MARTYN WEBBER | Exploring the Nature of Being

LIVING WITH CHANGE

It’s true that we have be willing to stand behind our truth as we see it, to defend, to justify, to explain. But also more importantly we need to learn to change our minds, to let go of our blind loyalties to people, ideas, views, and positions as we go along, and keep doing it.

We need to be nimble to respond and flourish in a rapidly changing world, and we can’t be if we’re attached to the heavy husks of the spent and the untenable.

Keep what’s good and true and beautiful, drop the rest. We need to be modular, we need to be endlessly upgrading, exploring new frames of understanding. All the while remaining ungrasping, open.

This open-handed approach to living and being ultimately provides the much needed contrast between the essential and the transient. By allowing the flow of knowledge and information to change and evolve freely in and through us, we have the opportunity to recognize the unchanging substrate, the ever-present sentience that we are.

Reducing or eliminating identification is an essential skill we have to master because we can’t move forward while dragging the past with us. We must be endlessly shedding or skins, participating in the increasingly fluid nature of manifest existence. In a world made of change, the static and the calcified must face inevitable convulsion and destruction.

There are no fixed points, no permanent structures in nature or human life. Longevity yes, sometimes. But immortality, no. Not in terms of structures and things, including knowledge and information. So don’t identify with that which doesn’t last. Don’t conceptually or emotionally orient your existence around the impossible idea of some kind of manifest immutability.

Seeking permanent identity with changing forms is futile and unnecessary for optimal functioning. In other words – let go, peeps! Stop with all the desperate clinging. Don’t be so narrow and lacking in imagination. Use the world, use ideas and information and intelligence and ways of being, then let them go when their time is done. Free yourself.

We are all explorers in this vast cosmic dream. There are an infinity of uncharted, unimagined possibilities unfolding themselves before our a very eyes. Don’t get fixed too soon, don’t make up your mind, remain humble in the face of the perpetually emerging kaleidoscopic lightshow. Grok the need for radical agility, intellectually, conceptually, emotionally, and yes, spiritually. Don’t be a boat on the river, be the river itself. Or better still, be water.

The good news is the very ground of all experiencing, who we actually are, is perpetually present as simple awareness. Discover that, be that, and the world and all its myriad forms becomes an endless playground to enjoy.

The Awakened Heart is a Broken Heart

There’s grief in awakening. Grief at the loss of autonomy, grief at the loss of purpose and meaning. Grief at the loss of knowing and certainty, however deluded they were. There’s grief over losing one’s power, and one’s familiar identity.

There’s so much loss in awakening. When it dawns that there’s nothing we can keep, nothing can be retained beyond its prescribed time, and all that we know and love must pass, then a natural grief for all of it can come. And since this knowledge of loss is for all of it, for all time, then that ache of grief is an ever-present refrain, a broken heart, amidst the delight at the miracle and mystery of life.

We know this poignancy, this pathos, because it’s familiar, it’s part of us, and it’s not wrong. It’s not something to be avoided or excised. We must comfort ourselves and each other tenderly, as we struggle to find the inevitable ground of acceptance.

PART & PARCEL

Sometimes I think this is a twisted culture where it’s so hard to be who and what we are, express ourselves naturally with our community. Instead we’re trained to take our essence and modify it and package it so we can sell it to each other. It’s not so easy to share our gifts and talents freely in natural mutuality, we must make ourselves into products to consume. Where once we’d simply enjoy each other’s gifts, now we devour each other’s branded essence. And in doing so we dismember our wholeness, and sever the deep, living contexts and interwoven fabric of our totality.

I want to offer myself in all, to all. I don’t want to pick off the most usable, saleable portions of my being to package in plastic for others to buy from a cheap merchandiser at the checkout.

”Souls for sale! – but only the choice cuts please. Keep the rest and consider it worthless. We don’t want all of you, just the highlights, just what the market wants today. We’ve no time for whole human beings.”

We’re all TL;DR – we remain largely unread. The system demands it. Skimming is the best we can do.

So what do we do with the unread, unseen parts of ourselves? If no-one values our wholeness, why should we? So we push what’s left into darkness, into shadow. Like icebergs, we reveal only a fraction of ourselves to each other. But underneath, in the depths, we are much more, and so much unseen. And so when we get close to each other, the shadows of our hidden underbellies collide, and we don’t know why. We’ve so forgotten ourselves in the rush to present the acceptable, the consumable, the sellable parts.

We need to take time and give attention to know ourselves as deep and wide. Ourselves and each other. We are more than our ‘best foot forward’. We are more than our highlights, more than our unique selling points.

We can’t let the world reduce us to a partial, standardised output. We are the totality of our being. We are fullness and complexity and nuance. We are light and dark and everything in between. And we are worthy. We are all worthy.

On Spiritual Transmission

One field of consciousness appearing as everything.

As a seeker I was always sensitive to spiritual ‘presence’. I noticed it in groups of TM meditators, watching Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on videos, yagyas, and the darshan of sages I met, even in certain places such as Arunachala. The energy was there, call it what you will; Shakti, presence, transmission. Back when I started to watch a lot of Satsangs online it was really fascinating that again I could sense the ‘presence’ of the enlightened teacher just as if it were in-person, even when the video quality was poor. Being around this ‘presence’ it was almost like I was ‘being meditated’ and I began to use this ‘transmission’ as a spiritual method.

But it also began to occur to me that the idea of transmission as such was a dualistic understanding of whatever the mechanism was. It certainly couldn’t be bound by time as I understood it, because that didn’t account for pre-recordings. And not by space either, because I was watching Satsangs that were happening thousands of miles away. And the fact that I was watching very low bandwidth stuff meant that ‘it’ couldn’t be traveling though the wires! So perhaps it was more about an ‘activation’ of my own consciousness in the vicinity of a sage, etc. Which is true enough, but still didn’t fully resolve the dualism.

The beauty to me is that any real understanding or description of spiritual transmission is only resolved at the level of unity/singularity. All that is is simply consciousness modulating in its own nature, appearing as seeming forms, and also appearing as a narrative that suggests division and duality, subject and object, all the while remaining entirely as itself. All of it arising as what we call the present moment, but it’s only a conceptual narrative, a story that suggests past, present, future, and distance.

The sage says “no teacher, no seeker, no bondage, no liberation, no world, consciousness is the only reality”.

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Whether you’re talking about the kind of direct Shaktipat Transmission that I do, or the general ‘presence’ transmission one can experience in the vicinity of awakened beings (Satsang), the first thing to consider is what level of analysis you’re engaging in. Making distinctions about transmitting and receiving and who is doing what are dualistic descriptions and understanding, and they just doesn’t hold water ultimately or bring about Self-realisation. But at their own level they’re useful enough as theoretical exercises and as functional shorthands.

But we can use this dualistic understanding to lead one to the deeper nondual understanding. It’s all consciousness, no more of it any ‘where’ than any other. But here’s the thing – this is all theorising, conceptualising, and these kinds of questions are not liberating to the seeker. Self-realisation is coming to see that all this is a dream. It’s not something you figure out, it just dawns as the obvious reality. And yes, you are in fact already consciousness, but maybe there’s a belief present that you’re a person. And when that belief disappears then the truth of what you already are is obvious and apparent.

So you could call a transmission a ‘relative phenomenon’ that clears away delusion, and functionally in the story of what-is it’s true enough. But that’s a dualistic level of analysis and would be to miss the point. There is no separate ‘relative’; everything is consciousness. ‘Relative’ is just a concept. “Brahman alone is Real”. But for all practical (relative) purposes it’s a transmission given by a giver, received by a receiver with the aim of promoting awakening, the effects of which are often strongly felt.

But these are imperfect concepts to describe reality in so-called relative terms, and are all transcended and resolved when Self-realisation dawns and the singular, nondual nature of reality is revealed.

The problem from a seeker’s perspective is that attempts to understand this are just perpetuating the belief and the effort that there’s something to work out on the level of mind that will lead to liberation. I’ve heard it said that there are two kinds of questions, knowledge questions and freedom questions. The former are of the mind and even if answered would do nothing but add to your store of knowledge. The latter kind destroys delusion and leads to complete liberation. I urge you to reflect on the kinds of questions that you ask yourself and others. Are you spending time feeding the mind, or will you free yourself while you have the precious time to do so?

Where IN Becomes AS

What are we but a self-knowing energetic field of consciousness?
And what is nature of energy if not a quality(s) of consciousness?

Self-examining our nature, that is, exploring consciousness with consciousness naturally results in the discovery of our formless nature. When we settle in to the direct observation of our essential subjectivity we find that we don’t find any hard edges, fixed forms, boundaries or irreducible objects at the centre or anywhere else.

In regard to self-identity this exploration into the very heart of our own sense of existence reveals no permanent, fixed entity to call ‘me’.

That’s not to say we don’t find any activity in this subjective field of awareness, on the contrary all possible activities arise here as wavelike fluctuations, whose ebb and flow constitute the kaleidoscope multi-sensory appearance we conceive of as ‘body’ and ’world’.

So that’s all good and true but I’m still yearning to express a different kind of voice that speaks to the deepest allowing, the discovery and dissolving of felt knots and boundaries in our living being. I want to speak of the intimacy of that, the closeness, the place that leads into and beyond any sense of separation in ourself, where IN becomes AS. And the work that is the courage to turn and face moment-to-moment that which we would rather not feel or know in ourselves; the courage and surrender to open ourselves fully to the storm of energetic embodiment; that radical act of complete inclusion and acceptance of all that arises and all that we are. So there’s that.

ॐ

Before Thinking – I AM, YOU ARE

Our trouble starts when we privilege thinking over direct experience. When this becomes an ingrained habit of relating to the world and ourselves even the suggestion to drop out of the mind and into the non-conceptual being can be violently resisted.

But for the sake of our peace and freedom we must learn to let go. Attachment to views, not just specific views but views as such, is our bane. Conditioned grasping to mental artefacts hijacks attention from the richness and wholeness that is being itself.

We’re frightened that if we let go of our orienting notions and nominal identities we’ll have no support to our existence, and that a plunge into no-thing-ness is necessarily a plunge into oblivion. The truth is the very opposite. Releasing our grasping to the conceptual releases unnecessary tension and contraction and allows attention to fully partake of its nature as unbounded awareness. We find there’s no need to cling to a fixed identity, identity becomes little more than dress-up in light of one’s realized Self-nature.

So find out where you’re stuck. What ideas and notions are you attached to? Approach them, explore them. Learn to soften the grasping tension you find there. Learn to ‘let go’ basically. Release the ‘muscle’ of energetic tension, practice softening and opening in your field of felt experiencing. Gently explore the feelings around your strongly held notions.

Because insisting that the world be just as we conceive it, when frankly ‘it’ doesn’t give a shit what we want or think, is insane and futile. Not only do we suffer it but we compound our own ineffectiveness in the face of inevitable and unremitting universal change. Our conceptions are our suffering.

From one perspective we are nodal expressions of universal intelligence, inseparable from the whole. Driven to act like waves are driven by the ocean. Our sense of separation born only from limited conceptions. Partiality of mind seems to disconnect us from our living source.

We must see mind for what it is: smoke and mirrors, insubstantial, passing, impermanent. Else we suffer the misapprehension of the apparent for the real, the transient for the essential. Take away the conceptual layer and what remains? Not even take it away, just notice it as an emergent phenomena not as self-nature. That which notices and knows is Self, is awareness, the being that you are before any conceiving occurs.

Awakening is the recognition of the holistic and singular flow of experiencing; the entirely inclusive and fundamentally unified nature of what is; the nominal subject and object recognized as such – separate in name only.

Existence is pre-conceptual, the thing-in-itself without ‘adornment’; the Uncarved Block, Zen-mind, thusness.

Know That.

Why Not Choose Freedom?

In my last post I said that that when it came down to it most people didn’t actually want to wake up. Someone asked for my thoughts on why that might be the case. This was my reply…

In terms of why most people don’t really want awakening/liberation, I’d say that this freedom requires (and is) a willingness to feel everything and a willingness to sacrifice everything for the truth. That’s a lot for most people who mostly figure they can get by in life without needing to pay that kind of price. Most are frightened that if they let go completely they’ll have to change or lose something important to them, they’re fear losing what they’ve got. This may be fear of losing material things but also losing the capacity to function in a certain way, losing status, or losing some cherished ideas. Identity is a big part of it. If you believe that you’re essentially the body and a person who’s in control, then when that idea starts to get radically challenged experientially there can be a powerful threshold of resistance and fear that needs to be confronted and traversed. (See: Fear)

Basically people put conditions on their freedom, which could be described as a complete ongoing surrender to what’s arising as experience; a complete energetic openness and nonresistance to the bleeding edge of the felt experience of being alive. It isn’t mental. Maybe they want some things in their life to change because they’re suffering them, but when it comes to it most are not willing to let go of their attachments, they’re not willing to make the sacrifice of the lower for the higher. People want guarantees before they fall into the endless groundlessness.

Now reassurances are fine and I can say everything will be OK. But only as long as you’re OK with everything and anything. There’s the rub; you don’t get to control the content, you don’t control outcomes. This radical openness and complete absence of control is anathema to most people which is why most people don’t want it. In reality it’s not that you’re giving up control but rather you’re giving up the illusion of control which feels the same. It’s this unwillingness to let go and remain open that’s the not wanting to ‘wake up’, because awakening is the deepest acceptance moment to moment, opening to your deep experiencing not pushing it away or wishing it away. It’s not that all problems will go away but you become free of the affliction of needing life to be any different to what it is at any given moment.

When it comes down to it ‘letting go’ is not something ‘you’ have to do, but it’s only when the willingness to embrace radical acceptance is present can the freefall begin. The trouble is this whole ‘freefall’ thing might not sound too attractive to a mind. And so it’s like “why bother, what’s in it for me?” But the point at which whatever it is that you don’t like or don’t want in your life becomes so utterly intolerable, and when you run out of options to get what you want or get rid of what you don’t want, then the opportunity arises for real transformation through deep acceptance. In that acceptance you find (you are) the spaciousness and capacity for all that is, all that can be. The narrowness of imagined personal limits are expanded and dissolved to accommodate whatever comes. Then you find you’re not existing as only a person, you recognize yourself and live as something more essential, as being itself.

So when people say that they don’t want to feel the way they feel, the irony is that the way to deal with that is to accept the way they feel at the deepest level. They don’t have to go searching for something to feel, they just have to allow whatever is happening in them to flow.

Are you willing to let go of control and accept whatever’s here? Probably only when you finally see that it’s your only option, then you’ll surrender. Until then you’ll hedge. That’s just how it works. It comes only when we’re ready for it, when we’re truly and actually done with all the strategies and the temporary fixes that never stick. This is being available to Grace. And living in Grace is when you’re perpetually surrendered and it’s left running the show. At this point ‘you’ and Grace are synonymous.

I invite you to let this in, because what I’m talking about isn’t some flowery words for the mind, it’s the living reality of your being and in order discover true and lasting peace you need to sacrifice the old and familiar patterns that may well be comforting in a way, and let yourself blossom into the freedom of a new way of being.

Problems

Sometimes it seems there’s a whole generation of people who are perpetually triggered and always tense. They live in a state of constant reactivity. They’ll often report the reasons are things like systemic injustice, racism, sexism, etc. And so their anger and agitation is justified. Maybe so.

As a generation Millennials (and Gen-Z) are not unique in their exposure to stressful stimuli, each generation has had its reasons to fret. For the Boomers it was civil rights and Vietnam, for Gen-X it was the hopelessness that typified the Cold War and the inevitability of nuclear annihilation. That same apocalyptic perspective is freshly clothed in the current climate crisis. For most people the everyday struggles of life itself; work, health, money, family are an inevitable source of tension.

Now I’m not going to get into the veracity of the issues, rather I’m interested in our response to them, as the need to deal with problems small and large is part and parcel of the human condition.

Getting to the root of not just specific problems but problems as a whole is the ideal approach. If we’re going to solve problems and also stop creating them needlessly we need to change our consciousness as well as our thinking. This means waking up. And not just in a political or social way, but all the way; nondual, transpersonal, spiritual awakening.

But I’ve come to feel that most people don’t really want or aren’t ready for this awakening. They need a bridge, and intermediary stage to lead them from their current malaise or overwhelm to the possibility of more ease, more peace, more capacity. They’re not ready to let go of all their perceived problems, they’re more interested in trying to fix them directly. Fortunately many teachings offer a way to more intelligence, more creativity, more energy, etc. Practices such as yoga, meditation and mindfulness for example.

Maybe it’s a trick this progressive path, this path of evolution. Is it disingenuous to offer it up as such, knowing that it results in its own transcendence? Is it a lie to not disclose the whole truth of where it’s heading or is it skillful means?

Ramana Maharshi was asked by Paramahansa Yogananda what was the means of liberation, what was the method. Ramana replied that it depended on who was asking, because the level of consciousness of the person would determine the appropriate approach for them. He said that there can be no single, universal prescription for Self-realization. Of course this doesn’t mean there are none, or that there are, practically speaking, infinite ways. It means there are many and one should pick the correct practice or method at any given stage of one’s evolution. Ultimately all methods are transcended. Because there can be no doing if there’s no do-er.

My point is whatever the method, however long and winding our path might be, we’ll never be happy and free of affliction or able to face our problems fearlessly and compassionately until we discover our true nature, the Self. And that true Self is not a perfected person of some kind but consciousness itself, the field of infinite intelligence and creativity. This is what we already are, we only have to recognize it.

So in regard to the problems of the world the question of do we fix them, accept them, or transcend them; it seems to me the answer is all of the above.

TO DO OR NOT TO DO

Awakened mind is the impersonal sentience and not the contents of awareness. Even the sense ‘I am’ is known by this awareness.

But who can say how this thing works? Getting into a technical analysis of the structure of consciousness and the nature of awakening becomes an exercise of intellect, and therefore true enough on that level but not Truth – capital T.

That Truth just can’t be spoken, it’s beyond description, beyond analysis, beyond intellectualization. It’s beyond any method you could employ to attain it, and yet the living reality of it is always present as the totality of experiencing.

So I could say that the ‘I Am’ isn’t it, but if you identify it and abide as it then the fullness of liberating insight will dawn. But the fact is the recognition of this fundamental reality self-generates spontaneously.

You see it’s really difficult to talk about the spontaneous and uncaused nature of being, of truth in terms of doing. Scratch that, it’s not difficult it’s just not true, it’s like describing the growth of a tree in terms of the personal actions of the tree, what a tree wants, and anthropomorphic projections aside it just doesn’t work that way.

I’ve seen seekers go a bit crazy when faced with non-dual maxims such as “you can’t do anything” or “there’s no one to do anything”. But this is as much to do with the personal addiction to autonomy and self-determination as the apparent riddle that is non-dual exposition.

Awakening is about seeing not doing, recognizing not achieving. And like waking up from sleep, waking up to one’s true nature is a spontaneous affair. Even saying something like “be present, be aware” as an injunction to act is misleading, but it’s a good sign when that happens with more frequency.

Bottom line, if you still think you’re doing it you’re mistaken. The person has to be transcended. And since the person can’t transcend itself, it’s the introduction and recognition of the non-personal being as the subject that does it. From there the person is seen for what it is, a mental construct. And all this is happening on its own as part and parcel of the dreamlike nature of consciousness.

Awakening or liberation seems to occur at some point in time when ripeness is present. But when it does ‘occur’ it becomes apparent that liberated mind is all there is, and to even speak of a past and a path is a concession to a mirage. A mirage whose existence is so fleeting and nebulous that it can barely be said to exist at all, and whose suggestions can be likened to an imagined world in a story.

So at the risk telling a nonexistent person in the nonexistent world what to do, I say this; drop all efforts, identify the empty, observing awareness that you are, and remain there, as that. At some point, if fortune smiles, all sense of separate existence and doership will recede. What remains? You tell me.

Fullness

Is nondual spirituality nihilistic?

Desirelessness, powerlessness, emptiness.

Sacrifice, surrender, formlessness.

Are these more fundamental than, say: fullness, all-possibilities, bountifulness, unboundedness, bliss?

It’s all well and good focusing on the qualities of mind required for the apprehension of silence. But this emptiness is full, this fullness is empty.

All around me I see fullness, I see rich intelligence and abundance manifested.

This Leela may be transient and not what it seems but it’s also a garden of joy. The futility of attachment is true, but what a bounty of appearance, what delightful forms the formless assumes!

This life is thick and dense with wonder. Every glance and glimpse is a living tapestry of beauty. Each moment a masterpiece is created anew, only to be supplanted by another a moment later. Such prodigy, such excess! Incredible, astounding.

Everywhere I look, more and more. An endless parade of impossible delight.

Life is both emptiness and fullness.

This was the Maharishi’s great exposition:

200% of life; 100% silence and 100% dynamism.

We had lost the ground of fullness, the silent source, pure potentiality. Without healthy roots the plant withers. But when the roots are attended to the plant flourishes, blossoms.

The risk of nondual ‘understanding’ is the inner life is cultured and the outer is denied; fullness is viewed with suspicion while the emptiness is idealised.

Both are one. This is the balancing of true nonduality, of unity. Holding the opposites without denying one or the other, refusing to concede to a false dichotomy.

The fullness Is, let it in. Be the boundless space AND the kaleidoscopic dance, both. Where are you not?

“Water the root to enjoy the fruit”

Denying the richness, beauty and wealth of creation is both futile and unnecessary. All is welcome. The Kingdom is founded on the Spirit. the Kingdom is the gift of Life.

Right now as I write I’m sitting in a country garden of exquisite beauty. Birds are flying and chirping, blossom is beginning to burst forth on the trees. The sound of running water whispers in the air. The sun shines its light and warmth, lush green and spring colours are all around. The air is fresh and fragrant.

Yes the boundless silence is the ever-vigilant ground of all, but it also dances in endless variety of expression. A self-created vision of light and life and blissful exuberance.

Aham! I am! I am alive. Aliveness in all its wondrous possibility, Is.

Birds fly, river flows, sun shines, grass grows, blossom bursts. I draw a clean breath and sip my strong coffee. Gratitude pervades my being. This world, this fullness, freely given, is a miracle; an endless, flowing mystery of being and becoming.

Know your Self and the world is yours to enjoy.

200% – you don’t have to choose.

Shiva and Shakti are One, the mystic marriage of silence and dynamism. Fullness and emptiness; reality is a paradox to the mind but self-evident to the awakened Heart.

Don’t hide in the transcendent, don’t hide the light of being under a bush.

Established in Unity, radiate the light of life in all its glory, in all its rich variety and seeming multiplicity. Deny nothing.

The Great Tao, the torrential Grace of the Divine, the body of Christ.

The world is Brahman; Brahman alone is real.

So thank you for this fullness, thank you for this emptiness, thank you for I AM.

Who am I thanking? Who am I to thank?

A-ha! The Mystery and the Miracle.

May You Live In Interesting Times

When the awakened view dawns it becomes apparent that everything we experience points to it, and always did. It’s the recognition that each moment is a Dharma Gate, the opportunity to realize the nature of what-is and it becomes fascinating and fun to see how the consideration of any given domain or field of knowledge offers an opening to its own origination and indeed the source and nature of phenomena in general.

The following is a brief exploration of three different propositions in the domain of science and technology and how each has at its heart the same unanswered question.

“May You Live In Interesting Times”

We might, if we were sufficiently curious and attentive, notice that the issues that we face in our modern scientific age urge us to question and explore the deepest nature of ourselves and of reality itself. The relatively recent emergence of rapid and accelerating technological development has introduced us to new and previously inconceivable propositions and possibilities to consider. New discoveries and developments prod at our imagined certainties about the nature of ourselves and the world. Venerable conceptual models of reality are being revealed as the insubstantial notional constructs that they’ve always been. Our brave new world is inadvertently attesting to the impermanence of ideas long believed to be concrete – ideas about reality, identity, truth.

As an example, advances in genetics and medicine, along with exponential progress in robotics and artificial intelligence, herald the prospect of the human as-such transforming beyond its evolved biological form into some kind of biotechnological trans-human being. Such a radical prospect begs the question: if the body isn’t fundamental or essential to my continued existence, then can I really BE this body? And if I’m not the body essentially, then who am I, what am I?

Another recent theory is that we may all be existing in some vast, cosmic simulation; an idea that is being taken so seriously that some leading thinkers suggest that the likelihood that we exist in ‘base reality’ is billions to one against. And if life as we know it is a stimulation, then who or what am ‘I’ that is experiencing the stimulation? When the simulation ends, including (presumably) the projection of a body and personality, do we wake to find ourselves to be a contemporary human, a future human descendant, an alien on a digital day trip, a neural blob in a jar, or some other type of aware intelligence? What exactly is the nature of our existential ‘base’ reality?

Perhaps the most subversive threat to the materialist status quo is from the perspective of quantum science, in which the necessity for the presence of an ‘observer’ is so fundamental to the existence of a phenomenal world, that it simply doesn’t exist without ‘someone’ to know it. But what is the nature of this essential observer, without which the universe couldn’t be?

Each of these examples brings the question about the nature of our true identity into sharp focus; if we are not the body, and the world that we experience is not permanent or substantial, then where and what are ‘we’ in all this? What came first, the world or I?

In our investigation into the world ‘out there’ we find that even when we look outwards, we inevitably find the need to turn our attention to where we are looking ‘from’ to comprehend the way of things. We have yet, in the modern world, to collectively apply the scrutiny of our scientific curiosity toward exploring ourselves as the essential subjective principle upon which the world depends.

The ‘hard problem of consciousness’ isn’t so hard, it’s just so ubiquitous as that it’s overlooked. It’s universally available for anyone to observe directly for themselves. The simple act of observing awareness from awareness reveals its nature and the nature of the objective phenomena that appear in it. It reveals itself as the first principle, self-existent, unconditioned.

This is old news; Masters of scientific introspection from Wisdom traditions have been reporting their findings for millennia and into the present day. Modern science has yet to fully embrace what I believe will be the transforming exploration of our times: the discovery and recognition of our true nature as consciousness by means of direct observation of awareness by awareness. The radical discovery that the universe is a ‘dream’ appearing in a singular, universal mind.

I’ll leave it to the scientists to do the math, to describe the details as best they can. But the lived experience and liberating benefits of knowing oneself as the ground of all being and becoming is the birthright of all. We need only to start looking for ourselves.

– Martyn

LOVE

Many of our words and concepts, we think we know what they mean, when often our understanding hangs short of the great depths of being that we miss. Our recognition stalls at the conceptual and clings there instead of plunging into the open experiential oneness that upholds and contains all.

So words like ‘love’ can be like objects, known and quantified and limited, instead of experienced and recognised as the very ground and essence of our being, the ultimate resolution and fulfilment of all our longing and the very fabric of life itself.

Love is the prime substance, but what do we know of it? When we say “love” do we comprehend the fullness, the all-encompassing quality of it? Not just the feeling or even the action, but ‘that which is’?

God, truth, and love are names of the absolute, the divine. And as love always has its origins in the heart, the inner being, then it offers us a direction in which to travel, it sets our compass straight and true.

Love includes, love swallows up enmity and hate. Love can be strong, but never cruel, never unkind. And although it may be that we fail in love, love never fails us, it’s always available and always forgives. How great is love?!

Love is spiritual gravity.
Love is peace. It resolves to unity, non-separation, and freedom. Love is non-grasping, tolerant and kind. It’s patient and secure in itself. All things come to love in the end.

Love is bliss, love is blessing.
Love is fearless, love is courage.
Love is the sun, it radiates warmth and light and draws all beings into its embrace.
All life is nourished by love.

Love will break your heart and smash your world to pieces, it will crucify you. Love brings a sword. But fear not, love cuts you free.

To live in love is to live in joy and freedom and peace.

But we set boundaries on our willingness to love, we create separation where there is none. We guard our vulnerabilities from each other, we hold ourselves in reserve. We don’t trust enough to love deeply, freely. Our own love is limited by the desire for reciprocity and bound by conditions.

But in truth love is neither given nor received, it’s the fabric and substance of being itself, and we live in and are pervaded by its presence. It’s inescapable and ubiquitous. O blessed love! Love seeks no gain because love is all.

Dissolve yourself in love.
No techniques, no strategies, just fall in love with love.

Love is truth, love is beauty, love is good.
Love is not of mind, love is of heart.
Let love swallow the mind.
Mind finds peace in the heart.

But love will challenge you in all ways and test you, for love’s sake.

A Thought for Easter

Good Friday

What must die? All forms, identities.
What is Risen? Life itself, triumphant.

Because there is no death, ultimately.
Life Eternal is enduring by definition.

Today is the sacrifice, the surrender of all for the sake of Truth.

Do I believe in Jesus? Not as such.

But it’s impossible to deny the sacrifice that all must face, finally and in each moment. The death of each moment, endlessly. The end of everything we think we are for what is risen anew. Each moment a new frame, a new being, created complete.

It’s so fast we miss it, a blur of newness, so rapid that the very destruction and creation is hidden in plain sight. We choose to see only the successive ‘peaks’ of creation, the frames of the movie of we call life. We avoid the void, the gap; the emptiness that terrifies the mind is missed completely.

But it’s here in the Mystery of sacrifice and silence that we find ourselves in our fullness.

The Calling of the Soul

How much of our time do we spend bracing ourselves against the possibility of someone else’s reactivity?

When we fear to break a rule or make a mistake, how often is that apprehension based on the anticipation of having to deal with someone’s anger, sadness, or disappointment?

Bumping into people’s reactive emotions is unpleasant and depending on how much power they hold, dangerous too.

How do we stay open and vulnerable when we’re always braced for impact? And how, when we’re avoiding the possible wrath of others’ displeasure do we pursue the calling of our intuitive heart?

How do we gird for reaction without tightening, without building defenses, or deposing our integrity?

Perhaps the question is, how do we go the way of the heart and deal best with the inevitable pushback from the fear-based beings that oppose it?

Follow the current of true integrity, come what may.

Bare your open, unguarded heart for all to see. Meet the world with compassion and firm resolve to honour the calling of your soul in each living moment.

It may be that we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. So all things being equal, you might as well sing your soul’s song.

Nietzsche spoke of the ubermensch, the overman, who was beyond good and evil. Rumi wrote that “out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field”.

The conditioned, rule-based being derives their moral orientation from outside and cannot imagine or trust the spontaneous, living ethic of the awakened heart.

We meet this challenge as much inside as out. Our turning away from our true, intuitive course in the world is mirrored in our inner struggle. The voices of fear and anger and grief rise to deter us from our path in the forms of people and situations in the world, and also as the formless voices in our inner world.

These voices only have the power that we endow them with. The voices of the tempter and the fearmonger. Living from the heart is a path of courage and compassion. It is not the path of indulgence or suppression, it’s the way of what-is, of Truth. And everyone who walks in the Way is a catalyst for the awakening truth in others.

The Way

I’ll show you the Way
but will you follow?

The Way is no way
The Way is silence and surrender
The Way is no effort
The Way is ‘stop!’
The Way is just this
The Way is no more seeking

Can you see the Way?
Can you accept the Way?
Or will you reject it?

Wherever you plant your foot is the Way
Wherever your eye lands is the Way
And the foot and the eye

The Way is unmissable
Because it’s everywhere
And everything

All beings everywhere follow the Way
There are none that fall from the Way
Because whatever occurs is the Way

Even the thrashing and tantrums
And refusals and resisting
The obstinate willful ignoring
The wailing and self-pity

There’s nothing
That does not show the Way

Suffering is the Way
Joy is the way
What is not the Way?

The Way embraces and upholds all
Includes all
Nourishes all

Be at peace
The Way has you
Always

Awakening and Creativity

Spiritual awakening is a bit like the creative process, because when you engage in meditation or introspection or inquiry, if you’re motivated by money or getting you want or anything like that it pollutes the process. It’s more important to be open and to play and be curious, to be intuitive and fearless rather than be wondering what you’re going to get out of it and how you’re going to benefit.

And I’m talking about process here. Because it’s OK to want things and to be motivated and incentivised in general, but any artist or creative will confirm that it’s that mode of play and wonder that opens up our intuition and leads to us deeper truths and greater joys.

Because remember, what’s being sought here is not learning, but discovery. Not achievement, but transformation. So just do it (whatever ‘it’ is for you) for it’s own sake, follow your bliss and discover the truth on it’s own terms.

Untitled Thoughts #8

The ego constricts around a more-or-less fixed mode of being. So when the ego is transcended and the constrictions are released, then the manifest being reorients to a more natural, unconstrained mode. And we don’t have any real idea what that might look like. During the ego’s reign fundamental embodied modes of intelligence may well have been completely subsumed, and so after awakening, in time we might find that we become an entirely different person with different likes and orientations. Political and social views might change, new paradigmatic perspectives might emerge.

But profound flexibility allows all our manifest aspects and characteristics to transform while never losing one’s essential being-nature. We are now the clay not the pot, and it turns out that the clay is not fixed and fired, but infinitely malleable. The trouble is that (for now) we live in a world of pots, and the temptation is to listen to them. “You are a pot! That is your fixed identity and only mode of being.”

The great challenge and the great freedom is to find, establish, and stand in your own inner truth and not to evaluate yourself by outer authorities. You must be the measure of yourself and the world. You know best for you, no matter what others would have you believe. If we give away all our power to the other by allowing ourselves to be judged and measured and defined by those who would control us, it’s invariably in the direction of limitation. You have to take that power for yourself, stand free in your own truth and be what you must be, on your own terms.

The Impulse To Spiritual Practice

The impulse to spiritual practice
is the impulse to awaken
so even if practice is wrong
or poor
or difficult
or ineffectual
it’s never misguided,

and in the worst cases
it can be redirected
or transformed
to better express
the core impulse.

All the prayers
and mantras
and chants
are well and good
but the urge
to practice
goes beyond
the limits
and constraints
of any particular method.

So don’t constrain yourself
to one particular
mode
or method
or time
or place.

Less doing
more noticing.

Always return to presence;
this is powerful and profound
yet simple.

Be aware(ness)
always here and now.

This isthe final practice;

beyond this
is abiding simplicity itself
the passing away
of all efforts
of all practice.

Simple Self-recognition
nothing to do.

ॐ

Not Me And Not You?

I was sitting outside a café with friend some time ago, and we were talking about ‘consensus reality’ as he put it. He was wishing that he could be free of its influence. I sympathised with his POV but pointed out that we aren’t actually bound by it, and it’s enough to recognise one’s existence as prior to the arising of conceptual frameworks, false notions of reality, etc., to see that were already essentially free of such influences, when another friend, an older lady, came and sat with us.

This lady is a devotee of a nondual guru whom I count among my own spiritual teachers and with whom I spent time at his ashram as part of the sangha. So this friend sat and listened for a while, and after I’d finished speaking she said, with a ambivalent look on her face, “you speak the knowledge very well”. I smiled and made a few more comments in the same vein as before, but I could now sense a subtle closing down of her attention; I got a kind of “I’m not letting this in“ feeling.

It struck me that I’d seen this before, and I’m calling it the ‘not-me-and-not-you syndrome’, and it’s all bound up with what our expectations about what Self-realisation looks like and the contexts in which we expect or even allow ourselves to encounter it. You see, this friend had decided at some level that enlightenment looks like something in particular – mostly like an old, charismatic guy with a beard talking to a room full of devotees. The trouble is that once someone has internalised expectations like these, no matter how much the guru might exhort that “I am That, YOU are that, EVERYTHING and EVERYBODY is That!”, even when faced with the recognition of your own true nature, and seeing it expressed in other, less exotic individuals, this will be dismissed because it doesn’t comport with ideas you’ve adopted about what it will and should look like when it comes.

This syndrome is playing out when they hear someone talking “the knowledge”. I could see it in my friends face as I spoke; that what I was saying was resonating with her, but she was confused that it wasn’t coming from where she expected. So she effectively dismissed it as just words and then shut down her listening apparatus, better to avoid the cognitive dissonance of meeting some regular person who knows their true nature and expresses it but isn’t some exotic guru figure.

Bottom line, one has to see that this whole spiritual awakening thing is about YOU. And that at some point (anytime, now!) you need to RECOGNISE, confirm, and finally ADMIT that you are, in fact, awareness itself, and live as that. And see that this is entirely normal and increasingly common.

Humility

True humility comes when you run out of strategies and realise that you’re powerless
Surrender comes as a result of this
It’s something that happens not something ‘you’ do

This is the difference between prescription and description in spiritual teachings
The seeker hears prescription
Because it can only understand what it hears in terms of itself
It’s personal
It’s something it must ‘do’

But when I say “you need to surrender”
I’m really saying that surrender needs to happen
That humility needs to dawn in your experience
There is no-one to do it

And if this kind of talk is frustrating
Then good
It needs to be
Learning that you’re powerless can be deeply frustrating
Even annoying

Then what’s left is to ‘admit it’ as the 12 Steps say
Pay attention
Be earnest and sincere
And honest about what you discover
And it’s inevitable that you’ll find the truth
Reality

Learn humility
And surrender
Then Grace can come

But it’s not an exchange
Surrender for grace
You’re not bargaining for power
This for that

Surrender is giving it all up
Even if there’s nothing to replace it
It’s just stopping
All the strategies
Because they don’t work
And so you surrender them all
Not as a deal with God
But just because they’re all fake and useless
You effectively create a vacuum
Grace fills it

Die before you die
Sacrifice what you are for what you could be

In your heart
Gather all that you think you are
All that you think you possess
All that you think you know
Gather it all up
And throw it on the fire
Today
Now

It’s time to wake up

ॐ

Getting It

The dichotomy dissolves
Of subject and object

Spiritual knowledge goes
Spiritual persona goes

Just this
Whatever is happening
Is it

Doubt
Is it
Mental discussions
About how this can’t be it
Is it

You can’t turn anywhere
Touch anything
Hear anything
Feel, taste
Without it being it

There’s nothing that isn’t it
And there’s nothing that can happen
That can make it not it
And nothing can happen that means
That you’re not it

Everything that happens
Is it
So keep quiet
(So far as one can take instructions)
Remain in ‘only don’t know’

Dive in
Or sit back
Think it through
Or not

Whatever occurs
Is it
This is it
Always

The sheer truth of it
The absolute is-ness
Will assert itself
More and more

But always
This is it

ॐ

Untitled Thoughts #7

What magic comes from Silence?
All of it
Can’t you see it all comes from Nothing?

I’m a voice crying out from the wilderness
“It doesn’t matter!”
None of it matters

Perhaps
What matters
Is that we suffer
Or that suffering is
Can be

What do we do with that?
What can we do?

Just a poem

I don’t really notice much
Outside
Because everything that happens
Happens in me
Of me

The flowers bloom
In me
The wind blows
In me
The hills roll and rise
In me

Like my bones
And my blood
And my breath

All in me

As if my body
Were the universe itself
And my breath
The wind

And the stars
Rejoice in my body –
The world

I am
Where I look
I am
Where I feel and touch
I am
Where the Sun shines

And the blaze of heat and light
Is me

I confess
That I am bigger
Than I imagined
And more capacious

In fact
I cannot find anything
That I am not

How reassuring
To be so complete
How helpful
To be so undivided
And so full

I am free to be
Myself

ॐ

Fear

The process (of awakening) requires us to face the most profound fear of our own annihilation or destitution

To face that fear and continue is the challenge of awakening

In the end there’s nothing we can do

We either come to the edge and let go or we don’t

Rather, it will happen or it won’t

There is an inevitability about it

Ultimately all beings wake up

(Maybe)

And it’s not a choice

But the unfoldment of the story of ‘you’

One day the belief in yourself as a person just isn’t there

And it becomes obvious that the person you thought you were was and is a character in a dream

And you’re the dreamer, consciousness

There’s no-one doing any of this

It’s just happening

And if I say ‘you’ need to see this

It’s not the person I’m talking to

It’s You

If you want to wake up because you think you’ll get more of anything

Then that’s ‘false view’

If you think that awakening will prevent your utter destitution

Then that’s ‘false view’ also

I’m not trying to scare you

Or discourage you

I just want to name the fears and expectations directly

Drop your expectations and face your fear

Because expectations are a distraction

And fear is a threshold you must pass

To be free

ॐ

Untitled Thoughts #6

This is new
It’s all new

Memory serves up similar visions
That give the impression
That you’ve seen it before
That you know this
But it’s all fresh

So stay awake
You don’t know what’s coming
The bleeding edge
Face first into the ocean spray of existence
The sharp breeze
Wake up!

The hum of Being
Alive, alive
This is no static field
The fabled flat equanimity
Equivalent to death
Or vanilla

This is life itself
Awake, alert
Even at rest
Electric
Energetic

But subtle
Transparent
Open

This.is.it

So stop what you’re doing
What you’re thinking
For now
Take it in
Rest here

Breathe

Yes

Meditation
Is the opposite
Of doing

It’s perverse
In fact
That we consider it
A thing
Rather than
Simply
What Is

It’s like flow
Everyone’s so busy
Trying to get
Into it

But flow is
It’s not a question
Of getting in
But are we ever out?

I Am

This Is

I Love

Love Is

Be the space of gentle noticing
Be that which knows
Notice that you are
Already that

Meditation
Is effortless nature
Being itself
No more
No less

Zen!
Just so
Thus

And when are you not that?
When are you not thus?

“Confused in mind about Dharma”
The way it is

See clearly
But see

Begin
At the beginning

I AM

“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God”

“Be still and know”

This

Look no further

Rest in the presence of God

I Am That

Thou Art That

All This Is That

Ayam Atma Brahm

All you need is here
All there is is here

Now

Abandon your seeking
Right now

Freedom!

Peace

Joy

Love

Bliss

Beyond, beyond

Gate, Gate, Paragate!

The farthest shore
Is here

“The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time”

Home, home
We never left!

Whatever seeking you have left
Abandon it
Now

“Free at last, free at last!”

And never pick it up again
And never doubt

Throw away false notions
Stand free

The end of seeking
Is like quitting smoking

The habit is so familiar
That when it stops
It feels strange
At first
Like something’s missing
There’s so much space
A void

But the void
Is bliss itself

Throw away the seeking
Like a bad habit

Make friends
With the space of being

Abide
In your nature

As your nature

As nothing

No-thing

Just this

Not even

“Are we there yet?”

Yes.

ॐ

Willingness

If you’re serious about self-discovery, if you’re serious about the truth, then you have to be willing to give up everything you think you know. You have to be willing to question and look at every assumption and become like a clean slate. Because untruth and suffering hides under the rocks of unexplored assumptions.

Here the most important thing is willingness, because without it you’re not going to get anywhere, you’re not going to see what you need to see. You’re likely to be precious about some idea or some concept that you hold, some interpretation that you’ve organised your life around. Because coming to see the fullness of your own being is easy, it’s right here. What’s hard is letting go of your attachments, letting go of your preconceptions and your cherished beliefs.

You might say that the maturity of the seeker is somehow measured or exemplified by this willingness to look, to push through their defensiveness around their notions and concepts. Nisargadatta Maharaj talked about the most important quality of a seeker as being earnestness. And this earnestness is that willingness to throw themselves on the fire if they need to.

Of course this willingness is actually how ‘able-ness’ is expressed. Or stated another way, when spiritual ripeness comes about through Grace, the capacity and inclination to inquire into your true nature arises as willingness, earnestness, sincerity. When this occurs only the real, the true, will satisfy your yearning. You’ll find yourself drawn inwardly to abide in your own silent nature. The things of the world will lose their lustre and charm. When Grace descends it’s only a matter of shedding the remnants of false notions and misperceptions. And quite naturally false ideas and attachments will drop from your Emptiness like autumn leaves.

ॐ

Untitled Thoughts #5

Nothing exists in isolation
So many conditions that we take for granted

For any single thing to occur
The existence of a universe is required
And everything that ever was

Funny that

So stay out of it
You’re doing less than you imagine
Nothing at all in fact

What a beautiful day

Of course the universe doesn’t exist
That’s a massive illusion
It’s like every time you go to look for something
Then you find it
But Reality is laying down the tracks as you go

Everywhere you turn
The universe is being created as you look
And destroyed the moment you turn away

If an atom bomb goes off in a dream
And all the flesh from all the bones
Is burned away
And turned to dust
Is that a real explosion?
Or just the dream of destruction?

And are you –
The dreamer –
Scorched by the heat?
Killed by the bomb?

Is this world
A real world?
Or the illusion
Of a world?

Where is it?
Except in your mind

Oh of course
You believe your mind
Is in your body
Which in turn
Is in the world

But is that true?
Is that how it is?
In your experience?

Have you checked?
Have you looked really, really closely?

Is your mind in your body?
Or is your body in your mind?

Advaita says ‘Awareness’
Zen says ‘Big Mind’
Dzogchen says ‘Rigpa’
Taoism says ‘The Nameless’

I say This, Now, Here, I.

Wake up!
You are awake!

ॐ

Untitled Thoughts #4

Drop it all
Leave it all alone
And if you’re still having trouble
It means you’ve picked it up again

Simple?
Yes it is

Do I need to elaborate?
After that is there any more to say?
Is that the final answer?
The only instruction?
Maybe

Any more would be just to assuage doubts

Like, “Yes, drop *everything*”

“Even *XYZ*?”

“Yes, even that”

“But what if *insert another possible exception here*?”

You see how the mind goes?

“What part of *everything* don’t you understand?”

We are wooly thinkers
We lack discrimination

We take things on trust
When we’re too young to know better
And then we hold on for dear life
To ideas that never get explored
Fundamental notions that never see the light of day

And so the truth is an alien concept
We don’t even know what it means to be true
We take everything on authority
And never look for ourselves
We’re lazy
And we’re ill-equipped for exploration

It’s a sad state of affairs actually
Really

In fact it’s this fundamental inability
To know shit from Shinola
Object from subject
Me from I
That wrecks our peace

And our ignorant grasping
And denial and defence
Of indefensible falsehoods
Is the endless wandering-on
Of samsara
The hamster wheel of suffering
On and on

But enough of the metaphors
And the spiritual rhetoric

“It is here, now!”
Is the truth
But drop all efforts
All mental engagement

What is here?
What Is?

Thoughts arise in this
But what is this?

Feelings happen
And sensations
Where?
How?
Who knows?

Whatever is known
Who knows?
Anyone?
Is there a knower?
Or just knowing?

Don’t answer with the mind
Just let the question be
Let it fall away

Where are you?
Who are you?
What are you?
What is?

This is how to look
How to inquire
The question is a mirror
That has you look
Not answer

The seer and the seen
The knower and the known
Are one
Are not two

Is non-mentation the goal?
Or the means?
Or both?

It’s recognising
That no-mind
Is the basis of mind
That no-thought
And thoughts
Are not mutually exclusive

Emptiness
Is full
But the fullness
Is empty

The silence
And the dynamism
Co-exist

But the silence
Is the womb of the dynamism

When you find the silence
The empty awareness-space
And you know it as your very being
Then thoughts can come and go
Without any problem

Ananda is the bliss of the Self
It is the attractiveness
The joy of pure being
That draws the wayward mind
Back to its source

Ananda is the Bhakti
Chitta is the Jnani

Without the bliss
Why bother?
Without Ananda
How would you know in which direction to turn?
To find Satya, the Truth?

Freedom is coming home
To where you already are

The deluded person
Is an amnesiac king
Or queen

Freedom is remembering
Smriti
Aham! I recall my Nature!
I know my Self!

The recognition and remembrance
Of that which is already true

The relief that comes
From shedding delusion
And living Truth

So take heart
And let go!

ॐ

On Nondual Understanding

It’s often the case that nondual understanding in the dualistic mind is the product of ‘secondary mind’, the logical, analytical mind, and not a wisdom emanation from Pure Mind. True wisdom is born directly from Self-nature without reference to understanding. It’s the difference between knowledge born of Self-recognition, and the cogitations of the functional mind and it’s rationalistic outputs.

In a sense one can suffer from the consistency of functional mind as it produces self-supporting arguments and theories that appear complete on their own level, however the nature of such ‘knowledge’ is entirely theoretical and concludes without recourse to direct non-conceptual apprehension. It’s hard to penetrate such understanding because of the strong crystalline nature of its structure, but the absolutist assertions about what-is that are derived from the seat of reason and not from the seat of insight simply don’t satisfy.

But it’s life itself that deposes this usurping intelligence by offering endless exceptions to whatever conceptual framework is held, as the failure to accomodate the ever-fresh, ever-proliferating nature of being becomes the incentive to look beyond concepts altogether. Non-duality as a paradigm is a profound intellectual understanding, and perhaps even represents a kind of ultimate iteration of conceptual understanding as such. But it’s only when ALL understanding is transcended that the living truth is realized. Reference to secondary mind is still available, but is known to be merely relative and conceptual.

Ultimately all appearances are born from Original Mind, and even the notion of delusion is a spontaneous arising. But the belief that the goal of Self-inquiry or the spiritual ‘path’ is to understand nonduality intellectually is delusionary, and the idea that understanding on its own level could be satisfactory is misguided. The development of intellectual understanding will only find its satisfactory conclusion in its own transcendence. That said, a rarefication and refinement of comprehension seems to be a precursor of its own demise, albeit not a immediate guarantee of it.

Transcendence is a leap of faith, a jump into the void, a fall into unknowing. It is the final step from the clifftop, when the freefall begins and never ends. No (apparent) form is stable, so to cling to anything is futile and cause for suffering. Remain in freefall, enjoy the breeze!

Many will cling to understanding as if it were a fixed point in an ocean of change. But understanding is itself relative and subject to change and dissolution. There’s no-thing to rely on. Even Being itself; who can say?

If A equals B, and B equals C, then A equals C. This is the functional mind, this is the mind that calculates and concludes. And it’s fine for building bridges and writing code and following recipes. It’s functional, it describes, it extrapolates from what it’s seen before. But this form of intelligence is nested within total knowledge, the infinite potentiality of intelligence itself, and as such cannot fully fathom or describe its own origins.

Knowing is known on its own level, in its own Nature. It is primordial and self-supporting. It is singular, awake intelligence, it is the universal Subject. The I-I. And no amount of analysis or reason can deliver the lived experience. It is beyond and prior to all such considerations, but is immanent and ever-present as your very own awareness.

“Know that by knowing which everything is known.”

ॐ

Untitled Thoughts #3

If we stop giving the mind attentional objects then it will tend to settle into its own non-conceptual, silent nature. It’s simply a case of remaining in an open and non-grasping posture.

The mind wants to settle, remaining always in a state of engagement is exhausting. Openness and non-grasping are a relief. But there are a couple of ways to look at this and approach it (although both resolve at the same place). The first is by the ‘action’ of noticing and releasing tensions in the body-mind. This is a result of a penetrating attention that actively works through and dissolves energetic densities and contractions as it finds them in the present moment experience.

The second way is more profound. It’s noticing the ever-present, non-grasping awareness that underlies and contextualises all energetic movements and phenomenal arisings. This is a more fundamental and powerful recognition. In a single stroke it transcends the problematic nature of embodied contraction and tensions, and at the same time begins the spontaneous process of natural releasing and the ultimate dissolution of embodied trauma and stress.

It’s the recognition of this foundational aspect of our nature that frees the human spirit from the burden of identity and activity and the affliction of embodied stress. Once known, awareness becomes the catalyst for freedom, while also being the goal and also the context in which any perceived process of liberation unfolds.

How this plays out in an individual can be seen as a function of bliss. At some point in the life of a person a dawning recognition can come that their essential nature is blissful, and on the basis of this the attention becomes attracted and inexorably drawn within to its own origin, where it finds rest and satisfaction.

It may be seen that suffering was only ever the result of the habitual narrowing of attention towards objects of awareness at the expense of the apprehension of ones boundless source. So at the heart of our experience is bliss, an ocean of it, but we miss it because we’re preoccupied with a limited view. Fortunately, because bliss is our essence, at some point its presence inevitably reveals itself to itself. We begin to remember who we are, what we are, the nature of our being. This is the dawning of the light of truth, we become the living memorial of the divine presence.

It may be that talk of bliss is alien. It may be that one’s attention is entirely caught up with the experience of suffering. This is a perfectly satisfactory starting point also. Suffering is a great teacher. It may be that the presence of suffering for so long can become the inspiration and incentive to seek out its extinction. This can be the birth of spiritual practice and seeking. And although in the end practice and seeking must both be dropped, in the beginning and along the way they serve to give purpose and focus attention in the right direction.

Bliss at the source, suffering at the outer edges as identification increases in narrower and more fragmentary ways. The primary injunction is just to turn the mind to its source. Stop chasing out, out into the world, turn the attention 180° where attention becomes awareness. Rest in your own silent, blissful nature, until it dawns that This is all that is.

ॐ

So what’s on my mind?

I’ve been concerned with identity politics and PC culture lately. I don’t quite know why, maybe it’s that I’m seeing in the outside world, in groups, the same kind of dynamics of fear, control, and suppression that the ego uses on a personal level.

I’ve been noticing that my attention has been liberated from the narrow introspective view that dominated my life for so long as a spiritual seeker, and I’m now more aware of the ‘outside world’, social dynamics, ideology, politics, etc. I’m noticing that those with ideological agendas of all stripes are working hard to impose them on others, infiltrating schools, colleges, government, media. In fact anywhere they can. It’s funny that I never really noticed it before, I was like some kind of spiritual ostrich with my head buried deeply in my own contemplative sand. Waking up, I find my head unplugged and unburied, my eyes are open! And what I see is the destructive power and effects of identification and strong views, grasped tightly.

At the heart of all this dysfunction is fear. Fear of the groundlessness at the heart of our being. But the fear itself is groundless, it’s simply a result of the mind projecting into an imagined void. Beyond the fear, beyond the imagined and threatening possibility of our own personal extinction, beyond the vulnerability of our contingent and impermanent identifications lies our essential ever-present nature. But if we continue to turn away from fear in regard to our own self-exploration then we miss the great opportunity, the discovery the greater part of ourselves, Being itself.

The present culture of offence, outrage, safe spaces, speech and thought control, is the very antithesis of intellectual and moral courage and integrity. It boxes us in, it narrows our possibilities, it gives fear dominion over our existence and expression. The misplaced moral certitude and the resulting righteous anger and indignation are a seductive and heady trade-off for the ongoing and sometimes challenging journey of self-discovery. An easily indulged hit of outrage and self-righteousness is a temporary salve and a distraction from the intuitive recognition of our fundamental powerlessness. Ideological grasping comes at a high cost – how many must be wrong for one to be right? How much of the world must be pacified and controlled to protect one’s fearful sensibilities? How many voices must be stifled in the name of one’s emotional comfort? The indulgence of such fear tyrannises the world.

I contend that the solution to these problems lies not in holding tightly to untenable certainties, or to seeking identities in ever narrowing conceptions, or by defining ourselves simply by that which we oppose, or by blind loyalty to comforting ideologies that fail to withstand the scrutiny of sincere and honest critical analysis, as all do ultimately.

I implore all to seek truth not expediency, to suspend judgment indefinitely, to welcome uncertainty, to breathe through the fear of unknowing, to resist premature intellectual and moral resolution and judgment, to seek ever-widening and ever-deepening context, and to exercise compassion and kindness to the extent of one’s capacity to do so.

We are a work in progress, we need room for change and growth. We must reject the hubris and the expectation of certainties. Trust in our essential goodness and wisdom. And if that’s too much to ask, then consider it as a hypothesis to be explored. Above all we need to admit to and contend with our own fear. Resisting or acting-out both sustain it. By allowing it to be, by accepting its presence as it comes and by seeing that it inevitably passes, we lessen its power over us and ultimately free ourselves from the affliction of strong emotions. Between suppression and indulgence lies the middle way – let it be, let it pass, let it go. And yes, this takes courage, but we have more capacity for experiencing that we imagine.

The fruits of this freedom are peace, clarity, a gentle power, and a spontaneous, intuitive, living ethic; responsive and unfettered from the limitations of any calcified dogma or ideology. On this basis we become free to participate meaningfully, wisely, and compassionately in the human adventure.

ॐ

Untitled Thoughts #2

Is there evidence for the existence of an outside/objective world separate and independent from the awareness in which it appears?

We can see that the awareness itself is malleable to an (presumably) infinite degree. Or not. Are there limits to the plasticity of relative arising? Is there a higher and lower limit, a range of phenomenality? Is there a finest and a fastest? A brightest? A subtlest? Or is it infinity in all directions? And infinite depth, an eternal well?

This infinite dance of appearances.

All the while the eternal Witness-subtrate is present, never changing, I AM, I AM, I AM. Always eternal Being, not personal but awake, alive, aware.

The nature of the ‘world’ is that no matter how closely you look it never resolves to certainty. There’s apparently no end to its kaleidoscopic blossoming at any scale. And what is scale anyway? It’s all relative to the nominal, containing space of awareness.

There are more questions than answers, and the bedrock we so desperately seek is ever elusive, yielding endlessly to emptiness and formlessness.

The heart of life is void of form, but filled with Being.

Ah! The bliss of This!

ॐ

Untitled Thoughts #1

If we saw the world at different scales we’d have quite a different experience and conception of reality. If we saw it at the atomic scale there’d be a lot of empty space and atoms but no material objects as such.

Looking beyond atoms we’d see vibrations of the underlying field.

Layers..

People at levels of consciousness report similar conceptions of reality. Like distinct patterns and forms emerging from sound vibrations through a substrate. Mind is a matrix/nexus of interlocking self-supporting structures of relative intelligence.

Emergent..

Mind is embodied.
It’s not just a superimposition, it’s the emergent conceptual correlate of the embodied intelligence.

Mind + Body
Thinking + Feeling/Sensing

Mind describes and expresses what awareness sees/knows.

In nature there is a progressive development of expressed embodied intelligence, from simple to complex forms and systems, expressed in stages of characteristic organisation, progressively becoming transparent to the underlying substrate of awareness.

The ‘personal’ unfolds in the context of the non-personal. The non-personal is not person shaped!

Reality is not defined by what it is not.

Non-personal is a description only for the benefit of the person.

Trans-personal is trans-everything.
Not to be defined in terms of what it isn’t.

Body is mind, mind is body.
Deeply connected and related.
Mind is an correlating expression of the somatic experience.

Drop into the body.

Atma Vichara is exploring the nature of the lived experience from first principles.

Is the body embodied?

Experience of embodiment..

Vision is a seamless, unified, kaleidoscopic image arising in awareness.
Sensing/feeling is a sea of energetic textures arising in awareness.

All appearances are differentiated but not fundamentally separated.

Separation is arbitrary and notional.

So the body is a range of feelings and sensations, supported by a notional body-image and a morphing self-conception.

Dispelling the illusion of separateness on the level of self-experiencing (felt and observed) informs the correlating conceptual expressions, mind.

ॐ

Ready, Steady, Wake!?

To awaken you have to be ready. But there’s nothing you can do to make yourself ready, because you’re not doing anything, because the you you think you are doesn’t exist.

So it’ll happen when it happens. Not a moment too soon, not a moment too late.

So do or don’t do, it’s all as it should be.

This is not comforting for a suffering ego, I know this.

So do something then, if you want, if you can. If you have choice available to you, use it.

But then you start worrying about whether it’s the right choice or the wrong one. And so the suffering comes, born from duality, doubt and confusion

It’s a miserable existence being an ego. Seeing and living from the deluded view of separation. But there’s so little that stands in the way (that appears to stand in the way) of Reality, Truth, Clarity.

It’s all just a misunderstanding of what and how you’re experiencing. A misapprehension that’s so easily cleared up.

Identify the source of thought. Recognize the origin of seeing, knowing, experiencing. Where are you looking from?

It sounds like a riddle but it’s not. You’re already looking from there, Here, This, Now.

It’s the persistence of a certain kind of thought that muddies the view and your understanding, your experiencing. Or so it seems.

But you are always Here.

Liberation is not the mere self negation of the enlightened “I don’t exist!”, nor the self aggrandisement of the enlightened “I am the universe!”, nor the subtle duality of ‘Union with God’.

Which comes first, I AM or IS?

The Self IS

Atma is Brahm is Consciousness

Brahman alone is Real

The world is Brahman

There is only Brahman

TAT TVAM ASI

AHAM BRAHMASMI

OM TAT SAT

Know this and be free

ॐ

What is Enlightenment?

What is Enlightenment, Moksha, Buddhahood, Liberation?

It’s the obliteration of the Ten Fetters, the complete dissolution of the occluding mental densities that give rise to avidya. It’s the destruction of the ‘thicket of views’ that confuses and confounds the realization of Self and of life in the Natural State.

It is ‘what remains’ when the cloud of unknowing passes. It’s the ‘Who I Am’ when the personal story ends for good.

It is ‘what is’ without adornment, it’s the ‘Peace that surpasses all understanding’.

It’s the abiding recognition of your nature as awareness itself, the end of the delusion that “I am the body”, and the living knowledge that “I am the Self”.

May you know it now.

ॐ

Empty Your Cup

Beginner’s Mind is very helpful in Self-inquiry. What that means is you let go of all of your concepts, all of your learning, everything you think you know – just drop it for now. Put it in your pocket, tuck it away and come at the observation and inquiry with a fresh, open, empty mind.

In this way you can, for a moment, explore your experience directly and look with a uncluttered, unbiased awareness.

All these concepts that you’ve dropped for the time being, you can pick them back up later if you find that they’re still valid or useful. But what you might find is they are neither.

ॐ

Questions

What is This?

Who am I?

What am I?

What kind of answers am I looking for?

What could satisfy?

Questions are beautiful, more illuminating than answers. Questions stop the mind.

So if I told you “you are consciousness”, would that help?

Would you be satisfied?

Would your suffering diminish at all with that piece of information?

Perhaps you could hold that thought in your mind, maybe you could write it down, repeat it as a mantra, an affirmation, a bumper sticker.

But is it true? For you?

Or is it just a hope, or an aspiration, some idea you like the sound of, so you repeat it to yourself.

But all the while you suffer from the other thoughts that assail you.

And if only you could banish those ones that trouble you, and keep the ones you like…

Then…

If only.

You got it all worked out.

If only…

You’d be happy if….

You’d be free if…

What if I were to tell you that your happiness was already here?

That your freedom is on THIS side of your experiencing?

Not on the far side of some desire or condition you’ve artificially imposed.

You betray your birthright when you forgo what is here for what is not.

The real for the dream.

And you miss the essential wholeness and completeness when you sacrifice reality for a lie.

All that we are is contained in love

The ‘fact’ of the answer becomes a thing to hold, to grasp, to identify with, to maintain, to defend, to lose.

Do you have an empty cup?

Can we drop all the teachings now and simply be?

Teachings get cumbersome, they get reified into persistent things, they become a hook to hang your coat on.

So…

Questions are better

than answers.

ॐ

The Personal Path

The seemingly simple task of describing a path from ‘a’ to ‘be’ unravels the very notions that uphold the conditioned view. It’s impossible to find a starting point, there’s no beginning. It seems like a cliché but it’s true, any given point is arbitrary, no ‘event’ is original, always there is a preceding moment.

So where could I begin to recount my own path? Was it the day I sat in a white chair and began to meditate in earnest, or the day I first heard the Buddha’s teaching? Or was it the time my mind stunned to a halt over a girl and I burned my books?

The personal story is uninteresting, it’s old news. The present moment is already full, dragging the past around gets terribly cumbersome.

Identify the sense I AM. Abide there.

This is the origin of all experiencing. Give yourself to this, fall in love with this. This ‘I-I’.

This is the Self.

Remain as the Self and all becomes the Self, is known as the Self; there’s nothing but the Self.

Don’t fall in love with fragments and forget the Whole. Rest as radiant awareness.

Rest, because there’s nothing to do.

Abide, because there’s nowhere to go.

Be, because this is what you are.

The wave is the ocean. Atma is Brahm.

Everything is just happening in awareness. You are awareness. Can you confirm or deny this for yourself? Can you reflect on your experience, use your discrimination to test this for yourself?

Notice that this self-reflection and discrimination are happening spontaneously. Awareness is spontaneously knowing itself.

The person goes looking for the person and finds that the person doesn’t exist.

Hahaha. The Cosmic Joke.

It was always awareness knowing itself.

Delusion is like a fog, it lifts. Enlightenment is clarity.

Drop all notions of a path. Trust your own existence and abide as that which you are, in the recognition and freedom of what is.

ॐ

The Great Happening

Your life is not your responsibility, you’re not doing it, you’re not ‘living’ your life, if anything life is living you. It’s important to recognize this. The burden of activity is not yours. Doership is a concept that has been imposed on the uncaused nature of life. Even the notion of a cosmic, supreme doer is an imposition.

We have the power of observation and discrimination. Use it to see what’s true and what’s not. Go find a doer if you can, at any level, in any realm of reality. Observe as awareness itself, see the waves of life move without cause, or need for cause. A singular flow of appearance arising in emptiness. These appearances are mindstuff, the cogitations of universal being. You.

What’s it going to take for you to admit your Divinity? It’s you, you, you!

But I’m not talking to this body-appearance you take yourself to be. You are not the body, stop orienting yourself around it. The buzz of sensations and memories, projections and opinions are just a bundle of noise in your transparent, unbounded nature.

Am I wasting my words? Who is hearing this? The person? Or the uncaused being that you are?

Who hears hearing? Who knows knowing?

Can an object know itself? Can the seen be the seer?

Don’t be too quick to answer the questions. Observe what’s true in your experience, in your awareness, awareness itself – yourself – your Self – the Self.

Identify the sense I AM. This is ananda, bliss. From here the world flows. The Great Tao.

The Truth is here if you want it, not ‘there’ in the objects of awareness. And when you see this, then there’s no ‘there’ – just This.

All is ‘I’

I-I

Atma

And Atma is Brahm.

Who can see this, know this?

All that is, is consciousness.

Who could know this?

Consciousness.

Be conscious, of being conscious.

Don’t think about it, just be aware.

Notice what’s already true.

You are aware, you are awareness.

Why jump into the mud of personhood? Why wrestle with the ghosts and projections of the deluded mind?

You are the pristine mind and all that appears shares your nature. Modulations occur spontaneously, the dance and play of life. The tissues of existence so seemingly robust are subtle beyond measure, the fabric of emptiness.

Where is this ‘world’? From where does it come and to where does it go?

I AM

ॐ

Keep Quiet

That we believe ourselves to be a person is completely taken for granted. We don’t even think to look into this, to question its veracity. We’ve been conditioned to stop short in our curiosity about our nature.

Go all the way. Use your discrimination and intelligence to fathom what’s true. I can set you down the right track, many can, but you must walk the walk.

Perhaps it’s only when the limits of our knowledge fails us in some way that we even become interested in looking beyond our previously prescribed limits of comprehension. Maybe our life needs to break apart a little first. Maybe it needs to fall to pieces. Either way “if it ain’t broke, don’t look” seems to be the maxim of choice for most.

Who wants to know?

To whom do these thoughts arise?

To me.

Who am I?

There is a pathless path, a road to self-knowledge that begins and ends right here and right now. It is the road of stopping, of ending, of keeping still.

Quiet.

From where do thoughts appear?

If you watch them, in real time, you can locate their source. Not conceptually, or inferentially, not by speculating on their psychological origins. No, right now, arising in your mind. Are you not the awareness-space in which they arise? Are you not the emptiness that Knows?

Just watch, observe, abide.

So tell me, where is this body of yours? Where is your sense of self, of being?

What comes first, the knowing or the known? Are they two?

And is this mind of yours in the body? Or is this body in the mind?

And this mind, whose is it? And how big is it? And where?

Abide

Observe

Inquire

This is the work of the Jnani. This is the awakening Spirit.

It is only conditioning that seems to muddy the view. Only thoughts, concepts believed.

There’s nothing to do here. Life wakes up to itself naturally, spontaneously, in its own time, through you and I. This game of separation is fleeting, short-lived, less than a heartbeat; a whisper, a story, and a dream.

You are not the body, the cause of all your misery. It’s here, sure. It shows up, but you are so much more – intelligence itself, life itself, existence itself. The only thing holding you back from knowing this for yourself is your loyalty to concepts, particularly about yourself.

There’s an obviousness about our nature that is revealed when observed, but the mind’s insistence on holding a contrary view, the insistence on filtering what-is through a framework of conceptual notions, and the refusal to drop the false in the light of the true, the real..

Any moment, any given moment you can simply refuse to pick up anything. Forget about dropping, just leave it be. Let it go, remain open, you are openness itself.

Breathe.

In the light of the truth the false dissolves, has no weight, no substance, inconsequential.

The truth is bliss.

You have to set your motives straight. Do you want some philosopical position you can cling to or some knowledge you can use as social currency? Or do you want the truth on its own terms, for its own sake?

Keep checking in. It’s just you that you’re accounting to, no-one else is calling you to step up. It’s just that the price of truth is integrity, or ‘earnestness’; true sincerity, courage, and humility.

And ultimately surrender. Not to anyone or anything, just surrender.

ॐ

Trust

Trust, rest, all is well.

You are home, always. This is it, believe it or not.

Hope is for fools. Running, chasing, holding, grasping, needing, wanting.

This is it, be here now.

Let the hope fall away, need be gone, cherish what is, here, this.

Simple, silence, source.

Time? Gone too.

Space? Just this, no inner, no outer, no names.

Rest.

Put your house in order, tidy your room, take out the trash, clean your teeth, pay the rent, do your job, become what you must become, live up to your potential, hold the line, stand your ground, sink or swim, do or do not (there is no try).

Abide. The Dude abides

I stare into the depths, the deep waters of the mind, nothing stirs, for now. And then..

Any dragons today?

I have to keep telling people that they’re wrong. I have to take their personal viewpoint and show them, if they’re willing to see, that they don’t exist as they believe themselves to be.

Even though what I show them about themselves is far greater and more permanent and fulfilling, even so they mostly don’t want to hear it or see it. But when they do, and they go “aaaaha!”, we share a communion of spirit, of truth, of reality and being. We share the recognition in union, and the resistance of the person is forgotten and forgiven.

The person stands in the way of the truth.

The person is fun while it lasts.

The person is a cartoon character who thinks it’s alive.

The person is an appearance in the Self.

Which are you? Can you choose? The ‘me’ or the ‘I’?

The person will end one way or the other.

The Self remains.

I AM.

You exist as transpersonal Being. In fact even describing your essential nature in terms of personhood is misguided. You are the unconditioned Satchitananda, the eternal Brahman, that which Is, in which the unending multitude of beings are born and die. But all that appears to you and in you is a mere dream.

WAKE UP!

You have forgotten your nature, you wear a mask that you take to be yourself, but the mask was never you, and for all your lapses of memory you remain the supreme Self.

When you give up your human tics like grasping, and hiding, and resisting, and wilful blindness, then what’s left is you as I AM.

Blast away your trivial attachments to minor powers and social currencies that only serve to bolster the pitiful illusion of personhood. Behold your Emptiness, endless and alive, eternal and inexhaustible, limitless. Jettison your faintheartedness.

Stand free! Stand free!

I am the deep waters
and the pouring rain

I am the swamp of hope
the mud of delusion

I am blue sky
wide and open

I am the cloudless night
ablaze

Of mountains
I am Meru

Of oceans
I am the deep blue

Of ravages
I am time

Of hatred
I am the betrayed

Of sleep
I am eternal slumber

Of love
I am the devoted

Of time
I am now

Of sex
I am tantra

Of hope
I am love

Of music
I am silence

Of beauty
I am youth

Of knowledge
I AM

To what extent is clinging to strong views problematic? Ideology?

In the absence of the recognition of the unconditioned view and the attendant satisfaction of the identifying function with the unbounded and eternal awareness-nature, the identifying function does its best with what is at hand, namely transient phenomenal ‘objects’. Now the more obvious objects of identification include the body and material ‘possessions’. But the more subtle ones are subtle abstract concepts, such as religious ideations and ideological constructs.

Naturally these conceptual objects are exclusive, failing as they to do to be all-encompassing, and limited, as they are, in their nature as mere mental constructs..

Why are we so terrified of the void? Why do we so desperately need to have something to cling to? Have some spine, people!

Just let go.

Holding on is such hard work. Aren’t you exhausted yet? Are you done yet trying to figure it all out? What would happen if you just stopped and gave up? Aren’t you even a little curious?

Struggle, holding tight to the reins. Release your grip, give your white-knuckles a break and just see what happens. Breathe. Breathe again. Introduce yourself to a more easeful way to be. Learn to relax. Could it be so simple?

Stay open. It’s a beginning. Turn up, sit, wait, watch.

Breathe, and breathe..

Good.

ॐ

The Cave Where The Dragon Sleeps

Have a practice.

Take time out each and every day to sit in the cave of your interior and wait and watch. This is where the dragons are and this is where the gold is.

It is the cave of the unknown and that is the place of fear. It takes courage to enter and to face whatever comes. You will wrestle your demons here and gardens of bliss will grow here.

And just by turning up you call forth whatever dwells in the unseen, dark places of your being. You are the hero venturing forth with courage and awareness. You light the torch in the dark places, you illuminate that which is unformed and inarticulate.

You are the Light Bringer.

This is my cave. I come here alone. I leave the safety and comfort of the tribe and I sit in solitude, in waiting. I cannot know what will come so I cannot prepare. But I know that I am, I exist. And I have slayed dragons before, and I have gathered gold and flowers.

I am the cave and I am the light. And I am the dragon and the flowers. I am the spilled blood of demons and virgins. I am the temple bell and the sleepless night. I am the dream of hunger, the wolf-whistle and the kindness of strangers.

I am the dragon and I am awake. The gold is mine. Courage or not, you will die. If not by my hand then by the ravages of time. Is it truly gold that you seek, hero? Or is it the end of death?

I am the cave. Timeless. So many heroes, so many dragons, so much gold and blood. My walls and floor hold no stains, but I remember all.

I am the gold and the virgin and the light of life. I am the object of desire and greed. I will not fulfill. I am what I am. I remain in my immutable nature, I adorn the world and all the beings in it. Yet I remain untouched and unmixed. I do not decay or waste away. I am ever resplendent, bright as the sun at noon. Behold, here I am, the object of your aspiration and surrender.

We don’t want the gold, we want to be the gold. We don’t want love, we want to be love. We don’t want to be free, we want to be freedom.

Unity means free of boundaries, devoid of separation. Yoga is not to unite but to be unity. Nonduality is the state of nonseparation.

We are freedom, not free.

Love not loved.

Truth not true.

Peace not peaceful.

Life is the cave of dragons. Each day, each moment we must stand and face what comes. Armed only with our nature and our wits and the light of truth and courage..

I’ve been slaying dragons for so long now, but they keep coming back. These damn hydra. Sisyphus I am. I don’t need the gold. What do I need the gold for anyway? I need sleep more than I need gold.

Fighting is for heroes, I’m no hero.

I fight not for me but for others. There’s nothing in it for me. But since I must fight, I fight for them. Even though they despise me and reject me, I speak my truth because I must.

Is there a better way to be?

Than what?

Than striving, controlling, wanting, needing, being someone, something..

Is letting go, stopping, dropping the chase, surrendering and accepting what-is.. is shedding the burden of being and doing a better way, a more peaceful way, a fuller way?

If I drop my sword and allow myself to be devoured by the dragon, what then?

If my bones become food for the plants and birds, what then?

Can we give up the struggle and see what comes, what remains?

When we’re tired of holding on can we just let go and see what happens?

Do we trust enough? Do we care too much? Fear too much?

Do we lack the courage to release our grasp?

Do we even know what would happen if we did?

Do we fear to find out?

Do we dare?

Let go?

So we freefall into oblivion, forever. So what?

Enjoy the fall. There’s an adventure for the fainthearted!

It’s happening anyway. It is what is. We just don’t care to admit it. We’re just really, really tense about our not-knowing.

We are freefalling, there are no fixed points. Endless openness in all directions. Freedom is exhilarating, no?

Breathe in, breathe out, repeat if necessary.

Breathe through the fear, because this is how it is and you’re stuck with it. Might as well get used to it. No point denying the truth, it has a way of insisting itself.

In the cave of dragons, the voice of the father echoes out words of reproval. I thank him for his wisdom and go my own way.

My heart is filled with fear and love, but I am free.

Softly I begin to sing, words of goodness and kindness, words of joy and ease and peace. Words of love and essence. The melody is the fabric of Being, it is the Song of Life.

Behold the kindness of life.

ॐ

You Are What You Seek

Why do we practice, why do we seek? Is it to attain or achieve some conceptual goal we call Enlightenment? Or is it to recognise that in every moment of our existence we are inescapably aware, we are here, we exist?

In fact we are awareness itself, we only have to look right now to see the fact of it. There is no path to it, there is only recognition of it; and that recognition is always available now.

Enlightenment is our natural condition, no-one has a monopoly on it, and it is not proprietary. Along the road we can make use of guides and pointers, teachers and teachings; but there is no master key, because there is no door, there is only Openness.

Feel into your natural presence, be aware of your existence. Recognise what is always here and what passes. Remain as awareness, remain as the witness, keep quiet. Thoughts are fine, feelings and sensations too. But know yourself as That which sees them all come and go.

There is a seamless continuity from your silent seeing through all the passing waves that arise in your experience. See it all, notice that you are free from its influence; it all spontaneously comes and goes in its own way. The burden of activity is not yours, you are Freedom itself.

ॐ

Seeing Beyond Limitations

The problem of human suffering is the problem of misapprehension. Our ideas about the nature of the world are at odds with the reality of it. The key mistake is that we take ourselves to be separate individuals existing in an objective world. We believe that our sense of I-ness originates in the physical body and in that body is a mind that runs the show.

Suffering arises because the belief that we are the body is to believe that we’re limited and are therefore vulnerable, that we can be harmed in body and mind, and therefore our very existence can be threatened.

With this belief it’s perfectly natural to feel anxious and fearful, and no amount of sweet and empowering affirmations will abate this natural sense of vulnerability, even though it’s based on a falsehood. The end of suffering comes when you discover the truth of who and what you really are.

When the light of reality dawns in you as the direct recognition of your existence as unbounded, ever-present, formless awareness, the fear and insecurity born from the sense of limitation falls away naturally and effortlessly.

ॐ

Nothing

There’s nothing to do
Nothing to think
Nothing to drop
Nothing to see
Nothing to follow

There’s no plan
No strategy

There’s nothing to believe
Nothing to hold on to
And nothing to let go of

There’s nothing to hope for
No future to come
No past to understand

There’s no right
And no wrong
No bad
And no good

Everything is negated
And transcended
In this
Unspeakable
Unknowable
Reality

Nothing that should be
Nothing that should not
No needs
No musts

Nothing ought
To look
Or be
Or feel
A certain way
To be right
Or not wrong
Or complete
Or true

It is
Simply

This

ॐ

You Are Never Lost

My only aim is to help you recognise yourself as boundless, ever-present awareness right here and now, and to recognise your essential wholeness and completeness.

Your true nature is easeful, lack-free Being; freedom and peace is who and what you are. Your awareness-nature is where you’re looking from, feeling from, sensing from. Look for yourself, identify yourSelf this very moment as the formless Seer.

Know that you can never lose yourself, you can only believe that you are lost. Fall in love with the silence of your Being, merge beyond merging into the recognition that you are always already here, always boundless and open, always aware, free of affliction.

You are the formless witness, what can touch you, what can harm you?

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From Awakening To Freedom

The recognition of our nature as non-conceptual awareness — spiritual awakening — is relatively simple. But the consequences of this recognition typically have challenging implications for our human-ness, conditioned as it is around the ego-belief. Awakening is rarely the end of the story. A reconstruction of the lived experience and outward expression in light of the newly acknowledged awareness-identity is inevitable, but it takes time to unfold.

During this post-awakening period, experience can alternate between heady bliss and the most challenging inner and outer experiences. It’s helpful to adopt the attitude of openness and allowing; to let whatever subjective experience that arises to pass through without resistance. This is perhaps the best way to minimize the ‘negative’ impact of this fundamental and necessary reorientation.

This process is an automatic one. For a while it probably won’t feel that way, you might feel that you have to ‘do’ something. But remember: allow, accept, let go, surrender (if you can). These are good pointers to be followed, but in time you’ll realize that they simply express your natural condition.

And trust the process, which is specific to your particular expression. Ultimately all that is untrue and a cause for suffering is falling away. What remains is the simple clarity of What Is.

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