surrender

my tuppence-worth

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 (Miriam Louisa)

Tuppence in her pram: Well then. What’s this all about?

 

What does the “God” word mean for you?

The Unknowable

dressed up and dancing as the knowable.

…

Is Consciousness all there is?

I don’t know.

I can only say it’s all I ever experience.

…

But what knows the contents of Consciousness?

You’ll never find it.

(You’ll never escape it either.)

…

What is “enlightenment”?

An idea those who believe they are not already fully alight

like to entertain.

…

“Already fully alight” – how can one know that?

It can’t be known.

It’s quietly evident when all hunger for knowing drops away.

…

Can there be a partial or ‘damaging’ awakening?

Presence is already perfectly and completely just so.

But ideas about it can be experienced as wrong/bad/incomplete.

…

The sages say the observer is the observed. How is that so?

I’ve spent a lifetime on this koan…

I only ever experience all-inclusive observing.

…

Is there an Almighty God?

Too constricted and limited a notion, I’d say.

How about an Unlimited and Almighty Godding?

…

Is it true there’s “only One”?

From the perspective of Presence,

One is one too many.

…

Is there a purpose to life?

I ask Life. It grins:

Get onstage – it’s The Full Monty and you’re the star!

…

What is death?

That’s easy because I’ve been across and had a look.

It’s a little side-step, from one theatre into another.

…

Is it true that thoughts create reality?

Reality transcends thinking entirely.

However, thoughts and beliefs determine the quality of experience.

…

Is life a dream?

Maybe.

We’d know if we could find a dreamer.

…

What is surrender?

Abdication. Effortless, voluntary relinquishment

of the ME-project.

…

Is the world an illusion?

If it is

you’re the magician.

…

What’s the difference between illusion and delusion?

Illusion is the mirage in the desert;

delusion is believing it’s real.

…

Is there anything sacred?

Nothing knowable

could ever be sacred.

…

Is it true that “I am That?”

No.

You are the glorious “am”.

…

Are there any true concepts?

I don’t know

any.

…

Is there any valid aspiration / intention?

Yes.

K I N D N E S S

…

What is freedom?

Being 100% present as the capacity for passionate engagement with life

and not minding what happens.

…

What brings your greatest fulfilment?

Nothing ever brings fulfilment.

It’s one’s natural state when there’s no need of fulfilment.

…

And your deepest peace?

S I L E N C E

(no contest)

…

Do you have any plans?

The GPS is set to nth – now! this! here!

Presence is driving.

…

What is Grace?

The Beloved

sneaking up for a kiss.

…

What are you?

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!]

the God game

How to play.

 
[Since participation isn’t optional, and there’s no Players’ Manual provided, what can one do but invent a good story?]
 

1

Go hide yourSelf [aka Primordial Awareness, Divine Light, Truth, Reality, Original Self, Godhead…] from view – somewhere so obvious and so simple, it’s guaranteed to be overlooked.

2

Call the shadow cast by your hidden self-shining Light “world”: an infinite array of mirrors reflecting every imaginable experience; a mind-field so intricate it can entertain for lifetimes…

 

Mirror Room (after Da Vinci)

 

3

Forget you had any part in this arrangement [crucial, repeat, crucial] and set out into the “world”, wearing an infinity of cunning disguises, to find yourSelf again.

4

Spend as much time as needed [i.e. aeons of now-ness] entertaining and satiating your seeker-self and eventually

5

stop.
shut up.
surrender and fall

back

 

down

 

in

 

and there,
which is now-here,
beyond time and space
behind the mirrors
out of your mind

 

meet yourSelf as your every perception
thought
and
feeling

 

love yourSelf as the font and the fabric
of this seething, sensuous
and wholly divine
dance

 

know yourSelf
– your own dear flawed and fantastic self –
as the Light
you hid so darned effectively
it took a lifetime of forgetting

before you could remember

again

 

Image: Mirror room built for the Da Vinci, the Genius traveling museum exhibition, based on one of his sketches. The mirror room was just an idea for Da Vinci, a way to see all around an object (or one’s self); the technology of his day couldn’t come close to creating mirrors of this size. I wonder if he fully realised what the experience of being in such a room would be like, the dizzying way reflections of your reflection would stretch off to infinity… did he perhaps reflect upon the all-inclusive Awareness in which this immense view appeared?

Source

 

raking rocks on the emptiness allotment

 

what I’ve noticed
since the free-fall into foolishness
is that
only a phantom called ‘me’
with its program of personal purpose
and its visions of attainment
– whether altruistic or mundane –
could demand of Life
(when the shit hits the fan)

but why?

why me?

?

Echoes from Emptiness: Ingo Leth: the spirit of zen, 2011, acrylic paint on linen

a space-filled nobody
(the absence of a ‘me’body)
makes no demands;
it doesn’t mind what happens

it has no agenda beyond
the health and well-being of the organism
(all organisms actually)
and no fantasies of an improved future

it just streams on regardless
from now to now to now
often wearing a quiet smile
and surreptitiously
inviting
more playmates to rake rocks
on the emptiness allotment

(the home base, dears,
of radical activism)

Painting by Ingo Leth

dear disappointment

 
Well hello there Disappointment! You’ve been on my mind of late. I’ve been reflecting on how your gracious appearances in my life were usually both misunderstood and unappreciated. And I reckon I owe you an apology. It’s a bit late coming, but since you are surely impervious to expectation I doubt that will bother you too much.

This morning these words lined up unbidden. They made me smile; I thought you might like to read them.
 

Echoes from Emptiness - Johannes Vermeer: A Lady Writing, detail

 

dear disappointment

 

your thumping Grace opened up
a view without a viewer
a life without an agenda
a heart at home in its hallowed holiness

 

your diamond-edged scalpel
shaved clean the fluff and fantasy
called “me-myself-mine”
excising my every erudite question
leaving no trace –

 

not even a shadow of ‘understanding’
survives

 

nothing
a phantom could claim as ‘I am’
or even I am not

 

you turned me towards your ruthless kindness
revealing every betrayal and abuse
every heart-break and aching longing
to be an instant portal
to the eye-popping Knowing
that is unknowable

 

beyond, so utterly beyond,
where every word is empty, hollow, meaningless
untrue
and all there is to do is giggle
at this glorious ever-unfurling
suchness

 

are you not the supreme guide and guru?
is there a faster track to seamless intimacy
with the everyday world of multiplicity?
could there be a greater blessing than your quiet interest
in our stumblings towards the light?

 

take me!
oh have me so completely
that true vulnerability is birthed

 

yours

 

truly

 

. . .

Image: Johannes Vermeer: A Lady Writing, detail.

Source – Artmight.com

the great escape routine

352

[From a letter to a friend.]

For decades I had read, been taught, and believed that the Real, by definition, must be omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent.  But I still believed it was something objective that I had to find, attain or ‘receive’.

What I had to do, I thought, was find where ‘it’ was hiding – or more to the point – why my perception couldn’t perceive ‘it’.  Which sounds easy, but dozens of years were spent traipsing around the spiritual circuit without getting one millimeter closer to my quarry.

It was a light-bulb moment for me when it sunk in that if the Real was totally accessible to me (and everyone), perhaps I should persistently ask myself

What’s the one thing I can’t get away from?  Ever?

And there it was – here it is.  Inescapably intimate.  Closer than my heartbeat.

Whenever protest or confusion arose, I’d just switch over to the Great Escape Routine again.  And laugh myself silly.

Well, you do have to laugh, don’t you?  Imagine.  All those years of seeking and sadhana, of surrender and self-inquiry, and here I am, prisoner of the Presence that I am.

Prisoner of the real dinkum Real.

~

grace is my undoing

231

More musings on Grace:  The ‘something’ that happens to return me to now, to Life, is usually something I want least.  I mean, who would welcome pain and immobility?  Who would sign up for surrender of career, colleagues and culture?

We love to welcome Grace in its function as provider of pleasant surprises and serendipities.  But Grace can also bring unpleasant surprises.

 *

Grace is function and fire.
Grace is Life’s creative dynamism.
Grace is Life on the return loop of Its journey.

Grace is what undoes ‘me.’

*

Sitting later today.  The sun is hotter, the shadows shorter; traffic noise is louder, but drowned out by a raucous conversation being held outside my window.

Four flying rainbows called lorikeets are in a dispute with one huge kookaburra:  What a drama!  What a racket!  You’d think a flock of fifty birds was out there, but no, only five.  First class Australian citizens . . . (only joking!)

~

image source

everything is inescapably IT

178

“Thy will be done.”

I’ve been thinking about this little cluster of words lately.  Taken in the Biblical sense it no longer makes much sense, for “Thy” presumes the presence of a God-power (modeled on human attributes, naturally) who has designs on the life of the supplicant.  Like all other godly notions, “Thy” is just a projection of mental fantasy.  And “… will be done” presumes the existence of a temporal future.  But all dimensions of time – including space, are also projections.  That’s what intellect tells me.  But then there’s the problem of Grace.

Maybe the magical movement I conceptualize as Grace is what the ancient Biblical scribes called God.  Maybe the God notion was anthropomorphized over time and set in stone as an object that wielded Grace.

When the echoes murmur about “giving Grace space” perhaps the essence is not so different from the surrender implied in “Thy will be done.”  But if I say “Thy will be done” I don’t refer to an object of any kind. Neither ‘Thy’ nor ‘will’ are objects but dynamics.  Perhaps we could say “Will is happening” but this still implies the existence of some kind of pre-planned divine choreography.  Which is all very well, but pretty pointless because there’s no way the immensity of IT would ever be accessible to our small minds.

It’s all good grist for the mind-mill.  Breathing in and breathing out, the mill grinds to a halt.  Aaahhhhh…

IT graces the spacious silence.  Everything sensed, conceived, imagined, is inescapably IT.

“IT, happening!”  sums up the existence story pretty nicely for me these days.

~