Utter simplicity; total impossibility. Maybe TOO simple.
The (W)Hole "Thing"...
[originally posted 6/24/17]
Quick.
(comfortably) Fleeting.
Restful.
DEEP.
Infinitesimal.
Source of strength.
A pit.
When the line of attention is traced back to itself, matters of "this is happening" and "this isn't happening" are rendered irrelevant.
It is as though, in the search for Light, Darkness gleams and (silently) screams through the slivered cracks of experience revealing a wholeness: an infinite hole of stillness and perfection.
It was — that's all. Now it isn't... but it still Is.
It made the later-felt sadness seem silly... a joke worth laughing at, but not worth spending too much time pondering over.
It is a seed planted in me: the "Christ who lives in me" whom "Paul" referred to as his brother in crucifixion; it is the fountain of water within that springs up into everlasting life; it is the Deep calling to Itself (Psalm 42); it is creativity shrouded in its creation; it is our one Sadness, our shared Joy; it is the narrow Path of infinite wonder; it is the single point of expansive spaciousness: my Center — your Center.
God, I want to be that Eucharist. I want to rest in You, resting in me.
"Wanting"... there's something to watch too.
Perfect Arriving
Now
Sunlight
“Stuff”
Traces
Advaita Christianity
"Holy" Pitcher
The life of suffering and the Kingdom of Heaven are both pitchers of water;They both are broken with a constant and flowing leak.They both are the same, in fact;One pitcher: broken, leaking.
At once exhausting and endlessly fulfilling;Being emptied is pain and satisfaction;The pouring-out balanced with a pouring-in;An unseen deposit and an unknown Source.
Torturous attention clinging to the cleftIs the life of grasping and repulsion - suffering.Affectionate detachment broadens to the whole;The out-pouring is released; the in-pouring embraced;both seen and allowed, then vanishing.
Anicca
Isaiah 40:6-8
“6 All flesh is grass, And all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. 7 The grass withers, the flower fades, Because the breath of the Lord blows upon it; Surely the people are grass. 8 The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever.”
Pleasure of the senses and Pleasure of the soul (worldly and unworldly pleasant feeling)
"Pleasure of the senses is emptiness ever filling itself,
Yet remaining ever empty.
Pleasure of the soul is fullness ever emptying itself,
Yet remaining ever full."
-Heiromonk Damascene ("Christ The Eternal Tao" Part I ch 64 p184
"The spirit is made blind by these three passions: avarice, self-esteem, and sensual pleasure. These three passions on their own full spiritual knowledge and faith, the foster-brothers of our nature. It is because of them that wrath, anger, war, murder, and all other evils have such power over mankind. Because of them we are commanded not to love 'the world' and 'the things of the world' (I John 2:15); not so that we should hate God's creation through lack of discernment, but so that we should eliminate the occasions for these three passions."
-St Mark the Ascetic (from "The Philokalia")
Each person is a universe;a greater world within a small one.It is here — in our greater interior world — that we may find and balance on that edge connecting the visible and invisible;the empty point of convergence that reveals the inseparability of being and not-being, created and un-created, finite and infinite...It is here that Christ is positioned as the Way conjoining knowing and un-knowing...We may meet Christ — the Logos, the Way, the Life —(or, rather, Christ will emerge to meet us)in the hour during which thought and image are not followed but allowed to liberate themselves and dissolve in the pure Light of unbroken Oneness and Love.We are to be, as Merton advises, like pristinely clean glass:being illuminated by the entering Light of the sun and disappearing in its Radiance.
Perceiving, Experiencing, Unknowing (agnosia)
"Seeing" the Light (the "Luminous Darkness") of Logos (Christ, the Word, the Tao, the Way)Experiencing the Grace of the Spirit (Holy Spirit, Teh, counselor, breath)Unknowing through negation (apophatic prayer, contemplation, setting aside all that is known to draw near - or to be drawn nearer to - the Unknowable: that which is beyond all existence, thought, concept, and intelligibility... one can only describe things relating to the Essence of God)
Divine Mind (unknown Essence) is the Womb of the Divine Word -Divine Word expresses the Divine Mind -Divine Word is like a still Sound -Divine Action is like a still Breath -Breath rests in the Word and the Word rests in the Breath -both rest in the Mind as the Mind rests in each -Breath (Spirit) is God in us, Word (the Way/Logos) is God with us, Mind (Unknown Essence) is God enveloping us
The 3 is the relationship with a shared Center; it surpasses the rigid oneness of 1 and the unsettled duality of 2...3 is the Non-dual.The only Way to the Mind is through the Word (expressed Thought);The Word emptied Itself so that, with Itself, all can be filled.
Rain, Waves, Ocean
All phenomena can be known in different ways:-Raindrops falling and dissolving into the vastness of ocean...-Waves of localized motion unceasingly rising out of and falling back into the expansive waters...-The depths of emptiness that underpins all action and intention.We can know ourselves as rain in life, waves in imprisonment, or the ocean in freedom.A tablespoon of salt is unpalatable. Dissolved in a Great Lake, it is unnoticeable. We are like that: at once a unit of identity and a dispersed whole; the material center of our experienced universe and the ubiquitous center of an open circle.Seeing this is freedom from entanglement;Living this is the Way.
Seeing
Seeing the swirl of experience pass through the mind,moment after moment,until the detached gaze is timeless...Seeing the workings of the mind betray themselvesand their own shallowness —moving from "knowing these functions of mind" to simply "knowing"...Seeing the chasing;the grasping;the expecting;the clinging;the identification;the wanting;the hatred;the irritation;the lust;the conditions of frustration;and the vapid unsatisfactoriness in all happenings...until all is realized as suffering except the freedom of releasing all from the tightly clenched fist of the mind.This sightlessness is seeing; this Silence is hearing; this untouchability is true feeling; this un-knowing is wisdom; this death is living.
Non-preference
Just as a man who is starving will indescriminately eat any option of sustenance put at his table,he who has tasted even a slivered glimpse of true Release grounded in Awareness (and my taste has admittedly been a mere flashed reflection of a slivered glimpse) will receive, accept, and continue to let go of experience as it is without desire for it to be any different.However, the purification of diligent meditation and prayer efforts driven by a clear presence of mind will hurt...
Cling only to Me...
By the time we actually are able to forget ourselves enough to "cling" to Christ, there is no need...we just ARE and we allow Christ to be within us —and we allow ourself to be [within] Christ.Self-forgetting is the motion of striving toward clinging only to Christ —not through stories, books, passion, or proselytization;but through "seeing" the constant swirling of "self" (including even consciousness) arise out of and return to the dynamic process of embodied divinity.Jesus gives a picture;Christ gives the Way;Spirit gives “inspiration” and energy;God gives Ultimate Mystery and eternally-receding horizons.