This dance of awakening seems to include the whole range of life, moments of soaring in ecstasy and moments of trudging through the trenches.
It is so easy to think that some experiences are "good" for us and that others are "bad" for us, but can we really know that this is true? Can we know what is moving and unfolding behind the scenes?
I see a place here that wants this non-process process to move completely and consistently on my own ideal scenario terms. I want to define it and control it. Then, whoosh, just when I think I have it all figured out, something unexpected comes in. Life just has its own plans.
If indeed "God Alone Is", as written here previously, then it must also be true that "Awakening Alone Is". Awakening must include all of it, merging with white herons and pain that cannot be controlled away. It must include ecstasy and triumphant celebration and the blood and guts of immense hurt or on-fire rage.
As much as we might like to be the director of the movie, we cannot always rely on life to pamper us and respond to our every whim. It appears to be that life’s fundamental attitude to "our" awakening is a bold: Whatever it takes! If Reality wants to be Kick Ass it is going to be that way independent of how we feel about it.
How present can we stay with both the soaring and the sinking? With moments of heaven and moments of hell? Can we include all of it? Can we soften our insistence on controlling each aspect of what unfolds?
Can we become more skillful at plunging down and soaring upwards? How do we best cultivate this skill? How can we allow this skill to cultivate us?
The reality of the whole range is true and important in all its aspects and all its details. It must be. Otherwise, this huge diversity in our experience would not exist.
Life is doing its thing here. Can we join the flow of this mystery play? Can we stay in the thick of it wherever it takes us?
And to paraphrase Bryon Katie: Can we look forward to the next trench?
We might as well look forward to it. It is going to come.
How present can we be with all flavors of intensity? Can we direct meet all aspects of heaven and all aspects of hell? Every turn of the roller coaster?
Can we sniff the aromas of something good baking in the oven?
Cab we also abide in the place where none of this is happening at all?
Can we abide where who we are is total stillness occupying stillness?
And when we find ourselves in noisy chaos can we abide there as well?
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3 comments:
Nice post, Bruce. Great questions. It occurs to me that to embrace the whole range is to transcend the ego, because it's ego that resists and clings to various aspects of the whole. Yes, can we be present to it all, heaven and earth? Can we allow life to be as it is? A great Burmese meditation master (Ajahn Chahwrgfg) once said, "There are many meditation techniques, but they all come down to this: let it all be."
Thank you for your thoughts, Tom.
Yes, that part of us which reacts and resists is a fragment of the whole. The whole can let it all be because it includes all of it.
In the background just now I started to hear a persistent dish washer noise I do not want to be hearing.
There is an "over here" not liking something that is "over there".
When I practice "letting it all be", I am more the space that the sound exists in and also the space the hearer exists in.
All is suddenly more in harmony.
Yes, Let It All Be. I love the simplicity and power of this simple approach to cut through everything to the Very Core of Existence Itself -- Peace, Tao, God, what have you. It's my essential practice: to just Let It All Be. Amen.
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