Christmas Arises.

The seeming freshness, the newness that happens upon apparent awakening (just the little awakening, the one that appears to happen in time each morning) lasted a little longer "today". I guess it's best to drop the pedantic semantics, or else I'd drop "seeming" or "apparent" into speech five times a sentence. Putting together the personal identity took longer, "today is Christmas" actually arising before "I am me." And in that absolute loss of self, the vastness of existence is more evident. Self arising, all the thoughts, the feelings, lying in bed, putting on my lounging-around-the-house clothes, all of that is what is as well, not some flaw or imperfection in awareness. It is what it is. I was at our usual Christmas Eve neighbourhood party last night and was told by a fellow mum that she noticed she has certain energies, and is taking a class in spiritual healing. We danced around the ineffable topic of awakening, or whatever the correct moniker is today. There is not exactly some vast sea change of separate individuals dying like flies all around, but perhaps this perception isn't as elusive as it used to be. Back in the day when it happened to someone, and they tried to talk about it, they were crowned the Messiah or the Prophet or the Buddha and vast numbers of apparent individuals tried to organise the absolute seeing of reality. (Christ is in the desert, having his "awakening." God gets together with Satan, and says smugly, "Hah! They'll all know the truth now. What are you going to do about it? You'll have no power." And Satan says, "I'm going to help them organise it." God sighs, resignedly.) None of it matters. It's a story, and the story can be incredibly interesting: one can use one's energies for spiritual healing, or investigate the scientific credibility of infinite parallel universes; dip into the bits of space between the teeny weeny bits of an atom and find they are vast, and that the particles seem to defy location and description; note that by observing those particles as a wave they obligingly become a wave, and realise that consciousness effects what we call reality; talk to the dead, or seem to die, see a light, and "come back" healed and whole. They are all just stories, fascinating to the mind and thrilling to the emotions. But all there is is this, not in time, not in space, nothing being something, happening, just happening, to no one. Infinite parallel universes are no more beautiful and awe-inspiring than that pile of dog poo on the pavement. Admittedly, this is difficult to see. But seen it is.