SOMEWHERE, IN ISLE 17
~* The whole of it all is sometimes overwhelming when the reality of being suddenly presents.
Whilst sitting here to perhaps write something, the title above popped into my head and evoked a smile of recognition related to a recent errand to buy some light bulbs in town; it touches subtly on aware living, on how the whole of it all is sometimes overwhelming when the reality of being suddenly presents. It’s normal, but never routine. We’re moved in and by presence to enjoy this non-thing that’s non-wordable; this apparent Creation that’s like an immense mega-store.
One enters (having never left) this non-experience, curiously looking at something real and simple as a light bulb, and is transported by wonder into the whole brilliance of it all; one wanders playfully in delight here – somewhere in aisle 17!
~* In truth, in reality, it’s all good. Life itself, lived well and truly, is purposeless. These days, there’s a lot less contemplative reading, dreaming and scheming; the inner workings are less personal, less ‘me’, less ‘memory’; there’s a lingering urge to relate and write intimately, directly, plainly and simply from one’s living experience. It’s all about nothing and everything, really.
In aware living, the lights are on, one is home, and there is no want, no place to go, no plan; one lives in surprise and wonder, in listening, learning and not-knowing. Living is tentative; I seem to drift and flow slowly along with the breath, sniffing, sipping, and savoring the delicate substance of this moment. And responding or not, appropriately. I’m sipping a warm green tea over by the window; a waning morning sun is peeking through soft cotton clouds; there’s a wondering and a few inner reflections inspiring one to write a little about stillness, from stillness; to go a little deeper into this resonant knowing we may call awareness. Seems more like love, yes.
I’ll start here and end here, not knowing where I’m going. There’s a quote note at my elbow that seems like it really came from me; it seems it was said to me, by me, even though I know that it was said by Jean Klein, apparently. While it may lack poetic expression, its prosody nonetheless touched profoundly as it sits huddled with other trail notes fading in the light.
I’m urged and invited to do something with that note now. Or perhaps I’ll just leave it to ripen and mellow here on the sunny windowsill, and see what happens to happen – in truth, one lives in a constant not-knowing; there’s an abiding curiosity that – whatever happens – there is no control and no controller, no knowing and, in fine, no knower. So all that’s appearing with these exploratory motions and word wavings here is a mystery that’s unknown and unborn because unseen – a murmuring that’s simply arising out of this empty air of consciousness:
“Our absence is presence.”
In presence, one is moved from the personal, death, nihilism, and knowing to non-personal, not-knowing, being, and life.
Non-duality is all about living, not faux living, with its personalization of experience and its mind-made problems, pains, conflicts, and confusions. It’s about an ever-deepening exploration of non-personal living in fidelity to reality. It’s about moving beyond conceptual knowing to broader perceptual recognition, to unknowing, growing, and out-growing. It’s about living openly and lovingly, watching what is, as it is, as it happens.
The nihilism (mind’s idea of Nothing) encountered in some supposedly ‘non-dual’ expressions is it seems, like traveling by rail and stopping at a brain, er, train station that some of us get stuck in – I spent a while in one just outside Doomsville! One is daily moved into a maturing recognition of that which one IS – infinite aware beingness. That being, true to life, it includes death, and that death is about the relative finite, the born, material, body/mind, not the unborn, absolute infinite, which one ultimately is. It seems one must be moved beyond body and belief, mind and its pretensions of knowing – to the direct recognition that one is in fact aware of being aware, now, and to rest content in not knowing what one is, there being no knower.
I post this note with respect and regard for the exquisite curiosity, poise, and posture that spirit takes on in openly, lovingly, finding one’s non-personal self in unknowing – in daily living here – and to share what continues to be useful, like a flashlight, to deepen further one’s insight beyond the accumulated social residues of body/brain consciousness to reveal one’s infinitely subtle being-nature of pure peace, beauty, love, and joy.
Love, be well, and B Y O A – Be Your Own Authority.
