The Pathless Path...

“The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.”

Albert Einstein

I feel as though I am standing at a crossroads, an important juncture between who my thinking led me to believe I was, and who I might be capable of being.

Silence has returned to my experience, and with it a more refined understanding of the wonder of not internally listening to myself speak…all the livelong day.

I make no claims, save the silence.  I do not know anything other than its blessed relief.

To fill your consciousness with its sweet embrace is to relax for the very first time.  It is beyond simple.  Well beyond vital.  A place to give your life for…and to…

In the moments I have experienced its wonder in the past, they were fleeting, primarily, because I found the search for a brighter tomorrow more enticing, than the simple, yet utterly, wonderful emptiness that silence brings with it.

I realize, now, that I can have no other gods before it.  I can choose to worship the chattering mind, and its constant plans for finding the “good”, just around the next bend in the road…or, I can stop believing entirely… 

What cannot be done is to have it both ways.

My teacher would often use the analogy of a circle to attempt to indicate the beauty and expansive spaciousness of the Silence, out of which all things are born.

Like spokes on a wheel, he would talk about the outer dimension of the circle as the fixed points of reference born of opinions and the conditioned mind.  The, us versus them anthem, that plays itself out all over the world since the beginning of time.  The two or three points on the wheel next to each other, share enough of a similarity that they can get along…at least for awhile.  The points directly opposite are always enemies, and often-mortal ones.

He taught, quite simply, that our spiritual and natural home was the center of the circle where all points on the wheel are resolved.  A place wherein silence reigns, and there are no opinions, no conflicts, no judgments, no right and wrong, nor any of the burdens that we associate with living the lives, we have been conditioned to experience.

In all the years that I listened to that lesson, in all the years that I heard him speak of the “Impersonal Self”, of the Silence, of the Stillness, and the Emptiness…I did not even remotely understand him.

Now that my mind has lost its fascinations, now that it has become transparent, now that I am no longer interested in its pursuits, yearnings, habituations, and longings…I finally understand the center of the circle and the gentleness with which it can hold you.

I have tasted its value on several occasions before, but I could not yet give up the many obsessions and desires that drove the very formation of my “personal life”.  I am deeply grateful that the gift of silence did not turn its back upon me, in search of some more worthy companion.

While I breathe…I want nothing more than to serve its purposes.

While I live…I want to be its constant servant.

I feel surely that the reason it did not stay before, is that I was still yet, self-centered enough to wish to use if for my own purposes.  To find within its embrace some home for my conditioned mind’s desires, wishes, hopes and dreams.

If that flame has not died entirely, it is very near exhaustion.

Now I am willing, capable, committed, and attenuated enough to be willing to watch the peace move, and move with it, rather than to occupy the burdened and conditioned mind, while it hunts for scraps in a universe of plenty.

The move to the center of the circle is a journey and a dedication, that cannot be explained, charted, plotted, planned, or devised.  It is a grace filled occurrence that can only be approached in a sideways manner.  It is achieved, although that is an utterly incorrect word, by means of resolution, absolution, renunciation, and the very death of the self.

And it makes every single breath worth it.

I look back on all that I was so deeply afraid to give up, and I wonder at the absurdity of not doing it sooner.  If I had known then, that all my “dreams” were really ash filled illusions, that would keep me in abject bondage for years and years of suffering, I would have given them up so very much sooner.

My prayer is that I will, this time, not trade the Ground of Being for the seductions of the “self” again.  That this most recent retreat, forced by my hurt foot, will be the one that will tip the scales and make possible a solid and non-shifting experience of living in Silence, rather than just visiting it.

Adayre R. Miller

3/1/13

photo courtesy of Trevor Williams and flickr photo sharing: to see more of this artist’s work, please follow this link.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/trevor303/6937366503/