294
the dream and its awareing
appear to be two
but can one exist
without the other?
try as I might
I can’t extricate myself from
either, and I ask myself:
how can I believe in two
when I fail to find even one?
~
the undoing
the chooser is a cartoon character
289
Apparently the Buddha said
The Great Way is not difficult, only avoid choosing.
The difficulty isn’t in the choosing or the not-choosing.
It’s in the notion that a separate *chooser* entity exists.
But choices arise spontaneously and choices are made spontaneously.
Assuming the existence of one-who- chooses,
when such an entity cannot be found,
creates the pits and potholes on the Way.
Believe in a self that can choose,
or a self that cannot choose,
and you’ll find the Way impossibly fraught.
The only way I found to “avoid choosing” was to track down the chooser. At some point on this hunt, I found that the chooser is a clever cartoon character dreamed up by a team of very creative fellow cartoon characters – the merry members of the local Think Tank. When they were seen for what they are, they shuffled back into the cartoon.
The naked light of Awareness that KNEW all this merriment turned out to be incapable of ever making a choice, yet it never fails to get everything exactly right!
~
wild wideawakeness isn’t a partial or incremental affair
281
Wild wideawakeness isn’t a partial or incremental affair. (Perception is always partial, apperception is holistic.)
Awakening can be a bit like falling through the bottom of a long-drop into an ocean of crystal-clear brilliance.
At some point the long-drop and its contents are seen to be all you thought you were as a separate self – a person with characteristics, a history and a future.
And all of it – all of it – is seen as a wondrous manifestation of Awareness.
Awareness, fundamental and infinitely creative
is the ‘I’ that knows both the long-drop
and the oceanic clarity
as It-self.
~
[long-drop? This may be a term unique to the lands downunder, where it’s what we call an outdoor pit toilet.]
in truth there is no other
279
Can old friendships survive this mind-shift?
The ‘person’ I appear to be, is a story in the mind of a sentient creature, and that creature cannot help but assemble its version of ‘me’ according to its conditioning.
Its conditioning determines acceptance or rejection as a ‘friend’ and is the brain’s device for determining those things – including people – that will comfort it, agree with it, support its survival. In short, what we commonly call friendship is a fantasy. If my friendship is determined by such needs it’s not a genuine relationship at all.
Wild wideawakeness shines an uncompromising light on such dissembling. Some friendships fall away naturally, some survive because at root they are story-free, or because the stories are recognized for what they are.
When the fantasy aspect of friendship has melted away along with all other fantasies, the stage is swept clean and there is room for true relating to occur. One-in-One.
It makes no difference whether the friend understands this savage wisdom or not. For in Truth there is no other who could be called a friend.
~
the perfect Lover is infinitely patient
278
The One that you are, and that everything is,
is eternal and ubiquitous
subject-without-object:
Self naked
and unconditioned.
no-thing-what-so-ever
Are you still seeking that One?
Still doing sadhana?
Still believing you steer your Lifeboat?
Still thinking you make your own choices?
Cool.
no-thing-what-so-ever
has no preferences
and as the perfect Lover
is infinitely patient.
~
whole and holy! halleluiah!
266
The penny slipped through a crack in the basket-case I used to take for ‘me’. It fell, spinning like a dervish – one side chasing the other in the cosmic dance of dualism. And eventually, obeying the laws of entropy, it ran out of momentum and stopped.
It came to rest in the Real, the changeless,
where both its sides are equally true and valid.
It came to rest in the Real, which had been its home all along,
and it knew as much.
It knew it had never,
in spite of all its spinning and spending,
ever for one nanosecond left the Real,
because the Real is one without a second,
the Real is all there is,
the Real is totality, wholeness.
Whole! Holy!
What a gobsmacker to realize that the two-sided penny called duality,
with all its stories, is inseparable from the Real.
Neither is the basket-case.
All Holy! Halleluiah!
~
the best way forward is sometimes to stop
265
It was on the eve of a new year that she-who-scribbles sat in the throne room at the rainforest monastery and asked any deities who might be lurking and listening to reveal the way ahead.
What happened? Nothing. Empty spacious silence roared through the room. An hour or so later the gong sounded for lunch.
.
.
En route back to her room, her right knee – the location of an old injury – exploded into a fury of crippling pain that would take six months to heal and would eventually need surgery.
Quite literally, she was knee-capped by the universe: 2002 was the year of the big bang!
Hobbled and humbled, it wasn’t long before what had happened in the knee played itself out in the brain.
Gratitude to all those deities, the non-local ones, who couldn’t help but be lurking and listening, and who couldn’t help but help.
Lesson: The best way forward is sometimes to stop. If one can’t or won’t, no problem. Grace will step in and sort it.
~
image source: Chenrezig Monastery, Eudlo, Queensland
echoes from emptiness 