Nostalgia for Samsara II
Another way nostalgia for samsara shows up for me...
Bliss
During my initial awakening, there was a tremendous sense of bliss, clarity, passion, insights, gratitude, compassion, capacity for action and engagement and so on.
It seems that the bliss part of it comes from the sense of release, the liberation of going from a contracted state of exclusive identification with my human self to an awakening to the whole universe as consciousness and I as that consciousness - to no I anywhere in particular in all of this, and yet a profound sense of intimacy and of being home again.
Appreciation
And when the ground and selflessness popped this last fall, and also before and after that, all of that seems far more ordinary.
I guess I have familiarized myself with it enough for it to become ordinary.
So there is not really the same bliss associated with it anymore. There is just ordinariness. And I see that there is a huge liberation in this. Liberation from bliss, or rather from the attachment to bliss and from mistakenly associating bliss with awakening to ground and selflessness. Instead of bliss, there is rather a deep and gentle receptivity, appreciation and gratitude.
Nostalgia for bliss
Although this is clearly a liberation, there is also a certain nostalgia for the bliss. Not really for the bliss itself, but from having mistakenly associated the awakening so closely with bliss.
There is the sense of shouldn't there be bliss here along with the realization of selflessness? And then also the clear recognition that bliss too is just a part of the world of phenomena.
It comes and goes on its own, as everything else. The ground is free from bliss, as it is free from anything else. Everything is free to come and go within and as the ground.
Clouds come and go. Thoughts come and go. Human selves come and go. Planets, solar systems, galaxies and universes come and go. Any content come and go. And bliss come and go.
Labels: samsara