I was eating lunch the other day on a bench outside of the San Rafael Whole Foods. I was in a flow of total bliss and simplicity. Very little was going on in my world at all. I was just watching some small black birds peck at pieces of food on the ground. This was about it.
After about a twenty minute eternity, there arose a sudden concern, a thought: "I cannot just keep sitting here, I need to go do something about my life." That felt like such a silly thought. What life, I asked myself.
And then this voice from everywhere and nowhere said:
Look closely at what you call "your life" and have been assuming is "your life" all these years. Can you really know for sure that it is "yours"? Can you really know that it is real?
There is no suggestion being made here that it is not yours or not real, just an invitation to look into this more deeply than perhaps you have before.
Can you find any on-the-ground evidence for your assumption that you indeed are an individual person with an individual life? In fact, can you find factual evidence for any of your assumptions?
Perhaps you can. You are, of course, the best expert on you here. How could it be otherwise? And, you have the option of taking a really close look at this.
If it was in fact the truth that you have no separate life that is "yours" would you want to know about it? Or would you feel like that was too much of a wild and crazy notion to even begin to entertain?
The alleged character who appears to be writing this blog, has been asking about "what to do about his life" for a long time. For seeming eons this question has appeared to be very real, serious and important to him. He has worked to be as on top of his life as he can be, but what does that mean? Is there a better or worse way?
And recently, through no conscious choice of his own, the whole reality-frame that those are "his" details that "he" should be taking care of, has started to flicker and sputter, not be so real and solid. Watching those birds peck at food just is his life, in those moments.
While he truly gets that there is nothing to do next in regards to awakening, he used to be so sure is a lot that has to be done on planet earth for him to give himself a passing grade as a good person. Now, that whole assessment is coming into question.
It is as if the Mississippi river of Life is carrying him along at quite a clip these days and he is not so sure he likes this cessation of the illusion of being in control. In order to possibly "buy some time", whatever that means, he is grabbing onto branches on his way to the ocean of infinity. The idea of having to do anything is just another branch.
Life is just doing what it wants to do in his alleged life, and he at times wants Life to do it differently. He is playing the Bruce part in the movie and then now and then he wants the movie director to give him different part. Perhaps, he thinks, I could play the part of an allegedly super-efficient Werner Erhard type character? But Bruce, the director says, you are playing your part so well!
So what about those details? This topic may arise again here at Blogging Awakening.
What thought branches do you notice that you hold onto?
Your comments and questions are appreciated in the comments section below and could inspire more posts here.
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3 comments:
The Bench at Whole Foods
Birds pecking at food, there is the glory of pecking radiating on wings and little hops and quiet chirps
There is the glory of mouth chewing, tastes of salad green and tang of sweet
There is the glory of a firing engine
There is the glory of sky with white puffball
There is the glory of ass resting on wood
There is the glory of all of this with none of it being the least bit "important"
No Inside, No Outside
I am not "me" looking out from behind "my" eyes. The eyes are gone. The I's are gone. There is only one Me.
And then there is a surge of energy from somewhere, a call, a compelling, a demand from the deep to return, to lift the ass off the bench and to scream to the world "WAKE UP!" as if everything really did depend on that, as if the game of awakening demands that this individual "I" play a certain game, and play it with total commitment. I am not to sit on the bench forever, I am to rise, to shine, to radiate the bliss of eternity in form in a way that is unique, noticing the dancer dancing the play, but playing pLaYiNG PLAYING the part of all seriousness, taking it all VERY seriously as part of the dancing game.
And so I get up, carrying the sparrows and the sky in my heart, as I return to the salt mine of samsara playing what appears to be a necessary, joyful at time and horrible at times, role in chipping away, and helping others to chip away, more salt from the mine...
And as I work in a dozen different ways, dancing the script forward, I quietly sing the chant of chants:
"God Alone Is, God Alone Is, God Alone Is...."
Bruce
I love this new blog. It is the clearest and strongest I've seen you embrace the nondual 'we have already arrived' perfection.
It is a strange and surreal world I sit in at this point in time. My mother is about to have open heart surgery and it feels like a culmination point of all that I have gone through in the last few years.
It is painful. yet your blog helped me sit with it all in a larger way.
There is less comparing and contrasting as I read your blog. it is all part of the Totality.
Thank you for playing your part
Don't stop!
Love
Michael
Thank you Daniel and Michael.
I really appreciate your reflections and adding your own notes to this song.
Love,
Bruce
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