Still Clearing the Dead Wood...

I’m still pruning and clearing the deadwood here. :)

And I thought I’d share my observations.

As with stepping back and looking at the tree to see where it needs pruning, it seems I have to keep stepping back to look at myself with the Light of Awareness, to see what needs pruning - or else life will show me through situations and events :) like it just did in the previous 2 posts – here and here - showing me the dead wood of ignorance, and the branches of self-delusion that I have become entangled in recently.  Pruning sometimes requires surgical precision.  And sometimes the dead wood practically falls off by itself once the clear seeing of Awareness occurs. 

Clearing the dead wood, as I’m discovering, is also a process of stepping back to discover the Life that is already Here; that which is living this life called “me”, seeing beyond the dead wood to what thrives within, and what is experiencing this life being lived in every moment – Consciousness ItSelf…   But for some reason I keep clinging to the dead wood, erroneously believing what the mind tells me, with its emotionally habituated responses, in some kind of perpetual relationship…

This pruning and clearing away of the dead wood is an internal process of clearly seeing the beliefs, the mental concepts, emotional reactivity, the conceptual frameworks and structures that I have lived by, even “the spiritual paths” I’ve traveled down, that no longer reflect the Truth, that don’t allow Aliveness to thrive, that no longer allow flow with the movement of Life.  They must be seen through to the spaciousness of Truth ItSelf…

I recently heard a definition of ignorance as the inability to see clearly the Truth of who we really are – our True Nature, our Beingness – the simple Silent Awareness that is not reactive to any life situation but sees and allows *every* situation (and also allows for action when needed).  But somehow I keep forgetting to see life with this Light of Awareness and I get all hung up on the deadwood, living from the place of ignorance, identified *with* the story of the “bad” neighbor, or irritating husband, the failing economy, the unfairness of life, the dysfunctional needy family, or my emotionally fractured self, etc. – all stories that reinforce the inability to see clearly, leaving me veiled to the Truth of my Being.

It’s an ongoing cyclical process, this pruning and clearing.  It always seems to come around as life spirals onward to new awarenesses, new openings of Truth – revealing ItSelf.  It’s a natural process actually.  Who I believe myself to be is pruned away in order for the Truth to be revealed.  There’s no getting comfortable on the “spiritual path.”  It seems “the path” is about staying open and aware, pruning what is no longer needed, what no longer allows the Truth to be seen, and allowing the bare bones Truth that is already there to be intimately known; not arriving at or attaining any special state of “enlightenment” as a one time event that we can claim for ourselves as yet another identity – but being continually opened by Life, to the Heart of Being, and allowing the Truth that is there to unfold in and through us.  In doing so we are pruned – until we see beyond the deadwood of ignorance and self-delusion.

If I ask – Who/What am I really?  What is really here?  Or, what is the Truth in this situation? – in a meditative way - not looking for answers in the mind, but in the Heart of Being - I see that paradoxically I am both the story *and* Aware Consciousness in which this story of “me” plays out.  Not either/or, but one and the same.  In some ways “the stories” we find ourselves in become “the teaching” if we’re paying attention and not being absorbed and defined by our stories – as I was just recently.  Often what we dismiss as story shows us where we most need pruning, where we need to see clearly, in order to thrive in the Truth.  And sometimes the best teaching comes out of our own failings to see clearly – once we see…

And it is then seen that thriving in the Truth of who we are is really a matter of recognizing the living Truth that we are, the Spaciousness in which the story of our life occurs – like the clouds that are suspended in the spaciousness of the sky. In spending time in meditative Silence, in the Spaciousness of Pure Awareness, I recognize that the Truth is so much vaster and clearer than the stories I’ve been telling myself *about* “the situation.”  The Truth of Pure Beingness that we are always sees clearly…  It’s where we thrive…