From Avikal’s series, Reporting from the Great Doubt
I have a great access to sleep. I can sleep anywhere, at any time, and pretty much under any conditions. As I have been travelling all over the world for decades I have learnt to sleep as I need it: I have slept on top of buses in the sierras of Mexico, on floors in many train stations in India, in churches in Europe, on boats and third-class trains in Thailand, Malaysia, Burma, in temples in Nepal and Ladakh, on any kind of airplane big or small…
I just close my eyes, lie in Morpheus’ arms and enter the Great Void in a few seconds. In the same way I wake up, easy, fast, ready to move and act, most of the time content.
In the past few years, a fundamental fact of my life is the understanding that ‘I know nothing’. This, together with the koan Who is in? are my main doors into the here/now and the timeless vertical dimension.
Let me now come back to the actual, practical, morning wake-up.
What I noticed, this last year or so, was that at times I would wake up with a sense of uneasiness, displacement, a very unfamiliar feeling, as if the molecules in my body were melting or, more precisely, less dense. This would last only a couple of minutes at the most, but made me quite curious.
This morning, as I explored the experience (right after it had happened again, but already back in a normal subject/object feel) I understood that I had been waking up in what, in a Satori retreat, we call ‘Direct Experience’. A space which has no distinction/separation between emptiness and fullness; where the distinction/separation between inside and outside is also missing; where time and space are missing; where not even “I know nothing” is there and where “not knowing” is all there is.
And as I feel into this space, it reveals a new place of intimacy.
Have a g’day from Down Under.
Related articles
- Follow the whole series: Reporting from the Great Doubt
- ‘Not knowing is the most intimate.’ – “The moment you don’t know, intimacy arises between you and reality, a great friendship arises. It becomes a love affair,” states Osho
- “Boh?” – Insights by Upchara on “Not knowing” (the “Boh?” for an Italian child) and the question “Why?”
Featured image: photo by the author
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