' Absolutely Nothing '...

"Now imagine that you stop to sit on a bench in the park. As you sit there everything stops, absolutely stops. Your mind is so still and quiet that you can hear dust particles floating in the air. Suddenly you are falling, and falling, and falling. There is no ground below or sky overhead, just a crushing thunderous silence, racing faster and faster. You suddenly realize that it’s going to kill you, rip you limb from limb and explode your lungs into dust.

There’s no way out, no possible means of survival. And so you do the only thing there is to do. Surrender. All goes blank and empty, more empty than limitless space. Prior to life and death, you blink out of (or is it into?) existence. Timelessness is all there is, all there ever was, or could be. Eternity reigns supreme, and is radiantly present in every particle of being. Something unborn and undying stirs to life and opens its eyes -- your eyes.

You or It is still sitting on the park bench. It is smiling, radiant, and content. A little girl on roller skates passes by. The sun glitters through the aspen leaves as an old man smokes his pipe on a footbridge crossing over a stream that feeds into a pondfilled with goldfish. Everywhere you look is emptiness. Each ‘thing’ is a veil, a shroud, cloaking Infinity. Nothing is as it seems, and everything is exactly as it is. Somehow perfect in all its apparent chaos, Infinity prevails.

You know with exact precision that there is nothing else -- nothing could be other than this vast and absolute void, this pure and Infinite Potential, this unborn and unformed Infinity. You reflect back over your life and realize that everything that ever happened or ever could happen, from birth to all of the ups and downs of this ephemeral life, to the strange realizations of spiritual awakening, to this exact moment outside of time, was and is the momentary display -- a blip, really -- of Infinity’s limitless potential coming into, and going out of, existence. An old friend finds you sitting on the bench in the park.

She sits down beside you and asks, ‘What are you up to?’ You love her as friends do, but what can you say? You’re already speechless, and as quiet inside as the dead. She doesn’t know it, but you’re in two different worlds, strangely intersecting here on this park bench. How do you reach across infinity to communicate with her? For a moment you strain inside for the words with which to respond. There is a silent pause -- is she onto you? Does she suspect something is different? A cool breeze caresses your face and the universe smiles inside you. ‘Oh, nothing really,’ you say. ‘Absolutely Nothing.’”


~ Adyashanti
The Way of Liberation