You can’t maintain this. Try as hard as you may, (which you probably have!), you are not capable of maintaining or sustaining the experience called being awake, the experience of waking up to what you are. But you don’t need to maintain it. God, Truth, Presence, Awakeness, Love, Life - call it what you will - It creates and sustains itself. It doesn’t need you. It IS you.
We overlook the miracle that lies before us for the simple reason that we keep looking for it somewhere else, searching for satisfaction in some other moment, hoping to find God in some other experience. This beautiful passage from the Gospel of Thomas says it all:
His disciples said unto to Him: “When will the Kingdom come?” And Jesus said: “It does not come by expecting it. It will not be a matter of saying, ‘See, it is here!’ or, ‘Look, it is there!’. Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread over the earth and men do not see it.”
God - the Limitless, Absolute, Source of all life - is simply too big to fit into the little box called “mind,” too vast to fit into the narrow confines of belief or ideology.
Nothing can contain the uncontainable. And that is what you are, this that cannot be contained, that cannot be defined, that cannot be known, a language without translation…
The life that you are streams forth from some unknown place. It has no end, no border, a boundless energy that asks for nothing.
Maybe there’s a sense of being a self, a feeling of being something or someone who is separate? And then, a moment later, the self-sense suddenly falls away. What is knowing both self and not self?
The mind-made “me” seeks fulfillment in everything it encounters.
The Self finds fulfillment in everything it encounters.
When the Heart looks
the eyes no longer see
difference or distinction.
Beauty has disappeared
and now, there is only Beauty -
a wind howling through the trees,
the dust that decorates my window sill,
the temple bells ringing,
the silly little thought clouds
dancing through the vast
and empty sky -
it has all become the same,
One Breath
breathing all things.
everything these eyes fall upon
whispers, “Here I am.”
What is it that grasps
and then lets go of grasping?
It is this permanence
that is forever changing,
the flame of this truth
that dances and flickers
a thousand different ways
and yet is always
only burning…
There is no one here,
no me… and yet,
something is drinking in
this moment,
savoring what is…
What is that?
I am the silence,
the silence
of wanting nothing,
the silence
of being nothing,
the silence
of knowing nothing.
I am the silence,
the silence
of loving everything,
the silence
of being everything…