
The Infinite Heart
In the experience of more and more opening, unfolding; in the loss of the illusion of boundaries that separate, a devolving of the filters of mind, there is an ease of being. Or you could say just Being.
We call this experience of just Being "peace". There can be joy too. A very simple joy – one not dependent on objective measures.
openness = ease of being = no real center
All inextricable to each other, implying each other, openness, ease of being and no real center unfold in the ever-presence. Since there is nothing permanent to hold onto or defend, no boundaries that are real, no position from which the real "I" comes, no right or wrong view; one naturally drops, lets go of any thought or experience. As things comes up, they are naturally "accepted". Acceptance is simply that which already is. It is not a doing.
"The difficult develops naturally from the easy,
And the great from the small;
So the sage, by dealing with the small,
Achieves the great."
I always felt Lao Tsu was pointing to something important with this—along the lines of Karl Renz's "the absence of a tendency of avoidance"—that is very practical, yet inward.
It is all a corollary of openness, seeing things in immediacy, without mind interference and interpretation, and responding as appropriate in the context—not making something big, or dramatic, or trying to be great, and not avoiding small—as if some things are "big" and "important", as humans make them—rather than the way of nature, the Tao. It is immediacy without imposed meaning or significance. Seeing and hearing without interpreting, silently.
An artist for example achieves "great" things—without trying or caring about being great (if working well)—by dealing with one tiny thing at a time in front of them, in the field of perception: this bit of paint, this exact color, to the best of his ability, out of love, and it's because it's what is here and now. Same for a technician or a mother or a policeman, or a bird on a branch. In daily living, "big" problems happen in avoiding "small" problems. So in "confronting" or "dealing with" (and this is not to imply a separate being or doer, it's just way of talking), there are no real "problems", if you get the drift.
By being in that flow (of seemingly small things), the whole thing goes according to the flow of the Tao. It's caringness you could say, a responsibility—ability to respond—according to a harmoniousness inherent in the totality, which a seeming person has nothing to do with, except to do the best they can and then "let go" as it were.
Here is the whole chapter from the Tao Te Ching:
63
Practice non-action.
Work without doing.
Taste the tasteless.
Magnify the small, increase the few.
Reward bitterness with care.See simplicity in the complicated.
Achieve greatness in little things.In the universe the difficult things are done as if they are easy.
In the universe great acts are made up of small deeds.
The sage does not attempt anything very big,
And thus achieves greatness.The difficult develops naturally from the easy,
And the great from the small;
So the sage, by dealing with the small,
Achieves the great.
One clearly sees the paradox of any effort or attempt or practice or need to achieve spiritually, to get there, or somewhere, since it's all here now. But it seems to be necessary, until it isn't. If it seems to be necessary, then it is.
Never Not Connected
Another Way of Noticing: see this desire to "connect", to have the pleasurable experience of light and love that arises, and to repeat an experience, to long for it. Yet the experience of connection comes and goes. If it comes and goes, then something is not real — just another passing show.
What is this experience of connection? Is this not the love, the sense of boundlessness we seek and that we really are, now? How can I know and be that which I truly am, if I can't experience it in such an experience as the boundary-less connection?
What you are never ceases, but its effects come and go.
Separation never existed. The illusion of separation never really existed to begin with either. Rest assured in that, once it is seen for certain.
There is simply no reality in not "connecting", since what I Am was was never not "connected", is not now disconnected, nor will never be. Between what and what would there be a disconnection? There simply cannot be such a state of affairs in the universe, the totality of the boundless All. What I Am is simply revealing That which was and is already the case.
The body and mind resonate, vibrate to the tune of Reality, phenomena in tune with the invisible.
“When we have reached the outposts of the mind, we are ready for the journey to the heart.”
~ Francis Lucille, The Perfume of Silence
However, grasping it as we might like to, owning it, cannot happen, other than to seek again, or to be addicted to effects.
(86) Jesus said, "The foxes have their holes and the birds have their nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head and rest."
~ The Gospel of Thomas
The Invisible Sangha
In Buddhism, a "sangha"—a word originally from Sanskrit meaning community or association—can mean a monastic order or formal community of monks. There is a deeper meaning however, beyond all religions, where it can mean a community of friends following the "dharma" or "way" or cosmic order (the divine logos in Greek, the all-powerful blazing sun god of the Mayans...). Dharma can mean any path of Truth, not just Buddhist.
What if we were to look even deeper than a community of spiritual friends sharing a sense of truth, a certain transmission of the "flame" of Reality. What if there were a deepest well of connection that encompassed all Beings, all faiths, all shapes of Life, however manifest, however played in beauty or light, as energy, vibration, concerted in concordance, never without connection, no point separate from any other point. What if The Infinite were another word for the Heart of all hearts? What if you were completely mistaken that there are "others"? What if there was only "God", or only "Love", only "Light", and no separate entity in existence?
very beautiful. thank you eric