I like to call it zero. It’s sitting in zero. It’s sitting in Being. It’s so slow that it has stopped. And it has a fierce fidelity to what is authentically unfolding in the moment out of Being. It is like a fierce mama bear protective of the little things that poke their heads out in this quiet. It stands with them. It stands like a birthing mama guarding the little head as it crowns. It celebrates the purity and the newborn-ness. It says bow here. Do not add anything. Do not take anything away. Don’t run from it. Don’t pelt fruit at it. Here we stand with what’s being born in its tiny infancy, authentic and shyly showing itself, birthed from Being. No care for what it can be used for, where it’s going, what it means about you, me or someone else. It simply stands with that crowning without a name, without a use, standing with that moment because it’s precious, because it’s the Holy unfolding itself.
We seldom have felt someone standing here, before things get named, in a total abiding with the shoots of our unfolding as Being. We have forgotten it is possible. We zoom over our beauty. We blow past the subtle petals of our unfolding, and this holy birthing that’s happening all the time through us. No matter if the newborn bits are ensuring our growth or enlightenment or our doom, proof of our goodness or sure evidence of our cursedness — before all that, this moment right here and what emerges authentically is Holy.
In Being, we’re not manipulating anything. We’re not trying to go anywhere. We’re not trying to heal anything. We follow the thread of what’s alive and we behold it in reverent silence, even if every egoic hand wants to grasp it and turn it into something. “Does this mean I’m going somewhere? Am I doing it right? Am I there yet?” The Holy is shining and peeking its head out, now, like this. Shhhhhhhh.
We are not shown how to stay with the natural expression of unfolding through us, though we were born knowing it. As we grew up, no one saw it, no one reflected it, stood with it, protected it, had faith in it, or knew it was going somewhere good simply because it was. It was slapped, shocked, harshed upon, told it wasn’t enough, sped up, and turned around. We were left in concept-land, zooming over our actual life in our fighter plane, high up and away from this right here: our own organic unfolding. Now we’re stuck up here in our everyday minds with our will trying to build something out of concept that will never be as solid as what the Holy organically reveals.
We can stand in what emerges naturally from Being. We can slow down to the speed of Being, which is zero. It has nothing to show for itself. It’s simply a miracle as it is. Everything that is zero is true. Everything that has any kind of velocity inside is false and born of fear.
True movement is pure and inside it we are zero. It is Beingness flowing into Beingness and looks like movement but it’s empty. When we say nothing ever happens, it is because when we sit in zero, there is only zero and even what moves is still. At some point when you imbibe it a bit, you start to feel it as yourself. That fidelity starts to wake in you. The refusal to dance like a trained dog for anyone is born, even if the mind says that everyone is going to leave you and that you completely suck. In refusing to preempt the unfolding present, you stay true to the speed of Being. You don’t move unless Being moves, because you cannot leave that place and offer anything real, and you’re sick to death of manipulation and skipping over what’s actually, purely and humbly here.
Nobody can make you fall in love with your Being. Sadly, we think that there’s something out there that’s more important than our slow, unfolding Being. There isn’t. Just shiny, crappy mirages. To live from Being is to die in the fidelity of going nowhere and being nobody.
As soon as we add anything to this simple Being, we’re off trying to split ourselves apart. What a glorious feeling it is to see even for a moment that we so deeply belong, that we are so deeply goodness itself. Here’s our zero. Our pool, our wellspring, like a big vacuum, a big dark hole in the center of us that we formerly thought was our problem. It’s actually a portal to the Holy. And through that empty Being the Holy paints the world. There are few of us who are in utter fidelity to the tiny sprout-like movement of that vacuum. We’re too busy trying to get big, get good, get strong, get sophisticated, get safe. We have forgotten how to rest as zero and stand in what’s simple and authentic.
I had the utter good fortune in my life to be faced with a crossroads: I could find that little bubbling wellspring of authenticity, that ground of solid immovable Being, or I could kill myself. Because somehow the volume was turned up on the suffering enough that it was either be true or die from being driven crazy by the mind’s insanity. I was so disgusted and unable to live inside my little dog dance any more. It sounds virtuous, but it was simply survival, crawling onto the shore of the empty naked moment.
You get to stand with this one. This slowest, nothing-to-show-for-yourself one, this that is authentically here, that doesn’t feel like it’s enough. At first we’re terrified of zero–we’re terrified we’ll be no one, we’ll be nowhere, no one will love us, we’ll end up in a gutter, the train will go on without us. But below, behind, throughout and beyond that, there’s just this zero. And out of the fidelity to that Being, out of this magnificent black hole that we are, an inordinate amount of glory spills, and each movement is the poetry of being in motion, utterly empty.
We can stand in what emerges naturally from Being. We can slow down to the speed of Being, which is zero. It has nothing to show for itself. It’s simply a miracle as it is. Everything that is zero is true. Everything that has any kind of velocity inside is false and born of fear.
True movement is pure and inside it we are zero. It is Beingness flowing into Beingness and looks like movement but it’s empty. When we say nothing ever happens, it is because when we sit in zero, there is only zero and even what moves is still. At some point when you imbibe it a bit, you start to feel it as yourself. That fidelity starts to wake in you. The refusal to dance like a trained dog for anyone is born, even if the mind says that everyone is going to leave you and that you completely suck. In refusing to preempt the unfolding present, you stay true to the speed of Being. You don’t move unless Being moves, because you cannot leave that place and offer anything real, and you’re sick to death of manipulation and skipping over what’s actually, purely and humbly here.
Nobody can make you fall in love with your Being. Sadly, we think that there’s something out there that’s more important than our slow, unfolding Being. There isn’t. Just shiny, crappy mirages. To live from Being is to die in the fidelity of going nowhere and being nobody.
I had the utter good fortune in my life to be faced with a crossroads: I could find that little bubbling wellspring of authenticity, that ground of solid immovable Being, or I could kill myself. Because somehow the volume was turned up on the suffering enough that it was either be true or die from being driven crazy by the mind’s insanity. I was so disgusted and unable to live inside my little dog dance any more. It sounds virtuous, but it was simply survival, crawling onto the shore of the empty naked moment.
You get to stand with this one. This slowest, nothing-to-show-for-yourself one, this that is authentically here, that doesn’t feel like it’s enough. At first we’re terrified of zero–we’re terrified we’ll be no one, we’ll be nowhere, no one will love us, we’ll end up in a gutter, the train will go on without us. But below, behind, throughout and beyond that, there’s just this zero. And out of the fidelity to that Being, out of this magnificent black hole that we are, an inordinate amount of glory spills, and each movement is the poetry of being in motion, utterly empty.
