Not one

In an absolute paradox (pardon the pun :-)), oneness lives in the way of not one.

As soon as the ego tries to define us as someone, something much bigger than ego knows that it is not that one. It is not any one - not this one and not that one - not any particular one.

To read about this without having experienced it can be confusing. And experiencing it can be disorienting to the mind. The mind seeks certainty and likes to be someone - someone particular - someone predictable who can be described and defined in a specific way. Until it doesn't.

And then there is that inbetween place, when something here can no longer really believe in the story of being someone particular. Still there can be a sort of half-hearted believing for a while. But rest assured this belief is very surely on its way out. And sooner rather than later that belief evaporates.

However, during this experience it seems like life around us continues on pretty much as before, and we still find ourselves amidst the same or similar situations as before. But now there is no particular someone dealing with those situations. Instead there is an openness that can still hear and see what is going on.

This is what is disorienting to mind. It doesn't know how to deal with life without being someone. So it may keep attempting to settle into being someone and reacting to what is happening as that someone. But it cannot really sustain that act for very long. So right in the middle of being someone, the belief in someone may just vanish and the openness may be revealed again.

This can be quite funny. We may find ourselves arguing a point (as someone) and then suddenly all interest in our own argument disappears and we are left holding nothing and feeling a little silly, and no doubt looking a lot sillier! :-)

That this could happen sometimes - that mind could try to be someone - that isn't a problem. It pretends for a while and then it can't anymore. Without any interference from us, the drama simply passes.

However we may be tempted to interfere. All our interference is from the mind, and it can take the form of thoughts believed - thoughts like:

I shouldn't be shaken from the openness
I am still not really enlightened enough
I should not look silly
etc.

None of these are true. But if believed in, they simply contract us again. So instead we can simply relax into what is happening, even if we are being someone again, or being silly or 'unspiritual'.

In this openness there is no attachment to being any one way, no attachment to appearing any one way. There is simply the freedom to be and the freedom to appear as any one. We are life responding to life and we are flexible.

This last statement seems contradictory? It is certainly paradoxical. For somehow, in a mysterious way, this openness that we are is no-one specific and yet can appear as specific things, without being confined to any one of them, without being defined as any one of them.

And we find out the truth of how this works right where we are, as life unfolds.

This body doesn't suddenly evaporate. This life experience isn't suddenly blanked out. The facts of our life don't change. We continue to look the same and sound the same and appear the same (atleast on the outside). But there is no one left here who needs to hang on to any one appearance.

So we are free - free to be what the moment demands of us - free to be the flow of life in this moment, as this moment.

We are free to be new and fresh. And there is no need to know in advance how to be.

By means unknown we are the unknown appearing as the known. What could be more amazing!

This moment speaks

This moment speaks to me
In a voice and way
It has rarely used

Displaying its rich beauty
Its sonorous silence
Its bursting fullness
in my being

Look, it says, at what I am
Not what you thought
My dear

Not just time
Marker for some event in your life
Not the start of something
Nor the end of something
Not even the inbetween

Though truth be told
Inbetween
comes closest to what I am

But you cast aside that
You cast aside the inbetween
In your hurry to get somewhere
And so you lose me
and lose me again

But I didn't lose you
How could I?
You come from my womb
you are my own child

You wander all over freely
away from me
and yet never outside
for I am all there is

Then someday I call out to you
And this time you say yes!
And we come back home
together

And that is what I am
I am you
at home

Turning spontaneously

The mind presents us with all kinds of experience. And further, the mind articulates that experience in many different ways (depending on the experience), such as:

I am working or

I am sad or

I am having a good time or

I am watching a movie etc

All of mind's interest and attention is in the sensory experience of being happy or sad or engrossed in the movie or whatever else. But if we really look at experience (any experience), there are always 2 components to any experience: - one is the sensory part of the experience (as described above - happy, sad, etc)- two is the 'I am' part of the experience or the beingness implicit in any experience.

This component of 'I am' is the foundational experience without which the sensory experience cannot be had. In order for something to be experienced, there must be someone who experiences it. So we can say that "I am" is the primary experience and the sensory part is the secondary experience.

Then perhaps we can agree that we live most of our lives located in secondary experience alone. It can be said that the primary experience is mostly ignored or taken for granted.

Most spiritual paths invite us to turn to the primary experience. Many meditation techniques and spiritual practices are geared to anchor us in this I-amness or simply beingness. But when mind goes there it gets very bored. There is no excitement there. By contrast, it seems like the secondary experience is vast, varied and infinitely more interesting. So the mind turns right back there, and assures itself of, at the very least - an exciting time. :-)

And yet, at the same time, it may seem like there is a lingering, maybe small part of us that is getting a bit tired of the sensory stuff. Perhaps we find that we need ever new experiences to keep us interested, because what used to interest us simply lost its appeal. And although there is no dearth of new things, we may find that they have an old air about them.

So we find ourselves in somewhat of a quandary - wanting sensory experience and yet wanting more than just that. The next time this quandary is experienced (or anything else), and the mind says 'I am feeling confused', perhaps we can turn, ever so slightly, to the primary experience there, - I am - and give it a small bit of attention too. So that we find that our awareness holds both - the experience of confusion and the experience of being.

We don't need to hold our attention there, we can just turn there when it occurs to us to do so. What we may find is that something expands out, and instead of feeling boxed into a tiny part of our reality - which is the sensory experience - we feel a spaciousness around experience, that is very relaxing.

But it is not just relaxing, it is perspective-altering. Stepping into I-amness, even for a split second, is stepping into the larger reality. And from here everything is seen differently. This world of experience that we have given so much importance to, begins to be seen in a much bigger context, and all experience is held more lightly.

The split second of unforced turning to I-am ness is unimaginably powerful. In the mind it competes with a lifetime of other experiences, but in reality it works like seeds sprinkled in the ground - invisibly, silently and surely, yielding forests that change the landscape.

In this way, without force, we can start to reconnect with the primary experience of beingness and see where it takes us. There is no need to give up our attraction to secondary experience. We can simply turn to 'I am', when we remember and want to do so. We need not dedicate a pre-specified amount of time to this, nor assign a special place for this. It can happen anytime, anyplace - during work, during leisure, in the car or while walking...

The best time to turn to 'I am' is when it happens spontaneously.

What is Advaita - 1

The central teachings of Advaita, (and some other spiritual legacies), are few and stark.

• What we take ourselves to be - we are not.
• What we are is the unknown or God or the Oneness.

As human beings we take ourselves to be separate from other human beings, from the world and from God. This is our lived experience. Our lived experience is that of separation. So the teachings seem contrary to our lived experience, and therefore utopian and fantastic. And yet when the time comes, they draw us to their discovery like moths to a flame.

The teachings point to the truth of what we are. And when we desire to know what we are, we come to the teaching. There is no faking this desire.

If something within us spontaneously stays curious about this even amidst all the intelligent protests of mind; if we find ourselves encountering this teaching in our lives again and again somehow, and some small part of us feels compelled to go there, then the desire is there and will chart its own course.

So the teachings tell us that all separation is an illusion. But they don't discount our lived experience. Rather they help us to see that what we take ourselves to be has reality (as we already know), but it is the reality of a mirage.

It is very real when we are in it. But there is a larger reality within which the mirage itself occurs, and from which the mirage can be seen as a mirage. This larger reality which is simultaneously all-inclusive and yet totally empty is the oneness or non-duality that Advaita points to as our true nature.

What is said above may give the impression that the great teachings are putting us on a self-improvement program, with a step-by-step process to becoming self-realized or the highest and best thing to be. :-) This is not so. Certainly our desire to know what we truly are may put us on a spiritual journey, but we are not somehow becoming the Oneness or God through the course of this journey.

We are always and already the Oneness. There is no arriving someplace. Because every place is that. There is no becoming somebody. Because every body is that. There is no way to not be that which we truly are.

But the issue is that we don't see this or experience this clearly, and so we feel we are outside that somehow, separate from God, separate from all there is. All suffering derives from this sense of separation - the firm belief ensconced in mind and body that I am a separate being.

This has also been likened to dreaming. Within the dream everything seems real and we suffer and we rejoice. Yet the truth, as we see clearly, is that we wake up from the dream every morning and know it was just a dream. In other words it is the nature of the dream to be full of stories. Similarly it is the nature of human life to go through this experience of separation.

The mind races ahead with questions as to why this might be so and how this truth can be realized and so on.

Broadly speaking there are 2 aspects to this realization - one is the understanding of what is being pointed to and the other is the living of it. The authentic desire to know what we are is what orchestrates the spiritual journey for each one.

There is no telling what the journey may look like for anyone. For some (very rare few) there may be no experience of a journey at all. Understanding may dawn and it is lived in, as, of and through, that human form, right away. For most others (and certainly for me) the body-mind complex gradually transforms in the living of this realization.

And yet the great paradox which is recognized is that the one that transforms is the same oneness, before, during and after the transformation! :-)

We are always and already that. And the experience of separation occurs within that which we are. This oneness is not the opposite of many. The many arise within it, as expressions of it, confused or otherwise.

God dancing with God

Amazing discovery
Silence can dance
and does
With noise
and a whole host
of unlikely partners

And what a dancer it is
Nothing too clumsy
for it
to take into its arms
and rejoice with

Silence the expert dancer
dancing with a clod
like me
in a dance so intimate
like God dancing with God

No God

I enter the temple
with bowed head
and humble heart

expecting to find
a glorious god
shining and pure

I'm ready to look up
to this great one
surrendering yet again

But what greets me
is a mirror instead
and a pristine image
of myself

Am I at home
in my room
dressing up?

No I see that
this is the temple
I entered

Where is the god here?
the perfect god
I came to bow to?

The only answer
is the steady image
of myself
looking at myself

imperfect, flawed
marred, worn down
me looking at myself

I hear the temple bells
smell the incense
see the flowers

All offered in prayer
to me?!
And to you
when you come here

No god
other than you and I
No god
without you and I
No god
just you and I
as God.

Silence in expression

Nothing to share

but silence

hearing itself echoed through sound

reading itself printed in words

watching itself unfold in images

Not needing expression

yet in full expression everywhere!

Freedom lived

Freedom lived
is leaving yourself
the option to love
the one who injures you
if love arises

Why take that
off the table
Freedom lived
does not deny you
anything

Freedom lived
is free of the strategy
to plot hatred
against those who hate
even subtly

Freedom lived
does not deny hatred
If it arises
it is allowed
with unflinching love

It is the space
between the leaves
of a tree dancing
with the wind
Stillness within dance

The eye of God

The eye of God is in all things, as all things, of all things and through all things.

This is the awareness that is inside all things. This is the awareness that we are.

This awareness is not dependent on the human mind as we sometimes believe.

The human mind is a powerful, and possibly unique, vehicle for the awareness to express itself. But awareness does not depend on your being aware or my being aware. It is totally independent of the movement of mind.

But because of the way that the human mind understands awareness, we think that awareness needs objects to be aware of. And we think that the awareness is outside the objects, and separate from them. We think that awareness is aware of the objects from outside them.

But the eye of God is in all things and awareness is on the inside of all things as all things, and as nothing. We can call it the beingness or the isness or the presence inherent in everything.

This is the awareness that is being pointed to.

Rest as this awareness, this beingness, even when the mind doesn't get it, for the mind is not the one that gets it.

Every protest of the mind is shot through with the beingness. Notice this in the next thought that says you don't get it. See the presence in the thought itself that dances in the mind.

We are this vibrant dancing alive beingness and everything is that.

We are the eye of God seeing itself.

Running

There is a human compulsion to make sense of things. We want things to be connected, to reveal a pattern, to satisfy our lust for meaning. We want this moment to be strung together with the next and the one before it so we can put our arms around time and life - to make something of the unmade.

We can't imagine a life where none of this is so - where each moment is on its own - orphaned. We can't imagine something so alone. It frightens us and chills us to the bone, as only something can that we know to be true. So we construct an elaborate facade and we collaborate to keep it strong and upright - not allowing each other to remember, lest the clear seeing of one become the undoing of all.

So precious is this life of meaning we say that we are willing to take its knocks just to live its grandeur. What garbage we feed ourselves. We are like a bird on the ground that does not know it has wings - and so it walks about and has little adventures - little triumphs and little mishaps. They don't really satisfy and so the bird uses its little beak of imagination to weave something grand out of the little things - and invents meaning for a filler - to fill the gaps between the little things so they can stick together and appear much bigger than they actually are.

We allow ourselves to be fooled by a life woven this way - from imagination and empty fillers. Out of fear we continue weaving and building out the emptiness. Till it grows so big and so hungry it swallows us whole. And there is nothing again. The very nothing we tried to run from. It is everywhere we run. And all the running is only running into its lap.

We can get desperate then and crumble or we can laugh - laugh a great big belly laugh. It is ridiculous to run from our self, believing we might escape the bugger. When what is running is the self. It is funny to realize this.

Then the sound of our own laughter dissolves into the nothing. And it's like it never was.

Then something is forgotten deep inside us and something is remembered there but not from a memory. And we look into the distance. And a tree waves its leaves and the sunlight filters in through a window. And we blink our eyes. And it is all one thing. Everything is just one thing. And we choke on the lump in the throat and we are blinded by the rush of tears. Gratitude and peace course through the veins. And there is fullness to bursting. Like a ripe peach cracking its skin to share the sweet juiciness. We spill over with complete abandon, not even noticing what is given up.

Fearlessness

Fearlessness is not someplace
Where fear becomes incapacitated

Fearlessness is the willingness
to be fearful

Fearlessness does not mean
the absence of fear
Fearlessness is
the allowing of fear

What can terrify that
which is not afraid to be afraid?

Nothing to lose, everything to gain

Maybe we come to the spiritual teachings because we are attracted to the peace they appear to promise.

Maybe we stay with the spiritual teachings because we taste the peace they appear to suggest.

But who can deny life its eccentricities? What can force life to provide us with unending peace?

Life inevitably presents us with the 'unpeaceful' - death, sickness, loss, war, recession etc.

(Perhaps you want to replace the word peace above with something else, like love, which resonates more strongly for you.)

Are we peaceful in these situations? What is our experience?

If you are like most seekers, then no - you are not peaceful in unpeaceful situations.

But the spiritual teachings are unassailable, we know. They are infallible, we tell ourselves.

So it must be that we are doing something wrong, - we are not seeking in the right way, we tell ourselves. If we were doing this right, then unending peace would be our experience.

This may seem like a spiritually naive belief that seasoned seekers may scoff at. But if we look again, even veteran seekers may find some version of this inside.

So we equate the end of seeking or enlightenment with a state of unending peace.

And further, we often believe that this is something that can be attained, whether it is by the right spiritual practices done the right way, or by the right transmission from the right teacher, or by the right kind of spiritual experience, or by the right spiritual attitude and so on.

The spiritual teachings that we revere so, consistently tell us one thing:

We are already and always that.

But we have given ourselves a new teaching:

I can attain the experience of unending peace.

Simply consider the vast gap between the above 2 statements.

Yet this is how all seekers (in some way or another) interprete the teachings.

Peace (or love) is only one of the myriad expressions of this that we are. If we insist on unending peace, we insist on denying every other expression. We insist on denying the fullness and vastness of what we are. In other words we insist on staying limited.

Luckily we don't succeed. :-) We are the freedom and the infinite vastness no matter how contorted and cramped we find ourselves.

So hear the teachings afresh. No old ideas needed.

We are already and always that.

The peaceful is that and the unpeaceful is that.

The love is that and the hatred is that.

The right spiritual practice is that and the wrong spiritual practice is that.

The right teacher is that and the wrong teacher is that.

The right attitude is that and the wrong attitude is that.

You are that through and through whatever you do and whoever you are.

What prevents us from acknowledging this within us is fear. All kinds of fear.

The fear of losing control. The fear of having nothing to do. The fear of dying. The fear of not knowing. The fear of of being too great to be true. The fear of being too small to matter. The fear of letting go and finding our demons. The fear of losing the world. The fear of being cast out of humanity. The fear of losing everything and everyone we love. The fear of living. The fear of freedom. The fear of not caring. The fear of losing our image. The fear of fear.

And we run from fear. This is the natural human tendency. Until it isn't.

It is not necessary to run from fear. It is not necessary to run from fear.

Can we look at the fear? - gently and at our own pace?

Can we see that something is already allowing the fear to be?

Can we be that which is already allowing the fear to be? Can we look at fear from here? - in this way?

No pressure to deal with the fear or fix it or resolve it.

Can we simply look?

Yes - It may not be very peaceful to look at fear. And that's why we have avoided the fear for so long. But the avoidance has not worked - it has not brought us peace.

Meanwhile the fear stands in the way of acknowledging what we are.

When we are ready, we can look at the fear and see what that brings.

And the beauty of this is, that the fear itself is that - that even as we look at the fear, we are already that. And no matter what we find, we are already that. And everything we find is already that.

We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

The Mask

Pure innocence arises
in human form
Pure innocence arises
as thoughts

Then attachment occurs
and thought becomes belief
And this happens also
in pure innocence

The belief becomes the mask
through which we look
And the world appears
colored by belief

In this way
beliefs are amassed
The mask becomes thicker
and the world more complex

We don't realize
that what we see
is only a result
of the masks we are wearing

So we take it all
to be very real
Until we don't
And it is all pure innocence

In a moment of grace
our looking chances
upon that
through which we are looking

We see the mask
and we see how
it has shaped our world
for so long now

The mask may not
slip off right away
Infact it tends
to cling in pure innocence

But the mask
has been seen you know
And though nothing has changed
This changes everything

This I know

This I know
that I don't want
to live an idea
even though
it may bring me peace
or wealth or joy.

This I know
that I want
to live the truth
whatever it may bring.

I have lived ideas
of all kinds.
They do not satisfy
but leave me parched
yearning
for what I do not know.

In truth I am free
of the need
to duck or hold
any one thing.
Wide wide open
to all that arises.

The great unknown

White light passing through a prism refracts into the rainbow. It cannot help this; it is its nature to refract into the rainbow.

Nothing can change the reality of the rainbow's source or its true nature. It is light appearing in different colors. Now we may prefer one color to another, but what has that to do with what each color truly is? The seven colors can produce a kaleidoscopic reality of great beauty and intricacy. And we can enjoy the spectacular show. But the entire show is enabled by the light. The entire show is only a play of light. Miraculous!

In the same way, formlessness refracts through the great witnessing into the rainbow of this universe. And you arise and I arise and the moon and the stars, and we dance life. And we are all only the great unknown in different shades and shapes.

The great witnessing is the prism that refracts. The great witnessing is the observer observing the observed. It is the observer that unfolds the observed, from deep within itself, such that the birth of the observer is simultaneously the birth of the observed.

We can name these things and dress them in fancy words and classify them into elaborate systems and there is great joy in all that. But what remains unchanged? The true nature of all things. It is the great unknown.

Where is the love?

Where is the love
In pain or suffering?

Where is the love
In hatred and war?

Where is the love
In death?

I rave and rant
About this elusive love

I bemoan
Its startling absence

Then the anger
Exhausts itself

And I am back
where I started

Even as I berate
My 'lapse'

Something has allowed
My outburst

And something allows
My self-judgement now

Something is ok
with me
exactly as I am

I don't have to be different
or better
In its presence

It is equally present
No matter who or what I am

Can there be
A more restful love?

Seeking is avoidance - Part 2

What are some ways in which we avoid seeing what we are by our very seeking?

I see 2 fundamental ways in which seekers avoid the truth - procrastination and projection.

Procrastination is about waiting for enlightenment to occur to us. It can take various forms. But usually the mind picks on some particular spiritual information that it has read or heard about, and either obviously or subtly, converts that into a pre-requisite for our enlightenment.

For example:

I haven't yet had a big spiritual experience. When I have it then perhaps enlightenment may set in.

or

I have had one or many memorable spiritual experiences, but they don't last. They come and go. When I have one that stays then I will be truly enlightened.

or

When I am finally able to be rid of my anger, and be loving all the time, then I will know that I am enlightened.

or

When I can make the time to do more meditation (or inquiry), and when I can learn to do it right, then I may have a chance at enlightenment.

or

When I find the right teacher and receive the right transmission, then .......

and on and on.

Is any of this familiar so far? Discover your own voice of procrastination. And see how it sustains the seeking. - Till you see that in this way we end up seeking only that which can be used to keep away the truth!

Projection is about putting the enlightenment onto another's shoulders. It's the you-are-enlightened-and-I-am-not pattern. Typically the teacher or someone else is held up as an exemplar that simply cannot be matched. The mind finds something unique about this enlightened other, that is then used to compare one's own experience with, and of course one's own experience always falls short.

For e.g.

This teacher talks about how they are in constant bliss. Now that is true enlightenment and it is simply not my experience.

or

I go from teacher to teacher and I see clearly that they have all had some extraordinary experience that changed them forever and that is not my experience and will likely never be.

or

My experience contradicts what the enlightened one says, so my experience is wrong. I can never be what she is.

or

Look at that amazing enlightened one! How could I (with all my faults) be the same as that one? What blasphemy!

and on and on.

Perhaps this sounds familiar? Check in to find your own version of projection. And notice if it is not infact used to reassert a comfortable belief - that you are not enlightened.

So why do we try to avoid the truth of what we are? Especially when we profess to want it so much?

It has much to do with the fear of realizing the truth fully. - The fear of disappearing as this ego-mind, the fear of taking full responsibility for everything, the fear of being completely alone, the fear of losing control and the fear of dying.

So what to do about this fear?

Nothing. Anything that is done to counter the fear actually stems from fear - the fear of fear. Instead we can take the opportunity to see clearly. Seeing clearly means seeing what is just as it is, without having to interprete it through the lens of judgement.

So when we see the various ways in which we are avoiding the truth of ourselves, then simply by that act of seeing, something starts to open up. It clears the way for a dropping of the resistance to the truth.

Don't expect this to be experienced in any one particular way. Discover and enjoy how it wishes to manifest in your own experience.

Seeking is avoidance - Part 1

Seeking is avoidance. Have you seen that in yourself?

Seeking is the dance between the deep desire for the truth and the avoidance of the truth, of what we are.

The desire for the truth holds our integrity. - That which yearns to fully meet itself.

The avoidance of the truth holds our resistance. - That which is afraid of what the truth may really mean for the I, for the body-mind.

The desire for the truth comes from beyond the I, despite the I. The avoidance of the truth comes from the I.

The desire for the truth bestows the grace of the breakthroughs. The avoidance attaches to the breakthroughs - the lack of them and the presence of them - as though they were the only truth.

Finally, it is the deep desire for the truth that enables us to see that we are in avoidance of the truth.

Seeking is avoidance.

Seeking is seeing the avoidance.

Seeking is seeing the dropping of avoidance.

Seeking ceases. The joy of continual discovery begins.

Nothing has changed. Everything has changed.

Heart to heart

When we look from the heart
Into the heart of all things
We find the same innocence
Everywhere

When we look at something
And miss the heart here and there
We find the same separateness
Everywhere

The price of separateness
Is the loss of innocence

The separate one does not deem this
To be a great loss
Nor a high price
To pay for its existence

But remember that separation too
Is born from the oneness
And the innocence
And returns to it surely

Freedom of Silence

The freedom of silence
Is not that it escapes noise

The freedom of silence
Is that it does not personalize noise