I worked on the koan Mu for about ten years and didn’t make a whole lot of progress. Then I switched to the practice that Joko calls "the icy couch". I began to sit with the sensations and tensions in my body, embracing them. I started to cry a lot during sesshins. It was a little embarassing, but I did it anyway.

To sit with myself like this was to sit with a great spaciousness and unconditional love for what is in myself. To sit like this was to allow an uncanny wisdom to arise. To sit like this, was, more and more, to manifest the True Self, the Self that is spacious stillness, unconditional love, and uncanny wisdom. It was the Self transforming the self in its own image.

I remember during one sesshin, a few years after I started the "icy couch" practice, the embracing of the tension in my chest became very deep. Tears poured out. I realized that when I was a child nothing I did was good enough, and my life had become a struggle for validation. When I saw this I also saw that I am OK. This was wonderful, but hard to admit. I went in to see Joko, crying, and I told her "I am OK". Her response: "That is very good! Now you need to do that a thousand more times."

Practicing this way gradually transformed my life over the years. Problems became easy to manage. Joy became present most of the time.

More and more my life and practice became one in the same. Practice was the real deal, not some technique. I don’t think I saw it at the time, but practice refined into a preparing for Grace. Practice was like this:

My life was very good. There was really nothing that I wanted…

…and at that moment, in an eternal instant, my life disappeared and there was just Unspeakable Grace; only Spaciousness, Unconditional Love, and Incomparable Wisdom…

…and I knew… I am THAT.

I didn’t talk about this much with anyone. What could I say? How do you talk about Unspeakable Grace?

There was another problem. There was something important that I needed to understand, and it took a couple of years to get it:

"I am THAT" is the same as "I am irrelevant", and this statement is like a contract that arises along with Unspeakable Grace. As Ramana Maharshi states it: "Your true glory lies where you cease to exist."

If you tear up the contract, you have an enlightenment experience.

If you accept the contract, and live in the way of the contract, you have liberation…

…the liberation of the Radiant Self.

Sam Gabriel, San Diego, CA
http://home.roadrunner.com/~clothespin
sam_gabriel@yahoo.com