What is your Script? - Adyashanti

 You [have to be willing] to ask "Who am I" or "What am I"

without any script or role, without the story, about who or what
you are, releasing the script of what you think your life is about.
Every sense of identity has its script.

...what am I, and who am I without my story, without my
demands upon the moment, without any hope of this
moment, without my script?

The mind would answer, "I don't know", because the mind
does not know when it is disarmed, it doesn't know who or what
it is without its role or its character to play.

The actor who is acting this all out is named "me."
The actor keeps maintaining itself. It will do whatever it takes
to keep the ball called "me" rolling.

When this disarming happens you are allowing the wordless
experience to present itself.  This is the wordless experience of
being.  You realize it's not a script or role, it carries no agenda,
and has no demand upon the moment.  It's also not  the actor.
What you are is prior to your idea of you.

What you are without your role [identity] is often assumed to
be hidden somewhere.  And so when you let go of your role
[identity], when you look past the character called "me" for the
truth of your being, you may look for the Self, the Truth, the
"enlightened me."  Looking for the "enlightened self" is just
another role, another script.  It's part of the spiritual seekers
script.  If you drop the script - now what are you?

Of course the reason I ask you to inquire into what you are is
because, at this moment, you are living the answer.  Nothing I
would tell you is a substitute for that Aliveness, for that living 
of the answer.  That is why it has been said many times that
only the people who don't know who they are, are "awake."
Everyone else knows who they are - because they are their
script, whatever their script is, [which includes their  "spiritual"
script], or "I'm not awake" script.  Awakeness is to have no
script, to know that ultimately a script is just a script, and a
story just a story.

There is a state of mind in which the mind says, "I have no
idea who I am," because it can't find the right script. 
Awakening is the realization that happens after the mind says,

"I give up.  I just have no idea who I am."  When you start to
understand this, you realize that if you put down your script of
being someone listening, and if you put down your script of
someone saying something, [or being a "spiritual" someone]
and you just drop these roles for a moment, you realize you are
not who you have taken yourself to be; this idea of a "me" that
thinks it's going to get its happiness through changing the script,
its role, its identity - even if its identity is to have no identity
[no-self]....

Adyashanti
From: Emptiness Dancing

~

Play life intuitively
not pre-scripted

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Madman - Kahlil Gibran & Balthazar

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a
house-top cried, "He is a madman."  I looked up to behold
him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time.
For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my
soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my
masks no more.  And as if in a trance I cried,"Blessed,
blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."

Thus I became a madman.

Kahlil Gibran

~

In an insane world you must be mad to be sane.  In an
upside down world true sanity appears as strange and
dangerous.  Things are so backwards that it seems impossible
to be happy, that it seems dangerous to love, that it seems as
madness to be honest and authentic.

In this absurd world the only thing that makes any sense is to
be radically authentic to ones self - even if it is the opposite
of society.

The Madman

The one who unquestioningly follows their heart is a madman.
The one who unfailing listens to the soul and heeds its urgings
is the madman.

The madman is dangerous - not that he will physically hurt you,
but he will shatter your illusions.  He is unpredictable, wild and
untamed.  You will feel uneasy around him because he does not
prop up your house of lies.

She cannot be contained or influenced.  You cannot bribe her
with money or status.  You cannot control her through fear or
desire.

The madman loves his madness, he does not reject it.  For he
knows that his madness is his treasure, is his very life-force
itself.  Only the twinkle in his eye betrays the chaotic
kosmos within.

He is mad precisely because he is not mad.
She is utterly natural, spontaneous, unburdened, innocent.

The mind is insane.  Society is insane.  And the mind is
society's conditioning in you.

"Normal" is to be profoundly inwardly sick.  Beneath nearly
everyone's smiley mask is a mount of pain, fear, sorrow anger,
anxiety, neuroticism, and insanity.  Everyone you see is a
dormant walking volcano that only doesn't erupt because
they have learned to suppress their inner energies.

It is the mind which is truly insane - the mind acting without
the lead of the heart and soul.

The Freedom of Madness

A man needs a healthy dose of madness, else he will never
do anything.....real.  If you want to be truly alive and truly
free you must be mad.

Mad to be oneself,
And mad enough to lose oneself.

Mad enough to risk everything for freedom, for truth,
for the heart, for love.

Mad enough to lose all respectability if it means staying
true to life and oneself.

Learn to love your madness, your primordial chaos.
Dare to be ecstatic, dare to be untamed.

Dare to be the Madman.

Excerpts from "The Madman"
Seth Balthazar

via - No Mind's Land

~

Art - "The Mask"
Mystic Meandering
Craypas oils
2009

An Infinite Number of New Beginnings - Jeff Foster

In your attempt to be an 'adult',
you lose touch with your inner child.
In your rush to b the 'expert',
you disconnect from the amateur you,
the inner lover, innocent and wild.

In your quest for security,
your run from insecurity,
bury your anxiety, crush your doubts,
until one day they explode all over the place,
and make a mess of your nice, 'ordered' life.

Don't confuse the role you play
with who you truly are.
Don't confuse the adaptation with the actor,
the changing weather with the vastness of sky.

Your true identity lies in Presence...
And wonder.
And creativity.
And an infinite number of new beginnings.

Each moment.
Each canvas.
Each Now.

Jeff Foster

~

Jupiter, Venus, Moon - June 2015

"I sense there is this Mystery" - Rilke

No one lives life...

Disguised since childhood
haphazardly assembled
from voice and fears,
and little pleasures,
we come of age
as masks...

~

And though we strain against
the deadening grip of daily necessity,
I sense there is this mystery.

All life is being lived.

Who is living it then?
Is it the things themselves,
or something waiting inside them,
like an unplayed melody in a flute?

Is it the winds blowing over the water?
Is it the branches that signal
to each other?

Is it the flowers
interweaving their fragrances
or streets, as they wind through time?

Is it animals, warmly moving,
or the birds that suddenly rise up?

Who lives it, then?

God, are you the one
who is living life?

Rainer Maria Rilke

~~~~

Life is the movement of "The Mystery"
Life is the manifestation of "The Mystery."
Life ItSelf is "The Mystery" in movement
with ItSelf in form.

The Formless *is* Form...

We are held in the embrace of "The Mystery."
*It* wants to be known and seen.

*It* wants to play in the seeing of ItSelf.

In looking into "The Mystery" there is a
sense of intimacy.
And there is only deep, deep Love looking back.

We are held in the intimate gaze of
"The Mystery",
like the intimate gaze of lovers seeing
 *into* each other,
seeing *beyond* each other,
seeing beyond the persona, the mask,
into the depths of Pure Being.

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
January 2009

~

Photo - Shadow of Bamboo leaves
creating a face against a reflection
of a rainbow crystal on the wall...

Good-bye Yellow Brick Road...

It's ending... and as TS Eliot said: "in my end is my beginning."

It's ending, the meandering - not because I have reached a "goal"
or the "end" of wondering what is True, or achieved "fulfillment"
of Being - quite the contrary...

What has been needs to end -
the disillusionment,
of years on the "spiritual treadmill" -
caught in the futility of trying to understand, to get somewhere,
to be other than "me", a "better" me, or no-me at all...
Going in circles,
rewinding myself through the same conundrums
over and over again,
trying to believe what others say is True...

Acceptance has set in...

Acceptance of myself as "I" am - the whole of "me"
without the need for a "spiritual identity" - another facade;
just "me" - living, breathing, being -

without the comforting certainties of "knowing" the answer
to the questions.

Feels freeing - actually,
letting go of old identities,
old masks, old myths about
how it's all sposed to be;
whether "this" is just a dream of duality,
or - if there's really a non-dual existence of the Divine
and "me"...

But can't do that mind trip anymore...
I can only see what I can see
and let the rest go...

The pursuit has ended...

No more trying to "become"
"enlightened", "illumined", "liberated"

to appease the mind's fantasies
about "spirituality."

No more rose colored glasses,
no more "Lucy in the sky with diamonds",
no more Yellow Brick Road,
with the "Wizards" of an illusionary Oz pulling the strings...

Subtly, I fell into the same mind traps

over and over again -
wanting, longing, searching,
waiting
for that elusive final epiphany -
the dissolving of the "me" in Ecstasy...

But there was nothing;
no rainbow,
or pot of gold;
no "radiance of Being" shining...

Just "me" - still "me"...

So -
Good-bye Yellow Brick Road...
I'm laying down the burden of "spirituality"...
and simply allowing myself to Be...

Now...

at last

I am...

finally free...

Mystic Meandering
April 16, 2018

Namaste
_/\_

~*~

"If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again,
I won't look any further than  my own back yard,
because if it isn't there, I never really lost it
to begin with." :)

Dorothy
From the Wizard of Oz

I Cry for Sirens - Revisited...

Some time ago, as I was driving to my mother's, I passed an ambulance
speeding down the fast lane, coming from the opposite direction;
lights flashing, sirens blaring, horn frantically honking to get the traffic
ahead of it out of the way.  I immediately started to cry.  I had forgotten
that since childhood the sound of ambulance sirens makes me cry...
It's as if my heart leaps out of my chest, knowing that whoever is in that
ambulance is in trouble and needs help.  I can hear it in the sirens - of
course - that's what they're for.

I recognized this strange phenomenon as the heart of compassion. I felt
the heart of compassion that actually lives here wake up again.  I had
never thought of it that way before.  I've always tried to hide this little
quirk of crying at the sound of sirens; to stuff those feelings, to stop
 myself from crying, to hide the love that wants to express itself...
 I thought there was something emotionally wrong with me.

I recognized the tender heart of compassion within - crying *for*
 someone in trouble, in danger, maybe dying, in pain and possibly
 suffering.  It has always been here, since childhood - this little heart
 of compassion.  It has been covered over with layers and layers of fear;
 not allowing myself to overtly *feel* and express the heartache and
compassion for a suffering world. I also hid it behind a mask of
adulthood, and a mask of "spirituality." That's easy to do in some
 "spiritual circles", you know - to not feel, to hide what you feel behind
 a mask of ideology, belief,  ritual or religiosity.  "Spirituality" becomes
 clinical, intellectual, philosophical - detached...

I learned to wear the "spiritual mask" early in life, and later in life to
talk myself into lofty, wordified "spiritual" places.  Please slap me if
I do it again. :)  I learned on the particular "spiritual path" that I was on
that there is no "me", and therefore, no "other" because there is only
this esoteric Beingness.  The danger of misinterpreting that is that
another's pain then somehow becomes invisible - instead of
 recognizing that our pain is all the same. How ironic.
We separate ourselves from one another's heartache - dismissing it as
 just a story of a "me" that doesn't exist -  because feeling another's pain
 leaves us too vulnerable,  too engaged;  and because we'd have to
face our own - heartache that is.
  I know this experience is not true for all of us - this detached place
 of no feeling. I hid my Heart.  But - the Heart remembers - and Love
*sees*, hears, notices, *feels*, and cares - with deep compassion...

Hearing the sirens again, the rawness of an unprotected, loving Heart
exploded in my chest.  And I remembered how that *feels*...  And I
rather liked it.  I hope I never lose it; never stop *feeling*, whether
it's sadness, grief, or love and joy.  I'm sure there will be more
opportunities as Life opens this Heart more and more...

I not only cried, I smiled, because I knew it meant that the Heart
that lives here is *Alive* - feeling - caring - loving...

~

I posted a version of this back in 2011.
It seemed appropriate to re-post it
in light of the events that are taking
place around the world now...

Namaste

_/\_

.

Adaptability...

I had hoped I would have some good news to share tonight after DH’s job interview this week.  But it turns out that “the company has met its quota on the first wave”, according to the recruiter (a cattle call hiring 10 people at a time basically, and he didn’t make the first cut).  They evidently plan on doing a “second wave” – although we have no idea when that might be.   However, DH has other irons in the fire as they say, so we are still encouraged, as he is early in this job-hunting process, although it’s difficult not to recede into a fog of sadness and discouragement because we weren’t instantaneously relieved from this period of uncertainty.  Which is a segue into the subject of “adaptability.” J

A week ago DH was at the library perusing the shelves when he came across a CD series called “Adaptability” by a leading guru of change, MJ Ryan, targeted towards those in the business world.  Basically the premise is that those who adapt survive the changes that are inevitable, and so the point is to cooperate with the unavoidable, learning to take on new roles and shift with the changes that are coming more frequently in the business world.  DH has been doing this for years – adapting, shifting his career identities and roles to suit the current business environment, and still, jobs have been hard to come by and keep. We are grateful that he actually had a job that lasted a full year!  Most have been 3-6 month contracts.  He says the series on “Adaptability” is helping him with this current change, giving him a new perspective and some new skills for riding the wave.  If you’re interested, here is a You Tube link to watch her give a talk on “The Tortured Mind.” J  As always it comes down to what we *think about* what we are going through and how we interpret it.

What does this have to do with the photo of the Raccoon in the drive-way you ask? J  Well it showed up late yesterday afternoon, sniffing its way around.   I of course grabbed the camera and snapped the shot through the window.  As it disappeared out of sight to the right, I went outside to see if I could get a better shot.  I’m a sucker for wildlife – especially in the burbs.  Raccoons and Coyotes are about as wild as we get here.  The critter had climbed part way up the Spruce tree at the corner of our neighbor’s property by the driveway.  And of course I just had to try to get closer for a better shot…  But it went further up the tree – so no shot only big cute eyes looking back at me.  And what does a Raccoon have to do with adaptability?

Well... late last night I looked up the symbolic “meaning” of Raccoon in one of those animal symbolism books.  And the very first word that was underlined in the text was “adaptable.”  My eyes bugged out at the seeming synchronicity, and I went to share it with DH who was already in bed trying to sleep. J  Seems there’s a message here we’re supposed to be paying attention to!  So I read on:  Raccoons are known for their sense of curiosity about new realms, exploring what fascinates them, as well as their courage and ferociousness.  One of their most striking features is the mask.  Although the common interpretation is thievery, it actually becomes a very powerful symbolism for adapting.  When we wear a mask we create a doorway in the mind of who we believe ourselves to be.  It goes on: We can become anything we want to be by wearing different masks (identities) and learning to be dexterous in the masks that we wear, knowing when to use which mask for different purposes, knowing what circumstances requires what mask.  And in that respect, masks help us in the process of change.

There is actually a purpose for the persona of course – adapting to life situations, which seems to be a natural process.  I had somehow lost sight of that...

So – it spawned a few questions for myself like:  What masks am I wearing…  And are they serving me…  Are they helping me to adapt and change to life circumstances or am I just hiding under a mask of “spirituality”…  Do my masks keep my True Self hiding under a disguise, or are they are true expression of the Being that I am…   Do I need to change my idea of who I am, my self-identity as a “spiritual” person – ahhh – now *there’s* a courageous question…   Will have to explore that one a little more…

In any case, we are learning to adapt once again to the perpetual changes of life, accepting the reality of what is at the moment.

You might also like this humorous post
that I wrote last May on the subject of masks and identities:

Who Would You Be If You Weren't Who You Think You Are...?

Who Would You Be If You Weren't Who You Think You Are...?

Okay, so maybe I’m taking the “spiritual path” a little too seriously…  I don’t know.  It seems all the sages and “spiritual teachers” that I read and listen to have taken their path very seriously, which is why they are where they are – and why we follow them, emulating them.  But, am I being too serious...

Over at ZenDotStudio, Carole is following the path of Joy, which sounds a whole lot more fun than the one I’ve been on lately.  :)  I mean she is really enjoying life!   In my last post I didn’t mean to imply that the “spiritual path” could not be “fun” when I said there’s no getting comfortable on the “spiritual path” because it seems there’s always some issue to attend to, to look at, that needs pruning, etc..  Or that we need to constantly be working on our issues…    It’s just that some of us seem to have a harder time accessing Joy.

I commented on a friend’s blog post yesterday, who was dealing with feeling stagnant, in a kind of off-hand humorous way, that sometimes it helps me to see things differently when I use my imagination, to be playful, to take on a different role, or persona, say of someone I admire – like snoopy the dog for example in his scarf, goggles and flying cap.  You may remember that image. :)  Just the mere act of wrapping a scarf around my neck makes me feel more lighthearted and free.  Or, as my blogger friend suggested, wearing long, striped socks like Pippi Longstocking!  Yes!  I remember how much fun and freeing it was to play dress up as a kid.  Wearing a mixed match of clothes somehow put me into a different, more playful place, an imaginative place.  As a kid I didn’t think about it, it was just spontaneous and authentic fun.  There was no rightness or wrongness to it…  It was just innocent child’s play…

I had a Buddhist therapist one time who asked me about the people I admired and why, and then had me pretend to be them talking to me to find out what they would say to me.  Interesting exercise actually – although awkward – but it made the point.   Pretending to use the qualities that I admired in them, only to discover that I had those same qualities too…   And another therapist said that the clothes we wear make a difference in how we feel about ourselves.  So – maybe I need a change of costume…  Where did I put those goggles and flying cap…

And interestingly I had a conversation this morning with my husband about how we see our selves is only a glimpse of a larger story; how we limit ourselves by how we perceive ourselves, and not seeing the bigger picture.  And how we can use our imagination, play, roles and personas to go beyond who we think we are.  “Christine” is a persona, a fabrication of the self, a mental construct based on upbringing, conditioning, and who I have come to believe myself to be.  So why not use my imagination to play different aspects of the self – as children do – without constraining myself to an idea of who I think I am.  If self is just a mask for the pure Beingness that we are, then Beingness is free to take on any persona, mask, self, role, personality that it chooses, right?  And since there are so many aspects to this self that we have come to believe in, then why not use one that reflects more clearly, more transparently the essence of our Being.   Even “spirituality” can become a mask we hide behind… 

When Byron Katie asks, “who would you be without that thought?” we think in terms of – being happier, being calmer, more accepting, being freer.   But to put a humorous twist on it, why not think in terms of personas!  Who would I be without my thoughts that life is hard, stressful, lifeless, directionless, that I’m a failure, etc.   Of course the answer is supposed to point you to your True Self, and not another character, or persona.  So what would my True Self/Beingness look like without these thoughts, or these personas?  Or better still – how would I see life differently if I pretended to be who I really am - Beingness ItSelf…  I think I’ll try that one on for size and see how it fits.

WHO am I when Beingness is seen and recognized to be what is looking through these eyes?   I feel lighter already… :)

Photo

I couldn’t sleep one night
and did this piece at 2am.
I call it The Blue Cocoon :)

I Cry for Sirens...

This morning, as I was driving to my mother’s to take her to the eye doctor, I passed an ambulance speeding down the fast lane coming from the opposite direction across the medium; lights flashing, sirens blaring, horn frantically honking to get the traffic ahead of it out of the way. I immediately started to cry. I had forgotten that since childhood the sound of ambulance sirens makes me cry… It’s as if my heart leaps out of my chest, knowing that whoever is in that ambulance is in trouble and needs help. I can hear it in the sirens – of course – that’s what they’re for.

This morning I recognized this strange phenomenon as the heart of compassion. I felt the heart of compassion that actually lives here wake up again. I had never thought of it that way before. I’ve always tried to hide this little quirk of crying at sirens; to stuff those feelings, to hide the love that wants to express itself, to stop myself from crying. I thought there was something emotionally wrong with me. Or maybe that it had something to do with being hospitalized many times as a child after birth. I have rationalized that because I had been hospitalized so many times that maybe I had *heard* sirens a lot, and that’s why they made me cry.

Today I recognized the tender heart of compassion – crying *for* someone in trouble, in danger, maybe dying, or in pain and possibly suffering. It has always been here, since childhood – this little heart of compassion. It has been covered over with layers and layers of fear; not allowing myself to overtly *feel* and express the compassion that is there. I also hid it behind a mask of adulthood, and a mask of “spirituality.” That’s easy to do in some “spiritual circles,” you know – to not feel, to hide what you feel behind a mask of ideology, belief, ritual or religiosity. “Spirituality” becomes clinical, intellectual, philosophical, detached.

I learned to wear the “spiritual mask” early in life, and later in life to talk myself into lofty, wordified “spiritual” places. Please slap me if I do it again. :) I learned on “the spiritual path” that there is no “me”, and therefore no “other” because there is only Beingness. The danger of misinterpreting that is that another’s pain then somehow becomes invisible – instead of recognizing that our pain is all the same. How ironic. We separate ourselves from one another's heartache – dismissing it as just a story of a “me” that doesn’t exist - because feeling another’s pain leaves us too vulnerable, too engaged; and because we’d have to face our own – Heart that is. I know this is not true for all of us. I hid my Heart. But - the Heart remembers – and Love *sees*, hears, notices, *feels*, and *cares* - with deep compassion…

Today the rawness of an unprotected loving Heart exploded in my chest. And I remembered how that *feels*… And I rather liked it. I hope I never lose it; never stop *feeling*, whether it’s sadness, grief, or love and joy. I’m sure there will be more opportunities as Life opens this Heart more and more :) I not only cried, I smiled, because I knew it meant that the Heart that lives here is *Alive* – feeling – caring – loving…

♥