Lisa Cairns - For The Love Of Everything

The Song of the Bird Can Never Be Caged

Lisa Cairns

TAO TE CHING, Verse 40

The Way is a circle

It always returns, it never ends.

A bird flies through the air

Leaves not a trace

Tao gives birth to everything

Takes it all back into itself

As if nothing ever happened.

(From: Meditations on the TAO by - Stream, 11.11.2014)

Transcribed and re-worded to format live recordings of Lisa Cairns into written form by Julie Rumbarger.

Chapters

The Story

Juicy Drama

Bitter~Sweet

Alive~ness

No Inside or Outside

Simplicity

Tough Story

Liberation

Love

Want

Comparison

Worth

Body

Oneness

Separation

Overlooked

Peace

Fading Game

Ecstatic

Questions and Answers

Love Affair

Positive Thinking

Home

Quite

Samskaras

Self~Inquiry

Thought

How Did This Happen?

Daily Living

Falling in Love

Rape

Source

Purpose

All You

Loss Program

What Can I Do?

Doer~ship

La~La Land

Reality

Conditioning

Irrelevant

One Flow

Other

Who Cares?

Money

Claiming

Loss

Grief

Death

Bliss

Greed

Banana Fritters

You Don't Have a Life

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

There is a field. Ill meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

The world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesnt make any sense.

Meveiana Jelaluddin Rumi. 13 th Century.

Preface

We are so used to being convinced by intellectual ideas. We are so used to listening to something intellectually and understanding it intellectually and thinking thats it. What I am talking about is not intellectual. It's not about me convincing you of something. It may sound like it.

What is being talked about here cannot be put into words in any way. This can't be made sense of.

This is talking about the mystery of this , of what is.

What is , is so incredibly mysterious, it's not something that you can ever understand. All the person, or the mind, is used to looking at, is in intellectual understanding, and knowing this intellectually. It seems impossible to the mind that this is not about you getting something, or understanding something. All of the intellectually processed information that you have learned about in spirituality, all the books that have been read, are not it. Maybe they are pointing to something though. Maybe there is a resonance beyond the words.

This isn't about having a good argument or a good presentation in non-duality. This isn't about making sense. It is so simple and obvious that it is impossible for the intellect to understand. There can be a resonance that is beyond the words, a knowing beyond the intellect, but its not thought or an understanding. It's not something you can know.

What this is , is entirely confusing to the intellect that is very busy in struggling to grasp onto something, anything. What I am pointing at here is the falling away of the one that is trying to hold on.

The person, the you, is something in time and in thought. This person, this you, is not who you are. Time arises in this, but you are not a product of time. Who you are, without the you, is Aliveness, Being~ness. What Is . No~thing and every~thing.

It's not about a you in time. Its that Am~ness that is prior to that you. You, the time-bound you, the character, arises in that. Alive~ness does not arise because of the character. The Alive~ness is right here. It's the stillness and the movement. You don't need to understand it. It's not about your understanding, or you getting it, or you seeing it, or you knowing it.

It is what Is . ~

Story

My memory is bad these days so maybe I misremember things, and leave things out. Also, I want to point out this is only Lisas version of events. Its not the truth, its not what happened, but its whats recorded in the Lisa brain. I am sure the others in the story would tell it completely differently.

The high board.

Often my parents would take us swimming in the local pools. I think on a Friday night or a Saturday afternoon. I think it was mostly my dad that would take us. I remember him being the shark chasing us, the joy of the game, his familiar face popping up from the water going Rarrrr. Sweet.

I remember one of the pools had a high diving board. There were three, a small, middle, and a very high one.

My older brother James would run to the top one and jump straight away. I would follow him up and still be on the edge of the highest diving board on his second turn. I always wanted to follow him. I loved his courage. He seemed so brave to me.

Sometimes I would sit the whole of the swimming session at the top of the high diving board waiting to jump, my feet dangling over the edge. Often, as my dad called me in, I would start crying as I climbed back down the steps. I never wanted to be afraid of anything.

My brother.

My brother was a beautiful child. People thought he was a girl, he was so pretty. He had deep red ringlets large hazel eyes and his personality was soft and giggly.

He was born three years before me.

I dont really remember too much from our childhood, it feels so distant now, like a different life. There are points that stand out, sometimes, the bits that shocked me, or frightened me, rather than the good memories. Shame thats what the brain records but its pretty obvious thats how it would work.

I think the saddest memories this body has witnessed have been watching my brother.

I was ten when my brother was first put in a psychiatric ward. He was thirteen. The explanation that had been given to me was that he had broken his head; like a broken arm, but his head was broken. I noticed if I told people this they would look at me with sad eyes and ask me if I was okay. I didnt really understand this. I didnt understand it was bad or sad. I didnt understand that this broken head was what made him scream for hours in the night with my dad having to pin him down. I didnt understand his broken head was what made him shake with fear in the corner of the room, or have him make my gran and I wear tin foil to protect us against aliens. I thought that was just my brother. I wasnt really sure what a broken head was. I quite liked breaking my arm; I got loads of attention and presents. It hurt at first, but it made me feel important. So I wasnt sure that it was such a bad thing.

I didnt realize it was BAD until we left him for the first time in the hospital. The nurses had to restrain him as he screamed and begged us not to leave. I found this rather amusing, so much activity and shouting, like the TV, like EastEnders . My mother, Father, I and my dog had to walk down a thin path to leave him screaming and banging on the glass door behind us nurses everywhere. I hear my dad laugh thank god, I thought, its okay to laugh. So I laughed and laughed. My mum in front of me cries, wails, like she was being killed. How odd. I went to her and I say dont cry Mum its funny really - Dad is laughing, she looks like she is going to collapse and my dad rushes forward and catches her. I look at his face. He wasnt laughing, I realized. He was crying.

The guilt.

I had never in my ten years experienced the agony of guilt. I felt physically sick for weeks.

My parents had cried the whole way home that night in the car. I sat in the back with my dog Bonny and burned in guilt. I thought it was funny. I thought it was a joke. But it wasnt. I had never seen them both cry before. I didnt know my dad did. And I had said to them out loud that it was funny.

I couldnt play with my friends at school. I couldnt concentrate. My insides ached and I just kept replaying the hour-long journey with them crying. I now knew my brothers broken head was very BAD.