Welcoming Grace

"There–but for the grace of God–go I" no longer feels quite accurate to say. If we are all one, there I am starving. There I am in a cage. There I am being a tyrant. There I am as an elephant. There I am in every situation a being appears to be in. (Happily this also implies that I am courageously piloting a rescue helicopter, brilliantly playing cello, and able to do a back flip–yay me!)

As for being the character Emily, in this not so flexible body, I do not believe that this little individual did anything "right" to "earn" a warm place to sleep or a computer to write on. Nor did anyone else do anything "wrong" to "deserve" less. I am not specially blessed by some deity who believes I am more worthy of grace than someone else. Good God, no! Grace is not bestowed upon one but not another! What kind of loving presence would operate like that? Only a crazy one, invented in the image of the ego, by the ego.

I no longer appeal to a deity to take care of me or anyone else as if not asking might result in being forgotten, or as if a significant number of votes were required to sway some deity's decision. As if we were all children competing for one very busy (and distant) parent's attention. A parent with limited resources. I no longer pray like an alien in Toy Story hoping The Claw in the arcade game will Pick Me. "oooOOOOOOooooooooo!"

Grace is not something that only comes quixotically or when called in the right manner. Sometimes it may appear to show up when we pray for it, but that is more about us being willing to be on the lookout, not us succeeding in getting it to pay attention. Grace is everywhere, at all times. Grace never goes away somewhere else, leaving us without it, any more than Love does. We simply forget to open our awareness to its presence. We may be setting conditions as to what forms we are willing to recognize it in. We may be limiting how we allow it to influence our reality.

Sometimes grace is difficult to recognize, such as the grace of not being given what you think you want because, ultimately, it is not what you really needed, after all. There were times in my life when I was so physically and neurologically compromised that I prayed to be released from this body. Other things happened instead, among them some dissolving of the identity who seemed to be suffering. Instead of just feeling better, but basically staying the same, there was more conscious awareness.

Grace is here to support our awakening. If we are willing to entertain that notion, we are more likely to recognize the presence of grace in our lives. Waking up can involve a lot of busting of assumptions. For me, anyway, a lot of busting of what I thought was true and real, in order to find out that it was illusory, or at least only relatively true. This is not easy to go through. It's usually after the fact that I can look back and declare, "What grace, to discover truth instead of having my illusions shored up!"

We don't need to hope and wait for grace to pick our number. Grace is in our lives as we speak. We might ask ourselves, just how much do I really want to be aware of it? If some problem has become a fundamental part of my personal identity, how willing am I to open up to the answer Grace may be offering?

Living on the Edge

I live on the edge of a gorgeous national park–and global environmental destruction. Unusual weather, fires, floods, drought, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, rising sea water, radioactive plumes, or at least contaminated soil, food, and air effect us all to some degree. Biological warfare that is human made, along with ever mutating micro organisms heighten my sense of being not in control of my physical environment. In one sense I live "on" the edge in that I am not physically located "over" the edge in the most devastated zones. So far, the house I live in, the water I drink, the air I breath, and the food I eat are well above the global average. But physical disasters could strike anywhere at any time. Even in the best of situations I live with the awareness of the impermanence of everything material.

I live on the edge financially. After years of believing that I could and should control my finances, I no longer believe this is possible. I do what feels authentic and responsible when choices appear, and somehow have what is needed in the material realm, but I am often surprised about where the money comes from and where it goes. I can almost expect the unexpected. A friend needs a loan, a large appliance breaks, the basement needs de-molding... meanwhile someone I met once years ago calls to buy a painting, someone else sends a check as a holiday gift... I no longer linger over a budget or checkbook making predictions, for conditions are likely to shift beyond my means to control them. There is no longer any fear about this, simply wonder, about how it is all playing out.

I live on the edge of health and illness, not knowing how this little body may feel tomorrow, expecting neither illness nor health to last. The little Emily character that I appear to be in this movie of life does not know what the script holds for her. I can make some choices about self care such as what to eat, but not control how much exposure I get to environmental contamination. There is daily gratitude for thus far having all limbs and senses intact, and for having endured such pain and insanity that I know that what I really am cannot be destroyed even if the body and brain disintegrate. I live on the edge of being entwined within a mortal body while being immortal spirit.

I live on the edge socially. There is no team or pack or partner with whom I run, no solid boundary of human connections that I lean into for security or identity. Each day is a surprise: whom I meet, what we do, what is said, how we will feel. I live as if these connections and meetings were all on schedule, going according to some bigger plan–except that from where this small self sits she cannot see that plan, what she sees is only whatever is happening now. I encounter each person I meet as a mystery, finding out what life shows me about each of us each day. I enjoy the moment when I meet someone's eyes and feel the spark of connection. We are all in this together.

I live on the edge of time. On the one hand, aware of its passing, in a linear fashion, at an ordinary human pace, day upon day, year upon year. And yet, there are moments of turning the noodle from side view to end view, as spiritual teacher David Hoffmeister says, and picturing all of it, all of time, as one simultaneous instant. In the film series "The Wonders of the Universe" physicist Brian Cox describes the evolution of the universe as taking billions of years to go from the Big Bang to human life on earth, and that it will take billions of years for the universe to stop expanding and drift into perfect stillness and nothingness again, and that the amount of time that the universe will maintain suns and planets which can support life is but an instant out of that whole spectrum. Gary Renard's spiritual mentors in the book "The Disappearance of the Universe" teach that we are already home in heaven (because we actually never left), (it's just that one part of our mind fell into a dream of separation, a "tiny mad idea" which lasted but an instant). They explain that all of this complicated life is but a memory of that dream being reviewed.

I live on the edge of reality. On the one hand, the water I just drank was cold and delicious–the water and the body drinking it sure seems real. All that is physical seems real from the perspective of the ordinary senses. And yet, there are frequent glimpses in which all of this appears as a dream, a vivid hallucination, a holographic trance projected by a mind that is dreaming it all–including dreaming up this body, like a little figure in a video game that is designed to operate inside of that virtual world. At the same time, there is awareness of being that which watches all of this and is indestructible. With the notion that this uncertain, pain filled world is but a dream, I can relax and enjoy the parts of the dream that seem wonderful. I can afford to open my eyes to destruction as well as delight, open my heart to tenderness and risk empathically feeling the woes of the world. I can dare to see others as myself–no matter what they appear to do wrong–because this is all a dream. Does this mean I do nothing? It hardly appears that way!

Moment by moment, as we appear to live through our lives, reviewing the dream, they explain, we have a choice to perceive everything from the perspective of the ego mind, which is based on the belief in separation and fear, or the divine mind, which is based on unity and love. Which lens I choose will determine how I view life and even what events appears to happen. I have experienced miracles from being willing to allow my perception to shift from the egoic to the divine, which A Course In Miracles calls the "holy instant." In the instant that I pull away from frightened doom and gloom thinking into openness to see things in a new light, in the instant that I look upon a situation or person with acceptance instead of judgement, I am no longer trapped in the structure of linear time, of cause and effect, a victim of past events, and neither is the rest of the world. In that moment, what appears to be true and real can suddenly shift as if someone stopped the movie, edited out some scenes of strife, gave everyone a revised script, and spliced the reel back together. I have been witness to such instantaneous transformation. It can be subtle or jaw-dropping amazing. Either way I feel a shift away from fear and a return to inner peace, and clarity about my role in the moment. This inspires me to keep opening my heart and mind to this perceptual shift that replaces what the body's senses tell me is true with spiritual vision which sees everything in the light of love. This takes practice. This is the edge that I live on now, moment by moment, throughout every day.

The Whole in the Heart

There are many meditations in which one focuses on the physical heart and energetic heart. Meditations such as opening it, feeling into it, resting in it, breathing the woes of the world into it. I used to guard my heart in so many ways. The idea of breathing in others' pain and suffering did not appeal. Later I came to realize that I did not have to take on these pains personally, I was more of an open hole in the wall between an apparent reality "out there" and an infinite space of potential for healing. All I needed to do was breath stuff in–and through–and let that spacious presence do what it does, and breath out into the world whatever it sent. That visualization made it easier to feel a great willingness to breath in the woes of the world.

The heart has been described as an oasis, implying (perhaps) that it is a place of renewal, a refuge from the challenging desert-like aspects of life, an inner source from which a fountain of love emanates.  Sometimes my heart has felt this outpouring, a spring flowing from an ever renewing Source. Then there have been periods in my life where this has not at all been the case! Far from an oasis, the heart can sometimes can be a place full of pain. During one long stretch, for example, any attention on entering my heart was like entering an elaborately carved white marble temple–which appeared to be encrusted with black soot. For as long as this lasted there was heart-work do be done, entering this sooty place with boxes of tissues, washing the walls with tears as I encountered secret pains stashed away in ever nook and shrine, reviewing and releasing memory after memory, scene after scene, grief after grief. It took courage to being present in the feeling of what was long shut away. I noticed how "enshrined" some memories were. Will power was needed to make a conscious choice to stop worshiping various stories as a evidence of my being a victim. I learned to breath into my own painful feelings, and through this attention much was eventually released.

My heart is calm today as I write, but there have been spontaneous periods, for days and weeks, of much electric or energetic activity in the heart area, a sweet yet searing and pulling sensation, as if a physical opening were being stretched widener in my chest. A fiery sensation sometimes came on, as if a hole were being burned through and through, as if burning the door on the heart, creating an unclosable opening. 

Awakening is a gradual process for most of us. With increasing awareness of one's connection with the rest of life comes increasing awareness of subtle and not so subtle information. Being in your heart is like being on-line, uplinked to a broader network of intelligence where you can get information instantly. At some point you "get it" that if you are honest and clear in how you relate to people then you can send another kind of e-mail, "energetic mail", which others can collect in the in-box of their hearts. They may not read it right away, but the messages will be saved for whenever they are ready to receive them. A positive thought is never lost. You learn from experience that if you start gossiping or slamming someone, your receiving apparatus gets harder to register, and you start to experience the world as a more painful and frightening place because your own antennae are down, you are not accessing the heart's knowing, so you are not navigating with your full system intact. At some point you really get it that the other people and animals and plants and earth and clouds and rocks and stars are part of what you are, and that being in the heart is like being in one great big intimate room with everything. You get it that if you think or talk about someone in a positive or negative way, they are hearing it on a subtle dimension. You may come to realize this is because you are always talking to and about yourself.

We are more likely to be taught how to use our rational minds to navigate, and to maintain healthy emotional boundaries such as letting other people's pain be theirs. There is some wisdom in this, some maturity to be learned in not taking on someone's pain in such a way as to take over their learning or become emotionally distraught ourselves. It is like seeing someone fall through ice and knowing not to jump into the water with them where neither one can support the other's release.

But there is a more mature form of empathy, and this develops as we mature in sustaining awakeness. Seeing an image of suffering, hearing a story of suffering, we may find our hearts shot through with awareness of this pain. We feel it as our own, and know this to be true. The other person, or dog, or elephant is ourself. But in the awakened heart this passes through, it doesn't get stuck. Feelings are felt without clogging the system. In the next moment awareness might land on a beautiful scene and feel  tenderness. A wide open heart is not defended and doesn't cling. It remains open through all encounters. Nothing in the world can shut it down because it embraces everything. I'm not operating at full capacity yet, but I know that I have a choice to practice with each feeling that arises: to encounter it or go numb, to flinch away or cling to it or let it flow. 

Dispassionate Love

Passionate love gets most of the screen time. It is exciting. I have appreciated passionate artistic expressions of artists, musicians, dancers, actors, poets, and film makers. Teachers with a passion for educating and a passion for their subject have altered my life path. I, too, have participated in passionate  teaching, painting, musical performances, and touch, each an expression of love. I have spoken passionately to individuals and before large groups of people, written passionately about creativity, education, and healing. I have searched for answers to the question, "What is my passion?" One of my favorite quotes is the one about finding what makes you come alive and then going and doing that because what the world needs is people who have come alive. (I included that in a passionate convocation speech.)

In a world where following the tribe has been the norm it is useful for an individual to explore what moves one deeply and what might make life better–that might not be within tribal tradition. Passion can assist in propelling a person's actions in a different direction, give turgor to break new ground, support the lead goose flying into the wind for others to follow.  Changing the status quo can involve courage and sustained motivation. Passionate conviction that change is necessary and possible is part of what galvanizes a new vision of possibility to make it more than a passing thought.

Life plays the strong warm fiery energy of passion through all of us at some time, whether we express it or not. Some people, more than others, get "all fired up" about some issue or project or belief. Passionate energy is part of the symphony of life. Passion can transport you into an altered state of consciousness. This is something we like about it. It is exciting compared to the ordinary way things are.

"The ordinary way that things are" may seem suffocating if you can't get to your particular passion. When my first child was very young I chomped at the bit to write and paint and was frequently plagued with the notion that I was not living up to my full potential. Now this child is out in the world, intelligently and creatively making it a better place, supported by passion in all that she does–and I'm so proud of her.

But passion can be over rated, or over emphasized, or not the most useful quality to focus on. Contrary to what is profiled in so many magazine articles and movies, passion is not the ultimate expression of caring and love. It is simply a part of a spectrum. Passion that is ungrounded may be more of a bull in a china shop. A person worked up in a passionate rant may feel a lot of energy in their head, even a ringing in the ears from all the blood pumping. Looking about for where there is passion in your life, as if it is a critical nutrient, like vitamin C, can make one worry that something is wrong if it isn't there. A lack of passion, these days, might be taken as a significant deficiency in some New Age spiritual contexts.

For a while now, life has not been playing this frequency through me. When I ask, "What is my passion?" the old answers don't compute. Painting, writing, playing music, teaching, even listening to music I used to get a buzz from, no longer convey a buzz. Nothing from the outside or that I do "makes" me happy or excited anymore. There is no passionate drive to write or paint–things I used to defend my right to take the time to do. I used to feel as if I could not fully live or breath right if I wasn't doing these activities enough. Now, sometimes months pass without. It feels good not to feel driven. There was love behind some of what I used to do, but there was also a lot of fear. For example, I entered education intent on saving students from a system of education I felt was damaging. I often feared a beautiful scene would pass and an urgency to capture it in paint or film, and would feel all clenched up with tension if I had to delay making art. I felt inspired to write, and cherished the ideas and inspiration that came to me, but felt angry and grudging toward any conditions that limited "my" writing time. I discovered that for me, anyway, passion could have a frenetic side that was not comfortable. It was a condition of being a perpetual seeker, seeking something to fix the tension and fear. Doing the things I was passionate about could be said to be "good" but they amounted to being "fixes"–temporary, at best–for my fear of not being in control of life.

This phase of life is distinctly dispassionate. Yet this is not the same as apathetic. There is caring. There is love. But the tone of it is more mellow, cool, serene, and quiet. Expression of this kind of loving is often overlooked in this fast paced activity driven world. There is nothing to film if there is no searcher searching for something. There is no drama if there is no tension of anticipation, no struggle for achievement. What is there to excite us about someone just being present in what is happening, accepting it as it is, and being moved to speak and act from quietness?

This quietness does not demand or fire me up. It invites without pushing. Not having passion pushing and roiling through my veins, neither is there any energy to invest in trying to get anyone else to join me in any project, ideal, or belief. As I interact with someone, there is awareness of what each one believes in that moment, a kind of empathetic recognition. There is, sometimes, insight into why they might believe what they do, an awareness of the wounding or inspiration motivating them. Somehow, even though I don't feel all bubbly and warm and fuzzy inside, I know that taking this in without judging it is an expression of love.

Impersonal Intimacy

Folding familiar language around experiences that it was not designed to describe can be fun! How could intimacy not be personal? Isn't it the person who is feeling the intimacy? If there is no self feeling close to another thing–another person, cat, dog, flower–how can there be intimacy? Isn't intimacy separate things overcoming their distance? A magnetic pulling of separate parts toward one another, a nestling-in of separate bodies, held in a mutual field?

I went through a very long phase of immense longing for intimacy. There was a deeply entrenched idea that it needed to come through joining with another person in a relationship. But whenever I seemed to have found that it didn't endure. I felt frustrated when anyone suggested that I needed to get in touch with loving myself: self-acceptance had not resulted in any intimate partnerships or relationships like in a modern romance movie where the character accepts her imperfections and then along comes a person who adores her and embraces her as she is. The idea of having a better future out there in the distance, that I might earn through self improvement, came to seem an irritating lie that was not worthy of being upheld. It's a blessing that there was never any relationship that was a match for long, for the sense of "who I am" rapidly passed through many phases. Again and again there was confronting the truth that whatever I was calling "the real me" was only an assemblage of concepts. Self image after self image demanded to be fulfilled, only to experience defeat. Each sense of self that thought it was unfulfilled became too weary, too heavy, to sustain. Over and over there was a conscious willingness to let go of clinging to whatever identity was experiencing suffering. It felt as if each illusory self got smoked out of hiding and burned away.

As well as an apparent absence of intimacy on a personal relationship level, there was also a dissolution of all other forms of social containment, no sense of being able to define myself or find rest and security within any of the social rings. (Picture that diagram of circles within circles, self in the center, intimate partner in the first ring, family, close personal friends, casual friends, colleagues, strangers, etcetera.) No one felt like an intimate friend. I felt as if I could leave all of it and miss no one. No one seemed wiser anymore. No one seemed to have answers for my existential questions. No one had power to provide me with happiness or security. No one treated me as their special someone. No one was helping to "hold me together". Ah ha! Hold "me" together!

I got in touch with the deepest homesick longing and grief, tasting a vacuous lonliness that I never suspected I harbored since I had typically been quite content with (even protective of) solitude. It became apparent that no version of a separate self could ever, truly, feel whole as the very notion of being a separate self was an illusion. Any efforts to reinstate any social containers did not result in the desired effect of security or intimacy or wellbeing. There was some despair about this, but also the intuition that a significant transformation was taking place. In the apparent absence of all containment there was a great freedom to be malleable, to be melted.

Relief was discovered in surrendering to whatever was happening, letting go of searching: searching for an improved life, trying to "follow my passion" or make "my" dreams come true.  Comfort was discovered in ceasing focusing on dream fulfillment. The atmosphere of not-knowing what aught to happen–to me or anyone else– became a resting zone. More attention was paid to what was actually happening, the smallest details of ordinary life. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures, silence.

Within silence, while meditating, there were flickers of awareness of a warm presence permeating everything. Another way to describe it could be a subtle immaterial intimacy pervading daily life. When I feel it, I have a sense of well being no matter what situation is occurring. I lose awareness of it if I try to make it personal, as if I deserve it or am being recognized and loved as a separate being. It conveys no sense of personal specialness as being loved in particular by a particular person feels. It is impersonal partly because it is everywhere. Now that I'm aware of this and have practiced finding it over and over again, there is no longer a gap in my middle. There is no one I miss or long to be with, an absence of longing for anything, an no more coldness of distance from anything. "All that is" is contained in this boundless presence.

It is also impersonal because now it feels as if "I" am made of the same fabric as "everything else" so there is not so much a sense of being a lonely separate "me" among "others" as much as "What Is." People I formerly judged as not fulfilling a role as my personal partner or lover or understanding friend or wise elder are accepted just as they are, which is largely as mysteries. The "me" at the center of those circles (which don't exist anyway) is like a little wad of table cloth gathered up into a point.  That wad is not a little napkin intimately wrapped up in a mother table cloth, it is woven of the very threads running through and as everything else. This is a new dynamic of intimacy. Speaking and writing from and as this is a new experience.

Absence of Hoping and Wishing

For many years I consciously worked at becoming more conscious of how the words I spoke effected my innards, how resonance or dissonance could be felt through the whole physical instrument. I learned to use those sensations as a guide for authenticity. It became impossible to lie or gossip without perceiving instant negative feedback. "Can you say what you mean, and mean what you say, without being mean?" This question helped me remember that I had a choice in how to verbalize anything: a request, a statement of opinion, a suggestion. I learned that when there was any attempt to manipulate or force anyone else to be or do or think a certain way, I would feel an uncomfortable pressure within myself. If I accused anyone else of any wrong doing, I would feel it within my own gut as a nagging guilt. Now this makes sense as I experience a continuum from this seemingly individual self with the rest of all that is; it's not separate, it's all one being. Whatever we do, we do onto ourself.

Having a personal agenda is considered normal, in fact we are taught to refine our agenda-setting skills. I have healthily implemented agendas as a teacher who needed to cover specific curriculum goals. I have also carried out other people's agendas professionally, such as following directions carefully and repeating functions predictably while cleaning rooms at an inn. So I'm not saying that having agendas or following them is "wrong". Agendas, procedures, protocols, can make sense in a practical way.

What is taken for granted, though, is that agenda-setting behavior is predicated on the assumption of the reality of the future, this idea of tomorrow and next month being something that are real. When we say "I wish...." or "I hope....." we are speaking from this platform: as if there is some time that will come later, and that we, from a particular perspective that senses itself as a self, would find it nice if [ ], or better if [ ]. This is such a normal part of daily life that it may seem very strange to consider that this is not a fundamental reality. What if one's sense of reality shifts so that the idea of having a future is seen as only an idea, occurring in this present moment? 

Sometimes the sense of being a self–who could want something or hope for something– recedes or falls away. At some point the idea that "tomorrow" is actually "coming" will suddenly be seen as just another thought, rather than a reality. It's not that when we see this we will stop and sit in suspended animation for eternity. We may still find ourselves booking flights and Googling hotels and calling our family to announce our plans. All of these things may take place, (in the present moment when they are taking place.)

As the sense of self that I thought was real has seemed to dissolved more, to say "I hope" and "I wish" seem like playing a game. These words no longer feel "true" when they resonate in my body. If I ever take them seriously, as if they were true, then I'm also taking seriously that I am fundamentally this small separate person, and that feels heavy and pinched. In this context, wanting and wishing feel painful, revealed to be based in the belief in the imperfection of this moment. And so there is a tendency to release that serious perspective and relax into the awake awareness that is simply present with all as it is, on the edge of the unknown. I no longer expect that the trip that was planned will happen, nor that the flight will run "on time."

The idea that something is possibly going to happen in some possible future does not evoke excitement, either. My parents are moving to the island where I live next week. (Supposedly. It was going to happen earlier, but that didn't happen.) "You must be so excited!" a friend says. Nope, actually, I'm not. We'll see, when and if it happens. Who knows what that will be like?  Excitement is not a flavor that runs through my body much. In fact, I can't recall feeling excited for a long time. (I pretend to, when it is the loving gesture to do. I play along with language just as you would thank a child for the empty doll cup of "tea" and pretend to drink it with a smile on your face.) Sometimes pretending can be the most authentic gesture of love. I still say to a friend, "I hope you feel better" (She either will or not, it will be what it will be.)

The other side of the absence of excitement is that there is almost no disappointment. Maybe a twinge, now and then, but this is usually sensing that there is disappointment being felt by someone around me, which I'm picking up on. When I come back to center and awareness rests in the present there is very little emotion in this body. When this started happening it felt bland, unexciting. Now it just feels normal.  An interesting side effect is that, as a largely neutral awareness, it is easy to pick up on all manner of feelings, they just don't seem to be happening to me. Or, to put it another way that seems equally true, that part of my larger Self that Is that excited person Is excited, and that part of Me which is Emily is not.

Ice Cubes and Blocks

Sometimes ice melts slowly and silently, sometimes it cracks and groans. Yesterday my son and his friend were playing with a block of dry ice in the kitchen sink. Pouring water on it made a lot of steam, and pushing at it with a fork made a chattering whining scream, "like a baby banshee or a lot of bees buzzing at the same time–but very small bees," he described.

That situation of shrieking ice reminded me of what it has felt like sometimes as a separate self that is being melted back into the loving embrace of the all. Whatever it is that resists unity, that still believes there is salvation in separation and something to fear about god, knows that it is not going to endure that warmth. So sometimes there is some frantic inner protest to awakening, some clinginess that is in vain since there is nothing solid to cling to once the ruse is up, once the truth is glimpsed–if ever so briefly.

Having glimpses, once for weeks at a time, of being the vast ocean of awareness–and everything in it–rather than just the "me" ice cube, opened that view of possibility. For a while it was a huge relief, and effortless to reside in, but it was not an abiding awareness. After a while the aperture closed down again. But what was left of the sense of self was now aware of its own fictionality. "I'm melting, m e l t i n g!" There was no longer a sense of containment as a particular self, just an assemblage of parts that were not fundamentally that thing called a self.

Snap together plastic building blocks are another way of looking at this. You can pick up some pieces and make something with them, but you would not long call it a bus or plane or castle, there would simply be that form temporarily. Being a self is like that. There are a multitude of memories, bits of information, bygone experiences, dreams, visions, feelings, apparently concrete reference points ("my" house, "my" painting) which can be temporarily assembled by life as life lives itself. Life might live as the form of my parents and their daughter, my children and their mother, but even the feel of these roles changes from day to day and year to year.

There has been the appearance of a continuum from my birth through childhood and into adulthood, but whatever I learned about boundaries and being a separate self is all getting turned inside out and upside down and backwards, becoming undone at the seams, melting away. The self that still seems to be here seems more transparent than ever. I still say "I" and "you" and "me", "myself" and "others", but there is a knowing that can't be unknown, now that it's been remembered, that all of this is really all one thing, all one self, all one dream or play, one being, one mind. 

And in this dream I'm aware of looking out from blue eyes in a kitchen that needs cleaning, and this sort of practical activity engages this body so there is not as much egoic banshee screaming around here. If there is engagement with and surrender into ordinary life, rather than fixation on the boundaries that no longer exist, then there can be availability for unexpected experiences–such as playing with dry ice, as amused as the other children.  

Beginning by Listening

The falling away of personal will is something I never heard of before it started to happen, but I have since read much about it by one of my favorite teachers, Adyashanti. At times I felt confused, lost, falling and floating into the unknown, no more plans, no more goals, wondering where my ambition had gone. Illness provided physical reasons to lay off trying to control much beyond my immediate needs and those of my children. I figured the lack of self drive was one more symptom, but as I got stronger the self drive didn't come back. I experienced it as an absence of an old way of being, without it being replaced by any sure way TO be.  I didn't see it as a positive thing until quite a ways into the dissolving, after I realized I could stop taking what was happening as a sign of personal failure or a condition to be overcome. Part of what "helped" was that even when I did try as hard as I could to make something happen, there was often no success, or no durability, unlike the past where there were results to be proud of. It felt as if the rules of "how life works" had been changed for me.

I often read quotes on facebook about following your passion and striving to make your dreams come true, but these no longer speak to me nor seem true in an ultimate sense. I do see that there could be a useful phase to go through, leaving behind a stage of victimization, learning that one has a capacity for making some choices and taking responsibility for some actions. There certainly were many years in my life of striving and perfecting and trying to make certain things happen and not happen, I could write pages about all that I have done that I used to give myself credit for. But eventually the energy to carry on like that dissolved. There was no more energy to "push" and no more personal conviction that pushing was "good" or going to "get" me anywhere or make the world a better place. (If a person is feeling the urge to push, then go for it! Everyone's part is important. I'm just describing how it changed for me.)

It doesn't feel the same as passivity or inactivity or giving up in frustration, in fact there is less frustration now than ever, less railing against, more resting in what is. There is still plenty of activity, only it's generated from a different place, the gesture feels smoother, and that gesture could be described as attentive listening. I'm no longer acting as if I am the teacher in charge trying to get the world/my class to do a certain thing a certain way, I'm more in the position of the humble student who is attentive  to, or resting in a larger presence than the (seemingly) separate "I". Activities flow, the days are full enough without being too much.

Today, out of the blue, I'm suddenly inspired to start this blog, and I really don't know where it's going, I just heard/saw/felt the ideas come to the fore and an upwelling of readiness and availability to share them. So I'm showing up to do that. To sit up and type. There is a personal thought that it could be cool to have a post to share while it is still Friday the 13th. That's where what remains of personal will comes in. But there is no feeling of "have to", no personal drive that will remain unfulfilled until the task is done. No pressure. I don't have to struggle to figure out what to generate, I can simply begin by listening. It's felt as more of an invitation, to which there is a yes, an acceptance, and there is trust that I will simply know what to write, when to write it, and that it will somehow serve a purpose, even if that only purpose is to give me an outlet so that I stop bugging my son to write his paper!

There's an example of how this lack of personal will is not simply leaving me like a jelly-fish out of water. I can still put on the mom act, I can still nag at him to do his work and brush his teeth, (so far.) But that, too, is coming from a different place, not so personal as it used to feel. I'm able to be a responsible parent and guide my child in the practical daily life activities that he will benefit from since he's living in a time and place that values literacy and expects dessert and thus learning to write and brushing one's teeth is practical. But there are plenty of moments when I'm listening for guidance as a parent, too. A difference now is that I almost never seek that guidance from outside, from reading someone else's "expert" advice. Instead I live in this moment with a keen sense of what authenticity feels like in the bones. It will look like whatever it looks like, and that may have little resemblance to some outer ideal that I might have striven for in the past.

It's so much simpler now. There is so much less fighting and arguing. There is so much less worrying about whether I am "living up to my full potential" or "expressing my passion" or "living the life I was meant to live." It's so much simpler. I'm just here now, that is all. And now it's time to go fix dinner.