Gazing in the Mirror

January 13 - Dynamically Centered at Emptiness

...we discover that our minds are
empty. This is a metaphor for
our minds being completely dynamic.
~ Deng Ming-Dao, The Lunar Tao

Mind is potential energy, while thought
is the dynamic force which produces
the activity of manifestation.
~ Ernest Holmes

For many people on a spiritualized path concepts of being centered or in balance are appealing. A precious guide is truth. We have a deeply held desire to find the heart of a matter and we want our perception to be on target with that desire. Once we hit our own center, we understand ourselves more thoroughly and yet we make an extraordinary discovery – our minds are actually empty. At the same time our mind is dynamic. We understand that our mind is not material (and that includes not actually being our brain) and yet our mind is not static either. Our mind remains in constant motion apprehending a continuous flow of thoughts passing through and it cannot be stopped for very long at any single state. Upon this realization we have found the center of a constantly shifting infinity.

There is a kind of balance in knowing that center of the circle and it brings with it a sense of proportion and what we once perceived as duality becomes a complete balance of wholeness. Mind is infinite and any or every point is from that center that doesn't even exist in reality. Mind has no shape and no limits or size actually and yet there is nowhere that its circumference is not. It stretches endlessly...Our thoughts play upon the energy potentials of mind to produce the manifestations that we experience. Form comes from It and returns to It and is not It but these forms are all a manifestation of Its creativity. Emptiness is not empty but not formed, whole, potential without needing to express, and often expressing any way.

Yet none of this thinking is actually "new". JE Tsongkhapa (Tibetan Buddhist 1357-1419) is quoted as saying "Unborn emptiness has let go of the extremes of being and non-being. Thus it is both the centre itself and the central path. Emptiness is the track on which the centered person moves." I experience – nothing is happening, infinite patience, like a pause but not motionless. Nothing needs to be done. Awareness remains. It's like waiting, not for something, just waiting and so I think of patience. Perhaps a cup of tea. To relieve a sense that time has slowed down. The clock ticks away minutes. Nothing is actually happening. Even why I write this seems a mystery that is wanting to write itself.

The path ahead seems calm, free and open. My sensitivity to Life continues as I follow a path to somewhere that will reveal itself in hindsight over time. The track ahead remains dynamic, fluid and shifting but immediately accessible, continuous and imminent. I am remarkably comfortable with this not knowing, with this nothing in my mind and marveling as my fingers continue to type out words that I am not certain have any real meaning. I don't even know for certain where this is that I am actually is.

Being centered in this place is being in the midst it all – changing, painful, joyous, unexpected, frustrating like my patient moment when everything seemed to slow to no movement. It caught my attention even as I continued aware but stalled from forward movement, even though the world continued to turn, activities continued around me. Fascinating, intriguing, frustrating and I never did go and get the tea for that moment passed. It was fleeting but not a thing of time as I would normally perceive that. Awesome, ambiguous reality – that last "perhaps" – for it can't be grasped or proven even though the experience remains clearly in me even now.

As soon as each moment passes, I am no longer there. There is a trajectory to all of this though no destination is planned and I have no idea of where it is all taking me. Yet I really have this sensation of a pregnant moment, something on the cusp of emerging and is not solid and may never be. Just a sense it's out there somehow. I am only a trace, an impression left by Life, on the sands of time that may yet leave no lasting trace. My life is like an unfolding narrative in a story I am writing and the story takes me places by twists and turns that I never anticipated at the beginning of it. In understanding this I find the freedom to create who I am in this play of Life upon Itself. There is a playful irony that I am this and do I laugh or do I cry ? Whatever.

~ perspective

Surprisingly there is lots of room for
happiness in the midst of a dynamically
centered emptiness.
The silence that I find at the center is
as vast as the universe but it has no
breadth or depth.
Sometimes I think I am a dream of something
eternal which is hidden in my form but not
contained there and that I am but a ghost
that reflects Being.
And sometimes I wonder if there really is
anything behind the appearances of somethings
all around me.
In biological reproduction the containers are
created and then filled by so much we don't see
and which shapes its form.

#awareness #balance #creativity #energy #expression #form #infinity #life #mind #patience