Something became apparent yesterday. I discovered the leap of faith I’ve been dancing around for years. The leaps of faith in the religions I grew up with were more up front. I found them early on and leapt with abandon, perhaps from conditioning for being good, perhaps for the love of mystery and the possibility that true goodness did exist. In short, I believed. I was not much of a Thomas.
The one I just discovered might be so obvious that my mention of it will have you shaking your head with my slow processing speed. No more beating around the bush, here it is: If everything that I see, feel, hear, smell, taste, and experience in this world changes, the knowing of the thing that doesn’t change for me is a leap of faith. The direct experience of the unchanging can not be known because (and here is where I am using my mind to try to solve a riddle that stretches out of the realm of mind) to know it would be an experience of it and experience is a changing phenomenon, by its very definition.
Stand up, flag me down, you who can answer my riddle. Can you send a lightning strike to the heart that makes the unknowable known? I’ve had experiences of beyond and daily I flow in a realm that meshes with the mundane, but is not of it. BUT tell me tell me if you can what is the mystery in the heart of a man. Is there a black (w)hole of connection to the unchanging within my heart, within every heart, within every quivering bit of matter?
I am not distressed. This little epiphany just has me pausing. Sitting sitting feeling feeling all to know what is unknowable. Must we always leap to reach? Is this why there is no where to go?
Love to anyone kind enough to tread in this unkept field of blossoms. I love that you are there and here. This expression is me, moving beyond my knowing, allowing the questioning to come. I am not separate, and yet this body being has existed from within this marga spot only, seemingly. Can she merge with knowing before she’s gone from this body? Oh, the strangeness of it all.
Life as Improv 
I believe that God tells us to make leaps of faith because he is always aware of what is on the other side. It is something that he wants us to conquer within ourselves as we trust him. This was a perfect blog, answered many questions that I am extremely grateful for. Thank you so much for posting!!
thank you for reading 🙂
wonderful finding you
here in the pot,
not jumping out
from where it’s warm
& cozy & we’re
all in this
as one 🙂
are some of us potatoes
and others of us carrots?
all welcome!
the pot discriminates
against no beings 🙂
Thanks for this, you have brought into focus something that’s been unseen for a long time. “the knowing of the thing that doesn’t change…”, the smallest glimpse of it unexpectedly, like the clouds revealing the moon on a windy night. And then after the event; but how can it be? The rational mind looking for words for it… impossible, it’s just that ‘knowing’…
thank you for validating the glimpses! Your words point well.
I have a take, but you might want to keep to yourself because I don’t think most people would like it: I don’t know anything–the changing, the unchanging, any of it; it’s *all* a leap of faith; I improvise moment to moment. And I chug along pretending I’m sure because I haven’t yet learned to live with the magnitude of that uncertainty.
Yet, inexplicably, here I am; here we are. Knowing nothing, I still exist. And that, to me, is the evidence of the unchanging, because *something* must be cranking this existence machine.
No leap required. Just the willingness to pull the rug out from under myself and ride this magic carpet. I get the feeling you like riding it too. But shhhhh. Don’t tell.
I love these words -right down to your choice of “cranking” versus the lofty “creating.” Evidence was something i seemed to be seeking in my post yesterday (just a snapshot in time:) and here you are today with a reminder of how to let a carpet slip remind of the unavoidable adventure . Cueing Steppenwolf…HOpe you are enjoying this bit of the ride, as well.
One of my favourite teachers, Adyashanti, would talk about finding what doesn’t change. I’ve had my glimpses of this true self – the all knowing that knows nothing nor needs to. It’s what MC said – when you get the direct experience of it the rug is pulled out from under your feet, and there’s no place to rest your head, just a magic carpet ride. But I’ve found the mind-made self is pretty darned adept at grabbing at that rug and standing firmly planted on it again. Not letting go, not letting go, not not not. And all the while the unchanging is there, never changing.
It’s a beautiful post Marga that pulled me into presence. It’s nice to have you back again.
Love
Alison
When I see your name and picture, I feel a warm glow of joy and almost a tug of nostalgia, a feeling of of missing a friend. It really does feel like some of us are sharing the journey the way it has continued through the years, as if I can still feel your warm handprint on a stone marker I pass along my hiking journey alone. xx! m
xox ❤
Interesting piece, Marga, and investigation of mental states is always a productive endeavour, don’t you think? I was always encouraged in the practising of it, anyway. What seemed to pop up for me reading this was a little phrase I coined for myself a few years back: Awareness knows itself as itself. What that’s intended to mean is that it isn’t known — i.e. cannot be known — as an object appearing within consciousness. So, all consciousness (or conscious experience) is ‘consciousness of’ objects — there’s a dichotomous paradigm at play, the subject knowing the objects of consciousness. Awareness is aside from (or overlays) all that, in a sense, in that the paradigm is dissolved, and it (awareness) isn’t constituted by mental objects (which consciousness exclusively is). I think maybe Nisargadatta made a similar distinction between Awareness and Consciousness. I don’t know if this is running on the same track as your own thoughts currently?
I think you really get the gist of my exploring here. There is a paradox, or dichotomous paradigm play (such great words), which will always lead one in circles from the same mindset coming at “it” again and again. I think I was pulling back from making a leap that I have made before from assuming something to be true, without full immersive knowing. I think I am expressing honestly where I am, and where I am not – and settling into being okay with not leaping anywhere that hasn’t revealed itself to be with my mind, missing the space between. I will enjoy exploring the seed of a name, Nisargadatta, when I finish this current stack of memoirs to grade. Each one is taking me on a journey of human experience. Wish I could just read without having to give feedback 🙂 So nice to see you again, Hariod!
Nisargadatta’s I Am That — a magisterial work on all this stuff, Marga, if you’re interested. I was trained in old-fashioned Dry Insight Buddhism, which is largely a reductive phenomenology, but that book was profoundly impactful, even though it’s Advaita. Still, it sounds as if you don’t need to read anything at all. On the contrary, it can get to a point when one just ignores consciousness [i.e. let it ignore itself] and stays fully awake and aware. Awareness isn’t interested in what consciousness thinks is ‘true’. 🙂
Hi Marga,
I have to confess this is one of my favorite topics… I wished I’d seen this earlier when it was fresh! Maybe you’ve moved on now. Anyway, for me it wasn’t until I understood the firm reality of the unchanging that all the changing stuff could soften for me, and transfigure into something new. Prior to that acceptance, the ever-changing world of sensation has this barbed edge to it, this ability to threaten, to push and pull, to hound and beguile, to give and to take with a sort of impersonal caprice.
Once many years ago when I was just starting to read A Course in Miracles I was with my wife and one of our friends, and we were talking about the Course. And I was just beginning it and was fixated intentionally on what is described as peace therein. Because this peace is described as unchanging, everywhere-accessible, and occluded by our insistence on the primacy of our sensed (e.g. fabricated) world. I had this strong feeling of peace from wrestling with it for a few months, but was an utter failure at trying to convey to another this conviction I felt that peace was firmer than granite, and everywhere present.
I’m not of the opinion that coming to know and accept this unchanging ground of being is a leap of faith. I mean, it is when we’re on the other side of it, but as we allow the conditions that inform our perceiving of things to change, then it seems to emerge in a very clear way. I think if I had one wish for everyone it would be that they encounter this somehow, some way, some time, because I think it’s a realization that does change everything. My favorite koan on this topic comes from the opening line of ACIM: “Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Therein lies the peace of God.” Drop the G-word and infuse whatever works best for you–Love, emptiness, presence, awareness. But don’t drop the fact that you are known, and that if the invisible isn’t real then nothing is… The beauty of these three lines for me is that to make sense they must turn our perceived order of things upside down, and they place the starting point of our thinking and perceiving in the domain of the unchanging, albeit invisible reality.
I do think this whatever-it-is lies at the heart of all changing phenomena, in the heart of man and woman and child, in the essence of a flower, a stone, a storm, a mountain, a computer. And I do think it is why there is nowhere to go, but having said that, I think increased acceptance of the “right order” of things allows for shifting of the phenomenal into new modes of being and dreaming and living. So we go somewhere else by going nowhere in a sense… 🙂 I think you know all this, of course, and I see in reading your post again you said you weren’t having a difficult time, so maybe I’ve laid it on too thick here. But I see this as the only thing that matters, in a sense, so I hope you will forgive my rambling!
With Love
Michael
Oh yes yes Mr. Michael! Such a gift to have your explosive word bomb here waiting for me. I am absolutely in a different place, and look back at this entry with curiosity about the one who wrote it. 🙂 Looking at it now these words seem a simple recognition of the impossibility of belief. I agree with you now, it is not a leap of faith, but a knowing that will blossom within. Listening from what seems like the other side to those describing the organic knowing SOUNDS like a leap of faith, so similar to other BELIEF systems. peace stronger than granite – you magic image maker – I can’t help but carry this beautiful capture of your words with me – No rambling from my view. these sorts of exchanges are what float my boat anymore. I’ve spent years clearing the decks and now I sigh with gratitude and clarity at the things that come along in the space I’ve made. Peace is also a lemon smelling air that can be breathed in and out through the pours of every cell – I may be dissolving, but I can still pull it together to get the mail and grab a melon at the market. Hope you are enjoying a bit of a fall cooling – send it down this way 🙂 love to you and D! m