The Hermitage Within

For God, you bring nothing worth having except
your entire availability. He alone knows the moment
and the way. Have no plan for your life, just keep
yourself free of anything that could prevent God
from moving you as he wishes.
- from The Hermitage Within by an anonymous
Cistercian monk

mind

The mind seeks to nail life down and get it to stop moving and changing. When this doesn't work, the mind begins to seek the changeless, the eternal, something that doesn't move. But the mind of thought is itself an expression of life's movement and so must always be in movement itself. When there is thought, that thought is always moving and changing.

When thought enters into the changeless it goes silent. When thought goes silent, the thinker, the psychological "me," the image-produced self, disappears. Suddenly it is gone. You, as an idea, are gone. Awareness remains alone.

Now awareness expresses itself. Awareness is always expressing itself: as life, as change, as thought, feelings, bodies, humans, plants, trees, cars... [as you]
- Adyashanti

Beyond mind, there is an awareness that is intrinsic, that is not given to you by the outside, and is not an idea.... The whole work of meditation is to make you aware of all that is "mind" and dis-identify yourself from it. That very separation is the greatest revolution that can happen to man. Now you can do and act on only that which makes you more joyous, fulfills you, gives you contentment, makes your life a work of art, a beauty. But this is possible only if the master in you is awake. Right now the master is fast asleep. And the mind, the servant, is playing the role of master. And the servant is created by the outside world, it follows the outside world and its laws. Once your awareness becomes a flame, it burns up the whole slavery that the mind has created. There is no blissfulness more precious than freedom.

- From the False to the Truth, Rajneesh

The Sheer Delight in the Great Joy of Liberation

Let this that has always been running your life have you. This complete cliff dive in every moment into "I don't know." I don't know where I am, I don't know who I am, I don't know what I am, I don't know what I'm here for. Let yourself be nothing. Just here. Offered. Ahhhh, what a relief. This is what is asked of us, over and over and over, to offer our empty hands. To let the things we are holding so tightly just drop. To give it all up, everything, that does not exist in this moment here. All that has happened, that we think we somehow need to do something about, all that we think might happen, or we hope will happen, every sweet dream that we cling to. This is like God's loving strip search, give it all over! Something else wants to live you. And you can feel it.

- Jeannie Zandi

Nietzsche's Cosmos

In some remote corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever animals invented Recognition. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of “world history,” but in any event it was never more than a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and thus the clever animals had to die. One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how pathetic, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary is this human intellect from the perspective of nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when the story of humankind and its intellect has gone to its end, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no additional mission which would lead it beyond human life. Rather, it is human, and only its possessor and begetter takes it seriously–as though the world’s axis turned in its midst. But if we could communicate with the gnat, we would learn that he likewise flies through the air with the same solemnity, that he feels the flying center of the universe within himself. There is nothing so reprehensible and unimportant in nature that it would not immediately swell up like a balloon at the slightest puff of this power of knowing. And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he sees on all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically focused upon his action and thought.

–Friedrich Nietzsche, Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinn sec. 1 (1873) in: Werke in drei Bänden, vol. 3, p. 309 (K. Schlechta ed. 1969)(S.H. transl.)

White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field

Coming down out of the freezing sky
with its depths of light,
like an angel, or a Buddha with wings,
it was beautiful, and accurate,
striking the snow and whatever was there
with a force that left the imprint
of the tips of its wings — five feet apart —
and the grabbing thrust of its feet,
and the indentation of what had been running
through the white valleys of the snow —
and then it rose, gracefully,
and flew back to the frozen marshes
to lurk there, like a little lighthouse,
in the blue shadows —
so I thought:
maybe death isn't darkness, after all,
but so much light wrapping itself around us —

as soft as feathers —
that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking,
and shut our eyes, not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow,
that is nothing but light — scalding, aortal light —
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.
~ Mary Oliver

Aristotle

This is the beginning.

Almost anything can happen.

This is where you find

the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,

the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.

Think of an egg, the letter A,

a woman ironing on a bare stage

as the heavy curtain rises.

This is the very beginning.

The first-person narrator introduces himself,

tells us about his lineage.

The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings.

Here the climbers are studying a map

or pulling on their long woolen socks.

This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn.

The profile of an animal is being smeared

on the wall of a cave,

and you have not yet learned to crawl.

This is the opening, the gambit,

a pawn moving forward an inch.

This is your first night with her,

your first night without her.

This is the first part

where the wheels begin to turn,

where the elevator begins its ascent,

before the doors lurch apart.

This is the middle.

Things have had time to get complicated,

messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore.

Cities have sprouted up along the rivers

teeming with people at cross-purposes—

a million schemes, a million wild looks.

Disappointment unshoulders his knapsack

here and pitches his ragged tent.

This is the sticky part where the plot congeals,

where the action suddenly reverses

or swerves off in an outrageous direction.

Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph

to why Miriam does not want Edward's child.

Someone hides a letter under a pillow.

Here the aria rises to a pitch,

a song of betrayal, salted with revenge.

And the climbing party is stuck on a ledge

halfway up the mountain.

This is the bridge, the painful modulation.

This is the thick of things.

So much is crowded into the middle—

the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados,

Russian uniforms, noisy parties,

lakeside kisses, arguments heard through a wall—

too much to name, too much to think about.

And this is the end,

the car running out of road,

the river losing its name in an ocean,

the long nose of the photographed horse

touching the white electronic line.

This is the colophon, the last elephant in the parade,

the empty wheelchair,

and pigeons floating down in the evening.

Here the stage is littered with bodies,

the narrator leads the characters to their cells,

and the climbers are in their graves.

It is me hitting the period

and you closing the book.

It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen

and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck.

This is the final bit

thinning away to nothing.

This is the end, according to Aristotle,

what we have all been waiting for,

what everything comes down to,

the destination we cannot help imagining,

a streak of light in the sky,

a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.

by Billy Collins

Sri Chinmoy: August 27, 1931, October 11, 2007

No mind, no form, I only exist;
Now ceased all will and thought;
The final end of Nature's dance,
I am it whom I have sought.

A realm of Bliss bare, ultimate;
Beyond both knower and known;
A rest immense I enjoy at last;
I face the One alone.

I have crossed the secret ways of life,
I have become the Goal.
The Truth immutable is revealed;
I am the way, the God Soul.

My spirit aware of all the heights,
I am mute in the core of the Sun.
I barter nothing with time and deeds;
My cosmic play is done.

By Sri Chinmoy
(1931 - 2007)

For Kent

On Angels

All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe in you,
messengers.

There, where the world is turned inside out,
a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,
you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seems.

Short is your stay here:
now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear,
in a melody repeated by a bird,
or in the smell of apples at close of day
when the light makes the orchards magic.

They say somebody has invented you
but to me this does not sound convincing
for the humans invented themselves as well.

The voice -- no doubt it is a valid proof,
as it can belong only to radiant creatures,
weightless and winged (after all, why not?),
girdled with the lightening.

I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:

day draw near
another one
do what you can

~Czeslaw Milosz

Maya

Until there is the conviction in the seeker that all phenomena, including himself, are merely appearances without any substance, there can be no true understanding. You are the primordial state of total freedom, that fullness of pure joy, that concentration of light which is subtler than the subtlest and the witness of everything

- Ramesh Balsekar

Delusion

A human being is a part of a whole, called by us a universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest ... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

— Albert Einstein

The Howling of Separation

Every time that we go out to our personality, our quirks, our apparent failings to evaluate, or out to a particular job or a particular love, looking for something, we're going to uncover the one that's going out there, which is the one that's howling. The howling of separation at the core of us. We are going to fail if we look outside and it's going to hurt. That is the blessed mechanism that drives us back to ourselves. Failed relationship after failed relationship, failed strategy after failed strategy, it's all saying, "Wrong way, go home!"
- Jeannie Zandi

Spiritual Maturity

There is a great momentum of suffering and confusion that every spiritual seeker encounters. It is the momentum of ignorance which manifests as the experience of conflict and confusion and which causes suffering. In order to discover the perspective of liberation, which alone transcends this entire movement of ignorance and suffering, one needs to let everything end. "Letting everything end" means to stand in the moment completely naked of attachment to any and all ideas, concepts, hopes, preferences, and experiences. Simply put, it means to stop strategizing, controlling, manipulating, and running away from yourself--and to simply be. Finally you must let everything end and be still. In letting everything end, all seeking and striving stops. All effort to be someone or to find some extraordinary state of being ceases. This ceasing is essential. It is true spiritual maturity. By ceasing to follow the mind's tendency to always want more, different, or better, one encounters the opportunity to be still. In being still, a perspective is revealed which is free from all ignorance and bondage to suffering. From that perspective, eternal Self is realized. The eternal Self, the Seer, is recognized to be one's true nature, one's very own Self. This is an invitation to let all seeking end, all striving end, all efforting end, all past identity end, all hopes end, and to discover That which has no beginning or end. This is an invitation to discover the eternal, unborn, undying Truth of being. The Truth of your being, your own Self. Let the entire movement of becoming end, and discover That which has always been present at the core of your being.

- Adyashant

Let Us See

Let us see, is this real,
Let us see, is this real,
Let us see, is this real,
This life I am living?
Ye gods, who dwell everywhere,
Let us see, is this real,
This life I am living?

Pawnee (Anonymous)18th century

English version by Daniel G. Brinton,

My heart is so small
it's almost invisible.
How can You place
such big sorrows in it?

"Look," He answered,
"your eyes are even smaller,
yet they behold the world."

~ Rumi ~

Ike: April 4, 1995 - October 4, 2004

Will I miss you
uncanny other
in the next life?

And you & I, my other, leave
the body, not leave the earth?

And you, a child in a field,
and I, a child on a train, go by, go by,

And what we had
give way like coffee grains
brushed across paper . . .
-Jean Valentine

The Moon

Totally conscious, and apropos of nothing, he comes to see me.
Is someone here? I ask.
The moon. The full moon is inside your house.

My friends and I go running out into the street.
I'm in here, comes a voice from the house, but we aren't
listening.
We're looking up at the sky.
My pet nightingale sobs like a drunk in the garden.
Ringdoves scatter with small cries. Where, Where.
It's midnight. The whole neighborhood is up and out in
the street
thinking, The cat-burglar has come back.
The actual thief is there too, saying out loud,
Yes, the cat-burglar is somewhere in this crowd.
No one pays attention.

Lo, I am with you always, means when you look for God,
God is in the look of your eyes,
in the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self,
or things that have happened to you.
There's no need to go outside.
Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.

A white flower grows in the quietness.
Let your tongue become that flower.

Version by Coleman Barks
"The Essential Rumi"

Refocusing our Lenses

Because of the developmental nature of the process we are involved in, we all have to continually refocus our lenses of perception and discrimination. It's not like you get the picture once and that's it. In a developmental context, you have to keep focusing and refocusing all the time, because as the Buddha said, everything is changing all the time. Everything is in flux; there's constant change. In the manifest domain, everything is changing all the time. And not only is everything changing, but everything is developing. So if we want to be pioneers of evolution, we need to be constantly leaning forward, refocusing, and looking—again and again and again. Not only do we need to keep up with the constant changing and shifting that is the nature of the manifest realm, but if we are going to be agents of the evolutionary impulse ourselves, that adds a whole other level of complexity and urgency to the picture. We need to be one step ahead. Your capacity to interpret your experience clearly becomes absolutely essential in order for you to be able to respond to life creatively, in such a way that not only keeps pace with but begins to define the very direction of the changing universe itself.

Andrew Cohen

BLACK MADONNA RETURNS

The entire world is now going through a massive crucifixion
on all levels. It's going through an environmental crucifixion.
Hundreds of species arevanishing every month. It's going
through a personal crucifixion. There are two billion people
living on less than a dollar a day. It's going through a
crucifixion of all the patriarchal systems. Look at Enron and
what it has shown us about Corporate America. Look at the
Catholic Church's scandals of pedophilia and what it shows us
about authority. Look at the growing disillusionment with
politicians of all kinds. All of the systems are being exposed
as illusory and fantasy-ridden, as deeply corrupt and
exploitative.

There's another kind of crucifixion going on: crucifixion of
purpose and hope. Everybody is totally bewildered. They
know that the world is potentially on the brink of total
apocalypse. There's a tremendous danger that as people
wake up to the horror of what is going on, they will run into
political extremism or into fundamentalism of one kind or
another.

So it's extremely important that the wisdom of the 'dark night
of the soul' gets across, because if people understand the
necessity for this crucifixion, and understand that it's preparing
a resurrection and empowerment, then they will be prepared
to go through it without too much fear, trusting in the logic of
the divine transformation.

The Benedictine monk Bede Griffiths shared with me his
experience of the dark night of the soul. He said he was sitting
outside his hut one day when he felt as if a hand hit him on the
right side of his being. He had suffered a massive heart attack
that destroyed what he described as his patriarchal mind and gave
him access to a much deeper elaboration of Oneness with all things.

He said, "It's a very strange thing, but when I thought of
surrendering to the Mother I of course thought of Mary--I often
say the 'Hail Mary'--but it was Mary as the Black Madonna that
came into my mind. She is the mother of the earth as well as
heaven, of the body as well as the soul, the mother of the
subconscious, the hidden, of all those powers that the 'masculine'
mind represses; the Mother of the sacred darkness. In Her the
Western Christian vision of the Divine Mother and the Eastern one
merge and meet; you can think of her as both Mary and Kali, both
preserver and destroyer. From that time on, I have turned to Her
again and again. Invoking Her strength and grace, I find, makes
the 'birth' go so much faster and more cleanly."

The power that is doing this to us is coming towards us
simultaneously with terrifying destruction and extreme grace
and prosperity. The destruction is, in fact, a form of that extreme
grace. It's quite clear that humanity is now terminally ill, and can
only be transfigured by a totally shocking revelation of its shadow
side. And this is what we're living through, these shadow sides
exploding in every direction because we have done nothing but
betray the sacred in us.

We have lacerated the sacred in others. We have betrayed the
sacred in an orgy of fundamentalism. We have brutalized the
sacred in nature. We are now terminally destructive.

So only an almost terminal destruction that reveals to us the
full extent of our responsibility in this destruction can wake us
up. And that is whatis happening, and it will get worse. It's
bound to get worse. But it is only being done to us for our own
redemption.

Those who turn to the Mother in total faith, those who turn to
the Black Madonna in total admiration, those who realize the
mercy behind the violence will be given extraordinary protection,
strength, and revelation. They will be empowered in the core
of themselves to become what everybody who has a heart and a
mind must now become--a spiritual revolutionary devoting their
entire life and all their resources to the preservation of the planet.

Finding the Black Madonna, in whatever form you want to find her,
realizing the massive task that she's doing and turning to her for
protection is now crucial to the preservation of the planet. It's
extremelyimportant that people really come to understand the
feminine and turn towards it, because it's our betrayal of the
feminine in ourselves and in the divine that has led to this crisis.

-by Andrew Harvey, in an interview with Colleen O'Connor
on the Grace Cathedral website at http://tinyurl.com/3avtf6
Copyright Andrew Harvey 2004--All Rights Reserved

For more information about Andrew Harvey, see his website at
http://www.andrewharvey.net

The Mind

What constitutes bondage or hindrance to Realization
is not activity or even effort but the sense of personal
doership.

Both ignorance and enlightenment are states of the
mind, and the mind is not an entity but a mere notion
inferred by the memory of experience.
Ramesh S. Balsekar

Ego

Ego is the movement of the mind toward objects of perception, in the form of grasping; and, away from objects, in the form of aversion. This fundamentally is all the ego is. This movement of grasping and aversion gives rise to a sense of a separate "me," and in turn the sense of "me" strengthens itself this way. It is this continuous loop of causation that tricks consciousness into a trance of identification. Identification with what? Identification with the continuous loop of suffering. After all, who is suffering? The "me" is suffering. And "who" is this me? It is nothing more than a sense of self caused by identification with grasping and aversion. You see, it's all a creation of the mind, an endless movie, a terrible dream.

Don't try to change the dream, because trying to change it is just another movement in the dream. Look at the dream. Be aware of the dream. That awareness is It. Become more interested in the awareness of the dream than in the dream itself. What is that awareness? Who is that awareness? Don't go spouting out an answer, just be the answer. Be It.
- Adyashanti,

Liberation

Spontaneous, natural action happens only
when the mind is vacant of the slightest trace
of intention or planning. The greatest liberty is
in having total trust in that final authority that
makes the grass grow and our limbs, organs
and minds work by themselves.
Ramesh S. Balsekar

Having a Smile on Friday

My current favorite Blog.

D'var Sutra: Resh Lakish, Angyyyulimala and Yom Kippur

It is the period of the ten days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur — that time when the myth (which I do not mean in any disparaging way — there is nothing quite so powerful as myth) tells us we are between life and death, and that we must put all our thoughts towards at-one-ment and return to God.

It is the time when we review all our sins and do the work of repairing what has been broken in our lives — relationships, agreements, our own moral sense. Sin in Judaism does not carry the same meaning as it does in Christianity. In fact, I tend to think it is closer to the Buddhist concept of “unskillful means,” that is to say that the sinful action was an attempt, however misguided, to reach wholeness from a place of delusion.

I find the words of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik on the subject of sin and the energy that is locked up in it to capture the experience of what happens in meditation when we awaken from the grip of one kind of delusional thinking or another:

“Sin is not to be forgotten, blotted out or cast into the depths of the sea. On the contrary, sin has to be remembered. It is the memory of sin that releases the power within the inner depths of the soul of the penitent to do greater things than every before. The energy of the sin can be used to bring one to new heights.”

He then goes on to use the example of the life of Resh Lakish, a sage of the Talmudic era who before he came to the study of Torah was a much feared bandit. When he repented and returned, Soloveitchik says (in agreement with all the sages of the Talmud) this is what raised him to the level of the sages, it was the energy from released sin that elevated him to “unimaginable heights.”

Certainly, one of Resh Lakish’s great teachings, recorded in the Talmud, could have come from the mouth of the Buddha:

"No man commits a sin unless struck by momentary insanity". . . . . . .

. . . . . . . I digress however because of my love of story. And that’s not what is important here. What’s important is that we all sin. And that we can use awareness, mindfulness and compassion towards ourselves and others to wake up and release the energy of our sins to ride that energy towards unimaginable heights.

May you have an easy fast.

Excerpts from Another Queer Jewish Buddhist
Read in entirety . . .

The Soul Speaks (from Hymn on the Fate of the Soul)

From the very beginning,
before times long past,
I was stored among His hidden treasures.
He had brought me forth from Nothing, but at the end of time
I shall be summoned back before the King.

My life flowed
out of the depth of the spheres
which gave me form and order.
Divine forces shaped me
to be treasured in the chambers of the King.

Then He shined his light
to bring me forth
in hidden well-springs, on the left and on the right.
He made me descend the steps leading down from
the Pool of Shelah to the garden of the King.

Hat tip Poetry Chaikhana

The Soul Speaks (from Hymn on the Fate of the Soul) By Nachmanides (Moses ben Nachman) (1194 - 1270) English version by T. Carmi

September 11, 2001

Remember

New Mysterianism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

New Mysterianism is a philosophy proposing that certain problems will never be explained or at the least cannot be explained by the human mind at its current evolutionary stage. The problem most often referred to is the hard problem of consciousness; i.e. how to explain sentience and qualia and their interaction with consciousness.

New Mysterianism is often characterized as a presupposition that some problems cannot be solved. Critics of this view argue that it is arrogant to assume that a problem cannot be solved just because we have not solved it yet. On the other hand, New Mysterians would say that it is just as absurd to assume that every problem can be solved. Crucially, New Mysterians would argue that they did not start with any supposition as to the solvability of the question, and instead reached their conclusion through logical reasoning.

Owen Flanagan noted in his 1991 book Science of the Mind that some modern thinkers have suggested that consciousness may never be completely explained. Flanagan called them "the new mysterians" after the rock group ? and the Mysterians.^[1] The "old mysterians" are thinkers throughout history who have put forward a similar position. They include Leibniz, Dr. Johnson, and Thomas Huxley. Huxley wrote, "How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djinn, when Aladdin rubbed his lamp." [6, p. 229, quote]

Noam Chomsky distinguishes between problems, which seem solvable, at least in principle, through scientific methods, and mysteries, which do not, even in principle. He notes that the cognitive capabilities of all organisms are limited by biology, e.g. a mouse will never speak like a human. In the same way, certain problems may be beyond our understanding.

The term New Mysterianism has been extended by some writers to encompass the wider philosophical position that humans do not have the intellectual ability to solve many hard problems, not just the problem of consciousness, at a scientific level. This position is also known as Anti-Constructive Naturalism.

For example, in the mind-body problem, emergent materialism claims that humans are not smart enough to determine "the relationship between mind and matter." [4] Strong agnosticism is a religious application of this position.

You move totally away from reality
when you believe that there is a
legitimate reason to suffer.

~Byron Katie

This was one of my favorite quotes and
it sure reads quite good. I noticed
that it does bring some immediate
relief and joy and it brings lot of
"hope" for a 'future' where I will have
become so 'wise' that I will never
suffer.

But, I found that believing in this
does not do much more than to bring this
temporary relief, "hope" for a 'future'
free of suffering [and possibly, ask me
to investigate, inquire, to 'get out
of it' when I find myself suffering.].

What I found is that much of my
'suffering' is simply because of the
idea... "I shouldn't suffer".

I noticed that much of my suffering is
because of the idea "I should be
happy", "I should be peaceful", "I
should be relaxed", "I should be
joyous". And, I noticed that *work* in
place of questioning this idea, which
was many times in the root of my
suffering, further strengthens it.

In fact, I saw that entire premise of the
*work* was based on the idea, "I should
be happy", the very idea that had
caused me stress and suffering many
times. If I didn't believe "I should be
happy", in many cases, there was very
little to stress or suffer about.
Further, I asked myself... 'Why must I
be happy?'.

I found that
I couldn't really answer that question
and I found that believing this
thought, in fact... felt extremely
selfish, narrow and... kind of stupid.

I noticed that in absence of this
belief in "I should be happy", my
unhappiness... whenever it occurred felt
far more 'natural', easy and 'light'.
I found out that in many
cases, this 'unhappiness' was in fact,
quite necessary and useful and I was
grateful for it. I noticed that without
this belief in "I should be happy", I
didn't mind and I didn't care for my
unhappiness that much and I wasn't that
'afraid' of it.

Without this belief in
"I should be happy", I was less
'afraid' of 'unhappiness' and I was less
'greedy' for 'happiness' and as a
Consequence...

I was freer to live my life
[which to me, actually meant "serving"
Life!].

When happiness came, I was
grateful for it. When unhappiness came,
many times, I was grateful for it...
and, even when I wasn't grateful for
it... that too was A OK
~Adithya Comming
from Power of Now

The Experience of No-Self

Perhaps the only philosophy or theology that can help us cross the stream is one that admits: when you have learned it all and lived it thoroughly, then you had better get ready to have it all collapse when you discover the highest wisdom is that you know nothing.

It is said that St. Thomas Aquinas, after writing his masterful tomes on Christian theology, suddenly had an experience of God that so silenced his mind that ever after, he never wrote a single word. In other words, St. Thomas literally fell outside his own frame of reference when he came upon "that" which no mind can comprehend nor pen describe. ...

It seems that ultimately we must go beyond all frames of reference when the Cloud of Unknowing descends, and all the thrashing around looking for a life preserver won't do a bit of good.

Nevertheless, I now see a possible line of travel that may be of use before crossing the stream. It would be to start with the Christian experience of self's union with God, whereby we loose the fear of ever becoming lost -- since we can only get lost in God. ...

But when the self disappears forever into this Great Silence, we come upon the Buddhist discovery of no-self, and learn how to live without anything we could possibly call a self, and without a frame of reference, as we come upon the essential oneness of all that is.

Then, finally, we come upon the peak of Hindu discovery, namely: "that" which remains when there is no self identical with "that" which Is, the one Existent that is all that Is. ..
~Excerpt from The Experience of No-Self
by Bernadette Roberts

Thought, desire and fear are all based on time or duration through memory - they are not of the present moment. They disappear along with time itself when volition has been abandoned or surrendered.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar