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Behold and Be Held

“There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise.

Drink all your passion and be a disgrace.
Close both eyes to see with the other eye.
Open your hands if you want to be held…

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking
Live in Silence.
Flow down and down, 
In always widening rings of being.’

Rumi

To behold and be held, this is the rapturous state. When bird songs from afar quiver within the embrace of your expansive heart. Intimacy with all things. A closeness that forgets there was once two. With arms open, behold the grand song and dance. With restful eyes, be held by the arms of space Herself. Dwell in the ocean of wakefulness. Behold the glory, be held in grace.

This universe is a swirl of containing and contained, though the churning liquid knows no boundaries. Where do I end and you begin? Where is within, where is without? To be full, become empty. No one home. Release into the arms of the beloved where the soothing song of a silent lullaby will warm your soul. Little by little, loosen the grip. A closed hand grasps the acorn, an open hand grasps the infinite. It is the open hand of God that holds you and leaves you free to wander as you please.

Wander home, wander home. The stillness within holds the treasure you seek. The radiant star that lights the cosmos, individuated but not separate. The light from within and the light from without are the same. The ghost that whispers of “me” and “mine” clings to the phantasmagoria. But no one’s home, no one’s home.

No one’s home because we are the home. We are the field, we are the play of light. Shed the heavy shackles of “I am this” and “I am that”. Who are you before you know who you are? Hush, listen slowly my dear. Give up the search, the answer is not hidden in the brush. Face to face with eternal presence. Free falling, no ground beneath. The way to become weightless is to fall eternally. Down, down, heed the call of our mother earth, for us to return to Her.

You can never be alone. You are held by the endless embrace. Behold and be held. See and be seen. Listen and speak, sigh and creek, like the wise old willow who dances in the wind. We can dance too, our spirits free to drift along with the breeze. Oh lovely child of the Ultimate, do you remember? Do you remember where we come from? Do you remember where we’re going?

To behold and be held, the two sides of God’s face reflected in every dew drop. Feel yourself from the outside in. We are not bound up in this narrow prison. Give yourself up, the ultimate release. Bring death to each moment to find your peace. Can you hear it? The thick, swelling silence? Marinate, steep, dissolve, expand. Come home to your soul, bear the blinding light and don’t turn away from the deepest darkness. Dive in, go deeper, deep deep deep down till you lose the seeker.

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Fully Engrossed

‘The Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, but men do not see it.’

Jesus Christ

Have you ever felt so entirely engrossed in a moment that your world feels dominated by the colors and sensations of your perceptual field? Perhaps from the rush of a roller coaster ride, through the textures of a challenging rock climb, or by surrendering to the soul’s engagement in artistic expression. In those moments you feel whole, firmly residing in the recognition that here there is nothing missing, nothing to achieve, nothing to regret… In this place, immersed in the ocean of what-is, we feel spacious and significant and we embody the powerful creativity that is the seed of our being.

This is an experience I remember striking me quite significantly on psychedelics. On one such adventure, under the influence of psilocybin, I was in an open field and needed to take a leak so I crossed a thick tree line and entered into a forest dominated by mangrove-like roots and branches. I remember being struck as heavily as if I had walked through a portal into another world. The whole energy of the place was different and the entire content of my existence seemed novel and fresh. What is the basis of this feeling, and when or how could this come about without the influence of psychoactive chemicals?

Through meditation I have come to experience this sensation quite frequently and the mode of observation that brings it about has become more clear. The key lies in a departure from the dualistic, imagined, and conditioned interpretation of the cosmos. One thing that pulls us into duality is our perception of time. When we look closely, our deeply rooted belief in the structure and movement of time proves to be a very limiting conceptualization.

When we exist in the imagined temporal realm, this moment is a blip. It is a small and relatively insignificant instant cast in the ocean of eternity, floating softly by like a mote of dust through a sunbeam. Some of these moments may hold more weight than others, like the first kiss of a married couple, or the moment just before a car crash, but in essence each of these moments is small when felt in the context of all the moments that make up a life.

In contrast, when we cast off our presumptions about the nature of existence and sit in quiet observation, more and more of our awareness and attention falls upon the reality that sits patiently before us. As this happens, the anxieties rooted in past and future fabrications gently dissolve and we are surrounded by the thick silence that lies behind the quivering air. We breathe in and feel the expansion of our ribcage. The colors around us seem to fill and define our whole being. We are the teal bedspread that we lie on, the dust gently drifting through our gaze.

It is from this place that we can feel the ground of Reality; the ground that is so often talked about but so rarely observed with authenticity. It is here that we can experience the infinite depth and expanse of the present moment. We look closer at the knitted blanket beneath the comforter and notice the winding and fraying threads that but a moment ago were nothing but a flat texture.

When we look deeper, we see the microcosm of complexity to be found within each corpuscle of reality. When we turn our gaze to the sky, we feel the vast expanse of space littered with stars amongst which we drift aimlessly. This is not a small place. This is not a frame within a movie reel. This is not a moment that lacks significance or power. This is eternity. This is the Kingdom of Heaven.