neti, neti

neti neti is a phrase from vedic culture and is loosely translated into english as not this, not that. i have been grokking on this phrase off and on all week, and today i sat quietly in my room for an hour and watched this Seeing negate all things that were passing across the screen with a sincere dedication to "neti neti"

it's been a strange week. there have been a ridiculous number of body and sensory changes, which in many ways amount to absolutely nothing. states are lovely, and sitting meditation is so nourishing i find myself sitting each day two or three times for an hour each. my head feels like it's going to explode every so often, and there is frequent heavy pressure at each temple, at the crown and in the middle of my brain. none of this matters, it's just me reporting from the midst...

i don't know how to explain what has gone on except to say that i am done. i, as a seeker, looking for something, have finished. mistaking myself for angela is done. there is awareness which has woken up to itself, and finds watching this world, and this life, fascinating and amusing and charming. i don't know what any of that means, frankly. my experience is that what is really happening here is empty space. i find myself to be capacity for the world, instead of a thing in the world itself.

beyond that, beyond that simplicity, i don't know anything else. i have no answers. i still don't know what they all mean when they say emptiness, unless what they mean is the world rather seems like a screen that everything is happening on (the Seeing is that screen, i am that screen...) but things have no thing-ness to them, everything seems rather like it's the same thing. but it is not some sharp delineation.

and the mind wants to wander into all sorts of sticky spots, to keep the awareness tangled up there. much like it has for the last two years, i have these perception shifts, all day every day. there is small, identified angela consciousness, and there is vast, unending space, which is the awareness that includes the whole world. the shift on christmas is that i finally know that space to be what i really am, and i can watch angela doing what she does, and i don't go asleep and think that i am her. (even though, in some twist and paradox, i've never felt *more myself* and angela is just fascinating and beloved, as everyone is...)

now, the mind is not silent, although i am amazed at how different it is these last few days. there is incredible access to silence as i know that to be my very own self, my no-thing, and when i sit quietly for even a moment, i can easily fall into a profound stillness. but over the last week i've had two or three movements of the mind to try to grasp onto control again, and during those moments i really found myself suffering until i remembered myself.

i posted two blog entries that i deleted, because they came up during one of the sticky mind episodes, when i had myself near convinced there is more to do, or something else i have to go figure out. it was the seeker trying to put herself back together again. with the grace of god and this perfect awareness that we are all spun out of, i was able to see through it.... neti, neti...

even getting stuck thinking to myself "i am this awareness" is not true, because the Seeing comes before the thought. everything, every single thing in the world comes *after* this Seeing. it is the surely the only thing in the world that i have ever known in a way that comes before mind. and that is why with every fiber of my being i know it to be true.

there is a sense of this process not being finished yet, because of the way the mind works.

it's like this: my first awakening where i knew what was happening (ie: not just a peak experience) was in march of 2009, while walking past a fountain. for the briefest of moments i saw very clearly, with absolute simplicity, that everything is one thing. i knew the sound, the water, the listening, the listener, the air and the street were all the same thing. i also knew it was only the mind which was capable of seeming to divide that which cannot be divided.

although that was my awakening, and since that time all day every day i've had those shifts in perception, where the Seeing poked through the small angela-mind, in some ways i almost forgot what the initial glimpse actually showed me.

and now, after chrismas, seeing it again, much much more clearly and deeply, and having that awareness not fade from view immediately, and spending my days with a very deep knowing of who i am, and able to check in there whenever i am so inclined.... i remember the event from last march.

this time i have seen enough about the lack of personal will and control that the awareness doesn't have to push aside as much of angela. i am the Seeing, watching angela go about her business, fascinated by what she does, her choices, how she lives, and almost (dare i say) enjoying her pictureshow and presence. i am fascinated by the mystery, by the fact that she seems to be moving without one speck of control, animated by i know not what.... because i am not "doing" angela.... i am the Seeing, watching her.

but the mind can still get sticky, and my heart is grateful for this neti, neti... this gentle reminder Not This, Not That... even when the mind tries to say I AM THE AWARENESS i can only giggle because the Seeing is present *before* the statement, so obviously the statement isn't true. and any thoughts of other things i need to do are completely false.

so when the mind tries it's own silly version of not this, not this, looking around at the world and saying this can't be it, it doesn't stick. the only thing left that is false, in fact, is that thought itself.

thankfully, gracefully, with full humility and praise be to the great spirit.... i know that there is only this. and this, is perfect.