Already this

There is no moment
when this is not

There is no place
where this is not

There is nobody
Who this is not

This cannot be given us
Nor taken from us

So what comes between
You and this?
What insists
I am not this

Only a voice
in the head
That is already this
through and through

Coming from wholeness

We are wholeness
exploring separation
through mind

and not separation
seeking wholeness
in mind

Unearned love

Something is afraid to fall
into this love
that is so steady
and so unearned

Something can't accept
this okness
that is so everpresent
and so unconditional

Something says
I'd be a fool
to let down my guard
so completely

Something says nothing
could be that constant
and be relied on
so absolutely

Afraid of being hurt
by its own innocence
something wears a mask
of continual mistrust
viewing everything
through narrow slits
fashioned by fear

What will it take
to let oneself slip
into the ocean of love
that is oneself?

Uncondtional love

We look for
unconditional love
in being loved

But unconditional love
is in the loving
of everything

The undivided attention
to what is
right now

The elephant in the room

There's an elephant in the room
We know there is

Too solid to miss
Yet missed anyways

This one doesn't trumpet
Does not need to make noise

It doesn't even move
It is very still

It isn't grey or brown
It has no color

We try to feel its shape
but it has no boundary

We walk about the room
holding our hands out

It is everywhere we touch,
this strange elephant

So we get a clever idea
We try to push it away

We push and we push
Then a curious thing happens

The elephant allows the pushing
It offers no fight!

So we feel kind of silly
But it doesn't stop there

The elephant surrounds
every hand that is pushing

Wait - the elephant is
every hand that is pushing

It is every hand
that's pushing itself away!

It is so so vast
It is the room itself

No - the building, the road
the earth, the sky
the universe, outer space ...
everything everywhere....

This elephant is not vast
It is vastness itself

Boy we are sure
this is no ordinary elephant

Heck we can see
this is no elephant at all!

What is it, what is it
we frantically ask

This 'thing' that is here
but cannot be named

This thing that is solid
but cannot be touched?

And then the final touch
The absolute masterstroke

This' thing' is not separate
from the me who is asking

This 'thing' is myself
asking itself what I am!!

This 'thing' is I
I am this 'thing'! :)

The vastness can come
in limited form too

The elephant in the room
that non-elephant 'thing'
is an elephant too
after all!

Truth, you know,
is stranger than fiction :)

What is real

What is real
needs no dressing up

What is not real
needs to be shrouded
in complexity
and in sophistication
in cleverness
and in brilliance

When the void
that nobody can escape
is frightened of
itself as the emptiness
it continually seeks
to fill itself up
with this and that

When the void
that nobody can miss
recognizes itself
as all there is
it is the fullness
bursting out
in all directions

Willingness - 2

If there is unwillingness
don't take it
as the absence
of willingness

Willingness is here
alongside
unwillingness

Simply notice it
and it reveals itself
ever more clearly

This is not grace
that hides sometimes
or presents itself selectively

This is grace
everpresent
Only mind does the hiding
from grace

Grace is here right now
offering this possibility
to simply notice
the willingness that always is

Such love!

Willingness - 1

When the willingness to meet this moment
meets this moment
it opens its arms
and says Come to me

When the willingness to suffer
meets suffering
it opens its arms
and says I am here for you

When the willingness to fear
meets fear
it opens its arms
and says I hold you

Willingness does
what will cannot
Willingness does not arise
from will
but grace

Subtle holding

Sometimes we identify with a particular belief very strongly. So strongly that the belief is living us. Do you know what I am talking about?

My teacher Adya, calls it a core belief.

Our very life is unfolding from that belief so that everything we do, including what we do on the spiritual journey, is in accordance with this belief.

Then we are the living embodiment of that belief pattern.

When we are living the belief in this way we cannot see the belief in operation, because there is no objectivity around it - we are too identified with it. To see it requires a distance from it which we do not have because we are it and we are only it.

Then at some point grace intervenes and we can see the belief. We have gained some distance from it and we can see how our life is being run by it.

However even if we see it quite clearly, the belief still seems to be playing out in our lives. And this can be confusing and frustrating.

If you find yourself in this situation, then perhaps what follows may be useful for you.

Let's take a concrete example.

Let's say that the belief is a need for appreciation. So there is a strong desire for appreciation that is playing itself out in your life.

Now everything that is born has a certain stickiness to it. The degree of stickiness can vary enormously, but once something is born there is a finite period of time for which it is sustained. And then it dies.

Some things that are born have a great stickiness and they are greatly self-sustaining. The kind of belief that we have been discussing is an example of this. It is by nature very sticky and wants to live.

So the strong desire for appreciation is very sticky. It uses every trick in the book to stay alive.

Let's say that this desire for appreciation were fulfilled and you experienced great appreciation. What would this mean for the desire for appreciation? What is a fulfilled desire? Is it a desire anymore? No - A fulfilled desire is a dead desire. Right?

The strong desire for appreciation which is very sticky does not want to die and so it does not want to be fulfilled. Of course this sounds completely counter-intuitive and contradictory. But don't go by the analysis of this, go by your experience of how the belief plays out for you.

So the strong desire for appreciation, in order to stay alive, avoids total fulfillment. However it is very skillful and it will accept partial fulfillment. So you will surely feel appreciated sometimes. But then that goes away and the old hunger arises again and is even stronger! Right?

Sometimes this strong desire for appreciation may even use a subtle and totally contradictory pattern to sustain itself. It may actually and very subtly seek rejection. Perhaps this is the point where you may completely dismiss what I am saying here as rubbish and so be it. :)

What happens to you when you have a strong desire for appreciation, and then you feel rejected? You immediately want appreciation oh so much more, right?

Everytime there is an experience of rejection, the desire for appreciation gains a new lease of life as it kicks back in with greater force. The desire for appreciation is so sticky that it can even use a totally opposite thing like rejection to further its goal of survival.

If you know what I am talking about then you know how this feels - like being pulled in opposite directions, so that the end result is one of stagnation.

This contradictory push and pull is what makes it so confusing. You may be aware of your need for appreciation and then you become aware of your being drawn to rejection in your life experience. And you wonder what is really going on! Right?

So you can check in your experience if the rejection bit is simply a mechanism of survival for your strong need for appreciation. And then if it is the case and you can see it for what it is, you may experience a clearing of the confusion.

What is true for a desire for appreciation can also be true for other strong patterns.

I have witnessed a case of great aversion to life. The experience of it for the most part was an apathy towards life in general and even a casual nonchalance towards death. But then a grave illness came about, and gave rise to a terror of dying. And now life became about illness and fear and so the aversion to such a life became even stronger.

At the same time confusion was being experienced in this push-pull of I don't want to live but I don't want to die!

Until it was seen in perspective.

When we see our core belief patterns in perspective, it is not that they immediately dissolve but they get conscious space around them. And instead of being lived out unconsciously they play out their momentum in the light of consciousness. And we are not yanked around by them so much anymore.

This releases blocked energy within us and something new and more free has space to be born.

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?