how could you not love something like that?

I was poking around one of my favourite poetry sites recently and found some of my own lines. They had been sourced from one of my other blogs.
(Sincere nods of gratitude to the curator.)

I had quite forgotten these lines (unsurprising, since you didn’t write them, says Emptiness), and reading them again delights me. Unashamedly. So I’m sharing them here.

Echoes from Emptiness: how could you not love something like that?

how could you not love something that

never leaves you
regardless of how often you ignore it?

that’s always self-shining –
never needing flint or switch or fuel?

that never changes
regardless of the vicissitudes of your daily experience?

that never takes sides
whatever person, team or nation you’re supporting,
whatever idea or opinion you hold?

that never breaks apart
even though your life appears to?

that never minds
n-e-v-e-r m-i-n-d-s
that you spend your life running around looking for it
while it’s in your face the whole time?

how could you not love something like that?

something you can never escape,
and that’s so immanent
you are forced to accept it
as your own true identity?

how could you not then love
Y O U R S E L F ?

and everything arising
– thoughts, perceptions, memories, feelings –
within that inconceivable Self?

how could you not love that immensity which precedes
and includes all existence?

how could you not kneel at your own feet
in awe?

how could you pretend that your enlightened
heart-driven passion
was not the Great Passion of That
which holds the planets in their orbit?

how could you ignore the urge to pour
your energy and attention
into whatever opens your heart?

how?

– miriam louisa
August 2013

please take these offerings

Today – another tick in the annual count for she-who-scribbles while her spacecraft steers itself around the sun.

Sitting watching the morning star rise in the pre-dawn coolness, I thought back to this offering, which I posted exactly a year ago on this unlit light blog. It wants to be shared here. I fancy it might be my yearly birthday post, since I can’t find one word I’d change. And I need these words.

Birthdays are a good time to reflect on one’s blessings, and to offer gratitude to our friends for their kindness and thoughtfulness. I always begin my birthday with a gesture of thanks to my mother, who not only gave me the miraculous opportunity for life, but also fostered, nourished and inspired the flourishing of that life in every way possible.

Now in my eighth decade, and delighting in life regardless of its curved balls, I feel to share some of the observations that have delivered me to this joy. It’s the best I can offer; may your mind and heart be able to receive.

Miriam Louisa Simons - Offering Bowl

Life hurts.
But what you are never feels pain.

Everything changes.
But what you are remains unchanged, eternally.

You’re flat and exhausted and depressed.
But what you are is forever poised as equanimity.

You’re broke, stressed, squeezed dry, homeless and hungry.
But what you are is unaffected and impartial.

You’re smashed by disappointment, betrayal, abandonment.
But what you are is ever calm, accepting and unbroken.

You’re afflicted by physical and mental aberrations, abnormalities, imbalances.
But what you are never suffers for one second.

So what you are is clearly something with which you need to become very familiar. And it’s e-a-s-y to do so. You don’t need a formal introduction. You don’t need a manual or a map or a guide book. You don’t need to change your religion or your beliefs (although changes may well occur as a result). You don’t need a 12-step plan or a meditation practice.

What you are is more obvious and closer than the tip of your nose. It’s the one experience you can never escape, 24/7.

What would you call that? Your aliveness? Your awareness? Your presence? All these words come close, but none are ultimately true or exact. Why?

Because they aren’t yours. Or mine. Or anyone’s. Drop the personal pronoun, and there you are – radiant all-knowing alive presence. The Light of Knowingness, self-luminous, always-on, never-needing fuel or flint…

And that is what you are – free, fulfilled and flourishing as all you conceive, perceive and experience. All of it.

How wondrous that this is possible – that this primordial awareness is huge enough to hold the entirety of creation, excluding nothing – yet be unaffected and unmoved by any expression of its handmaiden, consciousness.

It is truly The Beloved, the Godhead of the saints and sages and poets.

And it is what you are.

Image – Bowl, Miriam Louisa Simons, Japanese washi, threads, cardboard

plus ça change…

The ingenious wizards at WordPress have shifted things around again. They no longer offer a sampling of blogs using the themes they offer – a pity, imho, as it’s always interesting to see the way a variety of bloggers turn a particular theme into a personal platform for their writing.

The changes mean this little blog is no longer featured as a “great blog using the Manifest Theme.” Overnight the stats shrank like unmentionables doused in a shower of icy water.

There’s a sense of relief that the folk who turn up here nowadays are more likely to be interested in the content of this blog rather than its theme and design. Yet this is mingled with gratitude that the exposure generated by the WP link may have delivered a few web-wanderers – who might otherwise have scooted on by – to these pages.

When all is said and done, all that remains is emptiness. And emptiness is not about to be silenced. So if you are a stalwart subscriber to this blog, fear not. She-who-transcribes-the-downloads isn’t about to clock off because she’s been sidelined by WP. She thrives on anonymity, and it’s a constant source of amazement to her that Life makes sure her offerings land exactly where they are able to be received.

Nothing, nothing is required of her but to offer what’s given.

And she wryly observes that the Changeless remains – well – unchanged.

plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

Image source.

when the colour drains from life

Echoes from Emptiness: when the colour drains from life

my tail waggeth not

yet this crazy Love’s still here –

how mysterious!

you’d think it would flee

when the colour drains from life

but it just flows on

flows on – in and through

ev’rything thought, felt and known:

my refuge, my Love!

“crazy Love”? – what else can I call this Unknowable Presence that is not-other; that embraces ALL in its theatre of awareing, without preference or judgement; that isn’t a feeling, emotion or experience, yet makes these knowable; that is here, ever here, throughout the days and nights of this life I deceitfully call ‘mine’, yet know to be ITs own?

Image source

game. set. match.

match. set. game. Photo: Shutterstock

One of the most prevalent and persistent myths swirling around the concept of awakening, is that those who have been obliterated by the irreversible EUREKA are instantly and henceforth rendered exempt from all the trials of the flesh that plague “the unenlightened”.

The mind loves to employ this fantasy to critique even the sagest of sages. (“How could someone like a Krishnamurti or a Ramana become a victim of cancer?”) But more sneakily, it turns its scorn upon one’s own delicate understanding.

It loves to hold up one’s (so-called) unattractive qualities – one’s addictions, physical ailments and emotional irruptions as proof that one hasn’t understood anything of import. Really.

What sport it is to watch and listen to this chattering, taunting, would-be bully. For a while you return the volleys. But it doesn’t take long to realise it’s a game without end and you grow bored – you know the score already.

So you serve your Ace straight up.

You simply ask whether the rock-solid immensity of Awareness is being affected, in any way, by whatever is coming at it.

The answer is always the same.

Game. Set. Match.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Ramana Maharshi

In tennis, an ace is a legal serve that is not touched by the receiver, winning the point. – Wikipedia

Image: Shutterstock

on “spiritual inquiry” – be warned

Echoes from Emptiness - Image credit: Jaypee Online - Flickr

if you endlessly ponder

your seeming lack of enlightenment

(the proof of; the reasons for; the need to overcome)

your life appears to be unenlightened

and is experienced accordingly

if, for one instant, you stop your pondering

the Real is found to be already and always there

(luminous; changeless; already perfect)

and your life, in that instant, IS enlightenment

and is experienced accordingly

you don’t need to seek or strive or supplicate

you don’t even need to understand or accept or believe

you just need to slow down

get really quiet

and stop

how cool is that?

Image credit: Jaypee Online – Flickr

this mysterious morphing me

Echoes from Emptiness: this mysterious morphing me

‘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

image source

Share:

Like this:

Share:

Like this:

Share:

Like this:

Share:

Like this:

Share:

Like this:

Share:

Like this:

Share:

Like this: