Fountain of Grace

"Once the essential emptiness of the self is apperceived.......the centre can no longer hold. A natural process, or shift in perspective, begins ...."~~MM

A few years... even before the essential emptiness of self was apperceived... the no-self as many refer to it as... there were many an insight and revelations which were already beginning bit by bit, to subtly crack up the solidity of the self and my world-view... unbeknown to me

As spontaneously as they arose... just as easily did they slip slide away

There had been an intellectual understanding seeping in for years

Mostly insights like there is no such thing like time and space... and other little nuggets

It was all just bubbling up

I'd not read anything... nor heard of it from anywhere previously... nor spoken of it to anyone

I'd share a wee bit occasionally with my dear friend "Aunty"... though

When these insights would pop up... it was like drowning in an effervescent glass of bubbling champagne

I would almost pass out

Dear Aunty and me would laugh about it

She'd say... it's like being drunk without drinking a sip of sake

And we'd giggle some more

It was a heady woolly feeling of all the screws falling lose from the head....!

It would be quite a few years
Before the shift

Yet at the time, it felt like being at a birthday party... festooned with a gazillion colourful balloons

Like being Alice in Wonderland...!!

Like being in an enchanted garden

Even as one by one
It all kept slipping away

And I found that it didn't make any difference to the existential angst.. and life still continued just the same... even as these insights came and went... wonderful as they were

Yet... I don't know... what it was... life was the same and not the same anymore

The existential angst continued

It is difficult to describe... for even as life remained the same... boy oh boy... it wasn't the same anymore

I couldn't put my finger or it... not that I ever tried to... but something deep inside me was getting all shook up

Freebies... I'd later call them

Free glimpses
Like a precursor to a honeymoon

Even before the insights began to unfold

"The heliocentric perspective is replaced by an omnicentric overview..."~~MM

Having previously, for years... having tried everything the "mind" could think of, to fix my life... none of which worked

At that point...I had absolutely no interest in "fixing" my life!!!

And the seeing of the no-self came as a bolt from the blue
Nothing can prepare you for nothing

And this emptiness
This fullness
So sublime

So embraced

This
Just as it is

Pieces of me die

Fall away

Leaving an empty space

And no sense of lack, arises, nor fear

Nor the need to fill
So full already to the brim
Nor any need to fix it

Nor a looking for the next moment

No tomorrow
Nor a better
Or different, way of being

All hopes... the future
Ideas
Free fall

Awesomeness

And it matters not what this looks or feels like

The most intimate embrace

And a strange joy, flows through the heart, broken wide open

And tears

Of the sheer beauty of this

How life does itself

This

A fountain of grace