Nothing Dramatic

nothing too dramatic - just a lessening of my hold to self and things that pass briefly through the world. Not every awakening devastates us to the point of letting go completely, at once, and then forever left in altered view and mind. I've enjoyed my soft landing into now, an acceptance of each moment on arrival, no matter what is thought or found. Even my apparent struggle or refusal to find comfort through a given situation is now known to belong. There is no effort to be other. I simply am, and it's a grace to be so and one for which I'm grateful. So I have no story to tell of a particular awakening, no event that left me different than before. Yet there's been countless moments of letting go, just a bit less of my own self importance, and more, and more, a recognition of a self that belongs so fully and completely to world. I've found myself as a pattern, seamless in touch to the infinite presentation of every other pattern offered as the whole. It's beautiful to see, my own unique expression giving and finding space for other things to be. Perhaps even in this softer light of recognition - it's pretty dramatic after all. 

Peace,

Eric 

A Simple Inquiry of Looking

My starting point, a simple inquiry of looking - do I see the seer? This isn't a philosophical investigation, it's not mind game with end results of being clever. It's about opening up to the moment, finding what's present and how I fit in with it all. That I am aware is without question, before even looking I hear rain against the window, cars moving on damp streets, and birds muted in their song. I feel cool air from a nearby vent, noting my skins response of appreciation. I see the room from which I'm writing, and from a window I see the rain, cars, and birds. I'm aware of it all. Yet this isn't about attention, nor a mindful exercise of meditation. This is just allowing the world to find it's place through the morning of my awareness. The inquiry is this - who is it that sees the morning come alive? Who is it that's aware? This isn't an exhaustive search, truthfully I'm not even looking for answers. It's just turn around glance to find both the absence of seer and the pure, gentle, seamless grace of simply seeing. It's about looking, just once, for my faceless face, the one that is fluid in appearance as every object of the world. This is seeing myself as capacity as well as content, somehow an even exchange of form and immaterial wonder, a mysterious trade of self to selfless in constant fashion happening completely on its own. I take no part in any of this. It's an effortless inquiry that begins and ends with seeing. All that's left is a mystery - and a lifetime to explore.

~

Peace,

Eric 

Present as The World

to look - and find the world present in seamless completion, nothing excluded, and even the perceived self, through every real and imaged flaw, belongs with grace and certainty. Everywhere I look I find this completion, wholeness undisturbed by any judgement I impose. This too is my own inclusion, finding myself belonging to the view, and no less complete in this acceptance than any other aspect of the whole. To look is to instantly, spontaneously, find. No matter which direction. Knowing my view is infinite in its capacity to hold whatever comes before me, by nature always allowing one more thing without concern or bias - I relax in this acceptance. Nothing is required of me but to simply be, existing as existence without effort nor active will to make it so. To look is to see life in every aspect of itself, unfolding in appearance as tree as well as its reach to sky - that the formlessness that allows every object to appear, is also included as the view. Life is spacious as well as distinct in form, flowing patterns of energetic structure without true lines of separation, a continuous flow of mysterious nature. At no point though any of this am I missing. To look is to find myself as this flow in temporary stay, motion gathered as a moment and somehow offered as a lifetime. To look is bring immense gratitude that this is so, that I am, here, now, and present as the world. 

~

Peace,

Eric 

The World Becomes My Welcome

and so the world becomes my welcome - it's this seeing that brings a sense of intimate belonging to my day, a first rise of not just light but a dawn of possibilities and remembering my place amidst the whole. First morning seeing is a two way greeting, an instant meditation of emptiness meeting itself as form and becoming the new day. It's the seamless grace of sun parting night even though it was always present. This is simply life in a shift of patterns, one thing in focus of a different aspect of itself, the depth of my sleep in subtle awakening, first moments of dawn continuing in its reach of day - it's the same light, the same life in constant motion. My eyes open to this each morning, another round of natural, effortless meditation. There is nothing to do but awaken - and so the world becomes my welcome. 

~

Peace,

Eric 

Whatever Arrives Now

and this too - it all arrives without agenda, one more thing that comes to belong by virtue of its appearance now. Life is expansive and at once without remorse, things once denied have often found their place in my acceptance, and other hard fought for treasures have slipped now to memories with little note to the passion once assigned them. Through it all life simply flows onward, a continuing event of seemingly separate actions - and yet at this point I find myself without agenda as well, neither acquiring, nor active in letting go, but a deep surrender happening on its own. No action is found separate from another and it's seen that the world is responsive to itself, my own life being an event of infinite before's adding to a clear and present moment. And so whatever arrives now, each object and every person and event - belongs, for however long it does. 

~

Peace,

Eric 

Philosophy of The Moment

and certainly I don't wish to offer anything other than a philosophy of the moment, a truth told only now in the instant that I hold it. Yet every word is a memory already grown old, even as it reaches the page my experience is already other than before, shifting to a reality not noted until again the world moves on. What I write is always just moments behind, lagged by thoughts of an existing, permanent experience. This moment comes only once, stretched through a lifetime of now, but always arriving to a fresh promise brought through motion. So I write of moments past, what was know and felt just before and now already let go - this moment, I write of then. Everything happens in the present. At least that's the philosophy of the moment. 

~

Peace,

Eric 

In The Absence of Between

with no between found - even as events seem singular, standing out through moments of their own, there is already a shift to something other, a seamless flow to what comes now, now, and now. Life continues in this way, unaltered in its course of ever changing. It's all motion, a subtle dynamics displayed through a lifetime. We remember the dramatic effects, from achievements to sorrow, and yet none of this is truly separate from another, there is nothing between what's gained through life and then lost - but more life. Our achievement is motion, and already slipping to another moment's loss. To see this is to live as the current that allows events to be, unattached to objects and favored situations - it's the joy of being let go, knowing ourselves as the motion of the world. It's life in the absence of between. 

~

Peace,

Eric