Wordless

I came across this video of Mooji. It’s the closest I can come to explaining why blogging has become so difficult for me.
Trying to put words to my experience seems to actually hurt, as if being verbal rips some physical tissue made of almost nothing.
Words simply don’t do justice.
Words simply don’t make sense.
The moment a description arises I see how the exact opposite is also true, and then the next moment how nothing I could say is true.
… and if not true, why speak?

But this video presents perhaps an even more compelling point - how the heart is impacted by these changes.
Remaining wordless and silent with the heart seems the way forward for me now.

"Is it a sad discovery?" not really... and still

The heart is breaking. The heart is melting.
My job is to just let all this happen and go about my daily do.
It all feels somewhat strange and lonely on inside and looks extraordinarily ordinary from the outside - if one accepts as normal a fair amout of tears in public.



And for your convenience here’s a link to Wordless, Part 1.

The Question is Important

Girl on Horse
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

She wasn't looking
when they took this picture:
sitting on the grass
in her bare feet
wearing a cotton dress,
she stares off to the side
watching something on the lawn
the camera didn't catch.
What was it?
A ladybug? A flower?
Judging from her expression,
possibly nothing at all,
or else
the lawn was like a mirror,
and she sat watching herself,
wondering who she was
and how she came to be there
sitting in this backyard,
wearing a cheap, white dress,
imagining that tomorrow
would be like all her yesterdays,
while her parents chatted
and watched, as I do
years later,
too distantly to interfere.
Dana Gioia, "Photograph of My Mother as a Young Girl"

Recently my mother emailed me noting that now, at age 83, she had been wondering, “Who am I?”
Was she the person people took her to be?
Was she the person she imagined in her mind?
While she didn’t say it in so many words, in the silence I could tell she didn’t think so.

I made no explanation when I replied to Mom.
Her comment rests in memory, along with this poem Garrison Keillor read a few days ago which brought to mind this picture from my family’s past.

These disparate elements came together once again, this morning as I listened to a YouTube video of Mooji and did my daily asanas.
He was addressing what he called an important question – this question of “Who am I?”
And he briefly mentioned fear.
My last post about Mooji also brought a comment about fear and so the bow is tied – something I felt like sharing.
Enjoy.

What is watching all, experiences all, goes by the title “I”.
And then now even the sense “I” - even in its subtlest expression is also perceived.
What remains?
What remains?
And your answer, I don’t want.
I am looking for something else…

You are moving into the absence of you.
About now fear will come. Is it enough to stop your looking?
Fear also is some construct.
What watches that?

How much further to go?
What distance to cover?
Who are you?

I would take the answer from wherever it comes.
There is no last step to take.
There is no leap to happen, no explosion to occur.
Mooji, The Question is Important

Emptiness

Hello, I am not dead. Just really out of words. However, a friend introduced me to a fellow by the name of Mooji - and I found this treaching of his quite moving.

Winter light on painting
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

This emptiness is not a trivial thing. It's the most supreme state.
But in the consciousness there is this itching, and I use this term: the athlete's foot mind. In the mind the thought is coming, there is this itching, and it feels it needs a scratch…
Like a question arising, something more to be solved, or resolved.
But I say: only stay as this, and that itchiness will subside.
When this itchiness is there, there is the temptation to start to scratch it, but it just makes it more bloody and awful. So just take note of that for the moment.
But stay as you are. Because you cannot improve this emptiness… a little bit of meditation or self-enquiry returns you to this affirmation in yourself, this recognition:
all there is is just a sort of emptiness, beyond the concept of empty even.

So can you step out of this emptiness now?
In the emptiness, what are you?
Are you IN the emptiness like you are in this room, or are you the emptiness?...

if you say you're in something, then there is like two: there is a sense “I” and a sense “I'm in something.” … if you feel you're in, then emptiness becomes kind of an experience, and you remain as the experiencer, and there's a sort of duality in that.
So it makes possible the sense of leaving it…
That's why I'm asking you: In the emptiness what are you?
What form do you wear in emptiness?
Are you in it, or are you it? ...

So if you are [it] how can you step out? ...
if you are on earth, you can say: a cloud covers the sun.
But the sun doesn't know covering. It doesn't know the sensation I am covered up…
When you say I'm covered up, it's as though I'm hidden from myself.
I'm just getting you to look at it, it's very important actually. It's just through this subtle overlooking that this pain creeps in, this sense of separation, this sense of split in yourself.
But when you really investigate it, it's exposed as a kind of fraud.
You are just you.
Yesterday we spoke about it…
the knife can cut so many things but it cannot cut itself…
the eye can see so many things, but it cannot see itself…
a scale can weigh so many things but it cannot weigh itself …
And you are yourself, you cannot perceive yourself.
You can only perceive some idea of yourself.
You are this unicity, you see. There is no split in you. Only by this function of the consciousness it appears as though you become something qualitative, something you can evaluate.
But whatever you can see, it cannot be you.

Emptiness is only an idea at the present moment. A word in the consciousness.
But it points to something actually that you intuitively feel.
It's like the emptiness perceiving the emptiness somehow.
Or consciousness perceiving consciousness.
There is not really a form being observed in this. There are no words really adequate to convey. At this point you are at the very periphery of language even,
and the words are exhausting the energy of themselves, because no words will do. Just this acknowledgement I am, but what I am I cannot say.

Mooji, Emptiness