Tony Cuckson is disappearing

When I begin to write, as I do most every morning, there is the experience before me of the empty page. Sometimes my hand is running down the lines before I know it is happening. This happens when I am infused with inspiration from the lines of a poem or a heartsong.

At other times I don’t know what to write or I am working with an idea, a dawning that I have not yet turned into full awareness. Such dawning is happening this morning. I have a strange unfolding developing within me. It is an awareness that I am disappearing and to be honest I want to disappear.

Before anyone thinks I am about to run away, be assured this is not the case. What seems to be happening is that what I call “little me” is being seen as a prison and I no longer want to be a prisoner.

Fundamental to our Western idea of who we are is the statement by Descartes, “I think therefore I am.” This heralded the Age of Reason out of what was called the Dark Ages. However, we have become what might be called the people of the head and not what the poet David Whyte refers to as people who live in a body in full presence

One of the keys to peace of mind that I am discovering is the absence of thought. Thought is a wonderful tool but it is for most of us a monkey on the chain that tends to pull us around through all our life’s drama. When I say, “I am disappearing,” I mean I no longer value the constant noise that goes on in my head like a badly tuned radio that cannot be turned off and often takes me into emotional white water.

I am noticing that there is movement toward more silent witnessing of thought. This silent witnessing makes me aware of how unsettled my mind really is. It is on despite my wish that I simply be still and know that the presence within me is Love.

I take more time now not to think. People may then ask, “Then who will you be?” I answer that I will be the experience of no mind. This is an experience that people fear. They think they will disappear and become some mindless creature. Except that no mind is a vast ocean of timeless creativity. There is still experience but I do not need to grasp it and claim it as mine. Such experience is more direct and more glorious. It is less fraught with anxiety about how “my life” should be. This is what I call presence.

Your ability to be present is more fulfilling because there is the experience of presence. You feel lighter, you are more in your body, and you are present to this moment. You are not projecting into the future with your desires to fill any sense of lack. You do not spend time with the past in regret or worry. You learn to enjoy the body in full presence.

The paradox is that you feel a deeper kind of experience because the thought process is still. This stills the emotions, which stills the body. You move closer to the experience of I AM. You move closer to the experience that you are Love beyond any need to be loved. You begin to realise that you are so much more than your thoughts.

This is the invitation of meditation. A practice par excellence that takes you deep into a stillness that is paradoxical. The more empty you become of ideas the fuller you are of inspiration. Reason cannot help you here. The silence of the heart can and does.

When you begin to disappear you become available to the Beloved. The sense of ‘I’ begins to melt into the vastness of I AM beyond the limitation of subject/object duality. Peace begins to descend in and about you and in a mind that only thinks when it chooses too. There is no loss of intelligence here. In fact real intelligence begins to dawn. This is an intelligence that solves problems holistically and not through rational thought alone – ration meaning “in part.”

You think that no thought is something that you should avoid. You might think it is mindlessness but it is the chatter of ones monkey mind that is mindless. Sit and still your mind for ten minutes and unless you are a practiced meditator you are unlikely to be able to do this. You will spend most of the time thinking about everything other than what you intended to practice.

Your mind is central to who you think you are. Would it not be beneficial to be in control of it? You would then find the experience of less thought brings more peace and power. This is because intelligence arises that is beyond thinking in words and concepts. Words and concepts, which are thoughts, are not direct experience but always about experience. In this way you are always one step removed from Life.

This stillness of thought allows I AM to arise from the realm of the invisible out of which all forms and all creation arises. It doesn’t need you to work it out. It created you so it knows exactly what needs to be done better and more completely than your rational mind can ever accomplish.

So I feel I am disappearing. This idea brings me such delight. I feel lighter. It is as if a great burden is being lifted of my shoulders. This burden is this sense of self called “me, mine and myself.” The disappearance of Tony Cuckson is not to be lamented because he is exchanging the nothingness of “his life” for Life but not as most of us know it.