Within the Stream of Thought, Looking Out from Life

5-8-15  At Gimme Coffee

How easy it is to feel the multiplicity of Life.

The music plays, sounds of doors closing behind me, people walk by – I see only legs as I look down at my writing.  Outside the sun shines as cars pass, bicyclists ride, a conversation hums in the other room.

Have we learned to block all of this out in order to focus on our individual concerns? Is this focus the reason for our isolation?  Of course, we can reach out to the other, but when I see the density of the whole interaction, the multiplicity of relationship, inter-being as Thich Nat Hanh calls it, then I wonder why we are lonely when we are so in the middle of it.

What form of relationship are we after? Most everyday conversation is unsatisfying. We tell little, ask little. We stay defended and without curiosity about the other’s worldview. Catching up on the latest events and becomings, but incapable of really sharing our intimate thoughts, fears, joys.

I am of course the worst offender of this. Always ready to leave in order to avoid more meaningless chitchat.  And yet what would I really want to say?

Sometimes I feel the emotion come up in a conversation – as I say what I have experienced.  In those moments I know I am hungry to tell my thoughts to someone else. There is an underground storage of significant observations and wisdom to share.  And yet it may be one-sided. The receiver may not be ready, or interested.  So there is no insisting or guarantee of value to the other.

The one thing that would deliver me from this neediness of sharing intimate significant experience would be to merge with what is, to feel profoundly connected, one with everything that is perceived and to have the individual self, dissolve its personal meaning, but at the same time to feel the extended self.

I do have those realizations of looking out from Life. I can’t be separate from something I am looking out of.  Therefore I must be that which is prior and larger… I haven’t adequate words. When I look at someone else I see body and eyes looking. When I look, I am looking out of the aliveness, out of Life itself.  I am Life itself – no separation is possible. And although I know that this body, this being, may move around the physical world, it also may not take itself out of the environment of Life.  It is always seeing from the base –one with being- one with Life.

A minute ago I became aware of the whole coffee shop buzzing, almost roaring with conversation.  I had withdrawn into my private space of thought – hearing only my words as I wrote.  The whole world could have disappeared, and I would have been unaware – lost in thought, lost in personal meaning.

(Image: Within the Stream of Thought)