I am over and over struck by how the realization of selflessness - as it appears in my very limited experience of it - is just completely neutral. It is really a void. Empty of characteristics.

It is just the Ground from, within and as everything appears. It has no color, no sound, no texture, no qualities, no characteristics.

Just completely neutral.

And it has to be, to allow everything to unfold - it has to be independent and beyond any and all polarities, to allow for and manifest as any and all polarities. There is no other way, it seems.

There is a great beauty in this, in the simplicity and clarity of it. Yet, it is also a little puzzling and even disappointing. Is this really what they all talk about? Is it this that is the "goal" is so many traditions? It seems so simple. So obvious. So much like what has always been here. It is the eternal present - that which always is, that in which time and space unfolds. Simply.

And as we become more familiar with this complete neutrality, we also see more clearly that it allows everything - it really does allow everything, it is beyond and includes all polarities, all there is in the world of phenomena. Nothing is excluded. Not even the temporary identity as only a segment of all this. That too is allowed, as is the awakening to the Ground, as the Ground, as that in which this all unfolds, as everything unfolding in the present.

Nothing is lost. Nothing is left out.

Again, as we become more familiar with this, we see that it appeared initially that something was left out. In the awakening to and as the Ground and all phenomena unfolding as the Ground, it seemed that an exclusive identification is left out. I am this Ground, although there is not really any I here either, as there is no Other. There are no positions, no viewpoints, nothing fixed. Then, we see that even this is included. Even an exclusive identification is included, both in how this exclusive identification unfolds in others, and even in ourselves. We rehumanize, deepen into our humanity, into being no different from anyone else - not only as Ground but also as human, as a limited human being, flawed, stumbling, stuck, maturing, developing.

First, there is an exclusive identity with a segment of all that is - typically as a human being.

Then, an awakening as Ground.

Then, as Ground manifesting as the infinite world of phenomena, always unfolding within this eternal present.

Then, even as the limited, the deeply human. Coming back full circle, but now within the context of selflessness.

Labels: ground awakening, realized selflessness