Déjà Vu



People are scared to empty their minds
Fearing that they will be engulfed by the void
What they don’t realize is that their own mind is the void

–Huang Po

Rather than feelings of deep insight, lately I am more prone to impressions of déjà vu.  Everything seems to come full circle back to the Teaching — The world is illusory, Only Brahman is real, Brahman is the world (Ramana Maharshi).  While it seems like a linear path, the Truth for me occurs more like an orbit.  Sometimes I feel close to Source and at other times I am on the far side of the Moon and the darkness paves way for amnesic attitudes that the world is real.  When I am actively pushing away a body sensation or mental story, there is the strong dualistic sense that THIS is not GOOD.  What is NOT GOOD is NOT SOURCE.  And so goes the saga of suffering.  When I read Huang Po’s quote about unity consciousness, I realized that the mental stories that I was so fiercely trying to push away, were in fact movements in the One Mind.

As I said, no epiphany but yet a wider feeling of freedom around the story of failure once I stopped seeing it as something separate from Source.  We are funny human beings, my friend is fond of saying.  Because she has a deep knowing of the illusory nature of this world and the reality we superimpose upon it.  She reminds me in moments of chemical charge, to LAUGH, and in doing so the remembrance that nothing is real once again comes into focus.

Only Brahman is real.  That seems to be the second place that I get caught on my samsaric seeing of The Way.  It is what, for me, sets up the dualistic battle of Source and the mental story that defines my world.  I forget in my moments of witnessing presence that while it is perfectly true that I am not this body.  It is ALSO true that I AM.

So there is a struggle to recall that the world is an illusion.  Upon remembering there is a desire to remain in this place of witness, apart from this body/mind organism.  And eventually, the light shines brighter to reclaim this embodiment as not separate from Source.  And once again it becomes clear to my remembered Self … the Seeker and that which is sought are One.

Leave a Reply