Category: Teachings

Things that come along in life, at least the big things, are “supposed” to matter. (I don’t need to tell you what things. The list generates itself, if you give it a moment.) When nothing no longer carries meaning, in the long-accustomed way, what is it like to live that way?

What is it like when nothing any longer matters? When nothing “means” anything. Is a person depressed, in despair? Maybe it means they have no value system. If somebody you know (like the person in the mirror) says this is the case, and then says it’s profoundly restful to be that way . . . well, what to make of that?

Reactivity has drained away into the soil.

When a life development is allowed to be itself, how might that differ from the way a person is used to life’s realities landing? If you put the nothing-mattering thing alongside the familiar understanding of what it typically means, well, it’s a tad humorous.

* * *

If peace and delight are alive and well within, regardless of what’s going on, it may just be that something innate to us exists independent of what’s going on (or not going on) out there. For quite some time after awakening landed on me, I would periodically scan the landscape to see whether anything could account for the bizarre change. Nothing there.

How could it be that this new way was dependent for its sustenance on nothing? At some point I stopped asking silly questions, or putting the thing to this periodic “test.” Whatever came long didn’t mold the interior to fit it, reflect it, adapt.

Nor did it mean I was walking around wearing blinders. I kept being aware of poverty and violence all about me (sometimes in my own life). It did not mean it was a great day when the house my family lived in was demolished. It was just that the mechanism of piss-and-moan, regret and frustration, had weirdly crumbled into bits, like the roof and the walls of where my children had grown up, where my own life had spent its several decades.

It was just that all of it was taken in as the truth of life at the moment. Eventually I discovered that it was the fierce energy of opposition that had been the true source of pain. Life was soft, soft, soft.

* * *

And speaking of soft . . . When a life development cried out for bodied sorrow, I bowed my head to that. I do not protect myself from grief. Some have the idea that awake people don’t feel. Spare me a life without heartbreak. Without rejoicing, celebration!

Every day is a great day, basically. Reactivity has drained away into the soil. The most alive thing in all of us, the most essentially real, is radical allowing. There is not a morning I wake up (regardless of what’s going on nowadays) that I don’t wake up in profound gratitude that I am still alive. And that suffering left me years ago and has not returned.

I wish this for you. Meanwhile, if it isn’t that way, when light shines on a way you’re distancing yourself from reality, just allow yourself to see. Don’t try to change it. Maybe sometimes seeing this, in the moment it occurs, will open your heart a tad (and your body), enabling you to feel it.

* * *

What we don’t feel doesn’t go away. It revisits us later (or haven’t you noticed?). To the extent that we allow the fullness of whatever is there, we feel ourselves being alive. This applies with equal force to the negative and the positive. After a while it all feels the same, in a way: it’s all a piece of lived life.

And that opens the door to where I began: nothing mattering. It’s simply what is just now. You bow your head to all of it, and so there is peace.

* * *

I want to direct your attention to some possible sources of support for your explorations. Beth Miller’s recent talk on Awareness Explorers is a gem. You may also find The Humanness of Being Awake to be of use. The Watch page of my website now has the video of an interview that was previously on the “Listen” page. Scroll down to Mitchell Rabin’s “A Better World.” (While you’re on the audio page . . . not long ago some of the links there were not working. They have now been restored.)

I continue to be deeply grateful for donations, no matter the size.

That I have lived on this earth. That I have stood out in the black night, in the sky that comes all the way down to the grass, the wet grass. That my face has lifted to the stars, the fireflies. I have heard the owl in the dark woods. I have smelled the green and sweet air, with my whole body I have smelled and heard and touched.

I have ridden a truly wonderful roller coaster. I have loved. I have had just the best time. It is that I have lived, really lived, and been lucky lucky, so lucky. I have not missed the thing we were born for.

We have not missed that many-splendored thing.

When I was a girl, one of the movies (and books) I loved ended with this line: “We have not missed, you and I. We have not missed that many-splendored thing.” Already I have not missed it. All the rest is gravy, all the rest of whatever I get. I am not greedy for more, but glad of it, yes, if there is to be more.

* * *

What a thing, to be physical. I have no idea if there is anything else, another sort of life, another way to be. I’ll know about that when the time comes (if it does). I can’t be bothered with it now, with wondering about it. I have this! this here. If I were thinking about that, about the possibility of life beyond this one, I would be missing what’s in front of my face, my now, what my hands are on, or could be, if I weren’t escaped into my mind.

I would be missing the sweet face of my dog Casey, who is alive. Give me this dog, my fingers deep in her black fur that smells of old dog. I will not subject her to water, the kind that makes contact with her luscious coat. She hates getting wet. If she comes in from a necessary trip out into the rain (for her toilet is out there where the water is falling), when this happens, I drape a towel around her dear body and buff her. This is so good (she would say) that it almost makes it worth the misery of the rain.

I live in paradise. When do I ever walk out the door onto the porch that I fail to notice this? When does the world out there not take me into its arms, sweep me up in its smells, the shape of its terrain, its tall and green trees? How could I miss it?

I sit on the couch there, and the old dog works her way up onto her place beside me. Sighs into my leg. We are happy here. We are together.

* * *

It is that I had this, with her; that I got to sing Beethoven’s 9th several times in my life, and the Faure Requiem. That I had more than one passionate love affair, and had my heart broken too, more than once.

I feel done with that now, with that kind of loving. I had enough. It was good. I’m full, and happy to be empty. It all came and went. Life did that. Life still does that. I’m still here.

* * *

You’re still here, or you wouldn’t be reading this.

We won’t be, though. In a hundred years it will be all new people. It all just keeps going.

Live, my friend. Not for the future, not “so that.” ‘Cause it’s the only now you’ve got.

This was written 13 years ago, when Casey was quite old but still alive. I came upon it the other day. I’m 13 years older than I was then. Casey is a box of ash. In my heart, she lives to this day.

At our essence, we human beings are the same as one another. Nor are we apart from the world we dwell in. (This is not something the ordinary mind can understand, so resist the temptation to try.)

Someone recently asked why it meant so much to me to be in Ojai, California, where I traveled not long ago. Ojai is where Krishnamurti lived much of his life. It’s where he woke up, where he took countless delicious walks in the natural world, and where he would finally come to the end of his long life. He gave many talks in Ojai, trying earnestly, all his very long life, to help others experience what it was like to not suffer.

* * *

Ever since my awakening in 2003, I had longed to go to where he had been. For in the aftermath of that radical change, Krishnamurti’s writing had been such a blessing: his writing helped me fathom what had happened. For decades I dreamed of traveling to Ojai. At long last, some time ago, it seemed I needed to let go of that desire.

That is how it feels to me, when I take my walks in the woods.

Then it came to be, to my delighted surprise, that circumstances conspired to get me there after all. And so I was able to see — to taste, to feel — the places where K was flooded in such extraordinary joy.

It was above all when he was in the presence of the natural world that this occurred: the hills, his fellow creatures, the ocean. The air, the earth his shoes moved over. All of it.

He was it. And that is how it feels to me, when I take my walks in the woods. This is why I relate to him, and to how life felt to the man.

* * *

K did not write often of what it felt like to be himself, plainly that. His writing generally was intended to be of use to people. A precious few of his books portray the embodied human experience of his day-to-day, the unity of his in-motion body through the trees, with the clouds and earth, birdsong, the unceasing movement of sky, the scent of the non-human creatures among whom he moved. Two I especially cherish are Krishnamurti to Himself: His Last Journal and Krishnamurti’s Notebook. These are not “teacherly” volumes. They allow the reader into the man’s experience, to taste the continuity of him and what he moved through: the utter non-separation.

As I do now, he struggled to find words to express the unboundedness of himself and the glorious natural world in which he moved.

* * *

Some years ago, I realized I wanted to live alone. Because without another person occupying the house, it wouldn’t be necessary for me to need to “remember,” at intervals, that I was in some sense separate from the other. You can’t have a conversation unless there are two of you there, the going back-and-forth in an exchange. There is a perceiver and a perceived, one speaking and the other listening, taking it in.

I shared the house, in those days, with the man who was the love of my life. Choose to live apart from him? But if there was anything I cherished even more than that man, it was the extraordinary palpable experience of utter non-separation. So we began to live apart, though we stayed dear to one another all his remaining years.

There had come to be a strong preference to live in the experience of unity, to forgo the need to “pretend” to a distance I didn’t feel. I had landed in daily solitude. I struggle to describe all of this in Love Incarnate: Twenty Years After Awakening.

* * *

When I’m reading one of Krishnamurti’s luscious descriptions of those walks he went on in Ojai, it’s as if I am walking with him. So to blessedly walk the land he walked, all those years ago — to smell the air he breathed, see the miraculous colors of the still-abundant hummingbirds, wander the hills surrounding the buildings he was in — was the sweetest of dreams come true.

You are the whole world, my friend. You are all your senses drink in, with such lusciousness. For God’s sake (for your own dear sake!) slow down and notice it all.

Revel in it. You don’t have forever to do so.

Which is to say, brace yourself. You don’t get to be “free” without having the self basically destroyed. The precious, familiar self, I mean. The one that’s defined fun in particular terms, and torment, and freedom. All of it with a match suddenly put to its kindling.

Well, think of that blazing orb 93 million miles away. How it does light us and all our dealings. It keeps us comfortably warm without overdoing it. But we’d better not get too close. Yes, it might illumine what’s going on inside, what keeps us limited. But then the heat gets turned up. Pretty soon we’re burned to an unrecognizable crisp.

The rejoicing reaches to the most distant star.

Yes, do move toward it. By all means, when you feel the sun has taken you into its transforming arms, let yourself go — the self you’ve always thought you were. Bit by bit you find a way. I managed, when the time was right. But oh my, do you then discover! And yes, the rejoicing reaches to the most distant star. You keep not being able to believe how different you are.

* * *

And while you hold this in mind, whatever you suppose it might be like, whatever you think it’s been like for somebody else (me, for instance), laugh at yourself. Because you have no idea until you get there. And if you’re anything like me, when you get there, you may not even know where it is you’ve landed.

All the while an enormous kindness attends it all.

We can’t get there until we’re ready. We can’t rush it. Yes, you may say, I’ve been ready for decades. Or so you thought. But you can trust that when the time is right, it’ll happen. You can rest in it, and it will carry you, like a baby in its tender arms.

It turns out we were wrong about every scrap of it: well, that’s sure what happened in my case. As in the case of many others I’ve spoken with about what it was like in the aftermath.

* * *

Is this one of those “be careful what you wish for” things? No, not really. It’s just to say don’t be surprised if precious little of your old self appears to still be operative. Which is why when waking up first happens, it can take some time to register what’s happened. To adjust.

But we do, over time. Inch by micro-inch. And the change never ceases. At least, in my first 22 years of this wild ride, stability has been mostly short-lived.

But what a life. Oh yes indeed, it’s really something. It’s worth everything. So long as you don’t exert yourself in the aching longing. Just relax.

No, really.

So much love to you, my friend.

If not, it’s time for a change. Let me say that again: If you don’t cherish your every day, your moment-to-moment, gift your dear self with the space to sit with the truth of that. Don’t avert your eyes. Listen to your beloved self speaking that profound honesty-to-self.

You don’t have forever. You could die later today. (If you don’t believe it, ask yourself if anyone dear to you has ever shocked you by coming to an early demise, long before ever you could have imagined their disappearance from your life.)

Perhaps this is the moment you hold the mirror to your own face.

We aren’t here to work, to survive another day. To put up with one thing and another that drains us, that does not nourish, delight, make us giggle, tear up with joy. We are here to enjoy, to have fun. To (above every other thing) love.

* * *

Last summer I had six hummingbirds that flitted around the feeder I’d hung on the porch. They buzzed and dive-bombed one another and flew in and out with breakneck speed. (Did you know that in their tiny chests their wee hearts beat a thousand times each minute?) Utterly fearless, these creatures. I’ve had them zoom straight to my face, hover inches before me, as if to say into my gobsmacked eyes What on earth are YOU? (Such a privilege, that proximity!)

This summer there are two hummers. Next year . . . sigh. So what else is there but for me to linger out on my porch for as long as I can manage. To watch when they come. Because this one right here may be the last I’ll ever have the privilege of seeing. So I slow the hell down, pay attention. Grieve? No, not yet: the time for that will surely come. No, I celebrate the breathtaking beauty before me, the ferocity. What else can we do?

* * *

Looking all of this in the face can feel like a death. Oh, but it also can feel like a freshening spring morning, a waking up, a realization that life actually could be different. Better! Altogether worth living. Never mind (for now), the how of it. Just seeing the truth of how things are now — maybe have been, for so long you cannot recall a before — even slowing down enough to let all of that register in your beloved heart . . . Well, someday in the not-too-distant future, you may well look back on what you’ll see as a moment of truth and bow your dear head in gratitude.

You just might cry. With relief? Maybe. Regret? Don’t bother. (It’s a waste of life.) Maybe the tears will be gratitude leaking from your living eyes. Your not-done-yet eyes.

Tell me this: have you ever gazed upon someone else (perhaps someone important to you) and lamented how they were “wasting their life”? Perhaps this is the moment you hold the mirror to your own face.

* * *

Ask yourself (when you can summon the courage) this question: Do I habitually do things as a means to an end? So I can . . . get to the other side. Rest. Have fun. Be by myself for a bit. Or maybe so I can generate financial “security.” (As if.) Or impress others. Get my partner/parents/best friend off my back. Get a raise, a promotion. Do nothing at all.

Maybe it’s time to get off your own back!

If we’re not willing to look, it’s entirely possible nothing will ever change. Then the last breath comes, and the wondering How come I never saw this before?

Never mind the “how” of it. It will come to you all on its own. It will whisper to you when you’re washing your face, or dropping off to sleep. Or pushing yourself so hard to get things done, do them better, have somebody else APPRECIATE YOU, for once! Perhaps a tender little whisper that means you only well (does it have the ring of your own voice?) will say, You deserve to live a life of delight.

Please, oh please, listen to me. Listen to your heart.

* * *

Do you know any animals? What we call “pets”? Or do you observe someone else’s beloved creatures? Perhaps you have the privilege to observe animals in the wild, even in a city: birds soaring above, mice skittering, deer munching on yummy grass, spiders with egg sacs on their industrious backs, bees sipping from flowers somebody has allowed to keep growing. They are the finest teachers in immediacy. Be their students.

Do other animals (for we too are their kin) “know” their lives to be brief? Maybe not (but what do I know? nothing so far). But we do know that about ourselves. Our minds are both a torment — perhaps you’ve noticed — and a blessing. Those organs in our noggins have the ability to remember, to anticipate. To learn. To note trends, to see that it’s been a long time since there was a deep resting. A savoring, a giggly delight.

They can say: Okay, it’s time for a change. Oh yes (perhaps you’ve noticed) they can also say . . . I don’t want to look this in the face. Maybe I’ll try tomorrow. On and on it goes.

Then the life stops. Chances have run out.

It ain’t over yet, my love. Know how I can tell? You’re reading these words right now. Taking them into your beloved heart. Your oh-so-brief heart. Have fun! I will if you will. It’s a deal.

P.S. – Had you been thinking that the purpose of life is to “wake up”? What on earth is it to be awake but to be with what’s happening now? (So funny, eh?) And one last thing: soon you will be receiving an announcement for an in-person event I’m offering in Vermont this September.