Gábor Goda: The Third One- Day-Turn

(21st June 2011, Hungary – Pilis Mountains)

The longest day and shortest night of the year.

Memory of the first two turnings:
/Filled with emptiness/
I am not standing here, but everywhere.
/The Earth is not beneath my feet, but surrounds me.
Noise is a part of Silence. Detachment gone./

Antecedents

I knew, that it was not going to be easier this time either, that nothing would happen the way I could even imagine. It’s never going to be easier. Nay! There are going to be more turning points, too. The experience is always unique and very powerful just as the knowledge I earn through it. It goes straight to the body, deep, to the guts. It’s liveable, possible to share by gestures. Yet, at the same time, it’s not merely a self-induction, but also service. The service of every human being, the Earth, and most importantly the spiritual service of Wholeness, that has to be cultivated continually.
The current, third One-Day-Turn ritual-meditation focused on clearing the Axis-Pillar, so that it could serve as a channel through which the Earth and the Sky would be connected.
The role of the Pillar is partially giving support, but yet to a much greater extent it is connecting and letting through. Service. I craved for serving as a pillar, a mainstay, an artist, a father. This turning was different from the previous ones also because Gyöngyi turned, too.
Both of us had two helpers on spot. Márti and Tóni for Gyöngyi, and Bea and Tóni (another Tóni) to help me.

We went up the hill already on 20th.
I had announced in a close circle of friends and family that we were going to do the turn and that if anyone felt like seeing us during this time, we would be pleased and grateful. The support is inevitable, whether it comes from far away or directly on spot. The visitors can choose to stand a little, or turn for an hour, perhaps. But, they can also simply sit down and harmonize with the place.
There were no strict rules. I only knew and therefore had asked for Silence and Attendance, as they were the ones to support us most. Lajos came first, already on the 20th at 9pm. The second day the others turned up: Zoli, Sipi, Anna, Kinga, whom I know from Weight Flow. Then there was Féva, Eszter, Salome, Ruw-Keya, István, Holló and Tűzvirág. Then, all of sudden, Yvette appeared, accompanied by a whole group of people uniformly dressed in white.
Describing the 24 hour experience cannot be done chronologically this time. On the one hand, because the events of the day didn’t happen in a line, but, rather in a spatial dimension. On the other hand, because it is still going on, it has been present in every moment ever since. It requires a lot of effort to be able to write about it in such a matter-of-fact and comprehensible way. I feel that this time my sharing of what is non-sharable will be quite different.

Here it goes: the Third turn
Daybreak at 4:46

I got some clothes for my turn. Homespun linen. A pair of trousers and a hooded shirt, a long coat and a cap which I, eventually, did not put on. I prefer the old one. I’ve got the sleeveless T-shirt from the old drawer in my home, too. For I know it’s going to be hot. Ritual dress, a costume for performance, occasion-wear ordinariness /formal informality/, casual eminence, reverence, simplicity, agelessness, preparedness understood as humbleness. The attire of humbleness, behaviour-less. Slowly, I forget what I am wearing. Slowly, I forget who is wearing these clothes. Do they look good on me? „Do I look good- stand well -in these clothes?” I quote my wise son Áron. I am standing, in them. I am turning so slowly, that it seems I am only standing. I see continually. Images outside, images within. I see through myself. I keep the direction. I keep it, stick to it, but not with my hand, sight or thoughts. Wherever I look, whatever I see, the direction is not shown to me by my eyes, but my heart. The outer sight-images nourish me and give power to me, fill me with joy, evoke a smile, flood me with peacefulness. And yet, the direction manifests itself through my body, my chest, and my heart inside it. The “viewpoint” doesn’t equal the view of the eye. Viewpoint is the view of the open heart. For the heart is the one that sees through all the directions of space, its closeness or remoteness, and its time overlapping relations. The heart is the possibility of emanation and acceptance, the flowing itself. It’s the flow of blood within the physical body, and the flow of eternal Life in the spiritual body, an arrival to Oneness. Just as the delta of the river belongs to the ocean, my heart is the gate of the Self belonging to the Single Universe, and the telescope of my inner planetarium, at the same time. It is capable of focusing, and directing its attention to one particular thing by raising it to the surface from the endless sea of the Universe. The first rough hours of the New-Moon-Ritual opened my chest, which has been continually watching, sensing and leading since then, all through the 24 hours. My heart has sometimes felt heavy, turning into a mere body organ, though still doing a great service. It keeps me in the colourful and pulsating dimension of Life. We are standing on the hill. I am not alone. The quest for my own way is not mine anymore. Not at all! I am grateful for the lesson. Yet, I am distracted from what I am doing by the presence of the others. I am unable to focus on the turning with my entire self. I worry about the others. I wish Gyöngyi would also endure it. Lajos is here, too, standing behind me. He gives me strength. Brother. Our mutual being, the up-down axis of ours flows into the same point. And there are still many others here, too. They stand, turn, sit, they are with us. Their presence, spirit, turning supports me on the one hand, but swings me out of my axis on the other. It is not caused by them, though. It is me who steps out of my own axis, to build attendance-pillars beneath their feet. What is my duty? Nothing is the same as it used to be. And nothing happens the same way as the first time. Everything is all right. It’s not me turning. It’s the whole world that is turning and so is everything and everybody inside it. At this point, my distorted attention becomes focused again, not in me, however, but in us. We grow roots in the ground from above. We are growing the other way round. From top to bottom. Our roots meet in one single seed under the ground. We are swinging on the hilltop like swaying blades of grass; ‘grass-blade-people’. We are one field. We are a single being, standing and growing roots and creating New Earth around the core. The thickening SELF is slowly filling me up with increasing pain. My thoughts abduct me from my presence, the doubts make me weaker. The sophisticated games of my Self-Ego urge me to appease the relation with My-Self. We have to live together. Hence, I get hold of the spiritual pipettes of my alchemist being and their heart-based laboratory and set about to dissolve the mass of my Ego in this Laboratory of Universe and dilute it until there is exactly as much left in me, as there is in anybody else, anywhere else in the world. My Ego turns into a homeopathic fluid which eliminates detachment and like a healing elixir permeates the whole world, and all the people living in it, and there will be just as much of this strange self left in me as there is in anybody else. I am everybody, and I am nobody, hence, I turn to TAT TVAM ASI at last. There is a ship approaching from above. It floats beside me, slows down to dock, almost knocking me over. Its body skimmed over mine. The picture is dense and fleshy. A daytime apparition, with eyes wide open, I see the arch breaking out from the sky. I don’t even try to understand. Yet, I know that this is an utmost important moment! Statues are formed by the clouds. Animals, faces, magic gestures and creatures. I look down at the ground, then back up at the sky and notice that nothing is the same as it was before. All the past images have disappeared, and new ones popped up instead. Every look creates a new world in the sky. Time has stopped and the space thickens and evaporates into lives. The forms are illusive; they are born quickly, and disappear quickly, with every moment turning into a mere memory. The immutability and repetitiveness of my termination renews me, re-creates me. And eventually, I understand that “non-being” is the only true form of being who I am. I am grateful to Bea. She knows, and understands, what gives heed to me. Attendance. Sacrifice. Service. She gives it all gently. With kindness and care. Water and clothes. Her look is not questioning me, only watching me. She already performs that which I wish to reach, yet, without being ascetic. To be and not to be, at the same time. There are 24 flat stones at my feet, 20 wooden sticks, 4 larger stones signaling the cardinal directions and a haversack. And yet another treasure added up to my survival kit. A tiny capsule made of copper, with a small paper-roll inside, and a sentence written on it: „A speck of dust can take the whole Universe on its back and bear it, because both of them are You.” I had written that before, in the past. The mind does not turn the knowledge to its own profit. Milarepa passed away, and the act itself was his last teaching. It is not about enduring, or surviving things, but about living and experiencing them. This helps when it hurts. So, I finally allow myself to urinate, still keeping the right direction. A butterfly crawls slowly from my hand to my face. I am gradually moving my hand with the angelic bug on it, closer to my face, until it shows signs of willingness to move onto my nose in an aristocratic speed. There it stays. For about 30-40 minutes. I watch its patterns. Diamond shapes, in lines of 4 and 5. The edge of its wings is jagged. I study the butterfly sitting on my nose, with my right eye from the right, and then with my left eye from the left side. I am winking this way at an arthropod. Then, my curiousness transforms. Time of Peacefulness takes place. We are fine like this, the two of us. Then, another one appears. I turned into a runway. Later, a wasp-like fly rests on me, too. They don’t fight about me. There is enough room on me. I am enough. Silk-thread Reeling. The Great Circulation. I am not going to elaborate on this now. Twilight in an endless movement. The single curve of the 24 hours. Motionless journey. Meanwhile, the duet of Lajos and Reiki. My foot swells into the moccasin. My ankles swell up out of it. This isn’t a foot anymore. It is something else that fills up the tiny space between me and the Earth. The eye casts a look from above down to the foot and craves for being able to look at the sole some time, from underneath, respectfully, with a deep bow. Still, today I am only watching the feet, not able to decide to whom they belong – to me or the Earth? Tóni loiters about with a camera stand in his hand. He records the illusive, nebulous moment. Is it inside the snapshot-box? I signal that a back crack would do good to me. He embraces me, my back cracks, the spine is suited to function as a spine again. The Babel tower of my vertebras doesn’t fall apart, for every moment is a “Gate of God” and like a bridge arches over the afternoon siesta-sky. I step out of myself. Hey! There is furniture in the field. It looks so real that I even try to lean on it. I am exhausted and my body yearns for rest. I almost tumble over. There is nothing there! And yet, I see a whole set of furniture around me making the hill homey and cosy. ‘You’re at home’- all the space visions keep telling me. I smile at myself. How could I get here? I am lurching about in this meadow room, yet, my drunkenness is the most sober rapture. There is no chance of collapsing.    I couldn’t, for it is not me holding myself. For, there is no Me and Self anymore. There is nobody to see himself – myself, because there are not two of them to watch from outside in and from inside out. Emptiness fills me and we hold each other. There is something very humorous in this all: the fact that this is actually really happening. 24 bamboo sticks. Yet, the bamboo isn’t a native Hungarian plant of the Carpathian Pool, is it? So what! Nor are Hungarians. Bamboo circle will do just as good. It will get accustomed here. Or it won’t. We also got accustomed. Did we? 24 white stones from the Island of Hvar. I didn’t know why I had brought them home at the time. A stone-circle of 1m in diameter. An island. Hvar – Pharos – Alexandria – Lighthouse. 7/1 magic. A dock, a magical sunbeam leading to the library of the world. The labyrinth of Borges, the matrix universe of each letter. The Zen Garden of white, flat stones around my feet. Endless furrow route. Not even a route anymore. Soul-breathing, Soul-Zen.
It was a route first time.
It was a route second time.
Yet, the third time it became a meadow.
Its river of time flows into its own ocean and turns into a wavering field. Tussocks of moments, flowers of presence. Eden.
There is no linearity or succession, only collateral existence, where the distance between all the existing things is equal. What’s more, so is the closeness between them. It’s a boundless concentric field, in which any of its parts can be a centre-point, even at its edges- there is/there are/there we are: a centre-point.
My siblings,
It’s still going on..
And there will be no End…
Fort there was no Beginning, either …

Budapest, 27th June 2011