The Way of Pulsation (Further Meditations on Spanda)

 

Consciousness vibrates between i and I. As the infinitesimal particle yearns for boundless space beyond the rim of the galaxies, i expand into who I always already Am.

This play of awareness, as both finite and infinite, is ananda, or bliss. Bliss is the pulsing paradox that i am ever expanding into my Self. The "way" is not a straight and narrow line, but a pulsation.

This so-called "spiritual journey" has the rhetorical structure of a joke. Christ's parables, Zen teaching stories, and Sufi tales all have this trickster paradigm, with a punchline intended to shock me into Presence - a more expansive awareness of where I already Am.

Moving two steps forward, one step back - sometimes one step forward, two steps back - is a dance, not a path. Situations test me and keep me growing: they only seem like "imperfections" or "failures" because I imagine a place beyond, where Being is somehow better than being right here. Yet every atom,  every dust-mote, every pebble on this winding way, is the pulse of unbounded Existence.

Embrace the stumble, the loss, the fault, the hesitation, as lila, "play." Spanda-lila, the dance, the play of pulsation. These Sanskrit terms describe in ancient poetry what modern quantum science describes mathematically: the expanding-contracting wave-nature of creation, oscillating between micro- and macro-cosm, where every infinitesimal particle in the field is in fact a contraction of the entire field. Thus every step on the wayless path is both end and beginning, alpha and omega.

By all means, let us strive to attain our goals. That is the game. But we can ground our striving in stillness, and root our action in a realization that the goal is all around us, in every direction, wherever we turn, even if we get lost. There are no mistakes.

Forgive this mad Sunday morning rambling. These words are not mine. They spilled out of a tiny trumpet of honeysuckle on a broken fence post.

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