everything feels false
mind numbing isolation
I am reminded that the process of unlearning has a price
the soft jungle floor still slides beneath my feet I am groundless

I feel like the earth kept sailing through space and left me where I was

In the cold silence of oblivion I abide

Seems the conventional wisdom speaks of the difficulty of seeking enlightenment in the "real world".   Conventional wisdom holds one must go off to India or China and sit on a mountainside to "find" enlightenment. The 9 to 5 grind with mortgages and car payments are all thought to act as additional obstacles.

My recent sense seems  to be running counter to this.  The countless pin-pricks of reality may serve each as a tiny gate.  The steady flow of information from the illusory word is the "bread of life" and when I surrender enough to "become the inquiry" instead of "do the inquiry" it becomes natural.  This urge to just allow it to happen without judgment, is itself  another tiny gate.  At the storm of our suffering I am beginning to feel the unborn flow. If I am cloistered away at a monastery and cut off from the tangible texture of life, I may never see another gate again.

We all pass through these gates that is for sure. But if we fail to see them they can't  serve as a tiny transitional step.  Each gate is one step in the death march of my false self. The long walk to the only type of death that will make room for re-birth.  I am vigilantly scanning the horizon for the next opportunity to surrender to the flow of life. Stopping to notice all these tiny gates along the way.

Seems to me when we are young children we are drawn to a simple self. Unconcerned with outside forces and perceptions we flow through life with eternal wisdom.  Our conditioning gives birth to ego. Must of us live every moment of our fearful lives with the ego as the soloist in our concert.

As many teachers suggests, the spiritual search (or any inquiry) launches our craftiest adversary. The Super Ego, The judger of all things spiritual. The labeler of the good and bad of our search.  The one that compares our beliefs to all others.  The false spiritual self that  feels superior and is also crushed with the guilt of constant self judgment.

Someplace behind both of these, I sense, the non-self. The hum of oblivion. The sense of absence of me and it is a nothing that was always there. This unborn stream is aways flowing. Mostly underground. It worries not about "where I am" in my journey. It knows that no return to the silence is necessary, since it has been behind everything in my life.

A Dynamic has appeared between

1. Ego

2. Super Ego

3. The silent non-self

 The super ego (the force responsible for the need to even write a blog or have a web site) will masquerade I am sure for some time as #3, but its constant need for upkeep reveals its' charade. The silent non-self laughs waiting for super ego to melt away.

Does it matter anymore?