Don’t Eat the Menu|Savoring the Indescribable and the Unavoidable.

Your mind isn’t going to be quiet. It isn’t going to settle down.  Your thoughts aren’t going anywhere, they will always be around.

You cannot wait for your mind to quiet before you realize your true nature.

Don’t be fooled by the infiltration of thoughts after you’ve recognized what you are. They cannot touch what you are. They cannot exist unless YOU are here first. They come and go, making such a racket. They leave so much more quickly with out impetus from you. Their job is to arrive, present themselves then leave.

And you, well, you just nod your head gracefully and note “Ah, I see you, I hear you. I’m not going to get involved. No, thank you.”

Let Your thoughts run nilly willy.

You were never in control of them anyway.

Everything is allowed here.

Everything.

The confusion, the hurt, the indignation, the tears, the fear….These things do not go away. The absence of discomfort in not what is being pointed to.

That which knows the waxing and waning of discomfort, that is what you are.

The days are shorter. Sadness arises here. Tears fall, loneliness is felt.

And through it all there is a watching. A knowing that this is a state which has arrived and will depart. I was there before this state.

There is the seeing of a strong sense of a lonely, disconnected “me”, a feeling of hopelessness and so many thoughts. A river of thoughts that I’ve taken a plunge into and I get carried away for awhile.

And yet, even this is watched.

If I am witness to this, if I am experiencing this which before was not there… then I cannot possibly be this contracted ball of suffering that has arrived and will soon depart.

And it’s very easy to see that this body-mind is simply suffering from a lack of sunlight and sleep.

You think you are separate simply by habit. You have the habit of separation.

It’s not your fault. It’s just what humans do. At around age 2 or 3 everything the big people are telling you starts to sink in. You start believing you have a name, that you are a certain sex, a certain race. They tell you you are an American or a Française. You just can’t help believing this stuff. So many folks are telling you this.

Everyone says “you” and points in your direction, so you take the body to be you. And the word “I” begins to take the shape of the body. And thus the habit is born. The habit of believing the labels are truth.

Somehow it is overlooked that before any of this, you were, you ARE. Otherwise how could it even happen? Without the present awareness to see and experience it all, then how is it even known, this history of yours.

The mind will have fun with this. It will say “That’s daft, crazy talk”. Good. Because the mind isn’t going to figure this out.

See, before the mind and before any thoughts that the thought, “mind”, can come up with: You are there, before that. All the trappings that make up a “me”: your body, your thoughts, your sensations, your history, cannot exist unless you are there first.

What you are isn’t known yet you know that you exist.

If you think that you know what you are, then I suggest you break that habit….

Your thoughts.

You aren’t responsible for them.

(even most horrid thoughts you wish to bury)

Who would bury them? Even that person is a thought.

A thought can never touch what you are.

In the spacious blueness of the sky, a cloud formulates out of nothing. In the spacious awareness of who you are, a “me” formulates out of nothing.

A cloud… the thought of a “me”:

there is no difference.

You go into the kitchen to prepare tea. You are certain you decided this, and that you are doing this. Let us investigate this presumption.

Prior to going into the kitchen, you were involved in some other task. And then the thought: “I want some tea” occurs. The thought “I want some tea” instigates the action of going into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Pretty elementary.

But let us look closer. Let us forget about the action and look at the thought. The ultimate clue to who dunnit, lies with the thought. Prior to the arrival of that thought, where was it? What mechanism spawned it?

A likely answer is “the brain”. But even that thought: “Thoughts come from the brain”, where did that come from? Do you even know what your next thought will be? Give it a shot.

If you don’t know what your next thought will be and you are finding it challenging to figure out where they come from and actions arise from thought, then isn’t going into the kitchen to put the kettle on just happening?

So who dunnit?

No one.

Investigate this yourself.

A feeling  arises.

The label “this is sadness” arises.

The sense of a “me” that is “sad” arises.

The thought “I am sad” arises.

This is all being seen, observed, noticed. Is that space of knowing being touched by the sadness, being affected by the concept and vibration of “sadness”?

Can sadness even be known without that which is seeing?

YOU are that. YOU are the effortless seeing and knowing…

Weather is one of those things that we would agree is out of our control. We know it comes and it goes, it’s fierce or it’s balmy. It can be a curse or a blessing. We know that all storms pass. Yet behind all of that weather the sky remains untouched, unchanged. Only clouds, rain and gusts of wind are moving. Not the sky. The sky contains it all.

Now look at this “me” that you take yourself to be. Imagine the body as the clouds, the sensations that occur as drops of rain or warming rays of sun, the thoughts and emotions as gusts of wind.

The body forms from nothing and will dissolve into nothing, sensations come and go at any moment, thoughts and emotions swirl about in a vortex that eventually abates, then swirls again.

All of these things come and go like storms and balmy days, yet this is who you think you are.

You think you are the weather.

When you are the sky…