We sit together in the late day, as the sun is passing. We are at rest, and there is a shared heartbeat between us. A shared recognition of consciousness in our eyes. We have relaxed into what is fundamental to our being: the harmonizing field of the heart, the coherence of the present, the surrender of distraction and self- consciousness. Absent our self-centered mental worlds, awareness is simply a light that allows this moment's own transparency to energy and form and empti- ness; to the sighing of the sunset fields. And to the undefined reality of You and I awake to each other; which is only the universe's latest recognition and celebration of itself.

Yet how often are we locked into our thoughts of past and future, near and far, theory and explanation, fears and plans; thoughts of he said/she said, thoughts of better and worse, thoughts of self, thoughts of previous thoughts.? What do they have in common? They are all thoughts. They are all an imaginary film in which I live most of my life, in which awareness spends its time like a lost child in some- one else's movie, beholden to the script.

When awareness returns to itself, rests in its own luminous nature and its home in emptiness, reality is wide open, Now the passing day turns from the early gloaming, the gentle and still sparkling wash of post sunset pinks and peacocks and gold-lined grays; and the blue hour begins, slowly darkening into purple and black. But there is nothing fixed, nothing solid, here. There is awareness. This wash of color and form, these transformations of the air, are the transparent shades of an infinite moment; the darkening woods are a lover of infinite space and depth. Now there is a screech, now a rustle. The single note of a bird -- or the wind chime -- or a distant car. Or a heartbeat. Or of love recognizing itself once again.

Reality begins with this moment of awareness. Where else will it arise? Will it be the reality of the film or the reality of open sky and deep woods; the real- ity of the dream images or the reality of empty awareness; the reality that beckons newly and infinitely to us or the reality that is already prescribed? It begins here, in the moment of shadows, and in the sunrise.

When awareness recognizes and relaxes in its own openness, it illuminates all arising content without grasping or labeling, without pushing it away. When awareness does not recognize its own nature, its own openness, it is instead hypno- tized by the arising content. That is like the tug of the cart pulling the horse: when awareness identifies with all the random or pre-conditioned contents, thoughts, representations, and projections of the mind that every moment drag us, and structure our experience in fixed ways. We may believe whatever is on the "tele- vision," in which even the present moment is seen through the screen of our mental representation.

This latter is the world as we routinely know it -- with our experience pre- scribed for us. This is called normal. It is is our default, or "automatic," setting. We may even say it is our "sleep" setting. However, if we are able to withdraw our attention from the screen, we may re-allow a receptive openness to the field of experience right now, neither pre-conceived nor pre-judged. This choice often re- quires a conscious "manual setting." This openness of attention is available to any of us any time, and may be practiced.

This faculty of openness obviously serves us in allowing a more present, spontaneous, and creative response to our everyday experience and to each other.

It is also the beginning of what we may call contemplative openness; when the awareness is allowed to remain in a state of relaxed and receptive presence. It is not a static presence, but one which has an active and genuine interest in under- standing -- opening to -- the truth of things; an interest which does not enlist the mind's cleverness or projections. Rather it relies on a deeper organ of listening, or receptive awareness. Then, this moment emerges as an infinite sea of possibility and revelation that opens itself to us in accordance with our availability; that is, in accordance with our own willingness and capacity to open to it. It will disrobe for us layer by layer to reveal its naked body and its heart -- insofar as we gradually disrobe from our layers of mental preoccupation and conditioning.

Here we have the invitation and the opportunity to drop through many lay- ers of externality, separation, projection, and identification with our personally and culturally inherited ways of defining reality. It is simply an intent and sincere lis- tening into the heart of this moment. This is both the cultivated field of our open- ness, and, we might say, the growing "static electricity," in which the lightning of revelation, of sudden illumination, may strike. That is how it works. And then we know something directly about the intimate nature of reality -- however paradoxi- cal to consensus reality -- with an authority and confidence that all the other mental faculties are not capable of.

It is naturally difficult to make the small sustained choices of the attention that enable us over time to rest in that open field. Our attention has been trained -- like a kidnap victim -- to identify with its mental captors, and won't walk out the front door. Or -- to reverse the image -- imagine you are standing in the doorway of a treasure house -- which is the spacious home of your true being. Outside there is a blaring of bullhorns and a political parade is passing by, complete with clowns, music, special interest floats and dancing animals. Finally comes the politician on his loudspeaker, promising you anything and asking for your vote. You can't help but be engaged by all that activity. Your attention remains outside.

That parade represents all the contents of your mind. That politician is all the ways your mind has learned to describe, organize, and judge reality. It will promise you anything -- pleasure, freedom, approval -- and assure you it is your only hope, if you will just stick with it. It also gives you endless content for your attention. And it has endless apps to make this easier. That parade of the mind is constant, and our loyalty to its activity and projections is habitual. Consequently, even the present moment of experience is largely seen through its blare and glare.

Alternately, starting at this same moment of experience -- the same door- way -- your attention leaves the parade and turns back into the open space of your home. This is sometimes referred to as "looking within;" but the "within" is not a closed off place. It is not inside you, or inside your mind. Rather, it simply means looking within -- or opening to -- the nature of this moment, and the spacious nature of your own awareness, before the mind gets its hands on it.

The depth and fullness of the world lies in what we do not routinely see or feel, and have forgotten. But this knowing is not only about the physical form and texture of things – it is a seeing deeply into, and through, the world of appearances itself, to palpate the living flesh beneath the skin of our projections and concepts. It is like palpating the warm flesh of non-duality through the cold skin of separate- ness. It is a relaxation in awareness. It is the receptive attention that allows the more holistic truth of this moment to reveal itself to our deeper organ of knowing. We may truly call it our "home," because we can only be truly at home in this

moment, and in this space, of being. And we may call it a treasure house because the treasures of being are revealed here in this space of receptive knowing.

It is naturally easier for our active and projective mind to be drawn to the outside activity, to the parade. After all, the parade offers so many things to focus on. Whereas at home, there appears to be nothing -- only openness, or emptiness. It is only when the mind comes to discover that its own true nature is openness that the resting in openness becomes easy and pleasurable. But in contemplative open- ness, we can directly experience the realm of awareness and its content without our preconceptions or assumptions. In that place of openness, even the categories of self and other cease to arise. Even the categories of everything or nothing may cease to arise. And certainly the mind's projections and reactions to the various contents of awareness cease to arise. Hence we begin to experience one harmon- ious presence in which awareness and its contents rest together as one luminous space that is not otherwise divided or defined. Awareness may relax and open to its field of experience until its inherent and interpenetrating love and unity is revealed.

This is the context in which the shifts of experience described in this book have occurred. They may happen spontaneously, as many people have testified, apart from any formal or deliberate practice. The "shift" cannot be contrived or "accomplished" by anyone. It arises as a slip, an accident in consciousness, in a moment when our separative scaffolding can no longer be sustained. But, as it has been said, meditation -- contemplative openness -- makes us more accident prone.

Although my own tendencies, and ongoing practice from an early age, predisposed my availability to the experiences that I will recount and comment on in this book, they are not the province of one person as opposed to another. They constitute the greater landscape, or context, of all the other personal landscapes we each choose to become absorbed in; and that greater landscape becomes apparent only as we relax our preoccupation with our manufactured landscapes for a while.

I think of when I was a boy and would travel with my parents on long camping trips up through New England, into the maritime provinces of Canada and elsewhere. As we traveled through this countryside, my parents would make con- tinual comments on how beautiful the landscape was. But my brother and I were surviving these long car trips by being buried in comic books in the back seat . My parents would express dismay that we were not enjoying what was outside the car window. But we had more compelling and stimulating landscapes for our attention -- the landscape of comic books. I can remember glimpses of the countryside fleeting by, but I did not choose -- I was not naturally ready -- to make it part of my story. Yet the actual landscape was always equally there for me; and, of course, I later came to love it. The landscape I describe herein is also always fleeting by for all of us, though the prevailing landscapes of the mind are usually too compelling.

But that landscape will be there for each of us when all the other land- scapes are gone. It is what we are.

Some of the experiences I have recorded so far were major, dramatic, or defining shifts of experience. Some, like the next, arose quietly and smoothly as just an ordinary moment of revelation, as natural as the next breath. Just an occasional moment in which reality pats us on the head and says, "Good dog." I am sharing the driving with my daughter as we head north to visit friends in Montreal. On this occasion, my daughter is at the wheel, and I in the passenger seat. It is an ordinary car moment: chatting of this and that, sharing our love for Leonard Cohen, joking, gazing at the roadway. I am looking downward a moment when something begins flooding into awareness more essential than the external visual screen.

I find myself suddenly gazing into the "river of being" -- all existence just that. It is as if I am gazing into my own face in the river, but the face that is gazing back is "all-inclusive being itself." Here, in the car, eyes cast down -- or somewhat down -- I am totally aware of where I am, but gazing eye to eye with the hologram of being itself; a river whose only dimension is totality; and yet, "personally" gazing back as me and, like a mirror, showing all things looking out from me.

In a poem subsequently written about this occasion,* I wrote: "When I first saw my face reflected in that river, I saw all things looking out from that one face. And I saw that the river had never left its source." This captured the essential points: that I, who is a shimmer of the river-of-all-being, saw the river-of-all-being reflected back. I was not just "a self." I was everything else. And that river -- dynamic and creative by nature -- has never left its source. That river, however dynamic and abundant with the life of the whole, has never left home! It is ever the abiding source also expressing as active river, with absolutely no separation. And, it is our own intimate reflection; our own true face. And, we have never left home! "We are all comrades, then" I wrote, "on a hillside in spring; dancing at a festival from which no one has ever been excluded; and no one has ever left."

What a balm to our long-searching hearts. To our wandering bereft in the desert of our perceived exile. The daily reflections of the world, and of our partici- pation in it, all contribute to a reflected image of a separated self, which screens our perception of existence. But when the mental structures of separate self sud- denly relax -- for whatever reason -- when we are seeing into that non-dual mirror, there is no separate self seeing its reflection; but only reality reflecting its own wholeness, shaking hands with itself, experiencing from either side of the mirror, with all the warmth of a personalness that is not personal, the generous fulfillment of its own being. We are that.

Spring Morning

Dampness rises from the morning earth.
Smoke from the fire.
The body growls a bit and sends out its warmth too. Rain in the air. The trees know everything.
Thoughts, feelings: it's all snow melt.
This growling is a subterranean hum. Let's growl along. Something complete is moving as the earth moves. Resting on our foundation, the universe is accomplished. Heart recognizing heart. The rest is artifact.
Didn't we pass this way a million years from now?
I'm gonna let this timeless buggy take us home;
stick with what's true; sing with the clacking wheels. Simple opportunity is given every day --
which we cast out with the morning sink water.
Trying to manage the world by thought is

like trying to balance a cup atop a gushing fountain; or to operate the sunrise from a smartphone.
I think I'll let the day play me for a fool.
Be just as stupid as this rainfall.

Give me a ring, and we'll walk together.