Realer than real - Nancy Neithercut

There is a common misconception that enlightenment happens
*to* the person.  And somehow this imaginary character becomes
a no-self.  And obviously anyone who thinks that they are
enlightened also believes that there was a path or method that
they used to get there or to attain that, where there's nothing
to attain and no "person" to get it.

People long to escape their humanness.  As you grow up you
learn morals, you learn what to be like, how to act in society.
These morals generally come from some religion originating
from some God or giant authority keeping society together.
And one of the first ones they try to teach you is how to try to
be selfless.  So they tell you to give some of your candy to
Marianne.  And Marianne is happy to get it and your parents
or caregivers are happy that you've done it and so you feel
good about yourself.  So this seemingly selfless act was very
selfish wasn't it.  Lol

So the goal of many of these religions and societies is to become
a selfless person.  That sounds good to so many because they
can't stand the pain that they feel, the loneliness they feel
inside.  They have been taught that anger and jealousy are bad,
so they are trying to have only nice happy thoughts and nice
happy emotions and act selflessly, but this simply cannot be done.
And it is quite understandable that some people would be 
trying to erase or change themselves, their thought and emotion
in order to feel better.  However, I do think that unless they had
heard of it [as some teach it] they would not be trying to get
rid of the self.

So there are people who claim they have reached this rarefied
atmosphere.  And often they are revered and people imitate their
actions and language they use.  And they give instructions on how
to reach this unreachable place.  And seekers love this stuff because
 it gives them a path and it solidifies the Belief in [a separate] self.

And these "teachers" are revered and given a lot of flattery.  And
the authority hierarchy power driven cult is born.  I knew one
woman who said that there's nothing that you can do or not do 
[to attain enlightenment].  A few years later she was giving
instructions.  Other prominent "teachers" and "teachings" tell
 people to "drop the story" [of me], obviously not realizing that
there is no one who can drop,or not drop anything as we only
exist as a story...

It's all simultaneously dream-like and realer than real...

Nancy Neithercut
Facebook

 With thanks to No Mind's Land

~  

There is no "better" version of the self;
no "enlightened" version of the self.
You don't become your big "S" Self...
We are all "The Mystery" in funky clothes :)

MM

_/\_

~

Photo - Nancy Neithercut
via No Mind's Land

Love those funky clothes!  :)

The Tendency Toward War - Gangaji

When you are called home, when you are somehow struck by
the absolutely mysterious and irrevocable desire to know the
truth of who you are, then you must be willing to put aside
every story of separation.  Every story of separation is a story
of war.

Human beings have been making war in every culture for a
very long time.  Culture is a reflection of the individual mind,
and the individual mind is a reflection of the cultural mind.
Since you are reading this, I assume you are interested in
peace in your own mind.  You are not waiting for "them"
to make peace.  This is good news, because war is fought
to get others to do it our way so that we can be at peace.
When you stop waiting for them, instead shift your attention
to your own mind, then you can recognize the tendency toward
war in your own mind, the tendencies of totalitarianism, hate
revenge, and holding on.  And you can recognize the suffering
that those tendencies continue to deliver.

Somehow, in the face of it all, you find you want peace.
You are sick and tired of the war within your own mind.
You only need to accept the invitation of your own heart,
regardless of outer or inner circumstances, and let
yourself sink into the peace of your innermost Being.

Unless all of us take responsibility for our own inner peace,
the wars will continue.  We cannot wait any longer for
someone else to change.  We cannot wait for someone else
to forgive us so that we can forgive them.  We cannot wait
for someone else to say they are sorry.
Peace cannot be postponed.

Gangaji

From - The Diamond In Your Pocket

via - The Beauty We Love

~

"Separateness is an experience in the field of unity."

Joan Ruvinsky
From - The Recognition of Our Own Heart

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Violence - J. Krishnamurti

We are trying to understand violence as a fact,
not as an idea, as a fact which exists in the human being,
and the human being is myself.  And to go into the
problem I must be completely vulnerable, open, to it.
I must expose myself to myself - not necessarily
expose myself to you because you may not be interested -
but I must be in a state of mind that demands to see this thing
right to the end...

Now it must be obvious to me that I am a violent human being.
I have experienced violence in anger, violence in hatred, creating
enmity, violence in jealousy and so on - I have experienced it, I
have known it, and I say to myself 'I want to understand this whole
 problem, not just one fragment of it expressed in war, but this
aggression in man that also exists in animals, of which I am a part.

Violence is not merely killing another.  It is violence when we use
a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when
we obey because of fear.  So violence isn't merely organized butchery
in the name of God, in the name of society or country.  Violence is
much more subtle, much deeper...

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a
European, or anything else, you are being violent.  Do you see why
it is violent?  Because you are separating yourself from the rest of
mankind.  When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality,
by tradition, it breeds violence.  So a man who is seeking to
understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion,
to any political party or system; he is concerned with the
total understanding of mankind.

The moment you protect a belief, an idea, a dogma, the thing that
you demand or that you hold, that very protection indicates anger.
So can you look at anger without any explanation or justification...
Can you look at anger completely objectively?

To go beyond violence I cannot suppress it, I cannot deny it...
I have to look at it.  I must become intimate with it.  You have
to learn how to look at anger...  You have to learn why you are not
objective, why you condemn or justify.  You have to learn that you
condemn and justify because it is part of the social structure you live
in, your conditioning as a German or an Indian or a Negro
 or an American or whatever you happen to have been born with,
 all the dulling of the mind that this conditioning results in.

To live completely, fully, in the moment is to live with what is,
including the anger...  The face of violence is not only outside
you but inside you...

J. Krishnamurti
excerpt from: Freedom from the Known

via - The Beauty We Love

~

All violence begins with disconnection [a sense of separation].
All outward violence begins as inner loneliness [a sense of not belonging].

[We must] break the code of disconnection...

Glenn Doyle Melton

From the article:
One Teacher's Brilliant Strategy to Stop Future School Shootings

Taking Responsibility - Pema Chodron

All activities should be done with the intention of speaking
so that another person can hear you, rather than using words
that cause the barriers to go up and the ears to close.  Everything
you say can further  polarize the situation and convince you
[and others] of how separate you are.  On the other hand,
everything you say and do and think can support your desire
to communicate from the Heart, to move closer and
step out of this myth of isolation and separateness that
 we're all caught in.

...you don't have to get frozen in [language] of
loser or winner,
good guy or bad guy...

We have two alternatives.  Either we hold onto our fixed versions
of reality, or we begin to challenge them, and start dissolving
the barriers that we erect between ourselves and the world.

Pema Chodron
Buddhist Teacher
From: Comfortable with Uncertainty

photo - two pieces of bread that look like faces
facing each other...

~

How We Get There - Fred LaMotte

We wonder why everyone is so stressed.  But many of us would
not know who we are without conflict...

Democrat against Republican, socialist against capitalist,
woman vs man, black vs white, vegan vs omnivore,
the enlightened vs the ignorant...

Maybe the answer is never one side vs the other.  Maybe we could
rest the [conflicted] mind in the Heart. Maybe we could all go meet
in Rumi's field, under the stars, beyond the ideas of right and wrong.
How can we get there?
Listen to the Silence.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

With great grief for the hatred and violence
in this country...

To feel one's grief is being authentic, allowing
yourself to feel another's grief, the collective grief
of people heartbroken from the trauma of violence. It
softens you, opens the heart and gives you a different lens
with which to see others with a sense of connectedness
and compassion; dissolving the barriers that separate,
allowing a different vision than your own dearly held beliefs
and opinions, whether spiritual or political.  And in that
is a deepening sense of inner peace and equilibrium...

~

2nd photo - the Om (Aum) symbol is a sacred symbol of the
universal name of God (or Ultimate Reality),
Om (Aum) is the ever present "sound"/vibration of
 an already unified Universe, which expresses itself dualistically
in our experience here.
When you are in meditative Silence, listening, you are aware
of it, the Universal Om - the Hum of the Universe.
  It pervades even the chaos,
and every "sound" becomes the sound of OM/Aum singing
the song of the Universe...  Just listen...
One experiences the wholeness of Life,
despite what is happening...
At least that it my experience.

Choice/No Choice - Jeff Foster

It's not that you have no choice.
Rather, the 'chooser' is the fiction.

It's not 'you' who chooses or doesn't choose.
It's life itself.  You are inseparable from life itself.
Undivided from the totality.

A star explodes.  The grass grows.  A mother gives birth.
A war begins, ends, begins.  A relationship breaks down.
People come together, fall apart.  An old wound heals.
Hearts open, close, open.
Like breathing.  Like the ocean tides.

We believe that we have a choice,
or we believe that we don't.

The planets spin.  The rain falls and stops falling.
Did we choose, or were we chosen?

Could it have been any different?
Can the rain fall backwards?
Can we un-say what we have said?
Can we un-read this poem?

Choice, no choice.  Those thoughts fall away too.
Into silence.  Into stillness.
Into the vastness of Being.
Into...

Beyond choice or lack of it, you are.

And you take the next step, or you do not.

Or you take the next step
of not knowing which next step
you will take.

And out of the not knowing,
the path becomes clear
if only
for a moment.

And then the Universe
begins again.

Jeff Foster

~

photo via No Mind's Land

The Wound of Humanity...

I resurrected the "poem" below from my journal notes from 2004, because it is something that keeps arising in our present time again and again.  You can see it on the faces of people who are suffering, physically, mentally, and emotionally - the felt sense of separation from Source - which continues to impact our society and the world...  The words, that I turned into a "poem", came during times of deep meditative Silence, as if from a dear friend who understands so much more than me...  Namaste

The "original wound" of humanity is a
perceived separation from the Essence of Life;
from Source, from Self, God; from our True Nature...

The Cry of Separation is the longing of the wounded heart
for its Origin...

Healing this universal wound is a
healing of the consciousness of separation -
The imagined "split" from the Consciousness of Pure Being
that becomes the shadow-self;
a shadow of the Truth...

This wound of separation is just a consciousness
spawned by the belief in separation.
A belief in separation dominates your existence,
creating a consciousness of
fear and darkness and suffering.

It is only a belief, a consciousness.
It is not real.

It manifests a particular reality of darkness,
a shadow, that you believe to be true.

But the consciousness of darkness, of separation,
is only a thin layer, a thin veil, a covering.
It has no power to sustain itself.
It gives the illusion of power
to seemingly rob you of knowing who You really are;
your inherent Beingness...

Whatever your consciousness/belief is, that is your reality.
You have become caught in the net of separation again, and
again, thinking it is real.
Awaken from this shadow-self.

Recognize and Embrace the Presence of your True Nature,
the Pure untouched Beingness that You are
in the Silence of your True Heart, beyond the wound,
the perpetual Light that cannot be dimmed...

It is the place of un-wounding.
The place of unwinding the wound...
The place of a new reality...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
2004

_/\_

~

Photo - shadow of a bamboo plant
on the wall making the form of a face...

Failures of Kindness - George Saunders

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness...

Those moments when another human being was there, in front
of me, suffering, and I responded...sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope:
Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the
most undeniable feelings of warmth?

Those who were kindest to you, I bet.

Now, the million dollar question: Why aren't we kinder?

Here's what I think:

There's confusion in each of us, a sickness, really:
selfishness.

Each of us is born with a series of built-in confusions...
They are:

1) we're central to the universe (that is our personal story
is the main and most interesting story, the only story, really).

2) we're separate from the universe (there's US and "out there").

3) we're permanent (death is real, o.k., sure - but nor for me).

Now, we don't really believe these things - intellectually we know
better - but we believe them viscerally, and live by them, and
they cause us to prioritize our own needs over the needs of others,
even though what we really want, in our hearts, is to be less selfish,
more aware of what's actually happening in the present moment,
more open, and move loving.

So - second million dollar question: How might we DO this?

...to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness.

One thing in our favor: some of this "becoming kinder" happens
naturally, with age.  It might be a simple matter of attrition:
as we get older, we come to see how useless it is to be selfish -
how illogical, really.  We come to love other people and are
thereby counter-instructed in our own centrality.  We get our
butts kicked by life, and people come to our defense, and help
us, and we learn that we're not separate, and don't want to be.
We see people near and dear to us dropping away, and are
gradually convinced that maybe we too will drop away
(someday, a long time from now.)  Most people, as they are,
become less selfish and more loving.  I think this is true.

And so, a prediction, and my heartfelt wish for you: as you
get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love.
YOU will gradually be replaced by LOVE. 

That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality
 - your soul, if you will - is as bright and shining as any
 that has ever been.  Clear away everything that keeps you
 separate from this secret luminous place.  Believe it exists,
 come to know it better, nurture it, and share its fruits tirelessly.

George Saunders
author/writer

Excerpts from the convocation speech
to the graduating class of 2013
at Syracuse University

~*~

You are Eternal Being
unbounded and undivided.
Be kind to yourself
Open to your Heart...

If you want to help the planet
Live a life of compassion
Live a life of Love...

Papaji
From - The Truth Is

Limitless Awareness - The Tibetan Book of the Dead

You must be ready to accept the possibility that there is a limitless
range of awareness for which we now have no words; that
awareness can expand beyond range of your ego, your self,
your familiar identity, beyond everything you have learned,
beyond your notions of space and time, beyond the differences
which usually separate people from each other and from the
world around them.

Walter Evans-Wentz
The Tibetan Book of the Dead

~

It's not so much that we don't have a self, rather it's that
the self we do have is not a thing.  It is an impermanent,
fluctuating activity, a process not a particle, a verb not a noun.

Shinzen Young

The Science of Enlightenment:
How Meditation Works


via - Love Is A Place

Utterly Absorbed - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

“We have become conditioned to think that God
is something other than ourself -
but there is no separate identity.
We are utterly dissolved in God -
in a state of deepening absorption.

There is nothing but God...
Everything is illumined with Divine Presence...

The Beloved is present,
not as a personal God or Creator,
but as something both
inexpressible and intimate,
and is recognized as something
inseparable from the self.

In moments of absorption
only The Beloved exists.
This primal awareness
of the Heart is the foundation.

Immerse the self in the heart
allowing the energy of love
to slow down the mind
and its thoughts, until
eventually we arrive
at a state of receptivity,
in which we patiently wait
within the heart
for the words
of our
Beloved;
experience
Divine Presence;
and merge deeper into
the Silence that belongs
to Love…”

Words of LLewllyn Vaughan-Lee

Sufi Mystic
From: The Prayer of the Heart

I have taken his words from the book
and put them in prose poetry form.

~

Photo of sky and clouds color inverted

How We See Reality...

I am posting this beautiful piece from the Moon Mountain Sangha Newsletter on how we see reality by Spiritual Director Dorothy Hunt.  It is something I have been contemplating lately…

Moon Mountain Sangha Newsletter 
Volume 71, October 2013

Using the mind to look for reality is delusion.
Not using the mind to look for reality is Awareness.

--Bodhidharma
from The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma, transl. Red Pine

"The mind of separation imagines it sees reality when, in fact, it is only seeing through its own conditioned filters, the “virtual” reality its mental constructs, interpretations and judgments create.  Look at anything in the room you are sitting in right now.  Look at it using your mind.  It will tell you the name, color, shape, whether it is pleasing or not pleasing to your conditioning, whether the moment seems boring or interesting.  The mind will deliver its opinions, and probably quickly move attention on to other thoughts that tell you how you really should clean your desk, or answer another e-mail, or have a cup of coffee.

Now look at the same thing “not” using the mind.  What is the experience?  For one thing, when the mind stops moving, stops telling itself what it sees, stops reacting--even for a moment--we become deeply present.  We see from a different dimension. When we are simply aware, it does not mean we lose our ability to remember names, shapes, and colors.  It means that we are seeing from the dimension of our being that is undivided, that does not place a “self” between the seeing and the seen. We become aware that the name is not the thing, and neither are our beliefs about it. The moment becomes more vivid and “alive,” more mysterious, and our experience more intimate.  Awareness itself is free of self and free of division. It does not “think,” yet is the light that illumines thought.

Look at the reality of “you,” who you take yourself to be.  Using conditioned mind to look, you will find many ideas and images of a self, a self you like or do not like, a self that is always the focus and center of your attention. There are many things about this self and the world it sees that your mind judges, resists, denies or attaches to.  Awareness, our own awake essence, sheds light on conditioned consciousness, sees it for what it is, but it sees without judgment, without separation, and without a need to escape a single moment or a single experience.  The reality it sees is simply an expression of its infinite ways of Being.  There is a seeing that is timeless and indefinable.  And in this clear seeing, there is freedom to respond to any moment from Openness.

Conditioned consciousness is not our enemy.   It just does not happen to define us. Conditioned mind has been programmed to think, feel, and behave in particular ways, some of which have been very useful in surviving and thriving, some of which bring great suffering. Conditioned mind cannot be avoided, as we are born conditioned humans in a conditioned world.  However, conditioned mind cannot free itself from itself.  

At some point, if we are looking for reality, for the freedom of our true nature, the egoic mind that thinks “it” will be the liberator, has to realize the futility of its own struggle.  We have to open to a power, a seeing, an awakeness, a compassion, a love, a grace beyond what the mind can produce or even fathom.  Whether we call this the grace of Truth, Awareness, or the Divine, it seems to appear when we have surrendered our demands on reality, our intellect’s insistence on its views, and have opened to the Unknown. In those moments, we may discover that we are the abiding reality we have sought, and that our mind is simply a phenomenon."

© Dorothy Hunt, 2013

Photo: Raindrops on screen,

 digitally colored

The Fence...

Life, as it always does, afforded an opportunity for me to see things differently last weekend.  Who knew that a Fence would become fodder for awareness, and a blog post. :)

Our neighbor came to the door Friday evening wanting to know if he could take out the split rail fence on the property line between us, saying that the fence was not functional.  The real issue was that it kept him from easily accessing our side of his raised garden beds that abutted the fence, which meant he had to stand in our yard and lean over the fence to get to them. 

The fence belonged to neither of us, but had been put there by the developer many, many years ago.   My husband answered the door. I was preoccupied somewhere else in the house and missed the whole thing.  Anyway, B said – sure!    And then came to tell me what had transpired.

Enter drama…

My ego-mind immediately took over.  What does he mean that a fence is not “functional”, of course it’s functional, it sets boundaries! – I retorted.   It’s symbolic I argued.  It’s the principle of the thing, I snorted, feeling dismissed and disturbed that I had been left out of the decision. (No control issues there! :))  I felt myself go into resist mode.  My husband thought I was crazy and couldn’t believe I was making such a big deal about it.  He said to say no would have created uneccessary tension between the neighbor and us.  Maybe so – but still, I felt it necessary to defend my point. :)  Isn’t that the way the unawakened mind works… :)

It was obvious, even to me, that something in me had been triggered.  I suddenly felt vulnerable.  I watched as it took our neighbor about an hour to lift the fence posts out of the ground with a hydrolic car jack, and dismantle the fence.

For some crazy reason I felt sad, felt a sense of loss of what it symbolized – the letting down of boundaries, and a deeper fear of being more open; something that, from a spiritual perspective, I thought I really wanted anyway.  But now that it was really happening, in a symbolic way, it made me uncomfortable, feeling somehow unprotected and vulnerable.  Interesting how we are wired for safety and protection, and our egos become fearful of emancipation.

As Yoda said in a movie once – “You must unlearn what you have learned.”    

I am aware enough to know that a fence is only a symbol of a boundary.  That in reality there is no separation, no dividing line.  And yet, my mind *likes* the *idea* of separation, of yours and mine, of “other” who needs a reminder to keep from violating “my space.”  How un-enlightened of me. :)  Robert Frost, a New England poet, had a famous line in one of his poems, Mending Wall: “good fences make good neighbors.”  That has always seemed to work for me! :)  But an awakened view of the world requires a letting go of boundaries, of the sense of “other.”  I was being faced with that in real life, not in some idealistic spiritual concept.

Each day it became less and less of an issue as acceptance set in; cautionary acceptance, “what if” acceptance – like: what if his teenage son sees this as an invitation to come into our yard; not like the fence has kept him out before!  Once again, it’s only symbolic.  It doesn’t really keep anybody out.  It just makes *me* feel better that there is an *illusion* of a boundary that one must respect, providing a false sense of security and protection, an *illusion* of safe separateness.

Isn’t this how the world works too.  We create these false boundaries thinking it will keep us safe, like fences between countries.  We create tribes, communities, circles and in-groups.  Even beliefs and belief systems become fences that we create to keep us separate and safe.  But something always manages to get through – whether literally or symbolically.  Something crosses the boundary that we have created, disturbs our comfort zone, and forces us to awaken from our illusions of our separateness; our illusions of control; our illusions of safety.

Yet, there *is* something about a fence that I like. :) 

Mirabai Starr recently wrote about this sense of “other”, of separation, in her blog post “Otherizing.”   Here is an excerpt that struck me.  I highly recommend you read the whole post to get the context.

“The illusion of separation is what causes violence and oppression.  The minute we identify an individual or a group as being Other, we banish ourselves to a spiritual wasteland and justify treating someone else with anything less than loving kindness. [We] draw artificial boundaries to bisect a circle of our inter-connectedness with all beings.  [But] when we sit together and begin to peel back the layers…..it turns out that just about everyone everywhere affirms that Ultimate Reality is a unified field, and that no matter what names we ascribe to it…..it’s name is Love.”

Top Photo is not "the fence" at the property line :)
Unfortunately I didn't have a picture of that one.
It is another split rail fence from another place

in the neighborhood.
Sorry for the poor quality...

2nd photo - neighbor's garden beds
right up against the property line
where the fence used to be...

The Somber Tones Of Winter...

Sometimes my Heart sings the somber tones

that have lain dormant

needing expression…

An Adagio emerges

as if someone has died;

maybe that someone is “me,”

the false me… the mask of “me”

that keeps falling off,

leaving something more real exposed…

The grief begins

to sing, to play her strings,

feeling the loss.

I have heard her tune before.

I allow her to play her strings,

until she is played out,

listening to her deeply…

I know that

even the Somber tones are

an expression of the One.

There is no separateness,

no good or bad tones,

just the authentic expression

of what Lives here…

The Somber tones and shades are

Life ItSelf,

inviting me to look deeper,

to find the richness that lives within them…

Their song has to be sung as well.

Even they are the Heart’s language of Love,

calling me to more authentic Living...

©Mystic Meandering

January 27, 2011

Dancing With Shadow and Light...

I’ve been reading The Practice of Contemplative Photography: Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes.  It has inspired me to be more aware of the world around me, to pay attention to what I am actually seeing, whether through the lens of my own eyes, or through the lens of the camera.  According to the authors, Andy Karr and Michael Wood, contemplative photography is about the immediate direct experience of pure seeing without the overlay of conceptual thinking – without labeling what we are seeing.  They say that “labeling things as beautiful or ugly masks what they really look like.”  According to them, “artistic living” – or living artistically - has more to do with HOW we see than trying to be creative.   It has to do with “resting in an innate intelligence, that some call Awareness, and allowing the basic qualities of form to be recognized by this innate, nonconceptual intelligence…..allowing things to emerge, rather than trying to interpret the nature of the perception…”    Seems this applies to our spiritual practice, and life, as well!  Are we seeing with the HEART of Awareness, or with the conceptual mind that wants to figure things out, to analyze and interpret…  So I am experimenting with “seeing” and how I see what I see – and from where am I really seeing - WHO/WHAT is really seeing…  In most non-dual spiritual practices, this is really what it all comes down to – seeing WHO is really seeing…  Abstract, I know :)

One morning I became aware of the dance of shadow and light that was going on in the den, as the morning sun managed to find its way through the slits in the closed blinds that let the light in anyway.  I snapped the photos below that show this interplay of light and dark – the interplay of life really.  The shadow does not obscure what is really there.  It’s all a matter of how we see it.

I also included some meditative writings under the photos that I wrote several years ago (2004) while meditating that have to do with the dance of shadow and light that we participate in every day in our minds – some know it as the shadow self.

 

It’s all just a dance,
a playful dance of light and dark.
Allow the dance of shadow to play itself out in your life,
and be grateful for the dance.

  

The shadow self is just a consciousness.

It is the consciousness spawned by the *belief* in separation from Infinite Consciousness…

A *belief* in separateness creates a consciousness of darkness and fear…

For the most part humanity functions from this consciousness.

A consciousness of separation dominates the mind – creating suffering.

The fear feeds on fear, creating more darkness.

It manifests a consciousness of darkness
that you *believe* to be real.

But the shadow self is just a mist, an illusion…
It is not “darkness” in the negative sense…
The consciousness of darkness is only a thin layer, a thin veil.
It creates much dysfunction, but really has no power to sustain.
It gives the illusion of power to seemingly rob you of your
True Consciousness…

You have become caught in the net of fear,
*thinking* it is real.

You can emerge through this layer of darkness by becoming aware of the
Consciousness of Infinite Beingness/Awareness.

This creates a new reality,
a new consciousness.
Whatever your consciousness is,

that is your reality.
Shift the *identity* with the consciousness of shadow self
and you create a whole new reality…

The gift of the shadow is the Light of Awareness,
the call to awareness of the Light
that we are...

Perspectives on Pain...

I spent the early part of this week in intense back pain.  Evidently I twisted my back while out pruning, weeding and raking last weekend.  The pain didn’t emerge until Sunday late afternoon, when suddenly the muscle along the spine on my right side went into spasm - and radiated around my ribs.  It was relentless.  I could not find a comfortable position.  I was able to reach around for a little self-massage to get a little relief at first. But I believe in all the twisting and turning of yard work a rib “popped” out of place, which was the main pain culprit..  I discovered that no matter how I tried to maintain perspective, pain changes you and your perspective.  It puts you in a seemingly unenlivened grey place that takes control of your life.  And I once again realized how fragile the body and life are, how quickly my settled, comfortable views about life and “self “ change, and how shadowed my “knowing” becomes when pain comes to call. In pain everything is moment to moment. 

The body does what the body does.  I have had chronic health and body issues since birth, so I understand the very real limitations of being in a physical body that doesn’t “work” the way I’d like it to :)  Fortunately I haven’t been in chronic pain.  But this recent experience with pain made me realize, amongst other things, that pain in the body is not a mental construct. There was no use in playing with the words when going through it, trying to convince myself of the difference between pain and suffering, and that suffering is only of the mind. My experience and awareness was that this body was in serious pain - “struggling” - even though I know that what we really are is beyond that pain.  I found myself automatically and unconsciously resisting it, and therefore in more pain, trying to find ways to alleviate it.  I’m no masochist :) I applied ice, heat, went to the doctor, took Advil and Ativan and tried to remember to breathe into the pain and relax, while at the same time wanting to escape the pain – a natural response.    

I can’t imagine that anyone who is in pain, or seriously ill, does not feel some sort of “suffering” in their body, as conscious and enlightened as they may be.   The body labors to live.   How easy it is when in pain to fall down that slippery slope of fear - suffering in the mind.  In the midst of pain “practices” like following the breath, being with the pain, going into the pain, embracing the pain, or telling myself the famous non-dual cliche that there is no one here that suffers, seemed like band-aids in light of the pain experienced.  In that moment there was nothing beyond that moment of pain.  I now feel greater compassion for those who have chronic physical pain – and how debilitating that is on every level.   I had all I could do to remember to ride the pain with a sense of awareness, and not fall down the mental and emotional sink hole of despair; although I had my moments – sliding back and forth between conscious and unconscious suffering.

I noticed that pain unmasks all the wonderfully comfortable mental ideas and beliefs that suffering is optional. Who ever said that!?  Maybe what is optional is the mental and emotional suffering.  But any explanation feels like a mental construct, a consoling lens through which to see pain from a conceptual point of view.  Sometimes “we” can get lost in lofty “spiritual” constructs.  Our personal and collective constructs of why suffering occurs can actually separate us from the pain that we and others experience by trying to put a rational explanation on “suffering.”  That is not to say that we need to fall down the rabbit hole of drama with our pain, but I see now that we need to call it what it is and acknowledge ours and each other’s suffering.  I am aware that The Buddha said suffering happens because we do not see the true nature of our suffering; the true nature of ourselves.  I understand this in terms of how our ignorance of our True Nature can cause unnecessary suffering.  But physical pain and suffering still happens.  It’s part of the mechanism of the body-mind, of being human, the fragility of the body and human existence – as I see and experience it anyway.  And in the pain anxiety automatically arises in the body, as if in response.  It is so subtle.  It is a body response, and I suspect a neural response to the pain.  And trying to see the experience differently had no affect on it. 

In the pain there was a dream-like sense of separation from awareness of the Truth of Existence – that there is no separation.  Pain became like a shield that separated, seemingly impenetrable.  And in that state of pain it was realized that we are all really living on the threshold of awareness, building constructs like ropes trying to save ourselves from our fragility – from our vulnerability – from pain – from death – from perceived separation that doesn’t exist… 

Humans suffer.  Understanding that who I really am is more than my body-mind does not necessarily help.  Being aware of my True Nature does not seem to help.  Knowing that I am not a separate “self” from Pure Awareness, and that it is That Awareness which is really experiencing this does not help. Understanding that there is a difference between pain and suffering does not help.  “Knowing” the Truth doesn’t relieve us from life happening as it does.  The only thing that relieves suffering in the experience of pain is the compassionate embrace of unconditional love from someone who knows what pain is like; not theories and constructs of why we suffer, or that there is nothing here that suffers, but someone who can help hold the suffering with you, in true compassionate intimacy.

So, in my spare time this week - :) - I have been pondering these perspectives on pain, noticing the effect of pain, waiting for the pain to stop.  And gratefully it did – Thursday.  The veil of pain lifted, opening a new perspective on pain and suffering…

I’m curious…  What is your perspective on pain?