songs of the half born

so, a quick clarification about something i call the "Seeing" and then a little fable about will and surrender.

two years ago, in march 2009, reality came along and flashed me in an incident i would later refer to as "when my brain blew up" because it was just about that subtle. there is a whole storyline before that maybe matters, but probably doesn't. suffice to say, the incident in march was a serious glimpse of what is actually going on here. of what is real. and from that day on, i have been having these "Seeing" moments. for a while i called them jolts, probably because they were strange and new, but then once they weren't strange anymore, they weren't jolting, and by that time i'd had them going on long enough to begin to have some clarity around them. i began to call it the "Seeing" because it was clear that the moment was a different kind of seeing, a different perspective. it was as if angela's life/storyline would be going on, and then this "Seeing" would break through, part me like a veil, and remind me of that universal flash that had gone on. it was like a kind of whisper that would tell me "there's something other than this" meaning, there is more than this little angela. but to be clear, it was not a "knowing" or a thought of any kind - it was subtle as a feather, but also as fierce as a fist in it's revelation of itself as a whole other way of seeing. too obvious to be denied. and so, during the two years after the march event, that "Seeing" seems to have guided the dismantling of my storyline, and with a constant reminder that i didn't actually exist as i thought i did, and i wasn't the person i thought i was.

now, let me point out, these "Seeing" things happened (and still happen) hundreds, or thousands of times a day. they were brief, during the first year, just tiny 1-2 second long glimpses not at emptiness, but from emptiness. it was not looking *at* something, these "Seeing" moments. it was clear that something else was looking through angela, but it was also clear that i was that thing looking. so the experience was as if "I" was looking through "me" somehow. i asked adyashanti about it when i was able to meet him on retreat in may of last year, and i said "it's like there's a big hole looking through me" and he said "that hole is you" and i was like. okay. sure. of course it is. i knew it, intutively, but it took until the event-out-of-time on christmas to know that with absolute certainty. (i also told him that feeling this way, this back and forth, i felt like i was half born, a phrase he particularly liked, and thus the title of today's tale)

so. coming to the current part of our story.

having these "Seeing" moments, which for two years, whispered to a small identified angela that there was something else, and sort of.... beckoned her to take that backwards step, and come home to emptiness. that happened, that step was taken, and i backed out of my life into emptiness, into the experiential knowledge of myself as not a self at all, not a thing, but as space or capacity for life. and even that, i wouldn't put a stamp of certainty on. i mean, the experience is that the awareness is primary, and all the whole world of arising, angela, space, time, world are all secondary. but i wouldn't go toe to toe in a fight over the label of "me" as "awareness" or whatever. all i have is experience.

and being that all that i have is experience. my experiences these last weeks have taught me over and over these lessons about surrender and control. that has been the energy, drawn on a whole life with this sort of bhakti/devotional kind of path. everything points over and over again to surrender. and since christmas, i have had a couple unity experiences that have shown me, with great clarity, that this, right here, right now, is all there is. there cannot be anything else, this itself is heaven, and the only reason it feels off somehow is because the mind is pulling a scrapper move and throwing punches into god's face saying "no, this isn't it"

and the "Seeing" remains. and now, since christmas, all it can whisper is "right here, right now" in a thousand various ways. and i know in my heart that's the song, that's the only tune it knows. here, and here, and here.... this beingness, this awareness, the love of this moment. the sat-chit-ananda of ripe suchness of the world.

the fable is the strange tale of a mind, no longer believed, and seen through as being an arising "in" consciousness, still trying to exert control, still doing a fierce dance in attempts to draw energy into it's gas tank and keep the car moving.

because the mind would say "this isn't it" and raise fears about calling off the search altogether. it says to me that if i call off the search, and give up, and give in, that i will never find what i am looking for. and the "Seeing" reminds me repeatedly that i will never get what i am looking for anyway, because the i who is looking doesn't exist and is only a collection of thoughts, mainly arguments, with what is going on.

how a movie, called my mind, projected onto a screen, called reality, can believe itself to have any control whatsoever over what is going on, is quite a terry gilliam type psychedelic conundrum. especially because, in this example, i wrote the movie with terry, helped him film it, and put it up onto the projector reel myself. ie: i am aware of what it is doing. i know the jig. i see, every day, all day long, through the "Seeing" moments and in many other ways, that i am not the one "doing" this life. i watch things arise spontaneously, out of nowhere, and know that the mental story called "i did that" is absolute rubbish.

but still, it goes on, because it is neither the born (created, arising world) nor the unborn (the absolute).the experience is of them both. weather it is, or isn't, absolutely or relatively, i have no idea. and in this unknowing, life is lived.....

so, all my thoughts about surrender and will are fascinating here, especially these last few days where reality has grown very "thin" in experience several different times. the depths to which there is no one here, doing anything called surrender, are not lost on me. any questions, really, of my will, and thy will, are silly, because there isn't a me and a thy. i get it, not quickly, not easily, but i get it. i see it, hazy and in shadow, but i see it. and still, i want to surrender, i want to "do" surrender, because i see that is the only way home.

but "i" can't "do" surrender. never could. and so the songs of the half born continue, sliding gently out of my lips as i walk alone under a midnight moon, sort of lonely and aching, but also fully aware that this landscape, every single step, right here, just this, is my home....