Grand Design Galaxy
Poem: You Are Singular (Guest Post – Thomas Stern)
October 30, 2020 | |
It is deliciously simple:
Your true identity is no identity.
It is easy:
You do not own a thing
Nothing of what you see is yours
You are not what you did
You are not what you saw
You are not what you thought
Because there isn’t a you apart from doing
A you apart from seeing
A thinker apart from thinking
So you are not a memory
Because when that’s gone, you are.
You are not the appearance of this scene, this world, this body
Because when you don’t see those
Even when this body disappears
You are.
You are not any of these thoughts.
They continuously leave you
Never to return
Only seemingly
And you remain as you are
Nothing at all
No identity.
You are not a person.
You are not the shaper of your life
None of what you see out there
Is really about you
Could ever define you
Could ever be you
Or say anything true about you
Because saying something about something
no matter how skillfully descriptive
Is a million billion lightyears and dimensions off target.
Describing something observable is difficult enough.
But describing the unobservable, yet imminent,
The infinite
The unfathomable
Yet absolutely and singularly real
Is impossible.
And that is what you are.
And all of life is pointing you towards that
It is pointing you, eventually, to the immediacy of this very moment
And asking you patiently to observe the way things are actually set up.
So look again, look carefully.
Accept this invitation.
Pay attention!
It is right here, in this very moment, as this experience and its setup.
It is here as the very substance, the very container of this experience
It is here as what you actually are to yourself
Not what anybody said
Not as a memory or anything imagined or thought of
But before any of that
Strikingly immediate
Never moving an inch
Solid and unchanging
The no-thing open to everything.
The nothing where others tell you they see your face.
But you don’t.
Never here! Only at a distance from here.
None of these thoughts about a self, a world and others
Could ever be really true
And besides they are not yours anyways.
Nothing is yours, because you are nothing.
To find yourself you have to let go of everything.
Because everything that’s a thing isn’t you.
Is actually keeping you at a distance from you,
although only seemingly, still rather successfully if we want to give it some credit.
Everything that happened isn’t you.
Everything you see isn’t really you.
It’s what you appear as, very very temporarily.
Until you don’t.
So how real could it be?
Only memory-thought seeks to give the unreal further reality.
But how flimsy is that!
How laughable!
What is thought but
A vague whisper inaudible to the world except to the tiniest, furthest stretch of your infinite, loving attention?
Thought doesn’t prove that you are a person at all
It further establishes that you are truly immense capacity, limitless space, embracing everything
Even these tiny little helpless messengers called thoughts.
And how confused they have become.
Poor little things, so desperately seeking for attention and understanding.
And they have it, but don’t know it.
They have your love.
And how wispy they are
There and gone
This then that
On and off.
Well then.
You can see all things off with ease.
And you can embrace all things on as welcome guests.
This is already your nature, your home, your setup.
Eternally.
~ Thomas Stern
