It's Just This

or Seeing Ourselves in Context

AI was not used in the following essay.

I’m listening to birds on this May morning. Sipping coffee in bed.

I’m choosing to remember things I’m grateful for. (Oversized cups of coffee, and bird song among them.) I have yet to look at headlines though I can reasonably predict they’ll contain a ‘D’ mix of dread, doom, doldrums and dire-warnings. Thumbnails on streaming platforms with their AI generated images of well-known personalities in exaggerated expressions usually accompanied by warnings in the captions.

Pass.

No doubt among the bounty of streaming possibilities there are things I could learn, analysis I might find helpful, and all that. And quite likely, later when I’m preparing a meal, I’ll find something to listen to, hopefully that inspires me.

Still, there is something more interesting lately that’s gotten more of my attention. And while it feels expansive the attention required to explore it, necessarily narrows and cuts-off much of what’s happening in the world. To stay present with it, feel into it, there’s been less to say and what used to grab my attention often feels like a distraction from this deeper, quieter Presence.

It’s always here. Present. Acknowledged or not. It never goes anywhere. We do, but not this simple, always available Presence.

Somewhere we remember, we know however layered over it may be we are connected to it. Directly. If there were no words to point to it it would still be there. We could still tap in.

Doesn’t require a system, methodology, religion or philosophy. It doesn’t require a lab, or consensus from experts. These things have been built around it, but take all of it away, it’s still there.

When my aunt was dying - more than a decade ago - I visited her in the hospital with my sister. She was on a bed, but not yet in a room, and so we found ourselves in a busy interim and chaotic space with (mostly) nurses rushing around, tending to patients. A stream of announcements blaring over the speaker system.

I stood by her, feeling impatient and annoyed yet she was remarkably calm and peaceful. She knew she was dying and in fact would die later that night. She was sitting up in the hospital bed, watching the scene and said, “It’s just this.”

She had a smile. I looked at her with a questioning expression. It’s just this, she said again, gesturing to what was in front of her. Some part of me understood. I nodded.

Decades before, when living in California I had an experience washing dishes in my kitchen. I spontaneously slipped in to a space where I was all of it - the water flowing from the faucet, the dishes themselves, the trees and yard out the window; I was somehow, so clearly, so obviously all of it at once, yet still myself.

It wasn’t only that my sense of being separate had dissolved, it was the accompanying sense of deep calm that enveloped me, and familiarity - how did I forget this? Nothing was out of the ordinary - I’m washing dishes - it was as if a veil fell and this always already Presence came forward.

I was shocked at how plain it was and yet, how this was an exceptional experience rather than my moment-to-moment reality. I remember thinking how could I forget something so obvious. What has sometimes been referred to as non-dual consciousness, but it doesn’t matter what it’s called. It’s just this is a good way to describe it.

We are so deeply interwoven to this world, and each other.

The dish-washing experience lasted only a minute or so but once you know you know.

I’ve had similar moments alone in Nature, or in silence. The key difference was this sense of seamless communion showed up in the midst of regular doings; I had not created a context hoping to invite it.

And even that sentence - creating a context - is funny. What always is needs no invitation. Rather it’s us and our sense of being separate that comes and goes.

It’s just this is the context everything is embraced by all the time know it or not. Experiencing it or not.

Be certain that in the religion of Love, there are no believers and unbelievers. LOVE embraces all. Rumi

It’s familiar and recognizable - how could I forget this? - because it’s our natural state. We all have a memory of it. What we’ve been living in - the experience of separation, of striving, making our way, as separate identities in the world - that’s the illusion.

Layers of distortion, whole histories hijacked, atrocities and wars - it’s all still held in, embraced by Love. Love is the Presence, the context, the world happens in. And we are that.

Rumi knew.

And many others. Not because they were special but because this is where they placed their attention.

In fact, we all know.

As this world clears out and shakes off what was imposed and what has to go, more and more of us will remember. Oh, and that changes everything. What looks impossible now; so many obstacles, so much impending control, endless strife… all this will will yield to this growing field of remembering.

As we remember and reorient, the trajectory changes.

Whether he knew it or not, Van Gogh intuited this Presence in his Field of Poppies.

Insanity can not sustain. Remembering our true nature as Divine Beings of Love is all that’s required.

My aunt was experiencing that knowing just hours from her death in a hospital. There was no anxiety, no fear or worry for her. (What a gift for loved ones.) She was seamlessly connected to that Presence; the context in which her life was held, in which her temporal life was ending.

Being witness to that was humbling and precious. The eternal and timeless hold the temporal. Both are available to us, yet focusing on what’s always coming into and out of being rather than the space that’s happening in, is like getting lost in a story projected onto a screen. It’s entertainment, it’s fun, but it’s not the underlying reality. (And if it’s what you want to do, go for it.)

That’s what I’ve been up to. Paradoxically feeling more connected, even as I appear less so.

And words are clunky. They limit even as they try to expand. Maybe the less said, the better. I feel a reluctance in even attempting it.

Nor do I want to give the impression I’m hanging out in a blissful state 24/7. Hardly. Life has its ups and downs like always. I get pulled in, riled up, annoyed and everything else.

In shifting my attention, it’s more that the background life unfolds in, slowly recalibrates. With less time on the distractions, more on that always-present Presence, a calm moves in which re-tempers those ups and downs. It’s hard to stay with triggered emotions, you see them more quickly for what they are. It’s hard to take yourself too seriously.

Which gradually changes everything.

Thanks for reading. Your comments are always appreciated.

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