Layam

"Layam vraja: dissolve now." ~Ashtavakra Gita

They say that dissolving the "I" is enlightenment, and this is an extraordinary event. But really, isn't it quite ordinary? Didn't it happen when you were a child, in every-day moments of wonder? Marveling at a lightning bug, marveling at the eyes of a new friend on the playground, marveling at a shooting star.

 

Doesn't it happen now, when you give yourself completely to your grief, and dissolve into a tear? When you give yourself to joy, and dissolve into a smile? Give yourself to the sound of Miles, a Monet water lily, a sonnet of Keats, and dissolve into silence. Give yourself to the Friend in your heart, through a touch of divine inhalation, and dissolve into thanksgiving.

 

At such an ordinary moment, is there anyone left? Doesn't enlightenment, the dissolution of the ego, happen ten thousand times a day?

 

What is all this talk about getting rid of "I"? The problem is not having an ego, the problem is clinging to it. When "I" am a fixed structure, with weight and mass in time, suffering happens. When "I" let Source create and dissolve me for each new moment of our amazing dance, beauty happens. We are slivers of sunbeam sparkling on the waves. We each have a trillion momentary selves.

 

Little children have lots of egos, an ocean of bubbles, playfully expanding, popping into nothing, every now. The arising of "I" is for expression, the dissolving of "I" is for wonder. This is the pulse, the breath of creation.

 

Sometimes I think even the moon and stars are whispering this. In fact, there is not a single solid thing in all the universe that is not made of infinitesimal love-sparks, ever dissolving into waves of ananda.