“Delight is a secret. And the secret is this…”

“Delight is a secret. And the secret is this: to grow quiet and listen; to stop thinking, stop moving, almost to stop breathing; to create inner stillness in which, like mice in a deserted house, capacities and awarenesses too wayward and too fugitive for everyday use may delicately emerge.

Oh, welcome them home! For these are the long lost children of the human mind. Give them close and loving attention, for they are weakened by centuries of neglect. In return they will open your eyes to a new world within the known world, they will take your hand, as children do, and bring you where life is always nascent, day always dawning. 

Suddenly and miraculously, as you walk home in the dark, you are aware of the insubstantial shimmering essence that lies within appearances; the air is filled with expectancy, alive with meaning: the stranger, gliding by in the lamp lit street, carries silently past you in the night the whole mystery of his life…..” Alan McGlashan 

I am so very grateful to all those who have left breadcrumbs like these. I sit here alone in silence, and most moments are characterised by a resistance to doing the above. A resistance to the silence and to slowing right down and entering the bliss. The mind runs rampant over me with one doubt after the next. It screams, “is this it, is this IT?!”.

Yes, this is it, this is what we are doing right now. We are getting real quiet, being, waiting, allowing, breathing. 

It feels like death! The mind says. And it is a type of death. I wanted to take this journey as far as I could possibly go, the truth at any price was the motto. And like TS Eliot says, “(a condition of complete simplicity) it costs not less than everything”.

So today I’m doing a lot of sitting still, lying down, making cups of tea, reading of the breadcrumb trails left by others.  Been on Jed McKenna’s forum and enjoying his tough love approach. Kind of wish I had a question to ask him. 

Emotionally it’s tough, manageable but the mind is having a seizure in the face of all this quietitude, and I’ve got to keep looking to the feelings arising and looking after them. “There there now, I hear you” I say. Soothing, allowing, soothing and allowing. 

Here is another little treasure. 

“So stay right here, you lucky people,

let go and be happy in the natural state.

Let your complicated life and everyday confusion alone

and out of quietude, doing nothing, watch the nature of mind.

This piece of advice is from the bottom of my heart:

fully engage in contemplation and understanding is born;

cherish nonattachment and delusion dissolves;

and forming no agenda at all reality dawns.

Whatever occurs, whatever it may be, that itself is the key,

and without stopping it or nourishing it, in an even flow,

freely resting, surrendering to ultimate contemplation,

in naked pristine purity we reach consummation.”

Longchempa