This one is for Ben

spaciousness

There is Open Intelligence surrounding us at all moments.

There is no need to do anything.

We are what we seek.

We are the rising, the falling, Rumi’s breath.

We are the singing, the sobbing, the sigh of Hafiz.

It’s all over before it begins.

It never began.

We are everything which arises,

amazing!

why limit ourselves to a single being,

a Ben, a Kathy, a Laurie, an Elisa, a Patricia, a Colleen, a round-Robin?

Why not see ourselves as we truly are:

the computer keyboard, snow falling, this cup of tea.

Every time you try to do, you’re falling back

into the personality, the limits.

Pause between breaths, as the suffering arises,

connect with what never leaves,

never left,

never shall desert us.

What are we?

Only that huge Everything,

that amazing gift of Presence,

never born,

never dying,

always gesturing towards itself

and everything you see, hear, feel now

in this room.

You.

It was never otherwise,

no matter how you dreamed it

sunrise after sunrise after passing sunrise.

“You don’t need to change”

Hi there, whoever you are!

If you’re interested in

glimpsing beyond who you think you are,

if you’re passionate

about it,

here is a good blog to read:

http://www.janfrazierteachings.com/blog/?cat=5

I wrote her an email today telling her how much I appreciate her.

Who is the “I” that appreciates her?

Who is the “you” that is reading this blog?

Day 3 and that’s all folks

Day 3 of my spiritual journal:  That’s all for now folks!

I am hoping you enjoyed these entries, and perhaps are inspired with energy to focus on your own journey into your deepest self.

I am spending the next three weeks, until the next airplane flight above the clouds on my next trip, intensely in meditation and spiritual focus.

Shall I back up and explain why no more daily journal entries shall arise during those three weeks in Simply Here?  (I won’t say no more blogs.  Just no more journaling stories of this timbre in January.)

If you still occasionally tend to think in terms of “good” and “bad”, like I sometimes do, you might have called my experience yesterday not-so-good.

Yesterday started with a good hour of meditation.  Lovely, yes?  But the rest of the day amounted to lounging around the computer, playing computer card games, checking blog hits, responding to comments, reading blogs…in other words, completely and conveniently forgetting that this was supposed to be days of connecting with awareness and Oneness.

A new strategy was required.

Today began with 40 minutes of focused meditation before the outward meditation commenced.  I have spent the day acutely present, here, now, witnessing steps, fingers, wood, turning the key in the ignition.

Meditation while driving.  Meditation at work.  Presence in the forefront.

You fill out a form at work, witnessing your pen move.  You watch your fingers at the keyboard.  You pause between actions, sensing the larger awareness.  You talk on the phone without losing yourself in the conversation.  Or, rather, you can’t find yourself while talking on the phone and you’re aware of it.

It’s always easy to seemingly fall back asleep, losing oneself in activities.  The practice becomes simply staying present.  Not always easy.  But the only path that ignites this heart, the only way left.

However, after almost a full day of constant meditation, words begin to dry up. They head out into the woods, leaving you alone in the house.  It becomes challenging to create a thought (except when someone talks to you–and then you witness answers arise by themselves). Thoughts become so inadequate in the shine of what-we-are that sitting here at the computer and writing journal entries feels impossible.

This has been the first time that I have shared my inner life in this way while blogging.  Most folks are not aware that spiritual focus informs so many actions and thoughts and awareness in my life.  This is what Kathy’s about, until the day she fully realizes down to her fingernails that she is not a separate self.

(Thoughts actually feel like they’ve understood non-duality.  The fingernails don’t agree.  Thus–until the fingernails realize they are not separate–and maybe even after–we won’t be calling ourselves completely awake.)

Still waking up…  Love to all of you and your own deepest hearts!

Day 2: It’s Mu, not moo

Day 2 of this Spiritual Practice Journal.

Day 1, by the way, was not very enlightened.

(Darn.  You want your first day to be enlightened, don’t you?)

Day 1–yesterday–was the pits.

My mind fought itself with a vengeance.  Here’s what happened.

In meditation, early morning.  Breathing with the mantra/koan “Mu” saying it with the in-breath, the out-breath, with the fire in the belly.

When suddenly, the thoughts get a brilliant idea.

(Watch out when that happens.)

Because the mind which is breathing “Mu” is suddenly distracted.  It wants to find out what those thoughts are talkin’ about.  Suddenly the thoughts are more interesting than the syllable “Mu” because, gosh darn it, the syllable “Mu” is just not that exciting, is it?

The thoughts begin to determine that a spiritual blogging journal ought be written.  For two reasons.  #1  Someday I am gonna want to know what really happened in the days preceding full awakening into Oneness.  (Gosh, you thoughts are bold and determined, aren’t you?) and #2 The energy behind my spiritual practice just might help someone else with their energy behind their spiritual practice.

Suddenly I am filled with creative joy and delight.  Mu is temporarily forgotten!  (OK, return to Mu.  Breathe in the creative joy and delight.  Breathe out the creative joy and delight.  Mu, Mu, Mu.)

Thoughts say:  this is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.  Sitting on a couch and moo-ing like a cow.

We are not moo-ing like a cow, Thoughts.  Don’t you have any distinctive powers?  It is MU.  Like the koan.  The Zen koan.

Readers, would you like to know the story of Mu?  Even though my logical mind cannot believe that I am repeating this syllable over and over and over and over again in meditation, here is the story behind the story reported in the Three Pillars of Zen by Philip Kapleau:

A monk in all seriousness asked Joshu:  “Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?”  Joshu retorted “Mu!”

Here is the next part of the commentary by Mumon:  In the practice of Zen you must pass through the barrier gate set up by the Dharma Ancestors.  To realize this wondrous thing called enlightenment, you must cut off all (discriminating) thoughts.  If you cannot pass through the barrier and exhaust the arising of thoughts, you are alike a ghost clinging to the trees and grass.

Please buy the book if you want to read more.  I really don’t care two figs about the Mu story.  I do care sixteen thousand figs because it seems to be working on the deep unconscious.

You’re not suppose to assign yourself a Zen koan.  A Roshi assigns you a riddle which can not be solved by your logical mind based on your temperament.  However, if you’re sitting in the middle of the woods watching the snow fall, sometimes a koan assigns itself to you for a while.

My logical mind would never have chosen Mu.  Perhaps it will abandon it tomorrow.  But some time last week something deep and unconscious grabbed on to Mu like it was a life raft. 

When I breathe in Mu, bellows kindle the fire for Oneness in my belly.  When I breathe out Mu the fire burns brighter.  It’s fierce, like a sword.  There is no logical answer to the question “What is Mu?”

Mu feels fierce, uncompromising.

Yesterday it felt like Thoughts and Mu battled all day, with Thoughts the winner.

This morning I sat down after Barry left for work.  Have no idea whether Mu, breath, or simple awareness will be today’s practice.  It’s back to Mu. 

The thoughts start writing a blog in my head immediately.  I tense, prepared to resume the fight.  Shut up, you thoughts!   Mu continues.  Thoughts continue.  Mu, thoughts, Mu, thoughts.

When, suddenly, unexpectedly, the twenty-minute ”drop” signals.  Twenty minutes after you begin meditation–for some of us–you suddenly sink to a deeper state.  You fall into your unconscious.  Your breathing shifts.  If you’re aware, you can feel the twenty-minute “drop”.  Things change.

Suddenly, for the first time ever, Mu watches thoughts arise, but there is no effort to extinguish thoughts, to make them, please, oh please, Buddha, God, awareness, make them go away.  (I think I just told a fib.  This has happened many times before.  But never in this way.)

Mu felt so much larger, like a light shining bright in a dark room.  The thoughts could do their thing.  They could write an entire blog, let them!  They could go to the moon and back…if that’s what they want.  But they could never, ever, ever, turn off the light of Mu which shines bright in us, encompassing all.

Why, every thought is filled with Mu, with awareness, isn’t it?

After 35 minutes, I ended Mu’ing, or did Mu end Mu’ing? 

Ideally, I would like to carve space to Mu two more times today.  We’ll see how this fits between work-related chores and an evening meeting.

 Ideally, Mu should never cease. 

Realistically, Mu never ceases.

The 2012 spiritual practice journal begins…

Who am I?

I am a being utilizing practice/meditation to realize the Oneness which we already are.

I am also everything, simply everything.

For the next day or days or months–who knows?–this blog shall become a Journal summarizing my spiritual practice.

The comments shall be turned off during these journals.  As you know, meditation keeps our attention inward until we eventually fully realize that inward and outward are not two separate aspects.  They are one Emerging.   I am resolute to keep attention focused inward as much as possible now. (I’ll turn the comments back on when the journal entries cease and the poetry or more general thoughts flow again.)

The Mayan calendar ends in 2012–aren’t we lucky?  The end of the world as we perceive it might bless us this year!  If not, we will have deepened our practice to new depths and realizations.

If some of you current readers choose to cancel your subscriptions, my heart will not mind.  It knows everyone will not delight in journal entries about spirituality and Oneness and enlightenment.  It knows some folks break out in hives at the word “enlightenment” and perhaps that is a worthy response!

Nonetheless, I shall hazard forward.

Part of me thinks this is a big mistake.  Sharing may take attention off the fire in my belly which grows hotter by the moment.  I want to keep repeating my current mantra/koan which is “Mu” and not distract the mind with thoughts.  (I shall perhaps explain “Mu” to you soon.)  Sometimes I simply rest in awareness.  At other times ceaselessly question “Who am I?” Sometimes I look in awe and amazement at the dream reflecting back at that which calls itself a “self”.

Shall I back up a little and explain how the fire kindled in my belly toward the Moon of Awakening?

Quickly now.  Let’s not waste too much time in days gone by.  I “awoke” to Native American spirituality in 1987 and spent seven years with the Ojibway natives learning deep earth-based traditions like the sweat lodge and vision questing.  They named this one Naquobmigesiquay, which means Rainbow Eagle Woman.

In 1994, I veered off on my own path, experiencing kundalini in the mid-90′s in which waves and waves of energy suffused my body for five hours.  It felt like oceanic waves of bliss.

In 2000, I dreamed of Brooke Medicine Eagle who called me west to her camp “Lodge of the Dreaming Women.”  An incredible week of being-awake-in-the-dream broke through deep barriers.

In 2003, the dreaming abruptly seemed to cease and I was advised to ground my physical body/stability with meditation.  Meditated on awareness and breath for many years.

In 2008, suddenly and unexpectedly, on my birthday, after a month of culling all unnecessary graspings and desires, something other than Kathy “woke up”.  It woke up and she was nowhere to be found.  It was, literally, mind-blowing.

She kept returning and disappearing.  About three weeks later, Kathy returned with a vengeance.  She returned full-force, the ego screaming in indignity that such a horror of disappearance had happened.  An intense roller-coaster ride began for months after.

It felt like the Dark Night of the Soul.  It felt like hell.

On the surface, Kathy kept smiling and writing and doing all the usual things.  She even started a year of blogging about an outdoor commitment.  No one suspected anything was wrong or different or unusual.  But inside it roller coastered between no-self and ego-self, no-self and ego-self, rising up to thrilling heights and plummeting down to painful lows.

I didn’t know how to live with this human being any more, with all her graspings and desires.  I tried to get rid of desires.  This did not work.  This increased the desires a hundred fold.  I tried to do everything under the sun to find equilibrium, to rest in the no-mind.

It sometimes worked on the surface, but not deep inside.

I visited a friend/meditation teacher out in Lake Tahoe who returned to basics and taught me to return to my breath, breathing in and out.  I woke every morning and stumbled down to the basement before work to breathe and watch the Mind spin and breathe and watch the mind spin.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, the deep unconscious began to settle.  The roller coaster slowed down.  Even though the human graspings did not cease, the larger mind now encompassed them.

The witness grew stronger.  The mind grew clearer.

This year, at Christmas, during a holiday trip to Georgia, the mind relatively clear and expansive, I picked up the book “The Three Pillars of Zen” by Phillip Kapleau. The book itself didn’t seem anything new, but the energy behind it, through it, sizzled.

Some Zen Roshis advise using the word “Mu” as a mantra or koan.  A koan is a question you can not answer with your logical mind.

On the airplane, coming home from Georgia, I looked at the silver wing and breathed “Mu”. Glanced at my husband–mu.  Flight attendant–mu.   Magazine–mu.  Pants–mu.  Voice–mu.

Soon I was weeping in joy.  Mu, mu, everywhere!

(The Oneness, the Beloved, the Joy!)

What a lovely Christmas present, dear Jesus, dear Mu.

This past week–much clear expansive Mind.  The big Mind.  The little mind still continues its chatter, but it sounds like birds chirping.  Not really so important.

I talked with my friend/meditation teacher two days ago.  Her energy always feels like six jolts of caffeine.  Afterward I looked out the window and saw that it was ALL mind.  The trees are mind, the birds are mind, the deck is mind!

No separation, not because there isn’t discrimination and discernment.  There is no separation because it’s all mind!  And here we are, silly humans, thinking we’re only little separate bodies when we’re really everything.

The next day I felt dull, empty, almost like nothing.  It felt uncomfortable, like a pair of jeans that doesn’t quite fit.

They say that some people declare that they have “woken up” after they glimpse Oneness.

I would say that I am very shallowly experiencing Oneness, a bit here, a falling back asleep there.

I seek to deepen and truly realize this Oneness in 2012.

Writing about this on Simply Here is my gift for those of you who can gleam something from my practice and utilize it in your practice.  If you can be inspired or fired-up or expanded, my heart is glad.

Glimpses of oneness have revealed that you and I are not really separate.  Sure, we’re wearing separate dream bodies.  But we’re the same thing.  We’re awareness!  If one of us wakes up, everyone in the dream moves toward awakening.

If you’re not interested in awakening, if you are satisfied where you are, my heart bubbles over with delight because your satisfaction is also my own.

If you think the “doing” of meditation is not necessary or advised, I bow deeply to you in your own journey.  Many of us feel our hearts calling “do something to do nothing!” and we must not refuse to answer.

Blessings in our path to fully realizing the awakeness that we already are!  Love and Oneness, Kathy

Awaken now!

All you with a fire in your belly to awaken to the Oneness which we are–2012 is your golden opportunity, your silver possibility, the cusp of the moon!

If you’re content to stoke the fire which now smolders, to perceive the world in your customary way, to shore up the boundaries of an individual self, do not read on.

If, instead, something burns fierce to realize no-separation, no-self, no-other, then add more wood to your fire!  Now is the time!  You have been awaiting this day since the beginning of no-time, and so have I.

Take your bellows and blow air on the smoldering ashes.  Blow with your entire might.  Blow like an archer flexes his bowstring.  Relaxed, yet taut.  Determined, yet focused.

Coals slumber, thinking themselves coals.

With your precious awareness, blow them awake!

It is the midnight hour, 2012, the doorway you’ve been waiting.

The end of your world, as you know it, should you desire to proceed.

It’s where your desire points, like a finger toward the moon.

It’s the crux of all your other desires.

Nay-sayers will insist you need do nothing to awaken.  Believe them if you choose! Others have fully awakened into laughter through the nothingness of doing.  Follow that path if it calls you.  But if your fire needs fresh sweet air, burn bright!

Zen masters everywhere burn away the mind, bowing before the sacred match which annihilates all our preconceived assumptions and stories.

Everything is One in its sacred expression, have you glimpsed it?

Are you satisfied with only glimpses?

With fierce determination, turn toward awareness and ask, “Who desires Oneness?  Who is the one who perceives?  Who sees?  Who hears?  Who thinks?”

“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

“Mu!  Mu!”

Today, this moment, you have a choice.  Will the fire in your belly, rise, rise, burn the wood to ashes, smoke up through the chimney and curl into the open blue sky?

It’s 2012!  You shall never have this opportunity again.

 

Eyes of the Beloved

Beloved

Eyes of the Beloved shimmer like stars.  Which they are.

When the Beloved laughs, it bellows like howler monkeys or cackles like geese preening down by the bay.

When the Beloved mourns, hoot owls rise from its sorrow, yellow eyes gleaming in the pitch black night.

When the Beloved sings, mourning doves coo in sunlight.

When the Beloved dresses up for New Year’s Eve, it wears fireworks and Gucci pants and bright red lipstick.

When the Beloved loses every possession, it lies in rags covered with a box in the New York subway.

When the Beloved dances, evergreens twirl fine greenery, brandishing pine cones everywhere as the song encompasses.

When the Beloved kills, it stings like a scorpion.

It creates endlessly.

Shapes coalesce and dissolve and re-appear in unknown form, unfamiliar guise, un-knowable unfolding!

When the Beloved seems to sleep, it always awakens.

Hark!  The Beloved reveals you now, preparing for 2012, never absent from your seeking heart.

Dangerous words

let's dare not define

Do words rise like hard sharp metal in your world,

cutting decisive edges against the mind’s fuzzy not-knowing?

When you think “tree” what do you imagine?

Does your brain make limbs nice and tidy, green, rooted, leaves?

Or does it account for roaring wind,

leafless bones,

roots so thick your fingers can’t embrace them?

Can “tree” leap and escape from the labyrinth of your definition?

Can “tree” burst out of the prison of the mind’s labeling?

Can “tree” scurry beyond all words destined to root it,

define it, kill it, destroy it, wring aliveness from weeping twigs?

When you box “tree” in a nice human compartment,

can it rise in the depths of a December night

and walk away?

Can it purr to coyotes?

Can it sing to wolves?

Can it reach its long spider arms down from the sky and

pull you from your soft warm sheets and shake you awake?

Will you let “tree” into your bedroom tonight

as creeping vines twine through your open window,

past flung-back blankets,

into the red beating flush of your boundless heart

which beckons dangerous words closer, only to

sprout them into pussy willows of

endless possibility,

soft as sweet December snow.

 

 

My body broken for you

Look around…

This is my body, broken for you

into grey majestic tree bark

and computer screens

and funky ducks.

Look!  I am Christmas lights gleaming from garland

and scrap paper.

I am your VISA bill.

I am those photographs and your thought

that there must be something more,

something more than this.

Like that fishing reel hanging on the wall,

we’ve swallowed the hook and misunderstood,

thinking we’re silver-glinting fish

called Kathy or John or chickadee or poem

when we’re really

the arising,

all of it,

my body broken for you

into imperfect perfection.

I want to be Rumi when I grow up

I want to be Rumi when I grow up.

I want to meet him in that field

beyond wrong-doing and right-doing

and sprout poetry

so non-dual that you

know you’re grown up

and that you’re Rumi now.

He whispers:

Come, come, whoever you are.

Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.

It doesn’t matter.

Ours is not a caravan of despair.

Come, even if you have broken your vow

a thousand times

Come, yet again, come, come.

I want to be Rumi when I grow up.

When the vow finally breaks through

the veil of coming and going

and we rest in what we are

before poetry

whispers our heart to remember,

to come hither, now.