Bring Your Attention to the Embrace...

First the weather report :) Today has been a beautifully overcast, spritzy, cool kind of day. We are actually getting a Canadian cool front, and weather similar to what the Northwest usually gets, while they are reportedly getting triple digit weather – the kind we usually get in this semi-arid climate in July. I *love* this weather. I thrive in this. We have actually had a whole Summer of the kind of weather that makes all the trees in our backyard look like a tropical rain forest embracing the house.

And on this wet, Fallish, invigorating kind of day I had tea with “Z” – a wonderful friend who helps me to see the Truth beyond my experience. He helps me unwind when I get a little too wound up in the mind, in the thought function of trying to figure it all out, and in my over vigilance *about* the words I’m using, trying not to *sound* dualistc. I sometimes find it hard having tea with “Z” because he tends to deconstruct all the fabrications that I have built around myself to protect myself. He points out to me, in the most non-judgmental ways, where I am still hiding behind the words - defending, explaining, clarifying - in an attempt to be “spiritually correct” so as not to offend, so as to be understood, and where I’m still caring about how I’m being seen. Sometimes in this allowing of myself to be seen in the places where I am still attached there is an incredible feeling of vulnerability, and a wanting to contract, to not see or be seen. But today “Z” invited me to see in a way that helped me let go of all that. (And here I want to explain that “we” really don’t “let go” of anything, it dissolves when it is truly *seen*. So you see the kinds of word games I get into here, wanting to be sure you know that I’m not caught in some dualistic way of thinking and expressing… :)

Anyway, what “Z” offered me in all my wrangling and entanglement in thought and words today was this: Who is having the thought that you have to figure it out, that you have to know, that you have to be vigilant about your words, about life? What part of you says what you know is not enough, that who you are is not enough, that the way you express is not “right”? In the moments of silence that followed, as I “checked in” internally (tea with “Z” is very experiential :), I met the internal monitor – this hyper vigilance about languaging and expression, the “aspect” that tends to want to monitor everything I do and say – and – I met the belief in inadequacy, in “not good enough.” And in that moment of meeting them I saw that all there actually is, is Embrace. There is only a deep, compassionate Embrace for these “aspects” (here I go worrying about the words again :). There is just Embrace embracing, holding this vigilance, this inadequacy, this not good enough *belief.* In the seeing of this all the contractions around the concepts relaxed – let go of me. In that moment of seeing I realized that what I had been struggling with doesn’t matter – the words, the vigilance, the inadequacy - because it’s all just being embraced - all the thinking and feeling and expressing and doing. There’s only Embrace of all that is, as it is. There is only the Divine revealing Itself *in* every expression. It is what I bring my attention to that fuels it into a fire of thought vigilance, a thought frenzy that obscures the *seeing* of the Embrace. I contract into, become fixated on, and identified with those objects of attention, unable to see beyond them; seemingly unable to experience the Embrace of it all.

In this incredible opening of a doorway into seeing clearly there was a sense of translucence, of everything being seen *through,* seen as it is – just thought forms, or objects *in* Embrace, in Consciousness, in Awareness (sorry, the word thing again :) that are utterly translucent. And with this also came the realization that I don’t need to explain or clarify anything. And then “Z’s” absolutely lovely words emerged into clarity. Don’t focus on the words, on the thoughts, on the concepts, just keep bringing your attention to the Embrace that holds it all.

In speechless wonder…

Heart Smiles – MeANderi
www.ASerenitySanctuary.com