Taken from http://seeingnoself.blogspot.sg/2014/01/now-appearing-everything-everywhere-and.html

Delma (Thassa) wrote:

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Now Appearing: Everything, EveryWhere, and EveryWhen. Ta-Da

In addition to the paradigm-shifting realization that there was no separate me to carry around containers called 'memories', 'hurts', 'accomplishments', or 'regrets, there were two more shifts I wanted to tell you about, dear reader.  Why do I feel the need to document it?  I'm not certain.  It feels like it's time to let folks know what's happened here, especially those seekers who've come to me for pointers on anatta realization.  I mean, this whole business of guiding people, whether for money or on a volunteer basis, is just pretty weird when viewed from a conventional perspective.  Where are the credentials?

At any rate, I'll tell you about a second shift.  It had everything to do with the Bahiya Sutta and contemplation of each line.  I'd been reading Soh's AwakeningtoReality blog and followed a rabbit trail of links to Alex Weith's journal on his own progress in working with the sutta.  (I've since been unable to find the journal).  In addition, I'd continued reading on in Soh's blog, especially the sections where he'd gotten into ideas about realizing emptiness and interdependence.... although at the time I didn't realize it was called emptiness.
The story:
Relaxing by the side of a pool, I read and contemplated for hours, then glanced up to notice a snail sitting on the very edge of the lip, the place where water in motion rolls into a very sudden interruption, causing a wave.  The snail seemed, in my mind anyway, to be struggling against what must have seemed like a relentless series of tsunamis.  He teetered on the edge, each moment threatening to send him into the depths.  (that's three feet of water to you and me). 
When I looked across to pool to find the source of this epic disturbance, I saw a woman sporting a sublime but bright smile brought about from basking in the glow of Sunshine and Saturdays.  Despite her generous size, she appeared to delicately occupy her perch at the deep end.  Thoroughly enjoy her afternoon, she lazily and delicately swished her feet back and forth, then sighed.  It was then that the thunder of interdependence struck.  Like some sort of special effects movie, I 'saw', all at once, the woman, the water, the sun, the breeze, the weather, her parents, her grandparents and ancestors, the earth, the universe.  And from the other end of the spectrum there was the snail, his ever-growing shell, and every movement that had led him to the moment of finding himself at his poolside ledge.  Then there was the pool, the workers who'd constructed it, the water which filled it, and the rain and evaporation that moved the water.  Everywhere I looked, Everything appeared.   For lack of a better way to express this, what I saw could be expressed as a complete and whole view of anything at all that ever existed.  Not only that, but that it had to exist PRECISELY as it had in order for this very moment to be as it was. 
Ta-Da.

It would increasingly come to me that this is seen not just in that moment, but all the time, everywhere, and in every 'thing'.  Total exertion, and I do mean Total, is what This is.  The simultaneous complexity and simplicity of this is absolutely mind blowing in the best sort of sense.  What's more, it's not static and not inherent.  It's what it appears to be right now, but not a thing there at all.

Forget the nihilistic teachings that say there are no things for a second and just look at the experience of what appears.  The Total Exertion still applies.  That this blog post is being typed is It.  The whole shebang.  It's the apperance that contains the appearances of 'my entire history' which includes the history of existence.  That it's being read by a you is the whole thing too.  Everything that is normally thought of as "YOU" is right here. This also means that EveryWhen and EveryWhere is appearing too.
Very much like examining a fractal, zoom in at any point, and it's All there.

Amazing, isn't it?


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