Tag Archives: experience

birthday poem

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In this uncreated emptiness

- an unfurling, unfolding
energy-locus trembling with
sensations so varied
they appear to hold
no common currency -

experience swings

from melting tenderness
and wide-eyed wonder
to the creaking pain
of bodybits worn and stressed
(there’s a tutu pirouetting
on satin points in one scene;
stomping across the stage
leaden-hoofed in another)

In this uncreated emptiness

there’s a seeing, a knowing
a luminous awareing of every tonality
and every texture
every nuance of light and shade
shimmer and flicker
conspiring to create an apparent world

there’s an immaculate stillness
unchanging, unmoving, unaffected
by the stories told by
pleasure, pain or perfection

there’s a brilliant beingness
in which every dance
listed in life’s repertoire
is danced by be the one

whirling
crazy lover
inexhaustibly romancing its insatiable
self

emelle says:
off with the training-wheels,
away with the Zimmer-frame
I raise my glass to Life!

Beloved, let this heart beat long enough
to whirl a few more orbits of the sun
dissolving, giddy and swooning, into your arms
which are
none other
than
my own

~ miriam louisa

mind can fake it up to a point

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At the end of the day, you will reach a point of knowing that there is nothing to learn and nothing to experience.  However, there is something that makes itself known to you, and in that realization there begins a slow loosening of the habit that has you pretending to be what you are not.

Whatever your experience is of what you are, this is but a playful unfolding taking place within the totality of what you really are.

Mind can fake it up to a point; it creates the most subtle experiences.  Do not stop at experiences and do not stop with any conclusion.

The moment you think you have spiritual knowledge or that you know how it works, identity is present, mind is active, and further identification is taking place.  How does one know when mind is involved?  Simply because the mental capacity always has a personal agenda.  With real discovery, Silence is beyond description, the personal “I” is nowhere,  nothing can be said, there is nothing to be said.

~ Jac O’Keeffe
A selection from Born To Be Free

“… nothing to be said.”  Yet we look forward to Jac’s new book-in-progress, and send heartfelt prayers for her speedy recovery.

Post Script July 28, 2011 – Jac’s new book will be titled ‘From Awakening to Liberation.’
You can sneak a preview  of Chapter 3, Desire, at Non-Duality America blog.

the biggest mistake

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Sometimes the sweet synchronicity of life is enough to render one speechless.  I’ve commented several times about how Awareness – aka Freedom, Beloved, Reality, Truth, or whatever your pet word for IT might be – excludes nothing, and I mean nothing.  Surprisingly, perhaps, an opening, a softening towards this unknowable essence seems to relax one’s default defenses and allow some pretty challenging stuff to surface.  Not that it must be ‘dealt with’ or analyzed or healed or anything – that doesn’t occur to one. The stuff comes up, it’s allowed – without a story unfolding – tears flow or not, and it all vaporizes.  It can be heavy, but Awareness remains unmoved.

What changes, in terms of one’s experience, is this: the relationship with what arises from within, or what is dealt from without, is radically different.  Suffering simply doesn’t occur, because there are no preferences being trotted out.  And it seems that the more one’s default position is that of quietly resting as pure undivided Awareing, the sweeter, easier and calmer life becomes.  (Well, it always was thus, but we were too busy organizing it to notice.)

So I’ve always been slightly mystified by those who claim that this utterly natural state somehow obliterates the undesirable bits of human experience.  They write or speak of attributes like love and compassion and bliss – which they often prescribe practices to develop.  Is it even logical to consider developing that which is already utterly natural? I’m not sure which part of the goose isn’t cooked for such folk, but they haven’t got to the stuffing yet.  So when this little gem arrived from Jax I took out my cheering pompoms and did a little dance.  No, I wasn’t photographed – unseemly for a woman of a certain age … chuckles …

But the biggest mistake that almost all practitioners and teachers make is to think that when one is in Awareness, that one will have a pleasurable, peaceful, spacious state free of uncomfortable emotions, ego and confused thoughts.

Actually Awareness has no content of its “own”.  It is not bliss. It is not clarity.  It is not love.  It is not peace.  It is not compassion.  But it is present in all of those as well as every other possible experience equally.
~ Jackson Peterson

Speaking of women of a certain age, I can’t resist sharing a tit-bit from my favorite stand-up comic of the nonduality circus – wideawake Viki Woodyard. Vicki is someone who knows a great deal about the kind of tough cards life can deal. But she grabs the chocolates and scribbles on:

Today I have eaten sugar again and again. Why? Because it is there; heaped on the kitchen counter are a marzipan Yule Pig, a Mozart Piano Bar, a chocolate Santa, a coconut wreath, Godiva Peppermint Truffles and Gems, Lindt Truffles, Dove Chocolates, A Smore wrapped in cellophane and a little box of Jelly Belly Bean Boozles. These feature jelly beans with the auspicious titles of Skunk Spray, Pencil Shavings, Canned Dog Food, Barf and yes, my favorite, Baby Wipes.

I look in the mirror and see a pasty face with a terrible haircut. See a woman who has recently been crying and not becomingly. Is this the girl that started out on her spiritual quest determined to find the meaning of life. That slender sylph that had dark hair and naturally arched eyebrows. Look again. She is now squarely in her sixties, a writer coming into her own at an alarmingly advanced age. She is usually frank, truthful and edgy. Couple that with graceful, simple and tender and you have a fraction of what it was to be married to said writer. Nothing I would wish on anybody. Nevertheless, someone is looking down on me with love and hoping I will find my way to being a real writer one day soon. What does he know, sitting up there on his fluffy white cloud? The guy needs a Bean Boozle if you ask me. I still have a Rotten Egg and a Booger left. If that won’t entice him to come back down here on earth, I don’t know what will.
~Vicki Woodyard

It’s gotta be the ultimate Reality Check, you know:  can you recognize the Truth in a Barf or a Booger? More chuckles …
~ miriam

there’s no escaping total fulfillment

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This bright shining Awareness I have come to call ‘Beloved’ – and to know as ‘I’ – is total fulfillment.

This morning I tried to find anything It needed.  I failed.  It is complete; It cannot be divided.

It is the capacity for every thought, feeling and action.  That’s Its omnipotence.

It is the knowingness in which everything is knowable and known.  That’s Its omniscience.

It is the eternal present, the timeless now, which cannot be measured or escaped from.  That’s Its omnipresence.

But here’s the really awesome bit: try as I might I cannot extricate myself from this (no)thing I call Beloved.  I can experience estrangement and distraction and I can experience joy and graciousness.  But these are simply experiences.  Beloved remains unmoved and unchanged.  Beloved is the ground of all my experiences and the guts of them as well.  And if there’s no escaping the (no)thing that is complete and fulfilled in every way … doh? … huh? … crikey …
~ miriam louisa

[What a marvelous prefix: omni.  Says it all really – and look, it even contains the Sanskrit seed-syllable ‘om’ which I’m told is the energy vibration of Creation.  Good word for God, I reckon.  But I’m committed to ‘Beloved,’ – maybe because of the Be(ingness) and the Love(d).]

what is it with steps and falling?

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…

An old friend dropped this question into a recent email. It took me a while to understand where she was ‘coming from’ – it’s been a long while since analyzing events for their ‘deeper’ meaning has interested me. But I still love a good question, so I took a look.

I now understand that how a question is answered depends on where it’s flying in from. If I am zipped into my bodysuit – busy being a body – steps are solid forms to be negotiated in space and time. Falling happens when space and time are out of sync. Falling hurts; body might be crippled or disfigured. It’s an experience to be avoided: fear is body’s brand.

If I’m aloft in the thought-propelled balloon called mind, a fall down steps will trigger endless analysis of what it really means, what I need to know that I’m not looking at, what I need to avoid, what I must fix, change, rewrite about the story of “my life.” It will keep me very busy, very anxious, and very stressed out.

If I am neither body nor mind, but the spacious aware-ing that they and all their activities arise within – energy is simply dancing. It appears to take a tumble. It appears to be painful. It has no owner; it wears no name. Since there is no division possible in spaciousness, denial isn’t an option – nor is acceptance! Awareness knows itself intimately. And it knows exactly what’s needed for healing: rest and relaxation.

What is it with steps and falling? It’s a gift. It’s pure grace. The blessing of injury is that it delivers you, helpless and humbled, back to base: relaxation as Life, as the pure Light of awake, aware Livingness.

Gratitude!

~ miriam louisa

sunyata or story? – a Reality check

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…

Two weeks ago I took a tumble down unlit steps onto concrete. I’m no stranger to being hobbled for long periods (how else would a tearabout meet and fall fatally in love with a zafu?) but what’s interesting now, is that there’s … no drama. The Light of Being called ‘I’ is quite unaffected by two sprained ankles and one wrenched knee.

But there’s more, and it wants to be shared. In the leisure of forced immobility meditation finds no distractions. It flourishes. And this morning, after a sweet spell of simply being Being, it bubbled up some interesting questions.

Attention went to my left leg. There it lay on the sofa, the ankle swollen, the foot and calf black, yellow and blue with bruising. Not a pretty sight.

What do I actually see?
I see patches of color, shapes; a form.

Are the patches of color – in my actual direct experience, not in abstraction, interpretation or conceptualization – bruises?
No, they are simply patches of color – data perceptions. Bruises can only be inferred, not experienced.

And the shapes – the swollen ankle?
Swelling likewise. It can only be inferred, not experienced.

And the form?
Simply a form – ‘leg’ is what it gets labeled.

So?
No bruising, swelling or leg is actually being experienced.

What about pain?
My leg hurts, yes!

What leg?
Huh? Right. OK, there is sensation.

Where?
In my leg …… crikey…..?

Is the sensation outside of perception?
No, couldn’t be … could it?

Where is perception located?
Behind my eyes …

Really? Is perception outside of Awareness?
No. They can’t be separated.

So where’s the sensation actually experienced?
In Awareness – which has no fixed point of reference!

And where’s the perception of color, shape and form experienced?
In Awareness. Must be! OMG. There’s only Awareness experiencing Itself as a field of energy data!

And where’s the sense of ‘I’ experienced?
It … floats within Awareness … it is Awareness. It’s all Awareness!

Good Reality check, eh? Just in case you were tempted to turn it all into a wee story sweetheart!

…

No-thing exists outside of the Awareing,
the Experiencing, the Knowing, that is ‘I’.
No accident, no injury, no pain, no trauma
ever affects this unknowable ‘I’.
The Knowing of this is sweet peace and Lightness of Being.

I share this because I know the agony of bodily injury. This body has been smashed. One of my legs was severed and re-built. I have spent many months hospitalized and immobile, not knowing whether I’d ever walk unassisted again. Back then I was unable to separate the story of my experience from its actuality. Now I am able to do that, and I am profoundly moved to share this simple investigation with those who suffer. It’s such a simple inquiry, and it shows so clearly how we often don’t experience the actuality of what’s going on. We experience the story, and it’s usually an awful one. And it’s usually all a lie. To suffer is to believe the lie.
~ miriam louisa

amazing anarchic awareness

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No matter what you do, your Awareness is always the same in each experience.  Good actions are of no benefit to your Awareness.  Doing negative actions has no negative effect on your Awareness.  Your Awareness is not subject to the laws of “cause and effect”.  Your Awareness has no karma as it is the pure and perfect Buddha Mind as it is.

. . .

And your pure and perfect Buddha Mind, your perceiving awareness, has no preference as to what those experiences should or should not be, it makes absolutely no difference!  Awareness as pure Being, just is.  The experience of hell or samsara is just fine!  The mirror is never affected by the reflections that appear within it.  If you’re in a hellish state, your awareness of that experience is not the least bit affected.  Your ego may freak out, but then you’re noticing of your “freaked out ego” experience, is just another harmless experience.

This is the supreme View, the most excellent View, the View that can assuage all suffering without ever acting to change anything in body, voice or mind.  Even though no View can be said to exist, our own Awareness is the View!  How amazing!
~ Jax

The Way of Light

this unspeakable unchanging Light

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even I,
whose lifecourse
has been mapped
by a fierce longing for
something more
real
than words and beliefs

even I,
whose brilliant beacon
was oddly both
fore and aft as
this lifeboat surged
through seas of shimmering
experience

even I
am shocked silly
to find that this Light -
this unspeakable unchanging
Light
is here, is here
as ‘I’

and none other than ‘I’

self portrait

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‘I’ has no body;
the ten thousand things
and the ten thousand no-things
these are the skin ‘I’ wears

‘I’ has no mind;
direct seeing is its mental modality
intelligence flows from its well-spring
action is choiceless and free

‘I’ has no parents;
existence is its family tree,
breathtide its bridge to hallowed homeland
and Itself its sustenance

‘I’ has no history;
childhood and adulthood
yesterday and tomorrow –
all rest in its momentary eternity

‘I’ owns no experience;
no sorrow, no happiness, no hatred
no bliss, no blame, no freedom or burden
neither ignorance nor awakening

‘I’ is ever-innocent awareness
shining, shining as perfect presence

‘I’ is now!

‘I’ is this!

‘I’ is here!

~ miriam louisa
(with a deep bow to a certain samurai warrior)
echoes from emptiness

freedom is not an experience

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Yes, I know I’m going on about this.  But it bears repetition.  This little sentence is a powerful pointer.

What does it imply?  That there is no personal experiencer of Reality.  It doesn’t happen to someone.  Not ever.  Not you or anyone else, no matter how holy or wise.

It is prior to all experience – including the experience of a ‘self.’  It is your natural, unconditioned, unabridged, brilliant Being.

Grok this and your search is over: Freedom is not an experience.