Window Whispers...

Tonight I feel more like an indigenous native, becoming familiar with my surroundings, sitting in my tree house high in the trees, waiting for a night adventure, rather than the lady of the castle sitting in her turret window, waiting for her lover… “Silence” appears in many disguises…

The night is still and muggy. There is no breeze. There are the usual sounds and noticings.

Mind has figured out what we’re doing here, so it’s anticipating the experience, like a dog looking for mischief, seeing what it can get into. This is not what “I” had in mind, but I’m willing to play along for a while to see if this dog-mind will wear itself out. And like any good spotter dog, there is a new noticing. The back bedroom lights of the house diagonally behind us through the trees are on – blinds closed. I have not noticed this light before. Dog-mind is captured by this. The light goes off. Then it goes on. Then out. Then on. This goes on several times and dog-mind thinks – WHAT are these people doing!?

I coax dog-mind in from its distraction by focusing on the breath and, once again, cup head in hands on the window sill, and try to focus my energies on listening with my whole body. This is more difficult than I expected. Dog-mind is relentless in its need for adventure. I fidget and move and squirm, trying to find just the right position… In frustration I nearly call it quits prematurely…

Settling happens…

Stillness arrives and awareness arises with it…

In the stillness of the night I am aware that inner vastness and outer vastness are the same. That what I am waiting for is already here. I begin to lose the sense of inner and outer, of mind and Stillness, of me and night, of physical me and Spaciousness, of “other.” There’s no sense of boundary. It’s all the same – unbounded and uncontained. My sense of inner spaciousness and outer spaciousness is really one Spaciousness. Only my elbow on the window sill reminds me there’s a physical body sitting at a window (a hole in a wall) in a chair. Only my elbow and my mind remind me of solidity. But – there is no solidity, no inner and outer, only Spaciousness – all encompassing Vastness – unencumbered by definition or experience or feeling or sensation. Just Isness.

Suddenly cool air rolls in through the window and touches me gently on the arm, making me aware of its presence. Another awareness arises: If you sit long enough, with no agenda, or expectations, without giving up, Silence makes ItSelf known. It touches you through the window, through the opening in whatever wall we have constructed, and whispers its message on a gentle breeze in the night.

~*~