Imagine a scene : the mouth of a sewer pipe extending out from the cliff. At the very edge of the mouth is the beginning of what comes out of it – the very experience that is unavoidable and irresistible when it happens. What comes out is literally a processed process, a continuum of experiences, that of what comes through the mouth at each moment, non-ending so to speak, so long as the pipe is there to serve its purpose.
Yet, the pipe and what comes out from the pipe is two different matter altogether. Irrelevant to what is oozing out from the pipe, the pipe does not complaint or can it be affected by what is coming through; neither can the pipe affect or influence what is coming out. What is oozing out, and what is holding the oozing out are both simply nature doing its work.
The nature of sewer can be smelly, petrifying, dirty or sometimes just affluent water flowing through. Anything can come out of the pipe depending what is being introduced to it. The sewer is merely an end product of what has been ingested, digested and finally excreted into the sanitary system that lands itself into the pipe. Whereas for the pipe, its’ nature is non judgmental – giving its space for what comes through it. It neither complaints nor rejects, no matter what is going through it. Unaffected, the pipe just does the work that is been given. The pipe does not experience. The sewer too does not experience. Both are just nature taking its place. To notice both of these as nature is simply wisdom unfolding. To resist them, not seeing their realities, is delusion at work.
This is the metaphor of the mind. What comes up in each of us, at each moment, be it perception or feelings, are results of what views or ideas we have run in our system through times immemorial. Unchecked, unquestioned, due to forgetfulness or heedlessness, as opposing to awareness or wakefulness, all sorts of ideas or views mould the way we look at the world, hence we have to experience what results from it. It oozes out from our mind every moment, conditioned by situations, events, or anything for that matter, hence making it our experience in each moment. Many a times it is unpleasant, for that we are constantly reacting through attachment and resistance to the experiences. When we react, we are conditioning the mind to be as such in the future, hence repeating the vicious cycle.
When we wake up to the mind, awakened to what is truly happening, we come to realize there is actually nothing wrong with what is coming through the mind except nature of past conditioning replaying its results again and again. Our conditioned ideas and views are what oozes out from the mind in our moment to moment experience, like the sewer. The pipe is like the mind making that experience possible. Delusion or ignorance is the interference that perpetuates the process further. And wisdom is to wake up to what is, ending the process of ideas and views, slowly but surely, when non interference replaces resistance and holding on, hence ending whatever dance that perpetuates the oozing.
And Love is the meeting of the Lover with the Beloved – wakeful acceptance to what is, in full embrace, in love. And when the process comes into culmination, into completion, the Lover and the Beloved becomes one, in unity, in Oneness, no longer separated from each other. It is then, God is realized – both Lover and Beloved a mere reflection of each other.