Kaylee and Kevin

Yesterday, I received a call late in the morning.  I knew immediately before she said anything, by the sound of my mother’s voice that she was trying to control her sobs. Finally, garnering a shred of composure she choked out the message that two of my niece’s young children had been killed in an automobile accident a few hours before.  Apparently the car they were riding in was broadsided by a semi.

In the moment my mother conveyed the news, there was a jolt that ran through my body, and my solar plexus contracted as from a blow.  The images that arose were of the two little children lying dead in the wreckage; my niece, and her husband paralyzed with grief; my elderly mother alone, in shock; and the surviving little boy lying hurt in hospital. 

I watched as a hollow feeling radiated out from the center of my body, as I continued to listen to what my mother knew about the accident and the family gathering at the hospital in far away North Dakota.

After the call, I stayed with the observation of thought and feeling as it continued to arise and move through mind and body.  Surprisingly, I noticed that it was becoming an increasingly difficult effort to attach feeling to thought, and thought to feeling. 

I observed that arising simultaneously with the difficulty attaching was a nudging, as if from some distant part of myself, for me to suffer. It seemed to be chiding me for the sense of quiet stillness that was residing beneath conscious thought & physical sensation.  "After all", it seemed to say as it became conscious, “isn’t suffering a sign of love, compassion, and empathy for the suffering of my relatives.  And this ‘quiet stillness’ is just shock or denial, isn’t it?”

Reflexively the inquiry into the judgment of the stillness began…”Is it true that suffering would be proof of love, compassion, and empathy?  Is it true that suffering would be a validation of the children's lives?  This feeling of peace is false…a denial of the reality of a tragedy…is it true?”

The inquiry followed along these lines for some time until the question…”They are dead, is it true?” arose.  Suddenly, in a flash, the chiding voice disintegrated leaving in its wake an expansive awareness.

As the process continues this morning, I find that nowhere is there a place to ‘hang’ a hat of meaning.  I watch as fleeting thought and feeling move about without finding a place to rest.  What is the necessity of the moment?  Simply this.

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Who was born?

Today is the anniversary of the day I heard I was born.  Why do I phrase it that way? Well, when I investigate what I had always thought to be true, that I am so and so, and was born on such and such a date, I cannot truly say that it happened.  I don’t remember it, and even if I did, would that make it so?  The only proof I’ve had is word of mouth.  My mother says she was there and it happened.  But even when she utters those words, are they not based on a memory…albeit a pretty old one? Wouldn’t at this moment every thought be from memory?  In this moment, can I know mentally anything that isn’t past or future related? 

What’s it to me that “I was born”? What happens when I go from right here to there (into the past) with that thought? Where am ‘I,’ then?  Perhaps I go into a thought of the future, and imagine that if I was born I will surely die.  What happens to this present moment, when THAT thought intrudes upon it?

The beauty of inquiry is that one can travel into the depths leaving behind the many carcasses of  identity, shedding them like pieces of clothing, as who I think myself to be moves inward toward the naked truth.  Without these clothes, these carcasses of identity, who am I?  Do ‘I’ exist at all?  Understandably this can be quite a terrifying experiment, because all we think we are or have, is our existence as this person.

Without an ‘I’ (as a person) to identify with, do I exist?  There isn’t an answer to this question.  It is a question that collapses in on itself with inquiry.  And in the pure thoughtless moment that arises, there is only clear unadulterated reality.  But without investigation this is just another story told, to be believed…or not.  Each of us, if we are inclined to travel this road of inquiry, do so alone…perhaps inspired by the words and experience of our teachers, but alone just the same.

I am not aware of living in that awareness, except in a moment.  But it has shown me that it is, regardless of whether I am ‘aware’ of it or not.  It is not dependent on my recognition of its existence.  It is a constant.  It is my true nature.  It is always present, waiting to be ‘known.’