What Do We REALLY Want?

    "One way to think about suffering is as a failure of getting what we want." Bokin Kim PhD 

    I'm often reminded of stories (like W. Somerset Maugham's wonderful book, "The Razor's Edge") about the idle, independently wealthy, who regularly migrate from one opulent getaway to another, 'because things get terribly boring.' A particularly wacky aspect of human nature is our tendency to 'double down,' doing more & more of something that obviously doesn't work, until we 'hit rock bottom,' or worse. Suffering mostly arises from wanting people, things & experiences to provide lasting satisfaction ie wanting the impossible.
    Many simply can't stop trying to control the world to make it provide permanent safety & happiness. Wanting to become a marathon runner is understandable. BUT if a fish has this desire, then even if it manages to get out of the water onto dry land, it just can't be happy. The whole idea of running a marathon simply goes against the fish's true nature.

    A major gift of old age, for some of us, is having had ample opportunity to learn that we cannot get lasting satisfaction from anything - EXCEPT love - very specifically being the SOURCE of unconditional love.
    So a wise, mature orientation will have us nurturing all those we love, so that we may thrive. And 'those we love' gradually expands to embrace everyone & everything. This way of being is probably more natural & essential to us than breathing, eating, sleeping & our heart beating. It is not something we should do in order to get something else, or go somewhere else, or become someone else. We are simply expressing our essential true nature - who we are, have always been & will be - we're just being natural.

    Tony Parsons was a wealthy home builder when, at age 65, he underwent a dramatic liberation (awakening / enlightenment) experience, after which "there was no longer a ME, only absolute love." He expresses, imho, very similar understandings to other evolved mystics I've read about & listened to. However, Tony uses much more direct, uncompromising, even provocative language, that sometimes stimulates an energetic shift in the listener, evaporating their 'me' - their noisy ego.
    Reading about Tony's perspective may cause your noisy ego angst - possibly even more : 

“Basically, all there is is this. All there is is wholeness, oneness. I like to call it ‘boundless energy.’ Boundless energy is all there is, and it arises as everything there is and everything there isn’t. So this boundless energy is immeasurable, it can’t be tamed, it’s wild, it’s chaotic and it also appears to be ordered.
    And one of the things that it appears to be is a separate energy, a contracted energy that seems to happen uniquely to human beings. Some way or another, that sense of being separate begins a clock. A clock starts ticking, and throughout the separate energies there, the ‘me’ story begins. And ‘the story’ and ‘me’ are both the same thing. ‘Me’ can’t exist without ‘the story,’ and ‘the story’ can’t exist without ‘me.’ And that all happens in a separate reality.
    For the individual, it seems as though that reality is real. The whole idea that the person has free-will and choice and that their life has a purpose, and that story also includes cause & effect, all of those things arise, and all of those things seem real to the individual. And so the individual goes into what it thinks is it’s reality, but in some way or other that reality can at times seem dissatisfying, because of course the ‘me’ is living in a separate reality. So the ‘me’ never sees a tree naturally, never sees the sky naturally, never has feelings in the natural way they are, because all of those things are experienced through separation, as though those things arise as if through a filter. So the tree is somehow always an object out there, everything else is an object because already the ‘me’ has seemingly become a something. So the ‘me’ lives as though it is a real something, and it lives in a world of real somethings – everything 'real' out there is something else that’s happening to this 'real' something here.
    And somewhere there’s a sense of dissatisfaction about that, it feels unfulfilling to somehow live in this separate world. And so some people start to try to find an answer for that sense of dissatisfaction and they go to teachers, but of course they have with them that belief of free-will and choice, and the way they can ‘learn’ how to find that fulfillment, would be through their own choice, and through their own action. And so they go to teachers who also speak within the dream story about personal enlightenment and the way that that can be attained.
    But of course what’s happening all the time is that the ‘me’ is living in a circular world, in a separate world, and those things that it experiences come and go because they are happening in a world of time only, they are just time-oriented happenings or experiences. [Called by some, 'consensual reality' or 'relative reality'] So the things that people learn from teachers, like self-inquiry or meditation, bring up experiences that come & go. They are transient experiences and they never have any permanent or constant satisfaction about them.
    So ‘the open secret’ basically is revealing the myth of ‘me’ and the myth of ‘the story,’ and it’s pointing to the possibility that all of that is an illusion; that that whole story and the me is living in an illusory world which is circular, just with experiences coming & going, coming & going. And the strange thing is, that what seems to be happening when that is revealed at meetings, is that the whole sense of ‘me,’ the whole idea that the ‘me’ is real, or the embodied sense that the ‘me’ is real, seems to crumble. And the other thing that happens in the meetings, and obviously this doesn’t have to be at meetings, this dropping away of the ‘me’ can happen anywhere and at any time, but in the meetings it seems that somehow the contracted energy of the separate ‘me’ seems to melt back into the boundless energy of what is, and there’s nothing that’s left in that. And that is what I would call liberation. It’s my term for liberation from the illusory imprisonment of being a ‘me’ in a story.”
    Tony Parsons Feb 3, 2012 interview : https://batgap.com/tony-parsons/

 

Suffering, Peace and Meaning

    It's difficult to appreciate the corrosive effect that our society's dreary materialism has on even those of us who consider ourselves religious or spiritual. What is your default mood? When there's nothing specifically pleasant or unpleasant going on in your personal life, how do you feel - bright, gray, or dark? Even if our own life seems to feel OK for the moment, most of us are seriously disturbed by the war in Ukraine and the environmental crisis. But do you feel hopelessly doomed?
    Imagine, after many years of wanting one, you're finally driving down the highway in your gorgeous expensive sports car, but instead of luxuriating in the smooth, controlled ride & powerful purring of the engine, you're frustrated by the constant weird vibration & annoying repetitive whirring sound from an obvious wheel-alignment problem. You go to get that fixed, and the mechanic finds one problem after another; then the car gets scratched & banged up; the paint job fades; the car is never 'in tune'; it starts rusting; new models make it look strangely out of date; your dream is a chronic disappointment. And this is a 'first world problem' - boo hoo! How about constant change, aging, sickness & death - not just of ourselves, but all our loved ones & our material possessions?
    Over 3,000 years ago, the Buddha left his family & privileged life behind because he felt that he had to discover how to be happy in a world of 'dukkha.' Commonly thought of as suffering, dukkha more accurately refers to a wheel on a cart that's off center - today we might say, 'dis-ease' over the fact that nothing stays even satisfactory, never mind perfect!
    HOW CAN we live the best life possible, in a world that is NOT aligned at all with our individual material hopes & desires?

    “Non-duality ('perennial philosophy') is the understanding that underlies all the great religious & spiritual traditions. If we were to distill the essence of that understanding and express it in contemporary terms, it would sound something like this: Peace & happiness are the nature of our being, and we share our being with everyone & everything. The first part of this phrase, ‘peace and happiness are the nature of our being,’ refers to our inner experience – our thoughts and feelings. The second part, ‘we share our being with everyone and everything,’ refers to our exterior experience, that is our relationship with people, animals and things." Rupert Spira "Nonduality, Consciousness, and Ending Suffering" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtlDY3-rE_Y

    A transcript of, imho, two wise, intelligent people - Rupert Spira (RS) and Bernardo Kastrup (BK) - in conversation:

   RS: “What is it that causes most people to question the materialist paradigm? Suffering. If we didn’t suffer, there would be no reason to question our view of the world, on the contrary, we would think the happiness I experience is a confirmation that my view of the world is correct. We would never question anything and that’s why so many people are first open to the possibility that we are discussing here.
    Through the experience of suffering their life falls apart. They realize something’s not working. And it’s not just today that it’s not working, it gets worse the older you get. As Henry David Thoreau said, ‘Most people lead lives of quiet desperation.’ You get half-way through your life, and you realize it’s not working - relationships, activities. You’ve experienced enough suffering to no longer be able to keep it at bay through objects, substances, activities, relationships. You’ve been failed by life sufficiently often to probe a little bit deeper – could there be something about my attitude that is responsible? Might I have got something wrong? And for most of us, it’s suffering that opens this door.
    For me it was, although I had this very early intuition, at age seven, that everything is a dream in God’s mind. Then I forgot that intuition as I grew up. It was suffering that re-ignited my interest in these matters. In fact in my case it was a very particular experience, when my first girlfriend, with whom I thought I would get married, have four children and live happily ever after, ended our three-year relationship in a two-minute phone call. And for the first time in my life I became aware of the extent to which I had invested the thing that I loved the most – namely happiness – in objective experience. This cracked my world. My world had already been cracked by my parents’ divorce, but this was a crack that I could no longer plaster over. Am I going to spend the rest of my life investing the thing that I love most in life – which is peace or joy – in something which is inherently unstable? This brought urgency. I was already interested in these matters, but it became a passion. There must be something wrong with my model of reality.
    What can I know for certain is true? And if I were to start there and hold onto that, and only lead a life that was consistent with that, what kind of life would that be?”

    How the perennial philosophy / non-dualism has influenced their lives:

    RS: “Suffering arises less & less frequently, and it lasts for less & less time. And fewer & fewer experiences have the power to provoke it. Now I would never say that it never happens. I can be triggered in a situation and it can create an emotional resistance in me – that’s what suffering is, emotional resistance. But I notice that fewer experiences have that capacity. They have to be quite intense. So it happens less & less frequently, and when it does happen, when the experience of suffering is triggered, then this understanding kicks in quite quickly, and I’m able to trace my way back to my essential being and its innate peace that lies behind, so to speak, the content of my experience.

    BK: “Rupert radiates peace. … I’m not there. I still have my anxieties. What did happen for me, and I’m extraordinarily grateful for that, because I think that’s what makes all the difference, the banality, the meaninglessness that most people experience as their lives, that is completely gone for me.
    I’m not in profound peace, I have my demons, my anxieties, I suffer – suffer with things that there’s nothing I can do about, some of them physical in my own body, but I never have that notion that all this suffering is for nothing, that life is meaningless, that everything comes to a total end and it’s all for nothing. That I don’t have.
    My life is infused with meaning. In particular, the suffering is infused with meaning. Suffering is a great drive. It’s what keeps us moving in the direction of depth. Otherwise life would remain so shallow. We wouldn’t be asking the deep questions."

    RS: “I think the fruit of this (non-dual) understanding is peace on the inside – absence of suffering on the inside – and love on the outside. And when I say love, I don’t just mean a warm cozy feeling, when I use the word love I mean the recognition that we share our being, our reality, with everyone & everything, in other words, it is the felt sense of the understanding that we are speaking of here. So these two experiences are, I would suggest, the fruit of this understanding – peace on the inside, and love, beauty or oneness on the outside.
    And I have always felt, with you Bernardo, that you share this understanding profoundly, but that the fruit of it, at least on the inside, has been delayed in your case. Why? Because, as you’ve just said, suffering propels us to go deeper & deeper & deeper. It’s the fuel for this investigation, and I think you have a unique role in the world to share this understanding in a way that nobody else can, and rather than a way, in a field that nobody else can – for instance, in a way that I’m not qualified to speak – in the world of science. And for this reason, I feel that the fruit of this understanding, although I see it in you more & more over the years, but I feel the fruit of this understanding is being withheld from you precisely to keep you motivated to do what you are supposed to be doing in the world. And I think, as time goes on, I see it happening in you already, as time goes on, this peace will gradually emerge in your experience. And it’s absence, I do not in any consider to be a failure of your understanding. I think it’s necessary for you to do what you are doing so beautifully in the world."

    BK: “Of course what Rupert is saying instills hope in me. But … I am at peace with my lack of peace. I don’t double my suffering by not being at peace with the suffering. Because if you’re suffering, and then you tell yourself that I should not be suffering, then you just multiply it by two, you just make it worse. Now I don’t make it worse. I don’t have that voice telling me, ‘I should not suffer.’ I am in peace with my suffering, it’s part of nature. I’m aware that life is sacrificial. … I am OK with it. I do suffer, but I don’t make it worse than it needs to be."

    RS: “This is what is meant by 'ananda' in the Vendantic tradition. It’s the peace that lies behind the content of our experience, no matter what. It’s the peace that surpasses understanding. Peace that has nothing to do with what is taking place, so that your suffering is in the foreground, it’s the content of your experience. For most people, the experience of suffering takes up the full picture. But there is this peace behind your suffering, that enables you to say, ‘I am at peace with my suffering.’ And I suspect, that the peace behind your suffering will grow, and will progressively outshine the suffering in the foreground. That’s my intuition. And as you say, even if it doesn’t, in a way it doesn’t matter, because the meaning of our lives is so much bigger than our own personal experience." 

    BK: “Life is not about me. Life is not about any one of us.”

    RS: “It’s sacrificial as you say, yes.” 

    BK: “It is imaginable that if suffering in your life has come to a point where it has become so completely unbearable that nihilism would seem like paradise – a way out of that. There is no point in this whole thing. There is no point to the suffering. It’s all for nothing anyway, so why worry?
    Milan Kundera called it ‘the unbearable lightness of being.’ There is a character in his book, Dr. Tomas, who is sort of the embodiment of this lightness of being – of this nihilism, which gives a certain lightness to what’s going on and that can be alluring to some people, if they are desperate enough.
    Now my own relationship with the core of my being, the world, other people, and life in general is not nihilistic at all. Much to the contrary, for me, materialism is highly nihilistic: there is only matter; whatever insights you have come to a complete end when you die; so, whatever you learn, whatever maturity you accumulate, it’s all for nothing anyway. That’s nihilistic!
    Today I live the reality that there’s tremendous meaning to whatever suffering I have because they are the conduits to insights, and these insights are eternal in the sense of being outside time. Life is what provides the universe with a perspective, a point of view on itself, that it would otherwise not have, and therefore life is pregnant with purpose & meaning. The world of appearances is now a book to be read. It’s the superficial image of a deeper truth. There is a dimension of depth, meaning & significance to the entire world that wasn’t there before. Everything you are surrounded with now is a dance of symbols, symbols that point at something beyond themselves. They point to something fundamental to mind, the mind of the universe, to consciousness. And there is a point to this particular seemingly individual state that we are in right now, in trying to make sense of this. This is the antithesis of nihilism. This is the universe pregnant with meaning. This is life pregnant with purpose. It is baffling that someone would equate this with nihilism."
    "Is Everything Made of Matter or Consciousness?" - Rupert Spira & Bernardo Kastrup in Conversation : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQuMzocvmTQ   *** EXCEPTIONAL INTERVIEW ***

Constant change - Bath, UK

One Love

    "Going inward & making a connection to the deepest parts of you — physical, emotional, energetic, or spiritual — is the best, the deepest way to live and the deepest way to create impact." John Wineland
    HOWEVER, the deepest, truest, or most authentic aspect of who we are - according to saints & mystics - is beyond (transcends) the capacity of our usual level of thinking to conceive & of language to express! So the foremost experts at this, again saints & mystics, can at best provide pointers for us to directly experience ultimate reality:

    “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” Mother Teresa

    “The problem with the world is
that we draw our family circle too small.” Mother Teresa

    “There is more hunger for love & appreciation in this world than for bread.” Mother Teresa

    “The important thing is not to think much, but to love much, and so to do what best awakens us to love.” Saint Teresa of Ávila  


    “When it is indubitably recognized that your nature and the nature of the Absolute are fundamentally the same, indivisible nature, this is the ‘recognition of one’s true identity’: the realization that any and all identity is eclipsed by an actuality which renders separative distinctions ultimately meaningless.
    Such a realization, or non-dual perspective or awareness, cannot help but have a profound effect on one’s consideration of ‘personal individuality’. One cannot recognize that truth, of all pervasive indivisibility, and continue to maintain the fiction of separate personification – of the ‘me’ that was born and the ‘I’ which dies.
    This fruit of realization – that the absolute essence of all being does not ‘come’ from some place nor ‘go’ anywhere – quenches our deepest, final fear, the fear of extinction. Then the liberated may, indeed, ‘take no thought for the morrow.’ ”
    Robert Wolfe. “Living Nonduality. Enlightenment Teachings of Self-Realization.” Karina Library, 2014. EXCELLENT BOOK

 

    "Even when we've awakened from ego-identification, we still need to unlearn & relearn about love. What we call love, or what we think is love, is often mixed with a lot of early personal conditioning, old belief systems, & emotional attachments. When the heart doesn't go out to look for love, but looks instead back to its source - the ground of Being - we can discover unconditional love as who we have always been. Then this new experience of love can become the foundation from which relationships are formed. A whole different emotional way of being & seeing gives rise to a new, vastly more compassionate & connected way of relating.
    Open-hearted awareness, which is operating from our heart-mind, begins to include necessary judging functions of the mind, but leaves behind the fear, separation, & controlling anger that made us ‘judgmental.’ Our normal judging functions are transformed by open-hearted awareness into discernment & discriminating wisdom.
    The judge, the critic, and the superego are not essential or rigidly fixed parts of the human psyche. As soon as we shift into open-hearted awareness, an immediate feeling of being nonjudgmental & more compassionate arises. We develop a more mature conscience, a sense of integrity, & an acceptance of what is, while having the capacity & motivation to change what needs to be changed.”
    Loch Kelly. “Shift into Freedom. The Science and Practice of Open-hearted Awareness.” Sounds True, 2015.

Robert Wolfe “Quenching the Thirst: Fundamentals of Nonduality”
CONCISE 47-minute interview:

 

Never Left Home

     Bruce Springsteen expressed it nicely, "everybody's got a hungry heart." It goes by many other names: "an itch we can't scratch," "ordinary unhappiness," "lack," "seeker," "neediness," "greed," "inferiority complex," "imposter syndrome," "low self-esteem," "desperation," etc. And unless cynicism & resignation have set in, we strive heroically to fill the bottomless hole in our heart with: work, food, shopping, sex, drugs, travel, and all sorts of experiences including spirituality: prayer, meditation & rituals including sweat lodges, entheogenic plant medicines like ayahuasca etc. But too often, we just "can't get no satisfaction."
     Non-dual methods offer a surprisingly direct approach to "re-cognizing" how we're far less needy than we can imagine. Two teachers have particularly impressed me with the clarity of their teaching: "Sailor Bob" Donaldson and John Wheeler.
     I highly recommend listening to their 90min talk - youtube video bottom of this page. The initial (Bob's) portion has poor audio, so the text below will help:

     “I don’t teach you anything, and we don’t tell you anything. What we do is point toward, and ask you to look to where we’re pointing to, to see for yourself, because there’s nothing that you’re going to get, nothing that anybody can give you. We’re talking about non-duality or the nonconceptual present awareness, just this, nothing else. And we talk in concepts. So again, anybody new needs to realize that the concepts themselves are not the introduction, nor recognition of this. And you also realize that if you came from some conceptual point of view, you can pull apart what we recite quite easily – whatever we say, because it’s all conceptual.
     So we ask you to learn, if you haven’t learned already, to listen. And when we talk about listening, we’re not saying ‘head-to-head’ - taking what we say into your head, trying to analyze it. So let it wash in, in what we call, ‘heart-to-heart.’ We’re not talking about your physical heart or anything in your body. I’m talking about using the word ‘heart’ as the core of beingness or you can use the symbol of spirit if you like. When we talk about ‘heart-to-heart’ – you know what heart-to-hear is already. How many times when you heard somebody that you’ve really felt close to, heard what they were saying and you realized, ‘My heart opened up to them’? When we talk about heart-to-heart then there is natural communication.
     When it’s 'head-to-head,' you’ve got to put your concepts against the things spoken, and nothing’s going to penetrate. But if it’s heart-to-heart, there’s an openness there, and that’s communication. And it mightn’t be in the words, because the words are concepts. There might be a natural resonance there – a natural recognition of your innate true nature.
     Here we don’t say, ‘it’s only for the few,’ which you’ll hear elsewhere, ‘you have to do this & that, and it will take time & years to get there & understand it.’ In this space, everybody’s right in everybody’s natural state if you like to open yourself and drop some of the conceptual beliefs you’ve held & kept there that have become the blockages that stopped you." Sailor Bob Adamson 

     "In the beginning you might hear a few pointers to essentially get you looking in the right direction. You’ll hear many different types of pointers. If I start sharing my experience or my understanding, I might come out with a certain set of pointers & concepts as how I would frame what is the essence of what Bob was pointing to. I often come back to the basic pointer that you hear quite a lot that, there is this nature of reality or truth that is accessible to us, and if we are curious to where that resides, or how we would look at that, or where we would find that. We also often hear something to the effect that, ‘that is what you are,’ or ‘that’s already what you are.’ So this natural state or reality get’s pointed to, but in a practical way, when you want to notice that, or want to recognize that as an actual direct recognition, where you look for that, where you access that is pointed to be exactly, precisely where you are, because your natural being, your natural state is that reality that’s being talked about. So that’s a way of using pointers, & some words & concepts to try to get us simply to look in the right direction and notice something in our experience.
     Now once we have a grasp of that, or basic sense of that, then the concepts & the pointers can fall away, and we’re just in the immediate recognition of something that’s not a concept, that is present in our experience. That’s really what this is about. Not so much about what the concept or the word is, or how it’s stated or who says it or anything like that, it’s actually something that’s being pointed to. It’s important to keep that in mind in any of these teachings & pointers, so we can go immediately into noticing what is the nature of what is present in our experience here right now, that isn’t framed by any concept. There’s clearly something here. Each one of us is present, existing, aware, alive, conscious. Whatever that is, whatever that reality is, if you notice that you’ll see that it’s not word, or an object, or a pointer. It’s not even a teaching. There’s really no particular teaching or school of thought that really can capture that, or own that, or kind of have the rights to that so to speak. But still that natural being, that knowing the essence of what we are, is actually present for all of us, even right now in this moment. And I think what we find is that, at the end of the day, as we’re looking at this, resonating with it, that that’s what you recognize at the end in terms of where the pointers are pointing to. So I would say just to encourage you to pause the concept, pause the question, pause the mind trying to grasp some particular understanding, and just simply relax & notice something very simple & available which can be pointed to.
     So I could call it ‘the fact of your being’ or ‘that innate conscious presence that’s here right now, that’s at the root of all of our natural functioning & seeing & knowing & thinking’ and that’s there prior to any description, word, or label. Once you get that, once you resonate with that, and once you realize that that’s what we can notice, that that’s what really being pointed to, it just goes to an immediate re-cognition, an immediate looking & seeing that in direct experience.
     It’s quite interesting because what you’ll find, is that a lot of those pointers that are used, turn out to be someone attempting to describe what your natural being is. So just to give a flavor of a few things that I would say, and encourage you to also notice right now that there is that effortless, natural given reality of your being here right now. And that’s not an attainment, and it’s not even an awakening, it’s not a liberation or some kind of spiritual state. It’s actually simpler and prior to that. And in looking at that, and recognizing what that is, you’ll find that it’s not troubled by questions & problems. It’s not divided from anything. It’s not searching for anything. It’s not limited or defective or anything like that. So the amazing thing about this is when you follow that pointer and you actually examine in your experience to just simply be curious about what is the nature of what we are here, you immediately come face to face with this obvious, undeniable fact of your true nature, and it is already having all of those characteristics we might have been searching for.
     So that can allow us to appreciate some of these pointers, but always knowing that the pointer is not what it is. But in seeing that distinction, you can appreciate the pointers, you can enjoy the pointers, and you can be at a meeting like this and hear this being pointed to and following the pointers, but simultaneously actually directly recognizing, as it’s being discussed, that reality of who you are. And the beauty of it is it starts right now in our direct experience, if we care to recognize what’s being pointed to. And this is something that people I think miss, is that what you find is that we’re not really talking about attainment. It’s not a particular experience. It’s not a particular moment. It’s not a shift. It’s not a penny dropping. Nothing particular needs to happen, which is I think in spirituality we often subtly pick up that kind of idea that, ‘When’s it going to happen?’ ‘When am I going to be there?’ ‘Somebody got it and somebody didn’t get it.’ And subtly the mind is just kind of projecting into the future, imagining there’s something that’s going to happen to me and then ‘this’ will be the case.
     And it turns out, which is a wonderful understanding, that that’s not the case actually. Even the most rarefied, absolute teachings that you hear, also turn out to be a little bit too complicated. So we often hear ‘awakening.’ And it seems like so and so got something at a certain time. So that would lead us to feel like maybe that could happen to me, or something like that. But that’s all conceptual. That’s all in the imaginary, conceptual picture in the mind, because if you actually look in direct experience, that awake, conscious aware presence is actually already functioning. It’s already completely clear and evident. So there we were waiting for awakening, waiting for the shift or something to happen, not actually noticing that the awakeness or the awareness or that reality was actually there without even needing the shift or the awakening. In seeing it like this, the whole structure of spirituality concepts just glides out of the picture, because you realize you don’t need anything what you already are. All those natural qualities are given by default in what’s already present.
     This is the kind of thing that Bob pointed out to me, and that he shares. And I was able to listen to what he was saying, and just check it out and find the simplicity of the truth of the meaning of those pointers. But at no time was there some exotic awakening or shift or moment or something like that because it’s too complicated. Then those age-old pointers about ‘you are that’ and ‘your mind is the Buddha’ and ‘this is who we are’ – we recognize that, well this is what they’re trying to say, that you already are the truth of what you are, that you are that. And at that point, the need for the pointers, or the need to understand what it is and where it is and all that – that whole thing is no longer necessary for who we are because there’s that direct recognition for ourselves of the truth of what we are. It’s a simple appreciation & recognizing of something that, as was pointed out to me once, that one of the keys to it was that it’s so incredibly simple, so totally basic, and in a way so clear, so obvious that often we’ve just stepped over it and missed the essence of it. So you hear a lot of these pointers today and if you really follow what’s being said, it’s pointing back again & again & again & again in various different ways to that same basic message. And you don’t need a lot of pointers, or a lot of meetings, or a lot of time, or a lot of chewing over it, because all of that is still missing the simplicity of it. Just one meeting like this, or a discussion or heart-to-heart talk, or hearing just one direct pointer that resonates can in itself be quite sufficient, quite enough for us to notice that. So that’s just one attempt to try to share this." John Wheeler

 

 

Meditations: Structured & Unstructured

     “There are many types of meditation practices in various traditions and also outside of traditions. They generally fall into one of two categories: structured or unstructured time sitting in silence and being still.
     Structured practices include concentration practices, such as counting or focusing on the breath, reciting a mantra, or visualizing the guru, and they are used for gathering the scattered mind and developing the ability to focus the mind in one place. They are useful practices in that they initially show the seeker how very active the mind is. They will frustrate the seeker at first; he will be sure he is not doing the practices correctly because his thinking keeps interrupting his focus on the object of concentration.
     Over time, concentration practices do quiet the mind, and they have been shown to have benefits in reducing stress, lowering blood pressure, and bringing moments of calm into a troubled life or a restless mind. If these are the goals, they are quite useful. If you are a seeker of the Truth that frees one from one’s ‘self,’ however, they may or may not lead to liberation, since the ‘meditator’ may continue to feel separate from the meditation.
     Unstructured meditation is an invitation to simply sit without attempting to control anything that arises. It is an invitation to be – to be the silence, not the one who is trying to be silent; to be the awareness, not the one who is trying to be aware. It is not about controlling experience or maintaining a certain state of consciousness. True meditation reveals what IS before any ‘state’ of consciousness. There can be moments where there is no thought, no ego, and no time. We are conscious, if even for a moment, of being what we ARE.
     This type of meditation occurs when consciousness sinks into the unknown, into the depths of silence, where there is no ‘meditator.’ It is a deep listening to silence. Whether thoughts appear or do not appear is not a concern. We are not efforting to maintain a ‘state,’ but rather coming to rest in our natural state. This form of meditation does not engage the ego, as do so many structured meditation techniques. Of course, in the beginning you will encounter the noise of your ‘narrator,’ but you are not engaged in battle with your thinking. In fact, as consciousness comes to rest in its home ground, we discover that thought cannot interrupt the awake silence we eventually discover is our true nature. It is just another phenomenon that comes and goes in the Heart of Awareness.
     This kind of meditation can render the ego more and more transparent, since we are no longer striving to make something happen. It is a beautiful opportunity to unhook from our digital and virtual worlds, from our goal-oriented minds, and simply rest as what we are. We begin to see that when we are not struggling against our thoughts or feelings, something knows how to realign itself with its true nature. In this type of meditation, we also come to connect with the deep well of silence and wisdom into which we can drop our most important existential questions. Into this depth of knowing, we can inquire: Who or what am I, really?”

       Dorothy Hunt. “Ending the Search. From Spiritual Ambition to the Heart of Awareness.” Sounds True, 2018.

Fogo Island, Newfoundland

Our Story is Incredibly Powerful

     Clinging to the story of our life & our self-concept can lock us into a single, narrow way of seeing, & behaving. This is common, easy, and sad.
     Amoda Maa invites us to a far richer, more vibrant life:

     “In awakening, we awaken out of the dream of separation, out of the dream of duality, that there is an abiding sense of peace there, and oneness, that the world disappears in that, because we come to rest in an inner space, and inner dimension of beingness that is beyond the world of form. But if that realization, that knowing, that seeing is to really be lived in our everyday lives, then it’s not about transcending the world, it’s not about avoiding the world of opposites, denying the world of duality. 
     And that’s where the questions really come in. How can I really live this truth in my everyday life when the world seems to create division, when the world still pushes & pulls and I experience the polarity of my feelings, my thoughts, my emotions? What has happened to the nondual state, that inner dimension of beingness, the formless? And do I have to keep returning to that through meditation or some kind of practice or through stillness in order to remember, in order to realign, in order for it to become the deeper, lived truth?
     If it’s to be really lived, if you are to be fully awake and fully human, then there must be a re-visiting or re-emergence into the world. There must be an inclusion of the world, which means that nonduality, nondual awareness, or nondual realization must be realized in the midst of duality. That means meeting the world as you perceive it, as you experience it, without the story of the world in it. What does that mean? 
     That means that the world that we see, this thing that we call the world, my world, the world, is not real, because everything you perceive & experience can only be seen & experienced through your own belief system, through your own conditioning. So we do not see the world as it is, but as we believe it to be. So however profound or transcendent awakening is, that does not magically erase all that conditioning, all that conditioned seeing.
     There needs to be a meeting of that, and seeing that what you see is colored by your story. The story comes in whenever we say, ‘It shouldn’t be like this;’ ‘The world shouldn’t be like this;’ ‘My experience shouldn’t be like this.’ Whenever expectation, hope, agenda, fear, come to the forefront of your experience, of your seeing of the world, of your meeting of the world – it’s those expectations, hopes, fears, shoulds & shouldn’ts that create the world of opposites, that create the divisions. The division is not in the world, the opposites are not in the world, although there is a polarity in the world of form. The opposition is in you. The division is in you. And this continues to operate even after awakening. 
     And so the invitation is to meet the world without a story, not by denying or avoiding, not by suppressing or turning away from your experience, but by being willing to meet the world in your vulnerability, as your vulnerability, to meet the world as openness, to meet the world as broken-heartedness, to watch how every vestige of self-defense or upholding the self either as special or as victim – as poor me, in response to the world you experience, is the very thing that is creating the division in you. To meet the world in your nakedness, is to allow it to break your heart open, to allow it to touch the core of vulnerability. Because when you do, the ego’s attempt even in spiritual awakening, to create a safe space at which you have arrived, where nothing can touch you, will be brought to its knees. And it needs to be brought to its knees, over and over again. It’s not about poor me. It’s not about meeting the world with the story of victim, which is a very tenacious story, in many different ways. Some people have it in the world of relationship & intimacy; some people have it in the world of work or creative expression; some people have it in the world of relationship to money, support & resources. Somewhere, each of us carries some degree of poor me. That’s the one to watch out for. To meet the world without the poor me, even in the midst of where the poor me wants to rise up, which is where we are hurt, where something touches us deeply, where we feel vulnerable, where we feel raw, where a feeling, a sensation, an energy, an experience reveals itself that we really don’t like, because it doesn’t match our idea either of how we should be – because it makes us feel not good enough, not perfect enough, not spiritual enough, not enlightened enough, not worthy enough – or our idea of how the world should be. And our idea of how the world should be is very linked to that because we want the world to show us that we are good enough, that we are lovable enough, that we are worthy enough, that we are spiritual enough, and so on. 
     That’s where division, that’s where the world of opposites continues to play itself out. So to meet the world, which is to meet your experience of the world, because there is no thing as the world out there. Everything is appearing in you, through you, as you. The world is in you, it is inseparable from you. The world is your experience, your direct experience. If your direct experience is one of division, of should or shouldn’t, of denial, suppression or upholding, then you are creating the world of division, you are creating the world of opposites. To meet the world without the story, of its should or its shouldn’t, of I need it to be this way, of I need myself to be this way or that way, is radical - it’s revolutionary. 
     Whether we’re talking about on the way to awakening, or after awakening when you have to come back down to earth and live your everyday life. It doesn’t matter which one we’re speaking of, it’s the same. It’s revolutionary. It brings an end to division in you. But it’s not a one-time affair. It’s not just a realization of that and suddenly you’re in a magical world where nothing touches you, you’re not experiencing those inner dynamics. It’s over & over again. It’s like a love affair. That intimacy is called for over & over again, in every experience, in every moment, in every interaction, in every relationship. By meeting the world in this way, by meeting your inner world, which is all there is, in this way, there is a purification of all that is divided in you. There is a purification of the world in you. And, it’s as if you start to ripen. You start to ripen like the fruit on the tree that needs the constancy of the sun cooking it up to come to its fullness, so they can naturally drop off the tree. It doesn’t have to plucked, or cut off. It naturally, at the right time, falls off the tree. It’s like a wine that takes time to mature in the barrel in order to taste good. It’s like the chickpea in the pot that needs to be boiled – to death, so they can then be absorbed & assimilated. 
     So your capacity to meet the world over & over again is the maturation process, is the ripening process. The world is not separate from you. The world is in you. Your awakening is not about removing yourself from the world, rising above the world, but by having the world totally absorbed & metabolized, metamorphosed through you into the nectar of love. It’s a love that includes all the details of your experience, but is not constrained by those details. That’s what I mean by finding or realizing or living the nondual within the dual – the nonduality within the duality. It is totally inclusive because there is nothing outside of you. But the story of you and your experience with the world is no longer wrapped around it. Because as each story wraps itself around your experience, there is separation, there is a boundary, a cloak around this experience and this experience. Suddenly you’re in the world of separation and opposition and that’s where the suffering is. Without the story it is all allowed, it all comes pouring in, you are totally given to it, you’re wide open, permeable, and the world and you become one, and that is love - love that is not conditional on your experience, not conditional on you being loving, lovable, perfect, enlightened, spiritual, successful, or anything else that you can name. This is an ongoing process - an ongoing process that is often avoided, or simply missed out because it’s not often spoken about. 
     What we speak about mostly is the awakened state, how to get there, how to experience it, how to point to it, and so on. Enough! Enough! How many times are we going to hear that? Maybe you need to hear it some more. But I want to talk about the other part, which is what I am talking about, which is the embodiment of it. Embodiment of enlightenment or awakening is not about enjoying the body; it’s not about tantra; it’s not about opening the senses; it’s not about yoga; it’s not about dancing. It can include that. Nothing is excluded from the human experience. The more we open, the more refined our experience, which then goes beyond the body. But the embodiment of enlightenment is not about that, it’s not about fixating on any of that. Of course it includes coming into our bodies, in the sense that many people live in their heads – or seem to, I mean I don’t know how you can just live in your head – that’s ridiculous, you’re still living in your body, but their experience is often cut off from the feeling in the body and so on. Of course it includes that – that’s primary. But I’m talking about something else, something a little further along the line. I’m talking about seeing every story you impose upon your experience. And it gets more & more subtle, more & more subtle. There is no arrival point that I know of where you can say, ‘It’s done.’ There may be periods of time where it feels in some way done, when there is such openness & grace. But do not rest there. Well, rest there for a while, but do not claim that as the final destination. Neither claim that as an accolade for the self. It’s very tricky. It’s very easy to fall into that. Because as soon as you claim it, as soon as you self-congratulate in that, you will be humbled, you will be brought to your knees again. It’s not a punishment, it’s grace. Because some subtle vestige of ego, which does continue to operate in human form, it doesn’t die, it transmutes, but it still has a tendency to claim its experience. We are self-reflective beings. We’re not earthworms with no capacity for self-reflection. We do have a neocortex & so on, so we can self-reflect. It is both our blessing and our curse. That’s how consciousness becomes conscious of consciousness – of itself. So it is our blessing in that sense. But it’s also that we’re constantly taking a snapshot of our experience, and it can be very subtle. So when we find ourselves at this openness, as if a river of grace is moving through us, do not believe it to be the end. Just be open. Just be humble. Just be curious. Because the human experience goes on, and on, and on, and on. And yes it gets more refined. The purification becomes more refined. And in that refinement, and in that subtlety, it can get trickier. And it requires your vigilance. Not a vigilance that comes from mind or willfulness, but from some deep, soft part of you that is given to truth, that is given to love, come what may, come what may.
     So do not avoid the world, do not avoid relationship, do not avoid work, do not avoid money, do not avoid the body, do not avoid your relationship to anything that is a part of the human experience, even if it appears unspiritual. Do not create that division. Once the wall between spiritual and unspiritual comes tumbling down, and perhaps is demolished once & for all, then life itself becomes your practice. Life itself becomes your guru. That’s not just a nice little phrase to say. I mean it! There is nothing but life that teaches you ultimately. Life is constantly, constantly offering you the opportunity to end division. Life is love, however horrific it appears to be. It does not mean that we just loose ourselves in the world of form, and re-identify with the world of form. It’s not about abandoning the inner sanctuary, the kingdom of heaven that is your true nature, that which is beyond form within you always. It’s not about abandoning that and going running back into the world and saying, ‘To hell with all that spiritual stuff. I’m just going to enjoy all this,’ or ‘I hate this,’ or whatever. It’s called being lazy. And getting lost again, and so the cycle begins. It’s about staying wide open, as the kingdom of heaven, whilst letting, allowing the world to appear in you. There’s a big difference between the world being out there & you getting lost in it, re-identified in it; or you running into the inner sanctuary & holding onto it; or sometimes running out & then running in – it’s called spiritual practice – it’s still a divided place. It’s about being open as this, which is always here, and letting it all appear in you, because it’s unavoidable, it’s going to go on appearing until you die, and then we don’t know. We’ll find out then. So that’s my invitation.”

       Amoda Maa "Meet the World Without a Story"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE2N2LrY7Po

Amoda Maa "Meet the World Without a Story"