A contemplative portrait of stillness, happened upon.
Like a quiet country pond edged with silvery trees in winter and stumbled upon early in the morning light, this stillness speaks not with words but with its silence; with its grace in subtly, simply, suddenly, being. A being that is but is not personal, and which cannot be known by the limited sentient body/mind.
Being is inspired with itself – with its infinite existence; it’s a profound mutual appreciation of itself, of all that’s manifesting now and arising in and from this ground of pure potential. Being is ‘creation’ – life itself; it is always and only spontaneously beheld, without a beholder.
These old hands pause; in midstream the fingers gently stroke the keys and mind pokes about for the right word-symbols with their subtle color, tone and tenor that might portray and touch upon the fullness of this wordless moment. This living awareness as it is, plain and simple.
Breathing is slow, protracted, soft; there’s a lingering insight – inner and outer – a moving, attentive praise and affection that’s expanding across, over and into this silent pond of being. There’s a listening and a clear recognition that this silence includes, but is not limited too, the presence of phenomenal activity…thoughts, feelings, sights, sounds and sensations. There’s a resting in the noumenal, the source and substance of being, so to speak.
All thisness is met with curiousity, with unknowing, with wonder and mild delight. All is seen in affectionate awareness as what is – fragile and perishable, arising here, passing here, living here, only.
There are no words, no ways to portray, this that is, but to say, to point, to gesture and to suggest that one sincerely turn away from all belief, from all of minds’ conflicted knowing; from these and all words about the known, and to fully stop and be embraced by this vastness, this mystery.
To be, and not know what that is. To love, and not know what that, or anything, is. To be surrendered in innocence, empty and still before the void – the unknown – and to allow wonder to present.
There’s no vain contemplation, no attempted formulation about creation, no presumptive communication about this that one actually is… except to draw ones’ breath in love and awe, and in that same breath, at once, fall into the silence of an alert and alive awareness from which all arises, and into which all dissolves, apparently.
Herein lies beauty, peace and joy beyond the personal, beyond the knower and the known, beyond all comprehension and expression. Reality beyond all portraying.
In that silence, there is a certain knowing. Love. 🙂
~ In other words and pictures:
Soul receives from soul that knowledge, therefore not by book
nor from tongue.
If knowledge of mysteries come after emptiness of mind, that is
illumination of heart.
~Rumi
* photo by Cheryl Lister. Thanks Cheryl. 🙂
