Continual unfolding

As my evening grew late, I watched a video, where (from the midst of Hinduism in India) Anandamayi Ma spoke of how rebirth is there, and we have had many past lives. Then I watched a couple music videos, and went to bed. Before waking, I had a long elaborate dream. At our house in Jamaica Plain, talking with a woman who owns it now - we can look around, and even go in. But the looking around seems to be about our lives there - fixing a roof, cleaning some things up, preparing food, preparing a problem for my structures class, and more. When I woke, I thought quite a while what it meant, but couldn’t see it. Got up, made my meal, turned on TCM for while I ate. The movie was “ Outward Bound”, about the transition after death for a collection of people. I felt lucky for something so interesting to me. Halfway through the movie, I put it on record, as I finished my meal. Then, as always, I would meditate more than an hour. During meditation, I knew what the dream meant - It was my past life in Jamaica Plain - So powerfully different from my present life - Suspiciously so. They are not the same self. Thus, there is so much work and effort to maintain them as the same. This insight is likely possible to me because of the vast difference of circumstance, and with a present extreme isolation. So much more disconnected than for the norm. But lying in meditation, I could see the insubstantiality of “ Me”. And with the fading of that, being simply left with the present, without carrying all the connections from a past identity. And this Imeditative moment, had a different dynamic from many previous ones I have had. I have regularly watched thoughts diminish in my mind. And been there, in many moments, without a thought, and relishing that. But often, feeling “ My moment” Is empty. But this new insight is less focused on the thoughts, but instead that there is no one at all to think. And “ My” whole history has no necessary place in this present moment. There is no one here. Of course, this brings questions with it. What about all my past experiences? But there is no necessary self in them. There is this body and this mind in a surrounding. And then there are the profound actions and interactions between them, often very spontaneous, and without self-consciousness. But many times, very self-conscious. Very very self-conscious. But the best athletes know deeply and repeatedly, how all of that gets completely in the way. This new perspective is tied to my recent discovery of Anandamayi Ma. For three days, I have been reading and watching videos about her. Her central reality was a continuous, pure, radiant, love, visible to most who encountered her. Now this contrasts with what is central in Buddhism - “ Emptiness”. And that contrast is profound. They seem to culminate in much the same thing. But the dynamic of the path is different. Instead of emptiness, she was connected and united with everything as one - always communicating that “ It is all one!” No self anywhere…