So convinced, by habit, that there is something wrong, I flail to relax when the thoughts bully me, first thing in the morning, and again, later.
As inseparability becomes apparent, it does so in surprising ways.
Sitting at the table in Whole Foods this morning, my chai and pastels on the table in front of me, and the new
Rolling Stone, with Steve Jobs on the cover. The mind goes on another tangent here and wonders how will I die? And as I type this, "I" has no sense that it can die. Oh how the moods, the thoughts, the senses shift, and shift again.
I sat at that table for a few hours, mostly feeling like going to sleep. Also feeling a battlefield of thoughts, of longing, of missing a man I've loved, of feeling that I oughtn't be how I am, conflicted, conflicted. At last the repression can't contain itself and after resting and closing my eyes in prayer, a flurry of an unleashed honest message comes through me and is typed into my phone and is sent.
Oh praise to the unrepressed being!
And it was this that revealed to me its undivided nature. No separate me, no separate message, no separate receiver. Though they didn't disappear, which is what I've thought would happen in the realization of this. My mind hasn't been able to understand that inseparable does not mean one bland pureed soup. I still experienced me, and the phone still appeared on the table in front of me, and thoughts still arose that pointed to this man in my system, and yet the blending of the one dance revealed itself.
Our friend Pema Mags Deane wrote this today:
Oh these places that don't know yet they are Love, that don't know how included they are in the All.
When one of these finally feels the touch of the Heart after eons in the dark, what a cascade of tears , of tenderness, of heart swelling, of gratitude , of utter commitment to know and be this Love everywhere.
The unraveling of what binds us to the dream of separateness as Love shepherds all back into the Fold.
And I so recognized it. This is an unearthing kind of learning. We feel so deeply that we are madly flawed. Embarrassingly so. Shamefully so. Unworthy, broken, in need of repair. I mean forty-one fucking years of being so convinced.
What beauty is revealed when it is seen that nothing could possibly
be separate. And that the awareness, to which
all arises, holds us in its loving and welcoming arms, whether we are insane with lust and shame or dancing in the fields or resting on the couch and eating a snack.
I feel that I don't put this into words so well, and I hesitate to write, in part, because I do not claim to have reached an enduring sense of oneness. What matter? Whether it stays apparent to the apparent me or not . . .
I'll sign off by sharing my melancholy doodle from this morning, with gratitude for the impulse to rest in the storm being greater than the impulse to run.
I feel drawn to write poetry, where especially that which has been feared and repressed has a creative stage to sing its song.
