wonderment

memo to mind

Dear team-member:

 

It has come to our notice that you’ve been indulging

in speculation, prediction,

definition and generalisation

about

what it will be/is like after “awakening” occurs,

how to recognise an “awake” human being,

and even the degree of your own “awakening.”

 

 In other words, you’ve been snoozing on the job

and entertaining yourself in an indisious dream

in which you assume some kind of god-identity

and dish out judgement.

 

Not good teamwork, comrade Mind!

 

Speculation only serves to separate,

and we all know this team is a seamless unit;

seamless, spacious and silent.

 

What is your life about, anyway?
Nothing but a struggle to be someone.
Nothing but a running from your own silence.
– Rumi

 

We note that you get very edgy around silence.

(Your earnest claim of being no one

shatters silence as effectively as any “struggle to be someone.”)

 

Arthur Boyd, Sleeping Woman with Dragonfly and Watching Figure, c.1964

 

Dear comrade,

have you noticed

the iridescent miracle

hovering at the window of wonderment?

 

Are you aware

of the Beloved’s presence,

eyes bloodshot from its sleepless lifelong vigil?

 

Have you marvelled

at the way the life-stream flows on, inevitably,

without minding (without minding).

 

– – –

 

Please reconsider your function and report back.
Thank you.  You are a valued member of the team.

 

Arthur Boyd (1920 – 1999), Sleeping Woman with Dragonfly and Watching Figure c.1964
Pastel on paper, 48.5 x 63.0 cm

Apologies to Arthur Boyd for hijacking his artwork for poetic purposes.

 

on turning seventy three

 

alone in my hut

[no one here to invent me]

eyeballing emptiness

 

Rainbow Lorikeet hovering by Trevor Andersen

 

Seventy three missions

around the sun and not

one thing of worldly value

to show for it.

 

No savvy safety-nets:

investment portfolios, insurance policies,

plans A, B and C.  I walk the way

of not-knowing and wonderment.

 

Lofty notions of enlightenment, bliss,

exalted understanding have no buyer here;

I’ll take this uninvited, serene,

free and priceless fulfilment.

 

See, today I heard the air sing

as it danced through the rainbow wings

of a Lorikeet suspended

in space.

 

Today I watched cumulonimbus

massing in the west, those

sculpted edges alive with flaming gold

as the sun went down.

 

Tonight, as dusk fell

bringing cool relief to the sweating forest

I giddily inhaled a draught

laden with night-scented Jessamine.

 

And it is enough. Whatever may lie ahead

for this beloved bag of bones

the simple sensuous joy of being Presence

 

is enough.

 

Rainbow Lorikeet hovering. Photograph by Trevor Andersen.

alive . aware . presence

Miriam Louisa Simons - Breathscribe series: I am here, detail

 

This year
on the day they call Christmas
Team Emelle wakes up
wondrously severed
from its culture’s insidious story
about stars and shepherds
wise men, stables and saviours.

 

Team Emelle is curiously deaf
to the seductive calls
of collective consciousness
to make of this date something special.
It greets the day with a deep bow,
celebrating its everyday sanctity
with gratitude and wonderment.

 

It tends the Great Light
known as Primordial Wisdom Awareness
(as befits its Dharma name, Yeshe)
with its own private rituals
custom-created
on its unique journey
through time’s long now.

 

It tends creation’s original Word
by sitting,
breathing,
in solitary, silent, stillness.
Breath is its prayer
and its practice.
Breath.

 

It tends the manger
in the Heart’s stable
– the soul’s sanctuary –
where the ever newly-born,
uncorrupted
Child
dwells in comfort and safety.

 

Team Emelle doesn’t buy
into the marketplace mindset.
It knows of only one present sure
to give happiness and joy,
one (omni)present that can’t be bought,
wrapped, given or owned…

 

a l i v e  .  a w a r e  .  p r e s e n c e

 

Artwork by Miriam Louisa Simons – Breathscribe series: I am here, detail.

Since the Miriam Louisa composite is made up of of many characters, to say nothing of 37.2 trillion cells and a roughly equal population of bacteria, I have come to think of it as Team Emelle.
Emelle = ML
ML = Miriam Louisa
All smiling and bowing at you right now!

Primordial Wisdom Awareness is also known as The Great Perfection

spidermind at the clothesline

 

Echoes from Emptiness: St Andrews Cross Spider from www.thisisaustralia.com.au

 

three dark nights she toiled
throwing a silken mooring-line to the backyard clothesline

three bright mornings she watched it break
as the washing was hung out to dry

next night she cast her thread at the picket fence
and in the morning, strong and secure
raised a cocky eyebrow as I came with my basket

I laughed and I bowed to her –
eight-armed embodiment of the mind of creativity

–

 

ps

Instructions for Living A Life:

Pay Attention.
Be Astonished.
Tell About It.

– Mary Oliver

 

if there’s no ‘there’ out there…

Meditating Woman - sculpture by Dorothy Frankel

 

I keep on checking
but I always fail to find
a ‘within’ or ‘out there’
apart from thoughts in mind

 

so how can I ‘go within’
to ‘nurture’ the Immeasurable
or ‘cultivate’ it in the world
when ‘world’ and ‘me’ are inseparable?

 

if there’s no ‘there’ out there
(and this isn’t hard to see)
the buck stops right here
in this matrix called ‘me’

 

with nowhere to go
and nowhere to hide
no inner, outer, higher or lower
the heart can open wide

 

can kiss each wondrous moment
with a love that can’t be taught
the only way you’ll stop it
is to entertain a thought

 

~

Sculpture: Meditating Woman by Dorothy Frankel

 

proving nonduality

 

Echoes from Emptiness: Painting by Kazuaki Tanahashi

 

machine-mind (programmed for conclusions and certitude) asks:

how can you prove oneness, wholeness, nonduality?

 

fully defragged matrix-mind replies:

simply by failing to find proof of separation

 

[your ultimate and assured defeat in this quest
cancels all the questions
and leaves you blinking
in wonderment:
 
O M G
O N L Y
T H I S !
 

Painting by Kazuaki Tanahashi, at ‘the awakened eye’

wonder, creativity and wonderment

339

wonder births questions
questions birth creativity
creativity births wonderment

The cycle of creation begins with wonder

What exactly wonders?
Not ‘me’, not ‘you’!
Life Itself wonders, and billions of bubbles of sentience (felt as ‘I’-ness) explore its questions in billions of different ways.

The questions will always generate creativity in one form or another, but it takes a ripening awareness for creativity to birth wonderment.

Whose ripening awareness?
Not ‘mine’, not ‘yours’!
It’s a natural ripening without subject or object, without knower or known; a flowering that’s conclusion-free and that operates outside of time.

~