The Hand

Egoic Mind: Why is it that the pain brings on such feelings of fear and helplessness?  It makes me feel as if I am losing my mind.

GNANI: Who is it that fears loosing the mind?  Can you watch it?

Egoic Mind: Me.  It feels like me.  This being.  This body.

GNANI: The body doesn’t care …. It loses the mind willingly every night and welcomes the chance to do so.

Egoic Mind: It’s the only ‘me’ that I know.  It remembers every step of my childhood and is terrified of the future.  It’s ME.

GNANI: The egoic mind is a simple collection of memories and patterned responses.  Little more than a preprogrammed video game.  Is that ‘you’?

Egoic Mind: Stuck inside the constraints of my programming?  YES.  That’s me.

GNANI: I AM.  The taste of this vast emptiness is here too.  You — egoic mind — can not deny that.  I AM … Beyond your small stories and captive fear.  EMPTY and peaceful.  Bliss.

Egoic Mind: I can taste that.  But the fear is still mounting.

GNANI: Let both grow!  See WHO is left standing after the swell.

Egoic Mind: I will go insane!

GNANI: GO!!  Let nothing hold you back.  Sanity has gotten you nowhere!  BE AFRAID.  BE  insane.  BE.  The stillness will not go away … Even in the presence of a tidal wave of fear.  Let it capsize over you and see WHO is left standing.

Egoic Mind: I can’t.

GNANI: No bother.  YOU needn’t.  Breathe.  Watch.  That is what YOU were designed to do.  There is no bravado to muster.  No courage to summon.  BE.  BREATHE.  WATCH.

Egoic Mind: Wave upon wave assaults me.  I feel sharp pains in my back.

GNANI: YOU are experiencing sharp pains.  Who is this YOU?  Don’t answer!  Just FEEL the question.

Egoic Mind: This isn’t the non-dual teaching …. However my experience is that there is THAT which seems to witness/experience the pain.  AND there is that which interprets the pain and becomes frightened.

There is THAT which feels the hot flush and apperceives the fuzzy thinking.  Then there is that which interprets these sensations as danger and at once the alarm is pressed.

GNANI: WHO presses the alarm?

Egoic Mind: That second aspect that interprets.

GNANI: WHO is that?  And WHO was the one that just experienced the sensation or event?

Egoic Mind: Perhaps one is God and one is this me.

GNANI: Did You not EXPERIENCE the feelings?  Before the interpretation, was this non-judging witness not YOU?!  Did YOU experience the bliss and emptiness even inside the pit of fire?!!

Egoic Mind: Yes.  I experienced the nirvana and samsara simultaneously.

GNANI: Simultaneously!  BOTH as ONE.  Could it even be possible to have only half and not the whole?  (The Holy)  Where would the witness go?

Egoic Mind: I certainly experience nirvana without the burnt taste of fear at times.

GNANI: Fear is transient and for all purposes irrelevant (as well as the key) in those moments you can recall the satori experience when fear was not present, was there a presence of desire, clinging or hope for the final understanding?

Egoic Mind: At times, yes the egoic mind is present to the experience of nirvana and wants to claim it for its own betterment.  But I do believe there are times when just the I AM existed and no egoic mind — at least for brief times.  And!  I have experienced the taste of hell in complete separation from the God presence.  So each seems to exist independently.

GNANI: Not true!  When the primitive brain gets trapped in the circle of suffering, is there not an awareness of God’s absence?  Something apperceives a sense of separation because it KNOWS that at the moment it is only looking at one side of the coin.  Identification with one side does not mean the other side is non-existent.  The mere awareness that there is always something MORE than the fear-trap is proof that YOU are not that fear.

Egoic Mind: I am confused now.

GNANI: I AM is not confused.  The egoic mind feigns ignorance and wants to change the question when it feels itself losing ground.  But keep the focus on the enquiry.  WHO is having the experience?

Egoic Mind: The internal surge has ended.  The heat dissipates and I feel a new sense of chill on the air.  My focus wants to turn away, get something to eat, pick up a book or close my eyes and sleep.

GNANI: The egoic mind wants to look away.  Be earnest in the enquiry.  WHO is having this experience?  Without the face of fear in this moment, what is present?

Egoic Mind: A soft hum in my ears.  Water gurgles from the aquarium.  Tweets and coos from finches and doves outside my window.  This is insane.  The mind is still fuzzy but no one now minds.  The previous high state of alert has been put on hold.

STILL the egoic mind wants to claim this, wants a recipe to follow so that it can taste this again and again.

What was the question?

GNANI: WHO is having this experience?

Egoic Mind: There is only all of experience.  Devoid of a WHO.  At the same time the scent of a ‘me’ wafts through the space.

‘Go insane’ it whispers in remembrance of the instruction.  Yet now there seems nowhere to go.

Why can’t enlightenment follow on the heels of such a deep teaching?

GNANI: WHO seeks enlightenment?

Egoic Mind: Me!  That which remembers every step of my childhood and is terrified of the future.  And that at once recognizes that ‘it’ will never become enlightened because ‘it’ is only one aspect of the whole (The Holy) which is already awake.

It is like the hand wanting to become The Body.  It twitters it’s fingers and clentches it’s fist.  Touching everything.  Grasping for anything.  Searching fruitlessly to Become the body.  Not knowing that It IS already the body — that as Hand it IS Body.  But at the same time it can only ever be hand.

Simple.  Absurd as well.  Existential perhaps.

A disembodied hand looking to become The Body.  Creepy.

GNANI: Insane?

Egoic Mind: The stuff horror movies are made of.

GNANI: WHO is watching the horror movie?

Egoic Mind: The one handed man eating the popcorn?

GNANI: I AM.

Egoic Mind: In this small moment of stillness, peace and space … I KNOW.