no longer working to get free
(or fix or heal or please)
no longer needing to understand
how any of this is possible
not to mention
knowable
I rest
entirely wrapped
in wonderment
Photo by ml:
A recently completed small work, a candle, my mother’s ashes, a daffodil, an apple and a magic arrow
2021 covid lockdown, Aotearoa New Zealand
The invasion was unexpected and uninvited; it happened
one numinous now
when the minder of memories had her back turned.
In crept wild wideawakeness, sleuthing
through this dormitory of sleeping stories,
slipping from cocoon to cocoon
dubbing each bedded-down memory
with its diamond dagger and pronouncing each one
an esteemed and luminous Member of the Matrix.
It lifted up the wounded and the weary,
the lost and lonesome, the betrayed
and the broken, saying
To know this pain, beloved
is to know That which is beyond time
for That alone has the capacity to be aware
and in your naked awareness of your pain
you are naturally ever-enlightened.
You imagine your enlightenment to be
other than this wretchedness –
you take it as proof that you
haven’t yet “made the shift”
yet how could pain (or pleasure) be known
if enlightenment were not fully present?
By what function of cognition
would you aware this knowing?
By both logic and experience it’s found
that the unlit light of awareness
is prior to every sensory perception.
Will you stay tucked up in your cocoon
dreaming of the mirage of your awakening
shimmering in some distant space and time
or will you blink now
and own up to your feral freedom?
I blinked.
– ml, 2012
Tantric Painting, India, c1800 or earlier, detail
This post was originally published on my blog this unlit light in October 2012.
One of my father’s nick-names for me was ‘Tuppence.’ Perhaps it was because I was always eager to offer my “tuppence-worth” (i.e., the state-of-the-world according to my all-knowing self), and irritatingly persistent with my questions – “But why?” “Who says so?” When he was really mad at me he’d say, “For two pence I’d give you the hiding of your life!” I was always relieved no one came along with those pennies.
I never out-grew the tendency towards contrariness and insatiable curiosity. From here I regard them as having been essential companions – both tools and fuel – on the rather erratic life path that unfolded for the ‘Tuppence’ character.
The days when I held court in my pram are ancient history, but the questions that matter for me remain fresh and alive. My responses to them are an ever-morphing ontology. Here’s the current version – a crone’s tuppence-worth.
Tuppence in her pram: Well then. What’s this all about?
The Unknowable
dressed up and dancing as the knowable.
…
I don’t know.
I can only say it’s all I ever experience.
…
You’ll never find it.
(You’ll never escape it either.)
…
An idea those who believe they are not already fully alight
like to entertain.
…
It can’t be known.
It’s quietly evident when all hunger for knowing drops away.
…
Presence is already perfectly and completely just so.
But ideas about it can be experienced as wrong/bad/incomplete.
…
I’ve spent a lifetime on this koan…
I only ever experience all-inclusive observing.
…
Too constricted and limited a notion, I’d say.
How about an Unlimited and Almighty Godding?
…
From the perspective of Presence,
One is one too many.
…
I ask Life. It grins:
Get onstage – it’s The Full Monty and you’re the star!
…
That’s easy because I’ve been across and had a look.
It’s a little side-step, from one theatre into another.
…
Reality transcends thinking entirely.
However, thoughts and beliefs determine the quality of experience.
…
Maybe.
We’d know if we could find a dreamer.
…
Abdication. Effortless, voluntary relinquishment
of the ME-project.
…
If it is
you’re the magician.
…
Illusion is the mirage in the desert;
delusion is believing it’s real.
…
Nothing knowable
could ever be sacred.
…
No.
You are the glorious “am”.
…
I don’t know
any.
…
Yes.
K I N D N E S S
…
Being 100% present as the capacity for passionate engagement with life
and not minding what happens.
…
Nothing ever brings fulfilment.
It’s one’s natural state when there’s no need of fulfilment.
…
S I L E N C E
(no contest)
…
The GPS is set to nth – now! this! here!
Presence is driving.
…
The Beloved
sneaking up for a kiss.
…
I am whatever Presence wants to be
in response to whatever It meets.
[The words Awareness, Presence, the Unknowable, Reality, Grace, the Beloved, all point to the same ‘thing’. Except it’s not a thing. If anything (ha!) it’s an event-ing.
I like the Godding word; I might patent that one!]
Today – another tick in the annual count for she-who-scribbles while her spacecraft steers itself around the sun.
Sitting watching the morning star rise in the pre-dawn coolness, I thought back to this offering, which I posted exactly a year ago on this unlit light blog. It wants to be shared here. I fancy it might be my yearly birthday post, since I can’t find one word I’d change. And I need these words.
Birthdays are a good time to reflect on one’s blessings, and to offer gratitude to our friends for their kindness and thoughtfulness. I always begin my birthday with a gesture of thanks to my mother, who not only gave me the miraculous opportunity for life, but also fostered, nourished and inspired the flourishing of that life in every way possible.
Now in my eighth decade, and delighting in life regardless of its curved balls, I feel to share some of the observations that have delivered me to this joy. It’s the best I can offer; may your mind and heart be able to receive.
Life hurts.
But what you are never feels pain.
Everything changes.
But what you are remains unchanged, eternally.
You’re flat and exhausted and depressed.
But what you are is forever poised as equanimity.
You’re broke, stressed, squeezed dry, homeless and hungry.
But what you are is unaffected and impartial.
You’re smashed by disappointment, betrayal, abandonment.
But what you are is ever calm, accepting and unbroken.
You’re afflicted by physical and mental aberrations, abnormalities, imbalances.
But what you are never suffers for one second.
So what you are is clearly something with which you need to become very familiar. And it’s e-a-s-y to do so. You don’t need a formal introduction. You don’t need a manual or a map or a guide book. You don’t need to change your religion or your beliefs (although changes may well occur as a result). You don’t need a 12-step plan or a meditation practice.
What you are is more obvious and closer than the tip of your nose. It’s the one experience you can never escape, 24/7.
What would you call that? Your aliveness? Your awareness? Your presence? All these words come close, but none are ultimately true or exact. Why?
Because they aren’t yours. Or mine. Or anyone’s. Drop the personal pronoun, and there you are – radiant all-knowing alive presence. The Light of Knowingness, self-luminous, always-on, never-needing fuel or flint…
And that is what you are – free, fulfilled and flourishing as all you conceive, perceive and experience. All of it.
How wondrous that this is possible – that this primordial awareness is huge enough to hold the entirety of creation, excluding nothing – yet be unaffected and unmoved by any expression of its handmaiden, consciousness.
It is truly The Beloved, the Godhead of the saints and sages and poets.
And it is what you are.
Image – Bowl, Miriam Louisa Simons, Japanese washi, threads, cardboard
one haiku, twelve ways
… depending on one’s particular aversion/s.
tell me this my friend
how free are you, when you won’t
[choose your aversion/s]
spin with the Sufis?
kneel with the Muslims?
pray with the Mystics?
sit with the Zenners?
gaze with the Atis?
drink with the Taoists?
chant with the Bhaktis?
probe with the Jnanis?
dunk with the Baptists?
bow with the Buddhists?
dream with the Shamans?
laugh with the Skeptics?
I’ve had an encounter with an ear worm. You know, those catchy tunes that keep playing in your mind ad nauseam.
It’s amazing the lengths tic-toc thinking will go to, to ensure some activity is going on. I’ve found the only effective antidote to be a kind of meditation where you just plonk yourself down (or not) and cast attention in the worm’s direction without any intention to “stop” it. Brain worms loathe the light of attention.
This worm was fun (for a while), as my mind played with the lyrics. I jotted a couple down before returning the wriggler to sender, from whence it has failed to return. Maybe it’s back in Janis’s pocket…
“Freedom’s just another word
for nothin’ left to lose.”*
–
Love is just another word
for when you disappear.
Peace is just another word
for right and wrong conjoined.
Heaven‘s just another word
for no one left to choose.
More stanzas on the nondual theme, anyone?
[Later – they just keep coming… ]
Me is just another word
for God knowing Itself.
Joy is just another word
for thankfulness enthused.
Praise is just another word
for wonderment expressed.
God is just another word
for What’s beyond all words.
. . .
* Lyrics from Me and Bobby McGee, by Kris Kristofferson
Image: Janis Joplin, whose version of this song was her only number one hit. It was included in the album Pearl, 1970. Source: Wikimedia Commons
who are you
when you’re not constantly
re-minding yourself
on social media?
when you’re not sharing
your selfies, your mundane and mediocre
daily details?
when you’re not broadcasting
your insights, your threadbare, faded
knowledge?
what do you see
when you’re not there
telling yourself the old stories
(identify – label – judge)?
when there’s no observer
standing separate from
texture, color, energy?
when time and space
disappear, taking out your memorybank (poof!)
leaving . . . . . . . . . what?
who are you in that apocalyptic instant
when you realise that
every hard-earned conviction you hold
concerning
awakening
enlightenment
salvation
freedom
is merely an empty concept?
who are you when you aren’t there?
[conceptual answers not permitted; keep emptying!]
Drawing by Michael Leunig – it also accompanies this post from the early days of ‘the echoes’:
sitting in this leaky boat called ‘me’
echoes from emptiness 