‘me’-mirage

it was a damn good deal

Ceramic sculpture by Haejin Lee

 

Until I woke up
to my unconscious insatiable insanity
it was the tireless weaver
of the fabric of my life.

It wasn’t enough to have mentally unpicked
and clearly seen-through
the myth and mirage
of the solid-state ‘me’ story.

Unconscious residue of that ‘me’
I thought was done and dusted
remained, and so, another unpicking began
– a second-level unpicking if you like.

Waking up to what one isn’t is utterly mind shifting.
It’s tempting to rest in the inevitable sweet relief;
it’s tempting to assume one has attained
the ultimate wisdom.

Yet, although thought likes to tell itself otherwise,
the thrust of cellular conditioning forges on
below the limn,
obvious to everyone but oneself.

I am driven by curiosity –
especially concerning creativity and freedom.
What might I not know about this multi-layered energetic playground
called my life? An investigation was called for.

I saw how the old unconscious imprints
ran deep; how their effects can’t be denied
yet are avoided, by-passed, rationalised
by a self-idea facing sure extinction.

Have you ever unpicked knitting?
You take the single thread responsible for the fabric’s form
and simply pull. The stitches unravel with ease.
If there’s a knot, you tease it free.

Just like that: I grasped the master lie,
and pulled. Stitch by stitch the network of neurology
unravelled. Each stitch was an imprint of pain:
fear, anger or grief.

Separation ceased as each imprint was fully felt
without one word being brought to the alchemy.
(Commentary, analysis, explanation
are neither required nor helpful.)

The howling insatiability that fuelled
my craziness was slowly sated. An incomprehensible
fulfilment surfaced that has no idea what words like
sanity or insanity might mean.

These days I find it absurd to claim that I am
anything – even “That”, or “Life”, or “Nothing”.
To say “I am” is a lie, yet as a sage once observed,
“the universe is myself”.

The universe chuckles to itself:
“It was a damn good deal – an imaginary ‘me’ for an immensity!
It only cost me everything … and everything
came back, marked perfect, wondrous, eternal.”

 

“I am not, but the universe is myself.” – Shih-T’ou, A.D. 700-790

Ceramic sculpture by Haejin Lee

 

“I’m free!”


The 'me' who claims to be free is just a caged concept ...

 .

as soon as freedom is claimed

infinite potential has been abandoned

.

as soon as happiness is claimed

the joy that’s causeless has been abandoned

.

as soon as awakening is claimed

natural wideawakeness has been abandoned

.

if you want to be free

{{{ unconditionally }}}

try abandoning the mirage of ‘me’

–

The wonderful cartoon comes from Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo on Facebook

a willingness to disappear

363

analyze and adapt
diagnose and dialogue
formulate and fix
trance, track, tap:
so many ways to place
kiss-it-better
patches on the pain
of fragmentation

we call it healing
and invent new modalities by the minute
to ease the symptoms, which also
multiply by the minute, fattening the catalogue
of official psychological disorders

but until the trickster called time
is exposed and deposed
our little healings are just brief remissions
from the ache of incompleteness

to heal is to make whole

that’s why the true sages carry no band-aids
but go straight to the root of fragmentation
– time –
conjurer of the ‘me’-mirage
with its default sense of separation
and its insatiable appetite for union

they know that the ending of time
restores immeasurable wholeness
– no faith, no belief, no training required

only a willingness to disappear
into now and this and here

~

no worries, mate!

250

Problems?

Of course there are problems; isn’t that the nature of dreams?

If you wake up from a sleeping-dream which was problem-filled you say, “Oh it was only a dream, whew!”

When you wake up within the big Dream the response is the same: “Whew!”

As they say in the big Down Under: “No worries, mate!”

~

The first time I sat with Krishnamurti he asked us whether it was possible to live without problems.  Just to entertain the possibility.  What exactly is a “problem?” he asked.

Twenty years and much deliberation later, spaciousness scribbles: A problem is a thought believed to be real by another thought – the ‘me’ thought.  It’s only by inquiring into the nature of thought that one gets a grip on problems.  Or, rather, they lose their grip on the tail-chasing thinker.

Problems are as ephemeral as the ‘me’ thought.  When the dreamer wakes up to the Dream, problems are seen as Life’s creative unfolding.  There is nothing outside of this utterly mind-boggling miracle of Creation.

~

beliefs are like hookworms on the brain

147

Beliefs are like hookworms on the brain.  Firmly and deeply embedded into the bio-computer, they both feed on it and distort its functioning.

The most pervasive and destructive hookworm is the ‘me’ concept – it’s the motherworm and fatherworm in one fat wriggler.

To attempt to extricate it is to assist its replication.  It grows new heads and tails; mutates with amazing skill.

Waking up to the workings of thought is the only remedy.  When it’s seen that what one took oneself to be as an independent self-existent ‘person’ is a bundle of thoughts wearing a different barcode every time you turn around, everything changes.

It’s a seeing that’s fatal to all brainworms.

~

don’t believe me for one minute

53

this is what I found out, not from a book or a teacher,
but from looking at life without looking for a way out:

the root of all evil and of all tragedy and of all pain
is the belief in a solid, separate ‘me’

that
believes
in victims and victimizers;

that
believes
what happens should not happen;

that
believes
there is a ‘me’ to suffer;

that
believes
that a way must be found to avoid such suffering

the extent to which this might seem callous and cold
is the extent of one’s addiction to belief in
self-as-body
self-as-idea
self as something – anything

but please, don’t believe me for one minute

find out for yourself

~