Who Are We? Are we humans trying to awaken or awakening trying to be human?

Perhaps that which is searching is that which has already arrived. What if arrival is all that there is? We think of ourselves as consolidated finite entities moving through time and space. We think our interests are "our" interests. Can we really know that this is true?

We think our likes are "our" likes. We think our dislikes are "our" dislikes. We think our joys are "our" joys and our pain "our" pain. Yet, we have any real evidence that this is indeed the case? How can we know that that is not just a projection from the infinite? These ideas make a great story, and many of us love great stories. Stories are the spice of the cosmos.

Yet , what is this need to be in ownership of the story lines that run through us? Jumping into the movie and thinking that we ARE the movie does feel like great fun. Perhaps this is why the infinite does that as us. And right how, here at least, it is even more fun to see through that game.

Perhaps all of this is just an award winning Broadway Show that has been running now for 129 trillion seasons.

The Bruce that you have known for a long time or are just getting to know here is still intact as this is written. The story still unfolds. Yet, the glue that holds this story together is beyond the story. Does this make sense?

The Word Dance

Clearly words, all words, are but an overly simplistic approximation of something much more vast, gushing, oozing than words could ever convey. Reality seems to surge and flood past our passionate attempts to fit it into any miniature semantic boxes.

While we take great delight dancing the word dance, Reality has a dance of its own. It has a way of doing exquisite and beautiful end runs around what we have so carefully articulated. Reality rules! leaving our words in the dust. Exploding in our faces, tossing us around, washing us clean. Our stick-figure contrivances are displaced again and again.

And yet these amazing words are fierce warriors. They keep emerging in an orgasmic firework display of light. They appear from nowhere and return to nowhere. Words dance in this dance, arm in arm, along with everything else. Satsangs dance here. Ball games. Torture chambers. Apple orchards. Dancing, dancing as the One in the One.

Words are here, they belong in this game, they forever play their part.

They enter the big stage, strut around and then exit unexpectedly, along with everything else.

Words attempt to capture reality and then are captured by reality, all in good fun. Reality plays with words and words play with Reality.

They appear as real, as meaning something and then they dive back into to flow only to emerge again on a distant planet.

They are full yet empty. The are empty yet full.

Words are like this thought of "I", so real and so not real.

It all dies into mystery and is born again into mystery.

Even the word "word" conveys another rainbow of infinity.

A dive into any word is a dive into a boundless ocean.

and again we are back just in time for tea.

Every Moment As Equally Optimal For It.

Just as we can wake up at any moment in a nightime dream, could it also be true that we can wake up at any moment in this daytime dream?

What if every moment we find ourselves in our lives is an equally optimal moment for us to see through the veils and remember our true nature? What if no special conditions are necessary at all? What if we don't have to be camping on Mt.Shasta or on a retreat in Hawaii?

Some of "my" most powerful revelations and awakenings of this last week have come, curiously, while "I" was working out at Gold's gym. For Byron Katie it happened at a Half-Way house when a cockroach crawled over her foot.

What if every situation we are in with all its exact details is the perfect diving board into that which is eternally real?

Today was a practical, taking care of business, day for the character writing this blog, and yet every now and then I felt as if I was on the brink of the possibility of a great leap happening. One such moment was chatting with a friend on Skype in my van in an Office Depot parking lot.

Suddenly there was this big door way there. Life did not go through as this character, but I bookmarked the portal.

I know there are so many great stories of waking up happening in seemingly odd moments. If you have some and would like to share them you are welcome to comment below.

And in this moment also... still another chance...

Love you,
Bruce

Embracing The Whole Range

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?

The Ripples Are Part Of The Ocean.

I am walking around this beautiful spot in San Rafael. I am surrounded by glistening water on three sides. I am that water and that water is me. Herons and all sorts of other birds are here holding the space of this eternity.

I am chanting my friend's chant: "God Alone Is, God Alone Is". (See his comment below). God to the north, God to the south, God to the east, God to the west. God inside and God outside. God alone is.

I am standing totally still in this place. A large white heron I am watching is standing totally still also. Still in Motion. Joy is over flowing and spilling all over the place. Joy is pushing out like a baby who is about to be born, filling up more and more space.

None of this is special in any way because all of it is special. Every moment. Every journey. Every story. All of this is part of the ho hum ecstasy of the nature of things. God alone is.

All that is is animating this vantage point and this vantage point is animating all that is. The dance and the dancing are one, without a beginning and without an end.

It is all the same ocean.

And in this vast ocean there is a noticing that vivid ripples appear, ripples dancing in the sunlight. Some of these ripples could be termed bliss ripples and others could be termed contraction ripples. They seem to come and go on their own.

When a contraction ripple shimmers through there is this most curious impulse to do something about it, to try to fix it. Yet, that ripple does not need to be fixed. It is as much a part of the ocean as any other ripple. The ocean can handle every expression of itself. God does not need to be improved. God can handle God.

Truly, nothing more needs to be done. As the ocean, we can do it all. It is still party time. Joy is still beaming from every direction.

God Alone Is. Even in the contraction, even in the nightmare, God is there. God is the One animator of all seeming perfection and imperfections. God Alone Is and We Are That. Amen!

This is it. This Moment Is Our Arrival.

This is it! This moment is our arrival. Yes, let’s celebrate! And, this moment also is our arrival. Ah, lets celebrate again. Lets break out the Champaign. We are still here. Cool! How amazing!

Congratulations to all for having arrived here from doing nothing. Here, we are, still here. Nothing has changed. Here we are, still here.

How wild it is that arrival includes seeking and that arrival is a feature of seeking. We can play at seeking on the arrival game board for eternity without ever leaving arrival. God alone is.

There can never be a somewhere else to get to because it’s all already here. And yet, while we are already here we can still seek. We can walk forward on the path-less path, we can seem to meander forever, without ever leaving home. What a great set up!

Arrival can never really be left. It is the permanent state. It is the way of things. It is a never ending celebration that includes seeking and finding, and includes having and not having. It includes all things. It is the party that lasts for ever! Amen.

I join my friend on the East Coast in singing again the ultimate hymn of creation: "God Alone Is, God Alone Is". Ah, yes!

But What About My Life?

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.

Is There Anything Really To Be Done Next?

What if there is never anything that needs to be done to speed this process up or slow it down?

What if existence Itself is always the one in charge, and the doer of all doing? Even the telling of the story of doing may be coming only from the Is-ness of all that is?

The large Mississippi river of Life is just going to keep flowing wherever it flows, despite any efforts to steer it and control it. While we narrate that we have control, can we really know that this is true? And, this is just as valid part of this dream as any other.

We can choose to spin this fact as good news or bad news, and yet no spinning can change the factual reality of reality. And yet, the factual reality of reality itself is always changing.

Finite mind might as well "relax and float down stream" as the Beatles sing. And, yet being tense and and swimming up stream may be just as good as well.

If there is only one boat, one life, there is no way to fall off of this boat. And we can pretend to be off of it for alleged life times, and this is just as cool. Life is so much less serious than we make it.

Are there comments and questions coming up in the apparent "out there"? If so they may be answered in future posts of Blogging Awakening.