Nancy's posts and poems

your longing to get what is already the case will seem to push it away, as it is not an it, neither are you

longing for life to look and feel differently hurts

as it is impossible

how can the ocean taste its own wetness?

there is nothing to be remembered and no one to remember....

this obvious aliveness

this brilliant immediacy is undeniable, isn't it?

there appears to be awareness of this aliveness and an awareness of this awareness...

and there is no separation between these...

it is the apparent imaginary 'division' created by the objectifying brain that seems to create a thing called awareness and a thing called aliveness...

but can you isolate one?

is there ever awareness without perception

or perception without awareness?

this aliveness cannot be caught

of held

it is a treasure that seems to self arise

and simultaneously self erase

no past nor future nor 'now' can be found,

nor can a looker be isolated from this streaming perceptual sensorial display....

you know this magic, and the magic of it is that it is

indeed

un-graspable

unknowable

and there is no separate thing

no hand

no heart

no mind

that can hold it or know it in the conventional sense

yet it is always sensed

somehow

and there is no path or method to discover that which already is

as the path, the method, the looking, is already this magic of aliveness self arising and self erasing....

and you feel your hand your heart reaching out

trying to catch the rippling

but all you can see is rainbows flowing through your fingers

you are the walls you seek to escape or break down...

they seem to be solid and keep out the light...

but it is belief in the dream which creates this illusion of separation, of an inside and an outside, here and there

imprisonment and freedom...

and someone to be free or bound

some how this belief which is the cornerstone of who you are melts away, the wall of belief is punctured, all encompassing brilliance dissolves all and everything, yet all and everything and you remain.... all is transparent wonder

you are dissolved yet dancing...

there are no things nor non things nor both

nor neither

no mind, no non mind

no one to have a mind

or not

11

weightless sky endless blue endless grey clouds

hover

rain

falls

rainbows appear and dissolve colors spill into your mind stream ...they never left

river of thought has no beginning nor end no banks of time

nor background of space

daffodils swoon under the weight of moonlight stars seem fixed until they make you dizzy the world spins

or is it you

swirling into starlight?

a life time of chasing your tale

no beginning or end can be found to this seamless aliveness spinning may reveal an empty center to the jewel that you are infinite facets blend into a surround sound of echoes reverberating ancient songs

that were never sung

yet the words and melodies are felt deeply as they line your edgeless heart where clouds and starlight and endless skies bloom

and wilt

looking for a lasting presence

a fixed point on the horizon that will pin you to the story is like a pin in your heart

a bitter death to flight

morning dove floats to the frozen ground

I heard her singing as dawn streamed into the garden grey cat sleuths across the frost

flying up

magnificent feathered display

and you long to drown in this beauty and dissolve into light

but you were never separate from love you cannot find it or lose it

there is no you who is love

nor love to merge with

it is all love

12

river of love needs its banks to flow

we stand on opposite sides

and dance in the current as we dissolve into each other never separate

never joined

we need this river of reflections

to glimpse our own beauty

and drown in our own love

13

you are a persona

an imaginary persona

like me, the character that you are seems to arise in the company of apparent others.

we are the shared dream of separation, and as we do not exist alone, other personas are like our mirrors...

as we do not exist, we cannot find anything when we look inside. in a way we are each others reflections.

when a loved one dies, we will never see ourselves through their eyes again. that mirror has broken, and the shards rip through our hearts as we have lost a part of ourselves. gone forever.

enlightenment is not an escape from the dream.

knowing you and I and love are imaginary is not the end of love, it is the beginning of an all encompassing love, of realizing that all of us know somewhere down deep that we are utterly empty and exist only as each other's echoes, and that we do not exist alone,

that we all long to touch, knowing that we can never know what life looks or feels like for another.

we are all utterly alone. yet everyone shares this broken hearted beauty, everyone is utterly innocent, simply isolated swirling galaxies of thought, of liquid memory....insubstantial, ephemeral, beautiful dreamt personas....

love is the part of the dream that makes up for the total aloneness we all share. we are alone, together.

thought weaves a web that has no solidity nor liquidity... it is composed of not even nothing... less substantial than cloud castles dissolving.... nothing can be caught with thought, thought is more like a razor slicing up the perceptual symphony into things and an observer.... but there is no thing called perception or awareness without thought... no thing called thought...

without thought...

you are flowing fleeting description... memory, a story without a source or story teller....

you are an echo of your own aloneness....

14

utter emptiness is already the case.... it is the looking for it which seems to deny it.... looking for enlightenment.... looking for any idea requires a belief in it... and enlightenment is a belief, like emptiness, like other better more and next....

so how can you find that which is already on?

wouldn't looking for it be it

or running away?

how could it be confirmed or denied, accepted or rejected...

the confirmation or rejection or acceptance... all what seems to appear... there is no getting out of this streaming dream of separation...

there is certainly no outside or edge to what seems to appear... and isn't the recognition of this seamless symphony of sensorial display inseparable from it? never one without an other...

wouldn't you say that life seems to appear all by itself without effort or non effort?

the feelings of effort and ease both arise effortlessly...

all arises and self erases evenly and equally and there are no separate actual things in this stream of perceptual input....

it is thought which seems to divide the unknowable ungraspable no thingness into separate things and events....

and this is something you can never see, as you are one of these imaginary separate things, like enlightenment...

15

I am a dream spell of liquid memory

slipping sliding falling through itself

endless stories spiraling....

no end or beginning in sight

a fluid portrait of all the stories, all the images all whom I have met there are no separate stories...

that I am a fairytale dream girl is a story

as are these very lines trippling through your mind stream which really isn't yours, as you exist only in the thought

you think of as yours

all thought is learned shared words

stories...

weaving and unravelling without any actual substance sky soars through sky

light pours through light...

life swoons into itself

through your arms your eyes your lips this very kiss this obvious aliveness

immediate and clear

without other

without before or after ungraspable....

wondrous beyond measure

not even a this

as there is no that...

what is darkness?

what is light?

what is this warmth inside my chest?

stars

bursting

rivers of songs

pour onto this screen

fingertips flow softly over this keyboard painting light and dark and colors streaming through this thought dream

wings of memory

tides of images

feathers drift softly

settling into this book of poems that writes me

as I continually slide off the pages

that were never bound

or held

or separate

from the story they tell

there is no heart nor hand nor mind that can contain this love this unbearably wondrous symphony that seems to play itself and hear itself

and leaves not a drop of sound

not even silence

in its wake

no one paints these infinite watercolor skies or this moon that seems to hover suspended

falling through its own embrace

the horizon never reached

unties itself

and the present is revealed

to be nothing other than what it always was a dream of infinite wonder dreaming itself

17

this symphony of wonder may seem to have separate instruments, sound touch taste sight, and someone who sees and hears and loves….

but no watcher or player or conductor can ever be found,

nor a stage or dance floor across which life waltzes...

infinite galaxies spin only in this fairy tale of thought that seems to spiral endlessly as no beginning or end can be found.... or lost,

you are part of the enchantment

this wonderland thought paints with no background or foreground,

all is sky written in sky

wind painted with wind

vast measureless spaciousness without space...

and what could possibly divide you from all this when there is no this to divide?

this thought stream paints a world, and a you in the center of it

this is the end of the belief and the feeling of separation

awakening unties all these imaginary lines

all edges and the imaginary center are just

gone

whoosh!

it never was!

it is obvious that life seems to self arise and simultaneously self erase, and never actually is a substantial (nor non substantial) ‘thing’,

this is the astonishment that there are no things nor non things, no time, dimension, direction, movement or non movement, change or permanency

that there is no one separate from this imaginary world who can believe it or not, or claim it or not,

as all we, as imaginary characters, can know is this imaginary world

we are the dream of separation

it is obvious that the dream of separation is indeed made up, but it is not known how this is known, and this is the most delicious unknowing

enlightenment is a fatal collision between never and forever

the kiss and final annihilation of reality and unreality

emptiness and fullness

movement and stillness

everything and nothing

of you and me and love…

the utter insubstantiality of thought

of rainbows

of clouds of skies of mountains….

all ideas of solidity and certitude vanish

this is the complete obliteration of all beliefs and ideas of what you are and what you are not

what the world is and what it is not

and what love is and what it is not…

this is the end of all thoughts that he or she or me or the world ‘should’ be like this or that

this is the end of all hope and fear and need of a never arising next

the end of all questions about all things imaginary

…and all things are imaginary

you

and me

and even love

yet these songs are love songs truly

cascades of words

rivers of tears of smiles of ancient seas pouring through me and painting

wet with wetness

wind with wind

sky with sky

and

love with love

this is about the beauty of the dancing flames

as the world burns

and what is gained and what is lost when there are no things to be added or taken away,

and no source or answer to this love song?

a whirlwind of ancient shadows streaming through the darkness…

a waterfall of starlight pouring through light

a spinning arabesque without a point to enter or leave this endless circle

spiraling into infinity

outwards and inwards…

when there is no outside or in

no center or edge to this enchantment

that seems to drink me

and leaves me

intoxicated

pools of streetlights

passersby talking on their phones

there is only one side to the conversation

but there are no sides to this reflection

no home where echoes reside

no one inside this mirage

bathing in the waters

flowing

no one listening to this love song

feeling her heart soar

in love as love through love

life sings

we meet in this fatal kiss

of everything and nothing

and we find ourselves dancing on the edge of a feather

between love and nothing at all

and I was lost forever as emptiness and found again in the storybook of love...

this obvious vibrant aliveness self arises and simultaneously self erases without ever becoming any thing actual and substantial or solid or fixed.

you cannot even call this aliveness liquid as that would require edges and things that move....

as there are no things there is no movement nor non movement...

there is no outside to this obvious elusive aliveness, so there is no inside...

there is never anything other

so there is no this...

infinite sky, infinite space….

without sky

without space

what is without lines or space or emptiness….

it is this thought dream that paints your unique universe with galaxies

spinning,

and a you in the center, the hero or heroine of this passion play of wonder…

when the dream is believed, it feels like there is a thinker, a someone who feels, a bather in moonlight dreaming….

the mystery of love

the mystery of mystery...

thought spins a web of imaginary knowing

that never caught anything

not even itself

yet there is soaring always

through this dreamscape of space and time

as you are this water ballet of wonder

breath of wind is your breath

wings of sunlight is your winged beauty

dancing with your reflection on shimmering mountain streams

listening to your voice resounding in deep echoed valleys

soaring over mountains and valleys

across hot desert wastelands

glancing down and seeing that it is all a mirage

flowing into and through itself

wetness into wetness

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

you are an intoxication

drinking deeply this bottomless cup of wonderment

as it drinks you

I look around and I have no clue as to what I am walking on, walking from, walking towards, or what I am looking at.

there is no sense that there is a separate someone walking or looking, nor that there are a bunch of things interconnected or joined.

it feels like a seamless symphony, and not of any thing or things,

not even a symphony of emptiness...

simply a wondrous aliveness streaming and simultaneously disappearing without ever actually crystallizing into a thing or things,

nor even nothing at all….

in this fatal embrace of everything and nothing

all things never were

no time nor space

nor clouds racing across endless blue

dolphins jumping and playing and dissolving into sky…

nor this stunning silence of boundless ocean

roaring

love beyond any ideas of love

has swallowed the world of things

and is intoxicated by her own demise

she sings without words or music

is all music

this shock of unbridled aliveness

flows into and through itself

without movement or non movement

love pours into love

this cannot be found

it is not lost

for it is not separate from the stream of life as it appears

looking for it seems to solidify the dream of things

as well as trying to not look for it

for there is no it

nor you to get it.

words can make you dizzy

spin you around and spit you out..

were you ever?

are you now?

where are the dolphin clouds

playing in yesterday’s skies?