I watch me appear; I watch me disappear

 

I am never absent, I cannot be escaped
I watch me appear, I watch me disappear

I am unaffected, I have no preference
I watch me appear, I watch me disappear

Forget ‘Big Brother’ and CCTV:
there’s an eye there is no hiding from
and it’s known as “I” to me.

It prowls this world of dream and drama
ceaselessly scoping the cosmos and all creation:
macroscopic, microscopic and myopic too,
the outer worlds and inner…

Eyes wide open, eyes shut tight
I can never escape its unlit light.

I am unmoved, I am all movement
I watch me appear, I watch me disappear

I am never absent, I cannot be escaped
I watch me appear, I watch me disappear

– miriam louisa

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I watch me appear; I watch me disappear
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Gangaji expresses this warts-and-all totality to perfection:

At a certain point, a couple of years after [the disappearance of the ‘me’ as separate entity], I was aware of a sense of myself as a person starting to slowly return.  And I thought, “Oh, no, what does this mean?” because at that point I had been counseling people not to reconstruct themselves after this kind of experience.  There was a moment of wondering if this sense of myself meant I had lost anything, but by then I knew enough to check and see.  When I did, I saw clearly that the truth that needs no scaffolding was not bothered by any sense or perception of myself as being this human animal, this body-mind configuration.  Silent conscious awareness was not bothered by any disappearance of the sense of this form and not bothered by its reappearance.

The fact that the sense of me as form reappeared was actually a teaching for me because it threw me into profound inquiry.  And in that inquiry I saw that this sense of being a separate entity appears and disappears all the time, even in a day—for everyone.  It’s just that until we have an experience of it disappearing, and then discovering the true “I” to still be present, only then do we have the possibility of recognizing that the disappearance or the reappearance doesn’t really touch the unmoving truth.

It was at this point I felt myself reincarnating as an ordinary human being.  I didn’t fight the ordinariness coming back, because I was always aware that whatever came back—an emotion, a sense of me, a negative thought, etc.—it didn’t touch what had been revealed…

To this day, I can say that from that moment there has been no lack of resolution and fulfillment.  There have been negative states as well as positive.  There has been grief as well as joy.  There have been trials and there have been defeats, but nothing has dislodged the certainty that who I am includes all.

© Gangaji, 2012
[My emphasis.]
Source:  http://www.onethemagazine.com/blog/2012/10/12/answer-to-a-prayer/


Image source:  Rumi Facebook page


 

matter-of-fact awareness

I’m always delighted to come across writing that is honest and juicy and not too proud to celebrate the mundane. “We are our ordinary lives,” says Susan Stinson – how true that is!  Seen with “matter-of-fact-awareness” the exquisite details of our life/self are available to be honored and expressed. This makes good reading, especially if what particularly interests one is the self-shining awareness in which IT all – all – arises and disappears …

Immerse, sense, feel, imagine, enjoy: this is our miraculous everyday beloved life!

… May your hands weather with grace.  May your fingers smell good.  May chill on your arms keep you alive to your skin as much as warmth might do.  May you grieve when you need to and know your own lacks, with matter-of-fact awareness, like you know the landscape of leaving where you sleep to begin the day.  Leave the sleep.  Begin the day.  Offer things.  Work. Build.  Step toward others.  Take a lean and a fall as a chance to spin on the floor on your back.  Gather your courage.  Make beautiful meals.  Know your gifts and delight in them with specific, attentive vigor.  Shovel.  Pedal.  Cruise.  Oh, my darlings and others, listen as if you mean it, as if it matters, as if that act, in itself, were consuming and a kind of completion. When the moment opens, answer.  The toilet might be running again in the other room.  Get up, shake the handle and keep going.  If the water goes quiet, there will still be ticking.  We are our ordinary lives, and they have such depths and textures.  We brush against the nap in relationship, or we’re pressed to the plush, or something is jabbing, the plastic stem of an old tag, a broken zipper, but we dress in the fabrics of the lives near ours, however we bring them near.  Such clothes.  Such colors …

~ Susan Stinson

http://www.susanstinson.net/

http://susanstinson.livejournal.com/

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