Tag Archives: understanding

‘I’ is the only player

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there has been rain in the night
and the earth’s breath
is fresh and fruity this dawn

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what am I?
I am Awareness
that ‘I am’ not
and only ‘I’ is

intellectual acceptance of this
isn’t difficult;
self thinks it has understood something
and is pleased

but as acceptance percolates down
into the darker layers
something called me
isn’t so happy

the battle of battles begins
the outcome is inevitable –
winners in every corner
all bets collectible

turns out there was
only one Player!

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~ miriam louisa

echoes from emptiness

image source unknown

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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!

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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.

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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.

~ ml

little did I know

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little did I know
that it would come
to THIS

 

that THIS
would be the shocking
truth –
the answer I had both
longed for and rejected

 

that THIS
would be as obliterating
as a terrorist’s bomb;
that the old life
would not survive

 

that THIS
would be the revelation
in naked, unskinned knowing
of the miracle
of every moment’s
breath:

 

only THIS
breath-breathing ‘I’

 

omg

not

even

that

 

– miriam louisa

 

make no apology

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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

 

what gets your attention creates you

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My mother’s mother was a wise one. She understood the dynamics of the thinking machine. She was aware that her thoughts were not her or hers, that they arrived uninvited and that not all deserved to be made welcome as guests. Talking about such unfamiliar notions in the early 20th century, a farmer’s wife on a high country New Zealand sheep station a hundred miles from anywhere brought sideways glances and cast her as an outsider. (What’s new, huh?)

She liked to say, “Stand porter at the door of thought.” Perhaps she’d read that somewhere, or even made it up herself, whatever – it was etched in pokerwork on my fresh young hard-drive.

My mother was a chip off the old block, philosophically speaking. Her favorite aphorism was, “What gets your attention gets you.” Come in after school with a bellyfull of moans about how one had been bullied or unfairly punished or cheated on, and that’s what you’d hear. Hmmm. She should’ve been called Kali, my mum.

So, unlike most kids (I suspect) I grew up with a healthy skepticism re thoughts, thinking, and even the ‘thinker’. When I came across the teachings of J Krishnamurti there was huge relief, because all through the years of my early education I had met no one outside my family who was remotely concerned about the way one’s thinking unfolds one’s experience.

But it would take the passing of many moons before the nonduality teachings of the Advaita sages would reveal the baseline error in both Granny’s and Mum’s pithy sayings, and explain why, in spite of their apparent wisdom, they actually made little difference. One was still locked into the effects generated by thinking – both one’s own, and that of others.

The error lies in the unexamined assumption that there is a separate self who can take up the role of that “porter”, or who can be ‘got’ if attention fixates somewhere it shouldn’t.

This morning, while mulling over delicate family business, the aphorisms reshuffled and restated themselves in a fresh cluster of words.

Thoughts are arising here.

The ones that receive attention create me.

 
Granny and Mum would know exactly what I mean. They’d be chuckling away like two crazy crones. Good company for this one eh?
 

ditching the death-grip

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the grip of the identified ‘me’-self
is a death-grip

when that death-grip relaxed –
relaxed for a millisecond,
just long enough
for a rip in the cocoon to open –
there was immediate
understanding of its
cause

the fundamental illusion
in the living of a life
is the conviction that there is an
object
(me)
that does it . . .

when there is only the quiet flow
of a life being lived by Life
 

 

– 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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