having loved enough and lost enough

Photograph by Robyn Gordon

 
 

Having loved enough and lost enough,
I’m no longer searching
just opening,

no longer trying to make sense of pain
but trying to be a soft and sturdy home
in which real things can land.

These are the irritations
that rub into a pearl.

So we can talk for a while
but then we must listen,
the way rocks listen to the sea.

And we can churn at all that goes wrong
but then we must lay all distractions
down and water every living seed.

And yes, on nights like tonight
I too feel alone. But seldom do I
face it squarely enough
to see that it’s a door
into the endless breath
that has no breather,
into the surf that human
shells call God.

– Mark Nepo


marknepo.com


Photograph by Robyn Gordon
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[This post was edited on September 25 2019, to remove broken links and add Robyn Gordon’s glorious photograph. ml]

for as long as wanting wants

Bato Dugarzhapov, Silence

 

for as long as
wanting wants
anything – anything
[even not-wanting]
stillness is abandoned
peace is merely a story

 

see, as long as
wanting wants
there will be a wanter
an insatiable grasper
an inexhaustible seeker

deaf
to the savage wisdom
that whispers,
“First find the wanter!”

 

as long as
wanting wants
and the wanter
believes
it has more substance
than a thought;

believes
it’s real, with an agenda
[noble, admirable]

the clamour of wants will obscure
the Presence
of gracious sufficiency.

 

– miriam louisa

 


[Edited June 1, 2020
– a few tweaks to the lines
– a painting added: Bato Dugarzhapov, Silence.]


yes, but can you live it?

Well –

if you’ve had a peek into
wild wideawakeness –

if the jigsaw pieces of
a lifetime’s seeking
have grouped themselves
into an apperception
that’s savaged
all your ideas about
what this IS
and knocked both your
feely fantasies and your
intellectual understanding
clear out of mind –

if you’ve fallen
head-first into this
simple suchness,
there’s no longer a
question of “embodying it” or
“living it.”

 

So my answer is no.

How can you

live the Reality

that lives You?

And yes.

How can You not?

 

– miriam louisa


then Beingness becomes Beloved

The love that ‘I’ seeks is the Love that is seeking itself. Is there one ‘human’ beingness who is not seeking this thing called love? They mightn’t necessarily call it that – it might be referred to as happiness, peace, contentment or harmony, but all these are qualities of love itself.

Love never tires of seeking itself. The whole drama of Life is this search. And when Love eventually returns to find itself, one realizes that it was never lost, ever – it was just playing a kind of bittersweet game with itself. It was never, ever lost, for it is nothing but this inescapable Beingness.

Beingness – unavoidable and unchanging – is never unfaithful for one nanosecond. It never packs up and takes off with another lover; it is the Watching that notices lovers leaving on a fresh search for the love they haven’t yet recognized as their true Beingness. It never has an unkind word for me or anyone; it is the impartial Noticing of my unkind thoughts and thoughtless words. It’s never depressed or alienated or flattened or disappointed; it’s the Awareing of and the accepting of, all my mental and emotional states. It never demands that I or the world be better, different, more peaceful; it embraces everything equally, without judgment.

To use these words  – noticing, awareing, embracing – is completely incorrect actually, for it implies a split between Beingess and something ‘other.’ In fact, in our experience, there is no such split. Beingness is all – it is the hurt and betrayal and unkindness and violence as well as their perceived opposites.

This is the ultimate absolution. Beingness doesn’t condone nor does it mean one won’t act to help; it isn’t passive or nihilistic. It is simply realized that whatever is happening, is Beingness unfolding itself.

It strikes me that one could never find any object or person that could measure up to these qualities of basic Beingness. I guess that’s why after repeatedly trying to escape, and repeatedly making the return, I found that Beingness became Beloved for this gadabout. I rush to its immediacy without moving a hair. I am enfolded in its embrace. And I know it as ‘I’.

~ miriam louisa

.

nothing could be easier

The simple, most utterly obvious and unavoidable state of Beingness is the very thing we imagine to be complex, hidden, and therefore needing to be sought via an infinite array of practices.

I came down a pathway which attempted to get at this simplicity by examining deeply and interminably the mental dynamics that sabotage one’s clear seeing/experiencing of It.

Perhaps it was a worthy pursuit – it was surely interesting and entertaining – but in terms of leading me closer to ‘It,’ it was a total waste of time.  It made no difference whatsoever to simple Beingness – which silently ‘watched’ the goings-on, immovable and changeless.

Eventually it all ground to a halt – the inquiry, the seeking, the fascination and the endless construction of concepts.  And there I was, right back AS I’d begun on Day 1, Breath 1:  Beingness – simple, obvious and unavoidable.

It is surely the most amazing and incomprehensible of things that turning away from the mind machine and embracing the inescapable Light of Being is so darned difficult for most of us.

Nothing – nothing – could be easier.  It is now!  It is this!  It is here!

~ miriam louisa

life living life

Downunder with Unmani

Now this is great good news for Antipodeans addicted to nondual awareness: one very wideawake woman is currently visiting us in Australia.  Unmani is holding meetings in Byron Bay, NSW, and there will be a three-day retreat in December.  The theme is “Not-Knowing.”  Have a look at Umnani’s website for more info about her approach, her work, and the happenings downunder.

Recognising who You are is the end of overlooking that which has never been anywhere but right here. The end of pretending to know or trying to know. This is absolute Not-Knowing. Forever falling in absolute insecurity. This is what I am. I am what You are. Life itself.

Unmani points to the end of the spiritual search. Actually finding what you have been looking for. Finding that it has never been anywhere but right here. Realising the paradox of Life.

source:  Unmani’s website

It’s very easy to feel geographically remote when one lives downunder, especially in regional areas where getting to any major cultural center involves a very long drive.  And it’s not often that we receive visits from anyone on the wideawake women list – or the blogamigos list either.  Gratitude to Unmani for dropping by with her direct and powerful message.

.

make no apology

This Unlit Light: who is not enlightened?

 

Why is it so hard to accept that one is already fully, utterly wideawake?

I’ve a wispy memory of beloved Ramesh writing in one of his books that this acceptance is perhaps the ultimate hurdle for the seeker. And herein lies the clue: the seeker.

The seeker-self  is about to become redundant. Totally irrelevant. The seeker-self is smelling its own death. It cannot afford to accept the awesome and evident fact that seeking – which is the natural movement of Wholeness returning to Itself – is not the action of a self of any description. The seeker-self is a construct, just like any other version of a self. And it turns out it’s the only impediment to the search!

It is only when you hunt for it that you lose it.  But then you cannot get rid of it.  And while you cannot do either, you remain silent and it speaks.  You speak and it is gone.  The great gate of charity is wide open, with no obstacles before it.
~ Lao Tzu

For the weary, frustrated, disgusted, infuriated seeker-self the days are numbered. There will be a eureka. In its own good time, according to its own pattern. It will be a eureka moment that renews and relights itself with every breath. And when that comes to pass you will know that it is simply ridiculous to deny it. Why would you apologize for what you are?

You hear the birds?
You see the sun?
Who is not enlightened?
~ Zen saying