This Terrible Love, a journal of nonduality

From somewhere inside of a dream she fell in love with everything. And everything seemed like Christmas morning, wrapped in shiny paper, gifts of love and joyful wonder. Then everything went away, and she went with it, until she woke up in a strange place where nothing was familiar. It was as if everything was floating in soap bubbles blown by a child, carried in the wind, bursting into nothing at all. And laughter and tears flowed without distinction. And everything that had gone came back, but the way a holographic image is projected into empty space. People emerged like pop up ads on a computer screen, explaining everything that was happening and all she had seen. But she had trouble following all their explanations. It didn’t seem to matter, as the kaleidoscope of life turned by itself and a love song was always playing on the speakers in her mind. Unknown music filled her dreams, and there was no one to awaken. They told her it was just this, but it could have been just that for a...

They send me words, and little pictures of themselves light up the screen and reflect off my face in the darkness of the wee hours. Outside, the sounds of the forest hum a lullaby. The seekers that came here the past few years called this silence. How funny that seems, for I hear a symphony--- life singing in so many voices; a choir of love carried in the wind. They want to know what they can do about something or other. Or they want to know how to escape the pain of something or other. They wonder if I have an opinion on what they say is going on. If they are not specific, I have to ask them what they think is going on. For I am aware of no thing that is going on. Just the wind and the music of the dream of life that is playing a love song in my brain's theater of everything and nothing at all. And yet it is not a song you have to go to some retreat in the woods to hear. The notes may vary, but I have heard this song everywhere it seems I have been. It sings in the heart of London...

  Everything perceived and thought to be known is an illusion constructed by the mind, a fairy tale world of beings and things that are not beings and things at all.   The quantum physicists and the neuroscientists and the nonduality speakers all tell me this, yet they are also illusions. They speak and my mind dances with them, and then they vanish into thin air, their enigmatic smiles lingering a moment like the Cheshire cat, and I run to the mirror and what do I see….? An imagined Miranda, invented by no one, a fictional character, who one day in an imagined past saw that everything seemed to be a dream I could not remember from moment to moment. It felt as if some strange surreal world was being invented each instant, but I could not find the flow of time. It was beyond disorienting, for I couldn't even locate the center of it all, and yet these made up people and a make believe world appeared. I was one of the fairy tale characters, and it was always clear it was ...

I get asked a lot of difficult questions. I answer some of them, even though I always say none of my answers are true. They are just the programming. Like asking Siri on your iphone. Some ask how they can get enlightened. Some ask how I got enlightened. Some ask if I am enlightened. Some ask why I think I am enlightened when they are enlightened and it is clear I am not. Some ask if I want them to enlighten me and begin to explain how they will do this. Those are all fun, as they are so fundamentally unanswerable it’s like being in college again staying up all night with nerd friends pondering the nature of the Universe and the meaning of life.   Sometimes people ask a question so mind-blowing I have to turn off the computer and go outside for a walk. A question that is so enormous it defies imagination. They ask me, so, Miranda, what did you do yesterday?   Wow. Yesterday! First, I think it must be a trick question, but they are serious. They even tell me what they “did” ye...

The only reason she wanted to be a dancer w as that all she ever wished for was to do one thing so beautifully that everyone’s heart would stop and they would melt forever in an eternal ephemeral instant beyond time that would linger in the afterglow of their lives and they would never forget that moment of perfection, that absolute wonder and joy. Just one moment when it would be as if she had burst into flames and could ignite the warmth in even the coldest hearts, the girl who when she was 11 in Sunday School and the teacher talked of how great Jesus’ sacrifice had been piped up and said, "I would do that," because of course, who wouldn’t go through any agony, any suffering, any pain, to save the world (and especially if in 3 days you get to come back to life, but the nuns were mad enough without that comment). She never knew it was a world that never needed saving. A world that never needed any one to do any thing at all, for the beauty and the love were never missing. Al...

    You find yourself drawn to their words, over and over again, binge-watching their videos like other people watch the latest Netflix hit. Is it something they know, or perhaps something they no longer know? Something they have lost, an illusion dispelled? And yet the dream remains.  It seems there is someone pointing to the nature of the shared dream of life, even as they point to the illusion of there being any other or any separate self to experience the dream. You read book after book, but language turns the endless blanket of stars that is the night sky into a few words on a white page.    And so often, teachers see how the words they use fall like rain before they reach the ears of the seeker, let alone their hearts and minds. So sometimes they try to sound like they have a path, a technique, a method. Yet it seems most know this is not possible, for if it is a gate-less gate, how can there ever be a key?    Sometimes teachers seem to simp...

THE IMPOSSIBLE QUESTION   Sometimes a question comes floating from the back of the room in a fragile voice, as if the questioner had just quieted her sobbing long enough to speak and be heard. Everyone hushes, and there is a silence reverberating through the satsang as the question mark hangs in the air like a feather, until it slowly falls and the guru picks it up.   These are the questions he hates having to answer. He knows there is no true answer to any of the questions he is ever asked, but those few that have that tinge of sadness and echo in their delicate and desperate expression, so sincere it brings tears to his eyes, are almost painful. He knows there is an answer in his repertoire, he has thousands, rephrased every time so they always seem like he is spontaneously talking directly to each seeker. It is something he is known for, the intimacy, the love.   He would like to go backstage and cry, but the impulse quickly passes. The emotions that used to flood him ...