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A pen went scribbling along. When it tried to write love, it broke.
--Rumi
 
Sometime before a Musings is due there is always a casting about for a topic. The internal antennae shift into a mode of receptivity, an intent listening, a quiet anticipation for the depths to reveal a shining kernel of inspiration.
 
On Nov 5^th, when this article was last due, there were no words, just coiled tension, sickening dread, and the churning sensations of fear and hope dueling for supremacy. Six weeks later, this receiving station is still wordless but for an altogether different reason. The silence is reverberating with swirling eddies of brilliance that defy articulation. Contemplation of the Way of Dharma as the embodiment of Love in Action has shaped a Sangha conversation that sparkles with compassion, originality, sincerity, wisdom, delicacy, precision, purity, profundity, thoughtfulness, solicitude, clarity. What is there to say that hasn’t already been voiced by this gorgeous living tapestry of Intelligence, individually and collectively discovering itself?
 
Sometimes silence is the only way to honor the moment. At other times, “I have nothing to say” is simply a voice in the head that is a barrier to tasting the depths of our Being.
 
Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself.
If the soul attend for a moment to its own infinity,
then and there is silence.
--Henry David Thoreau
 
The breathtaking insights that have been shared by Sangha all year have emerged from this void of Infinity. The term we’ve coined for this alchemy of Silence into words is Queue Practice. The mechanics of queue magic are simple—dial a number/launch an app, press *6—but the power of the magic is unleashed in its practice. Awakening can feel like an abstract goal to be attained at some nebulous future date, but each time we put ourselves in the queue, tune into receptivity to Grace, are we not communing with Intuition? Isn’t willingness to by-pass the limited programs of conditioned thinking the way to greater intimacy with the infinity of our Being?  
 
We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.
--Alan Watts
 
Through an awareness practice, we discover the propensity to identify with the individual, the part rather than with the whole as a process of the mind. Once we understand separation to be an illusion, we are free to discover our totality as non-separation. The dissonance of dissatisfaction alerts us to the loss of sensitivity to Presence. It becomes a cue to press *6 and calibrate to Being in the queue, not just on the morning show but everywhere in life. And when we do, we are alive to a world, us, quivering with Intelligence, within which guidance shimmers as insight and everything enlightens.
 
The key to this world is a practice of faith. From Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy:
 
It is because we don't know Who we are, because we are unaware that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, that we behave in the generally silly, the often insane, the sometimes criminal ways that are so characteristically human. We are saved, we are liberated and enlightened, by perceiving the hitherto unperceived good that is already within us, by returning to our eternal Ground and remaining where, without knowing it, we have always been.
 
As we grapple with the horrendous consequences of our collective ignorance, it is easy to lose sight of the Light of our being. But by all accounts, it is when the “world” appears shrouded in impossible darkness that we apply ourselves to the quest for light. As long as we bemoan the finite world of form, the violence it perpetuates and the suffering it is subject to, we are looking in the wrong direction. Queue Practice highlights again and yet again the wisdom of a leap of faith, of trusting the Unknown in the face of all that denies its existence. When we do, we find out like Hafiz:
 
The heart is the thousand-stringed instrument.
Our sadness and fear come from being
Out of tune with love.
--Hafiz
 
Living, then, becomes a practice of calibration to Love, not to an abstract ideal but to the active principle actualized as the Light within each of us in “this” moment of being. When we are alive to its vibration, we bow in reverence and gratitude for resonance. When resistance interferes with receptivity to illumination, we learn to tune the instrument of attention, accepting the oscillation between resonance and dissatisfaction as an aspect of the Mystery. Fidelity to love makes us all Beloveds of the Light within.
 
The Inner Light is beyond praise and blame;
Like space it knows no boundaries,
Yet it is even here, within us,
ever retaining its serenity and fullness.
You cannot take hold of it,
but equally you cannot get rid of it,
And while you can do neither,
it goes on its own way.
You remain silent and it speaks; you speak, and it is dumb;
The great gate of charity is wide open, with no obstacles before it.
--Ywig-chia Ta-shih
 
So here, in humble submission, we return to *6, to another year of Queue Practice!
Go happy. Go grateful.
 
In gasshō
ashwini