just a little thing....

there is nothing left in me that can take seriously the antics of mind for very long. the mind will try to rile up some forces, to create some identity, but it literally collapses within an hour or so of any attempt. it can't get a seeker going, it can't tell the sob story of it's demise.... not much, really. there are lots of little wall-building thoughts that arise such as "i like chocolate more than vanilla" - simple, mundane things, but tactics to create a person here, a being that has separations. i am investigating these in the grace of awareness and have found some funny stuff.

over the history of my life i always knew my body was actually a good guide for me. it's not real, and exists as an object like everything else, but it's also the way that the awareness dances in the world of form, so i think writing it off as a dream is sort of advita double-speak.

i have been surprised to find in the last two months that i am meditating a whole lot, twice a day for about 45 minutes each. not because i have to, but because i long to. it is very nourishing, that silence, that stillness. so sitting there, i don't find a whole slew of angela crap to sort through, the way i used to. just these simple thoughts, these little illusions of separation, a story of "i am this, and not that". and what i find also, right alongside of each one, is a movement of the face muscles that coincide. as a thought catches hold, the forehead, temples, jaw and throat seem to tighten around the thought, as if to create a person here, to follow the thought out into the world. each time grace arises, as the awareness i know myself to be presents itself in obviousness, the thought collapses at the same moment as the muscles release themselves.

i noticed something along these lines a few weeks ago, before christmas, but i wasn't ready to see it fully, just yet. apparently today, i am. it's just another one of those little things, those little teachers, that i am so grateful for in the living world around me.

it's everywhere, or it's nowhere at all.

this heart....

this juicy pulp in the chest
this senseless adoration of all things
this serenity
this fear it is too big to bear
this humanity
this absolute freedom
this surrender
this narrative
this touch
this sweeping panorama of the mountains
this world and all the darkness
this decimation of all separate sense
this undying gratitude
this depth
this sinking feeling in my gut
this sufering and storytelling and falseness
this cyclic spiraling of all things
this rapture
this terrified scrambling of the mind
this childlike wonder
this pristine empty vastness
this poetry of god
this reminder of here and now
this mirror of beauty upon every surface
this nightmare illusion of separation
this unending grace of right now
this that murders me for all isolation
this suchness
this teacher, beloved teacher
this heart, right here,
     big enough to be everywhere and nowhere,
     to be the center of it all.

love, and love, and love....

it has been my guide and my grace, my guru and my god for more of my life than i can even recollect in rational terms. peppered inside of all the damaged behaviors of my past, serving the life around me in the healthier years of stability.... there has always been this current of love. love as big as the milky way. love the likes of which there aren't enough poems to express. love without reason.

and i find myself here, in the nearly 3 1/2 weeks since christmas, since the grace of god showed me that the contracted space i thought of as a self is just a playground, and it is not to be my prison. i find myself here at the edges of a love that is so unfathomably enormous that i think it may whip me off the very face of the earth and steal me away into the depths of space with it's power. i may be drilled down to the molten core of the earth to find a heat that can even whisper a rivalry to the intensity of this love. i may have to be flayed, skin, muscle, nerves and bone, absolutely shredded in some sacrificial gesture to indicate how perfectly desperate the comprehension of this love is to the mind.

i am ruined as a separate being. i am decimated as a singularity.

i have died for this love, lain down before god and prayed again and again to be a vessel and an instrument and the great wonder of it all is that You heard my call and gave me the greatest gift imaginable. you took away my choice, you took away my logic, you took away my life and left me hollow enough to begin to hold You.

good god if only words could suffice to explain the marvel and mystery of this Love, pouring forth and forth and forth from the depths of forever. i am not poet enough to speak it. but by the grace of Your touch, that i may be servant enough to share it....

very curious

one of the most difficult things about waking up to what is really going on is all of the ridiculous mass of information out there about truth, enlightenment, awakening etc. there is no clear picture of what exactly is going on here, and a lot of the teachings even seem to contradict themselves. having twirled around with this subject matter for a couple of years, i am by no means an expert. but i did learn along the way that the best, most lucid teachers won't actually tell you a single thing. they will only ever point you back to your own experience, your own nature, and your own curiosity.
 
and in this, in every way possible, it has been my curiosity which has been the biggest blessing.

i am emptied of self, and watching the world happen. that much is clear. but i also see that by sitting and feeling myself as empty or without self that i am in some way accepting a non-identity kind of identity. and is it actually true - true that what i am is empty? in my heart/gut/intuition combo the answer rings clearly that no, any defining of a self, even one that points to emptiness, isn't entirely correct. it's a paradox to the mind to even talk about, but since i trust my guts more than my brain or my language, its obvious i have to listen. there is clearly no self. but thinking that i am no self still shows evidence of a self. and therefore, more to investigate.

i have said before in this blog and elsewhere that i can see how tricky it gets right up in this space, and i'd wager that this emptiness accounts for all sorts of the half-awake teachers out there peddling enlightenment that doesn't always look very holy or feel free of self. they've emptied themselves into nothing, and finding the freedom and joy and humor in all that, it's time to just get along and peddle the wares. but without being truly free of any identification they will always be in some subtle way sharing a teaching that "knows" instead of the real teaching of unknowing back and back and back until the curiosity kills the cat.

i am grateful to not feel incomplete. i am grateful to not be seeking. i am no longer exhausted, miserable, or in any way positioned at an argument with what is going on. however, there is the sense that if i were to lose my curiosity here, it would be a drastic mistake. the sword is gone from my hand, because i no longer need to hack away at gross manifestations of a separate self. the vision of the other afternoon of absolute unity shows itself as that which is always, always present and couldn't possibly not be present. it is not something to chase, in any way. it is just a matter of being passionately curious about what is already here, what is really going on, and not settling for anything other than the joyful unknowing as a place to call home.

thy will be done

there is naught but surrender.

anyone telling you otherwise is trying to sell you something. even if it is your very own self, run away, and quickly. give up, give in. you have no choice anyway. in this, beauty and love, all the wonders of the world, and the death you have been afraid of since you first realized it was coming.

there is nothing in this for you.

not my will, but thy will, be done.

a taste of absolute unity

on christmas, i was emptied out, backed up beyond the image of the separate self, and hit a point of the seeker being just totally done. the bloody sword that had been fused to my fist for the last two years dropped, much to my surprise, and i was just left blinking at the vast, unending space i found in all directions. the mind wasn't sure what to do with such emptiness, and there remained these strange questions about the things i'd heard from teachers over the years of this process..... the seeker was gone, but the answers to certain questions alluded me.

i was still wondering:
"how exactly is emptiness is dancing?"
"what does it mean that there is no death?"
"how can everyone be awake and not know it?"
"what about this unity thing? what does it mean to see something as yourself?" 
"what does it mean that nothing has ever happened or will ever happen?"
"what does it mean that form is emptiness? emptiness is form?"
"what is it that there is no inside and no outside / that there is only Just This?"
"what on god's green earth does I Am That mean???????!?!?!?!?"

all these questions were based on various teachings that i'd heard over the two years of my demolition process. they were the kinds of things that the mind races and races to answer, and finding no answer, gets really even more bummed out than ever, and goes even more mad and crazy and spiraling out into the furthest reaches of elasticity.

so, after being removed from myself into emptiness on christmas, i kind of sensed that something was just around the corner to take up the slack here, and this afternoon it did. the truth moved up and revealed itself, the most sublime and perfect sanity, beyond imagination....

reality revealed itself in this ripe, luscious, luminosity the likes of which i could not summon enough poetry to explain. all the clarity in the world was offered because i finally saw this for what it really is - what is actually going on here - and the simplicity and obviousness of the truth, the inescapable reality of the truth.

simple:

1) she hears the phrase 'be what this is' come up from the depths
2) she dances, stretches, moves and prays
3) she lies down, watches for a moment the inner chaos of the mind
4) she sighs. she knows then it is time to die.
5) she is surrendered.
6) she stands back up, looks around.
7) the world has become her.

"well of course!! everything is all one thing, hanging together like fruit, dangling on the breath of You!!"

and i have spent the afternoon and evening checking in with a few audio tapes from my teacher Adyashanti, because i want to be sure that, yes, this is obviously it.... because it holds up with what he is saying.... and i have sent some notes of gratitude to the beloved pointers along the way. and i took a walk. and i hugged my dog. and it goes as it goes, dancing on, as it ever has, without a point or a meaning, but with absolute freedom as the very nature of its dance.

even if this is just a taste, to have a glimpse of absolute reality totally devoid of any self whatsoever, is the most amazing vision of what is possible....

radical emptiness

there is a beautiful woman in my life, my dearest friend and soul sister, who is currently in the middle of watching her life burn down around her. she is about half thrilled and half mortified, and remembering that feeling, i feel honored beyond belief that i get to watch her burn. i think she is the most beautiful creature i have ever known.

the funny thing about spirituality is that it's not at all what we think it is, when we're playing little ego games and trying to create some superhero identity of holy wisdom or divine intent. genuine, real spirituality is not about building a single thing at all. it's about being brave enough to put down the mortar and glue you've had welded into your fists your whole life - shoring up the illusion of a separate self - and take off the fireproof suit. from there, from that first step, real spirituality can begin. it's not a path of icons and mantras and rainbows and inner children. it is a bloody, messy battle and the absolute worst part is that once the fire is burning you realize there's not a single damn thing you can do except learn to breathe smoke.

i am not in a place of knowing these days. i have unknown myself backwards into radical emptiness. there is not a single thing that can be known, thought, felt, touched, smelled, seen or otherwise that i would call my own. there is only this vast, vast, vast....................................... nothing. in all directions.

spirituality brought me here. the insane bloody deconstruction of two years of my life, and the absolute only time i have ever really known myself to be a creature of abject faith. because no matter how much it hurt, i just knew i was being drawn home. of course, the illusion of a gate looked rather like a black hole, and all the gravity was being squeezed from my veins and i was being flattened, emptied and otherwise crushed.... but i just knew in my guts that this was the most real thing i'd ever done in my life. and so i kept that sword in my hand, until it was just fused there, hacking away without me even trying.

and then one day, one sudden evening, the sword dropped from my hand because there was nothing left to chop away. i was empty. there was none of me left. of course, for a day or a few days, the mental gymnastics tried to gather enough strength to mount another epic battle. but it was done. i was done. there was nothing left to fight.

and today - without having anything of my own, all of a sudden the entire world is available to me. i can play or pout or dance or fall silent, because they all arise and pass away like clouds and knowing that i am only empty sky means i can lay and daydream on the shapes and sizes of the clouds all day long.

my girl, my best girl in the whole universe, sits at her house and burns furiously, and sometimes passionately, and sometimes petulantly, and sometimes morbidly and sometimes with colossal, unfathomable beauty. and i want to say to her that it's all perfect, that she is being drawn home. but she knows that already. she's the one who taught that to me.

so this is just a little dialogue from open space, from capacity into empty space.... a bit of high tech cheerleading to my favorite person, doing the only thing around that matters at all.