Unburdened

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..."

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?

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?

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

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

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

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.