What Would It Be Like to Just Be Here? A Process Journal

What Would It Be Like to Just Be Here? A Process Journal

What would it be like to just be here? What would happen if I, just for a singular, very present moment let go of all of my constructed world-views and identifications and attended to what is always here, whether or not this I’s persona happens to have been noticing it?

The first thing I notice is the fear. I begin to remember and more deeply recognize is that all of my “I”s within this dualistic misinterpretation co-extensively arise with their own version of “Life” and the “World” and “Our life” and “Our World” and “My World.”

Once again I am touching the edge of relinquishing the assumed authority of my conditioned mind in favor of releasing into the living actuality of being beneath the fabricated mind of this world. I, like nearly all of us, have been living within a mind-made world of illusory separation and polarized duality constructed out of reifications. In this moment, I am considering turning attention from these habits and their premises and toward the undifferentiated openness at the core of being. As I consider these prospective futures, the intelligence of being says, “Go with the living now, as it is and let go into the space between thoughts.” And, the body screams, “Danger!,” and the gut’s mind feels fear. The lure of an abandoned free-fall turns quickly toward triage for the terror. And everything grinds to a halt.

So, how to regard this from within the openness and stay present? It seems so formidable.

I can only do what I know to do: I turn to short moments and I stop all thinking and notice what’s already here; I re-recognize the un-divided awareness of being. As they say in the Dzogchen lineages of the Nyingma, short moments of re-recognition of the clear, open inclusiveness of our actual being until the recognition becomes continuous and obvious in all situations and circumstances is the fastest path to fully awakened consciousness. This is my practice: short moments, many times – as often as I remember - until continuous and pervasive.

But I have digressed from my process: The energies that were roiling beneath the surface of conscious experience, broke through into noticed and interpreted felt-sense; as fear quickened an explanatory digression which, once again, diverted attention in to a dualistic concept of relationship in which my current version of “me” explaining to my rather undifferentiated version of “you’, who happens to be reading this, what I mean by a “short moment.” An important communication perhaps, but, in this moment, for me, it is an avoidant sleigh of attention, a step away from this moment on the edge the cliff. The conditioned organism balks at it’s painful interpretation of what it would mean to take that last step

Again, how do I stay attentively present with both the discomfort and apprehension and the yearning and the vision? How do I remain patient in and with the organism’s frightened interpretation of the world of my perception/experience while conscious as the inclusive and peaceful awareness/presence of being? Am I even capable in this moment of digesting this discomfort? Yes, no or maybe?

Perhaps I can take a moment, just to openly wonder, what would it be like to just be here? What would happen if I, just for this brief, now moment let go of all of my constructed world-views and identifications, all the things I perceive and believe are real in me and in this world – completely let go of all of that mind-made world and attentively notice what is always here, whether I have ever really noticed it in just this way before or not. Truly, what is this like when we have let go of thoughts and images for a moment, releasing into the non-verbal, un-conceived alert presence?

Wide-open, alert presence of the undifferentiated inclusiveness and aware of the particulars as they arise and pass for some moments. And then, focusing down into a self-other, or self-world reification and living, experiencing/perceiving from within the frame of an identity in duality. Then, more often than not, I am off and running.

Another explanatory diversion. My nervous system - my triune brain, visceral, somatic/relational, interpretive nervous system is like an enormous orchestra continuously tuning and playing innumerable riffs out of ear-shot. Hundreds of billions of instrument-neurons, with trillions of mutually resonant connections mostly practicing rehearsed neuronal collaborations which, when they breach the surface between conscious and unconscious, have formed into dualistic, conditioned interpretations of self, other and world; more of the same old same old. Neuronal-ly encoded habits of body, habits of relationship, habits of perception and interpretation – these neural networks of resonances harmonically entrain other neural nets until this composition breaches the surface of awareness, commanding attention as it takes center stage for a while and I have, once again, collapsed into living within a dualistic, reified field of representation and taken conceptual leave of the enveloping and infusing, living field of Is. This identification as a separate one living in duality lasts for as long as it lasts.

Then either, another self-similar representational field will replace it or it may be replaced by my developing neuronal habit of taking a short moment - releasing myself out of whatever construct I happen to have found myself in, releasing myself into the open, the clear boundless awareness of the present moment. In this latter case, the neuronal energies repattern themselves into a resonant harmonic of the awareness of being, just now, right here. This temporary stabilization of attention lasts as long as it lasts. At some point it is permanent and stops seeming to go away when the neuronal substrate of our attention finds something else engaging