I walked through the city tonight, experiencing life’s beauty reflected back at me.
As I walked home a man startled me and asked for change. At first, I felt a sharp, sudden feeling of panic, but beneath the panic was a deep, abiding sense of calm and well-being. Feeling into the calm, I realized that its root wasn’t a psychological feeling of safety and security, but something deeper. Its root was a knowingness of my oneness with life. I use the word “my” because that is grammatically correct, but the experience is actually that life knows its oneness with life. And knowingness is perhaps too soft of a word – the knowledge is immensely strong, diamond-like in its clarity, organization and strength – a knowledge that can’t be broken.
Closer to my apartment, I saw two women sitting on a bench, waiting for a bus in summer dresses, smiling and laughing. I felt their sensuality and enjoyment. I enjoyed them enjoying themselves. Or more simply, life was enjoying itself through them.
This experience of non-duality can be very hard to put into words. One’s experience of individuality remains, but beneath that individuality is a radiant nothingness, transparent yet full of itself. Reading that sentence I acknowledge that it sounds like gibberish, even though I wrote it and am experiencing it right now. Consciousness can’t fit into language but the effort is worthwhile.
