Until it is true that there is no belief in a solid world, a solid, autonomous self, it is a living hell to walk about with a smile on your face and a dagger in your heart. In this case, it is not in truth to say you believe that this is a beautiful gift, and that you welcome it, open-heartedly. Right now, your heart is fully constricted, and being called to open. You are being shown the world, and railing against it, with all your might, because it is magic you seek - not truth, not clear seeing.
Your heart is broken and you are suffering. In this case, it is in truth to cry and scream, to beg for mercy, to acknowledge the felt terror of your circumstance. Dancing in the daisies at this time is pure delusion, absence from what is true, and is a brutal unkindness to your heart. When it is true that this awesome, awful, sacred, treacherous dream, and everything in it, is as impersonal and transparent as air, then you will be called, in truth, to the freedom of the dream. Everything and nothing will change. Here, you will sing and dance, laugh and cry, mourn and rejoice, with a wild abandon you have never known. You may even beg for mercy to that which cannot hear you, that which cannot be heard. And you will smile and bow to this tender, empty peace. You only have to hand over the keys and walk away.
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I am not a point of departure or a final destination...
There is no ascent to me or descent beneath me... I am the emptiness of nothing arising... I am the awareness of knowing itself... As infinite diamond-like glimmers of being... What am I? Your eyes scan the landscape before you,
Wondering what mysterious beauty lies beyond this place. This is the mysterious beauty. Here. That one you long for, Is already, always what you are. The landscape does not change As you float toward it. The hills and valleys meadows and sky are your own embrace, waiting. New eyes look out, See only themselves looking back. Vast heart swallows hard, The throat opens again, after the long parching fever breaks and cools. Hands form an empty beggar's bowl Overflowing as it meets the lips, Drinking in Spilling out. Welcome here. Alone in your encampment
Hungry ghosts huddled around the fire Burned alive at the stake. The flames themselves Already wooden ashes Never born Never seed Never sprout Never majestic standing ones, The glorious already dead. In this magnificent vision So achingly beautiful Laughter and tears flow into ether Again, always already dead. An imaginary mirror to see yourself Inside out. The earth you dreamed would hold and Preserve you The stars you dreamed were arranged like breadcrumbs To follow back. The Moon and its oceans To give you some thing to go by. This is the truth you came for And now you regret the day You were born to wander into this greedy nothingness. A shifting black-red avalanche of terror Thunder inside the earth! Oozing Sliding Engulfing No footing Down you go Swallowed Buried alive. An explosion so horrific above you Takes out each little twinkling sky light Like so much faerie dust blown from a child’s hand. An ocean flips upside down. Ocean. Upside. Down! Nothing. How long have I been here like this? Hours? Days? Eons? Can I stand? Can I speak? Wait! Is that dawn peering in the window? What is this body laying next to me? Can I speak? What can I possibly say? “Oh, good morning, love.” “Yes, another lovely day.” “Eggs will be fine, thank you.” So many conditions of the human body can be healed; many of them cured. Dying is not among them.
The dying of our loved ones is most often accompanied by the private mourning of our own loss. If we are wise and brave and supported, dying is further accompanied by the more outward expression called grief, an emotion, primal and raw. Grief is an agonizing hurt. It sticks around, until you are through with it. Until it is through with you. In its time, grief, fully acknowledged and embraced, carries golden offerings of grace to the sliced open heart, now ripe for awakening love. Living and dying cannot be parted. They happen together, each moment. Living and dying is suffering. Living and dying is liberation. Living and Dying is heaven, living and dying is hell. Living and dying is all the places, visited in between. Living and dying is the precious human wound we all share. No one escapes, no one goes away empty-handed or empty-hearted. There is a field of emptiness, of everything. Home. Back we come, again and again, offering this grail of everything to the thirst and hunger of nothing, smiling, bowing deep and low. No wonder we love, no wonder we grieve. You are so loved, Analisa Come away from all knowing. Step back and back and back from each untrue certainty that torments you, commands you, contracts you in rage. Keep stepping back until the thunder's guttural rumbling beneath you tears open the red earth, and takes you under. Until the tsunami comes. Until every semblance of you, mind, feet, or ground are penetrated and swallowed. Until you find yourself standing in an infinite field of transparency so vast and pristine, that obliteration itself glows unbroken, and beautiful. Until your heart crumbles in this nothingness of everything.
Notice if there is a tendency to believe that you must be holy and still to know yourself as Love. This is the farthest thing from the truth. Notice if there is a tendency to believe anything at all. This is what keeps you locked into your subservience to this mistaken identity.
You are everything that is happening right here in this moment. You are not that shining star, only visible when the moon is right and your waters are calm and pristine. You are that star, that moon, that water. And you are also the roiling tempest, the volcanic eruption, the earthquake's heaving clay. You are the angels that sing, and the filthy, tattered and torn lost soul begging for a coin and sleeping in the street. You are the sweet refrain of loved ones gathered in joy, and the temper tantrum that knows no end to the primal scream echoing out into eternity. You are the saint and the killer, the healed and the dead. Love is not one thing, and not another. Know yourself as Love, and the most bitter taste dissolves on the tongue like the buttery nectar of freedom that you are. You are so loved! Analisa |
The invitation is to leave it alone. To let life be. To know yourself as being lived. That is what is happening here. Life is alive as you, through your breath, through your being. Don't look for it elsewhere. It does you and undoes you, over and over again. You are not the doer. Stop claiming that you are, and your relentless despair of knowing you are not, will dissolve. The belief in the doer, is what deadens you, and crushes your heart. And yet you fear death. The only death you will ever know is this lifeless longing. Question these beliefs, awaken from them, and live it out loud. Then you will know yourself as boundless life, as freedom, and your body will age and die fully alive, without regret, endlessly beautiful.
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August 2022
CategoriesAnalisa Domenica is in private practice as a Doula for living and dying. She offers private mentoring sessions, end-of-life preparation & transition support, bereavement, home death, funeral, and natural burial guidance, and therapeutic touch for comfort care and pain release. She is available to private clients, small groups, and for public education. Find out more about her by clicking here.
'Li' lives and works in Mill Spring, NC, a stone or two's throw from Asheville, NC and Greenville/Spartanburg, SC. She also works globally via phone and zoom. You may reach her by phone at 828.429.0096 or write to her by clicking here. |