Stepping Back Into the Bath of Now

Stepping Back Into the Bath of Now

Carrying the warmth of awareness.

After meditation this morning, something began connecting.

In Dzogchen the instruction was simple:

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Hold the out-breath.

And in that brief holding…

something pauses.

Not exactly holding thoughts in abeyance…

more like not generating the next one.

As if the bubble machine of the mind…

for just a moment…

is put on pause.

Like pressing stop on a CD player.

Nothing added.

Nothing taken away.

Just stillness.

Just gap.

And in that gap…

time seems to disappear.

No past.

No future.

Not even now being measured.

Just this.

Then another image came.

Stepping into a warm bath.

That first moment…

before the mind says that feels good…

before comparison…

before memory…

before commentary…

there is only contact.

Warmth.

Soothing.

Direct experience.

A gap in thought.

And then, almost inevitably…

thinking returns.

But the insight wasn’t that the soothing disappeared.

Or that I needed to step back into the bath to find it again.

The insight was that I could carry the soothing with me.

The warmth…

the softness…

the directness of contact…

didn’t belong to the bath.

The bath revealed it.

And maybe the mind is no different.

The gap of no-thought…

the pause…

the open awareness…

doesn’t belong only to meditation.

The breath reveals it.

And with an in-breath…

with an out-breath…

with a pause…

I can carry that gap with me.

Not returning to it…

but recognizing

I never really left.

So with each breath…

I can come back.

Back to the edge of the moment.

Back to the gap.

Back to the bath.

And from there…

a quiet question arises:

Can I be okay over here…
even if everything over there…
is not okay?

And maybe that question itself…

is the edge of now.