Living From the Centre

This is chapter 7. To read from the start, click here.

There is only one.
I am ever more deeply, it seems to me now, 
falling into that - and gone. 

I am a wondering in, 
occasionally wandering out. 

An unexpectedly beautiful weed in the veldt, I sprout,
somewhere off the path, where people seldom walk. 

What use? What use? I ask,
What use is all this talk?

As the old idea of “me” slips and slips away, that one shines ever more clearly as me. It has no shape, yet paradoxically, and astoundingly, it is the shape of me, here and now, and it has the shape of everyone and everything I encounter, for just as they have said, the inside has become the outside, and outside has become the inside. I have turned right-side-up, and now my roots go up into the air, and sink deep within, to the water of the ever-shining sun of being. 

The pattern of the old seed husk of me is still here, beautiful and ugly as it is, weak and tremendously strong, stupid and so deeply wise, clear-eyed blind, strange and weird, wearing away with time, and there is a deep inner smile now. So be it. I am, yet never we were. I wonder. 

I wonder what this moment will bring. 

Now, I sit here typing. This is a familiar experience, for ever since I was a young man, I have spent many, many hours doing this; but I am amazed. What I type now is fresh and new. 

I wonder at the words appearing on the screen now. Where do they come from? They come from the heart, I feel. They seem to appear on the page here, but I know they are destined for your heart. 

Into what will they disappear? Into what will they reform, and where will they sprout? I wonder. In that feeling, I let them go, like seeds that have clung to my trousers, now falling off at random, while I walk over the good earth.

Self is appearing and disappearing in the words, like reflections that appear and disappear in moving water.

The disappearing selves, the temporary sense of selves, and there are many, these take organic forms, and move through mental-emotional ecosystems, vanishing in the underbrush, sinking like water into the soil, then sprouting again somewhere else in a new shape. They are beautiful, and strange, and violent sometimes, but they have no reality in themselves. Seeing this loosens the grip of ego, loosens the mind, frees up the heart to play. 

It has been a journey of shedding. It has been a journey of letting go, rather than accumulating. More knowledge changes nothing. Experiences cannot be hoarded.

When a pathway in nature is no longer used, it disappears into the landscape. That takes time to happen, even though, in an important sense, time is really illusory. Life requires time and space for new expressions. There is change, and unchanging being wonders in change.

All of this change happens one real moment at a time. Pop. Here is a gift – this present moment. What am I going to do with it? What would I most love to express, play with, and create? 

I can only take hold of that gift if I too am present. When I am projecting, thinking about the past or future, the gift goes unopened. I open this gift now.

I do it for you, and I do it for me, and honestly, for no person in particular, for there is only one. I can no longer be sure that it is me who is doing anything at all, for something from beyond is coming in, and doing what wants to be done. Sometimes I cooperate. Sometimes there is something here that resists. Mostly, I just watch. Even as I type now – I am cooperating with my fingers – but they are typing, almost by themselves. There is flow.

I remember that now, almost all the time, and when I happen to feel some discomfort, I remind myself again. I can never again forget what happened that day, for this mind-ending awakening cannot let me sleep anymore.

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