Awakening sense

fractured and dysfunctional

Doesn't giving priority to the practice of remembrance split our attention and make us less functional?

But our attention is already fractured and dysfunctional. If anything, remembrance would create a greater integration. Then we wouldn't use all of our emotional juice and mental energy to stay glued to our usual self.

So less glue means the possibility of more movement, of transformation.

Remembrance itself is transformative. But a by-product would be less magnification of problems and conflicts we mass produce and that constantly occupy our imagination. It means opening the doors and windows of our mind to let things air out, to ignite heart's longing for what lies beyond self's narrow boundaries.

Which is?

Which is yet to be discovered. Ego-mind can't have all the answers, can't even sincerely pose real questions.

Then what recourse is left?

What's left is our inner compass, our inner guidance system based on an intuitive recognition.

A recognition of what?

Of knowing that we aren't who or what we think we are, and that what that is can only truly be realized when the urge to awaken pulls us past ourselves.

That's quite an amazing maze of words.

So many words to point to what can't be described.

And sometimes it takes less words.

Yes, less as in paradox or, better yet, silence.

gathering steam

I have heard it said the universe is ultimately a safe place. But overall seems fairly dangerous to me...

Danger and conflict abound in our world experience, but ultimately, meaning spiritually, meaning in the experience of non-dual oneness, everything is OK, as it should be; anything other than that can be taken as a labor of love.

So ego-mind can be insecure while our deeper self experiences otherwise.

Ego-mind has an obstinate defensiveness. With its inbuilt insecurity that's to be expected.

And the basis of that insecurity is...

Is based upon its unconscious knowing of its own actual nothingness.

Even as we can have an intuitive recognition of our actual everythingness in the experience of Self?

Even as. That's what bridges the gap, what connects where we seem to be to where we can be. That recognition becomes a less abstract and more concrete sensation or sense of self as our transitional ego gathers steam.

signs and wonders

What's beyond signs and wonders,
Beyond those first intoxicating glances?

What goes beyond the lure of initial bedazzlement,
Could it be a call to some new sobriety?

What path might our inner knowing reveal,
Leading beyond what we take ourselves to be?

Isn't all this in the hands of the Changeless One,
Always adapting to our changeable states?

wiggle room

Let's return to the perennial question of free will...

Maybe the answer is we're compelled to serve the will to be free.

If serving is predetermined, where's the room for being self-determined?

The idea is that a fully conditioned mind is a prerequisite for real freedom.

Sounds very contradictory, even unlikely.

Right, but consider a sliding scale that at some points has some wiggle room for choices.

But choices from among a limited number of already predetermined alternatives?

Could be, but even that can count. And let's remember that rays of grace and mercy can seep through at times.

So some choices could contribute to less jail time for good behavior.

Less entrapment in ego-mind's folds.