Shadowy Caverns

“Window Sitting”/Meditating is not just about floating around in the ethers, as I think I read one blogger refer to it recently – or some version of that. It’s about sitting with whatever shows up at “the window” – the inner window of awareness. It’s about sitting in our shadowy caverns with/as our True Nature – Eternal Beingness. This week I’ve been exploring those shadowy caverns again. It was the impetus for the piece of art above, the piece of prose poetry in the previous post, and, where the word “collapse” showed up.

Some have experienced that when they have had that wonderful moment of “awakening” to the Truth of Who they really are – Eternal Beingness - all their shadowy aspects melt away, dissolve, dissipate, collapse, and they are forever gone. That has not been my experience. I still visit the “shadowy caverns” on a regular basis. And I sit with the shadows at "the window" in the space of Silent Awareness…

One night this week, as I settled in to the deeper place of Silence, I became aware of the pain of a very deep sadness within. The sadness about the way life is, and the way life isn’t. She had been beckoning me all day to enter her cavern, but I had held her off. And here she was – waiting for me again at the window; waiting to be acknowledged, listened to, heard, felt, experienced authentically. So I peered in to her gaping wound. I saw lots of other shadowy figures there too - angst, grief, anger, frustration, resentment, anxiety and worries of daily life. They’re all related, but sadness wanted my attention that night. Sitting at the window I felt her heavy pain, so I began to explore her shadowy haunts in the body; how she moved through this body, the places she liked to hide – my solar plexus and chest - and the pressure she creates in my throat when I try to resist her, to hold back the tears, pretending she’s not there.

As I explored her, I heard the word “collapse” arise. As I heard this word internally I felt a release in the self-body-mind structure. I then consciously repeated the word to myself, and I felt the scaffolding begin to melt – the scaffolding of the sad self – the constriction of the sadness released. Amazed – I felt myself sink. The body-mind sank into the liquid state of Being, if only just briefly. Whoa – really? Amazing! Let’s try this again!

I noticed that every time I said the word “collapse” to myself I felt this sense of relief, and the self-body-mind structure relaxed – collapsed – and sank. I became curious and started playing with the word. Sadness arose and collapsed like the rise and fall of the waves back into the ocean. What was left behind was a sense of liquid relaxation. Sadness has not gone for good, she rises again and again, but this week it’s been an exercise in awareness and collapse. Kind of takes the whammy out of those shadowy figures… No more boogey men lurking in the cavern… Only the realization that when sitting in the space of deep Stillness of Being even those dark caverns are just places for feelings to rise and fall, to come and go.

A sense of deep compassion arose for this sadness. It was seen that the *recognition* of this sadness was actually what allowed the “collapsing” to occur. That is, *feeling* it, awareing it, allows it to collapse. This “collapsing” was also felt as an organic unraveling, or unwinding on a cellular level. And in the “collapse” a sense of openness and fluidity returned. No “floating in the ethers” but a simple sense of flow, of openness and groundedness in Beingness ItSelf.

It was also seen that by sitting with the *awareness* of Eternal Beingness, the scaffolding of self and its shadows collapse. And beneath the scaffolding there is a deeper Cavern of Stillness, the stillness of Eternal Beingness that is Alive with Life and fills every crevice with its Liquid Light.

Really… Imagine That…

~ ♥ ~

Art: Shadow Cavern