‘me’ is a mystery
to myself and to the world
of teeming memies
it morphs on-demand
to become … whatever is
projected-then-perceived
it’s a shape-shifter
expert nanodrama artist
in cunning disguise
but no such mystery
shrouds the changeless One called ‘I’
right here, always ON
Creation’s unblinking eye
awakening from sleep
awareness arrays a new-born world
splashes face
gropes for zafu
settles butt, folds legs
inhales the fragrant flowering gums
chuckles with the kookaburra
trembles with the palm fronds
sips steaming green tea
disappears into a silence
that senses every tone and texture
breathes – is breathed
marvels, that
not one scientist, philosopher or sage
can explain how any of this can possibly occur
on an exquisite pulsing rock
awhirl in a numinous space –
a space inseparable from
the immense, immeasurable awareness
in which it all appears
Image source – Parallax
140
Many traditional spiritual advisors love to dangle the ‘Mystery’ carrot in front of their flock – always, of course, just out of range and reach.
We go for it with our customary (and sanctioned) appetite for spiritual must-haves. We love a good mystery and in the spiritual stakes this one is particularly attractive. Awe and adulation descend and before we know it we’re on our knees begging for all to be revealed.
But mystery is just another red herring put out by mind’s concept-canning factory; a conceptual stand-in for what we honestly hunger – our real and changeless Self, which just happens to be the most immediate, intimate and non-mysterious marvel that we insist on overlooking.
Here IT is. IT’s never been anywhere but here, closer than one’s breath. Yet we crave the carrot!
Can mystery be found outside of mind’s ideas about it? If it’s only a product of the imagination then perhaps we should call it mystory rather than mystery.
Mystery and mystory. Alan Watts would have called them a “goeswith”.
~
21
I seek a shift in common language,
a way to say what is actually meant
I speak of I, but don’t mean I
as a thing
I speak of it as that (mystery)
which manifests function and
process
I speak of I as ‘It’
but this ‘It’ is no-thing either, yet thought
would instantly turn it into a thing in
time and space
I as ‘It’ occupies neither time nor
space, yet – magician that it is –
manifests both in order to
show up for the party
I as ‘It’ is never caught napping;
ever-present ‘I’ is an eternal insomniac,
resting as unknowable Knowingness
and wideawake – to the n
~
echoes from emptiness 