murmurings from a luminous lifestream
little did I know
that it would come
to THIS
that THIS
would be the shocking
truth -
the answer I had both
longed for and rejected
that THIS
would be as obliterating
as a terrorist’s bomb;
that the old life
would not survive
that THIS
would be the revelation
in naked, unskinned knowing
of the miracle
of every moment’s
breath:
only THIS
breath-breathing ‘I’
You are already awake. And by you I don’t mean you as the imaginary separate individual. I mean you as everything–you as this awake space that’s here right now, that is everything and no-thing. I mean the seeing, breathing, awaring being that is already awake, already complete–always complete, always awake. And everything is it, everything, everything! The sunlight, the birds, the leaves, the traffic, the thoughts, the mental movies, the headaches, the episodes of acid indigestion. Everything is this one undivided, awake, alive–what? I could put some word on it–beingness, emptiness, presence, God, the Self, oneness, boundlessness. Those are just words and each of those words is it. Every word is it. Everything is it. And there’s no possibility of being separate from it or losing it or not having it yet, or not quite getting it, because there’s no one apart from it to get it or to lose it or to find it or to have it. And the thought, “I’m not quite there yet,” is only a thought. And that thought is it too, playfully expressing itself as that funny little thought and the melodrama that thought creates, because apparently whatever this is, this awake emptiness or whatever you want to call it, apparently it enjoys melodramas. It loves playing.
~ Joan Tollifson
source – Joan’s website: http://www.joantollifson.com/writing5.html
Don Juan: One day I understood that my personal history was no longer needed. So I dropped it.
Radical Discontinuity of Personal History.
Jettisoned.
Gone. Gone!
Please ponder this.
Extinction of story-self: trashing of memory files and folders; defrag of system; reformat.
No going back to the old grazing grounds. No replay of the old impulses. No safety-net of sangha, family, friends, colleagues. No suitcases, backpacks, backups.
Who am I without the suitcases crammed with crumpled versions of ‘me’?
I am lightened, that’s for sure; they weighed a ton.
I am lightened?
I am, goodness me, Light itself!
Light of being, knowing, feeling, flowing, unfolding.
Light unborn, unlit, and never not here, now, in this very THIS.
Downunder with Unmani
Now this is great good news for Antipodeans addicted to nondual awareness: one very wideawake woman is currently visiting us in Australia. Unmani is holding meetings in Byron Bay, NSW, and there will be a three-day retreat in December. The theme is “Not-Knowing.” Have a look at Umnani’s website for more info about her approach, her work, and the happenings downunder.
Recognising who You are is the end of overlooking that which has never been anywhere but right here. The end of pretending to know or trying to know. This is absolute Not-Knowing. Forever falling in absolute insecurity. This is what I am. I am what You are. Life itself.
Unmani points to the end of the spiritual search. Actually finding what you have been looking for. Finding that it has never been anywhere but right here. Realising the paradox of Life.
source: Unmani’s website
It’s very easy to feel geographically remote when one lives downunder, especially in regional areas where getting to any major cultural center involves a very long drive. And it’s not often that we receive visits from anyone on the wideawake women list – or the blogamigos list either. Gratitude to Unmani for dropping by with her direct and powerful message.
even I,
whose lifecourse
has been mapped
by a fierce longing for
something more
real
than words and beliefs
even I,
whose brilliant beacon
was oddly both
fore and aft as
this lifeboat surged
through seas of shimmering
experience
even I
am shocked silly
to find that this Light -
this unspeakable unchanging
Light
is here, is here
as ‘I’
and none other than ‘I’
The end of becoming is knowing that you never could, and never have, become anything in the first place other than what you already are. And what you already are has never been subject to becoming ever.
When the Gordian knot of ignorance (taking my self to be the body/mind) slips apart, then I see, Wow! This existence consciousness which I am, never becomes, never changes, is ever the same, and it is the most wonderful constant ‘me’ that I have always loved in every changing moment.
It is what I always wanted to be! And what I always wanted to be, I am! Amazing!
There is nothing that I can do to become my self, because I am already my self, and the recognition of that is called freedom!
~ Durga
Seven months since she spun out of her solar orbit and left my life. Well, appeared to leave my life.
What a cruel lie it is to believe that those we love have gone; what an ignorant denial of Life’s infinity of guises and disguises; what a limiting perspective on the vastness of Life’s Play.
She is missed, yes. But I find that if I simply allow ‘missingness’ to be its unadorned energetic self and ignore the siren-call of memory’s stories, she is there, in that movement of energy. Missingness holds the blessing of mutual gratitude – a two-way appreciation of love known and cherished.
Who would want to miss such a blessing? Who would want to “move on from it”? Who would want to heal it, transform it, transmute or transcend it?
Who would want to deny the gift of grief’s solidarity, the diamond sharp sorrow shared with the mother whose child disappeared a decade ago at the school bus stop, the father whose son has just been shot dead practicing maneuvers for a dubious war in a distant land, the lover whose beloved has passed away before she was ready?
Grief is a great gift. I love the way it keeps my heart soft. I love the way I see it in your eyes, in the eyes of all ‘I’s walking this Earth. It is a hallmark of the unclouded Light of human-being-ness.
Please don’t tell me to get over it.
***
The Well of Grief
Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown by those who wished for something else.
Where Many Rivers Meet
©2007 Many Rivers Press
This post was inspired by an email exchange with Vicki Woodyard shortly after my mother’s death and the beginning of this blog. Thank you dear Vicki.
34
who is sitting?
who is painting?
who is writing?
who is breathing?
the answer will depend on who is asking
self asking will create a response
from its handy archive of memories
I asking (non-personal ‘I’) will simply recognize I
who or what this-here-now is,
is created in the brain of the perceiver
I am not,
but Life lives I
and knows I(t)-self through the Awareness of all ‘I’s
source – the nth notes
L was used to being liked. L was used to being popular, sought-out for social soirees, head-hunted for educational and creative projects. She was used to being firmly connected to family, friends and folk of like mind. It seemed nothing could shake her self-confidence.
Then it all changed.* Life tipped her unceremoniously into another version of itself, a version which was the opposite in both degree and kind. Her task in this version of shadows and invisibility took ten years. She used to call it her Dark Time, her time in the Wasteland, because most of the time she was not even aware that a task existed. But now that the task is done she sees it differently. There is gratitude. This is why.
Life was kind enough to strip her of all her stories, her income, her so-called choices, her mobility, her means of escape, and especially her sources of spiritual entertainment, so that without her habitual props she would fall flat on her face. And by some fluke of fate she stayed there instead of clambering up and fighting on. Call it Grace.
Stayed there. Something in her knew that she was in her place – on her face. That was the place where she was finally incarcerated with the inescapable questions that had been her life-long companions:
“Is it true that there is a joy without cause, a contentment without conditions, a peace that passes all understanding, and a love that has no subject or object?”
And deeper, further – “Who, or what, wants to know?”
~~~~~
It turned out that solving the last question revealed the truth of the others. Coming face to face with the me-mirage, falling through the mirror and down the wormhole, exploding out into a world of Unlit Light, finally faceless, and at home in the placeless.
~~~~~
If you knew how important you were, you would fragment into a billion pieces and just be light.
~ Byron Katie
* How this came to pass is another confession for another day…
Homage to Daido, Roshi
What is real, what is reality, what is truth, what is life, what is death, who are you?
To imitate the teachers doesn’t impart strength.
To understand the teachings doesn’t do a blessed thing for your life.
But to realize reality transforms your way of perceiving yourself and the universe—and it shows, it’s felt, it functions.
So what is the reality itself?
~ John Daido Loori, Roshi
source – Zen Mountain Monastery website
There is a deeper dimension to nature and the insentient than what we see on the surface – a realm that goes beyond morphology, chemistry, biology, ecology or physics. Science most often speaks to what things are. Zen art points to what else things are. It speaks not only to the object and its effect on the audience, but moves beyond to present the object’s underlying reality – its intrinsic nature. And when we personally experience this intrinsic nature, we realize that to know objects only through dissecting, cataloging and understanding them, is to miss their full reality. It is to fall asleep amidst the mystery and to become numb to the wonder of our lives on this great earth.
~ John Daido Loori, Roshi
source – Catalog notes accompanying Daido Roshi’s exhibition Jinzu
photo: Floating Rocks copyright John Daido Loori
For more on Daido Roshi, please visit his pages at THE AWAKENED EYE website: the zen of creativity and creativity will never make sense
