let the fun begin.

here i am making breakfast and my cell rings upstairs. so for the next while i am bilateral tasking. talking with my editor and keeping an eye on my food. by the way i am having a new thing for the morning meal. an egg in a little rice milk lightly sweetened with jaggery. it fills me up the whole morning in a light way. back to my editor. she has these ideas come to her during the night. and, o, yes, we know those are usually the best stuff. the night energy is without the busy-ness of the day. very little mundane static. flashes and sparks from pure consciousness are less likely to be masked over. not that there aren't creative pulses during the day. it's just that our attention tend to be drawn outward in all kinds of ways. anyway by the end of our conversation i am so ecstatic. i feel like i am at the stage of examining the house of the book. the architecture is there. the bones are good. now i can, with my editor's help, plays with the flow of rooms, think of what furniture to put in which room, how to arrange them, what to do to make sure the purpose of the room is shining through beautifully, and so on and so forth. this is great. let the fun begin.

fear, anger, frustration are great stuff.

here's an exciting breakthrough. there i am reading when out of nowhere a surge of intense emotions arise. what are they? in the moment of the tsunami, i can't tell. but as an afterthought, as i look back, it's a probably a bundle of impatience, frustration, anguish, blah blah blah all mushed up. what triggers it? what is it about? this is where the fruit of my spiritual efforts lift me up and beyond. instead of diving headlong into the contents of the emotions a swell of spiritual will pulls my attention into the movement of the breath. breathe in deep. breathe out even longer. after a little while i notice the tightness in the diaphragm area begin to loosen up a little bit. then i discover something familiar. a throbbing sensation. it pervades my whole being but it is evident that the epicenter is in the fingertips and hands. in fact the fingertips feel like warm water balloons and they are gently bouncing in the ocean of awareness. that immediately reminds me of something. a recurring meditation experience. my fingertips and hands pulse, filled with strong energy currents. by now i already lose sight of all that intense emotions that set off this whole episode. i am so thrilled. this is what the scriptures talk about, what my guru talks about, again and again. the essence of everything in the inner world is energy that flows forth from pure consciousness. that's why the teaching says strong emotions such as fear and anger are great opportunities to take us back to my own true nature. when we have the right understanding, of course. kind of like a life. in the surgeon's hands it can save lives. in the hands of a thug, it kills. great stuff, isn't it.

river of grace from the nose

nosie is running like a river. it almost drips into the pot of ginger water. i have not had something like this in a long, long while. on one hand i know everything is just a temporary manifestation of pure consciousness. on another hand it's no fun to have to sleep sitting up and the sinus sore and achy. o dear. now it is almost dripping right over the keyboard. what a river of grace.

by what light do we see in dream?

there's a recurring meditation experience that i have been trying to put it into words. actually it's also something about dreams as well. since i have to start somewhere, and, by the way, isn't it true of anything we have to take care of and we don't quite know where to begin, just start somewhere, do something, right now. anyhow. let me try. i meditate in darkness. i even blindfold the eyes. so how comes in the world of closed eyes, i sense, or, more accurately, see, with the closed eyes, this darkness with such luminosity? take this morning, for instance, the moment i close the eyes, there's this incredible expanse of greenish-white brilliance shining over the physical darkness. it's like i am looking at the darkness through a spotlight that is larger than the inner being. meanwhile i am aware of the contours and confines of the physical body. yet the inner being and this field of light don't seem to have any limits. so is this light in the body? or is the body immersed in this light? at this point, the mind can't take it. it says, too much. so i let the thought thread pause at this one. i go to sleep in darkness. so by what lights do i see those vibrant colors, vivid shapes and forms in dreams? where do all those lights in the dream world come from?

for the remainder of the meditation i just revel in the deliciousness of the easy breath which, by the way, is naturally deepening and lengthening. as i sense i am emerging like a diver coming up gradually from the ocean depths i hear this. the light of pure awareness. bingo. that's it. in those moments i am in touch with the light of pure consciousness by which physical darkness is illumined and dreams are lit up. and i own all of that. wow. 

enough is my nature

here's what i've come to believe. when i sit down with the intention to meditate whatever happens is meditation. so it is when i sit through today's session with a foggy mind humming with fatigue i choose to take an inner stance of the highest and innermost self is looking at mental clouds coming and going over the vast sky of pure consciousness. i see how i got the mind into this state. i've been up since five working through a bunch of things in a hotel room, making ginger water, chapati, chai, packing a day's worth of food and snack for hwubby and a business meeting, all before meditation and on an empty stomach. i have to do better tomorrow. since i can't meditate until hwubby leaves i have to have breakfast around seven and figure out meditation later.

do i feel i have a 'good enough' meditation today? you bet i do. i am enough and good enough. enough is my very inherent nature.

doubting, second-guessing are spiritual killers

just one thought could rock the inner boat. case in point. we signed a bunch of important papers in the morning. it was the culmination of two months of hard work and masterminding. i felt tremendous relief. until in the afternoon when i caught myself already in a thought wave of doubting and second-guessing. i should have...what if i didn't... there was a time when i would be so caught up in it that this broken record was stuck in the mind for days and weeks. this time around i catch myself looking at it and the power of sustained spiritual efforts lift my perception to a higher vantage point. an inner message appears. this is not you. drop it and forget about it. so i summon the will and intention to kick them out into the field of pure consciousness. i keep doing it for a little while like scrubbing hard stains on the kitchen floor. i take a pause and scan the inner state. the negative thought wave is much weaker than before. it is now a lingering whisper hovering in the far horizons of awareness.

very soon after i settle into this morning's meditation i experience this message. meditation reveals my worthiness. it is pure. my own greatness is unaffected by anything. i feel this surge of strength from deep within the belly. with that i notice the inbreaths becoming even deeper and the outbreaths longer. just like that i relax into my own mystical world.  my own grace draws grace. great things happen. i see grace absorbing all that negative tendency. the mental mirror is a little clearer and cleaner.

possibilities are like sparks within lapis lazuli

this morning's meditation is magnificent. i go deeper and higher than i recall i ever have. the inner being is so vast, so pristine, so strongly quiet, so clear and light. it is not sheltered by the body. on the contrary, the body is within this subtle yet tangible conscious realm. as awareness rests and roams in this i realize i am having an experience of what 'being refreshed' means. there's a sense of opening everywhere in the entire being. from this place i look at how i was shocked into panic by an unexpected development. now i can see its root cause is a deeply-rooted conditioning, that the reality that i find myself in is the only reality. this illusion is a killer. it blocks grace. it blinds out peripheral vision. it renders me incapable to see possibilities and openings sparkling the way delicate golden sparks are embedded within lapis lazuli.
the moment i recognize this i lift my awareness out of that lower vantage point. my inner vision opens up. i am once again in the clear sky of pure consciousness. hey, this twist actually points the way to do something that previously i thought i couldn't pursue. the limitation is dissolved.

happy anniversary, hwubby and suk wah.

this body is a temporary garment

hwubby and i take a walk basking in the afternoon sun. it's so nice holding hands and feeling the warmth of each other. one warmth. it's been such a long time since we've been able to do that. i remember something my teacher say when she was a teenager. as an indian and knowing little english, she was given the task to translate her teacher's teaching talks in front of large audiences of foreigners. she asks her beloved teacher, why do you give me so little time to prepare? he says, to the effect, then you can truly appreciate the power of grace. as the question and answer appear on the screen of the bright and quiet mind i realize i am having just that, an experience of the power of grace. there are so many challenges and uncertainties in our lives. yet my inner space is sweet, warm, pristine and permeating the fragrance of freedom. from this vantage point it is clear, without a doubt, that everything in the physical universe, circumstances, situations, are simply reflections in the mirror of my pure consciousness. this body is a temporary garment sheltering the ever-great, ever-full, ever-fresh inner self.