Timothy Conway will be a retreat leader at the Awakening Together Satsang Retreat in Santa Barbara from September 12-14, 2014. He will also lead a Satsang at the ‘Soak in the Beauty’ retreat at the same location from September 14-18, 2014. In preparation for the retreat, I am sharing a series of questions answered by Timothy. To read the full series, click here. And now, here is today’s question:
Marshall writes:
Timothy, something has happened. I found your wonderful reply yesterday on my email and absorbed some of it through tears of joy and gratitude. The presence of true God in you and this light and love are so filling. Last night as I laid down in bed I took a copy of this reply and read it slowly and absorbed as much as I could. It was feelings and expansions and peace.
Today I am in a new state… something has happened. If this lasts for another minute it will have been enough. I will test this, if it is real it will endure and flourish. Whatever happens I am profoundly, deeply, infinitely (beyond words) in love with what you have done for me just by being you. I do not know what to say…. I can only project to you my profound open heart for you, myself, and every particle and potential of created and non created Source and Creation. WE are indeed ONE. I cannot claim, only experience. I will write again. At your service.
——-
Timothy responds:
Thank you for your really kind words!
Now: let’s hone in very, very deeply on the Divine Truth underlying all of us and our passing, transient states of consciousness. You already know this, but this Timothy fellow is going to presume to say it anyway…. 🙂
Marshall, you wrote: “Timothy, something has happened. […] Today I am in a new state… something has happened.”
Marshall, nothing has happened! There is only God—changeless, eternal, infinite, vaster than vast, Absolute Being-Awareness-Bliss-Peace-Love. All that can come and go is of the dream—transient, fleeting. Even states of mind that feel “realized,” blissful, peaceful, clear. All of this is to say that, by Divine Grace, all sorts of wonderful happenings will happen—but the Divine One, formless and invisible and unexperiencable (as an object), the one Subject beyond all subject-object experiences, is always right HERE and NOW “underneath” the play of persons and their experiences of the Divine. Our deepest, deepest, subtlest, subtlest Divine knowingness-gnosis-jnana-prajna [Vedanta and Buddhist terms for “wisdom-knowing”] knows ItSelf by being ItSelf (this Self of Absolute Awareness), before and beyond the mind and its experiences.
You also wrote: “If this last for another minute it will have been enough. I will test this, if it is real it will endure and flourish.”
The mind may try to reassert itself or it may have, in fact, irreversibly relaxed its grip and sunk in full surrender to its Source, Our Lord of Love, the Divine One, the One who ALONE IS, the Self of all, the transcendent-immanent Spirit. Regardless… be very careful not to look for fulfilment, completion, or closure on the level of the mind and being able to sustain a state, any state, of mind. There’s a great old Zen story, which i actually have at the Zen Humor page of my website which goes as follows:
A student went to see his meditation teacher and said, “My situation is horrible! I feel so distracted most of the time, or my legs ache, or I’m repeatedly falling asleep. It’s terrible.” Said the teacher matter-of-factly, “It will pass.” A week later, the student returned to his teacher. “My meditation is wonderful! I feel so aware, so peaceful, so alive!” “It will pass,” replied the teacher.
Now, Marshall, you already know all this. For you have written:
>Whatever happens, I am profoundly, deeply, infinitely (beyond words) in love with what you have done for me just by being you. I do not know what to say….
Marshall, there is nothing to say—and everything to say—and, as our Zen friends put it, “no mouth is big enough to utter It.”
You wrote: I can only project to you my profound open heart for you, myself, and every particle and potential of created and non created Source and Creation. WE are indeed ONE. I cannot claim, only experience.
Yes. The Divine has come up with a way of experiencing Itself as experiences, forms, phenomena, body-mind-soul states. And yet there is nothing really happening but the one, changeless, absolutely empty-full Divine Being-Awareness. O what wonder, O what miracle. To this One (Who is no one and everyone) we can always spontaneously and with such gratitude thank and praise….
Love to you always, dear Marshall (the One Alone!)
Timothy
Adapted from www.enlightened-spirituality.org
