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    Home » Laughing Buddha
    Spiritual

    Laughing Buddha

    May 4, 2024No Comments
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    By Amaya Gayle Gregory

    Amaya Gayle GregoryLife is so strange. One moment I am fascinated with this crazy, unnameable Isness, in awe of this unreasonable aliveness, fractured to my very soul, unwilling and literally unable to even try to comprehend why there is anything here at all … and the next moment I am sighing, laughing, crying, feeling my humanity, adoring its expressions, deeply in love with the totality while simultaneously heartbroken by the pain we feel the need to inflict on one another.

    I guess it’s not all that strange, after all we hu-mans — (hu) God man — are both human and divine at the same non-time, not one or the other, not even human pretending to be God, or God pretending to be man. Saying they are separate would be like saying the sky is separate from its blueness, the ocean is separate from its wetness, the human is separate from its body, mind and soul.

    It doesn’t seem that we can focus on the totality of what we are, even though focusing on the Isness occurs from separation. Awareness of separation requires separation. Awareness of Isness does too. The human body is the focusing mechanism of separation. Without it, there is no locus of perception. Whether the form lies apparently dead on a surgical table, stands upright and walks, or is asleep in the dead of night, anything known, at least here in the materialistic venue, appears to require the focalization instrument.

    The focus shifts. What we see ourselves to be, or not to be at all, is determined by the focus, the lightning blips that blink back and forth, rapidly, always blipping, most often unawares.

    Now I do find that funny, that we could miss the aliveness, the unowned, formless, spaceless, timelessness of Isness. It’s easy to do, to miss it that is, when we are pointedly focused on lighting up aliveness in drag.

    That’s what we’ve been taught to focus on, the places where life is likely to sneak up and bite us in the ass, or the raw spots where it already did. That barnacle ridden anchor tethers us to what’s wrong, to what we believe should be otherwise, and doesn’t just prevent us from seeing what’s fun and beautiful and precious and loving in this amazing improvisational dramedy, it also blocks the view of Isness.

    Do you ever wonder why you can’t see what all the mystics say is right in front of your eyes? I did, until life slowed me down, dead stop down. Dropped nearly dead, aliveness was so obvious I had to laugh, and like an optical illusion, once you see it, you can’t unsee it. You can literally watch the focus shift, the blips blip. It’s wild.

    I didn’t know how active my imagination was, how determined I had been to find and a safe harbor and move right in. I had learned to watch my thoughts and I knew they tended towards what would undoubtedly go wrong., but until I was still enough, unfocused enough, open enough to see, I didn’t understand the price I was paying to play the protection game or how committed to it I was.

    Life knocked me senseless, mindless, selfless. It was a gift, but a gift I wouldn’t go looking for. It was quite the extreme sport.

    Seeing life as I see it know, what would I tell my younger self?

    I cannot see what I cannot see (sounds obvious, but it isn’t on so many levels) so I’d slow way down, as slow as I could go and freely confess that I am confined by my own patterns, that I really don’t know anything other than what my beliefs and experiences tell me and they are suspect, every single one is suspect … yes, even my experiences … and I’d do my damnedest to simply be with whatever arises without labels, without judgements, without pride or shame … and let life show me what is.

    But that’s only me … your take may differ and most likely will.

    Oh … and I’d quit taking this all so darn seriously and laugh a whole lot more.

    There is no appropriate bio for Amaya Gayle. She doesn’t exist other than as an expression of Consciousness Itself. Talking about her in biographical terms is a disservice to the truth and to anyone who might be led to believe in such nonsense. None of us exist, not in the way we think. Ideas spring into words. Words flow onto paper and yet no one writes them. They simply appear fully formed. Looking at her you would swear this is a lie. She’s there after all, but honestly, she’s not. Bios normally wax on about accomplishments and beliefs, happenings in time and space. She has never accomplished anything, has no beliefs and like you was never born and will never die. Engage with Amaya at your own risk. 

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