362
reality
[aka
confusion
disconnection
resentment
frustration
cowardice
grief]
isn’t optional
…
reality
[aka
clarity
intimacy
gladness
ease
courage
joy]
isn’t optional
…
if I scream for a break from this full-on life
with all its dualistic extremes
I’ve gone and forgotten
again
that reality isn’t optional
…
and how extraordinary to find that this
savage wisdom somehow soothes
and silences, softly,
sweetly,
the voice of she-who-screams
~
341
If you’re born blind, totally blind, you need to be told about light. That’s the only way you’ll come to believe something like light exists. But if you aren’t blind, belief isn’t necessary – you simply see and know light.
It’s odd then – with respect to ‘awakening’ – the way beliefs seem to cause blindness in those with eyes to see. Beliefs are just like cataracts.
To see for yourself that wideawake brilliant awareness is all there is, is simple. It’s probably the most obvious of all observations. So why do we resist? Why do we look for the Real everywhere but here?
Conditioned from tiny-hood to believe ourselves blind (unenlightened) we unquestioningly accept the beliefs of those who appear to have vision (authority): parents, priests, teachers, gurus, scriptures.
What happens when that conditioning is questioned? What happens when all authority is abandoned? What happens when we use our own eyes and trust our own vision?
Clear brilliant awareness is inescapably present. Clarity flowers. And clarity instantly removes cataracts.
~
302
after the fall
into calamitous clarity
one cannot call either the state of war
or the state of peace ‘real’
the only reality is the knowing
of war or peace
this unknowable knowingness
which hosts and populates
perception’s phenomena
never takes sides
and has nothing to lose
or to gain
ever
~
281
Wild wideawakeness isn’t a partial or incremental affair. (Perception is always partial, apperception is holistic.)
Awakening can be a bit like falling through the bottom of a long-drop into an ocean of crystal-clear brilliance.
At some point the long-drop and its contents are seen to be all you thought you were as a separate self – a person with characteristics, a history and a future.
And all of it – all of it – is seen as a wondrous manifestation of Awareness.
Awareness, fundamental and infinitely creative
is the ‘I’ that knows both the long-drop
and the oceanic clarity
as It-self.
~
[long-drop? This may be a term unique to the lands downunder, where it’s what we call an outdoor pit toilet.]
222
The ruts made by a million meanderings of the Memory Bus down Habit Avenue are deep.
Little wonder then that the bus finds it easy to continue to follow them along – even after a whiff of wild wideawakeness. It’s easy to drop back into default dualism when this happens, to be unsettled, and critical of a ‘clarity’ that’s become objectified and ‘owned.’
But what I’m noticing is that there’s an immediate and spontaneous awareness of what’s going on (mindless habitude), of where one is (in Rutsville), and an equally spontaneous elevation (yes it feels like that – like just floating up) from the rut. Oh!
Another dead petal drops off the lifebloom, floats serenely to the ground without one having to do a single thing, think a single thought, or choose one state over the other.
Life’s driving, whether one’s in the ruts or out. And Life’s wearing one’s very own name-tag. So what’s the big deal?
~
190
[This post seems to echo back to clarity comes effortlessly.]
Let’s be clear when speaking about clarity.
Clarity has nothing to do with deductive thought, analysis or memory. It’s a spontaneous insight without any perceiver. It isn’t a product of the imagination which draws on the known, or intellect which connects the dots.
Insight means seeing-in, seeing beyond the mind, and it isn’t an experience of any kind because the experiencer (thinker) is absent. It is a direct knowing on the part of unknowable Knowingness, which subsequently might use thought as a tool, if necessary.
For insight, Knowingness, Awareness – whatever name we give this ineffable Intelligence – is holistic. It includes everything: thoughts, mind, intellect, feelings, senses.
There is nothing that is not the One no-thing, and seeing-into this Knowingness reveals the sanctity of everything.
~
182
Looking for clarity?
Try turning off the thought machine.
Clarity comes effortlessly when mind
stops its default dot-connecting.
It’s like a rio abajo rio –
a field of intelligence that flows
beneath the river of intellect
and the streams of space and time.
Stop thinking; it bubbles up.
Trouble is, ‘you’ can’t stop thinking
for ‘you’ are the thinking process!
What to do?
Nothing, there’s no way out.
The discovery of this stops thought in its tracks.
Like Grace, all that’s needed for clarity
is space.
~
echoes from emptiness 