Georgi Y. Johnson's Blog: I AM HERE - Opening the Windows of Life & Beauty, page 42

Suddenly

A mite of light spits out of me

flowing liquid through vessels of dust

embodying a center here,

in this pin-point crater of eternity.

And these bones map the breakage

and this bliss is light revolving

through skin, muscle and form.

Suddenly, a symphony of love

but not all loving –

often, discord and cruel interruption

hardly resolving to That harmony

of loss and becoming.

Timelessly hosting this Being

as a continuous still note sounds

and strange planetary choirs

celebrate the silence That let them sing.

Suddenly, someone turns on the lights,

And I am here – in walls confining,

twilighting in two-tunnelled places

of old faces and this ‘no’ thing,

That we strive so hard to believe.

Be THAT and Be for Real

Could it be that the most profound shift that will happen in your life is the shift that lands you precisely in the muck, mire, normality and commonality of being for real, here and now, unconditional to your physical, psychological or spiritual condition?

The body moves, but THAT is never moving.

Could it be that no experience of awakening or enlightenment could ever define you? For sure, these kind of experiences, in which the boundaries of our minds and hearts blast open, have tremendous value, but what are they, except a happening relative to the prior state of inner imprisonment that activates the nervous system, mind, and emotions with a rush of excitement?

Can any experience – a happening – already only an imprint in memory – really have authority over the morning after, or the years after, or those days when some obnoxious driver curses you in a rainstorm and the bank manager makes a private call to warn you that the overdraft has outworn its limits?

Can any experience be absolute when it is held in memory and memory – a function of the brain – will decompose and fragment in old age – indeed, when it will die even in its present unreliable, amorphous form, together with the one who believes herself enlightened?

Memory is beautiful, but memory is memory.

THAT is unchanged, through childhood, adulthood and old age.

There is a lot of magic in memory, which we will explore in a coming post. But it is really important to recognize that all experience is memory – an imprint on our mental, emotional and physical form. It is an effect of something else – something that has such a fine vibration, we can hardly grasp it with our dense fingers, thoughts and forms of imagination.

We’re not underrating the value of experience, or the nurturing power of certain perspectives. These perspective have one foot out of habitual layers of entanglement with form, but they are not end-points, and to take them as such is to begin a whole new cycle of identification and states of being – cycles which deflect us from the authentic source of every possible perspective.

It is wonderful, for example, to have a way to move to Stillness. To be able to release the thinking mind, and to become conscious of consciousness to a degree that the mental limitation of form is lost, or at least loosened. It is beautiful to be able dis-attach from dense feelings in our hearts and to stay present in a pure atmosphere of Being – unconditional to the driving rain and the bank manager.

These are great perspectives to serve us in the art of living, but are they end points? Do we need to identify with these positions as absolute? They can serve our processes of healing, but are they really bringing unity?

These are questions that need to be asked internally, in the intimate chambers of our inner landscape. Are we truly free? Or are remembered ways to ‘Stillness’ or ‘Being’ exploited as a winning strategy in the art of living – until like every drug – they outlive their purpose and fail to create the effect we are seeking? Are these so called spiritual “attainments” falling into the secret collective agenda of separation, superiority, evasion and grandiosity?

THAT

At the depth of who you are is ONE that never needed to be enlightened. This one has always been there, through thick and thin, through childhood and through every happening – the good, the bad and the ugly.

This one is there when we sleep, it is even there when we are unconscious. This one is there when we are entangled in violence, or lost in emotion. It is there when we experience the greatest expansion in meditation, and it is also there when we curse as we stub our toe on the pavement. It never changes.

This one – this continuum – is so close to home that we can think there’s ‘nothing’ in it. No light shows – no uncommon spiritual explosions, no personal profit.

Yet here you are – at source, unconditional to the freedom of consciousness, or the expansion of awareness.

It is here when you are disillusioned and it is here when you are broken. It will be here in the moment of your death, as it was here in the moment of your birth. It has always been here.

It’s the source of the finest emanations of strength, peace and love. Yet nothing effects it.

Alone or among friends, THAT is unaffected.

Don’t search for the elated experience through the expansion of consciousness or awareness – these are just the effects of That – that continuum which is always there behind and unconditional to the pulsations of light. When we cling to the effects, we are identifying our perception and breaking the channel of that which is at cause, and which at the same time exists independently to causing anything.

Don’t look to teachers to show you this – it is almost impossible to describe. THAT is identical in them as it is at the source of you, irrespective of their freedom of consciousness or the liberation of their awareness.

THAT is in the trees, in the ocean, and in the infinite night sky. It is in the rotting food at the bottom of the fridge. We can only put words, thoughts or feeling to what it is not.

THAT – source of it all – is so commonplace, yet so defiant of all that can be seen, felt or experienced. Because all that which can be thought, felt or experienced is not That one, out of which all those effects arise. Don’t l0ok for anything in particular, because THAT doesn’t need a seeker. It will be wherever your eyes fall, and also when your eyes are closed. THAT is both the seeker and that which is sought. It is behind, within, before, and beyond all we could ever find.

THAT is the core of you which is not an effect of anything. Nothing defines it. Yet it is a cause. The more we allow That, the more we can notice the effect of being that – and some effects can be so strong that for a while we forget we are THAT. This is the direct home-coming – to That which is so common, so blindingly obvious, that we simply forgot it was there.

Consciousness is a mirror. It is a mirror composed of the universal mind which reflects the light emanating from That. As such, consciousness is an effect of THAT source, as is awareness. Every effect can also be a cause, and it is in the realm of causing effect after effect that we suffer within illusion after illusion of false identity. How many apparent selves we move through in a life time! And the only continuum is this awesome, ignored, THAT, which is beyond even perception itself.

Irrespective of our state of being or our state of mind, THAT is always here.

THAT is here, right now, regardless of whether you create light-shows of activity and entanglement. It is anyway here. There is no escape. It is at that core of you where there is no identification necessary. Identification is withdrawn – and although the mirror of consciousness is dark – we are still thoughtlessly here – as we always were. All that could be felt is not THAT, although THAT is there in every thought, every feeling, every moment of consciousness and sweep of awareness.

We cannot perceive THAT, we can only dive into it. We can only be THAT. Inquiry out of THAT turns inside out, as the whole manifest world of perception becomes revealed as an effect of THAT which we cannot perceive, as we are IT.

Take the feeling of peace, for example. This feeling, it’s not peace. It is the effect of the primal peace arising out of THAT, arising from beyond perception. The feeling of peace (we tend to call peace) is an effect on our physical, psychological and mental form. It is a feeling or release, of slowing down, of relaxation, of quietening. These feelings are effects of a PEACE which is so finely attuned as it emanates from the source of who we are that it cannot be “felt”. We can only feel the effect of it. Yet when we disentangle from the “effect” and surrender to THAT out of which peace is emanating, how much more free is the movement of peace.

THAT which never abandons, never betrays, never confuses and which never can be lost.

Next time you have an elevated or expanded spiritual experience, drop it. Just for once. Try to drop it, and be THAT one – at the core of you – that remains. THAT is never abandoned, never not here, you can trust it to the end of time and beyond. And allowing THAT is the start of a whole new journey into the incredible, miraculous service of being human and being here in stillness, freedom mand unity.

This is the process of authenticity, and possibly the source referred to by Nisargadatta – the masterkey to the purity of nonduality which could be better called Unity.

“In reality there is only the source, dark in itself, making everything shine. Unperceived, it causes perception. Unfelt, it causes feeling. Unthinkable, it causes thought. Non-being, it gives birth to being. It is the immovable background of motion. Once you are there, you are at home everywhere.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

Keywords for being THAT:

Normal; Commonplace; Obvious; Continuous; Unconditional; Imperceivable; Self-identical; Unchanging; Unending; Unconstrained; Undivided.  Inescapable, indestructible.

The Shamash – 3 reasons for Thanksgiving on Hannukah

When the Jewish people light the Hannukiah, there is one candle, called  “The Shamash” which is used each night to light the other candles.

On the first night, stands two candles – one candle and the shamash. On the second night, there are three candles – two candles for two days or miracles, and the shamash. Thus the lighting of the candles continues until the eighth evening – when nine candles light up each Jewish home – celebrating the eight days of Hannukah and the “Shamash”.

“Shamash” in Hebrew, is the one that serves. This simple, often ignored candle is the light that lights up all the others. To me,  the shamash is perhaps the most holy part of the whole Festival of Lights. The Shamash represents the light that we carry as conscious beings, manifesting as a service in unique structures of form on the planet.

Here is the case to be thankful for the Shamash, and Happy Hannukah and Thanksgiving  to all of you!

1. Service, Passion and the Meaning of Life

The Shamash is of service.

That means, that all the miracle represented by the eight candles is dependent on her. Without the Shamash bringing the light from a source way beyond the very concept of salvation and miracle, there would be no miracle.

In our culture, we have a latent attitude that she or he that serves is inferior. Happiness is hooked into a condition of being served and not being of service. This is a terrible belief.

Can there be such a thing as private happiness? Happiness is directly connected to our capacity to be of service to the whole. If we are not of service, if we have no use beyond our own individual agenda, then we have no satisfaction. The temporary safety of having others serve us cannot be trusted – as we are dependent – dependent on a temporary structure of power.

In ourselves, the one who is served but is of no service has no sense of purpose. In no time, she who does not serve begins to waste in isolation – an isolation born from the ignorance of being a divided self with no interest in the whole.

Service arises from passion which is unconditional to personal pleasure or pain. As such, service allows the greatest manifestation. In the case of the Shamash, this is in the lighting up of the Hannukiah in every Jewish home.

 

2. The Shamash and Thanksgiving

The spirit and energy of gratitude is closely connected to passion and service.

Even when our whole world seems to collapse, it is still possible to find an attitude of gratitude. Gratitude for the service of others is a key. This opens the gratitude that we are able to serve, that we are part of the whole.

Remember the Shamash! It is not Shabbat Goy doing the dirty work for the miracle – it brings light from the whole which is of service to each individual miracle. Experience gratitude for its tender, constant flame!

 

3. Existence

Existence as human beings, also as Jewish humans or American humans, involves perception.

Before we do, say or decide anything; before we take any form, there is the one perceiving. In the act of being anything or existing, we perceive. Perception is before, behind and through all manifestation.

Perception is light and perception brings light.

The Shamash is that which beings light to each other candle. It is that which shares the light, or inspiration, from one candle to another.

As such – every one who is truly existing in the here and now is a shamash and is of service to the miracle of creation. Just this existence – this flame in its purity, is a service to the whole. Just this one flame can light up many, many other candles, and even by itself, can illuminate an infinite night.

Nonduality, Pain, Healing & the “Person” Problem

The fundamental precept of nonduality – whatever its form and expression – is that essentially, we are far more than the “form” – the creature limited in time and space. Nonduality supposes a unified source, out of which all these limited and transient forms emerge, and to which they return. Through uncovering this source, we realize our true nature and can move through awakening to the unlimited depths of ourselves, to increasing freedom from fear and suffering.

Yet processes of nonduality – such as the widely known awakening to the Power of the Now – often become stalled. The “person” bites back – and a moments ecstasy in freedom rapidly reappears as a garment of person-hood – an “attainment” or a status or a position. Why is this happening and how do the teachings of I AM HERE bring the needed refinement to ease the transition out of identification with person-hood into true inner freedom?

I AM HERE introduces a critical difference between perceptive forms of consciousness, awareness and emptiness. These three forms of perception – or windows – are actually universes in themselves, moving in intimate wedlock with each other, but nevertheless clearly distinguishable. We won’t go too much into the philosophy of experience, but to keep it simple, there is a difference between freedom of mind and freedom of heart. This difference is critical enough to ensure that if one side of the twinship is ignored, the other will not be free either.

Conceptually, we can easily work on ourselves through Satsangs that expose the pure logic of the finite and infinite – using the question “Who am I”. This changing, shifting identity, hooked into a changing, composing and decomposing physical body and mind, soon collapses as a secure place to identify. It can only, ever depend on the One who is able to identify in the first place. Out of this one, the “I” arises, and to this one, the “I” returns. Experiences of awakening through a witnessing consciousness abound. Often, these describe a radical release of consciousness from identification and a sudden expansion into consciousness of consciousness – or consciousness existing independently, before and behind any conscious identification.

For example, when we work with the Power of the Now – the past can collapse easily into the illusory – existing only in the shifting and maleable sands of memory. Likewise, the future can be dissembled in a moment – as a mental anticipation of territory which is based on nothing other than that same fallible store house of memory. Through opening the window of consciousness, we can become rapidly disentangled and empowered through pure existential freedom.

Yet this is not enough. We are still hooked – now, not through mental identification but through the more causal layer of feeling attachment. This “person” also has feeling and emotions. It has a heart which loves, attaches, and grieves loss – irrespective of the thinking mind. To deprogram the conscious mind doesn’t reduce the longing of this heart. To “Know” unity on the level of the mind, doesn’t remove the agony of loneliness, isolation or rejection on the level of the heart.

So many seekers spiral between head and heart. They periodically crash into pain and person-hood, and sometimes with great effort, try to forcibly pull themselves out through their minds – as if they have secretly failed – as if they must still constantly strive to attain that transcendental position, or as if the world itself is so despicable that our freedom can only involve its complete rejection.

Thoughts held in consciousness are able to dis-identify relatively quickly from the person when it is in pain. But the pain? Are we so easily able to dis-attach from that?

When we move to the dimension of awareness – and open our sentience – or our sentience of sentience – we can notice that although we might be expanded in pure awareness, the pain is still there – following us around like an open wound in the unlimited non-dual expanse of infinity. And while buying-out of the mental story is certainly worthwhile in disabling part of the motor of personhood, it doesn’t in anyway negate this open sentient wound. We can “know” we are ultimately One. We can believe that. But does this knowing take the pain of rejection of loneliness away?

Freedom on the level of awareness works quite differently from freedom on the level of consciousness. The sentient suffering (which actually activates the same area of the pain as a physical wound) persists – it requires healing.

Healing is not a popular world in non-duality circles. How can you “heal” the very person we are trying to be free of? Isn’t that counter-intuitive? This person is anyway a total illusion, why would we make the illusion shine brighter? Why even relate to it?

Perhaps the best answer to this is common sense. If we do not address energetic blockages or traumatic states, we will never be free, and we will never truly realize the wisdom behind non-duality. We can not heal something by refusing to acknowledge it is there. We can’t “think” away our feelings – as psychologists have shown for more than a century. Energetically, irrespective of the “person” there are these blockages in pure awareness – sentient blockages – and they have their own intelligence and life-time. Not mental time, but sentient time. If these feelings are not “felt”, then they will wait. And our ability to be free on the level of consciousness will be directly affected by our lack of inner silence, our subtle attachment, and our emotional and sentient pain.

Healing the pain that manifests in our feeling experience – regardless of whether it is of this person or the unified field – is a fundamental part of living freedom. Ignoring suffering is to make precisely that movement which nonduality tries to avoid – the movement into the illusion of separation.

Sometimes the pain – like an open wound – is to potent to treat at once. Sometimes, all we can do is breath through it mindfully. Breathing relativizes the suffering, and allows an expansion in which the pain is not the only focus of the mind (breathing is also happening).

When there is a possibility, it a good technique to use an additional circulation through perception. We can “feel” the pain – where it is in the body – taste it, or sample it. And then, if we are able, move our attention to a part of our body where the feeling is pleasant – such as the face, feet or hands. After totally immersing ourselves in the comfortable area we can move back to the pain. In this sentient circulation, we are able to observe a loosening of state and and a softening of the pain.

At some stage, it could be possible to open the loving observer of awareness and observe the phenomena of the pain from the inside out – and perhaps to observe its healing.

All these methods can be used to liberate awareness of the blocks of suffering – thus giving a stronger ground for the increasing, integrated freedom of consciousness. We don’t need to do them all at once – suffering will wait until we come to take it home.

In working with sentient pain – it is important that the mind and consciousness work as a support. Not “believing” in the truth of any voices that come forward (eg. He hates me) and not “believing” in the person that is under attack. Below is an example of working with the pain of rejection.

Sara focusses on the feeling of the pain in her upper tummy. When it feels uncontainable, we move to the soft feeling of her feet resting on the ground. When she is established there, we move back to the pain in her upper tummy, which is already slightly less potent. Then a voice comes forward in her consciousness.

Voice: “He hates me.”

Answer: “I don’t believe you.”

Voice: “Everybody hates me.”

Answer: “Everybody wants you to be free of the illusion of you.”

The pain in Sara’s belly has moved upwards to the upper chest area. A new layer of pain is emerging, connected with shame and early child-hood. The process of healing and liberation of the identification and attachment to the limited state of person-hood continues – on behalf of the individual and on behalf of the whole – which at a certain stage is revealed as one and the same.

 

 

Burning Woman

Here she is.

A flame in a night of stars,

and air so fresh it’s as if you’re tasting

the outer precincts of this universe.

They say universe, yes, one song,

but in this song, how many discords sound.

See the smoke. as she burns,

clouding the night sky

as if infinity were a fantasy,

here the cold crackle mocks

her body as it burns

Could you allow

the un-sentient shame of heat?

Don’t pretend you didn’t mean it.

Don’t discard it, in thoughts of “other”,

for here love burns and burns for you.

And when she burns, you burn too

and after this November horror is gone

she will still be always, already one.

Evolving in Emptiness – a Supermarket Meditation

Screech of sound, it’s music, they say,

turn around and cash, a cart in the way

a steely face, and eyes avert

criminal record, accused, inert,

so sail etheric to the fisherman’s queue

where boats are barren, no ocean air,

just a row about turns, and customer care,

coupons, status and an immortal stew.

Softly, my love, be soft in empty spaces,

be soft, love, be here and now

softly through this body, in traces

of being here, and being allowed

to be here, softly,

leaving no footsteps where we go.

Georgi Y. Johnson

Daring the Somebody: a miraculous, precious, individual, orchestra of perception

In the broad world of spirituality, an old-new trend is emerging: the fashion of the “nobody.” Of course, being “nobody” can be exhilarating for a while – especially after perhaps a lifetime of being addicted to social norms, parental expectations, popular ideas and the general movement of adjusting the face and heart to suit the circumstances. But while we are in a body, the absolute truth of “nobody” doesn’t hold that long, and this creates a pressure.

The popular way to relieve this pressure is through the unifying realization that you are “everybody”. Everybody that you talk to, every form that you are able to perceive, every thundercloud and every vibration is part of you. Again – liberating. Again, at risk of falling into the trap of god-like narcissism. Because, even in the realization of the “Everybody” it is you – you at the eye of the storm – you at the heart of perception. Through the I am Everybody movement, the  “other” can be reduced to a film image or a cartoon character in your own story book, and nothing beyond. In general, the “everybody” realization will only be able to give to the “other” that which the one that realizes is able to allow within his or her self. Often, this is very little.

Nisargadatta said: “Wisdom says I am nothing. The heart says I am everything. Between the two, my life flows.”

So here we are. We have wisdom at one polarity. The heart at the other polarity. We have the nothing – the great liberation of consciousness, and we have the everything – the great liberation of awareness. And then we have this “life” which is flowing between the two. A middle way.

Between the Nobody, who is Nothing, situated in Nowhere; and the Everybody, who is Everything, situated in the Everywhere – we have the blindingly obvious miracle of emptiness. Why is it not talked about too much? Partly because it confronts people with the very aspect they sought to escape through spirituality and meditation – the human aspect – the world of responsibility, emotions, feelings, and suffering, transient, individuality. This is a life that can’t be held as a concept or experience. This is the “Life” that flows between the two poles of all and nothing, space and time, consciousness and awareness – a life emanating out of existence, which brightens in the opening to the very possibility of non-existence.

In emptiness, the nobody and everybody duality disappears and what emerged is the starting point  of every process – that challenge to be Somebody, Something, Somewhere.

Why would we hide from that? Why would we need to dose it, spiritualize it, transcend it, or vanish it?

When we move from the someone, to the noone, to the everyone, and back to the someone, what tends to arise is the suffering of love. This is the challenge of being authentically human. It is inseparable from the pain that this somebody will die, this something will dissipate, and this somewhere is only a relative perspective. Yet the challenge of being a non-absolute somebody – in all its glorious simplicity, is the true service of being here.

Someone cannot be held forever, it cannot be identified with, it defies attachment, and it cannot be fixed in time or space. Yet Someone is here – human in mind, heart and body. Human in consciousness, awareness and emptiness. Human in the relative and absolute service of being human.

This means allowance. Allowance of the pain, the love, the instinct, the illness, the fear, the trauma and the addictions (perhaps even the addiction to spirituality).

This means movement – the flow – of responsiveness and responsibility through the great web of interbeing. and responsibility for our brilliant minds in using the fallible garments of words and concepts to try to communicate the ineffable.

This means loyalty – loyalty to that source out of which the black, the white and the gray emerge – that which is the container of humanity itself – in every living second. That out of which all perception arises – that which is imperceivable as it cannot see itself, no matter how it arranges the mirrors.

This loyalty is the masterkey to a process that takes its own course through every particle of human perception in service to a unity which is greater even than our imagination.

Why does suffering exclude others? Q & A with Georgi.

Q: Why does suffering have to be exclusive? Why do we separate from others when we suffer?

If suffering appears as exclusive, there is a wisdom behind that movement of separation in the negotiation of physical time and space. Separation – more space and time – could be needed for a while because when suffering arises, it is intimate and shockingly real. Is there reality to the idea of suffering excluding others? Absolutely not.

Yet to open this, we must look at the nature of suffering, which means we need to allow suffering to arise in our perception, sentience and experience. Are we ready to take some time and space to do this? Is there enough suffering around to make this possible?

What is suffering? Could this phenomena called suffering ever exclude anyone? Does it have a separate identity, self and soul? Is there a human, animal or archangel whose name is “suffering”?

No, there is no such animal.

Suffering is utterly dependant on the one that suffers. It arises out of the one that suffers. It has life – thoughts, feelings, and body – which is drawn from the one that is able to suffer.

So can suffering exclude? No. That would be the end of itself, it would have no more substance if it could truly separate from the one that is sustaining it. Suffering doesn’t exclude anything or anyone, we are the ones that for whatever purpose, attempt to direct our consciousness in a way that excludes real suffering.

Q: Can’t we exclude suffering forever, by not investing in it?

No. We can numb it with medication. We can distract ourselves from it with recreation and pleasure-seeking. We can try to sleep through it – closing the windows of perception as soon as the suffering weather comes. But in the end, to exclude suffering means to exclude life and living. Still further, it means to deny creation. As part of creation, are we able to deny it?

Q: So what is suffering?

Suffering is a word loaded with negative connotation and agenda. It is a word, caught within the polarity of pleasure and pain. We want the pleasure but we don’t want the pain. Yet the pain is the twin flame of pleasure – it gives sense to pleasure. In the same way, pleasure, or its absence, gives sense to pain. You don’t get one without the other. It’s just a sliding scale. No matter how much you control, how fast you run, or how high you fly.

Pleasure will always bring pain – they are two sides of the same coin.

Q: So what is pleasure and what is pain?

They are the effects of contact with a differing vibration. They are sensations – sensations that are arising out of movement. A gentle stroke is pleasant while a sharp slap is painful – yet both involve the principle of contact, touch and otherness – both depend on a separation or space between. No space, no touch. No touch, no pleasure and no pain. No emptiness, no creation.

So in suffering, we are being touched. We are being touched so much that it hurts. It becomes uncontainable, so there is a slow-down, an energetic freeze or flight.

If that same touching was gentle, and attuned to peace, it would be pure pleasure, responsiveness would be allowed, there would be reunion.

In suffering, something is touched, perhaps even destroyed (which is always transformation).

This “thing” which can be touched and can be destroyed is just a form, it is anyway inherently unreal in that it is transient. This “thing” of phenomena is at source totally dependent on you – the one out of whom the thing is arising. You are the source of it and it is transiently a part of you.

Q: Can we be free of suffering?

We are always free of suffering. We are always, already free of suffering, at the same time that we are in suffering.

The more we move with the illusion that we can “exclude” suffering, the more we lose connection with that freedom. This is because the very notion of exclusion is based in the belief that absolute separation is possible.

Q: So what is its purpose?

Suffering in part of the barometer of feeling. Feeling is the after-effect of perception through awareness. The Tibetans call it sentience. Awareness is unconditional – unlike consciousness, it doesn’t exclude, select or divide.

With our consciousness we can “block” the impressions left through awareness (our angers, pain, grief), but it will anyway arise through what psychologists have termed the “unconscious” – it will arise in the dream state, when consciousness has surrendered to awareness, in the forms of – for example – projections, dreams or nightmares. It will even arise in play-outs in whole dramas in our “normal” every-day lives. Awareness is always responsive , always responding whether or not we allow it, and always inclusive.

Our control is limited to the “blocking”, “selecting”, or “investing” choices of the waking mind and the power of consciousness and light directed by that same mind.

Awareness is a window that opens to unconditional or universal love. That is to say that love is carried in every particle of awareness. It has a vibration which is much finer and more potent than the normal shared vibration of human life – that which resonates through the individual self, the physical body and nervous system. The impact of the vibration of love on the physical vibration manifests in the experience of feelings and emotions. This impact on form is what we normally identify as “love”. What these feelings are in reality, are the effect of love on a denser layer of form or vibration.

Q: So love is not so “loving”?

Loving is the effect of love manifesting through layers of vibration. In this, we begin to identify, calling it “my” love or “your” love. In this, the Me and the You arise. “Nobody loves Me.” Within this mind-field, there is the suffering of ignorance and of disconnection from who we truly are in a wilderness of form. That same suffering is the love calling us home.

When our physical and psychological bodies are relaxed, the effect of this love can be experienced as a fulfilling, nurturing, opening, reuniting, delicious happening in the heart, body and mind.

Yet we are always secretly dosing it, because if the potency were to be increased, it could break our nervous systems. This is part of the task of identification – to put limits on the love to preserve our mental and psychological form. The body itself regulates how much love can be experienced. Too much love becomes a very high form of suffering. Most people actively run from that. It takes training – down to the light particles of the nervous system – to allow this love in its purity.

Conditioning (the misconception of conditional love) has groomed our nervous systems into patterns of disallowing pain – or avoiding suffering. This is based on the absolute belief in “otherness” (a twin-flame of identification). It also arises out of a belief that our physical fragility is some kind of absolute fragility (i.e. that pain is an existential or spiritual threat). This means that the subtle vibrations of our physical form become even denser. This is what we could call an energetic “block”.

Yet love always seeks itself, and it is infinite in its omnipotence. The blocks become attractants. This is because trapped within these block are dense, (not yet physical) particles of love. Vibrating particles of love. Love answers love creating an extremely high potency of love.

This high potency of love moving through the physical is the experience of suffering.

Q: So how should I move with suffering?

This suffering is not “my” suffering or “your” suffering. There is no “me” and there is no “you”. These are mental constructs created by the mind to support its own evolution.

If we move through a casualty zone, we move equally through suffering. It is one shared pool of pain. Yet if we are a paramedic, we will know that suffering as love.

At core, suffering is the love which cannot and will not exclude any vibration of itself.

Suffering is love and love is suffering. And who now, if they asked themselves honestly, in privacy, and in the suffering of isolation, could live without love?

Q: Why does God allow suffering?

In the light of the above, it could be experienced that God is love. Love is infinitely arising out of what you could call God. This love is arising through all the dimensions of our physical universe, of creation. It is always here, always now, always arising from beyond the limits of time and space.

If God is love, then God is suffering. God is suffering and suffering is God.

All we need to do is allow that. Allow ourselves to surrender the “I” and to collapse in empathy.

Empathy is the effect of perception through emptiness – perception through all that which is transient and temporary. In seeing and feeling through all that which is transient and temporary – disengaging and disinvesting from all transient forms, the one that sees becomes purified and revealed. All transient forms are inherently empty, so the one that sees and the one that feels, can easily pass through. Also suffering is a layer of form. It is empty of a separate self.

Q: Allowing suffering sounds quite outrageous!

Through allowance, the greatest fire of all will arise – the fire of passion – powered by pure love. This is the true outrage.

This passion will rise and manifest through compassion.

Compassion is passion manifesting in form – through the transient separations of time and space.

This compassion will compel action – in and of itself. It is choice-less. In witnessing all this, understanding will unfold into wisdom, implanting deeply into the fertile silence of the mind. This wisdom empowered by consciousness will stand timelessly – for as long as there is still time – as a guide in the art of living.

Soothing the Inside Out

A wind chants threads of home,

the wonder of a child within, alone,

an inner creak of sacred bones,

and a dog running nearby,

Can you hear

the silence singing a setting sun?

Listen – these bells that ring,

they ring for you.

Colors change in this space,

mystery with light in the eyes

through a window – being, seeing

as out there, far away, so close,

a horizon limits sight;

yet curving unseen, sensuous

into these arms, as two hands,

loyal escorts through happening

are suddenly now so still,

as if they had shaped the night.

Heat inside body and cooler there

Where? Here.

Where this one holds feeling

as contrast to itself,

finding this vanishing bliss

and a great soul behind, before,

timelessly waiting

where hot and cold are one.

Give me a moment of your miracle

Let me come into your wild universe,

to a source of what we’re meaning to be;

Let’s caress this multiple illusion

into emptiness,

where we are always, already free.

Intimacy, Despair and the Open Heart

Georgi,

Despite the beauty, connection, intensity, etc of any relationship, is there a place we with-hold or reserve within ourselves?

Perhaps we save something in case we get rejected by that loved one and it is where we store up our little criticisms?

Or, is our Heart just more open at one moment than another?

I’m thinking that of course you cannot give yourself completely to another in this life, that is only possible in the union of the next. But there is something I am feeling that is such despair.

It doesn’t matter how much we have experienced the beauty, bliss and ecstasy of our inner core in meditation and life, there still emerges a front line of service in the area of intimate relationships. We can be enlightened to the whole world, but in the kitchen with our partners, sometimes a simple gesture or look can seem to crush our heart – sending us cascading into a forbidden space of despair, isolation or hopelessness.

Why is this?

Are we withholding a part of ourselves, or is there some kind of devil’s valley between the inherent, unconditional unity we know is there, and the celebration of love, intimacy and togetherness.?

Called poetically the “valley of the shadow of death”, this area is pure shadow-land of all the transient forms of creation. It is a shadow-land because for all the tremendous beauty of creation and being human, and being here now, the transience – or passing away of it all – is inherent to that same beauty.

This means that we could have the perfect partner – one who is fulfilling, nurturing, and emanating unconditional love and care. Yet this partner, in this form, WILL leave us – or we will leave them – if not by choice, then through ageing and death. This death bell is ringing moment by moment through every relationship.

If we bring this transience to the microscale, it is happening also moment by moment. Perception through beauty is made possible through the realization of the transience of what is perceived. It can’t be held onto, fixed, or defined, it always escapes. In a way. at the same moment we are in love, ecstasy and joy, we are also are abandoned, releasing all forms, moment by moment.

The opening of the heart is a layer of form. Many of us can recognize that even when we are really angry with someone, the love is the same as it always was, is and ever will be. The heart can close for good reason, such as maintenance, grief, the need for a deeper movement inside (like closing the door to meditate). We are still here, on both sides of the closed door. It is important to allow this natural rhythm and movement of the energetic body.

Now here is the bad/good news. What to do when we meet despair? We need to let ourselves be, also in that, not rejecting a particle of it.

Let’s quote one of the greatest lovers and poets of our times on togetherness:

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”

~ Khalil Gibran

Intimacy is the opposite of loneliness. Unity has no opposite.  If we can truly allow this internal loneliness, and this despair, we create the existential space out of which intimacy and love can re-emerge from a deeper truth, purity and strength. When we can allow the pain of separation, we allow also the opening and clarifying of perception. And it is only through perception – through our consciousness and awareness, that we can hold this beauty of the “other” for a moment of eternity.

When we truly allow our despair, we are already walking through the valley of the shadow of death, moment by moment, towards the source and truth of all we are – a source which at core casts no shadows. From this source, all creation is reborn second by second in all its splendour. The despair itself will bring the perspective in which gratitude emerges, and the celebration of all those manifestations through which the togetherness of the relationship is formed.

If there is a need for our relationships to evolve, change, or reform, then this valley will reconnect us with the source from which all forms are arising. We won’t even need to do anything – just allow the evolution.