Do you sense wholeness in Being, just feeling Presence, like a lover, near and within? I do. This fullness is so lovely. I have a stong desire to share this sensation, to offer it up it again and again. Yet often my imagination is spotty, and all I can seem to do is pull fragments from nowhere. These small bits are mottled, like sunlight through the trees, of no substance, fleeting. Still, these fragments are what I have, momentarily floating through my fingertips, and I love to share them.
A few days ago on this blog, an anonymous responder wrote that holding presence is fraudulent, just like the water drop in the graphic I posted on the Simple Meditation - recreated and false. I scrapped the comment, but it has been lingering in my psyche. I asked Aki what he thought about it, and he responded:
“Spiritual imagination is lovely and delightful and sorely needed in this world, which is often degraded by the relentless striving and suffering of ego-fixation. With love we bring beauty to life - in poetry, photographs, painting, or prose. We are love and the expressions of love are many and varied. No one can stand in judgment of authentic expression, but the mind will try. It will comment and critique, praise and blame. This is what mind does.
Pulling fragments from nowhere is inspired - without the commentary of the mind; it is fresh and beautiful, like mottled sunlight. The best we have in this human life is "of no substance, fleeting."
Expressions of love are flowing, always flowing. We try to share this flowing presence as best we can, and it always falls short. The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. But what are we to do? We have to point! We want to share this flowing presence, and however inadequate our sharing, however misunderstood, we still share our love and our joy. There will always be those who see only the static, the frozen drop and miss what it is pointing at - the flowing river. Words and pictures are after all only snapshots, and language falls short of describing the dynamic quality of presence. You see a photo and you see what it is pointing at. Another looks at the photo and they see only a frozen image, fraudulent, the same fraudulence and frustration they experience about themselves, living as a self-identity. They miss it again and again. They are telling you about them, about where they are living from.
Your life is an expression of genuineness and generosity. Holding, not holding - these words mean nothing to authentic presence. I realize who you are. I am not confused by your fingers pointing, always pointing at the moon, at presence, at love. You are living presence, living presence, so alive..."
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Thank you, my dear Friend.
