Encountering the Self

 

My first go at on-line blogging has been a very intriguing experiment.  On the 'stats' page, one can view the numbers of people connecting to the site and their location.  A world map becomes colour-coded according to the country where the readership originates.  So it seems a lot of peeps have either stumbled onto the link, or even passed it around.  I would love to know who my readers were in Germany!  And the Russians?

The world is a wondrously vast place, but also very very small...

I believe this will be the final post for Biografia-Automatique.  My work at "Undressing the Word" is going to morph into something a little bit different now.  I've been encouraged to share more writing on the Net regarding the main subject of my previous post, namely some pointers for folks who are on a path of deeply investigating matters of truth and reality.

So for the next couple of months I'll be engaged in a new writing project (now that I’m no longer employed in the BC Public Service and have time on my hands – yeah).  By the end of June I hope to have this project uploaded in e-book form:

THE SELFWARD-FACING WAY:

A Course for Living the Direct Experience of Your Eternal Nature

If any readers out there are interested in being notified of this written work upon its completion, I would be happy to send it along or direct you to the link where it will be posted.  In that case, please message me at faceselfward@gmail.com.


With much love and peace from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada...
Sal

To Church on Mondays - Part 2

(Click for PART 1)
  
The heavy oak door with wrought-iron handle closes shut behind me.  Silence.

I take a step forward.  “Clunk-tap.”

A few more steps.  “Clunk-tap, clunk-tap, clunk-tap…” echoing through.  Silence.

No patron appears to greet me.  I am the only one here.

I begin my first-ever private walking tour around the inner sanctum of Christ Church Cathedral on Quadra Street.  I walk.

“Clunk-tap, clunk-tap, clunk-tap, clunk-tap...”

Five minutes.  Ten minutes.  Just me.  Silence.

I circumnavigate with senses taking in all that I haven’t paid much attention to until this visit… The immaculately chiseled edgings of massive stone columns.  The mild odor of worn leather pew cushions and polished wood.  The drone of seemingly distant cars passing by, which I experience in the same way as a forest hike at Upper Thetis Lake (I have to be very still to detect the highway in the far background).  The variety of windows-as-Saints constructed from cut stained glass pieces, filtering sunlight.

Symmetry and balance.  Order.  The sheer height of the domed coral-coloured ceiling with its criss-crossing patterns.  The sensation at the base of my neck as I look up into it, letting my head fall back into a cradle of observing.

Mostly, I love the softness the wall hangings around the perimeter bring to the Cathedral… The way the light picks up the glimmer in their fabrics.  The ones with the universal messages of peace.

It seems the church belongs to me right now. I select a pew and sit.

*   *   *

Pure Consciousness has a hum-like quality to it that is not heard as sound per se but rather directly experienced by one’s entire being, by one’s very nature of being, itself.  My teacher, C, liked to call it “the Current.”  It is profound, boundless, and whole – without shape or form.  Always here and available, it is graciously empty and abundantly full at the same time.  Fulfillment.

The recognition of this ever-present opportunity for fulfillment is precious, because it points to what is actually living as that which is referred to within every sentient being as “I”... living as All.

How to recognize it?

All the great prophets, the great saints and mystics since time immemorial have been telling us ‘how.’  All the Jesuses and the Buddhas and the Ramanas end up arriving at the same conclusion.  The greatest Teachings and Dharmas the world over give us this sublime instruction:

“Be still.”  Be exactly as you are.  Self/God alone is here.

*   *   *

Sitting in that pew quietly, as the firing of thought-creative neurons comes to rest (for now), it becomes effortlessly obvious that I am this empty fullness – moment for moment.   Before, during, and after every perception of thought, feeling or any other sensation, the Current remains the same.   In waking state, dreams and deep sleep, in life and in death, here it is.   Existing equally inside and outside, infinite in all directions, indescribable yet spoken of, nothing compares to the peace of surrendering oneself to this.

In the deepest waters of surrender, it can be seen to have already been the truth of oneself, all along.

The truth of oneself is the only thing that is not conceptual.  And undressing such a statement, one discovers the “divine paradox” in the fact that concepts are being used to describe this thing, which is not a thing, either.  Which is the kind of mess that can make a mind crazy for decades while lugging around the identity of a spiritual seeker…

My apparent separateness was a very convincing hallucination.

*   *   *

I take a moment to glance up at the pews in front of me, at the books dressing up their backsides.   At all the bibles and hymn guides.  So many books!  So many concepts!  So many reference points!

The books remind me of how much I enjoy words, reading and writing, and especially making music with other people.  When gathering for the purpose of being thankful together, “the Word” spoken and sung is definitely awesome.

But here I sit.  Just sitting, no big deal.  I keep quiet for a bit.  Mentally grasping at some reference point to define or understand – to identify myself as ‘this’ or ‘that’ – feels irrelevant and rather exhausting.  So I don’t bother.  The moment is as it is.  Soon I’ll go back to the office and maybe decide I like the drama of the “temporary insanity” this job seems to be causing me, so much so that an as-yet-not-dislodged attachment to masochism will re-engage my dance with drama.

Meanwhile, countless trillions of universes are spinning, in this very moment, as ‘me’ and everything – with no scientifically provable distinction between the two.  Same same.   It spins as all galactic events:  Milky Ways, supernovas, black holes, big bangs.  Spins as each living cell, as every fellowship of atoms and particles in a perpetual diversity of moving configurations.  The Moment will always be as it is, this Infinity.  Drama or no drama, the Current is indestructible.

The thinking mind is not a suitable instrument for apperceiving the Infinite.  In Zen, they say: you have to take the backward step.  This means that to recognize what is eternally present one must completely let go of every point of reference and fall hands-free off the cliff.  Not literally, of course.  But it’s a good metaphor for stubborn, busy minds like mine.

Such a complicated search!  How contracted and small did I feel my whole life while I worked towards what I imagined would comprise my happiness, my fulfillment?   "Be still" was much too simple an instruction.  As long as I got to keep things complicated, my suffering was nobler somehow.  Special.

What Grace pours in (and not from somewhere else) in stopping all my effort, my seeking… when I stop trying to get something!  Inwardly, what if I permit myself to not interfere with “things as they are” while I sit here?  What do I think is going to happen to me?  What if, for an instant, I don’t reach for a single concept?

Free of all referencing activity, what is left over?  What am I, then?  ‘Where’ am I?

“In Church,” obviously.  How about “everywhere.”   “Nowhere?”

Take your pick.  Same same.

*   *   *

These words are very BIG concepts.  A single instant of absolute trust in the incomprehensible bigness of true Reality shatters everything one once thought to be real.  Waiting here, allowing the Bigness to be the Bigness, what arises in the next moment can only be unknowable.  The freedom of letting go makes not knowing such a relief.

But you can bet it will keep getting bigger.  It is like this.  This is “normal life.”  In the most ordinary of events, and the most extraordinary, there is nothing unmiraculous about it.  The awe that saturates the heart of such a realization inevitably leads to creativity, commitment and responsibility, passion, joy...   Ah:  future writings await subject matter.

*   *   *

As I sit, breathing is happening somewhere.  There is repetition.  Expansion and collapse.  Like worlds forming and disappearing, maybe, or waves rushing up on sand then drawn back again.  Waves drawn back into the ocean, which they never left.

… Ocean, which they always were, and could never not be.

This photo was taken in Parksville, BC, from the back deck of my favorite place on Earth:
"Uncle Don's Cabin"

To Church on Mondays

I’ve decided there’s only one thing about my new job that isn’t completely unsuited to me:  the fact that it’s temporary.

A funny thing happens when I’m engaged for a period of time in any kind of energy-depleting activity with a (thankfully) pre-determined end.  The mind begins calculating duration with a particular degree of willful shape-shifting I wouldn’t require under other circumstances.  Maybe you have experienced something similar to this nature of cognitive trickery.  

For example, I just finished the fourth week of twelve at this job.  It seems a miracle I’ve completed one third of the work!  Even better, in only two weeks – just half the amount of time I have already marked – I will be at the “half finished” point!  If I can make it to half finished, I am positive I’ll have what it takes to survive the last half.  

And just two weeks following the halfway mark I will be two-thirds through, etc.  So you see how over-the-top this line of reasoning can become...

Now that I think about it, I’ve observed the mind adopt the same strategy for opposite purposes, too, especially when I’m doing something I really love and don’t want to end.  “How could it be half over, already?  I feel like it just started!”  A music festival is always a good excuse to entertain this form of resistance to the natural progression of time.  Or a rendezvous with a foreign lover, of which there were a few during my years as a Canadian woman traveller...

But I digress.  

Now employed in the Public Service, perceiving these weeks as bearable is also intimately linked with my 1-2pm lunch hour.  A cup of Earl Grey tea taken sometime between 9:45 and 10:30am is the first saving grace of the day, and then at 1:00 I get to escape the building for an entire hour.  My office is located on Fort Street east of Blanshard, a groovy neighbourhood of Victoria that benevolently extends a wealth of creative eating and window-shopping opportunities.  I find myself becoming a “tourist in my own town” within these elegantly cultured blocks, or Antique Row as the locals have affectionately dubbed them.

But most afternoons breaking away from the office at lunchtime, I opt for the relief that overtakes me when I walk one block south down Quadra Street and enter Christ Church Cathedral.  Sometimes I spend almost the whole of my precious hour there, just sitting quietly.  Consumed in the palpably alive silence of this place, I shut the door to the city – and to the inevitable feeling of dread that will begin creeping into my throat around 1:55 – behind me. 

*   *   * 

Stepping in, the dissolution of streetscape acoustics has taught me that masses of pure vaulted stone make for a remarkable sound barrier.  The polished floor shines and invites me to a pew.  On days when I’m wearing my fancy thift-purchased office shoes, I tippy-toe down the aisle to avoid the reverberating ‘clunk’ of my heels through this immense spaciousness.  Surely, tapping is more forgivable than clunking in the House of God.

I typically perceive a range of intermittent sounds as I sit.  Today included the sobbing of grief, and then a cell phone ringing (oh the irony!).  A patron will greet incoming tourists and explain in low tones that this version of Christ Church was built in 1929 – others existed at nearby locations prior.  It amazes me that such a lasting feat of elaborate architecture was constructed here within the past century.

Yesterday a school teacher gave a tour to young students of the attached Catholic school.  All in red shirts, the chattery children were shuttled en masse between the different alcoves of Christ Church, receiving their tutorials in the particular religious element being accentuated at each one.

One day there was an organ lesson going on above my head, perhaps in preparation for the regular Friday recitals held at the Cathedral.  Admittedly, I don’t imagine myself gaining an appreciation for organ music in this lifetime…  

During one of my first visits, in solitude a man played the piano.  I’m not sure exactly what his gig was.  He would play a few lovely bars of music, and then hammer down on a high octave key (F sharp?) for thirty seconds or more.  With great feeling and purpose.  Over and over, the same key, then a few more bars would come.  Then F# F# F# F# F# F#...  That f*%!king note defiantly proclaimed itself throughout every inch of the church's interior, as well as inside me.  It felt like a gavel kept slamming into my eardrum – I understood in those moments why they call it a sharp.  Could I perceive this annoyance as a reminder that what I call 'noise' and 'silence' have the same ultimate source, that the “right conditions” for meditation come in an infinite diversity of forms?  

In the end, I could no longer contain my laughter and had to leave the Cathedral.

*   *   *

But a week ago, something extraordinary happened.  Or didn’t happen.  When I entered the building that lunch hour, it was deserted.  For a period of time, I was all alone at Christ Church Cathedral...       [“To Church on Mondays” PART 2]

*   *   *

Since I began my current employment I’ve reflected a few times on that highly-quoted observation (who made it?): Most people live lives of quiet desperation.  The pervasive effects of hating one’s job cannot be understated.  I feel that Monday must be the most difficult day of the week, for millions.  In fact, do I remember at one point reading about Monday having statistically higher suicide rates?  (Or maybe it was Sunday?)  Working for the reward of your lunch hours and your retirement pension does not constitute meaningful work.  Being chained to a computer desk and governed by mountains of documents that sit on lifeless shelves is not a life. 

 

But soon, I’ll be halfway finished…   

At least I am grateful to have found a remedy for getting through my back-to-work blues.  You can bet you’ll find me at Church on Mondays.  

The Coming

Greetings of the New Year!  I begin this writing at the end of the first week of 2012.  Funny, but I've suddenly realized that in the rich and active new Age of Blogging (how long has it been running, now?), I admit to being completely "green" regarding this aspect of modern culture.  In fact, I have hardly even really read any blogs.  There must be so many millions of excellent writers, blogging away out there!  But for the record, my exposure thus far, and my interest, is owed to three bloggers.  Well, four, actually.

The first is Gluten-Free Girl.  Shauna James Ahern, from Seattle.  This woman “saved my life,” quite literally.  That’s all I can really say about her without having my whole first blog post taken up with adoring gratitude for her amazing work!  Now formally named Gluten-Free Girl and The Chef, this blog is a testament to how endlessly enjoyable it can be to immerse one’s life in a contemplated exploration of food and love (The Chef is her husband), among other subjects of note.  

I ordered Gluten-Free Girl, Shauna’s first book, about four years ago.  Sub-titled: How I Found the Food that Loves Me Back... & How You Can Too.  Imagine a world where we all eat, everyday, with the experience that our food is loving us?  What a life that would be!  And how then could we not, in turn, love how we seed, grow, harvest, raise, distribute and otherwise create/produce humanity’s food system?  How healthy, how vital and creative, would our species be?  Not to mention a few other species around here, too, many of which we eat and lots of others whose survival cannot but be affected by our need to eat.  Now there's an interesting topic for a blogger to take on... 

Shauna's January 2nd blog post is entitled "going quiet," and she graciously tells her readers that she won't be available for a time:

"It’s the bleak dark winter. Starting the year in January, when the light is weak and the cold air sharp, has always seemed so wrong to me. This is the winding-down time, the slowest time of the year.

And yet, every magazine article and blog post right now is about Improvement! New Start! Green smoothies, kale salads, and a clear denunciation of who we have been in the past year. Organize yourself now! Most magazine covers this month read: lose weight, clear yourself of clutter, improve your memory, get your financial life in order, and be happy now! How is that last one possible when we’re so busy bustling, doing all the things needed to become a new person?

I don’t want to become a new person. I just want to be here.

That’s why I’m not going to be here for awhile."

Go inside, Gluten-Free Girl!  Be right Here and Go Inside, quietly...

*   *   *

I have two dear friends who are currently sharing thoughts, stories and experiences through blogs.  My friend Paula is writing about her travel musings in Spain.  It is inspiring to absorb the flowering and maturing of Paula's delight, as she enters ever deeper into the mythological force that surges from the Corazon (Heart) of Espanya: “I find a strength here that I have not encountered in other places.”

Another friend, Nowick, writes from India at this moment in time.  Soon, from Bali.  In this blog, Nowick shares his sublime perceptions of truth, love, and ordinary everyday happenings:

Merger and Wholeness

I want you to be merged with me.

And I want you in your own wholeness.

These desires are not contradictory.

We are holograms; each reflecting the whole.

Oneness manifests in individuality.

As you give yourself to me, you find yourself.

You find and maintain and grow in your own expression,

enfolded in my love, and in the greater One.

If this is “Wisdom on the Fly,” as Nowick's SEEKER's MANUAL is aptly sub-titled, I look forward to how wisdom reads when he's not on the fly...

*   *   *

Oh, and the fourth blog I referred to... Taxi Tales.  Stories of a UK (Cumbrian?) taxi driver.  Great stories!  Brilliant mind!  Thoughtful and honouring of his occupation.  You never know what inspiration, wit and cleverness might be at the wheel of your next cab ride... worth your curiosity.  But of course, I wouldn’t know anything about that.  No, not me...

The reason I’m offering my first post today, of all days, is because this week I discovered a poem I wrote over a decade ago and had forgotten about, which I want to “give away.”  I’ve never been much of a writer of poetry, although like most people (I imagine) there have been brief pockets of time during which the raw wonder, beauty, desperation, horror, appreciation and/or frustration of living must be “let out” in a few random stanzas, with pen and on paper.  Or, as the case may be, with typing fingers and a word processing program.

I found the poem while executing a purge of old documents.  My two-year-old PC has recently developed a few pesky issues and is no longer running efficiently.  It requires a good cleansing, so to speak.  Now I need to “transfer my data” onto an external hard drive so that we can strip the PC’s software back to basics and start with a clean slate.  The we I am referring to is me and the techie I will speak with in India after I call the toll free number for iYogi.  

This “technical support agent” will take remote control of my computer and doctor it up.  I’ll watch him do it all in real time—yes, I am conscious during the procedure.  As the ‘zip’ and ‘click’ of his-my cursor darts around, I’ll forget all about sipping on my tea, because there’s nothing else to do but stare in utter amazement into the screen of this totally mind-blowing Quantum Reality.  

iYogi.  That can’t not but elicit at least a laugh or two...

*   *   *

My meditation teacher always used to say that sitting practice – learning to be Quiet Inside – is analogous to "deleting useless data from your hard drive.”  We all grow up 'downloading' information from people and the world around us.  Much of this information is helpful, and necessary.  We need it to develop our full personhood.  The learning process is about survival and the creative possibilities of Mind, which have evolutionary value.

Lots of our downloaded data is just plain garbage, however.  We absorb diverse forms of garbage through many of our faculties, everyday.  We can’t help it.  We are sensitive, receptive, and constantly building identity...  

At some point, if we’re lucky, we discover we want to learn what it feels like to unlearn a few things. 

*   *   *

My PC’s data purge was executed with the goal of at least a 2:1 ratio between the two options of trash and transfer for each of the hundreds of files (mainly Word documents and digital photos) in question.  The first option actually refers to the “recycle bin,” except that this time—after the remote-realtime procedure is complete—there will be no hope of my ever returning to the bin to sift through what I threw away.  

So I really am trashing this old stuff.  Which I like.

*   *   *

This poem is a gift for the New Year.  I am already loving this year, amidst all the anticipation and hype and prophecy and financial, social, & ecological calamity.  Amidst all the unknowns of what is in store for us, here on this particular planet, in 2012 and beyond. 

I fell in love with 2012 on January 1^st.  Yes it's true—it was love at first sight.  As the clock struck twelve, I was just climbing into bed after a very quiet evening at home.  I was sad to have missed the dance party I was scheduled to attend, but a flu I had been fighting all through Christmas held my dancer’s feet and my socialite nature at bay.  The next afternoon I was well enough to go for a walk.  Leaving the house, I discovered that New Year’s Day in Victoria was beautiful!  It amazed me how many people were parading the Dallas Road boardwalk, walking their pooches or gathered in conversation along the beach.  The air was mild and dry.  It hardly even felt like a winter's day, at all.

The Olympic Mountains rose quietly before me, and far to the southeast in the tiniest spot of my visual field stood four glacial peaks, stark and glinting like pink fire from the setting sun.  I have just consulted Google Maps but cannot figure out what mountains I was looking at.  These peaks rightfully remain nameless in their splendour...

During my beach walk, I was reflecting on how privileged I truly am.  When I look at all the major 'quadrants' of my life—my strong circles of friendships and family, my ability to meet my basic needs (and much more), my skills and level of education, my trust that I am not imminently threatened by acts of violence, my access to nature and freedom to recreate, my mobility within my geographical home and outside of its borders—I realize without a doubt that in terms of relative privilege, I form part of “the 1%.”  There are many ways in which I consider that I am part of “the 99%” too, but for the sake of genuinely taking stock of my relative privileges I remembered that the lives of billions of people are consumed day by day with matters of securing access to food, clean water, sanitation and shelter.

As I pondered on these rather sobering realities, there on the beach, my relative privileges suddenly seemed to have a voice of their own.  This voice had rhythm, lapping against my heart like the sound of waves against pebbles.  

Rhythm appeared as questions:

How is my privilege to be used?

How will I apply my skills, my education, my knowledge, my health?

Can I live taking responsibility for the Whole, as the Whole, the 100%, within my own day-to-day life?  Can I do my best to act responsibly for the sake of All Beings? 

How lightly can I walk?  And, when I make choices I know are not in alignment with “walking lightly,” can I remain conscious and be humbled by the fact that I do not act in isolation, that my actions have impacts and effects on the vast, dynamic complexities of this tiny spinning Planet?  Can I not be hampered by guilt, but still be accountable to myself and the Life that sustains me, which are inseparable?

These questions came without need of any immediate or concrete response.  In fact, I prefer to hold the questions as the answers, too.  This will allow me to keep learning, be attentive and ask more questions—to find the question inside the question.  

And then, without any satisfactory answer forthcoming from the limits of my own imagination, perhaps I will keep quiet and wait long enough to let the Natural Intelligence of life show the Way... 

*   *   *

My New Year’s Day walk came on the heels of eight days spent with my family in Kamloops.  I am tickled by the diverse and colourful personalities now surrounding me in the form of the children in my life!  “Auntie Sally” is utterly proud to be so, to seven nieces and nephews between the ages of five years and six months.  They are all vibrant, intelligent and creative little people – as an extended family, we are so very blessed.  And my extended extended family includes other wonderful children of dear friends. 

One of these friends is Cindy, who now lives in the Kootenays.  Cindy & I both grew up in Kamloops and have been close for over twenty years.  She was the "first ever" of my friends to have a child, Alesha, in the fall of 2000.  When I met Alesha almost a year later, needless to say I fell in love.  She was a baby, and babies are Love.
   

For Alesha

I thank you for the day
I held you and listened to your soft baby snores,
While Ma-Ma and Da-Da played on the rocks.

The little birds wanted to play, too.
Tiny squirrels chased each other up a tree.
Ma-Ma lowered her chin and replied “moo” to the cow that

greeted us from far away.

Your warm, small body calmed the inside of me.
The coolness of the autumn air silently kissed our faces and lungs.
I humbly accepted the honour, witness to the late afternoon

sunshine's reverence for your rosy cheeks.

You came awake.  Da-Da did a silly dance,
And you clapped and waved in rapture.
We all played together in that tender nook of the woods.

I put you up high on my shoulders –
Noisy twigs under my boots said “snap, snap”.
You giggled when I picked rosehips from the bush and

hid them in my pocket.

Delighting in discovery, you learned to dig with a stick,
The fragrance of fertile earth rising up from your activity.
Does the dirt taste good, little One?

I remembered the beauty of Life that day.
A Creation Story was gifted to my senses and my Heart
From the essence of the living moment, flowing unmistakably

through your being.

May Da-Da dance with you, always.
With Ma-Ma, may you speak the language of the cows.
And may you know that digging matters, my Child.
May you know that digging matters.  

This poem is for all children everywhere!  Blessed be!

Nephew Eli, born August 2011.

*   *   *

On Monday, I will begin new but temporary employment in the BC Public Service—my first government job.  I will be responsible for completing some policy development projects and editing/publishing a number of reports for distribution to various provincial agencies and public interest groups.  My official title is Auxiliary Information Officer, which I don’t think sounds like me one bit!  However, I’m excited for the challenge, the new learning and connections.  An adventure!

All the best of 2012 to You & Yours,
Sal