Is There A Right Way To Do It?

There are various links and blogs referred to on this site to your right, most of which more or less use the same language, and have pretty much the same message: oneness is already everything, awakening is this, enlightenment cannot be achieved by a dream-individual, everything you ever wanted is already right here, there are no separate individuals, there is nothing special about awakening, nothingness is the absolute, all that exists is beingness, consciousness, aliveness, whichever you care to label it; blah blah and more blah. In exploring this stuff, of which volumes has been (paradoxically!) written, and which can be labeled "advaita" or "non-duality" writings, I've stumbled upon an apparent contentious point. You can be sure we're back into a (highly amusing) story when "right" and "wrong" rears its jolie laide head. One particular fella, Dennis Waite, takes great umbrage at Tony Parson's et al message, which says that all there is, is this, no practice is necessary. No meditating until the butt is numb, no high states need be achieved, this is already all that is, and that can be seen by anyone if they are no one; that is to say, if the personal identity embodied in the seeker slips away. It appears he is upset that this may be seen by just anyone, and writes to that effect. He variously says that practice of traditional teaching chip away at the "bad" bits of the story, or of the dream-person; that all the usual perceptions of reality must be thwarted one by one; that "neo-advaitists" doing things like dropping the personal pronoun is no proof that the ego has been dispelled, which is evidently necessary for awakening. The neos, he opines, are saying "Don't bother telling me about arithmetic. I want to learn quantum mechanics!" Tony directly addresses the debate on his website, with finality. And balls.

Well, follow the links and have a nice surf. I'd turn it around, the analogy about quantum mechanics, and say it's a bit like taking degrees in meteorology, cosmology, geophysics and astronomy to learn that the sky is blue. There's another fella, Stanley Sobottka, who writes about this stuff (one of the first I stumbled upon, a quantum physicist) who says (in section 3, 17.5 of his work A Course In Consciousness) it's either/or; although, to his perception, practice usually seems to happen "first", and that there is no causal relationship between practice and awakening. He's big on the words "no doer" whereas I like to say "no one". But honestly, folks, blah blah and yet more blah. I'm pretty sure we're all talking about the same thing, oneness, awakening, whatever we call it on Easter Saturday. Just what exactly is it that we're trying to describe? It's all very well, and very convenient to the suspicious, to say "it's ineffable" or "it's indescribable". OK then, I'll give it a go, just for fun. It's looking at something and without any doubt being that thing. It's being somewhere and there are no boundaries between you and where you are, or where you seem to be. It's an awareness that what seems to have happened is only memory happening right now, and the next thing that happens doesn't really happen in the future, it is always now. There is only this, and I am that, but there is no separation. It's not necessary to label it, it's just a shift in how everything is seen. It's seen that suffering is as much a gift as joy, for it is part of everything, and you are everything, so everything is available. It's seen that there is no right or wrong, just existence; and it's seen that no right and no wrong don't mean anarchy, they don't mean anything, it all goes along just as it always has, because there is nothing wrong with what seems to happen, it was just the dreamer that thought there was. Wholeness and completeness and unconditional love, it's right under the dreamer's nose, expressed in absolutely everything, every bird call, every thought, every feeling, every disaster, every violent urge. It couldn't be more obvious: it is this. It loops round, or seems to, back to everything just exactly as it is. Poor Mr. Waite, in his tome cited above, is worried that "such characteristics as renunciation, discrimination, and self-restraint" are left out by the neo-advaitists. They pop up, along with everything else. Oneness has no interest in whether the dreamer renounces anything, or lets go of his ego, or restrains himself; ego is oneness, ego-ing. The assertion of a "right" way and a "wrong" way is surely proof that duality is still being dreamed, that the mind is still wrestling with the simultaneous coexistence of mutually exclusive polarities, which can never be resolved by the mind, the tool of duality. The really cosmically funny thing is, that of course, everybody is doing just exactly as they must, and there is nothing wrong or right about the debate. It all unfolds, or seems to, just as it should.