seamless intimacy

I need to tell you this before it’s too late

 

Jean-Michel Meurice, Urgell 1, 2004

 

The knowing of Knowing

is the sweetest somatic intimacy, the ultimate G[od]-spot.

It’s no wonder poets pen passionate love-notes

to their beloved Beloved.

 

It’s more evident than any revelation,

more obvious than anything observed.

Yet this seamless saturation is neither an experience

nor anything that could be called an attainment.

 

It’s prior to consciousness,

to memory, to perception, to imagination.

(I say “prior to” but I don’t mean a-p-a-r-t from.

Perhaps precursory would be a better word.)

 

How mysterious that it’s completely overlooked, ignored,

while at the same time

hungered for/longed for/searched for/worked for/studied for/meditated for/practiced for/prayed for/paid for, in time, devotion and sacrifice . . .

 

What a joke! 

No GPS can locate it.

Yet it’s inescapable.

 

I don’t need a guru, method, scripture, sledgehammer

to wake up to the fact that whatever I am

is unarguably and precisely whatever I perceive, experience, feel.

I only have to look from a silent mind.

 

To acknowledge this Knowing –

to abide as it, to act as it –

restores me to the all-inclusive immensity

I knew all along.

 

All along.

 

Since breath #1 was gasped on a summer’s morning in 1944

and these innocent eyes first opened

onto the mindscape

before

words like suffering and salvation were sown there

sprouting addictive fantasies

about enlightenment, transcendence, escape

before

I was thought-washed to believe that

the embodiment of this Knowing

would erase every discomfort and dysfunction from my experience

before

the dark net of distinctions descended

before

I learned to be clever.

 

– miriam louisa

 

 

Artwork by Jean-Michel Meurice
Urgell 1, 2004
Acrylic on fabric, 215 x 215cm
More info HERE

I love the way this work portrays the richness of our circular existence, the dance of the dreamer around the still, silent core. It’s a wonderful example of contemporary Tantric art.

 

 

It’s been a year of farewells: a brother, an artist comrade, and now another old buddy from my peer-group has gone.
Again I meet the temporality, the impermanence of this experience of being alive.
Again something rises to state the actuality of my experience – not to comfort or console, but to remind myself that everything appearing is a window onto the everlastingly unaffected.
So what?
So that whatever life dishes up has some small chance of being met with honesty and presence. So that I might be sane enough to remember that my wishes – no matter how profound – have nothing to do with what-is. So that I might see directly, act appropriately.
I’m ok with old age. The need to change anything falls away. Candles in the wind.
Yet (occasionally) (rarely these days) I’m moved to share a confession. You never can tell, it might be the last one. And there are things I want to say before I go.
Thank you for reading.

 

the birds come to my birdbath

 

Philip Sutton, The Tree, 1958

 

emelle says:

I’m a fool with little need of company.

There’s no one deemed respectable here,
so how could I demand respect?

When recognition only brings busyness,
how could I not love invisibility?

Knowing that mind is the slayer of silence
why would I want “the last word?”

Saturated by streaming aliveness
how could I be lonely?

I cherish the extraordinariness
of ordinary suchness
but few know what that looks like,
so I’ll tell you:

The birds come to my birdbath.

The dogs wag their tails
when I open my door.

My luna-lover beams at me
without reproach or expectation.

My cup runneth over
and the ants make the most of it;
they even cart off my toenail clippings.

When the tide of breath runs out
they will claim every scrap of this body
and have a banquet with the worms.

And their scats will feed the earth;
new grass will grow in the summer,
sap will rise in the trees
and they will exhale my smile.

I will be breathed back
into the fecundity of space.

Just like that.
And that’s enough for me.

 

Image: Philip Sutton, The Tree, 1958
philipsuttonra.com

 

pop goes the poseur

Three mid-winter haiku.

 

Rengetsu - Uji River Teapot Scroll ca1840

 

xxxv

winter in my hut

drafts shivering the rainbows

I sit with my tea

 

xxxvi

thoughts and thinker? wrong

thoughts-thinker-thinking: all one!

pop goes the poseur

 

xxxvii

zafu guru says

two thoughts cannot co-exist

I dive in the gap

 

Painting by Rengetsu – Uji River Teapot Scroll

Source – The Rengetsu Circle

you will not be missed

Photograph by Andy Ilachinski

 

You will not be missed by Life

– you,

a minuscule synapse in Its immeasurable web

of pulsing intelligence.

 

Yet, if you stumble wideawake into that synaptic self-

less identity – against all odds,

turning away from all cultured data-input –

Life will support you in unimaginable ways

(you will speak of Grace, you will kneel in awe)

as you flow the info-field for the fulfilment

of Its One Uncaused Thought

 

Make no mistake

you will not be missed by Life, ever.

The nano-speck of measurable matter

known by your good name

will be recycled to beneficent use

in the interest of the

Holy Whole.

 

You will not be missed by Life

Beloved

because you can never go missing,

even when you pretend to die.

 

Image by photographer and physicist Andy Ilachinski

See more of Andy’s fine work on one of my other blogs – the awakened eye

Synapse?

the shock of seamless intimacy

 
Miriam Louisa Simons: the shock of seamless intimacy

 

when the myth of separation erases itself

from the mind’s story-trove

one free-falls into a view (there’s no choice about it)

that’s viewerless

the shock of seamless intimacy is usually hair-raising

devastating, humbling

no separation! outside & inside – same!

repeat: same!

– – –

all those stories one tells oneself about oneself

and the mythical others

all those resolutions made in the aching lostness:

practice! diligence! discretion!

all those stern exclusions: the egotist, the phoney

the ignorant, the ‘evil’…

all those fantasies about embracing

some Unknowable Immensity

aye

all those comforting conclusions; certitudes acquired

along a streaming lifeline

gone – synapses wiped

– – –

only this Nothing that excludes nothing

remains, on Its knees

utterly undone

fully full

and excruciatingly sweet

– – –

 

Image source unknown. Please notify me if it’s yours, so credit can be given. Thank you.

whatever It is

Echoes from Emptiness - Black Hole 7 by Fabian Oefner

 

whatever It is
that delivers these words
(unreachable by mind’s intent)
through this form

that’s what I pray to

 

whatever It is
that cracks open this heart
(circumventing mind’s cynicism)
to bathe me in bliss

that’s what I call love

 

whatever It is
that heals this weary wounded body
(unaided by any out-sourced effort)
restoring it while I sleep, oblivious

that’s what I hold sacred

 

whatever It is
that births and sustains creation
(immeasurable by mind’s technologies)
unfindable, yet apparent wherever my senses alight

that’s what I bow down to

 

whatever It is
that is moved by grace
(which is just another word for the unwordable)
to pray, to bow, to melt into the sacred

that’s whatever It is

entertaining Itself

 

Image credit: Fabian Oefner

‘me + world’ or ‘me = world’?

'me + world' or 'me = world'? You get to decide your stand in the great Game of life.

 

everything
is either ‘for’ or ‘against’
your being free

one of my teachers sagely pointed out
that everything is definitely ‘against’

then along came another who shook
her curls and laughed:

it’s all set up for your delight!
how could you bear to miss one morsel?

they were both right of course –
it all depends on whether one’s view
is from the look-out of ‘me + world’

or ‘me = world’

in their compassion and kindness
both gave me the key
to the secret of secrets:

you get to decide which look-out you’ll accept
and which version of the Game you’ll play

you get to decide

yes

you!

 

[That’s the Game in a nutshell. Which version are you playing?]

Image source