Ahhh - what a relief. And yet nothing will be left undone, as the Tao te Ching says.

Having nothing to do makes me unimportant, and what is more delicious than humility? What is more delicious than disappearing in the breeze?

If I did have a lot to do today I would be very important. What more dreadful burden is there than delusions of self-importance?

I relish the freedom and ease of having nothing to do today. I may work hard at my job, due a ton of errands, care for my kids, exercise at the Y; or I may simply relax with a cup of tea and a book of poetry; either way, I have nothing to do today, and the day will, without doubt, get done. So there is nothing to worry about.

Can I live without me?

2010-02-21T13:32:00.000-08:00

Yes! I can live without me, and you can live without you, and every day each of us lives without a me for a few seconds here and there without realizing it. Those times when we forget ourselves.

When attention drops its clutch on the me (which is only an idea in awareness) then activity carries on exactly the same - eating, walking, talking, working, playing, thinking, seeing, etc. Action flows just fine without me. It's erroneous to believe that a me is needed for life to occur or for anything to get done.

Misery and stress are outcroppings of the me-idea. Where is misery without a me?

It's hard to say what I am, but it is possible to discern what I am not. It's possible to see that the me is not who I am, it is just a bunch of mind-stuff. As the things I believed myself to be are peeled away (through seeing they are not who I am) then what's left is who I am. It can't be boxed or put into language very well; who we are will always be as different from words as a finger pointing at the moon is different from the moon.

What's left of me without a me? Awareness. The fullness of being alive in this moment. When the me and true nature are mixed up, there is confusion and suffering. The very structure of language and syntax reflects how deeply this case of mistaken identity is embedded into human consciousness.

Yet it's not hard to be extricated from the entire morass of mind-stuff. It's as simple as being present with this breath, it's as easy as being alive and aware in this moment. With me or without me, life itself is great.

Banquet

2010-02-20T17:31:00.000-08:00

I came across an eye-opening passage from Anthony de Mello's book Awareness (p. 26, excerpt).

"Life is a banquet. And the tragedy is that most people are starving to death. There's a story about some people who were on a raft off the coast of Brazil perishing from thirst. They had no idea that the water they were floating on was fresh water. The river was coming out into the sea with such force that it went out for a couple of miles, so they had fresh water right there where they were. But they had no idea. In the same way, we're surrounded with joy, with happiness, with love. Most people have no idea of this whatsoever."

As I type this, a new Mary Oliver poem that just came out in the spring Parabola issue floats to mind. Let me close by sharing this poem, which my husband Greg also loved. Every time I have read this poem it has had a new layer of meaning to me. It's related to the above passage from de Mello in my mind.

In Your Hands

The dog, the donkey, surely they know
they are alive.
Who would argue otherwise?

But now, after years of consideration,
I am getting beyond that.
What about the sunflowers? What about
the tulips, and the pines?

Listen, all you have to do is start and
there'll be no stopping.
What about mountains? What about water
slipping over the hard-skinned rocks?

And, speaking of stones, what about
the little ones you can
hold in your hands, their heartbeats
so secret, so hidden it may take years

before, finally, you hear them?

Alienation

2010-02-18T08:36:00.000-08:00

I was sitting in the car this morning looking at a tree when all of a sudden, like a sheet of cracked glass, I saw veins of alienation running every which way throughout my life. Alienation from nature, alienation from myself, and from others, and from emotions, alienation from my body, and from the present moment, and from reality. In seeing the alienation there was a peculiar shock of feeling rejoined with that from which I have never been truly separated; namely, myself, and all that is.

As I sat there looking at the tree, I realized that the word "tree" is not a tree, and somehow the mental label "tree" blinds me to a full and real experience of the phenomenon called "tree." What is a tree without the word "tree"? Somehow the word becomes a dead-end, the word "tree" gives me a false sense that I know what this tree-phenomenon is, and my curiosity is cut off. "Tree. Big deal." says the mind.

In my interpretaton of the tree, I lose the tree. The mind creates a barrier between me and the tree where none exists.

Exactly the same process occurs when I label this mysterious energy that I am as "Colleen," as an image and story in the head. Suddenly an artificial barrier is imposed where none exists. But I don't know this. I think the image and mental interpretations and past history and stories are in fact who I am- or at least a huge and important aspect of who I am.

Unwittingly, I have become alienated from myself, from my reality, in the same way that I became alienated from the tree. I don't realize this however. I don't think I'm alienated from myself, to the contrary, I think I am obsessed with myself, drenched in myself, entangled in myself from sun up till sun down every day of my life. I don't know that in fact I am alienated from myself. All I know is a pervasive malaise permeates my days. I'm baffled by it and I seek endless explanations and remedies. Never do I realize the true ailment is a mind-imposed alienation from myself, from my very being, and from others, from nature, and from life.

Now what?

What is it that perceives this alienation? Instead of trying to answer the question with words, which would only lead to an infinite regression of further division and alienation, I simply looked and felt the awareness that perceives this mind-concocted alienation, and as I type I feel the awareness that is now seeing this sentence appear. For practical suggestions for seeing through mind-made reality to true reality, I looked through pages 248 to 256 of Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth. It's possible to have a little fun jumping off the diving board of the known into the unknown. There are some moments when I have absolutely no idea who or what I am, and those moments are exhilirating, those moments I feel more myself than when I have come up with the latest theory for who I am and what life is. I like skinny dipping without any theories at all, skinny dipping in the unspeakable fact of what is. Living without self-definition, it turns out, is the greatest possible adventure.

It's staggering what is seen in looking at a tree without calling it anything, what is seen when looking at oneself or another human being without labels, with a silent mind of full awareness. Last night I came across a passage from Nisargadatta that was like a slap of cold water in the face, and today I am taking it to heart:

"Fight with all the strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and describable. You are not." (I Am That, p. 204)

Blogs are a great antidote to our collective dream of alienation, thanks for joining me here.

Thought is a camera-click away from reality.

2010-02-14T13:54:00.000-08:00

Thought is a camera-click away from reality. The photo pretends to be reality but there is a world of difference between the flat photo and the reality of rolling hills. The personal self is a snap-shot distance away from fundamental reality.

There is something closer than thought, more immediate and intimate. It spills up in the tiny gaps between thought, the reality between the shutter-clicks of the mind.

If we call it something it becomes a thought.

What is closer than thought is elusive in that it cannot be pinned down in words, but it is abundant and accessible as the wind. Call it Life or awareness or don't call it anything at all, and don't think about it, but do pay attention to it. And realize the important distinction between thinking about something and direct looking or awareness.

I've tried to think my way to clarity for years and all it did was muddy the waters. Thinking has been my one paddle through life and it has been running me in circles, getting me nowhere. Not to denigrate the marvelous capacity for thought, but it can become like the field of poppies in the Wizard of Oz, and I am fenced into a very small region of reality when I live primarily in the dream of thought.

It seems that often a point of extremis must be reached before the compulsion to dig with the brain is finally broken.
The shovel snaps.
Dumb awareness, so long ignored by the haughty brain, turns out to be the great, ignored treasure. Awareness may be dumb in the sense of nonverbal, but it is not dumb in the sense of unintelligent. Awareness is intrinsically brimming with pure intelligence.

When it comes to being oneself, there's nothing to mull over. There's nothing to work out mentally. Realization isn't about thinking but about direct looking into the reality of one's being in this very instant.

It's entirely possible to settle back into this awareness from which the mind is witnessed. The conditioning of the mind doesn't have to broken, it merely needs to be recognized as conditioning and nothing more, it is not an entity.

Freedom from the mind is not found in the mind but in awareness. That which witnesses is free from that which is witnessed. Seeing just happens. Awareness happens effortlessly all the time and can be noticed in any moment. The embryo in the womb just grows. Galaxies whirl. It's the One Life that we all are. I am in no way separate from this One Life, no one is separate from it. Who needs success, fame, or a glorious story? All these are nothing compared to the magnificence of simply being alive. There is a great, unrecognized wealth of being that can easily be enjoyed by any human being. Jack is here and it's time for me to help look for our two missing ferrets, Happy Valentine's Day to you.

"When you see the rope, the snake vanishes."

2010-02-09T09:26:00.000-08:00

"When you see the rope, the snake vanishes." Ashtavakra Gita, Chap. 2, verse 7

I've tried running from the snake and I've tried fighting the snake and I've tried pretending the snake wasn't there and I've tried affirming to myself, "It's not a snake, it's just a rope." Running, fighting, denying, and lying do not make the snake vanish. What vanishes the snake?"When you SEE the rope, the snake vanishes." Seeing (inquiry, awareness) is an innate power, it is the Ruby Shoes.

Mistaken identity as an isolated "me" is the snake in the rope of thought. Stories are the snake in the rope of thought. Problems are the snake in the rope of thought. Thought (mind) is a harmless rope, and wonderfully useful; but when it's mistaken for a snake there is a lot of fear and distress. No need to fight the mind or thoughts, only see clearly that they are no more than innocent vibrations in awareness.

"It is a key point to see that all problems are just created in thought and nowhere else. Your living awareness, who you really are, is utterly present and not affected in the least by thoughts. You are utterly free of thought. There is a fundamental difference between direct awareness and thought, which is just words and labels. We take the words and labels to be real. Can you drink the word 'water'?...Try to see the difference between awareness (direct knowing) and the labelling activity of the mind. ... You can know your real nature for certain at any moment because you know you are aware, you know you exist, even without taking a thought about it. Normally, this is overlooked because it is so simple. The mind is apt to minimize this pointing, but it is utterly profound." John Wheeler, Awakening to the Natural State, p. 26-7 (excerpt)

Seeing (silent, nonverbal awareness) is a gentle, natural power that does not require struggle or effort; it's happening all the time by itself, and when it's attended to there is a shift from the trance-of-thought to being simple, spacious, open presence. This space of consciousness-without-thought is a space of great intelligence. This space of consciousness-without-thought is fully present and unmarred even when the mind is seething with a billion thoughts. The shift from thought to awareness is as easy as noticing the Ruby Shoes on your feet.

The Shadow (a.k.a. the First Noble Truth)

2010-02-06T17:30:00.000-08:00

In the grand scheme of things, it's been a very decent day (give it a 6.5 on a scale of 10), plenty of pleasant moments, and yet what interests me now is noticing the "background static of ordinary unhappiness." (Tolle) All the fidgeting, all the restlessness, all the boredom, all the "wanting things to be different" amounts to a kind of unease and rejection of the present moment. There's a friction against the present moment- a clash behind mind and is-ness - which manifests as a vague sense of discomfort or unsatisfactoriness, also known as dukkha, the first noble truth.

It's the first noble truth because it is a revelation to realize the magnitude of subtle unhappiness in even supposedly happy human lives. While the acute unhappiness of major difficulties is recognized, there remains a huge ocean of suffering that is largely invisible, unattended to, discounted, overlooked, glossed over, because it's considered so normal; it's written off as "just the status quo" and therefore unworthy of attention.

It's staggering how much subtle unrest there is in a typical day, in the form of impatience, craving, a nebulous sense of dullness and tedium, or any other of the thousand flavors of ordinary unhappiness. If all this grittiness is overlooked, one could become a spiritual ninny. I've definitely fallen into this error of spiritual bypassing - basting in all the joy of clarity and deceiving myself that dukkha was a thing of the past for me. But that felt off. Yes, it's possible to sense the naturally joyful buoyancy of awareness that is ever-present behind the mind-parade; and that joyful buoyancy is in no way diminished even when the mind-parade is full of dukkha, dukkha, dukkha. It's also possible to sense that the open presence of awareness is actually one's self, whereas the transient surface moods of discontent are only passing clouds. Still, becoming conscious of and honest about dukkha is helpful. What is habitually unconscious can become conscious, what is ignored can be examined. Which may open up noble truths two, three, and four...

"Why do the river's work? The river knows how to flow." Pavel Somov

2010-02-05T10:02:00.000-08:00

Like a rat in a maze I spent years scampering up and down the hallways of the mind until I read Eckhart Tolle and began to glimmer that there is more to reality than the maze, there is more to reality than the mind. Mind is one of those tricky words that means different things to different people. To me mind is thought, perception, images, the stories we tell ourselves, and it is a wondrous instrument; but identity is not equivalent with mind anymore than identity is equivalent with the liver or pinky, eyebrow or spleen. Awareness or being includes the mind, and the liver and pinky and eyebrow and spleen; but they do not include awareness. Awareness is more than mind-stuff, and the mind cannot encapsulate or fully comprehend what awareness is. We are so addicted to and drunk with the mind that we are often completely oblivious to our mind-possessed state.

I was happily surprised yesterday to see that this month Eckhart gives a 90 minute webcast on Emerson! This is hog-heaven for a girl who named her blog Emerson and Tolle. Eckhart reads this sentence from Emerson: "We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity...When we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow passage to its beams." (Self-Reliance) The intelligence, for example, of the human body never ceases to stagger me- and I am very much in the lap of this intelligence! Sometimes I turn away from the chatter in the mind and sink deeply into the intelligence that sweeps ceaselessly through the body. Eckhart calls it inner body awareness- being nonverbally alert and present to the intelligent energy animating every cell of the body. "Man is a stream whose source is hidden." (Eckhart reads this sentence from Emerson's The Oversoul.)
We are a stream whose source is hidden. But we live in the lap of that stream. Feel that! Slip out of the mind-maze into the effortless river of real life. "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." (John Lennon) It's not so hard to shift from the busy plan-making mind to the silent shock of the life that is happening right now. "Lose your mind to find your consciousness." (Pavel Somov) Today I'm feeling the current of the river, sometimes easy, sometimes swift and turbulent, flowing from me to you and from you to me, carrying along the crazy maze of mind, which is part of it all...

Unburdened

2010-01-30T13:08:00.000-08:00

I chanced across these words:

"If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe. What looks like weakness to the ego is in fact the only true strength."
Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

There have been moments where instead of fighting against myself or anything else, there has been an open-sail sense of being united with a vast flow of energy. Moments when I disappeared from my own thoughts and surfaced invisible, unbaffled, silent.

There have been moments when I had no idea who I was and paradoxically felt more clearly myself than ever. The mind relaxes past definitions, expands, and is caught in the tailwind of a life force careening through everything. All the things I thought I needed to be happy, complete, and at peace are leaves scattered in the wind, and nothing remains but happiness, completion, and peace. The mind is unburdened of heavy notions of needing to do something big and flashy, and the sun coming through the window says everything that needs to be said.

"A ward on fire..."

2010-01-26T08:01:00.000-08:00

Today I woke up in a puddle of myself. The strange lust for revenge: what does it satisfy?

At loose ends, unsure what to do with myself, startled by a sudden gap in the schedule. From here it is clear that all the frantic scurrying around was to avoid this very spot.

"Like amnesiacs on a ward on fire
we must find words or burn." Olga Bromoff

How many times have I fallen back into the mind after a few brief instants on the lip of clarity? I pull myself out of the broth of past and future, fear and craving, only to slip back into the soup again.

Attention orbits on the cruel circuit of self-centeredness, trapped in an invisible gravitational pull. Open space is unnoticed.

What's the big deal about the present moment?

2010-01-25T16:23:00.000-08:00

I have been perplexed at the brouhaha about present moment awareness. What's the big deal? Here I am, sitting in a room, there's some furniture, that's the present moment; now give me something interesting to pay attention to, such as thoughts about all the stuff going on in my life. Thoughts about the not-present moments in my life seem much more interesting than this ridiculously ordinary and uninteresting present moment. Why waste time in present moment awareness? It's painfully boring and unproductive to boot.

When attention is dispersed in the fields of thought, present-moment awareness is fuzzy and dim. But when the energy of attention coalesces into the space of the present moment, something happens.

We all know what this is like, those sunset moments of total presence and luminous clarity. The wattage of consciousness is increased when the energy of awareness no longer leaks into the city of a thousand worries. There's a heightened alertness as attention is streamlined into present reality.

Every moment is a sunset moment, whether it's recognized or goes right by.

What is awareness and how is it different than thought? This is a question that draws me in more deeply every day. But it's not a question to ponder so much as something to experience directly. "Right now you exist; you are aware. Without taking a thought, you are absolutely sure of your being... This is not the result of some fantastic ability or spiritual prowess. It is just a matter of simple looking...You cannot deny the fact of your own being. It is palpably obvious, and yet, from the time we were born, no one has pointed this out." John Wheeler, Awakening to the Natural State

The simple obvious fact of being alive turns out to be the meat and potatoes of the present moment. It is quiet and electric and abundant, this neverending now, and it is worthy of attention.

What's under the mask?

2010-01-21T10:04:00.000-08:00

The other day I was looking in the mirror and found myself wondering what if I had glued a mask onto my face and forgotten about it. I'd think the mask in the mirror was my real face. To me it wouldn't be a mask, it would be who I really am. Even though it wasn't me, it would be me. I wondered what if I had glued on not one mask, but ten, or a hundred. If I managed to pry off one mask, I'd think the mask below was me, even though it wasn't.

Actually, this is the story of my life. It reminds me of that weird thing in calculus where you cross the room by half, and then again by half, and every time the distance is halved again and you never reach the other side of the room. I try on different identities and every time I think I've found myself I haven't. Even no-self or Self or big mind or emptiness have a way of solidifying into a new mask, a new concept-in-the-head that I think is finally the real me. But it's just another mask.

Not knowing drove me crazy until I realized that not knowing was the land outside of the head, a land outside of masks, outside of words and definitions. Now I am making peace with not knowing, and it shocks me to discover that not knowing is a realm of greater intelligence than the realm of the known and definable. Awareness is suddenly untrapped from a million thoughts.

Matter and time are masks, and I don't know what's under the mask. In that not knowing I feel at home and I am myself.

"The rapture of being alive" Joseph Campbell

2010-01-19T07:12:00.000-08:00

The squirrel doesn't need a reason to live, it just does. The rose doesn't need a reason to be, it just is. The cloud doesn't need a purpose, though it has one.

Yet people- myself included- despair over not having a reason to live or a purpose in life. Just being- like the squirrel and the rose and the cloud- seems far too unglamorous to sate the human's yearning for meaning and significance.

Light existed for billions of years on this planet before the light sensitive tissue that evolved into eyes developed. Somehow the existence of light drew forth the evolution of life-enhancing organs of vision.

Without the prior existence of sound waves would the ear have developed, appearing as if out of nowhere over a vast period of time?

One wonders what other vibrations exist and what other sense organs or capacities might be teased into existence through the life-promoting laws of evolution. It seems unlikely that the five senses so far developed are the end of the unveiling of reality into the realm of perception. Who knows what vibrations now undetectable by any sensory neuron may someday be received by a new neuron of knowing?

Which brings me back to the strange yearning for meaning and significance stamped upon the human heart. Could this be the inklings of a type of new organ or sensory apparatus, akin to the first membrane of light sensitive tissue which had the glimmer of light perception? There is something precious about the unquenchable longing for meaning: it is an inbuilt compass, and not easy to read or follow. One detour or error in the search for significance is "the absurd overvaluation of fame" (Eckhart Tolle). Making a splash in one way or another (whether winning a Gold Metal or blowing up a federal building) and garnering massive quantities of attention from others does not confer significance to one's existence.

Meaning becomes a vital nutrient without which we languish. We become rudderless and stall in the course of our life without some sense of direction conferred by meaning. I've been there many times, and still find myself at times disoriented and directionless, unable to glimpse that elusive sense of meaning to navigate through the day.

Meanwhile I enjoy the squirrel, the rose, the cloud, and all of nature, and the people I love, and the air moving in and out of my lungs. And I find myself entranced by these words from Joseph Campbell:

"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."

I don't know the answers, but I wonder...and this sense of wonder itself is perhaps a vital sense organ, the sense organ that has come into being in response to the finest of all vibrations: the presence of mystery. A mystery which seems to be the very substance of every atom and the space in between. The sense of wonder is the deepest possible rapture at the sense of being alive.

Awareness and Perception

2010-01-17T11:28:00.000-08:00

What is a perception apart from the awareness of that perception? There is no such thing as a perception without awareness; therefore awareness is a component, a part of what is perceived.

It's not hard to recognize that there is no perception in the absence of awareness. What is sound without an ear? It is at most vibrations evoked in the air, but without a tympanic membrane and auditory cortex, without a perceiving consciousness, how could there be sound?

What would reflected light off an object be if there were no retina and rod and cone cells to transduce that reflected light into a visual image? Without a consciousness capable of vision, all is molecules in darkness.

There is no perception without awareness.
But there is awareness even in the absence of anything perceived.

Awareness and perception are intimately blended together, and it seems easy to be focused on perceptions, thoughts, feelings, etc., while being mostly oblivious to the screen of awareness that is part and parcel of all experience. So for example, I am aware of a thought; but am I aware of the awareness of the thought? I am aware of a sound; but am I aware of the awareness of the sound? I am aware of experience; but am I aware of the awareness of experience? Moreover, am I the thought, or am I the awareness of the thought? Am I the experience, or am I the awareness of the experience?

These questions are not hard to answer directly, because in fact it is not difficult to notice and be aware of the perceiving consciousness itself that knows thoughts and feelings and perceptions. Whether it is in the mental world of words and images, or the physical world of sense perceptions, there is an underlying awareness that can be sensed, an underlying awareness in which the objects of the mental and physical world exist.

I'm not so interested in an intellectual understanding of this awareness (because I think it is outside the domain of the intellect). But I am VERY interested in noticing the existence of this awareness that lights up the mental and physical worlds. And this awareness can be noticed. It can be noticed in any instant. The more it is noticed the more compelling it becomes.

Eckhart Tolle says that awareness of awareness is the secret of balanced living. Without awareness of awareness it is easy to become lost in the whirl of thoughts, feelings, perceptions, experiences. Awareness is the solid river bank and river bed that is present as the river of life flows by. Stepping onto this river bank, being aware of awareness, there is an immediate sense of depth and stillness.

Now it's time to hang out with my kids, who just got home, and to enjoy the balance and blend of awareness and perception as I look into their eyes.

Cooking Noodles

2010-01-12T10:05:00.000-08:00

I was standing at the sink watching the water pour into a pot for boiling noodles. I stood there looking intently for a good sixty seconds or longer as it was a large pot. The pot did not move. The water did move. What moves and what doesn't move?

Something about the stock-still pot and the rushing water from the tap and the two mixed together stayed with me and kept coming back to mind. So it seemed like synchronicity when the next day I chanced on these words: "Aristotle defines space to be an immovable vessel, in which things are contained." Space is the pot and everything else is the water. Why does this matter? Why does seeing this make life feel worth living? What moves and what doesn't move?

Emerson talks about the "meadow of space, strown with these flowers we call suns, and moons, and stars." Maybe there is a field of clarity strewn with moods, and emotions, and the flux of everything. The unmoving canvas beneath the swirls of paint, the unmoving screen beneath the flicker of images, the unmoving stage beneath the dancer's feet, the unmoving silence beneath the waves of noise, and the unmoving now beneath the permutations of time, are the presence of that which neither arises nor passes away, but is more real than bricks.

I'm seasick with motion unbalanced by stillness. Or I'm lost in stillness detached from motion. But this improbable union of that which moves and that which doesn't makes delicious noodles.