Doing as No Doer
Doing as no doer
What breathes this body and writes these words? What parts the clouds so the sun's rays shine through? What sparks fire and ice and joy and rage? What sees through these eyes and senses the smooth silk of the the cat's fur as it purrs on the lap?
What animates this form and all form right now – not yesterday or tomorrow, for where are they? What are they? Right now, in this moment?
Awareness stops and falls deeper in to sense the aliveness in the body – in the arms and hands as they type, In rising and falling of breath, in the effortless beating of the heart. This alive presence, both full and empty and so vast and spacious that no words can capture the pure essence of essence.
It is sensed as the body is cradled by the chair, held by the floor and the ground below. enlivened by earth and sky. The majesty of teardrops and phlegm, pain and the hard knot of doubt and regret that nestle somewhere behind the heart.
The thoughts arise saying that this should make more sense, should get to the point, and even those thoughts arise from the emptiness, the fullness, the pure presence that lives this life with no effort at all. Placing one foot in front of the other, resting when the body needs rest. Falling open as itself moving through a world that is pure projection. Leela – the play of God. Joy moving through joy – even as the shape is taken of one who is in pain, perhaps even one who is suffering. Yes, even that.
This morning the hand reached for a journal written twenty years ago. The pages fell open to words asking how to live this life? Who to love? How to serve? Why be here on this planet at all? So beautiful – this aching sense of separation – of a “me” who needs to “do”, who needs to figure out how to live – as though living is not always happening effortlessly – as those words fell on to the page of the journal to be read again twenty years later on another rainy morning that is the same rainy morning – right now.
Ahh...to tell that one who is this one who is all One that the pure presence, the essence of God, of the stars, of the infinite is-ness that burns as “you” is trustworthy beyond the shallow meaning of that word. It is. There is no “you” and “life”, there is no one who has to decide anything or doubt or plan or get better, do more, be anything. Stop. Stop all effort, all story of a “do-er”, and see what remains. Fall back and down and open and apart sensing this alive presence within. This alive presence without. Is there any difference at all? Sensing sensing itself everywhere as everything.
Give up and rest and then feel what is living through you, using the form you call by your name to serve itself – to serve love as love. What if the way you are used is none of your business at all? So impersonal, effortless and loving. Yes, even the pain of losing your health, your mind, your security, your loved ones. Even that. As eyes and heart take in the atrocity of the world, the mind might say – what can I do? I need to do something. Yes. Give up and rest and then feel what is living through you – how does it serve love as love – to meet the atrocity in pure service with no agenda – living as love.
Pure essence takes a step and the earth rises to meet it.
