It is 6:30 in the morning. Fall darkness envelops the world outside the thin glass pane that is the window of the old house in which I sit. The rumpled sheets and quilt of my bed, still warm from sleep; a sleep abandoned now for writing. I am aware of the danger in the night; the unconscious actions of those who would seek to win some power or some piece of land their minds hold as valuable. Not just across the world somewhere, as my own mind would have me believe, but also in this seemingly quiet city I have called home for most of 49 years. Here there are those who seek to steal what appears to belong to others; as if anything ever truly belongs to any of us. Be it possessions that may be turned to cash or drugs, they move out there mostly unaware of the darkness they contribute to, the darkness they carry within themselves. The veil of unconsciousness we all carry within us as our human birthright.
Traffic sounds reach me from across the inlet; lights moving swiftly along the highway. Where do they go? The world obviously does not come to a complete standstill because it is a recognized holiday, but as I watch the lights move in both directions north and south I am once again struck by the endless, futile movement of humanity. Our doing, or undoing perhaps, as we listen to our minds. Why do we listen? Is there really anything the endless chatter and bullying judgments have to offer? Or do we listen simply because the alternative is the silence of the unknown; the place where our fears linger?
I am listening. I want to know what my mind is saying. Not because I believe its lies, or wish to become entangled in its stories. I listen because I know, I feel in my bones, that my mind's rantings are fueled by tiny kernels of truth.
Listening I hear the attacks against the hearth of my worth, my value, my realness. In this moment, unlike many other moments, the fire that burns in the center of me, this awareness that I am, wavers only briefly. Only briefly do I feel my belly tighten, twist, and shrink at the words. Fraud, it says. Inauthentic, it shouts. Momentarily my mind goes quiet, assessing the damage.
It has just begun to rain. I love the sound of rain on the roof. Always have. I can feel into the cleansing that is taking place; all that was is washed by all that is, preparing for all that will be.
I feel peace in this moment. Peace, no matter what is happening in the rest of the world. In this second of time, and in this thin sliver of space, I am a dream character typing away on a magic box, my fingers moving, clicking, as forms appear on the dimly lit screen in front of me.
Who am I? What am I? I have heard from my mind and have survived its latest attempt to diminish my presence. How can I be a fraud as it claims? I have to think or believe that I am something in particular in order to be a fraud, do I not?
My beloved, and twenty-five other souls, are already awake as she supports them and their sleep-addled minds to contemplate those questions: Who am I? What am I? What is another? What is life? What is love? Away in the early morning darkness, in her own tiredness, she has risen, ringing the gong, reciting the words, Good morning, this is the third day of your enlightenment intensive. And those sleepy seekers rise, put on rumpled clothes, brush their teeth, toss water over their faces, and make their way through the darkness and light rain to the dyad room where they will sit in pairs, across from one another to give and receive their instructions: Tell me who you are....
Our minds are, at times, like demons surfacing out of the murkiness of sleep, out of the confusion of unexplored dream states, scared in their discomfort and angered by their own fears. You are ME!, they shout at us. Look away! Stop this foolish questioning. You will never find the answers you seek without ME!, they cry out.
Where is the kernel of truth I alluded to earlier? I am not my mind! That is not who or what I am, says a voice inside us. But who is speaking? What is the truth?
It is 7:10 and the damp, grey morning begins to reveal itself. Silouettes of fir and garry oak trees, for a brief moment, give the appearance of peering in my second story window, momentarily unaware of the increasing sounds of traffic on the highway and the presence of rain dripping from their branches.
The truth is my mind can not tell me what truth is. My mind can not solve any of the problems it has created with its chatter and its bullying. It does not have the ability to contemplate itself. Its only skill is its ability to play every role in the dramatic piece of theater it has written for me. Making me both participant and audience. But only if I choose to stay in the theater.
The kernels of truth, the nuggets of brilliance that make any play worthy of stage and screen are why I sit in the theater, why I venture onto the stage. The writer of my plays, my mind, does not realize that it unwittingly shows me the way out of my own dramas in the very words, the multitude of plots it creates.
When I listen. When I listen carefully, with discrimination, with a willingness, a deep devotion to knowing Who I am, I can hear the kernels of truth. Wrapped in layers of story, lies, judgments, both beautiful and horrible, rests a tiny truth about who and what I am.
As the hands of the clock move and night becomes day here where I sit, somewhere else in this world darkness descends out of the illumination of day. Consciousness and unconsciousness dance or struggle with each other. Humans knowingly or unwittingly decide Will I love today or will I hate? In reaction and fear we either unconsciously listen to our mind's incessant barrage or we consciously choose, in love, to mine the depths of those stories, those dramas, for the nuggets of truth that lay hidden there.
You are a fraud!, my mind has whispered, has shouted at me over almost five decades of this human experience. And, for much of that time I have believed every word it has said to reinforce this lie. Why? Because it is so compelling. I long to be real and authentic, but I am never told what those words really mean. But now I see the truth. I see the kernels of essential truth that make up the core of every mind attack, every personality stance, every role I have ever played in the comedic tragedy that has been this life.
These truths reveal themselves slowly, willingly, even lovingly, but only when I listen, watch, with openness and fearlessness. Otherwise they are almost impossible to see. Our minds are highly skilled, but not very bright in what they do. They repeat the same old lies, the same old judgments, and they work much of the time because, like advertisers, our minds realize that repetition creates habitual beliefs and perceptions.
Fraud? The kernel of truth in that oft repeated word is that we are all frauds. We are all pretending to be tiny insignificant human personalities moving about our seemingly flat roads, on our seemingly round planet, in our seemingly finite existence. And, with the insistence of our minds, we are continually afraid we will fall off the edge of our flat one-dimensional story line. And, like the ancient explorers in their wooden boats, we can sail into unknown waters with courage, knowing that our mind maps will tell us There be monsters here, and all the while, if we are lucky we may just sail off the edge of our known worlds into the truth of Who and What we are.
I am determined to let loose the lines that hold my ship to the shore, to venture out into unknown waters, face the monsters that arise and demand they reveal the truths hidden in their bellies. And, when I find a quiet moment, when the seas have calmed and the wind stilled, I will listen once again to the rain as it falls and washes the previous moment away, and I will open my being to the next moment that arises.
Care to join me?
E.
Traffic sounds reach me from across the inlet; lights moving swiftly along the highway. Where do they go? The world obviously does not come to a complete standstill because it is a recognized holiday, but as I watch the lights move in both directions north and south I am once again struck by the endless, futile movement of humanity. Our doing, or undoing perhaps, as we listen to our minds. Why do we listen? Is there really anything the endless chatter and bullying judgments have to offer? Or do we listen simply because the alternative is the silence of the unknown; the place where our fears linger?
I am listening. I want to know what my mind is saying. Not because I believe its lies, or wish to become entangled in its stories. I listen because I know, I feel in my bones, that my mind's rantings are fueled by tiny kernels of truth.
Listening I hear the attacks against the hearth of my worth, my value, my realness. In this moment, unlike many other moments, the fire that burns in the center of me, this awareness that I am, wavers only briefly. Only briefly do I feel my belly tighten, twist, and shrink at the words. Fraud, it says. Inauthentic, it shouts. Momentarily my mind goes quiet, assessing the damage.
It has just begun to rain. I love the sound of rain on the roof. Always have. I can feel into the cleansing that is taking place; all that was is washed by all that is, preparing for all that will be.
I feel peace in this moment. Peace, no matter what is happening in the rest of the world. In this second of time, and in this thin sliver of space, I am a dream character typing away on a magic box, my fingers moving, clicking, as forms appear on the dimly lit screen in front of me.
Who am I? What am I? I have heard from my mind and have survived its latest attempt to diminish my presence. How can I be a fraud as it claims? I have to think or believe that I am something in particular in order to be a fraud, do I not?
My beloved, and twenty-five other souls, are already awake as she supports them and their sleep-addled minds to contemplate those questions: Who am I? What am I? What is another? What is life? What is love? Away in the early morning darkness, in her own tiredness, she has risen, ringing the gong, reciting the words, Good morning, this is the third day of your enlightenment intensive. And those sleepy seekers rise, put on rumpled clothes, brush their teeth, toss water over their faces, and make their way through the darkness and light rain to the dyad room where they will sit in pairs, across from one another to give and receive their instructions: Tell me who you are....
Our minds are, at times, like demons surfacing out of the murkiness of sleep, out of the confusion of unexplored dream states, scared in their discomfort and angered by their own fears. You are ME!, they shout at us. Look away! Stop this foolish questioning. You will never find the answers you seek without ME!, they cry out.
Where is the kernel of truth I alluded to earlier? I am not my mind! That is not who or what I am, says a voice inside us. But who is speaking? What is the truth?
It is 7:10 and the damp, grey morning begins to reveal itself. Silouettes of fir and garry oak trees, for a brief moment, give the appearance of peering in my second story window, momentarily unaware of the increasing sounds of traffic on the highway and the presence of rain dripping from their branches.
The truth is my mind can not tell me what truth is. My mind can not solve any of the problems it has created with its chatter and its bullying. It does not have the ability to contemplate itself. Its only skill is its ability to play every role in the dramatic piece of theater it has written for me. Making me both participant and audience. But only if I choose to stay in the theater.
The kernels of truth, the nuggets of brilliance that make any play worthy of stage and screen are why I sit in the theater, why I venture onto the stage. The writer of my plays, my mind, does not realize that it unwittingly shows me the way out of my own dramas in the very words, the multitude of plots it creates.
When I listen. When I listen carefully, with discrimination, with a willingness, a deep devotion to knowing Who I am, I can hear the kernels of truth. Wrapped in layers of story, lies, judgments, both beautiful and horrible, rests a tiny truth about who and what I am.
As the hands of the clock move and night becomes day here where I sit, somewhere else in this world darkness descends out of the illumination of day. Consciousness and unconsciousness dance or struggle with each other. Humans knowingly or unwittingly decide Will I love today or will I hate? In reaction and fear we either unconsciously listen to our mind's incessant barrage or we consciously choose, in love, to mine the depths of those stories, those dramas, for the nuggets of truth that lay hidden there.
You are a fraud!, my mind has whispered, has shouted at me over almost five decades of this human experience. And, for much of that time I have believed every word it has said to reinforce this lie. Why? Because it is so compelling. I long to be real and authentic, but I am never told what those words really mean. But now I see the truth. I see the kernels of essential truth that make up the core of every mind attack, every personality stance, every role I have ever played in the comedic tragedy that has been this life.
These truths reveal themselves slowly, willingly, even lovingly, but only when I listen, watch, with openness and fearlessness. Otherwise they are almost impossible to see. Our minds are highly skilled, but not very bright in what they do. They repeat the same old lies, the same old judgments, and they work much of the time because, like advertisers, our minds realize that repetition creates habitual beliefs and perceptions.
Fraud? The kernel of truth in that oft repeated word is that we are all frauds. We are all pretending to be tiny insignificant human personalities moving about our seemingly flat roads, on our seemingly round planet, in our seemingly finite existence. And, with the insistence of our minds, we are continually afraid we will fall off the edge of our flat one-dimensional story line. And, like the ancient explorers in their wooden boats, we can sail into unknown waters with courage, knowing that our mind maps will tell us There be monsters here, and all the while, if we are lucky we may just sail off the edge of our known worlds into the truth of Who and What we are.
I am determined to let loose the lines that hold my ship to the shore, to venture out into unknown waters, face the monsters that arise and demand they reveal the truths hidden in their bellies. And, when I find a quiet moment, when the seas have calmed and the wind stilled, I will listen once again to the rain as it falls and washes the previous moment away, and I will open my being to the next moment that arises.
Care to join me?
E.
