Melting Woman

1.8.18 White Solar Dog

I want nothing. My gut heaves and breath catches in my throat while I weep in the darkness. There is a world of hurt I’m feeling, old yet freshly come again, generating teardrop after teardrop; I didn’t know I held this much moisture inside. I didn’t know the pressure of water heaving and knocking, until it found a crack and came pouring out as it does while I weep myself into knowing nothing. Knowing nothing, how can I want? There is nothing to aim the wanting at. Rolling drops backtrack up my nose, I sniff and wipe them away, salt slides down my throat and I realize I am emptying out wanting. Wanting more, wanting less, wanting anything, wanting everything, wanting nothing, the want spills out until there is no want.

What is this place of no want? It is familiar yet unfamiliar. I walk about tentatively feeling the no want place sliding and slipping with me. I am not wanting. I have no want. My needs are all met. By having no want I acknowledge that I am not wanting, nor in want of, nor wanting for. A strange feeling comes over me. A feeling of release and lightness. I feel empty yet full. I enjoy it yet I’m not wanting it to last nor to go away, simply experiencing it for what it is. Is this what it’s like to be without want? It feels liberating. Will it last? I don’t know, it may it may not, yet I keep myself centered with this mantra:: I want nothing and nothing wants me yet I am not wanting.

My tears have gone, washing away the ache with it, yet I didn’t want them to stop, nor to go on. Is this what it is to be with whatever is felt? To have no want yet to be sad or joyful or to feel, think about, sense whatever is rising, departing without wanting, simply being with it? I’m new to this, I sense this even now, the baby step learning to walk in and with this place of wanting not. Without wanting, I am free to cry with sorrow at what hurts, be it war or rejection or hunger or pain I’ve caused another, free from anger at myself for having been hurt or in pain or causing pain or witnessing war or being helpless, no this is different, it is allowing feelings to come through the walls and be felt exactly as they are, experienced, served, without wanting anything to come of it, to go with it, to accept, reject. Nothing. There is no want and only the experience happening.

I don’t want to know. I don’t want to not know. I don’t want to be x, y, or z, I don’t want to not be q, r, or s. I don’t want this, nor do I want that. In this no want place I receive rubies that I don’t want, yet in being unwanting I am suddenly free to choose my response, suddenly able to see behind the rubies into the heart of what is being offered! I feel grounded and strong, able to observe feeling this centred! A slow unfurling whisper shimmers opalescent in the dark:: without wanting I see clearly, my wants and not wants were obscuring clarity! I see the moon shining through the walls, golden light above me, and I rejoice in the moment, kissing gratitude’s ruby lips with my own for suddenly I sense this::in shedding want, I have shed a layer of skin, sloughed out of and through it, hot on the steam that had bubbled from me earlier, baked by despair a breach occurred that lifted me up out of thick ice and spat me out into a void, yet the void is where I found::I know nothing, nothing know I, I want not nor am wanting yet all is provided, every need met . . . a question comes, what if all was not provided, not given, needs not met, then would I return to wanting? Baby steps, I walk tentatively and gentle as snow falling toward this one with a pearly luminescent thought, if wanting returns then it is an indicator that I have become wanting, thus::wanting!

I don’t want . . . to surrender, yet I do. I surrender my want without wanting to. It’s picked up by the air and carried into the woodstove where it sparks and catches flame before billowing up and out the chimney into the night. Fly free! I don’t want . . . to be grateful yet I am, a hundred million thanks crawl under my skin and work their way over my body, warming me cozily in bed. I don’t want anything, for myself or my mate or my children or for anyone or anybody, yet I say prayers for us all to be blessed with health and wholeness, with love and joy, with peace and habitat, with compassion and gratitude, with humor and integrity, with impeccability and honesty, with our needs being met, with abundance. I pray, not because I want these outcomes but simply because I AM praying, moved to pray and these are what’s flowing, without want. I feel again the familiar yet unfamiliar feeling of being in this no want space, vast and open and limitless, what all is possible here, what freedom of action and thought and feeling is available here? It is old new territory and I realize all that I thought I knew before, I did not, a veil moves away from over my eyes as the skin I wore, the skin that covered and bound me, drops to the ground and I feel the same yet not the same.

Today the water under the ice continues to knock and heave while shimmering beads of crushed hail fall from the gray skies above. Anousheh walked on thick ice and tried looking through and into the below, she saw leaves frozen and grasses embedded in the depths. I walked around the pond with her, alert and slightly worried, but without want I was not as I was before, it’s not that I want nothing, it’s just a not wanting, just walking alert and happy to be outside with my daughter.