The air is so cold that the ice on the sidewalks is like a precious stone, hard and glistening like quartz deposited ages ago in some unusual geological process.  The landscape in stasis, she steps carefully over the curb.  Her breath settles on the silent street like morning fog and adds another microscopic layer to the ice formations under her feet.

Behind her is a little front yard covered with hardened pillows of snow surrounding an intricate tree encased in glass.  Ahead is a trail through the woods, growing ever wider, and the sun glowing through the filigree.

Ice sickles pause among shards, crystals, flakes, and prisms of unmoving water.  Not a drop of melt.

Consciousness moves like this, through the frozen moment with warm footsteps.

Opening to Now

Every ice crystal is shimmering with the whole past and the whole future like Indra’s net.  Indra’s net of pearls is a mythical Hindu metaphor for reality in which every element reflects every other element ad infinitum.  The only reality to each element lies in the reflections it enables, which means that the only thing one ever sees is the original light source or “first cause.”

She looks at this moment and only this moment, as if the past and future were just figments of her imagination, and she sees it all right there.  The past and future as she knows them are figments of her imagination, but they are also realities embedded in the forms and emptiness of right now.  In this way, the now is eternal.

A POVray simulation of Indra's net of pearls

If you can get to a place of total acceptance, opening entirely without fear to this moment, even opening to your own resistance, opening to waves that appear to bring pain and suffering, opening to doing nothing right, opening so deeply that there is no conception of what you see, love pours out of every shining snowflake.  Cold gusts of wind promising pain and discontent hit and dissipate without a sting.

Pain that Does Not Hurt

For the past week or so, I’ve noticed that pain has stopped hurting.  Even when I’m venting or arguing or sobbing, I feel happy.  Even as I watch a relationship disintegrate, I feel pleasure, relief, release, peaceful contentment, connection and warmth.  There is no substantial reality to whatever I would point to as “going bad.”  I get frustrated searching for the right words even as I know that every single word that comes out of my mouth will be perfection.  I cannot do anything right… and I cannot do anything wrong!  Neither makes any sense.  There is only acting, surrendering to this moment.  I’m not afraid.

I separate without separation, move on without leaving, detach without losing anything, cut people off while remaining connected to them.  Sadness does not make me sad.  Anger does not make me angry.  What is there to be angry about?  There is nothing tangible here to injure.

Off Screen

The only explanation I can come up with is that the core of awareness at the center of this person called “me” has seen its self and now knows it is an actress reading off a script.  When you discover that you are not the character in the movie, the character does not pop out of the movie.  The movie keeps going.  The character keeps going.  Everything is exactly as it was.  Only, it has become two dimensional.

So much of what we call spiritual growth is an attempt to change the character in the movie.  In some ways, this only makes it harder for us to realize that we are not the characters on the screen.  In fact, there may be times when the more you fail at spirituality or royally fuck up, despite all your efforts, the easier it becomes to step back and see who you really are.

How Does This Happen?

Things come and go, and not as much of it sticks.  You might ask yourself if it will last, but then the question seems silly.  Who will be around in the next moment to keep or lose it?  Conceptual life begins to evaporate.  What once seemed like reality itself will, in the light of day, be revealed as nothing more than words on a page… describing the page!  It’s like reading a long paragraph about “What Words are Like” and “What Reading is Like” before realizing that you are directly experiencing what you are wondering all about.

Want it more than life itself, more than any daydream of healing or the perfect life.  Want it more than the perfect lover.  The more you taste the Divine Beloved’s sweet lips, the more you will laugh at your yearnings for the ultimate partner.  I heard a song on the radio with the lyrics, “They’ve got nothing on you.”  I want to sing that to God.  But there is no concrete reality to this Divine Beloved other than that which is in front of me.

Love what is in front of you.