After It Happens

"May the vacuum be with you..." ~Nassim Haramein 

After it happens, everything is just the same, but weightless. Absolutely weightless. Whatever exists as form, matter or content no longer has any substance: one sees it simply flower from the heart of the void.

The vacuum is a cornucopia. This is as true in modern physics as in ancient mysticism. Whatever happens, whatever appears, is revelation - whether it's a heavenly sunset over the sea, or an abandoned lot filled with rusty chassis and a lonely dandelion. Even a dog turd on the sidewalk is a revelation of Supreme Beauty.

After it happens, whatever arises in the field of perception is all the more poignant because so ordinary. When all is commonplace, all is miraculous. There is no need for judgment or comparison. Emptiness is the true democracy.

Seeing the bounty of the infinite overflow from the glance of the waitress in an all-night diner, is no less meaningful than gazing at angels with harps on a golden stairway to heaven. How utterly liberated we are from the need to photo-shop our reality, when there is nothing "better" or "worse" or more "holy." Whatever happens is the Last Judgment. Wherever we are, we have returned to the Garden.

Bliss is not happiness, for then "it" would be something. Bliss is it-less freedom. Liberation is not an attainment, but an abysmal and unconditional loss.

This is the real meaning of the Cross in Christian mysticism. The absolute devastation of Jesus' death is the portal to his resurrection. The two poles of the paradox must not be divided into chronological "events." Descent into the tomb is simultaneous with resurrection on Easter morning, just as the seed of the prolific banyan tree is utterly hollow.

In paradox, opposites are inseparable. From the "i" perspective, liberation is crucifixion: the devastating loss of my story, my achievement, my accumulated resume of merit. My personal history is over. There are no survivors.

Yet simultaneous with this cruci-fiction is the revelation of it-less radiance, an unbounded space that refuses to be informed by anything. The loss of "me" is the blossoming of eternity. What remains is lightness of heart without a center.

Some wish to cling to the notion that "i" get to keep a little mask, a thin veil to wear in times of crisis: like an insurance policy in case of a catastrophe. This is only a fantasy, another construct of the mind that must be crucified. For liberation is catastrophe. Without catastrophe there is no liberation. Even the thinnest veil must dissolve. Even the subtlest layer of "me" is a mirage.

This catastrophe is represented by the death of Jesus. He cries, "Father, father, why have you forsaken me," to express the liberating depths of his loss. As the deepest veil of "me" dissolves, so does the divine "Other" reflected by that "me" in the mirror of duality. Liberation is the death of me and my God, yet the birth of eternal radiance.

Throughout Christian history, the ignorant have murdered this paradox, either by portraying the cruci-fiction and liberation of the "me" as joyful sweetness, or by portraying it as neurotic self-destruction. In fact, there is no taste of "sweet" and "joyful," because there is no one left to taste it. And there is no suffering, because there is no one left to suffer. Radiance is not even an experience, because there is no experiencer. If you knock on this, it will never open, because there is no door.

In the Cross is a hollow and empty point where opposites converge: the hub of Laotzu's wagon wheel; the Buddhist enzo, or "empty circle"; the vacuum of quantum physics. Yet all of creation resonates out of that vacuum. Emptiness is vibrant with the fullness of life, bombarding nobody from all directions with love.

True mystics refuse to murder the paradox.