Just Beneath the Surface

We’ve been on this path together for a long time. Shifting between teacher and student and into the I’m just going to be ‘me’ for the weekend persona.There’s a new book to discuss, there’s a new meditation or a new teacher or a new dream or experience. And it never stops.
In the past few months, I’ve been deeply listening to Eckhart Tolle and more recently to Adyashanti. And their call is to discover the present moment. To discover ‘what is’ rather than what I want or what I think ‘is’. And remarkably or not, its not one and the same thing.
There have been a few triggers in the audios and books I’ve been reading, but the one that brings me to this moment is ‘is it true?’
This question, when gently asked when any thought arises, acts like a laser gun. Everything is dematerialising before my eyes.
But guess what I discovered just beneath the surface.
A snarling, growling, vicious dog.
That is, someone who is slightly irritated with pretty much everything. The surface appears to be calm, I grant you, but just beneath is a raging whirlpool of black fumes. General dissatisfaction. For everything. Yes, I could say, for pretty much everything. And no, I’m not pre-menstrual.
I’m surprised, to say the least. Lift the lid off the pot to discover a boiling concoction that doesn’t look that tempting for dinner.
Hmm.
When I’m doing yoga, qigong, walking, cooking, studying, typing, I am exploring the layers within for resistance. Am I allowing what ‘is’ to be? Or am I insisting on another framework. Delicious. At every moment I am resisting. Deviously. Secretly. Little pockets of secret forces holding up in my top right shoulder or in the side of my neck. Tension building and afraid of annihilation.
So I turn the light up and shine it on. Is it true? Or is it a fabrication for safety? And the smoke shifts, there’s a certain scuttling and moving away, only to gather again, somewhere else, another layer deep into the terrain of me.
A mission of search and discover. Of claiming territory. Of rooting out illusion and seeing just how deep the infestation has gone.
‘Am I really allowing this moment to be?’
‘Is it the truth?’

I love these phrases. I love them because they are what drove me to seek in the first place. With real innocence and true hunger for the Truth. I was sidetracked by mirrors for a while, but I think I’m back on track.