All We Are, we are...

All this week the phrases: "All We Are, we are" and “just be as you are,” have been running through my head. The first phrase is the chorus line of a song by the same name that caught my attention a year ago while at the grocery store. The second is the title of one of Ramana Maharshi’s books (Be As You Are). And after my "Life is Everything" moment in the previous post, I once again became aware that ALL we are, we are. All of who we are is Consciousness expressing ItSelf here. We are the Self – expressed. However you label that: - Beingness, Life, God-Consciousness, the Vastness, Awareness, the Space of Emptiness/Stillness - is living ItSelf *as* us in every moment. You probably heard this theme in my last post. It’s a reoccurring theme that keeps driving itself home here. So I write about it. Interesting phrase – “driving ItSelf home.” :)

We can’t be anything other than what/who we are. We are who we are… All of it – not just the parts we like, but even our hidden parts, the “darker” parts; the depression, the anger, the anxiety, the restlessness, the doubts, the uncertainties, the insecurities, the resistances, and the seeker in us… All of it is the Face of the Self – Being – expressing ItSelf as us – authentically.....Life as it is – me exactly as I am. There is nothing that needs to be changed! Nothing wrong with this expression called “me.” There is nothing that needs to be done away with, practiced into perfection, improved on, polished to make it look shiny and “enlightened.” The “awakening” is the *seeing* that we are all an expression and the experience of Beingness.

The waves of the Ocean rising and falling back into ItSelf are still the Ocean – in movement with ItSelf. We are the ripples on the pond - all ripples being the movement of the pond. Not separate. Not separating out the good and bad waves, as I tend to do – still – *believing* that “enlightenment”/”awakening”/perfection/True Nature is something to attain or achieve somewhere down the road, something to grow into – that IT somehow should *look* different than the way it looks now. In believing this way I “complexify” ("I" loves to make up words:) what is really very simple - the simplicity of simply becoming *aware* of the space of Awareness – aka: True Nature/The Nature of Reality/Buddha Nature/Christ Consciousness - that expresses ItSelf as this “me.” THAT is who “we” are. THAT is who lives this life.

You’ll have to pardon my enthusiasm as I rediscover this for myself. :)

Everything is THAT. I know this, and I forget this. I become aware and then unaware… And so the still small Voice continues to use the ordinary to softly whisper ITs music through my head:

All We Are, we are...

Just BE as you are…

~*~

"...the heart of all practices is simply sustaining the
luminous nature of present awareness...."

Dzogchen Master

Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche
The Great Perfection

~*~

Photo - "The Face of Self"

Shadow of Bamboo leaves
with rainbow reflected on a wall...