Tag Archives: surrender

to surrender to the truth of yourself, is to surrender to love

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My title is stolen from Gangaji, with respectful thanks.

I’ve had an interesting few days since the last post. Interesting as in wondrous, as in OMG, and as in “what am I gonna do with this?”

(The last post. Crikey – isn’t that what they play at funerals?)

In this case it was a poem by Mary Oliver about Buddha’s last instruction imploring his friends and followers to “Make of yourself a light.”

Make of yourself a light. My beloved teacher Krishnamurti issued the same urgent invitation – “Be a Light unto yourself!” – and if anyone was a stand-up example of a being who put everything – even godhood – behind him to be his own Light, it was K.

Make of yourself a light. Be a Light unto yourself. I’ve been sitting with this and I confess it no longer makes sense to me. How can I be a Light unto ‘myself’ when what I am cannot be separated from the Light of Beingness? Clearly both K and the Buddha were speaking to the individual. But this Light that ‘I’ is, has no experienced beginning or end and is indivisible and changeless and inescapable. It’s meaningless to imagine that I am separate from it and need to make myself one with it. No disrespect to my teachers, but … why didn’t they come upfront and say something like “Be the changeless Light that you are?”

A Light. A Light that knows all other light as its shadow. This is the truth of what I am and I cannot argue with it. I can only dive deeper and deeper into it, to “surrender to it” as Gangaji writes.

And what a strange synchronicity: at the same time I have been becoming acutely, painfully aware that the bottom line for me now is Love. It’s the only thing that really, truly, interests me – Divine Love. Paradoxically, it seems to be most intimately known by its absence.

In the mix of moving and settling and re-establishing relationships I have been neglecting the Beloved. The zafu has been waiting, the Gap has been beckoning. To the extent that I have procrastinated I have felt the subtle ache of estrangement. Finally it could no longer be tolerated and I pinched my nose, held my breath and dropped into Point Zero – Zafuland.

Beloved Lover was there; lovingness and lightness and laughter were there.

No buts, no maybe’s. Love lies awaiting when ‘I’  make the turn – when Unlit Light makes the turn. There were tears. There was contrition. Lover simply laughs: “No big deal babe!”

Love is like good bread – it must be baked fresh every day.

Krishnamurti used to say “Enlightenment is a Light that is continually lighting itself.”

Yes. I go forth with a massive box of matches …

~ miriam louisa

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drop off your own skin

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Withdraw now from the invisible pounding and weaving of your ingrained ideas.

If you want to be rid of this invisible turmoil, you must just sit through it and let go of everything.

Attain fulfillment and illuminate thoroughly.

Light and shadow altogether forgotten.

Drop off your own skin, and the sense-dusts will be fully purified.

The eye then readily discerns the brightness.

~ Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091-1157)

suffering doesn’t get a look-in

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Crikey. Here I am contemplating the wantless life and the disappearing worlds and out of nowhere comes Life-as-a-lethal-lurgy. It invades my body and lays it to waste; days of dry heaving and a giddiness that has yet to take off its Sufi-shoes.

There’s nothing remotely pleasant about being sick. It’s a process that has its own mysterious reasons, strategies, timings. I’m in awe of the intelligence that powers this bundle of bones. I can’t grow a toenail, build a cell or mend a tear in the sheath of my skin.

But this body has The Complete Maintenance Manual and Toolkit built-in. The only requirement from my side is to relax and … relax more, to get out of its way while it does what’s necessary. And what amazes me in this simple allowing is that suffering doesn’t get a look-in.

I’m not pretending to myself or anyone that I won’t seek help, or that it’s cool or enjoyable to be ill. It’s horrid. But what I notice now is that it can be horrid without being difficult. It can be both painful and peaceful. It can be whatever it is and be loved for whatever it is. It’s very odd, but don’t-mind mind seems to be the most powerful healing tool of all.

The most effective medicine:

 

Silence and stillness and a sinking into the spaciousness
in which it is all arising.

 

Take as required.

 

surrender?

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what does surrender mean?

who does it?

and to what?

in the context of these notes, it’s a verb that takes no subject or object.
it attempts to describe what ‘happens’ when the self-as-doer-construct dissolves, and the body-mind-being understands that it is purely and simply lived by Life.

there’s no one feeling either happy or sad about this

 
~ miriam louisa
echoes from emptiness
 

nonduality and the mutating brain

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A couple of days ago Jerry Katz – one of the editors of the online Nonduality Highlights – invited responses to a post from a blogger called ‘Tabby’.  Tabby’s had a gutsfull of words about nonduality and has reached the conclusion that it’s worthless when the circumstances of one’s life present pain, torture and deprivation.  This was what came up here, so I sent it off:

Understanding something (anything) causes an effect in the structure of the brain.

J Krishnamurti talked about a mutation of the brain – a re-ordering of the cells.  Wei Wu Wei used the word ‘apperception’ to refer to this inner reorganization of the contents of consciousness.  Science has a new name for it, and a whole new research arena: Neuroplasticity.

In the case of nondual understanding, it is not that the outer circumstances of one’s life necessarily change, but one’s relationship to them certainly does.  Pain comes with the human package.  How it is experienced depends on the brain’s response, and all brains are unique.  (Why would a Novocain response be invalid, pray tell?)

What triggers nondual apperception?  Six billion answers and counting.

The only thing these answers appear to have in common is a threshold at which one drops speculation, abandons hope, and is angry/depressed/disappointed/disgusted enough to give up.  And then?  Give up.

And then?

Give up.

(You will die but it won’t kill you.)

For this brain it began with a gift out of the blue.  In the midst of suicidal agony, Grace came.  And left a calling card.  I’ve posted a recollection on my (very) new blog:

an uninvited koan

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ps:   “I conclude that non-duality is not so much wrong as it is useless.”  Excellent!  Tabby’s whiskers are on the right twitch …

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