Public Case
There are many currents that direct the flow of a life’s journey. Through the psychic and mental lens which we acquire through the simple act of floating along these currents, attachments, preferences, aversions and the like develop. As a rolling stone gathers no moss, thusly, a floating cork collects algal bloom.
These many currents, much like streams, show many sunsets, show many blossoming springs; as do they shower light on the many carcasses running amok- of the currents, the streams, of our own past stringing on to an imagined future. And thus we float, with our many alliances, with our many fears and hopes.
However, just a drop of a pebble skittling past a still lake on a moonlit night away, there is silence.
This is a dropping inward to the depths of experience; an answer brought forth only from stillness: a stillness so clear that the ripples rattling back and forth hush to a mirror’s surface, limpid and pale, yet clear.
Seeing this essence of matter and dropping further still into an experience of the substrate beckons a clearer than clear reflection of all life’s many currents, all the backflows, all the drifting that a mere cork experiences throughout the journey. Where is it that the journey leads to matters less than knowing that the journey is progressing ever forward, perhaps slow, perhaps fast, yet ever onward, deeper and deeper into an Unknown.
When I sit still and allow a stillness to enter my breathing, it is then that all pretenses fade away and all that I am left with is the experience of naught but the journey itself. As I grew up, my happy mien was rusted deeply with shells of defences, of judgments, of desires. The stillness did not so much cut through these, as it allowed for still breathing and being.
It is in such a state that, I believe, the experience of understanding flourishes. We see the face left from our parent’s birth and our own birth and do not so much despise these, as we feel a deep compassion for them, for ourselves, for our dear ones, for our ancestors: all those many factors that needed to align for this stillness to birth itself.
Whether passively scrolling, silently enduring, or otherwise caught up in the many flavors that each day ushers forth, there is a tendency to separate binary strands of experience and non-experience. Living with a family, friends, alone, with strangers or any strange brew of these, certainly paints different hues of how one experiences oneself. It is in the going within to the source of each moment that one suddenly realizes the cosmic joke.
A shedding of fear, joy, and any other emotion as an experience separate from the present moment simply reveals the only valuable asset left behind: the original face.
As a soft, slow tune marches into the ear over a dusky sunset, the many masks we wear simply to survive everyday life becomes a heavy burden to carry, and even heavier to pass on to the next moment as, even for the tiniest of a split second, there is the bare-truth of the mystery and with it, a turn towards a light laugh at the massive miracle we are all in the midst of. It is not so much that this is an especially profound dawning, for the stuff is out there everyday, in an everyday context.
Remembering, however, is well nigh impossible, yet, somehow, the possibility persists. Shedding away the pain of Dis-connection is a gift only to be obtained from this: The Present.
As an eddy springs forth spontaneously in a river; as the specificity of currents remain something to be experienced, thus do we inherit our masks, our pain. And with such an inheritance, it is quite the struggle to touch stillness and silence.
Generations go by without knowing that there is more to the experience of life than the tugs and twists of situational arising. It is not so much a secret, as it is a foolhardy optimism and the will to fire. Letting go of the power borne of the moment into a chance at simply observing: And what is it that lets itself be shown at the end of observation?
It is infamously said that the experience obtained from the chemical N,N-dimethyl tryptamine is impossible to truly classify, since it is designed to be a specific experience for each individual and thus there is no “One True” experience.
In a similar fashion, no one can ever let you know what the experience of stillness and silence will bear for you, and Leave aside the face you have that wants simply to rely on another’s notion of this original face. It is a most intimate act to feel all the energy from all of your faces dip silently into the pond of origination.
What is the original face? I do not know, and Never will. Yet, my search forever beams on.
Excellent! Love the concluding photo😸