Experiencing Without the Ego

I saw what it was like to be present not as "me" but just present. It was that space of realizing that nothing is about me. I was actually experiencing but I wasn't there, just experiencing. The "withinness" was experiencing and I wasn't trying to make anything of it. It wasn't an intellectual 'insight.' I had nothing to say about this presence because it wasn't mine. I didn't have it. I was it. I realized what it meant to "stop the search." It's not lost unless I try to put it in a space to understand it, thus trying to convince my ego that "I got it." If I'm searching for "it" then it becomes impossible to "see." It can't be objectified, thought, perceived. No "it." No "me." To try to "grasp" it in any way with the mind is like gouging your eyes out and then trying to see. All in the empty, infinite moment of the timeless now. There is the only place I can be without me.

Toward the End

How it all seems to be coming together in this thing called 'getting older.' It might in fact even be the blessing I sometimes hear it is. Certainly more a visitor than a permanent resident here, even though I've always only looked for permanent residency. Nothing left but to merge with God, with Self, which Ramana asserts is one and the same. It seems all my teaching must blend with this goal for myself. How to do?

Endless Love

The metaphor of Jesus as God's Son has struck me in a new way. Why would God have a son? Well he wouldn't except in the sense that we are all creations of God, all God's sons and daughters. But also it apparently is Jesus who claims so intimate a connection as to be One with the Father. As far as I know Jesus never claimed that he was God's Son, as we understand it, though he refers to God as Father. Actually we could all declare ourselves sons and daughters of God if we knew his love as deeply as Jesus did. Of course in Jesus' time the son is more important than the daughter for a lot of cultural, historical and probably religious reasons.

But as I think of the metaphor in terms of what my own sons mean to me, I know that I would give my life rather than have theirs taken. God would too, except that God "so loved the world" that his love is possibly best understood in terms of a love so great that a father would even give his son to the task of demonstrating that love. Jesus makes God vulnerable in his suffering and death. God suffers in seeing this death. But God suffers in seeing the pain and suffering and unnecessary deaths we all cause one another. We love desperately as if there is not enough love to go around. We love as if God's love is not infinite. We love in small boxes and tight places. We love forgetting that Jesus asked us to love one another as he loved us. He obviously had the faith if not knowledge that such divine love is possible even for you and me.

The Compassion of Consciousness

The Un-consciousness of deep sleep is not the absence of Consciousness but the very gift that Consciousness bestows on a mind and body that cannot rest in Consciousness itself.

To Be Like the Sun

"The sun has no intention, but by its rising all the world becomes active."
Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj

Nobody Knows My Troubles with God

My most recent struggle has been with 'communicating with God' or "praying" if you will. When I fall into doubt and fear, however, I do still turn to God in the end. At such times my first feeling is one of shame, doubt and hypocrisy. When I feel good and strong I forget about God. My better "self" and higher consciousness tells me there must be a god. But as a philosophy teacher and researcher, as a thinker, I have never really tried to "believe" in God through logic or even really faith for that matter. I've at times concluded that consciousness or "definitionless Awareness" is the endpoint, highest Self or Source of "divinity." But I suspect there is something more...God.

The truth of the matter is that even though my 'conversation with God' is considerably illiterate, so to speak, it still has its moment of presence in a simple silence and vigil of waiting and presencing. But the fact is, I'm not doing it. It happens within the circumstances, usually of trial and tribulation when I know I'm not doing a very good job of doing this life of mine.

God, I am assuming, in my actions, in my way of being, is there for me. But God's being there for me is not demonstrable in any way especially for myself. I fall silent, mute, dumb in this moment, embarrassed and dare I say even humbled. But I don't trust myself not to betray this connection to God. I guess I want to know how to secure it, especially when I egoistically presume that "I am doing it."

So I guess my question is: what exactly is this connection and communication with God? How does one practice it and reconcile it with all the possible ways of spiritual being that there are. This may be my dark night of the soul. I just don't know.