Monday, February 16, 2009

up, up, and away ~

despair, rejection, deep-seated fears of being nothing: empty, hollow. as compared with others who, of course, are something.

that my pain is in some way, fundamentally "different" from everyone else's, that my intrinsic inability to find a sense of self that is permanent and stable means i am forever destined to be alone; afraid.

what is real and what is illusion?

my answer is that i am nothing. but everything is nothing. therefore, nothing is everything. nothing is everything; everything is nothing.

just this morning i realized that my fundamental nothingness is not something to despair or deny, but something to embrace. it is the gateway to becoming everything i want, to being open to every kind of energy that radiates about this universe. that it is all contained within me, and you, and every little thing.


a few months ago in the autumn i wrote to my dear friend scott a reflection on a meditation experience that i would like to share here. scott is a very very dear friend of mine who i am so so blessed to have. :)

October 15, 2008
...*We were doing meditation at the end of class, laying on our backs on our mats in the dark, sweet soft music playing with birds chirping...and I was imagining my soul becoming free from my body and swirling in the wind with the leaves ...then being immersed in ocean water crashing into the shore with the waves, just in time with my in and out breaths. I also imagined myself with the singing birds perched atop a tree branch in the mornings after sleep, ready again to join my friends and enjoy the morning sun with bird song!! All of it, the seasons, the turning of the tide, the ebb and flow of nature, reminded me of how we as people also move in this way, through joy and sorrow or love and hatred...never staying in one emotion or state for very long and only with the promise that it will go but that it will also return in time. Mmmmm... and it reminded me to revel in the moment and to just 'be' the emotion I'm feeling without getting attached, yet to immerse myself in it like the leaves tumble across the ground with the wind, soon to settle and experience something new. I have never experienced anything like this in meditation. I found myself smiling over and over again, and thinking also how in some way it may seem sad that the leaves are falling off the trees to die...but when they do they get to tumble about the ground as if they are dancing and moving freely without being bound to the earth (or well the tree) any longer...I guess it was my first really personal experience with the idea of death and yet understanding how intimately life and death are related. Osho (from a book I am reading) says that you cannot love life until you love death. I always had trouble with that but now I think I'm starting to understand*...

"I believe in everything, nothing is sacred. I believe in nothing, everything is sacred."
-Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
"When a dewdrop slips from a lotus leaf into the ocean it does not find that it is part of the ocean, it finds it is the ocean. And to find it is the ultimate goal, the ultimate realization. There is nothing beyond it."
-Osho

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