What Is This Body?

[Guest guest]

My Dearest Friends,

It's always a delight to hear from my friends, our friends, both

the new friends and the old, held-in-the-heart-forever-and-ever friends.

Isn't it always just so, that exactly what we culminate/ruminate upon,

it dawn-shine arrives perfectly on time, arising in time, aligned perfectly

right-on upon space ... and just yesterday I referred to it, to Bob, as this:

 

"Love, or God, This That Is, it's always and incredibly just so,

showing Itself, winking at you and I, and every other guy and gal in this

Town of Now ... yeah, Bob, God's a real Wise-Guy, eh, Baby, arriving

and smiling through every single thing that we see." Synchronicity? Wheeeeee!

Isn't it just lovely, so utterly wonderful, my Loves, to be the

beneficiary AND thebenefactor, de facto-attractionating all of this,

every particle of What-Is...

of all the shining light forms and time/space-adornments that are.

Like stars shining in a vast, dark tract of LightSpace, our Hearts ignite the

mind-shined-forth Amour-story-skies of I Am, and lifekind findswhat it

has been seeking for more milennium than the mind has time to define -

All Rivers At Once

Don't unstring the bow.I am your four-feathered arrowthat has not been used yet.

I am a strong knifeblade word,not some if or maybe,dissolving in air.

I am sunlight slicing in the dark.Who made this night?A forge deep in the earth-mud.

What is the body?Endurance.

What is love?Gratitude.

What is hiddenin our chests?Laughter.

What else?Compassion.

Let the beloved be a hat pulled down firmly on my head.Or drawstrings

pulled and tied around my chest.

Someone askes, How does love have hands and feet?Love is the sprouting bed for hands and feet!

Your father and mother were playing love games.They came together, and you appeared!

Don't ask what love can make or do!Look at the colors of the world.

The riverwater moving in all rivers at once ...The truth that lives in Shams' face.

~ Rumi, from "The Soul of Rumi," a Coleman Barks' translationIt lives

with us, through us as Consciousness lifts its world-hoodedeyes and

Heart-stimulates the relational/volitionary concentrationupon what we

pierce-point annoint with the mind. I Am, and I am animmensity of

Light breaking the walls down of ego-hewn darkness.

We hearken to this now, or we miss this liberational placement right now

and keep plowing through time and mind trying to find ourselves by

definingourselves by what we think we are, and what we desire.

 

"Where, oh where can I be safe?"

"In giving up all wanting and trying."

 

~ Rumi

 

We are not these bodies, not this mind, not anything that is found and seen ...

in this dream-time winding and wending through life and death testaments.

Not arhats, not ascended masters, not gurus, not anyone nor anything

is aboveanother. There is only One, and like a crystal prism of

Light, Love, This Loveshatterback cosmic-crackles into endless

streaming lightedness of being(s) -luminarians of Love's coming into

form. Love is the actual form ofGod ... Aaaaahhhh, more amore for

you, my Friend:

One Swaying Being

Love is not condescension, never that,nor books, nor any marking on

paper,nor what people say of each other.

Love is a tree with branchesreaching into eternity and rootsset deep in eternity, and no trunk!

Have you seen it?The mind cannot. Your desiring cannot.The longing you

feel for this love comes from inside you.

When you become the Friend, your longingwill be as the man in the oceanwho holds to a piece of wood.

Eventually wood, man, and oceanbecome one swaying being,Shams Tabriz, the secret of God.

~ RumiI went through a most enlivening time prior to the appointment

withthe neurosurgeon. I contemplated this: If I were to end up unable

towalk or to stand due to the nerve and bone and tissue damage in

thespinal area, unable to actively garden (this is my passion and

mybliss), will the joy at the Beauty and the Happiness of the

enjoymentof working and reveling among the flowers, and the hours in

thesunshine and rainline and timeless lines of your life, will this

bediminished if you are paralyzed and unable to realize your dream

ofbeing an avid, hands-on master gardener? I looked straight at this,

neverlooking away for a moment at whatever arose, and you know,

DearHearts,the truth for me was simply this:

 

No matter what this body and mind were toexperience here, this Peace

and Joy would not be diminished. I restin mySelf, a raptured riptide

of Life living itself to the fullest,knowing that all of this is a

dream world ... a self-annointingappointment with revealing the truth

of (I Am That), removing all

vestiges of the fear of pain, of the fear of loss or lack of gain, or the fear

of blame or lack of praise, or the fear of fearing the future, it dissolved

away when I faced myself without flinching at what came up for me.

Grace and determination, ernestness, diligence, a willingness to letgo

of all the old memory-tapes played-out in doubt, frustration, ache

andsensationalism, it simply isn't, wasn't, and Dear Cousin, Love

liveditself so well, spelling the endtimes of my dime-tossing across

timeand place, all done with the (self-defeating) hope of attaining

anotherwiseness for myself and for others, and done while banging my

entire me-ness against the wall of what is, as it is. Something HAD to give.

 

It was me. I had to give up, to give up struggling, to give up trying,

to give up endlessly whining over what is. It is only in complete surrender,

and I mean to the depths of dharma's depthlessness ... resting in myself,

Resting in Love. No one can take away our Peace, and no one or no thing

can give us this Peace ... just simply Being - realizing this truth removes the

fear that is the mirrorback blackening of Love.

Love becomes revealed unto Itself in awareness.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Rinzai, my Darling Bob, and all my shining

Friends of all these years and lives, they helped me to See mySelf well,

to look and leap freely into the well of the unknown, the whatever

this ismissal, and with this there is the allowing for the untying of

theknots of nadis, the identification to this body, the

not-this-and-not-thatisms of egotism and as-ifisms that derail the

self so completelyand so well. Keep digging, that's what Sri Niz

encouraged. Don't stopfor anything or anyone in coming clean with

yourself. Sincerity,honesty, openness in the unfoldment of one's life

.... for myself,this somehow prepared the way. Aaahhh, the old and

golden flowing ofthis knowing, and allowing it to be so, "Make

straight the way forthe coming of the Lord."

I don't know why, (and it doesn't matter), why such things happen ordo

not happen such as this that has occured in my own life. LettingLove

live one's life, letting go of the old conditionings that keepone

coming back for more and more of the "I-desire" storyboardaffording

more and more suffering, such suffering that stymies onewith

over-stimulation of the senses ... in a word - Surrender, totaland

absolute surrender to What Is AS It Is.

Dearest Friends, it's nice, so sweet to speak with you here at this

Sanghathis , and under these utterly mind-boggingly

marvelouscircumstances. Your dance of life has taken the hand of my

dance oflife, and we are all light-mingling in the LoveDance that IS

us, each oneof us, all of us. Such Love that this is, it is such a

Love that we cannotcontain it, nor ever explain it. It simply,

sweetly, succinctly Is.

 

Quietness

Inside this new love, die.Your way begins on the other side.Become the sky.

Take an ax to the prison wall.Escape.

Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.Do it now.

You're covered with thick clouds.Slide out the side.

Die, and be quiet.Quietness is the surest sign that you've died.

Your old life was a frantic running from silence.The speechless full moon comes out now.

~ Rumi

I Love you so, all of you whom are my own Beautiful Self, my

Beautiful-Hearted Companions in all of this, my Gift from God,

my Friends, my Dearest Friends.

 

I Have Come to ShineI have come

to pull you by your ear,

and bring you to myself.I will make you selfless,

I will make you fearless,

then I will place you in the

heart and the soul of the king of Souls.I have come like a breeze of Spring

to you, oh, field of flowers,

so I can keep you by my side,

and hold you tight.I have come to shine on you,

as you walk this path.

Like the prayer of lovers,

I will help you reach the

roof of the heavens.I have come to take back that kiss

that you stole from me.

You are my catch, my game,

my prey, my hunt.You have escaped my trap so far,

but run toward that trap once again.

Run, run, or I will chase you there.Remember what the lion said to the deer.

"You are so beautiful,

you are so lovely

run in front of me,

so I can catch you

and tear you to pieces."Be like the deer, accept the wounds

like a shield of a warrior.

Don't listen to anything

but the whooshing of the arrows heading

toward you.From the dust of the Earth to a human being

there are a thousand steps

I have been with you through these steps,

I have held your hand and walked by your side.You may think that I have left you

on the side of the road.

Don't complain,

don't become mad,

and don't open the lid of the pot.

Boil happily and be patient.

Remember what you are being prepared for.You are a lion's cub,

hidden inside a deer's body,

with one strike I will wipe that illusion

and rid you of it.You are my ball, and you roll because

of the strike of my polo mallet.Just remember,

it is me who is chasing you

even though it is me who is helping you run.~ Rumi, from 'Hush - Don't

Say Anything to God - Passionate Poems of Rumi'

translated by Shahram Shiva

As I Am,

Mzie