Miranda-ings

THE DANCER-LESS DANCE

Seeing through illusory separation

leaves us with what is,

movement without defined boundaries,

stillness or emptiness,

and nothing that can be isolated from the flow of life.

It is incredibly hard to express this in language,

yet I find similarities in how I felt when I was dancing.

The sense of myself separate from other dancers

receded into the background,

and the collective movement of all of us,

and the dance itself,

was all that appeared.

Appearances dance upon this stage of life

in all their wondrous forms,

yet there is no thing,

no one,

underneath appearances,

no beginning nor end.

What seems like total chaos

is absolute freedom;

this is wild,

this aliveness,

out of control.

No one doing or being done to;

there are no separate dancers

in a seamless stillness

in which all seems to miraculously appear.

There is no me,

there is no other,

there is

always

only

ever

this

Lost in the woods she waited

No one was ever found

In the flight of the falcon

There are no wings

Falling into nothing

She was surprised to see a crowd

The glimpse of emptiness

Was merely her own reflection

If a tree falls in the forest

Does it care if it makes a sound?

And somehow this all seems

so absolutely perfect and beautiful,

when the seeming horror

and the seeming harmony,

when the seeming sorrow

and the seeming joy

all dance together

in an inseparable ballet

where there is

only ever the dance

and no separate dancer,

and this life that has broken

and taken my heart and my mind

and all other imaginary parts

of what was also

always only imaginary

nonetheless spills over me

with a flood of tears

that fall like the rain

that brings wildflowers

to the desert

and washes away villages,

a flood of all that appears

and can never be found

any where at all,

a dream too wonder-full

and awe-full

to be defined or known

or even believed,

and yet here we appear to be,

my beloveds,

dancing on the very edge

of this edgeless ballroom

of dreams and no thing at all

I RECOGNIZE MYSELF IN EVERY STRANGER'S EYES

All the people that appear in the dream of life seem like variations of the same song. There is never any sense that what anyone says is anything but the script written by life. Including this Miranda character.

Cats meow, people talk, and it’s all the same. There is nothing to understand, nothing to communicate. Just life happening, the show playing out the only way it can on a screen of dreams in which nothing is even playing out at all.

It feels like love, but it's not a love I can ever explain and maybe it's not even that at all.

It simply seems that when life unravels, all the meanings attached to life fall away. All the ideas and beliefs that seem to give everyone their interpretation of the world, that provide their sense of identity, are simply gone. And not a word is believed ever again, including the belief in one who could or could not believe.

For without actual individuals who have identities and lives that are their own, relationships and actions that they choose, and a past and future to give the story continuity, what is there?

Some say Nothing.

Some say Everything.

Some say Just This,

but what "this" is I cannot even say.

But it doesn't really need saying, does it?

WHAT IS THIS ANYWAY?

Oneness,

Wholeness,

This,

What Is,

are simply names for

the seamlessness of all that appears.

It cannot be known or grasped in thought,

and its limits or edges cannot be found.

Even the words "limitless" or "edgeless"

seem to define what cannot be spoken of,

attempting to give us a concept,

a false summit to an unfathomable mountain

that can never be climbed or conquered.

In this dance of light playing upon the screen of dreams,

we say everything is imaginary, and we call it a dream.

But the truth is that even those words take what is unknowable,

mysterious, ineffable, untouchable, and indescribable

and give us a sense that we have some conception

of this vast mysterious appearance

which is beyond definition or understanding.

Many of the apparent questions and contradictions in nonduality

arise from taking the metaphors we use for the unimaginable

to be accurate descriptions.

But they only point to what can perhaps be intuited,

felt, and sensed in some small way,

but never truly known,

understood,

or comprehended by thought.

This is not about being

in some emotionless sterile void.

This is love.

This is the volcano.

This is the miracle

that any appearance seems to be dreamed

out of the misty swirling soup

of all that is and is not.

This is aliveness

that drowns you like a tsunami.

This is so far beyond

simply the loss of personal identity

that if you ever felt it

you would die a million deaths

in heart stopping astonishment

at the miracle

of whatever seems to be appearing---

like a supernova exploding

in every apparent instant

in what you used to see

as the most everyday experience

of your indescribably

extraordinary ordinary life.

It is always the very last moment, and it is also always the very first, and it is never any moment at all. This kaleidoscopic whirlwind of apparent movement and feeling and all that arises is always an inseparable collage of dreams, and yet it is filled with infinite points of unfathomable experience, even if it is not the experience of any separate person.

All the nonduality speaker who says there is ‘no one’ ever means is that there is no autonomous separate entity apart from the seamless aliveness of all that appears. They simply realize that there is no solidity, no foundation, no explanation, no separation in whatever seems to be happening. But that is not, as some seem to imagine, the end of human feeling and perception.

Even the most radical nonduality speaker

will bleed the same as the seekers in the room

if you cut them.

They will laugh

and sometimes have tears roll down their cheeks

at the unknowable whirlpool of life

that dances itself into being

and then vanishes without a trace,

leaving only an echo of a lingering note

in what we call memory

that too will disappear

into the silence

of all that was

and never was at all.

Boundaries and borders fade

like the shadows of the branches

swaying in the wind at dusk

when all is bathed

in an impossibly radiant light and color

I cannot fathom or name,

and can we ever find

a beginning or end

to what sees and is seen

when such words

become harder to remember

as this seamless aliveness

dances us away....

The endless debates about me and no me, you and no-you, words twirling in a soundproof room with the curtains drawn while all the time this whirlwind of an infinite explosion of all that appears bursts like fireworks in the night while you whither away the apparent hours debating whether or not you exist....

Ultimately, there is only ever a whirlwind of appearances, and words floating like dust motes in sunlight, a floating dreamscape in which nothing can be located or known. Questions as to why and from where and how it appears, and questions about to whom and for whom it appears, are simply one more appearance in what we call thoughts; thoughts seeming to give continuity or a faint glimmer of hope of understanding.

But thoughts are only ever flashing sparkles of illuminated color reflected in the kaleidoscopic whirlpool that spins and spins and is all words even as it remains neither everything nor nothing, neither this nor that, neither me nor you, neither time nor space, neither love nor god; not even awe or ineffable wonderment or what feels like a supernova of aliveness exploding in this unknowable and untouchable and indescribable dream that no one ever dreamt......

Liberation or enlightenment is simply one more story in the fairy tale of all that is...and is not at all. Nothing really ever happens but a dream and a dance. Love is simply what is dancing the illusion of you and all you seem to perceive into being, and it’s wonderful and terrifying and awesome and dizzying and delightful and amazing when you think you are someone seeing it.

When and if that sense of a separate self falls away, well, it’s your heart breaking into infinitesimal pieces of love and expanding through the imaginary universe until what’s seen is simply seen without any seer. Though for some, it’s a bit more like quietly and contentedly sipping a cup of tea at the café by the lake, the peace that passes all understanding.

In the phantasmagorical

whirlwind of reflections

where things

and beings

appear

like figures

in an endlessly unfolding

impressionistic canvas,

all the descriptions

and interpretations

of what is appearing

seem like translations

in a language

that can barely

be understood.

What is seemingly

going on

doesn’t seem to have

much relationship

to what is said about

what is seemingly

going on,

and yet,

it is only

the description

that allows

the fragile threads

of imaginary communication

to arise.

There are appearances,

and words

floating like dust motes

in sunlight,

a floating dreamscape

in which nothing

can be located or known,

and questions as to why

and from where

and how

it appears,

and questions about

to whom

and for whom

it appears

are simply

one more appearance

in what we call thoughts;

thoughts seeming to give

a continuity

or a faint glimmer

of hope of understanding,

that are only ever

flashing sparkles

of illuminated color

reflected

in the kaleidoscopic whirlpool

that spins

and spins

and is neither everything

nor nothing,

neither this

nor that,

neither me

nor you,

neither time

nor space,

neither love

nor god.

And yet

this irrepressible sensation

called a feeling

seems bursting

to infinity

with what words

can never say,

not even awe

or ineffable wonderment

or a supernova

of aliveness

exploding

in this unknowable

and untouchable

and indescribable

dream

that no one

ever dreamt.

What needs pointing to? What can even be pointed to? Nonduality is simply a story that isn’t true. This isn’t a belief or an idea or a philosophy, it’s never been about truth or lies or duality or nonduality.

There is simply life. And what is life? A beautiful dream that I call love even though I have always known love’s got nothing at all to do with it.

All of us are simply being written by life, appearing in the movie, and it’s the most perfect beautiful amazing and exciting and still and moving silent movie imaginable; it is all and everything and nothing.

Life is not about finding anything or changing anything or being anything or knowing anything or gaining anything. What promised future liberation is there, when there is only always ever this?

Life is not about some human ideal of what it should be, but the miracle of what simply is. I have met those who live in places where bombs fall, a man who awakened on a battlefield in Afghanistan, those who were tortured as children, raped, dying of cancer when this miracle of inseparability was seen, and it is always expressed in the same way. Each using their own words and reference points, but the seamless dance of aliveness, the awe and wonder and love, sings through their voices.

Yet there is no one who somehow sees something that others do not, as the very idea of others dissolves in this. Seemingly not seeing this is also this, and the stories of pain and struggle of the apparent separate individual are as beautiful and luminous as that of any Shakespearean tragic hero or heroine. No one is exempt from this beauty or this love, for there is no one who exists separate from life itself.

Sometimes people ask questions, and answers arise. The ones I like best are the ones that sound like music, but I can't say they are true. Some say nonduality is a beautiful message, yet it is a rare and elusive beauty, perhaps impossible to describe.

Who could ever imagine they truly know anything? I don’t know anything at all. I just feel and know beyond emotion or thought that when the symphony of life rains over you until you are drenched, drowned in what simply is, then no sense is separate from any other sense, no emotion or thought is separate from any other emotion or thought or from any sensory perception, no object or form or being is separate from any other or from emotions, thoughts and senses, and there is just this.

This: An ineffable, indescribable dreamscape created by the apparent diversity of transient dancers of light and sound and shadow and feeling and all that is unnamable and mysterious, but is only ever this, without beginning or end, without me or you or any thing at all...yet appearing as everything, and gently covering us with a blanket of unconditional love.

No one is behind the face

that fills you with wonder,

and no one speaks with the voice

that stirs your heart.

You are the sage

you have been searching for,

the only one

you will ever appear to meet...

and yet

you are not

even that

at all

It's as if the very same sense of aliveness that experiences the apparent world also tries to imagine it's non-existence, and it can't be done. And yet we imagine the idea of "oneness," because we believe that everything we see is separate and that there must be some underlying unity. Then we try to imagine or perceive "oneness," but no such thing can ever be found. Some say they see this "oneness" in an altered state of consciousness or some visionary experience, but that is simply a human having an experience. No more a truth about "reality" than what is seen in a nighttime dream.

Yet "oneness" as a concept need never be invoked, as no one has ever seen a world of separation. Even in our most mundane, everyday perception we never see an isolated thing, just a flow of movement, sound, imagery, thought, and feelings; a dance of fleeting appearances that only seem static and still and separate when we try to limit and define them with our thoughts (which are simply also part of the flowing, edgeless mystery).

Sometimes people imagine there is a "quantum leap" that may happen, an event that will take them to something called "enlightenment."

But as Lisa Cairns says, "This is spectacular. This whole creation...We spend our whole life waiting for a miracle. What we fail to realize is that life is a miracle. This is the miracle. I mean. Wow."

Wow indeed!

There was an interview where Tony Parsons was explaining his perception. And at one point he says, “There is only the beloved, the beloved is speaking to you right now.” I don’t remember the rest of the interview, but it didn’t seem to matter.

That is the heart of this message. For this is not about being in some emotionless sterile void. This is love, this is the volcano, this is the miracle that any appearance seems to be dreamed out of the misty swirling soup of all that is and is not, this is aliveness that drowns you like a tsunami. This is so far beyond simply the loss of personal identity that if you ever felt it, you would die a million deaths in heart stopping astonishment at the miracle of whatever seems to be appearing like a supernova exploding in every apparent instant in what you used to see as the most everyday experience of your indescribably extraordinary ordinary life.

It is the song of life and love that is weaving a dream undreamt, and what is going on is not any thing or event that appears to be happening in a separate place and time, for there is no place and there is no time. Nothing is happening to you and nothing is happening to me.

And yet, I am you and you are me. And even that is as impossible and true and untrue as your beating heart, your heart which I hear right now, drumming a song of beauty so miraculous you would fall to the ground in tears if only you could hear the luminous music that you are...and aren't at all.

Life is more beautiful than I had ever imagined.

Each apparent instant of this dream of life is so filled with unbearable emotions that seem to pour through me like a flood as I wash away in the rain.

It is love, and yet it is nothing at all that any one can imagine. Nothing that words could ever mean.

No language can hold it or even point to it.

Nothing can contain or unleash it, for it is simply what is

happening.

And yet that is like saying the explosion of a star is simply that.

Even if it is.

A lot of speakers tell their audience there is nothing they can offer them, but people still keep coming.

What they hear is a complete negation of every belief, idea, hope, or validation of their sense of personal identity.

Maybe there is something in many seekers that recognizes the truth in that, even if there is no way for anyone to do anything about it.

What needs pointing to? What can even be pointed to? I have often said that nonduality is simply a story that isn’t true. This isn’t a belief or an idea or a philosophy, it’s never been about truth or lies or duality or nonduality.

There is simply life. And what is life? A beautiful dream that I call love even though I have always known love’s got nothing at all to do with it.

Lost in the woods she waited

No one was ever found

In the flight of the falcon

There are no wings

Falling into nothing

She was surprised to see a crowd

The glimpse of emptiness

Was merely her own reflection

If a tree falls in the forest

Does it care if it makes a sound?

Truly whether in the midst of the woods or in the midst of London it is the same, and no apparent dreamplace has ever seemed different, from the Cascade glaciers to Chicago, from the Carpathian mountains to Prague. It is the same whether locked in an overcrowded prison or living in solitude in a yurt on a hilltop.

It never is about the appearances, they are simply like being in a multi-plex movie theater and walking into one playing a quiet nature story while another has an urban shoot-em-up action film. What is felt and seemingly known (though not by thought) is never in the appearances or the apparent play of dreams upon the screen. It is an aloneness hard to speak of, for it is not what most people mean by being alone or lonely. It is alone with everything and nothing, alone in infinite emptiness and eternal fullness…and nothing like that at all.

Who could even know or say or see separately enough to imagine she knew anything? I don’t know anything at all.

I just feel and know beyond emotion or thought that when the symphony rains over you and you are drenched,

no sense is separate from any other sense,

no emotion or thought is separate from any other emotion or thought or from any sensory perception,

no object or form or being is separate from any other or from emotions, thoughts and senses,

and there is just music,

music that is only created by the apparent diversity of transient dancers of light and sound and shadow and feeling and everything that is unnamable and mysterious,

but is only ever this,

the music,

without beginning or end,

covering us all in a blanket of dreams and love.

Life makes us all drunk, I used to think it was the wine. But it all becomes one song I hear and every word is like seeing all your hearts when I look in the mirror. I carry them all with me, looking out the windows of a train, every one blending like a watercolor in the rain, all there is of me...

People ask me, “Who is a true sage?”

But the question has no answer.

I hear people speak of this

the way I hear music

like the sounds of the wind

only heard as it caresses the trees

and without touching any apparent other

it would be silent

there is just an apparent seamless flow of experience

it needs no one to explain or interpret it or do anything at all

for you are it, inseparable

a spun web of unbroken wonderment

imagining there is a way to say what will never be spoken

and every beautifully futile effort

is where the heart of love bleeds us all into being

and words or no words only silence remains

echoing like a symphony into the forest

where seekers hike in search of the never lost or found

imagining they can feel the emptiness

they have named and turned into a thing

in a neverland world dancing in its own reflection

and being not this and not that

and not even everything and nothing at all

No one is inside, there isn't a person doing or saying or thinking, neither none nor one. So it is a paradox to imagine a real character in a world of fiction, and project qualities and intentions onto what are only phantom images seen in the smoke from a fire at night.

We are only formless dancers trying to contain and capture and claim what is so beautifully and totally and limitlessly elusive to the little convoluted neural spaghetti that paints an image on a canvas which isn't even there.

We are ghosts and whispers that the wind seems to blow into seemingly solid forms, even for only an ephemeral instant; children finger painting in the air.

I have talked of feeling an emotion I call love that seemed a mixture of sadness and joy. Now I realize there is really only ever joy, but the kind of joy that cries tears of astonishment at the beautiful mystery of this dance of apparent existence. Phantasmagorical images painted upon the canvas of life in colors created to interpret that which is beyond interpretation.

There are words, and thoughts seem to float like leaves in the wind. But there is nothing behind them; there is no one with some idea or desire to arrive anywhere, to seek something truer or find any answers. All answers, and all questions, simply dissolve into this, swirling like a whirlpool in a stream, as if they were not simply the stream itself. And even the stream cannot be found....

The longing to find any thing, any meaning, that lies in imagination fades, and there seems nothing but imagination that has no origin. Thoughts labeled "future" or "past" become nearly impossible to believe, and it feels like sinking into a meadow with no urge to ever get up as you lie in the grass on a sunny day and night falls over you like a blanket and you slip away into the darkness of the dream that you are...and never have been at all.

Time and space are like the colors of the world. Your bodymind seems to conjure them up so you have a dancefloor to move upon, even when there is no floor at all.

That doesn’t mean there is either nothing or something, it’s not a dualistic choice. And it's not a non-thing "being" a some-thing, or any thing we can say at all. But the dream seems to come complete with an apparent backstory, the same way film characters have a past that is implied but never seen. Whether anything ever happened or never happened is only a conceptual word game, though if you look closely you may see the smoke and mirrors behind the stage of life.

But the images and the fantastic tales are awe-full and wonder-full beyond belief. Especially beyond belief, and beyond believing. It’s simply that we project a painting of a world upon a canvas resistant to our knowing or understanding.

But what needs understanding when we are inseparable from the painting itself?

If you do not see a path or feel yourself to be at the top of the mountain, it would not make sense to tell others how to find the way.

If all that seems to happen is that an illusion is no longer believed, there's not much else to say but pointing that out. For some that will resonate, but many still imagine there is a path to where they have never left, nor ever really been at all.

But others want a big story, a better, grand illusion, and there are plenty of speakers out there who will provide that, just like the Wizard of Oz.

There is never anything we can find or attain or possess. This life is unfolding as it appears and the lived experience of perception, or as some say, awareness aware of itself, is not the province of the sage but of all who appear upon this ephemeral stage of dreams.

No advice on how to live can be given when life is all there is. Some point to an abstract "true Self" or something called "nothing," but I merely point to whatever is in front of you appearing right now. That is where the heart of love and life exists, no matter the form it seems to take or the thoughts that coat it like a painting on a canvas of dreams.

There is no thing to be reached and yet there may still seem as if there is something to understand. Even when this is apparently seen and experienced, understanding remains elusive. This isn't a perception that fits in with anything known in a logical way, and even when an explanation seems clear it is never quite "it."

And yet all there ever is, is only what is happening and there is no one who has more or less access to life in all the ways it appears.

Thoughts appear without meaning or non-meaning,

arising for no reason, and chosen by no one.

Yet life paints a canvas with such vivid characters

as we appear to be.

There is no one to hold any thought,

and yet the painting resonates with the vibrant colors

of an astounding panorama of perception;

from the most tender kiss imaginable

to the atomic bomb.

Yet only these words and thoughts,

as unbidden and unowned as the rain,

say there is any thing at all.

This is the prison break. The seeker thinks it is freedom, liberation, awakening, enlightenment; the guru complies by naming it all these positive, wonderful-sounding words. If it was instead called self-loss, no-being, endarkenment, there would be mostly empty seats at satsangs.

Endarkenment. That is what I name it. That is what I speak of, if anything at all.

Come dance with me inside the black hole on a dancefloor made of dark matter. Where light cannot escape. It doesn’t need to try.

Language often makes it sound like there is something tangible going on and someone to discover it. Life, love, god, nonduality, wholeness, oneness, awakening, liberation, this, true self, consciousness ... are only storybook fables.

No person will ever know more than you about this luminous experience of the dream of life; this wondrous aliveness that is not a concept to be grasped, but all that ever appears. This is it, and it needs no explanation. You are life’s expression as fully, deeply, and wholly as any apparent guru or teacher, and there is only what simply is, not what someone says it is.

every story meets every other story

in a place so wordlessly beautiful

it can never be described...

the love is there in all that appears;

the murder and the grieving,

the war and the comforting of orphans,

in the wild ecstasy of the dance,

and the stillness of a creek

flowing without direction.

It is all a ritual of no one,

baptized in tears

made of dreams,

as real in life

as in death.

And only love is felt,

no matter what is happening,

even if there is not

such a thing

as love at all

Ever eluding definition, what appears needs no explanation, and all thoughts and beliefs about the nature of an imagined thing called "reality" simply feed the illusion of a separate self who knows something about its world.

Some spiritual teachers who see the illusory nature of a separate individual identity nonetheless imagine themselves to be part of a larger, equally fictional identity, whether they call it consciousness or awareness or the absolute.

But even pointing out that there is no thing at all, however seemingly accurate, appears to many seekers as another concept, another illusion of knowing.

The beauty is that life doesn’t need to be known or understood at all. What is, this, requires no knowing, has no truth, and cannot be captured or defined.

Can a squirrel look at the pages of a book and grasp its meaning?

Can a human look at This and understand it?

It seems as if there are appearances, but from where or why or how they arise is unknown. What these creatures are that seem to be perceiving this apparent world can never be known, whether human or squirrel, though it may well be that of the two categories we call species, only the human has any interest in knowing such things.

Though many words are spoken about what this is and isn't, and they may sound quite clever at pointing to a magic show of nothing at all, even the most resonant words are no closer to capturing any sort of truth than the squirrel is of understanding a book of human words.

It is simply impossible to say anything that could be true or accurate about any of these questions at all.

Including this reflection.

There is nothing that is not intimate beyond words. There is simply this intimate dance that enfolds whatever I appear to be along with all that seems to dance with me. Many try to find out who they are, or who others truly are, whether spiritually or psychologically or some other story telling tale of the separate self.

Who are we underneath the mask of apparent identity? Here it seems there is no one behind the mask, but that doesn’t mean the mask is not beautiful.

Sometimes nonduality portrays the human appearance as a shapeless, emotionless, empty visage. But while it is true there is no actual individual living life, there appears a dance of what we call humans and all of life in a whirlpool of awe-inspiring and heartbreaking beauty. And you don't need to know any thing at all to dance....

When it is somehow known without question that one’s apparent life is not one’s own, that there is no stage with separate actors but simply a single play in which all appear, the ability to attribute labels to what happens seems to fall away. In the movie you may see the demon chasing the little girl, but there is no separate demon, no little girl, just appearances. It is the very same in the movie we call “life.”

When the concept of volitional activity, of freedom of choice held by separate autonomous beings, is seen as illusory, all the characters in the dream of life are seen as reacting without any more choice than a movie character, and your own apparent reactions to life are seen as lacking any independence.

No thing exists apart from all that is, and the life of an endless series of discrete events, judged constantly as good or bad or harmful or hurtful, dissolves into the seamless awe of what simply is.

Every judgement is simply a projection of what we call the separate self, there is no other way it can arise. No one transcends anything. Life writes, and some characters see what they seem to see, but nothing is ever apart or free or awake, for nothing has ever been separate, imprisoned or asleep. No thing. Ever.

That is, in the end, all that I can say. There is not two. Not even one. No words that say this one is a 'that' and that one is a 'this' are ever true. You already know that. Not with your imaginary mind, but with your imaginary, yet beautiful, heart made of love.