The Meaning of it all? - Unmani

Since I was a child I asked myself this question:
"What is the meaning of it all?  Why am I here?
What the hell is going on here?"

I was surrounded by facades and people pretending to know
a lot of apparently very important stuff.  There were so
many rules and so much mental information that must prove
that there is a secret meaning that they all know.  And this
meaning must be very grown-up, important and serious...

That knowing that I knew wasn't intellectual or any kind of
belief.  It wasn't some kind of special experience or state of
mind.  It was beyond all that.  It was, and is, a simple knowing
that whatever is happening.....is part of the movie of life.

Recognizing this and letting go of the usual chase for meaning
can leave you feeling very lost.....empty of anything that means
anything.....

What is left is simply the experience itself.....without needing
a meaning.....  This gives space to really experience Life fully.
Everything is experienced in an open and raw way, without any
overlay of meaning.  None of it needs meaning.  It is enough
as it is.  It is overflowing with Life expression, with Life playing
itself in this way or that.  This is the expression of Love.

Life is Love loving itself in this particular way, now, exactly as
it is in this experience.  This is the true meaning of Life.  The
raw experience without any need of any filter or overlay.
Nothing means anything, and yet, everything means so much
that is beyond all words.

There is no need for any extra meaning or mental labeling
or interpretation to Life because it is enough unto itself.
The only thing the mind can do now is bow down in
absolute reverence to the simplicity of Life as it is.

Our limited minds cannot know the true meaning of Life.....
It is only when you give up trying to know something
that will give you a special 'me' identity, that you see
how simple and obvious the true meaning really is.
Life doesn't care about the meaning you think you know.
It is simply living itself as it is.

Within the movie of a person's life, the only purpose or
meaning is to acknowledge this simplicity and live in
alignment with that.  It is all around you, in you, and
as you.  Just stop for a moment and see the mysterious
love song of Life to ItSelf.

Unmani

excerpt from a larger article
via No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

To Let the Light In - James George

What I'm coming to lately is an end-of-life conviction that
there is more to consciousness than what is produced in my
little head, or yours.  Both of us have the capacity, at times,
mysteriously, to get beyond whatever this small
consciousness is doing and telling us.  When we are able,
when we are sufficiently still and relaxed - letting it happen,
not doing it - we can receive a resonance from a greater
Consciousness.

...am I open to something that could be quite new, that is not
really coming so much from me as from this 'source consciousness'
that many traditions have called "I"?

I'm referring to the consciousness that manages to see what
things are, what I am, and to not get caught in the next reaction
or judgment or association - because all of these are functions;
and Consciousness is not a function.

Interviewer: When I experience an echo or hint of that
Consciousness, there's a distinct experience that something can
move through me.  And I even begin to feel impotent without
that sense of connection to a greater knowing.

JG: I think our entire culture has been rendered impotent by its
disconnection from that Consciousness, from anything that
we could really call sacred.

Without being in love with Consciousness, we can't reach it.
and it can't reach us while we're preoccupied with all that is
going on in our ordinary thought, our ordinary bodily habits,
sensations, movements, and our ordinary emotional reactions.
These are what I am calling functions.

It's as if we have two natures: a functional nature and what
many people have been calling a "spiritual nature" or soul.
But the language is suspect these days because we have been
so careful the last couple of centuries to separate from the
superstitions of the past that we have involuntarily cut
ourselves off from the sacred...

Like you, I am searching for who I am, and by now I know I am
not going to find an answer in my functional machinery, ticking
away automatically, but in my essential mind, just aware attention...

It is so important to understand awareness as a connector to
something greater than me, to my source, really.  My presence
is the doorway to that, even at the moment that I acknowledge that
I don't know who I am and see I my lack of presence.  But that is the
beginning of a real wish for it, a wish to Be...

And when I have that wish, then maybe something can reach me
that is of an absolutely different quality.  I may perceive it as an
axis of Light running down my physical body, which has a
different origin.

We have such resistance to even the theoretical idea that we
could, right now, be breathing an air charged with omnipresence
of Consciousness, the omniscience of Consciousness.  We've all
had, perhaps rarely, a direct experience of a moment when I knew
everything at once and I was aware, not just of what I'm calling
this present moment, but of past, present, future as one eternity.

These are just words at this moment.  But I remember it wasn't
just a word, it was a flash of light, of electricity from the top of
my head to my toes.  And it changed something in my cellular
structure that persists today.  I feel that now.

We really need to see ourselves as we are - not trying to change
anything...  How do I include all of me: mind, body, feeling?  All
the functions have to be integrated.  It's not a search to escape
from this altogether wonderful system of functions...

For a moment, stop thinking, start sensing and feeling, so as to
integrate all the parts.

When the mind becomes aware, there is clarity,  When the body
becomes aware, there is the sensation of life.  And when the
feelings become aware, there is the presence of Love.

So I let go, sense and listen, until something relaxes enough to
let the light in from a crack in my shell...

It's not a mental conception, but a deeper conviction that could
draw everything and everyone together...

James George
Excerpts from: To Let the Light In, A Conversation with
James George
in Parabola Magazine
To read the whole article click here.

James George is a retired Canadian Diplomat who served as
High Commissioner to India, and Ambassador to Nepal and Iran.
He has known many important spiritual teachers of the 20th century.

~

Photo - Light coming through the fingers of my hands
held together.  Photo turned on its side.

Simply Living...

I've been basking in a "new", and not so new, "revelation" that
life is a story being lived by Life ItSelf'; that *I* am being lived:
that we *are* the living story of Life.

Life lives the story of "me" that I've identified with all these years,
and believed, for a while at least, that "I" needed to be
"enlightened" - and have once again returned to the sense that
"I" am "simply living."

In this "revelation" there is an internal "letting go" - or
"giving up" - or some would say "surrender"...
And as a wise friend recently explained:
"In that, an ancient tension and stress is released.  And in the
deepest instance of 'giving up', even the somatic aspect of
our being feels a tremendous relief, and a Serene Emptiness
where that contraction had formerly been felt; as much in
our physical body as in our subtle energetic nature.
Struggle ceases, no longer driven by the engine of
dissatisfaction with 'what is', with 'how we are.'  No longer
driven by the engine of self-judgment and self-qualification,
by the desire to be better or worthy, or finally 'understanding'
or 'apperceiving' by the desire for 'enlightenment.'"

This articulates my current experience perfectly...

~

And I wrote this back in 2011

There is only the immediacy of the current moment -
just living that experience, whatever that experience is,
however it unfolds, without the sense of a separate "self"
striving for something "better", or to *do* anything to
improve it, or become "enlightened."

"We", the "Beingness" that we are, just experiences
whatever is occurring without a framework or reference
point, or concept...
It's just Life being life!

It is Existence experiencing ItSelf as "me", or "you" -
as an occurrence within ItSelf...
Simply Living...

We, as waves on the Ocean of Existence, are continually
occurring - unfolding fluidly, seamlessly,  Yet, a
"construct" of "self" can emerge *if/when* there is a belief
in a "self" that can hold onto the present moment - trying
to grasp what cannot be grasped.  But the current experience
cannot be grasped, for as soon as we try to capture it we
re-enter the struggle of "self"...

The present moment is unending, constantly reverberating
through the *concept* of time, and is what the wrinkle of
time happens *in* -
the Timeless Ocean of Existence.

And so the realization seems to be that we simply recognize
Life living ItSelf  as us - seeing the Luminous in everything -
recognizing that we ARE that
Luminosity of Life...

...simply living.

Namaste

_/\_

photo - from a greeting card

What Is Left To Say - Lisel Mueller

The self steps out of the circle;
it stops wanting to be
the farmer, the wife, and the child.

It stops trying to please
by learning everyone's dialect;
it finds it can live, after all,
in a world of strangers.

It sends itself fewer flowers;
it stops preserving its tears in amber.

How splendidly arrogant it was
when it believed the gold-filled tomb
of language awaited its raids!

Now it frequents the junkyards
knowing all words are secondhand.

It has not chosen its poverty,
this new frugality.
It did not want to fall out of love
with itself.  Young,
it celebrated itself
and richly sang itself,
seeing only itself
in the mirror of the world.

It cannot return.  It assumes
its place in the universe of stars
that do not see it.  Even the dead
no longer need it to be at peace.
Its function is to applaud.

Lisel Mueller

via Poetry Chaikhana

see Ivan's commentary on
Lisel's poem here

~

Photo - Face Reflections Mandala

2013

Dreaming The Fear

Just days after entering “The Cave” and meeting the fear I started having nightmares. Am not surprised actually. When you “decide” – that is, when you have been nailed to the cave wall by your fears you have no other choice than to meet with your demons, because the demons show up. Funny how that happens. Anyway, I thought I’d share this dream, not so much for its possible interpretations, but for the metaphor and Dharma it provided with regard to the fear that is moving through here…

In the dream I am laying in bed, just as I usually am while sleeping. A voice in the dream said: “Maybe you need to take care of that before B gets home.” There was a sense that “the voice” motioned to the window. So in my dream I looked at the window across from me, and it appeared as if there was someone behind the curtain panel on the left, as there was a protrusion of the curtain in the shape of a body and head. I kept looking, trying to see more clearly. As I attempted to look more intently at what this was, an eye appeared in front of the curtain panel to the right, with the faintest outline of a face – the emphasis being the eye; a rather large eye – just staring back at me. In the dream it freaked me out, triggering the nightmare. And I evidently did my usual warbling routine that I do when having nightmares, waking my husband up. I then heard B saying in my ear: “It’s okay – you’re dreaming – it’s just a dream – it’ll be okay.” That woke me up from the dream just enough to allow me to realize I was dreaming, and that there was no boogyman behind the curtain… Whew!

What came to me in the moments after, when I was trying to fall back to sleep, was – “Fear is a dream.” It was as if a switch went off in my head – bing.

This led to the insight that “fearing” during waking hours is also dream. It’s a dream of fear in Consciousness/Awareness. The *mind* of this mechanism called ‘me’ evidently gets freaked out by life’s make-believe boogymen behind curtains. Fear apparently happens when we focus on the construct of the ‘me’ and not the greater context of Self that is really living here.

I also noted that in some ways Fear has become a mask, a persona with which I have met the world. And that construct is collapsing evidently - hopefully. Five days before I had the nightmare I passed a kidney stone – the release of frozen fear. Fear is being released from this body-mind in many ways, and it appears that the “me” structure that has carried this fear all these years may be collapsing with it, as there is a growing recognition of its emptiness – revealing that this mask of fear, this fearful “me” is really a dream veil – hiding the real Self…

In the dream I *believed* I saw “the boogyman” hiding behind the curtain. I *believed* I saw an eye staring back at me. In the dream they were real to me, causing fear. But they were just dream figures rising from the mind, or psyche. And the only thing that *broke* the belief was being told that it was only a dream and waking up to the fact that it was only a dream. Hearing the words, “it’s just a dream,” spoken in my ear - the dream and the belief in its realness dissolved….

Somehow this should translate into waking life as well, don’t you think! There should be this amazing “enlightenment” that life is just a dream – a construct of the mind – with resulting joy and bliss at this realization. As of yet, this hasn’t fully happened. This sense of me evidently still believes the dream figures that appear from behind life’s curtains like a habituated dream machine. But I seem to know on some level that these fears are only dream ghosts from past beliefs, from repetitive, reactive responses to life’s events. The awareness is there – that the fear I experience is just that, an experience, created by how I *see* or what I *believe* about what I see. In this sense I seem to be slowly awakening from the dream machine.

~*~

“You dream your experiences.
You dream that you are (afraid, fearful, anxious)
Look at experiences as insubstantially transient
and related to mind projections.

When we think of experiences as only a dream,
it is less real to us.
It loses its power over us -
the power we gave it -
so it can no longer disturb us…”

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
The Tibetan Yoga of Dreams and Sleep
Quote taken from ZenDotStudio blog

~

So where is the experience actually experienced?
In Awareness…
There’s only Awareness
experiencing Itself as energy.
This sense of ‘me’ floats within Awareness.
It’s all Awareness – dreaming…

Author unknown…

~~~~~~~

Photo – the face of my drum

Serenity's Sanctuary - Allowing

All old paradigms, perceptions, perspectives and judgments

don’t matter anymore.

It is time to see things new – through Innocence and Love –

despite the pains and frustrations, wounds and traumas that are

emerging through the physical body and the collective body.

Embrace it all in Innocence.

This is the lesson:

To see Love in everything.

It is the Divine Truth of all things.

~

Compassion is the embrace of what is;

seeing what is, clearly and cleanly, without a need to fix.

Just embrace. Just hold.

Just suspend in what is.

See what is and embrace it without changing it.

That is compassion.

~

Accept the “wounds” as arising in the field of Being,

as part of your fabric, your dance of Life.

Just move with it.

Don’t try to figure it out, or analyze it.

Just let it all be what it is.

~

All that is required is allowing.

Allow Being to Be.

Just allow whatever moves to move, to be.

It’s just Isness Be-ing.

Let the “me” function rest.

What happens when you let the “me” function rest

and just allow?

~

Being breaks through the confusion, the illusion, the mind.

Being breaks through for union with Itself…

Being wants to break through, to come Alive,

to Express.

Sweet Serenity...

~

From: Postcards from the Heart

compilations of insights from the Heart of Being

Photo by Bill Kennedy