when the scaffolding crumbles
Amid the ruins of old beliefs you watch, there but not there, drifts of dust that vanish. An erasure of the lies of your identity. The dream of who and what you should become seemed so logical, attainable and probable, right? A girl this man your race their age, a political affiliation your job. wife husband doer thinker empath or indifferent, why not? Ever the becoming. Seek fame, gain, pleasure, praise: Some body? Somebody!
Sing the song that can’t be sung. The dream lasts years and decades, a narrative defined by limits and desires, small, but so what. What you think you must and must not be, you obey. You have been shown a recipe for happiness. Why would you not comply, confine, yes concur?
Unknowingly, most of us ignore Life’s inherent happiness. Yet, by the trajectory of grace an inevitable intuition dawns that you are missing something essential. Youare missing. Doubts arise. Your sense of lack becomes insufferable. The scaffolding of your cherished identity begins to crumble. You have everything you are supposed to have and yes yes something has gone so terribly wrong.
What IS happiness, you shyly ask. The answer floors you. The recipe failed you. Give happiness any name and you would limit it by your narrow desires. Yet you sense it must be real, this happiness, and yes yes this is your evidence, your flawless intuiting of the truth.
You are the happiness you seek. You could call it freedom, or your true nature. Or: Love as the eternal and the infinite.
Intuition is vague, you say, just more drifts of dust. “My love, for you are that Love,” Life responds, I will guide you to the rim of your comfort, but you must be prepared to die. You have glimpsed the intuition that you are, aware and at peace, an inner essence, ineffable, not an object, not found in objects. And, anyways, you can’t turn back.”
The irreversibility of this glimpse feels devastating and expansive at once. Don’t be afraid. The recipe failed you. Why not explore something else?
The intuition jolts you awake from a dream. The prison was always without doors and what once seemed improbable becomes possible. You see this, but, yes, you are afraid. It’s a habit, to fear the unknown.
Life says, “Will you summon the courage to ask further? You’ll risk everything familiar and may fall off the rim.” And yes yes you ask: So I am not a body, not the set of all my stories, and mentations? Am I not these ideas that cause strive, conflict and pain? Am I really free?”
Your questions circle the void. An emptiness that dances as a universe, is both form and formless at once, unimaginable. Wave and particle never knew greater ease than being one another in pure joy.
Discard the lies you were told and told yourself on what you are.
The dust settles. Touch the void and sense the silent quiver of unformed infinite potential. “You are the void touching Itself, my Love,” Life says. Touch the void and sense the shimmering of form.
You inextricably belong. For you are That. As You Are. Your true Self does not need anything for it is already all that is. You are Beauty. Happiness. Naturally spontaneous. Stillness and dance. All sensations bear your footprint.
So please, Let yourself be silently drawn to what you truly love (Rumi) Watch clouds and birds. Or squirrels that climb the trunk of ancient trees. Listen to music and children’s laughter. Place roses on the altar of your divinity.
You are no thing, Love. You are everything. The eternal heart of being.
credit photo: tommy bond | unsplash
