life’s livingness

two crones, cackling

238

Two Miriams, thirty years between their birthdays, are having a mother-daughter chat over morning coffee.

Miriam senior (90) tells daughter that, unable to sleep because of the rising tropical heat, she spent the night fiddling around with curtains and bedding trying to create better conditions for rest.

Then she adds, almost guiltily, “I know I should just ‘be’ with ‘what-is’ …”

Daughter asks, “But wasn’t the ‘what-is’ of the night the heat and the subsequent discomfort?  Wasn’t the ‘what-is’ of the night the impulse to find remedies for that discomfort?”

“So how can you say you weren’t wholly ‘being’ with the ‘what-is’ of the night?”

The mother’s face creases with laughter.  “I’m such a clot.  I still sometimes forget.”

“Clotting is Beingness too!  Forgetting is Beingness too.  What can we find that’s not Beingness Being?”

Two Miriams, thirty years between their birthdays, crack up with crone-cackle over morning coffee.

~

life lives its vast vitality

189

Natural, deep, dreamless sleep is a miraculous healer.  Any approximation of that ‘state’ during waking hours is a crucial activity of the body-mind.  This is where meditation is such a vital (non)activity.

Life  –  Knowingness, Awareness, Primordial Essence, God, Tao; as you wish  –  is unhampered by the web of confused and conflicting concepts called thought and experienced as self.

IT simply lives ITs vast vitality; runs repairs on the body-mind as necessary, blessedly unimpeded by a ‘doer’ doing anything.

~

opening to Grace

170

Iris Murdoch was having a chat with Krishnamurti once, and voiced the opinion that he was “in a state of Grace,” implying that he was different from the milling crowd.  K was rather irritated by this, protesting at first, but then saying, “Call it Grace if you wish, but be in a state to receive It.”

What potential confusion lurks in this response!  (Perhaps this explains K’s irritation.)  Grace is not a thing that gets sent from somewhere and is received by someone.  I’ve been blessed to be in the company of sages who were resting in/as Grace, and what I noticed was that if I was open enough, still and soft enough, that Grace could be felt in the energy field called my body.

To be in a state of Grace is to embody this openness, this fluid movement of Life’s livingness – and to be unburdened by any desire that IT be different than it is, exactly as it is now, in what-is.  It sounds simple, but it’s a very big ask.  Yet we all know what the state of Grace feels like.  Perhaps we know it best by its absence, those painful times when we argue with Life and second-guess ITs incomprehensible order.

She-who-scribbles is a very slow learner in the Grace-stakes. It gets easier … but at the same time ever more challenging. I don’t remember who said it, but it’s spot-on: “As the water gets calmer, the fire gets hotter.”

~

may I never cease to be amazed

135

a world-premier concert this pre-dawn hour:

kookaburra yodels, hoots and cackles the still-dark overture
a distant butcher bird strikes up a string of notes at first hint of light
fat green frogs on the pond gurgle a throaty chorus
and on the roof, the unpatterned patter of rain

then – as the eastern sky lightens
an orchestra of unseen players takes its timely cue

the whole world seems joined in a symphony of dawn rapture
blessed by the gentle earth-revivng showers

a sublime symphony –
never heard before in the long history of consciousness
and never again to be repeated

I fold my hands and bow deeply:
Beloved Life, may I never cease to be amazed …

~

what I call meditation

130

this morning it’s so deliciously simple:

in the absence of a self-as-solid-state-entity
doing, needing, wanting, believing,
having, and all that stuff,
the intelligence that lives this body-brain
somehow looks after itself beautifully

it dictates the conditions
under which it will be healthy,
and prompts the necessary
adjustments in ‘lifestyle’

that intelligence is what I’ve come to call Grace

being in a state to ‘receive’ IT
is what I call meditation

~

life embraces ITself and knows ITself as Beloved

116

The divine logic of undivided Wholeness flowers and ripens in its own way, in its own time.  IT cannot be taught or bestowed.  There are no maps, no paths, no secret initiations or alchemical formulae that can reveal ITs reality – they serve only to divert One away from the breath-taking simplicity of what is being sought.

Perhaps this explains my lifelong discomfort with all forms of proselytizing and mission-work.  It has always been intuited that when ripeness is ready, Grace presents all that is needed for the flowering of understanding and clarity.

 

Life ‘lives’ this life
as IT lives all Life
according to ITs own
incomprehensible agenda.

And once One ‘sees’ that Life ITself
is One’s true identity,
One knows the true identity
of all the apparent ‘others.’

This is the end of separation –
Life embraces ITself
and knows ITself as Beloved.

~

 

to awaken is to stop

109

to live is to move:
Life surges, pulses, flows, pushes, wanders, creeps
(just observe nature!)

 

to be is to be determined:
being is Life in movement
dancing the dance of destiny
through the corridors of conditioning
(just observe yourself!)

 

to awaken is to stop:
to stay still
to shut up
to stay silent
long enough
to let Life dance a new dance amongst the neurons

~