The Pathless Path Unfolds Endlessly...

I know I posted a version of this earlier this year, but it was timely for me to post it again - with a few changes - to remind myself - as I find myself at another turning of the page to new awareness..  The original post was written in 2011... "The path" continues to unfold...  Somehow I just couldn't get this into a poem :)

As I move though my elder years the more I just want to rest in the Ineffable Space of Being, leaving the many trodden "spiritual paths" that I've been on all my life behind - actually - I already have.  I've been on a pathless path for many years now.

As a child I had an innocent longing to "know God" - directly; a child's understanding of a religious "God" figure - and pursued that longing through many religions and "spiritual paths" over many years.  The path evolved into the search for "Awakening" and "Enlightenment."  They are all the same "path" really, Longing for what is Ineffable in different disguises.  After all these many paths, I recently stopped pursuing; not because I had finally "found" anything - but because I realized The Ineffable is not a "thing" to be "found."  It only and always just IS - Everywhere - simultaneously.  One only needs to turn within and intuitively listen to and experience the movement of The Ineffable within - the inherent Inner Being - that pure space of Love that knows no limit or condition...

Being on a "spiritual path" implies that one is going somewhere, seeking some *thing* at the end of the journey - like retirement after a life of working, or the magical pot of gold at the end of the mythical rainbow, or even the mystical "Holy Grail."  Or maybe one is even seeking an end to something, like suffering, pain, spiritual ignorance, their humanness, or the end of seeking itself.  But what if there was no need for seeking the illusive big "Some-thing" that spiritual seekers seek?  I know, I have been down the "seeking road" - many times.

"Spirituality" and the pursuit of "Enlightenment"/"Awakening" has lost its luster, its pull, its certainty and security - much like the other paths I have taken throughout life.  They are just constructs.  And I found they did not take me where my Heart longed to go...  And - I finally noticed that the energy of "pursuit" has a quality of *trying* - trying to get some *thing*, or somewhere - to arrive; striving and struggling to find; grasping after an illusive thing that I called "Enlightenment", "Awakening", (or God).  Pursuing became a burden of *trying* to find - like a game of hide and seek.

Dropping the *pursuit* of all *ideas* of "spirituality" allows me to just rest. It relieved the burden of feeling *responsible* for finding some *thing* - forever seeking; as if it were up to me.  Instead, remaining open to the Ineffable in the every-day-ness of life allows *The Mystery* to reveal ItSelf - like a treasure that has always been there, but suddenly reveals its brilliance when we aren't *trying* to *see* it.  But, I often get caught in the pursuit again, in very subtle ways.  Wanting to really Know with certainty what cannot be known with certainty - because it is a mystery.

Years of seeking and pursuing brought me to the realization that as we "evolve" the "path" dissolves.  What we *think* we "know about The Ineffable, God, Life, "spirituality", changes, and we find ourselves in a place of not needing to seek, not needing to "know" anything about The Ineffable, but only wanting to Rest in the Ineffable; to experience that which can't truly be "known" with the mind - but through a more intimate, intuitive "knowing" with the whole of our being.  Discovering (or rediscovering) the Ineffable within ourselves, through an awareness of and deep intimacy with The Mystery, through continually coming back to the timeless space of Silent Awareness of what is always within - the space of The Ineffable Mystery of Being - and resting there...

In Solitude - listening within, in times of Meditative Silence - listening within the space of Pure Awareness, and even listening to our deepest wounds, surrenders us and opens the door to experiencing The Mystery, of which there is no end...  It is not a "place."  The "spiritual path" doesn't go anywhere.  It doesn't end, but endlessly unfolds, and deepens, and therefore continues as an inner pathless path of openness, rest and direct experience; experiencing the *feeling* of the Ineffable, the felt sense of the underlying Mystery of Existence - the Breath within the breath - the underlying Rhythm of Life - however that manifests for each of us - until we are "reabsorbed"/dissolved into the timeless, formless Mystery again, from which we came, at the death of our form...

"...all the activity (seeking) eventually leads us to a giving up.
And in this surrender what is revealed is seen to be what has always been here
- before the searching began...
The task turns out to be ceding to stillness...
Falling back and resting.
Amidst life itself we find our self sinking back into what is underneath the surface,
recognizing our true fundamental nature..."

Joan Ruvinsky
Pathless Yoga

Joan was reabsorbed into the
Ineffable Mystery
March 21, 2016

~*~

Instead of building a road to somewhere...
the life of spirit requires us to open doors
that wait before us and within us;
opening doors into the life we already have -
inhabiting the life we are given -
facing the very pulse of life that waits like a
kind mother at the edge of our exhaustion.

Mark Nepo