truth

have you got a minute?

 

I’d like to invite you to sit down
right now,
for just one minute,
and not entertain one thought.

 

Can you do that?

 

Can you feel the coolness
that wafts through your entire
Presence
when you stop thinking?

 

Not “stop … and”
not “stop … then”
not “stop … so that”
but just stop.

 

Stop.

 

Everything you’ve ever longed for
is waiting for you
in that pause.

 

The cogs and gears of the “me project”
grind to a halt.
The engineers maintaining the scaffolding of the self
take a smoko.
The universe itself sighs,
so gladdened to see an earth angel
hold the claws of thought apart
for even one minute.

 

And every cell in your always-fully-awake body
lights up with a smile: “Now, at last,
we can bow before our own experience
and dance our destiny!”

 

You can do it.

 

It’ll only take a minute.

 

One thought-free minute equals one minute of full wideawakeness
or, one minute of intimacy with what the Buddha knew.
(Did you know that?)

 

You just need to want to meet the Truth of your life
more than you want to entertain a thought about it.

 

[entertain: v.t. Maintain (correspondence, discourse) Concise Oxford Dictionary]

Calligraphy by Jakusho Kwang, Roshi

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

 

the trick to living naturally, fully and wholly

301

Is it true that living naturally, fully, wholly,
is something that one can turn into a goal,
an ultimate state?

Some say that the moment Life is assessed
by a cognizing process
and assigned a value on a scale of how-things-should-be,
the minute Life is seen to need changing
and plans are laid to alter Life’s flow –
that’s when Life’s lost.

They claim that’s when one begins to wonder
why the marvel of living has dried up,
why one feels only half alive, why one feels as though
drowning in a sea of ‘shoulds’.

However, these are devious dualistic perspectives;
they make grand promises they cannot deliver.

The trick to living naturally, fully, wholly
is simply to embrace the Totality of Life
and realize that you are inseparable from IT.

Whatever is happening is Life’s design.

If there’s desire to change anything, that’s Life’s desire.

If there’s desire to remember the Truth, that’s Life’s desire.
If one forgets to remember, that buck stops with Life as well.

And in case a crucial little line above passed you by
I will put it here, again:

… and realize that you are inseparable from IT…

~

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.

~

r e s t . r e l a x . r e l e a s e

277

Dull sky draped over grey and textured sea.
A couple of early fishing boats buzzing about stalking their prey.
Palm fronds quiet, enjoying a rare rest on this storm-pregnant dawn.

 
Do you favor the ‘neti-neti’ (not-this, not-this) path or are you inclined towards the ‘yes-yes’ (yes to everything) approach to Truth?

I found out that it makes no difference what path one ‘signs up’ for or what one practices. Once the source of all your utterances is given space, silent unknowable knowingness is laid bare.

And IT couldn’t care less what path you take, or how diligent your practice might be; IT is utterly unaffected.
 

Rest.  Relax.  Release.

Returning to suchness is peace.

Ahhhhhh …

~

go for the guts of IT

262

What can be said about the overpopulation of the planet?  What can be said about starvation, about terrorism, about climate change?  What can be said about the spread of diseases like AIDS?

Whatever is said or imagined by thought will be the product of conceptualization – the same source that produced the problems, the questions, and that endlessly spins the solutions.  But genuine change cannot be wrought by thought’s projections, for it only knows the known, and the known is the past.  Revolution is never creative; it may be innovative, but that’s not the same as creative.  Innovation is generated by thought re-arranging what it already knows.  Is it possible for thought to find a new question?  Or can new questions only arise from That which is beyond thought?

What thought knows cannot be the Truth for Truth is changeless and unknowable.

Go for the guts of IT: find the changeless, unknowable Truth and then see what happens to the rest.

Watch in amazement as Life rises to meet ITself – with wisdom and compassion and your name on ITs ID card.

~

how sweet it is, to be just what-is!

198

Falling asleep again seems to be common enough in the early stages of the mindshift. But the fact that the dreamer eventually – via the presence of weird discomfort – remembers awake-ness, is evidence that apperception of the Truth has occurred.  The energy pattern called brain has changed irrevocably.

The tracks of the past are deep ruts; the partner (if there’s one), the old friends, are still identified with their stories, and they still feature in the daily life of the one-who-remembers.  Their stories of feelings, needs, desires, meanings, are revisited on cue.  There’s potential distraction in this, for sure.

But if I think I don’t want to be caught in this soporific trap; if I chastise myself for having fallen for it all, again; if I feel I want to be rid of everything that triggers somnolence … I stop and reach for my precious little sanity-saving question:

 .

ummmm . . . who owns that thought?

and maybe another ummmm . . . who owns that thought?

ahhhhhh . . . no one can be found!

.

How sweet it is, to be just what-is!

~