and even more surrender....

it's been six weeks now since christmas, and it's so vastly different than before it's hard to express in words. odd, too, because while i am viewing from a different perspective, the life/mind/personality was wired with 34 years of habit behind it. and sitting in a space where i can see mind, but it cannot see me, the mind doesn't know much is really different at all.

the beauty, in my experience, is the profound connection to the grace of the divine, the nearly ecstatic love and worship that i feel flooding through whenever i am still enough to allow it as such. it's funny, for the two years since the shifts in seeing started in earnest, since the major awakening in march of 2009, i rather lost the kind of heartfelt connection i had with the divine. not entirely, as the grace was always the underlying character of everything that was moving. and the trust and faith in the dismantling would not have been possible without the ground of trust and faith in god. they were the same movement. but for about two years, i had to hone the mind somehow, i had to learn inquiry, and learn negation, and learn philosophical thinking - mainly so i could see through all the mental structures, but still, it was a dramatic shift away from the heart-centered life i'd lived up until then.

at the end of it, i surprised myself by telling god i was willing to give up my heart. by november and december of last year, things had grown so stale, so meaningless, so unbelievably empty it was hard to bear. for a little while i got mad at god, but the beauty there was god sort of whispering "i don't care if you're angry, it's just nice to hear from you again" i felt that i'd been removed of everything, everything that i'd ever cared about, and nothing had come along to make any of it make any sense. about three weeks before christmas i'd spent a whole evening screaming and crying at god, mad beyond belief, dismantled beyond repair.... and in the course of it there i'd said those words of surrender that come back to me again and again in this lifetime, and have always been the grace of my existence "Fine! I surrender!! I give up!! I can't do this!!"

in the moment there i knew that i was willing to give everything, absolutely everything, even the relationship, the heart, the soul of my life. to never feel again, to never have anything ever again. i was willing, because i saw clearly that i had no more faith in "me".... my only faith left, my only trust, was that god was wiser than i could ever be. and after some final emotional purging, and a clearly philosophical weekend whereby i investigated the remaining belief in physical objects and a me who was separate from them (experiments in perception, you could say).... christmas came along and i popped backwards out of my life, and knew myself as awareness.

now, it would be lovely if i could report that was the end of the road. but it wasn't, as this blog is a standing testament toward. these are the weeks of..... hrmmm..... ????..... uuuuhhh..... yup.

the weeks of a mind that still tries, and has to be pinned again and again into surrender.

the weeks of a personality that still believes it can "get it" and has to be removed of all power to do so until it relaxes.

the weeks of a habitual efforted seeking that has to be undermined by the reality that i can never reach what it is that i seek, because in fact, i am the only thing standing in the way of its realization.

and again, and again, and again, there is naught but surrender. the bodymind wants to keep seeking, because it realized that this is a sort of halfway house here - this knowing that there is no self, there is only awareness, but also not having the full understanding of unity the way the heart sort of intuits to be true underneath everything else.

and every few days, the seeker tries for a few hours or so, to get a good path built up again. and it's funny because the wisdom of the heart, which guided me for so long, and was never, never doubted at any other point in my life, is experiencing the ways the mind can and will try to doubt. the heart knows, clearly and without failure, that this is heaven. every movement, every morsel, every gorgeous drop of every moment. but the mind, doesn't know. and moves and moves and dances and contracts and doubts and flails about - trying to find what is Only Ever Right Here.

and it's beautiful, and sad, and amazing to witness. and every time i am drawn back to the heart, to the place that whispers to god "oh my beloved, i trust you, i know you know what is best for me, and i give up, again and again, in your true embrace..." i cannot express how grateful i am.

i am grateful god is so wise, and i am so small.

i am grateful that god lets me forget over and over again and yet never forgets me.

i am grateful each time the seeking fails, and i am drawn back to right here, where i never left.

i am grateful for these constant lessons in surrender.

i am grateful that in the end of all things, it is this heart, this true heart, that was always the only real thing, remains the only real thing.

right now, i am mostly grateful that by the willingness to give up claim on the heart, i discovered it was never mine to begin with, and in that grace, it has grown outside the scope of things, and space, and time, and yet still intimately loves every single breath of every single atom now and until infinity.

so, this halfway house, where i am being removed of my seeker, is strange. because the mind, built up over two years, in order to help see through beliefs, has become strong in that time, and wants to negate to such an infinite degree, that it wants to negate this heart, this grace, and this inner wisdom, because to do so keeps the mind fed and active. and the illusion of choice, or a do-er at all, keeps the life in a tail chasing high speed run. i am being relieved of my seeker into the trust and faith in the divine, which i always said i had, and always felt, but i am being drawn into it in such a dramatic way it's hard to even express.

can i surrender my need/desire/thoughts about ultimate freedom? can i accept that this is beyond my control, in any way shape or form? can i let go, and let god, and trust enough that the divine is going to do what it is going to do, as it ever has done, and weather or not full awakening happens here is fully not up to me? at all? do i want this supposed freedom more, or do i want to rest in the cradle of faith that is the only thing that has ever been real - the understanding that i am a dust speck, a nothing special, a nobody, and god loves me enough to do in this life what is best?

how much faith do i really find here, and how much surrender?

well, now. only god can really say.

thank you, and amen, dear, sweet Beloved....