The Journey Home (through the veils...)

Today, practicing Anapanasati again, I found myself in the feelings more than ever - generally I move through this part fast because on the surface, my emotions feel rather smooth, peaceful... Today I stopped and saw that on such a subtle level so many feelings are alive in me! So many feelings rooted in the innocent mistaking of the impermanent for the permanent - and the subsequent longing/grasping/attachment/anger/push/pull/raga/dvesha... that follows.

So many subtle feelings, breathing through, letting them soften...

From the emotions I am drawn to skip ahead, past the mind (I spend enough time there usually :-) and onto the 13th and 14th practice, "I observe impermanence in all things," and "I release my desires for these impermanent things." Meditating on impermanence, on how all things are always changing - being born, growing, becoming, decaying, dying... This garden I am just planting will in the fall bloom and die. Friends will pass in and out of my life, eventually passing away entirely. Watching even as my own body would decay and become dust someday...

And in this meditation, as I saw my skin and muscles and bones become earth again, I remembered one of the most powerful visions ever while journeying with the Grandmother medicine - when my body became the earth, and then became the worms crawling through me... And then this same, changing body became birds and rabbits - flying, bounding through. All just passing through, becoming and unbecoming this body of earth that I am.

So today, I let my impermanence meditation become that, feeling my body become birds and animals, becoming the rain and the soil of the garden that is watered by it, the plants growing out of it. My bones, some became dust and dirt, some became food for mountain lions, as I became the lion, and the warm stone it lays upon...

And as I let myself become all these things, letting go, letting go..., I find an emotion arises - sadness. Sadness as I release the separate-self, dissolving and becoming everything.

It is this deep sadness of being-human, of just-passing-through. There must be something more, something more...

There is Love, and this precious sharing of each moment as it passes on by. But still, something more, something that doesn't fade...

So I sit, waiting. Dissolving, unbecoming...

Time doesn't stop, but "I" will, someday. Or will I? Will something remain? A perceiver, a witness? A Love?? Perhaps a Love remains - whole, complete unto itself, living in all things. Yet where will I be?... All things passing, there must be something more!

The Mother ("matre," matter), the body of existence, "she" is used to all this coming and going. All things grow and dissolve and change within "her" body.

And I see and feel her body now - black and still. All "things" are just play of light and shadow upon and within this vast, still blackness. I sit here, now absorbed in this blackness. This is cessation, the 15th breath practice.

There is a sense of density here, of thickness of this black, vast, (infinite?) body. It's not exciting or euphoric. It's still, peaceful, but almost boring. But perfectly fine. It's nice to be home, to rest in the source, seeking nothing. Here in the body of the black mother I see nothing is missing - all things exist here, whole and complete. There is a sense of unchanging. And the play of light and shadow I came from? - beautiful, sweet, but just a play...

Then from this death-black-stillness suddenly I feel/see a lily budding from my heart. I can't help but laugh out loud! The absurd, ecstatic beauty of it.

Oh, let us celebrate, dance together in this absurd garden of fleeting dreams. Laughing, letting go, I am Free.

Flowers bloom in me. From the deathless void, all things come to being...