In the 2007 summer seminar, I had the distinct experience of having woken up within my self. I spoke about this with John, and, as always, he showered me with further, deepening awareness of what it means to be here. This knowledge of actually being here has continued to reveal itself as an unfolding recognition of what I am being in existence. The following fragments are attempts to describe these ongoing revelations of a developing awareness.

What I am has woken up

What I am has woken up
And come to make a home in who I am.
Who I am grows and stretches beyond its limits
To make room for what is coming.
For what is coming, all existence is home.

I have awoken to discover

I am continuously coming into existence.
I arrive as awareness, awareness awakened to its self
And its experience of being in form.

I step anew through the portal of existence
Entering through the door marked ‘Now’
Into the side marked ‘Here’.

On the other side, I am without form, an eternal mystery.
Here I am clothed with existence
A formless intelligence arriving as simple awareness.

Behind me lies the ever-forming Sea
From which I radiate forth upon a wave of Being
Entering my earthly body
Like a pool of shimmering sunlight dancing on water
Moving into and through existence
Neither forcing nor resisting what comes
Letting all be as it is
Not expecting existence to provide what it cannot.

I am life amid forms of life
Merging in delight.

Honesty works
In testing times
My old self still shows itself, throws itself around
Re-creates its reign of havoc within
Spits and bites and wants and whines without
Till I return
Bringing space, and I am here again,
Patiently, persistently ready,
To teach my self the way of reasonableness.

Why are you angry my self?
“Other people make me angry.
Things that happen make me angry.”

Are you sure, how can it be that others make you angry?
Is it not your own expectations of others and things that make you angry?
Is it not you, my self, that divides the flow of life
Into right and wrong, good and bad, like and dislike, want and want not?
And, if you see this is so,
Then is it not you who makes you angry?

Thus is my self pacified by gentle reason.
And yet I must be watchful of its momentum in me.

On the moment

When I am right on the moment
Then all I find is the enjoyment, wonder, and fascination
Of being in form.
Then this glorious nature is my nature.

When I am off this moment, even slightly,
Then what I find is some degree of fear, anxiety, concern
About something that has happened or may happen.

When I walk right on the moment,
I see that everything is alive.
Nature is buzzing, bursting, burgeoning with life
So much so that I am dancing inside with delight.

How did I ever miss it?
Because I was walking to get somewhere
And I, though here, was somehow elsewhere
In my ignorance of this.

This seamless moment

In this seamless moment
I am clothed in existence
Learning not to touch it,
Change or control it,
Letting existence reveal
Its inner harmony of changing forms
Free of me and mine.

Letting go even the subtle forms of thought
From which I have forged and calcified
The grooves of opinion, belief and judgment.

Walking home carrying shopping
Ah, but then of course I see
Silly me
I am this moment!

Only form moves
I am forever still
This moment.

One will

Seamless unfolding of one will
Moving through time, a continuous subtle flow
Appearing somehow as this body now
Acting, breathing, waving, dancing
Who knows how or why?

Value

There is nothing more important than this moment.
Where I am and what I am doing are always secondary
To what I am being, and how I am being.
What I am thinking and what I am feeling are incidental.
What I am knowing is fundamental.
Doing is necessary, breathing is vital
Only being is essential.

Life story

Between the dates of birth and death
Is the careful construction of who I think I am
How pre-occupied I am with this never ending story
Told between waking and sleeping
How absorbed by this talking book
Of up and downs, ins and outs, turns and twists

Only stillness stops the story.

Compassion

Whatever you have done, I have too.
And if not in the flesh, then in heart and mind.
Am I responsible then for my world of ignorance?
Now I am, fully and kindly so.
And was I then?
How could I be, so lost was I in ignorance.

Now I am lost in the tenderest touch of innocence
Absorbed, quietened and gentled by its presence.

Every thing is softened

Let there be no dark corner I will not be in
No dense fog, nor lurking pain I will not enter.
For what then happens?
Everything within is softened
For my innermost to dwell in.

Whole seeing

The more I do see
Within the context of the whole
The more I can see
And the more I get to see.
Each thing a new point of learning
That becomes a merging
Returning to stillness of the whole.

Nature gives so generously and in such abundance
We give so little and take so much.

Whatever I see within me
I am now responsible for.

Spontaneous harmony

As letting go continues
There is simply awareness
Moving as attention, acting, choosing
No separating ‘I’ to interfere
No one apart
That tries to see, only seeing
No hearer, only hearing
No chooser, only seamless choosing
Moving in harmony with all that is.

Thinking is the first addiction

There should be a government health warning:
‘Thought is a highly addictive substance
Its continued misuse can lead to serious and long lasting side effects.’

Take that first thought on waking
And see how quick others are to follow
Leaving anxious worry and concern waiting for the morrow

Point of contact

At the finest point of delicacy
Where formless touches form
There am I
Resting, absorbed, vulnerable
Ancient like a Buddha
All that is here is a receptacle for resonance
In tune with all around
Delicate as a floating seed in Autumn.

The awakening of Us

There is movement in the undergrowth
A rousing in the deep
A meeting at the chasm
And a willingness to leap

There is warmth in the body
A fire beneath the feet
Though the air is chilled
And our skin is streaked
With the blood of the many
And the tears of the weak

Yea tho’ the darkness of fear and despair
Tears at the soul and pulls at the hair
There’s a sparkling in the darkness
A shimmering through the haze
A dawning of lights
Amid the pinkish morning glaze

Come see the parking lot is filling to the brim
As the hunger of hearts long to come in
Where the entrance way is narrow
Yet there’s others in the hall
And the play of liquid sunshine
Awaits to greet us all

Where each can hear the calling
To the moment of emerging
When these somnolent days
Must come justly to a close

Then all will know a time of resonant attuning
A seamless resuming of our place within the whole
For each self that’s brightly shaken
With a whisper to awaken
Becomes an ever faithful maker
Of the oneness of Us.