You Are Happening To Yourself

So much of our experience of the world and ourselves is visual, so we’ll begin there. Look at an object, it can be anything; this word, the screen, your hand, a tree, anything you like. Ok, now just stop thinking for a moment and be interested in how it looks. Don’t add names, keep the mind quiet and just see. Easy.

What you are seeing is a fact. It is there. To argue is to think. Be dumb and see. What you are seeing is just there, it is self-evident, obvious. Beyond doubt.

Ok, now notice how the object is actually seen only in seeing.

You are seeing and the object is there in it. There is no division between your seeing and the object is there? No, the seeing is the object. We could say that the object is made out of seeing!

So look around and notice that everything you see is made from your own seeing. There can be nothing seen that is outside if your seeing. Everything you look at is made from the fabric of seeing.

This can be a powerful realisation. That wherever you go, all you’re ever seeing is made from your own seeing! The same seeing sees many different things, yet all things can only be made from your own seeing!

Now try to notice if there is any distance between you and the object. Is there a boundary or line between you and what you see?

No. The seen is just there. We may say the bottle is ‘over there’, but the bottle and the distance only exist as part of sight. And where does sight happen? Here – in Me.

How close is here? Well for me, when I look at any object it’s like there’s a wide space where I think my face is and everything fills that space. Anything I look at fills it. It doesn’t just fill it partially – but totally. I am this wide space which contains what is seen. This seeing, this hereness, happens so close to me, so intimately within me, that actually I cannot perceive any distance at all. I am the Here.

So there are two things to notice here; that everything you see is made from your own seeing and that therefore everything you see happens not ‘out there’, but only in your immediacy, right here, and this hereness is so close that you are already merged with it. You are this intimate hereness.

You are what you see because what you see is only your own seeing. It never takes place ‘out there’ for ‘distance’ also happens in seeing and all seeing only happens ‘here’ in the intimate immediacy of your experience.

There is no distance between you and seeing: you literally are what you see.

Now try this with other sensations. Try finding where sound happens, how close is sound to you? Is not sound only made of your own hearing? And doesn’t sound always happen ‘here’?

Are not your current sensations only made from your own feelings? And doesn’t your feelings always happen ‘here’, intimately?

Life is not something ‘out there’. It is so intimate, so close and so full. This is what we miss. We put concepts between this freely given intimacy and the obvious fact of fullness. It’s the labels and words which seem to split things apart.

So what are you amongst all this fullness? Well, you are so full that you are merged with all things, all experiences and sensations. You are merged with every thought and perception. It’s all you. Why? Because there is no boundary between your perceptions and yourself. It all happens Here. Intimately.

You are ALL things. No gaps can be found. Life floods in. No ‘you’ to stop it. Even the idea of ‘You’ has flooded in without your choice; it too is only your own awareness.

Your whole life you have thought that you were separate from the world. In fact you missed how close the world was to you, that it only happens within you. Your room, your body and sensations, your friends and family, the ocean, the Himalayas, the Sun, Moon and Cosmos are all made from you. You are all of these things.

See it all as yourself. Claim your birthright. Even your doubts are just one more flavour of yourself. Just to make life a bit more interesting!

There is absolutely nothing to get rid off or avoid. Just see how everything is already caressing you tenderly whispering your name. When this is realised, then all that falls away is the strong conviction that you were ever a limited separate being, and then this realisation bears its own fruit both in understanding and action.

You are all and all is you. This is not a cliché, this is fact. See it.

Forget emptiness and non-self: See how vast and full you are in each moment.

You are happening to yourself.

Stay with this quiet and obvious fullness.

Feast

Don't get caught in any particular expression or flavour of seeing 'this'.

Life is a shifting flux of flavours and qualities.

Sometimes it appears to be complete fullness, love and bliss, or a heart-wrenching compassion. Sometimes it's just emptiness and silent aloofness.

Sometimes it is the thought that 'I am Enlightened' or 'I have the answer and can tell others about it', other times it is a total disinterest in thinking or talking about 'this'.

Sometimes it can be an almost fervent desire to communicate and share this with others, to scream it from the rooftops. Sometimes, not to be able to share this is a cruel loneliness.

Sometimes it's the impossibility of ever understanding this; a kind of lostness or confusion, which happens to no-body. Other times it may appear that there is someone there to be confused.

There are many experiences arising and passing endlessly.

But they cannot catch you. They will not cut you. Their blades are blunt.

They come and go in awareness as awareness.

It is this play of spices which gives life its profound and unique flavour. And...you are only ever tasting yourself. So enjoy the feast. Eat well and drink well.

The banquet is just for you.

You Are Un-likeable!

With words we can say that 'This' is like fullness. We can say that it is also like emptiness. Or perhaps it's more like bliss? Or maybe all three together, or maybe none of these things.

What is it like?

This is the question we want to know. Then we can compare it, understand it, move towards it. But saying it is like anything is to kill it. This is not like anything but itself. It is not like anything because it simply is everything.

It is not like a table. It is the table. It is not like the clouds. It is the clouds.

It is every detail you perceive because those details are known in your awareness as awareness.

It is everything which happens exactly as it happens. And what happens is not like anything, it is only itself. It is unique.

To compare it is to kill it.

So fall in love with This. Fall in love with experience moment by moment. No gap, no separation, no need for a label, no need to understand. Just rest in undeniable this-ness.

Adore the uniqueness of life,

It's what you are.

Do It Yourself

To try and describe this is to kill it. To limit and imprison it. To incarcerate it in a word. It's also a way of duping you. Believing the words we attempt to nourish ourselves on dust and bones.

Don't fool yourself. Don't listen to me, to my words, to anyone's words. There is nothing outside of yourself to search for. No 'other' you must 'get'.

These words are only your words. They are your own spontaneous awareness. They are you.

I cannot and will never be able to point to anything other than yourself. For all is you. I don't want to rob yourself of resting in yourself, of being yourself. I don't want to add to the propagation of the idea that there is a separate 'you' which needs to find 'Enlightenment'.

Recently I haven't wanted to write anything at all. This is just this. It doesn't need to be constantly interpreted through concepts. I don't need to understand it. When I don't want to understand it I don't want to write about it.

So what is this 'This' ?

It is the muddled conversation of everyone around me, the Music coming through the speakers, the man outside in a white hat passing the estate agents with his shopping, the newspaper on my table, the smell of my coffee, the hissing sound of the steam-arm, the sensation of gripping this pen and the words it produces, the vague unformed idea of what to do next...

It is all of this.

It is everything which arises without exception. All and always.

But don't believe me, don't believe anyone.

Be brave. Be your own authority. Be your own 'All'.

With Love x

Perception

It is perception itself which is ‘enlightened’ for without the light of perception there is only darkness, the unknown. I don’t mean a particular perception and I don’t mean my perception; Just naked perception – free and as-is.

There are no gaps in perception. No subject-object, no inside-outside. Take a look: there is just the perceiving, the seeing, the experiencing. Separation is a superimposed thought onto what is. Nowhere in any perception is there a line between you and what you perceive. You ARE perception.

Perception is always TOTAL.

Perception is always WHOLE.

The gaps just don’t exist.

If this doesn’t satisfy you – what will?

Reality

The answer you’re looking for is not contained within the Mind. It is not contained in Knowledge. Mind cannot understand reality for the Mind can only produce concepts and ideas which it then takes as an authentic self-existing reality.

It then devises ways to go and 'attain' those ideas, conveniently ignoring the fact that it is only ever searching for its own creations and therefore suffering when it can't seem to find them.

The Mind has nothing to do with true understanding because true understanding is and always has been implicit and obvious as experience. Not in labelling experience, nor in a particular experience, but experience per se.

Reality is always present but can appear to be covered by mental concepts and labels such as ‘Me’, ‘You’ ‘This’ and ‘That’. Through a sincere investigation of these labels it can be seen that they are just concepts produced by the Mind, and do not relate to any concrete realities.

Once these inadequate ideas have been seen through, then reality shines forth, luminous, obvious and free. Reality is not, and has never been, anything other than what you truly are but without interpretation through mental concepts.

Reality is only experience – just as it is - arising and passing away just as it has always done. The view from your window is reality. The toast you had for breakfast is reality. The only difference is that with the realisation that the concept of a separate individual is invalid, then experience no longer refers back to anyone. Then reality simply is, happening to no-one, spontaneous and free.

There is only reality - despite all appearances - and reality is unity.

Understanding must also fall away

The clarity of seeing ‘this’ can often become clouded again by the very attempt to ‘understand’ it. Life is as it is, obvious, silent and ordinary, yet the mind begins to label this clarity with more ‘accurate’ concepts. It picks up some ‘clearer labels’, some ‘non-dual’ jargon and then begins to construct what it believes is an ‘understanding’.

“Great”, thinks the mind, “Now I can express this, write about it, talk clearly about it. Now I know what I’m talking about, I know what it means, I’m certain, I have authority’.

All of which is just mind trying to get its job back. Poor mind; it tries its best to assert dominance and authority by claiming to ‘understand’ life, but this is something it can never do. Concepts cannot touch life and no amount of ‘non-dual pointers’ can immerse you in your own clarity.

Non-dualism is. It cannot be expressed for the moment it is spoken of it is dualistic. Any attempt to prove you have an ‘understanding’ or some kind of experiential ‘authority’ misses the point and suddenly you find yourself having to define and defend labels which in reality have absolutely nothing to do with ‘this’.

We abandon our unbounded freedom and cling to a mere concept.

‘This’ is so bright that it outshines any idea. It dissolves all names and forms. It destroys the imagined boundary of separation. Give up trying to understand it. There is no authority here, no certainty.

No-one to say “I know”.

There is no structure - only free-fall.

Seeing Oneness

Oneness is clear and obvious not as phenomena but as the spontaneous knowing in which all phenomena arise.

Seeing the obvious - being the obvious

The realisation of the ordinariness of impersonal spontaneous awareness eliminates the notion of a separate, self-motivating individual who is seeking something called 'Enlightenment'.

Then it is seen that this so-called 'me' was only ever an idea arising within the impersonal spontaneous awareness which was - and always is - present.

See your obviousness.

It's the one thing that's truly yours.

You can’t get Enlightened twice

Many people seem to have an Enlightening experience, then subsequently loose it. There is then the sheer frustration of trying to get it back.

But once it is seen that what you essentially are is the spontaneous ‘knowing’ or ‘awareness’ in which all perception takes place, there is no possibility of forgetting it or loosing it. This is because, once seen, it is obvious that any further thought, doubt, emotion or action, only ever appears within ‘knowing’ or ‘awareness’. No amount of mental noise nor the opinions of others can then dissuade you from the obvious fact that any appearance, any phenomena, perception or experience can only ever arise within ‘knowing’ or ‘awareness’.

When you realise that you are essentially that knowing awareness then it is impossible to loose yourself, for you see that you always were and always will be everything and nothing.

You cannot become what you already are

We often hear that we must be more mindful, more aware, more conscious. We strive to attain perfect mindfulness, perfect awareness, perfect consciousness, as if that were something apart from ourselves that we have to create or manufacture in order to be 'better' or 'enlightened'.

Instead of spending time and effort (and ultimately frustration) in attempting to 'create' awareness, just see that all your actions and thoughts already take place in awareness naturally and spontaneously. Even your effort to produce awareness happen in awareness.

The fact that you know you are - that you are conscious - is the clue.

Awareness or knowing happens spontaneously, it is not produced by an individual. In fact the sense of a separate self arises within that aware space as a known thing, for no-one can deny they lack self-consciousness. Your sense of self is therefore only an uninvestigated assumption a which arises and falls within the net of awareness.

Awareness or knowingness does not rise and fall. It is the condition for all further conditions, the paper upon which the words are written, the very material of which your thoughts and actions are made and known. It is an infinite net from which you cannot escape, it is not something that a so called 'individual' can produce.

So, does an ocean need to be more like water? A flower more like a flower? Does awareness need to be more like awareness?

See what you are and be what you are.

There is only recognition

What we call the world is made up of a lifetime of experiences. All experiences are made up from perceptions. All perceptions have the inherent quality of knowing or awareness (e.g. We know that we perceive).

To reverse this order:

What we call perceptions have the inherent quality of knowing or awareness (e.g. We know that we perceive). Perceptions make up our experiences. What we call the world is made up from a lifetime of experiences.

Therefore to recognise that the world is ultimately only awareness and that awareness is none other than the world is to see the non-duality of reality.

Ultimately there is only recognition.

To recognise this is freedom.

No distinctions, only being.

Any distinction between experiences is only ever the minds interpretation, a learnt label added after the fact. So whether your experience may be the product of drugs, dreams, or dzogchen, the raw immediate fact of the experience is always its being (the fact that it is). You could say that being is appearing as a hallucination, nightmare or deep meditation just as the ocean becomes tidal waves, cross-currents, or flat calms.

The 'out there' is also only a label for what is; a learnt distinction. There is only this raw nameless perception which is simultaneously a know perception. Perception has the character of knowing or awareness. We may say 'I perceive' but really, there is only perception which is itself aware - an action which has no actor (try looking for the so-called person who claims awareness).

If we really see the ordinary directly - as it is - we will discover that actually it belongs to no-body and that therefore no-one can become attached to it. This world of ours is a floating one, without an anchor or base. Just awareness or being bubbling up into apparent forms before fading back into nothing.

But this is of course not something that the mind is interested in hearing.

Failure

Everything I've written here fails.

Any description of this points in the opposite direction. Words like emptiness or fullness, being, awareness or no-self, become objects for the hungry mind to hunt down and capture so that it can 'know' the truth, possess the truth.

It fails to recognise that those very labels are themselves only ever sounds and images appearing in the vast suchness to which they attempt to point.

And look, here I am leading you astray again..

Can you stop THIS?

Without thinking about it, can we stop or prevent what is happening right now in this moment? The room I am in, the music playing, the slight chill in the air, the sounds of the keyboard, my full stomach, the sensation of sitting...can I stop these from happening without thinking about it?

Well let's see.

I stop thinking and see, quite plainly, very obviously, that these things are just happening. They are facts. The room is here, the music plays, sensations happen. It's all just happening. The fact of it is effortless. It is very fresh and beautiful actually. Very simple.

Yet the mind does not have time for this silent simplicity and quickly buries the fact of this effortlessness with thoughts and opinions, imaginations or memories. The mind ignores the simple fact that everything is just here, easily, without requiring thinking to interpret any of it.

Right now, without thinking about it the sun is quickly setting, clouds move across the sky, I feel a sensation of tiredness in my eyes, I hear the dull and distant movements of my house-mates. This all just happens, regardless of whether or not I'm thinking about it.

Without thinking about it things are just as they are. Ordinary and simple. These are our only facts, the Mind is only ever interpretation and opinion.

Can you see this fact without the Mind's distraction?

Try it. Suspend thought. Just see. See the ordinary as it is, without names and labels. See its there-ness, its being, its fact.

See the quiet stillness of things.

Open Essay II

Without jumping into analysis and philosophical systems, let us relax the mind and look directly at experience as it arises, raw and naked. Let us drop names and ideas, comparisons and memories, likes and dislikes, and just see. Let us be like scientists without even the idea of science to colour our perception, or like children who have not learnt all the names of things and are still open to wonder.

Let us ask ourselves a question:

What is the one thing in this moment can you be certain about? What is there in this moment that is real and actual beyond all doubt or criticism? Is there anything available now which presents itself beyond all supposition or belief?

If we are totally honest and clear with ourselves we may see that the only certainty we have in this moment is that - in the most simple terms - ‘something’ is happening.

It might be a sensation like hunger or a tingling in the face or fingers, the sunlight coming through the window, a birds shriek, an itch, numbness or warmth, but before we even begin naming and describing, the only fact we can be certain about is that ‘something’ is happening.

Now all you have to do is discover just what that ‘something’ is.

Open Essay I

The world as we think of it is only a web of concepts and associations which exist as mental translations of sensation and raw experience. In this sense we could say that there are two worlds, the one which exists in our heads and which we imagine to be real, and the one which exists simply as it is without need of concept or translation.

Without the habitual translation of experience into thoughts, memories, comparisons etc, there is no 'World' and without a world there is no 'Me' and no 'You'. There is just what is. It has not changed, but it is not weighed down and buried beneath a life-time of labels and attachments. Without belief in labels, things come to life as life itself.

The borders, boundaries and limitations such as 'out there is the world' or 'this is a bad feeling' or 'this is a chair' or 'I am inside this body' all fall away when the inadequacy of labels are seen through. The imagined separation between ourselves and the universe then ceases to be, and the mind-altering revelation occurs that up until now we have been experiencing life through the narrow and energy sapping lens of mental concepts. Most of our experience is channelled into thought and the energy of these thoughts have distracted us from the raw simplicity of life which - if we look at it directly - we find as spontaneous, free, formless, intangible and boundless.

Indeed once this is seen, the world in which we live seems dream-like, incredibly fragile and transient, yet heart-wrenchingly beautiful and profound. We may still refer to ourselves as an individual, but the belief in these concepts as realities falls away. Language and concepts are for our convenience only, not for leading us to reality. All language is therefore poetry and poetry cannot tell us the truth, but only, beautifully, point towards it.

Thinking continues but its authority has been exposed and it's hypnotic power is weakened. We may use it to read a map or talk about our day, but we will not use it existentially to search for reality, God or Truth. Even if we do it will be with a clearly marked caveat: Life itself does not require a name.

Ultimately, even the thinking mind and belief in concepts and labels are but facets of the intelligence of life. They are not to be forcibly removed or denied or even surrendered to, because when seen clearly we find that the some-one who would repress, silence or deny the mind is itself just another thought. We do not have to get rid of a 'Me' or stop our thoughts. We just need to look directly at our experience to see that there never was a 'Me' and never will be.

The 'Me' is the ultimate label, the Queen of concepts, and yet it has no root, no core, no connection to reality. The 'Me' is but a dream, a thought which comes and goes. Once this keystone concept is seen as essentially invalid all thoughts pertaining to this imagined entity weaken, for we do not hold conversations with ghosts and we do not continue to wait up for Santa Claus after we discover him to be unreal.

All that remains is this. But even this has a variety of concepts and labels associated with it such as flow, being, suchness, life, consciousness or awareness. These may give a flavour of reality, but are really only more refined pointers. This cannot be named and never has been, it is the slayer of words, the destroyer of unreality. Our entire lives we have been one-ness, yet our thoughts convinced us that we were separate. See these thoughts as the dreams they are, look at what is happening right now and try to see if there is any separation between you and the world, between your thoughts and the awareness of them.

There are no gaps in reality and these very words - although but a collection of dreams - are in fact none other than yourself; One-ness staring back at one-ness.

This Floating World

It's not that there is an empty self to be found as opposed to a real self. Rather everything, every detail, is self-illuminating shining fresh within its own light. Every sensation is a new sun shining with its own rays.

There is no 'empty self' anchoring or rooting any of this, only a pure and empty space which can never be located for it is always outside of any location. This pure space is limitless and unknowable and from it all things arise spontaneously like passing clouds produced from vast sky.

All is spontaneous self-awareness. Everything is self-illuminating and drenched in awareness - in fact, everything is none other than awareness. Although it is not 'yours' or 'mine' but simply awareness or being. Perceived like this, all is light, all is being.

There is no witness to this because everything is the witness to itself. Self-knowing automatic awareness which happens freely without anyone having to do anything. The 'who' who would act or choose is merely conceptual - an imagined root of the experience of being - and an idea which none the less arises spontaneously and lovingly from the overflowing of pure space.

The Greatest Trick of Them All

I Know that I exist. I am the only measure for what I call 'existence'.

Yet everything arises within myself; my senses and perceptions happen not 'out there' but 'in here', these trees only appear on the back of my retina, nowhere else.

In this way all perception arises spontaneously within myself. Even the concept of 'myself' arises from a deeper silent presence which I will call awareness.

This means that you, dear reader, are but a dream arising from myself like the beautiful surreal images which arise from my deepest sleep.

And yet, for you this is true also. You know that you exist, undeniably so, for perceptions, thoughts, smells, ideas, feelings, emotions and memories arise automatically within you, instantly known by your innate immutable awareness.

In this way You are no dream at all, but the very eye of reality. Indeed for you, I am but a figment, a dream image conjured from your deepest self.

You are my dream
I am yours.

This is the greatest trick
of them all.

The Creativity of Impermanence.

Impermanence is not merely the doctrine that all that arises must pass away. It is the profound realisation that both the emptiness from which the world arises and the world itself are both impermanent states.

The emptiness is as impermanent as the existence it creates.
In the midst of emptiness we find a thing; in the midst of things we find nothing.

Emptiness and fullness are the breaths of existence.
They are the rise and fall of reality, the Father and Mother of every moment.

Things are neither trapped in Samsara nor lost in Nirvana. They are impermanent which means that they are not one or the other, but both: ‘form as emptiness, emptiness as form’ as Nagarjuna wrote.

Both Nirvana and Samsara are impermanent.

Existence is non-dual.

Everything that arises passes away into……this, this, this.

24/10/09