Ellen Davis: Breathing Eternity Waves Into Time, Part One

Being is the beginning of becoming, and the middle and each moment along the way.
Being one in the dance, there is only one movement: now.
The Divine as us through mulitplicity and diversity is Becoming in time and Being in eternity.
You are breathing eternity waves into time, beingness waves into becoming.
Gratitude.

The footprints we leave, danced in that awareness, change the face of the earth, as all footprints do. Yet these create a path toward the freedom that is our birthright and the freedom from which they come.

As we know ourselves in the fullness of this light, all tendencies of separation and disconnection that have been born from forgetting or not knowing dissolve. The discipline to that service is a dance enabling an integrating force and undivided awareness through manifestation.

Time is eternity's medium to realize itself.
Process is its dance and delight.
Where does the circle begin or end?
There is only one movement: now --
Yet, each second that passes, nothing is the same.

Permanence and Impermanence

The appearance of permanence and all that strives toward it in manifestation is a reflection of what we essentially realize as the changeless brahman. Paradoxically, the ever-present immutable, in becoming form, becomes impermanent. Archetypally speaking, the unchangeable being-ness where Shiva and the immutable live, resting in its undifferentiated nature, become the pole to the fluidity of Spirit, the ever-changing Shakti.

In spirit's movement towards itself in form,
the apparent permanence of matter is in truth impermanent.
In spirit's movement within the awareness of its empty formless nature,
it is impermanent, fluid, and always changing in appearance,
and in truth permanent, changeless, Brahman.

Facing the conditions of life, with an awareness that is prior to those conditions, informs a relaxed, balanced and integral experience of manifestation. Realizing akshara purusha (the immutable soul) and kshara purusha (the mutable soul) as not two while also breathing in awareness of their distinctions -- and realizing the immutable soul that always stands behind and through the mutable, changeable soul -- is part and parcel of an undivided awareness. Becoming is the matrix through which Being realizes itself, and vice versa. In seeing this we can see the inherency of each in the other, and the inherency of sat (being), chit (consciousnes), and ananda (essential love and bliss), in each other. This awareness informs a more integral experience of manifestation.

I have thought it ironic that the desire for permanence, expressed through the procreative "urge to merge," the desire to own, or the resistance to change, for example, is a sometimes distorted expression of what I intuit we sense of the unchanging brahman and our desire to rest in that awareness. At an essential level, the seeds of the will to do that is the divine purusha actualizing itself through the divine prakiti. Yet, without realizing it is that moving toward its self experience and realization, the more that we resist change, hold on and get attached, the more we concretize our illusions of separation, and the more we identify with the outcomes of impermanence. That which never "changes," unconditioned self, our original face, the immutable ground of being, is utterly fluid in manifestation and realizes that there is nothing to hold on to and no one that needs to hold on.

Isn't it funny that the more we strive for permanence and feed our attachments to that, the more temporally bound we become where we are faced with impermanence and the mortalities of life in its constant changing? And the more that we allow flow, change and surrender to the unknown mysteries, the more we touch the eternal unchanging ground of being?

Perhaps at the most causal levels or in the most innocent sense, the striving for permanence is spirit's unchanging, immutable nature seeking to recognize itself in form. When there is an identification with a separated self-sense, or the contraction that is the self-referencing through differentiation, separation and resistance, it concretizes a sense of impermanence. When there is insecurity with the unknown and sense of this separation, we try and make what is impermanent and illusory something permanent. We are forever trying to create an insurance polity that will guarantee the quality of our next moment, the life of our next moment, our next moment... There is never the next moment. There is only now.

In the quest for happiness
most try to tame impermanence
so that it becomes permanent.
This is like an ocean wave trying to
stop itself and all of the other waves around it from cresting.
It is time trying to freeze itself.
Be the ocean wave and watch the waves
arise and fall within you

In part two I will discuss the notions of sudden vs. gradual awakening and some of the pitfalls in a goal-oriented apporach to awakening that mythologizes and objectifies enlightenment. Please feel free to enter into discussion and leave comments. I will reply here.

For more by Ellen Davis, click here.

For more on the spirit, click here.

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