I am in it, this wide open awareness, right away. I need merely focus, or perhaps unfocus is closer to it, and I find myself resting in clarity. All else - thoughts, sounds, sensations - float through without the least friction of the acquisitive mind. It has always been so, but only after years of polishing away the accretions of conditioning. Now I must learn how to operate from this orientation, how not to be drawn out by every little tug and attraction daily life presents. I must learn to remain consciously established in my true nature. Why? There is no why about it--it already is, and once felt or accessed it never leaves, as vision never leaves once you open your eyes (except for glaucoma boy here). And it feels absolutely right and true, like coming home, and it sheds a little light on what has been harmful to me or by me throughout my unconscious life. And it ever so subtly purifies my thoughts and actions. This is obvious to me now. It was not so when my meditation practice was fueled by hope and study of various masters: by promptings. Now I don't even have to sit or isolate myself, but merely remain vigilant of being, and of the myriad of nonsense so well expressed by Al Pacino in "Godfather III" - "Just when I thought I was out they draw me back in." Crazy wisdom there. Nothing really changes. The mountains are still mountains, and I sit here this very minute surrounded by inexpressibly beautiful snow-capped peaks, surrounded yet penetrated, because I no longer have a center, and encompassed by me because I no longer have boundaries.
I know this sounds like claptrap in this cynical, skeptical, conditioned world - of which I am a charter member - but it is true, and the only truth worth seeking. Too few open their minds and hearts to this wisdom. Coming from where I began, an arrogant, atheistic, drugged and drunken sop, my own opening up seems a miracle. But it's no big deal really. I needed some hard knocks to crack the shell of ego and now I only feel gratitude for every minute of suffering that pushed me to this point.
My senses are pigments and textures of paint
My mind informs the painting
Until in time its chips and cracks
Leave canvas alone, untainted.
Moths and worms will finish the job
One for the cloth, one for me
'Til nothing remains of nothing begun
What's left? How sweet! How sweet!
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