light without, light within, one light

  I "sit" for at least 15 minutes a day, usually first thing in the morning right after drinking a green drink. I sit in a big wingback chair at the window of our bedroom and close my eyes. I let go of everything – images, thoughts, memories, events, the future – just being with awareness. Sometimes I begin with sensations – breathing in and out, the feel of the chair, subtle sounds coming from outside like birds, a train, distant highway traffic, or inside, like my husband's cough. If thoughts, images, or memories come to mind, I say to myself "I am one with that thought/image/memory." It has gotten easier to stay in that empty awareness since I first tried to meditate this way, without a recorded guide on YouTube. I heard a guru say that if you can sit for 15 minutes a day then in three months you will feel awakening. I started this regular practice soon after hearing that, 17 days ago, October 3rd. The good news is that the more I do it, the more often I have...

There's the freight train part of me that's ready to go places. Well, the freight train doesn't really work here, because I don't want to go along a track someone else has built. I'm done with streamlined institutions when it comes to spirituality. Maybe I'm more like the Tarot's Knight of Swords: When she sets her mind on something, she gets on her horse and nothing is going to stop her. She doesn't want to take it slow, or just let things happen. She goes after it, full speed, and is ready to engage everyone around her on her mission. My mind wants to understand. That's always been my thing. In relationships, politics, group dynamics. My English degree. I analyze and intellectualize. I could talk a topic to death (much to my husband's dismay at times). So when I was in Christianity, I loved the heady stuff of digging into texts, learning what the original Greek or Hebrew said, why was God so many different characters in the Bible, and how do we...

If I start with I am  maybe the words will come.  I was lying in the hammock -- October sun warm, elm branches curtaining half a circle around me, and I knew, deeply knew , that this  is It. This green leaf grace in light breeze. This blue sky ease. This effortless seeing. This connection with what is. Awareness. In just a month's time I've gone from despair, stress, depression, striving, to this . A month ago the longing was so intense it felt like it would rip the stitches out of every seam of me. For the life of me no matter how much I read and listened and "learned" about just being, just letting it happen, I kept seeing the bar this high . Enlightenment. Awakening. Direct experience with the God presence. Ultimate consciousness. All. Day. Long. It just isn't that easy to undo all the little buckles and ties that have dressed my mind. A lifetime of it, and hey, I'm 69. Just. But once you start unbuckling and untying you find out it really isn't that ha...