The Gap is Always Here

Wait a second.

Stop just a moment.

Nothing you do, or don’t do will get you any closer to This.

Every time a thought ends … there’s a gap. This gap is vast beyond measure and allows for all form to manifest and exist. But there’s a natural ending ... a natural death to all form. Watch each thought … no, maybe that’s a little hard because it’s so difficult to extricate our beingness from thought, as it’s the very thing that gives thought the liberty to be.

No, an easier way is to catch the natural death of a thought. One thought … any thought. Try it with the thought you are entertaining right now … as soon as you become aware that you are thinking, take note of the space and emptiness that happens as  the thought dissipates …   Here you will find a gap. Call it what you will, I like “This Blessed Isle”, a term coined by Thich Nhat Hanh … the gap will reveal itself naturally, effortlessly. Sit in the gap, contemplate the gap …

Now, you’ll feel a very natural pull to another thought. In attention goes again. One second … ten … thirty. But it will end and you will inevitably find yourself back on the shores of “This Blessed Isle”. Whenever you get back to the gap, the tendency is to judge the pull into thought as a miss-step, as a problem, as another failed attempt to be present. That’s the next thought! Watch it … and you’re back on the shores again. Keep watching and eventually what will begin to happen is that the gap will become the resting place, the Home of your reality which it is anyway. And things will begin to reverse themselves as you’ll find a natural pull back to shore … without judgment and without effort. You’ll see that in truth you’ve never been anywhere else … it’s only thought that has been riding the currents of your own beingness.

So, every moment offers another precious opportunity to see things as they are. With thought and without thought. And things as they are doesn’t mean that the gap is better.It simply means that you are no longer seeking yourself out in your thinking … you are no longer trying to find joy, peace or happiness with thoughts. All thoughts die! What you will see is that the ultimate freedom, peace,  joy and happiness lies in the realization that what’s been holding you captive is your identification with  your own thinking.

This is where it all turns around. This is where “This Blessed Isle” becomes the Ocean of Awakened Beingness… your own Presence. This is where you and That are no longer at odds. You no longer seek yourself. You see that there really is only This … only That.

Now the great work begins.

This Is It

The water calls me ... draws me out ... gingerly, gently, tenderly ... slowly tantalizing my ear … then my heart … then I’m gone.

It doesn’t take much you know. We are all sitting at the water’s edge, the waves come and go, the wind blows sand in our face … and there’s that constant call.

Yet, we lie distracted. Mesmerized by our own thinking … lulled asleep by the incessant sound of the words in our heads. But, these too are made from the water … this great spread of infinite, fathomless deep and dark …

Calling us in, even the thoughts that chime into words and pictures, these too are the froth and tumble of the ocean’s edge.

But we fail to recognise this. It’s all made out of nothing … we know it in thought, in words: emptiness is form … form is emptiness.

We do know this now, yet, mysteriously the form still smothers the emptiness and the emptiness empties out the form.

As water splashes at my ear … and the constancy of the sound wends its way through my heart … my eyes suddenly come to a stop and my ears actually hear … and the splashing sound of the words finally peak into stillness.

“This is it!”… The sand blows into my face, stinging my eyes as my lips taste the brine that’s lingering here; right here … “This is it…”

The words ring true. The words feel wet and taste salty as they splash through the sound barrier right to my very soul.

“This is it…” Can my heart bear it? Can these two existences finally merge or do I forever draw that line in the sand?

But wait … Nothing whispers louder than ever now. Bouncing round my head, this echo of emptiness storms the gates … without even a whisper, “This is it…” … breathes deeply inside my chest.

I stop …

I listen … I look … and, I allow. And the cold wet splashing against my ankles feel just right, just so … “This is it …” Just right … just so. This is it.