Monday, September 6, 2010

Is-ness


Singing Bells
Originally uploaded by Ben Heine

I spent the morning today on a long walk on the trails of the neighboring woods, followed by some non-dual healing practices in a field on the way back home.

I spent a lot of time listening and taking in all the forms of nature surrounding me. It really struck me that no matter what anyone or anything does in nature, be it biking or hiking or running or strolling or sitting ... nature just IS.

Nature is filled with constantly changing forms as well as forms whose changes are so microscopic that it appears they are un-changing to the naked eye. The rushing water of the creek along the trails pounded over the rocks, while birds and butterflies and falling leaves twirled around in the atmosphere above and the grass on the side of the trail upon which I was walking appeared to be perfectly still, static, unaffected and unchanged. Blades basking in their grass-ness.

I posed the question to myself : "What would it be like to be in the world fully in your is-ness and not in reaction to what is happening outside of you?" This is what led me to the open field to do Work of Return and Impersonal Movement.

I let the question live vividly in me. I began the practice and I felt the breeze and some bees, a mosquito or two, couple of dragon flies above. A mom and her two kids along with a large golden retriever entered the field from the woods across from me. I caught a "wrinkle" of irritation rise up about "not having this all to myself". I returned to my question and my practice, moving the knotted muscles in my neck into the curvilinear space in front of me. The image of the blades of grass popped up and I landed with a resounding thud back into my own being-ness. After a minute or two, I barely perceived that others were in the field or what they were doing. Each of us became part of the tapestry of the landscape, equally an integral part of the picture, no one thing or person more prominent than the other.

At this point, I had dropped deeply into a segment of the practice in which I am seated in the Heart -- which includes movement into my own chest and into the consciousness of the world. At this point, the IS-ness of everything was what I felt and viewed and touched and heard and tasted. I had an awareness that all of this was me too and not me at all. I did not want this moment to cease.

When I arrived back to my place, I re-read a passage that I have been stuck on for an entire week in my teacher Jason's book. The words resonated with me in a way that I had not been able to take them in previously:
"The Heart holds All to itself, making no distinction between manifest and unmanifest, good or evil ... It is not entranced because the origin of the Heart is not personal but transcendent ... The Heart is not a product of history but of Emptiness ... When the Heart is Empty, every way is the Way."

This experience of being seated in the Heart in Nature in my Is-ness brought these words to life for me. I had a tangible feeling of being without history, a transcending of the personal. And a new understanding of "Emptiness" : an unlimited vessel for holding ALL. That is perhaps why I did not want this experience to end. I had a glimpse of what it was like to be fully in my Is-ness and in the world.

As Jason notes at the bottom of his passage in the smallest of fonts (which feels purposeful to emphasize the statement's preciousness): "The Heart is smart".

Ahhhhhhhhhh.

Yepper.

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