When Things Fall Apart - Pema Khandro Rinpoche

There are times like these in our lives - such as facing death
or even giving birth - when we are no longer able to manage
our outer image, no longer able to suspend ourselves in
pursuit of the ideal self.  It's just how it is....  and in these
times of crisis we just don't have the energy to hold it all
together.  When things fall apart, we can only be as we are.
Pretense and striving fall away, and life becomes starkly
simple.

The value of such moments is this:  we are shown that the
game can be given up and that when it is, the emptiness
that we feared, emptiness of the void, is not what is there.
What is there is the bare fact of being.  Simple presence 
remains - breathing in and out, waking up and going to 
sleep.  The inevitability of the circumstances at hand is
compelling enough that for the moment, our complexity
ceases.  Our compulsive manufacturing of contrived 
existence stops.  Perhaps in that ungrounded space, we
are not even comforting ourselves, not even telling
ourselves everything is okay; we may be too tired to
do even that.

It's just capitulation - we're forced into non-grasping of
inherent reality.  The contrived self has been emptied
out along with contrived existence and the tiring
treadmill of image maintenance that goes along with it.
What remains is a new moment spontaneously meeting us,
again and again.

There is an incredible reality that opens up to us in 
those gaps...

Pema Khandro Rinpoche

excerpts from Breaking Open in the Bardo

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering