Sunday, November 27, 2011

indulgent contemplation

I enjoyed reading about my name, at the wikipedia page about it.  I particularly liked reading this part:

"W.F. Albright held that it meant "soil", or "earth", and was the name of an earth-goddess."

Being partial to contemplating ideas of and about the 'ground of being', I am amused to think that perhaps in some way, my name has meant just that.

Friday, November 18, 2011

today...

i feel like a space object, endlessly entering the atmosphere of truth, endlessly burning myself away

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

hello moment of now

lose the hope for affirmation of being

no separate self exists to affirm or provide affirmation

meaning, value, or affirmation is not required for life to be





benediction

two rabbits.
full moon dusk.



.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

so many ways to dance around the truth

one day i will die.  it might happen gradually, losing my mind and then the body failing.  it might happen suddenly in a violent car crash.  it might happen peacefully, asleep in my bed.  i may be aware of it's approach or i may never know what hit me.

these are unavoidable facts.

the human body depends on the earth to live.  it requires the air here, the water here, and the food here.  the human body has a brain.  the brain and the body are pretty much inseparable, and despite medical science, chances are good eventually both will perish.

all of the senses will cease their functions.  there will be no more sight, no more sound, no more smell.  the skin will never sense a touch or a breath of wind again.

the mind will cease.  thoughts will never again arise.  consciousness will end.

the cells of the body will remain aware.  as the body decomposes, the cells will break down.

at no point, will any of this cease to be life, working perfectly.

this process will occur in one way or another regardless of any words ever spoken by the mouth of this body.  no thought that could arise here could abort this timeless mission of life to fall apart, to break down, to change, to recycle.

how the imagination copes with this reality is intensely diverse.  despite this creative outpouring of the human mind, nothing changes the inevitable.

for me, finding a way to face the reality of my own death, has been the only effort worth making.  this is how it seems, and yet it's very clear that there is nothing driving that effort besides the awareness of the truth of my own end.

whatever could be identified with, as my self, is doomed and entirely out of any other controlling force.


.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

a note to my self

there's a unique experience of life happening right here
and it's here for you too, isn't it?
in my experience, it's happening there for you, but in yours it's happening here.

why is this worth mentioning?  because there is nothing else.
literally.
nothing else is happening but what's here, right now.

no past, no future, no separate god out in space, no heaven or hell; none of these things are here right now.  a belief of something is not the same as it being real.

this is all there is.

and it's always moving.  it's never the same.  as soon as a word gets out to describe it, it's different.

there's no reference point possible when all there is, is constantly changing.

all reference points are assumptions.  and they hinge on one particular assumption about one particular reference point, that very very few ever question.

it feels like there's a human female body here, but there is no memory of this body being born.  there's no reference point in memory for the beginning of this body, there's only a set of descriptions.

it feels like the body is separate somehow.  a separate name.  a separate set of habits.  a separate set of thoughts.  a separate set of preferences.  all with a unique attachment to this particular body.

but the body is not separate from life.  it IS life.  and the list of things considered to be separate will disappear when the body dies and breaks down into parts that are absorbable by the earth.  right now, the body requires just this composition of oxygen to continue to breathe.  it requires the light of the sun to remain healthy.  it requires food, and food comes from the life around it.  it requires water.

all that is believed to prove that some part of what's happening right now is a separate me, is in fact just life, just changing, just moving, without any need of a reference point, to be just as it is.

so remember.  everything you think of as you, will die.  if you think you'll know, you could be wrong.

there's no reference point from which to measure the movement of life.

.

GATE GATE PARA GATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA!

There are many translations.  A few:

"Going, going, going on beyond, always going on beyond, always becoming Buddha."
http://www.interluderetreat.com/meditate/ppsutra.htm

"go, go, go beyond, go thoroughly beyond, and establish yourself in enlightenment"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_Sutra#Tibetan_exegesis

"Gone, Gone, Gone beyond Gone utterly beyond.  Oh what an Awakening"
http://www.sanghalou.org/heart_suttra.htm

what this famous line means to me, lately:

every phenomenal arising of every moment is always passing.  everything is already gone.  everything is going as soon as it is here.  there's nothing that doesn't return to where it came from.

included in this, is the fiction of the self.  when the self is seen to be non-existent in reality, or outside of reality, there appears to be a de-conditioning, obviously within the arising of phenomenon.  the apparent parts of reality that used to be held as proof of identity are also going, going, going.  liberation seems like a good word for this.

.

Monday, June 13, 2011

in the same way that we notice eating a donut makes us feel shitty afterward, it is possible to notice that some thoughts, if believed, make us feel shitty afterward.

.
true forgiveness can't happen until there is no belief in separation left.

true forgiveness is realizing the impossibility of anything ever being different than it is.

.

Friday, June 10, 2011

there is no deeper connection with life in any form other than the form of THIS present moment, here and now.

there is no more intimate experience than this - what is happening now.
i remember age 14 or so and trying to change 'myself' into how i wanted others to view me, and feeling the frustration and realizing the futility of that effort.  and i remember the raging NO that comes from the deepest place, in response to this wrong-headed effort.

never force a child to consider how others see him.  you know it is impossible to ever know how another thinks about anything.  never ask a child to contemplate what his friends or neighbors will think of his behavior.  nothing can be rated wrong or right in this perfect world because no one is in charge.

this is not the same as learning to not hit others or not interrupt while another is talking.  this is not learning how to function in close proximity to other talking mammals.

this is enforcing the thought pattern which enforces the belief in oneself as somehow separate from all of life and it is true evil to perpetuate.

the habit of passing judgement on life, as it is, is the direct path to hell.
in this life, some of the tools given to assess the status of reality are just plain off.  trusting the flow of events, when you know you don't exist separate from life, is the most reliable tool i know.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

expressions

it's a natural expression of human body/mind to talk about stuff.
it's as natural as birds singing.
i suspect birds don't sit around going 'oh your song is a more true expression of life than that other bird's'.
we can say that we prefer one birdsong over another, but that is a preference strictly relevant to the body/mind conditioning, and apparently unavoidable, as such.

there is no ultimate perfect expression of truth, whether it be made by human noise or bird noise.

there's just THIS.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

the golden rule

do unto others as you would have them do unto you

how can you know how you would like to be treated, if you do not love yourself?
the golden rule, upon examination, appears to first require self love, to be applicable.

if you are living your life always attempting to please other people, how can you know how you want to be treated?  does it mean you want others to put aside their own callings, and honor what they imagine yours to be instead?  yet it appears that your preference is to sacrifice the 'inner yes' for what you imagine someone else's inner yes to be...

is this anything other than a thought-induced loop of pain and suffering?

imagine putting aside this altruistic delusion for a moment and instead of giving attention to the program and conditioning of thought telling you to sacrifice yourself, just feel for the 'yes' of your present moment.

go to the mirror and look at that face no one else will ever see the way you do and tell it you love it without conditions.

listen.  feel where the 'yes' and the 'no' of life is moving.

can you feel this movement for another?  if not, how can you possibly know how they wish to be treated?

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Do you think that having awakened there is still a process of embodiment going on?  For instance, "the breaking open wide of my heart" - that's a process, yes?  How do you view that?  I ask because I think of you as a pathless, direct, "boom" but I also don't think I've got that accurate.  And, it's this unfolding that interests me.

----

I want to give you a very honest clear response to these questions.

The breaking open wide of my heart is the way every moment is, now.

Back in November, my mind gathered itself and leapt into the possibility that 'me' was just a thought and had no real substance in the direct experience of life.  What brought my mind to that place could be called a process, I suppose, but when did that process begin? When my body was born?  When my mother's and father's bodies were born?

I'm not sure what happened between November and March.  I was trying to see what to do with this new realization.  I wrote stuff to you about looking and seeing and whatnot, and I wrote on the fierce freedom blog and generally felt pissed off at the lie of self...  In retrospect I was like an egotistical teenager running about going 'look what i figured out.  i got the answer!'

Come the first of March, it's like the Universe said 'well we will see about that'.

And then my attention was given the koan of death to focus on.  Without the confusion that there was a separate 'me' to whom the sickness of my cat was happening, I had nowhere to stand.  I had nothing to buffer the reality, and no position to argue from.  So the usual "why is this happening to me, what did i do wrong to make my cat sick, can i do something to make the cat well, can i arrange for a miracle from God, etc." just played itself out.  Every day of that entire month I gave the cat medicine and love and attention, knowing the entire time she was going to die at any moment.  I sat with my own programmed thoughts about death and I sat with a little part of the universe that i'd honestly loved more than pretty much anything else for the last 14 years and i watched that spark burn.  It had nothing to do with 'me'.  It had nothing to do with any imagined 'will' the cat might have had, either.  I saw there is no dividing line between life and death, even though humans like to think there is.  I couldn't find the point in time when the cat became 'dying' vs. living, you see.  Then, after the cat died, I got really really sick and I had to do the same thing with my own body that i had done for the cat.  I had to be with it, and wait.  I couldn't read or think or do anything besides sleep.  Obviously i didn't die, but I wanted to, i felt so crappy.  These experiences brought some glimpse into view of how absolutely without bearing this silly notion of self is on life.  And how amazing that life is aware of itself!  What is this thing we call attention?  What moves it?  I have no idea!

So now every moment is like this.  Nothing my attention moves to or with, lasts.  Everyone is dead and therefore infinitely precious in the moment that my attention is one with them.  I am walking dead.  And nothing matters anymore aside from sitting with what is, and loving it as it is, just here and now, without condition.  There's nothing to fix.  There's nowhere to get to.  Every moment is the last moment.  Emptiness and fullness at the same time...

I hope this makes some sense and answers your questions.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

How admirable,
He who thinks not, "Life is fleeting,"
When he sees the lightning!

How very noble!
One who finds no satori
in the lightning-flash

Two translations of apparently the same haiku by Basho.  I find the comparison of thinking "life is fleeting" and "satori" particularly interesting, and as usual, the entire observation of these poems and the related thought and now the words and blog post, are all another arising of this very frequent serendipity/coincidence thing that happens 'to me' lately.

This 'thought of life being fleeting' is my constant koan, these days, and the more i open to it, the more i find only room for conditionless love to prevail in my experience.  everything fades in the brilliance of this permanent transience.  all concerns and expectations lose their potency.

This conditionless love, or unconditional acceptance of what IS, is the Emptiness.  It is the Oneness.  It is the timelessness and it is the Peace that passeth understanding.  It is Enlightenment, Liberation and Sat-Chit-Ananda.  It is Being.  It is Awareness.  It is Attention.  It is that which animates all of existence.  It is not a word.  It is what gives rise to any word description of it.  It is prior and beyond.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

and i say to myself what a wonderful world

back in november i thought i'd figured it all out, having seen there's no me separate from life. i was high on this new insight and determined to find a way to wake the world up to it! i was full of rage at the delusion of separation that causes suffering and frustrated that i couldn't wake everyone up immediately. turned out this was a cute first baby step.

then in march my cat got sick and i nursed her for 30 days and she died. the vet told me she would not recover, but i did not want to choose the time of her death for her so we tried to make her comfortable at home.

i don't know about anyone else, but there's never been anything like caring faithfully and tenderly for someone i love, all the while knowing that they will die.

the thought of 'me' was only in the way of the experience and became silenced in the immensity of what WAS. i could not fight with what was inevitable. i could not bargain or find a story that made me feel better.

after the cat died my body's immune system was trashed from grief and stress. i got sick and was literally on my back in bed for 7 days. i could think about nothing. utter rest.

again, not speaking for anyone else, it is very clear, always here and now, that this is the condition of being at all times. this is the breaking open wide of my heart. there's nothing possible but conditionless love of it all, whatever it is, and loving it into death.

Friday, May 27, 2011

death is a gift.  death is essential.

how else would we awaken to the mystery of our being?

how else would we taste the juice of living?

life = walking dead

here's how it seems from right here.

this flow of being doesn't have a findable, locatable, separate ego-self-me.  there's no entity controlling and blamable for any outcome of events.  there's not even a particular event that can be confirmed as THE point of events.

there is no separate me.  there is only life, as it is.  to say 'only' may be to play down the complete enoughness of life, as it is.  after all, THIS is how it is, and to say it is not enough is also part of what is.

life seeks pleasure.  living beings seek pleasure.  this seems to be the case without exception.
if this is truly the case without exception, what is experienced here, is that giving unconditional love and acceptance to all 'other' manifestations of life... to all living beings...  to this-what-is...  is the absolute best way i know to gain pleasure.  

therefore, to love 'myself', i 'choose' to forsake myself for love of all that is 'other' to 'me'.  truly, this was never a choice, but instead, it is grace to see life this way.

life is intelligent.  a self-loving being is not proof of a separate someone who loves.  this is simply the case for all living beings...  for all of life...

the flicker

i kissed the head of a sick frail cat
i kissed the head of a dead cat that i loved

i kissed the forehead of my sleeping lover
i kissed the head of a baby chick
i kissed the shell of an egg

formed and shattered in time

each born and bloomed
then changed and gone

what is this

which kisses these fragile
empty all too soon
spheres

what is this
which loves?

the kiss
the love
the leaving

everything comes and goes
the source and the destination are the same
drugs and alcohol seem to make the illusion of a controller of experience seem more real

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

the sun doesn't go down... it's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

i can say
be at rest within
there is no way
there has never been a possibility that things could be any other way than they are
just as they are
right now

this seems thoroughly marvelous to me just now.

Friday, May 13, 2011

there is no findable experience of no separation, because there was never separation to begin with.  so really, all experiences are of no separation.

there is no findable experience of union, because nothing was ever apart.  all experiences are experiences of union.

separation is an idea.  a thought.  a notion.  a belief.  a misconception.  a lie.  ego.  self.  me.  you.

even these ideas are not separate from what is.

there is nothing separate from what is.  everything has to be just as it is, for this to be as it is right now.  the proof is that this is what is.  it's obvious. 

nothing can tear that apart.

what is, is constantly changing.  nothing can stop that.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

the end of believing
that the thought of being
an individual me
is proof that there really IS an individual me,
does not leave nothing. 
it leaves everything,
rushing in.
it leaves singularity.
and it leaves innocence. 
unconditional love. 
all that is necessary is seeing
there's no separate you
to hold knowledge.

notes on haunted universe by steven norquist

"its power: the animation of existence"
a person can live only so long in this dream before a nightmare must emerge...
once that nightmare emerges and dominates the field of consciousness the urge to awaken manifests
who am i? why am i here? is there a god?
as waking from a nightmare in sleep is when the dream world vanishes, waking from the nightmare of life is when the dreamer vanishes.
the dream (the world of transient experiences) never ends.  the fabric of reality does not dissolve, but the self vanishes.
the brilliance of the world (transient experience only available now) increases as the individual fades
all that makes you uniquely you fades
true nature of reality = no you
there was never an individual dreamer
the universe is empty of self
void of persons
silence=no self
there is only the spontaneous manifestation of life
yet nothing is random and all that emerges does so precisely and perfectly
this is only known in direct experience.  it is felt.
the hum of the machine, working endlessly, blindly and perfectly.
the substance of this emergence is consciousness
universe = consciousness
the barrier to ultimate truth is a personal desire for meaning or value
all that is (you are) that which moves = mindless + intentionless
lose the hope for affirmation of being
there, is the peace and release of the void
the suffering comes from the belief that there must be meaning or purpose to live.  love, success, hope, recognition.
there is no final feeling of freedom from delusion or freedom from suffering
singularity = black hole, irresistible void, abyss... central to all manifestation... the origin of all things
life does everything in its power to return to death
the instant the human ego tries to assert itself... the void opens... suffering, flames, destruction, annihilation, peace - in that order
you become the void, the emptiness
you are unable to 'buy in' or see meaning in anything
you become a flaming force searing meaning and ego and hope
the art of automation
a shell following its programming
the universe is in charge
this is the way it is
there is no need to change or be something other than what has always been
to see the centrality as void changes nothing
you has always been a mindless, soulless, animatronis character in disneyland with music and dancing and singing and flashing lights and absolutely no one ever in the park to see or experience it
...there has only ever been enlightenment
actionless, motionless, and as destructive as a 2 year old child
you are no longer constrained; you expand outwards and fill all that is

Sunday, May 1, 2011

en
light-ened!

the load of self is lifted the load is lightened the load of self is gone.
the yoke is easy and the burden is light. 

whaddoiknow about enlightenment?

i know i got my answer it was my answer because no one else was asking the question.  i couldn't verbalize the question because it formed from conditioning like a snowball into a giant snow boulder over the years.  i held the question close and it leaked out through all the holes in my facade in the false structure of separation the conditioning created. 

when i say the conditioning i mean the way my mind grew to believe something was wrong, out of place, missing, lost, lacking with my life.  the conditioning of my mind said i had to behave right versus wrong and find salvation for my soul so i looked for the salvation for a long time until someone mentioned i might consider looking for the soul. 

lo and behold all the great sages were right and there is nothing separate.  the wholeness of each moment is never not here.  even in the middle of a great movement of mind to exert the sense of me of self into an experience, there is never not wholeness.  its funny how all the fancy and previously confusing descriptions about this make sense now.  they never lit my way before.  they only made me hungry for the missing piece to be found. 

there is a very subtle click in the mind, when it is seen that there is no missing piece.  there is a moment by moment, now by now, just-being-ness that has always been, but can now be felt directly, since the veil of separation is seen through.  i listen to opinions and i feel less and less of an urge to pick one.  opinions seem silly now.  how could it possibly matter if i say 'this!' or 'that!'?