Waking: Morning Musings

I gather myself. I breathe. Something seems to pull itself up out of the long darkness of the night. What was that…that enveloping darkness…that space where the mind wanders…looking? It looks and looks. It watches.

It sees the one wondering about things…this…and that; the future…how to make herself happy…how to create herself happy. It sees her wondering in the night…playing with things…toying with things.  It sees her reaching in the darkness for a bit of warmth…pulling the covers up over her shoulders…reaching for the man lying beside her. It watches…this Presence behind her musings…as she breathes and sinks into the body.

It feels as if it stretches on forever…this Presence. Empty Space. It holds the stars of the night. It holds the body and its breathing. Without it…everything is gone.

The woman stirs and wakes from a slumber and she senses that, yes…here is the world…here is her world…and it seems like the same one she put down as she went to sleep. It seems continuous…connected to itself…like a life…like telling a story. Beginning. Middle. End. It seems that way.

What is happening, here?

There is also a sense that it isn’t necessarily so. The story isn’t necessarily what it appears to be. The darkness…the Presence…that was felt through the night…that stretching emptiness…there could be more truth in that. That is to say, if one is more “true” than the other.

The emptiness appears to create the story. Not out of anything solid…out of Itself, somehow; something from nothing…something from the possibility of something. Behind eyes. Beyond thoughts. Watching.

Consciousness…awareness…arising from…what? Where does it come from?

Life. Source. God. “Is-ness”. Where did the is-ness come from? How did it happen?

Something sings “awaken”. Something calls.

Something is already awake. Something has always been awake. It has no beginning or middle…and it shall have no end.


What is out beyond the woman and the story? What is right here…as this pen floats over the paper?

Diving

Cliffs of Moher

Everything…everything…everything doesn’t have to look perfect, pretty, acceptable, “appropriate”. Everything doesn’t have to be for show or to score points. Everything doesn’t have to be so much struggle and effort. Slowly, I am learning a little bit about jumping off that cliff.

And everything doesn’t have to be shallow…or hidden in the depths…or riding just above the surface…never quite touching what’s real. Everything doesn’t have to be that cold. The world doesn’t have to be that cold. My own world doesn’t have to be that cold. What I know is: it doesn’t change if there aren’t changes here in me.

Maybe this year is the year I learn to dive…swan dives, nose dives, belly flops…all of it…any of it. What if I let myself be that vulnerable? What if I let myself be that free?

Right now, I don’t even know how that might show up. I don’t even know what that voice might sound like, but I want to find out. I want to meet that person.

As this year opens, I wish us all discovery.