The Dawn

I awoke early this morning even though the night before had been a late retiring. The darkness was like a cool blanket as I sat with myself by the living room window. Morning’s light crept ever so slowly to silhouette the mountain rim. The bird song choruses began one voice at a time until there was a frenzy of sound.

Then suddenly there was silence as if the whole of existence was pausing for breath. The stillness without matches the stillness within. There I sit in that timeless space in sync somehow. That moment passed and in floods the chorus of birdsong and thoughts alike…. Chattery; ever chattering to direct my attention from here to there and here again. I find myself being in it and among it, no resistance. Only awareness that the shadows are fleeing as the light ever so slowly illuminates every object. The dimmer switch is turned up incrementally to shed light on the garden as a peer out the window to see that the breath of a new day sways the blossoms in the tree outside.

What dawns in me is somehow new and yet familiar as if what is being noticed is the alignment of me with All; the rhythm of me in sync with the rhythm of All that is around me, and yet moves through me at the same time.

Somehow words fail to grasp it all for there is nothing more sweet than the recognition that what I have been seeking is already present inside. What I wanted to find has been here all along. Who I am is enough and more.

To see and be seen…..to witness and experience it all, one breath at a time; one moment at a time. And yet more fluid than that….. TO see because all that chattered so distractedly and kept me from seeing is now more in the background. What arises is a ‘now’ presence. I see and witness without story clinging to every part of what is viewed. I see and BE with the whole of this day, and the whole of this day greets me somehow. Acknowledges my existence as I acknowledge this day. Dawning is a familiarity; a relaxed presence with my surroundings and a relaxed way of resting inside myself without resistance to any part of me that has expression of any kind.

Here I am.

~Create your own experience of being present in this moment and this moment only by following what Eckhart Tolle suggests in his book, “A New Earth”:

“Choose an object close to you—and explore it visually, that is to say, look at it with great interest, almost curiosity… Without straining, relaxed but alert, give your complete attention to the object, every detail of it. If thoughts arise, don’t get involved in them. It is not the thoughts you are interested in, but the act of perception itself. Can you take the thinking out of the perceiving? Can you look without the voice in your head commenting, drawing conclusions, comparing, or trying to figure something out? After a couple of minutes or so, let your gaze wander around the room or wherever you are, your alert attention lighting up each thing that it rests upon.

"Then, listen to any sounds that may be present. Listen to them the same way as you looked at the things around you. Some sounds are natural—water, wind, birds—while others are man-made. Some may be pleasant, others unpleasant… Allow each sound to be as it is, without interpretation…
When you look and listen in this way, you may become aware of a subtle and at first perhaps hardly noticeable sense of calm. Some people feel it as a stillness in the background. Others call it peace. When consciousness is no longer totally absorbed by thinking, some of it remains in its formless, unconditioned, original state. This is inner space.”