Awareness transcends what it is aware of. It is as separate as
light is from what it shines upon. You are consciousness, and
you can free yourself from all of this [pain and suffering] by
relaxing behind it. Michael A. Singer
I return refreshed from a month of gardening followed by a week-long yoga intensive. Each summer at this time, I treat myself to these occasions of being purposefully led through a transformational experience. Always my intention is the same — to awaken to my unconscious habits and to continue the work of liberating these deeply held patterns from my body.
Fortunately, the physical body wisely shows us, through sensation, where to focus attention in order to heighten awareness and raise consciousness. In this case, the released sensation was a deep fatigue. Not necessarily pleasant, but past experience has taught me that freeing myself from these stored pockets of trapped energy create the space for conscious transformation to take hold.
Now that the release has been accomplished, no more is required than to quietly wait and watch for inspiration to emerge and give new purpose to being. Neither thought nor action can hurry this process of discovery. As I have had to patiently learn, the unfolding comes as a result of sitting with silence and allowing consciousness to expand with each new experience. If your nature is similar to mine — that of an explorer — then the seeming nothingness of a wait-and-watch approach challenges the old habit of willful action. Beware of surfacing desires, goals and ambitions, which are merely ways of distracting ourselves from the discomfort we feel with uncertainty.
Occasionally, I will need to remind myself that an unfolding adventure can only be experienced, not premeditated. Without goals, without worry, a willing explorer seeks insecurity — the very foundation of adventure — and finds truth through radical realization.
My poem below reflects one such unfolding adventure.
Nothingness
Holding no thought, no thing, no story
frees consciousness to fill cells, flesh, bone.
Such is the purpose behind silence —
to shift consciousness to the foreground
rather than wallpaper the background.
At the back of my throat, I taste ambivalence
for this no-mindedness, no-thingness.
Conditioning urges me to hold to the physical,
to grasp its objects and believe I am made real
through their touch.
When really, my expanding consciousness
fills the greatest amount of space,
beyond my cells and flesh,
beyond my outer skin,
beyond this place.
May 2013
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