A SINGLE POINT

 How to use the darkness as my point of contemplation. The neural webwork of my brain filters the avalanche of possibilities.. the barrage... the hailstorm of stimuli that floods in from all dimensions... My brain reduces the smorgasbord down to one single fact of awareness at any given time...The path to embodying the light involves opening up... expanding awareness...  I cannot take it all in at once.. I cannot contain it all.  The movement moves from the large & inclusive to the focussed & exclusive... I concentrate... bring the attention down to a single band... then down to the single point. I tether my awareness... A process of concentration. A single pixel on the screen. I go back to the moment of the Big Bang. All of reality contained in a single point.

A SINGLE BAND OF UNWAVERING LIGHT

My oldest friend Anastasios practises the Buddhism of the Dalai Lama. When he was twenty four he went to a monastery in northern New York state. There a sixty five year old Lama from Tibet had been living a simple life devoted to prayer & contemplation. The monk sat at the front of the gathered group & lead the meditation. He said the whole & exclusive point of his life was to maintain a single band of unwavering light in his mind for all humanity & all sentient beings. Day after day he entered the Hall… entered the silence …. and with the gathered monks & nuns & mendicants….  focussed his mind on that clear line of certainty. Thirty years later, after a whole lot of living, my friend went back to the monastery. The same Lama, now ninety five years old, was leading the same devotion. For all those years, day after day, he had been maintaining that single band of unwavering light.

TWO RAVENS TUMBLING

Intelligence, for me, is not measured in the ability to solve math problems but in the ability to play. Ravens are consummate masters of the art of Joy. They fly like flying is an aerobatic improvisation invented as momentary impulse. Two Ravens riff out a babble of caterwaul  & catcall... stop at the apex of a parabola & then free fall for three seconds in a tandem tumble catching themselves when the wind ruffles their feathers. They remind me to deepen my breath & then to just embrace the possibility of possibility. There are no fixed rules in the unfolding of mirth just the allowing of free form to unfold like a flower in time lapse when time stands still.

NIGHT FALLS

The human brain as filter. At any given moment the exquisite machinery of my central nervous system is sparkling, popping, jiggling… lit up with trillions of electrical potentials triggering on off on off on off. It comes at me through my six senses. Endlessly streaming. How can I possibly approach the infinitesimal avalanche of information & stimuli coming at the clarity I call me? All I see is a thin band of the spectral kaleidoscope. I can make sense of that thin slice. & maybe one or two details in the periphery. Can I expand my perceptions? Open a window… or even a chink in the armour of the filters imposed on my knowing? I commit myself to the quiet while sitting in the dark at the stillness of the source. I suspend myself in the ether. I surrender to the emptiness within…. at the centre. It is almost too much. I cannot stop flying the Starship Enterprise while sitting at the controls on the bridge. Gratitude for the filter mechanism of my central nervous system. This is not all or one. I can modulate… fine tune… expand the band width of the slice of perception I am living in this moment... as my teacher tells me.... back to the breath.... breathe & breathe.... & flow......