Choicelessness
To be
or not to be
All my struggle
contained
in six words
To dream
or to wake up
All my power
absorbed
in one conflict
To leave
or to stay
All my love
suspended
between the two
But it never was
about staying or leaving
It always was about being
“About” can be dropped
altogether
Then I am left with
this:
To be choiceless
is simply allowing
what always
already
is
Katrine 2005
May all your Nows be Here
Great, Katherine. I love the last stanza. It’s a fine companion to Zen’s Hsin Hsin Ming that I’m always flogging (http://www.allspirit.co.uk/hsinhsinming.html), which is often misinterpreted to urge abandonment of passion and discernment in favor of bland passivity. We grip so hard (to what is essentially nothingness) that we define ourselves by our gripping. We wag the dog by maintaining the ridiculous illusion that our environments are things we need to rejigger to get just right.
The best attitude toward our world is one of a photographer who’s gotten his fruit basket and lighting perfectly positioned, stares at it long and hard, nods his head in approval, ducks under his camera’s velvet scrim to shoot the photo, opens himself utterly to the image and the moment (until he IS the fruitbasket AND the camera AND the resulting shot AND the observer), and goes “click”.
We need to live in “click”. The closer we get, the more we realize the damned fruitbasket is always just perfect right where it is (if we choose to adjust or change it, great, we’ve invested our unique slant of Godly creative perfection to what was perfect Godly creation in the first place). It’s all just perfect just as-is - even if it feels sad or horrific or overly hot, humid, and hazy - and it remains perfect as the form of things changes from moment to moment, click to click.
The first step, indeed, is to give everything permission to be exactly what it is right now. Cosmically ridiculous though it is, the universe actually acknowledges this permission by offering you more bliss than you can imagine (the creative buzz the photographer builds as he approaches “click” is a taste of this). God is indeed merciful.
Thank you Jim 
and his Karma 
I can understand why you flog this particular zen perspective.
Life is so radiant; so ALIVE; so continuously streaming. And yet as constant as any space. It’s funny - but the “click” you talk about is exactly how I explain the feeling of having adjusted myself to the right pitch in the middle of a chord (when I sing with my Ensemble or play my flute). The pitch has the potential of always being perfectly balanced, and yet it never stands still - the resonance is always changig. The clue is to always allow for this change. Then, somehow, all is unchanging. (This is hard for me to reduce to words; but you know what I mean).The exact same “click” is what I feel when I really See my clients at work (I run a clinic outside Oslo). And in order to “click” I have to be all ears. It is a completely passive action, yet this state of receptivity allows for infinite movement - or true action. Life is paradoxical. Here is another poem for you:
“I am not”
I will never find
what I seek
I am what prays
for release
from the prison
I never entered
I am what looks
for the way
through the door
to the space
I already occupy
I will never find
what I seek
I am but a simple key
If I were to stop;
just for an instant;
and relax myself
into the hole
Then without
is within
and within
is without
And no eyes
are needed
to see
Katrine 2005
May all your Nows be Here
No one in the history of the world has ever sung (or played) the exact same B flat. Being in tune doesn’t involve being accurate and singing the correct note. There is an infinite range of subtle shadings within the realm of B-flat, and that’s what makes for an evocative experience for the listener and an expressive, creative opportunity for the singer/musician. And if you’re in ensemble, you need a moment-by-moment sensitivity to infinite subtlety…and that’s not something the mind is capable of.
If you try to achieve these subtle shadings via mind, you get nowhere. You may be correctly in tune but you’re not beautifully in tune. All calculation is miscalculation! The mind is before the moment (anticipation or worry) or after the moment (judging, adjusting). If you throw open your doors to What Is in the moment, then you are in effortless perfect flow, and the tuning happens through you rather than by you (and you start to realize that “you” is a construct of the mind to begin with! Delusion feeding delusion).
Click!
Yes. I agree. The balance I see as actualized potential pertains to the creation of overtones in the chord, the extra that happens when you are in flow. So different from the set tones of the piano. It has nothing to do with “correct” singing. To be “correctly in tune” is not possible. Partly in tune, maybe. And that has its own charm.
Thank you for your crisp reply, Jim!
Katrine
May all your Nows be Here