These Tiny Moments Of Pure Awareness…

The Teachers that have truly captured my attention, as I have unraveled the conditioned mind’s hold on me, all shared a similar idea with me – gave of their experiences in a similar way – talked and taught that the way out – is by slowing bringing myself to the awareness that the mindstream moving through my life is not me, but rather a complicated amalgam of the stories I told myself in childhood in a deeply misguided attempt to allay my fears.  The “voice” inside my head, and the way it disguises itself as the story of me…is not me, but rather, a deadly imposter.

Most of my teachers spoke about the “heaven” that awaited a person on the other side of salvation or redemption, when the end of the self made mind is finally reached.  There was only one, in my life, who almost never spoke to me of the other side and its many blessings.

My Beloved Teacher almost never spoke about the deep beauty, of the quiet mind.

Instead he spoke about the Impersonal self, the capacity to transcend, the willingness to give up comparison, the poison of “improvement”, the value of the 24 virtues.

I have never, until today, given that much thought. 

My Teacher’s “presence” was such a palpable felt experience that being near him was all the convincing a mind, (open to his expression), could have ever needed of the wonder of, to use his term, the Impersonal Self.  Having the privilege of watching him moving through this daily life was what it must have been like for Peter or Paul.  Watching him teach was like being present at the discovery of E=MC2, or the light bulb, the combustion engine, or gravity, or that the earth travels round the sun.  It was such a miracle to witness an authentic expression of Stillness that it never occurred to me, that he rarely spoke of the benefits of a Silent mind.

I wonder about that now.  Now that he is gone from sight, and I am left only with the perfume of his memory and the deep swath of change, that he wrought upon the landscape of my life.

I look back in memory and I cannot find a single moment in my experience where he taught benefit over commitment.  I suppose he did not tell us of the wonder of Silence, because he did not wish to support a new form of searching or seeking.

But he did speak, and write, and teach, a great deal about “Availability”, something I am only just now, beginning to fully understand.

The very first time my mind went silent was while I was watching my mother take in her last breath.  It electrified me.  I have never before, or since, felt more alive.  Every neuron in my brain was so laser focused on my optic nerves, that I truly felt as though I could see out the back of my head.  The air seemed to crackle with electricity, and I was flooded with a pervasive sense of absolute well-being.  (I did eventually grieve her passing, but that grief was simple, swift, and deeply impersonal.  And it could not hold a single candle against the overwhelming sense, of the rightness, of the moment of her death.)

It was, however, in some way I cannot describe an unbidden moment.  I did not choose the silence that emptied my mind of the capacity to think, it chose me…the moment was so intensely sacred, that I could naught but respond to it in silent wonder.

Finding the snake in my dining room had a very similar effect.  I could not possibly have had a single thought while I worked to save the life of my best friend, my lovely red haired shadow, my favorite companion.  While he was the focus of the snake’s hissing and striking,  (but also having the good sense to stay far enough away from the death dealing venom, that he was still alive when I finally made my way into the dining room) my thinking mind was entirely stopped …yet… effective, and even, elegant action was arrived at creating safety for all concerned.  I had no interest in killing the rattler, no interest in running from the situation despite the surging adrenalin that took three full days to recover from, only a driving and insistent and entirely wordless willingness for immediate and potent action.  Here again, the Silence found me…not the other way around.

During my mother’s death, Silence brought me wonder.  During the struggle to save my animal, Silence brought me absolute and total trust.

Then one day about three years ago now, I found a simple entrance into Silence that I had not known was even there.  A doorway, a threshold, a jumping off place opened and I knew I could walk through it if I chose to.  I remember being quite frightened for just a few moments, “what if I slip beneath this sea of Silent darkness and never return?”  I wondered to myself.  “What if there is no form of existence beyond the threshold of my speaking mind…like Dorothy, what if I can never get back home?”  I do not know how or why, I could hear these fears and feel the anxiety and let go into the silence anyway.  I think it probably has to do with the experience with my mother’s death and with the snake, I don’t know and it doesn’t matter.

Instead of pulling back, I stepped forward and found myself in such an ocean of relief that I cannot accurately describe it.  You have heard the words from others “oceanic bliss”, heaven, redemption, relief, salvation…I could go on and on and on.  This experience lasted about three weeks or so, and to say that it was good does not even get close to the truth.   Delicious might help describe it, as it was such a tangible and palpable wonder.

But then it closed back up, and the thinking mind returned, and I went in search of the wonder I had lost.  I took a job that was deeply stressful and once again, became lost in the productions of mind.

So now, seven weeks back into the quietness of no job and no where to go… Silence has returned to my mind and with it a maturity that I did not possess, with the previous experiences of the cessation of thinking.

I understand, now, why my Beloved Teacher did not speak of “bliss” or heaven or wonder.

The reason is because they are states of mind, forms that appear and disappear, in the Emptiness that is the real self.  They are subtle, but still quite tangible; productions of mind…a mind relieved to be sure, but productions of mind, none-the-less.  (How can I say this with such assurance? …because they came, and they went… whereas the environment in which they arose, (awareness or consciousness) remains forever constant.

This brings me, finally, back to my imagined reason for why my Beloved Teacher never spoke to of us of the many wonders that can be felt, and touched, and experienced, out of a Silent mind.

I looked and looked in my memory for what he did speak of, what he did say about the gifts of the Impersonal Self? of transcending separation? of ending the pursuits of seeking? 

And I can come up with only one answer to this curiosity.

He spoke of Availability.

No bells and whistles here.  No blissed out, mind bending, waves of rainbow colored goodies to be found in …“Availability”…!??!

I smile now, to think of how subtle was his great gift.  He never gave us anything that could be lusted after, pursued, desired, or manipulated.  It was one of his greatest wisdoms.  Even as his presence was so intense that I needed to bow my head in humility, (I regularly felt a keen desire to lower my head whenever he was in the room it was an expression of the reverence I felt when I was in his presence, although I resisted the need because it would have been read wrong by anyone watching me), but what kept me in my chair for those nearly three decades, was the palpable presence of fearlessness, he exuded.   And for someone who had experienced everything from acute terror in childhood to daily grinding anxiety in adulthood…the need to be near someone who was fearless, was an ache in my bones.

He never spoke of fearlessness that I can recall.  He never made promises of any kind, his focus was always and only on service.  Not what we could get out of our spiritual depths, but rather, what we could give from it.

Now that I have chosen a silent mind over the productions of my vivid imagination, now that I have matured enough to understand that bliss 24/7 is not a permanent state, now that I am ready to shoulder a greater responsibility for the many gifts that have brought me to this quiet interior…now…finally, I have the first glimmerings of the notion of Availability, and the service it can provide.

You can see Availability quite easily, it is visible everywhere.

The next time you see a child, or a dog, or almost any mammal, watch very closely and you will see the origins of availability.  It is a type of innocence, a willingness to be fully present, a giving over of oneself to the fill the shape of a present moment, no matter what shape it may take.  When a child is happy, they are happy right down to the cellular level. 

I am fond of watching YouTube videos of babies laughing, they laugh with their toenails and fingernails, with their eyeballs and knuckles, with their mouth and with their breath.  And they cry the very same way…  deeply, potently, available.

When this capacity has passed through the horrors of the conditioned mind and come out the other side, it becomes the spiritual power of Availability.

George was so completely available; it was very much like watching a baby laugh, or a loyal dog’s gaze following its loved companion with unblinking constancy.  In his later years, he sat in his chair bounded by his disease process and gave himself fully to the moment in which he found himself.  He took its shape, and filled out its contours, like water seeking every crevice of a vessel it has been poured into.

He never once claimed anything for himself, he only gave…and with a commitment that was truly staggering.

His intelligent presence was so blindingly simple that the complexities of the conditioned mind of his students, were stunned into uselessness by him, which is why I felt the need to bow my head when he was near. 

When I first met him I was a very clever, but horribly broken girl.  I had a facile and agile mind, bent on “understanding” and quite capable of keeping me in prison for a lifetime.  He cut cleanly through that cleverness and made possible my escape.

And the only reasonable and possible return on his investment, is for me, to become as “Available” as is possible.  I did not know that until just now…you might well be questioning my claim to intelligence, if it has taken me this long to come to the realization that being Available is the one, and perhaps only, way that I can truly honor all that he poured forth on my behalf.

But I beg your indulgence as I examine why it took me so long to come to such a stunningly simple realization…

Availability, in its fullness, means that I do not get to shape the moment I find myself in, in any way.  And believe me when I tell you that the thinking mind is a subtle and cunningly clever master thief, whose only goal is the insane illusion of control.  It can, and will, steal the breath right out of your lungs.  Even after so much exposure to the relief of Silence I went willingly back into slavery, merely because there was not enough “juice” in silence to keep me satisfied, present, and available.  I went right back to approval seeking, desire, future orientation, the poison of self-improvement – a drug of the first order – and listening to the crafty and clever manipulations of my thinking mind. 

Please understand that it is not my intention to denigrate the capacity to think.  Everything that we enjoy, from flushable toilets to space ships, comes to fruition by virtue of thought.  When thought is in service to, the follower of, a tool for … a clarified, simplified, clean and spacious mind, it is genius made visible.

When thought leads, only war is possible. 

The internal war of self-hatred has claimed more victims than all the wars the world over, since the beginning of time.

More mature now, I understand and fully accept, that vigilance is necessary all the days of our lives.  A watchful, wakeful, conscious recognition of when the preciousness of thought, becomes the repetitive and insane slave master of useless and dangerous thinking.  And much more, that vigilance is the ground upon which Availability stands.

Only I can vigilantly safeguard against the sweet seduction of the repetitive thinking minds veil of illusion – the sleep of unconsciousness – and only I can make myself available to the present moment to take the shape it wants, and not the one I choose.

I remember now…

My mother’s last breath, the coiled and striking snake, the pure brilliant and empty presence of a gifted and giving teacher, these are the reminders I have been given, of the presence of heaven here on earth.  These tiny moments of pure Awareness…

I share them with you in great humility, gratitude, and the will to become ever more Available.

Adayre R. Miller (Ronni)

9/23/12

photo courtesy of flickr photo sharing and Parkbes, to see more of this artists work please follow this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/parkbes/4015327738/