And Therefore Is Love Said To Be A Child, Because In Choice He Is So Oft Beguiled.

The ego, said a friend of mine once, is like an abandoned child, embraced again when it is seen that ego is this too. There is nothing wrong with your reactions and responses. There is absolutely no choice; the paradox of apparent choice, even carefully worked out decisions, gravely considered and deliberately executed, are the actions of a life lived. In the story of awakening - no more nor less important than any other story - this paradox is often the last thing the mind has trouble with, that it wrestles with, grapples with, frets over, and cannot make head nor tail of. Perhaps oneness is seen, and even understood a bit by the overtaxed and overvalued mind. Then why is the day-to-day, the mundane, the story of life dependent on time - why does that seem to still go on? Why do we encourage our children to get a good education and fulfill their potential if fulfillment is truly this, just what exists, right now? Why do we continue to sort out the admin of life, pay parking tickets, work for the mortgage or rent, question the systems of governance and do our best to make the world a better place, if the world is truly perfect as it is? Why is the story - duality - apparently still bought into? Why do we groom ourselves and educate ourselves and volunteer our time and try very hard to do the next right thing if there is nothing wrong with us? Why do we still meditate, pray to some deity outside ourselves, or have a heartfelt conversation with a troubled friend, if there is no state of mind or action better or worse than any other? Why don't we - as expected, as anticipated when awakening was sought - turn away from all this, and live only in this everlasting moment, completely unconcerned with the machinations of life, and the comforts of the material world? Why is it not turned away from, why does it not hold no appeal whatsoever?

Because there is no choice. You do not choose what is chosen. You do not do what is done. This is the everlasting moment, whether it is apprehended or not. So whatever it is, it is; there is never any say in it; in this choicelessness is liberation. Gather up the ego-child and give him a hug.

Why Either Were You Ignorant To See't, Or, Seeing It, Of Such Childish Friendliness To Yield Your Voices?

Life flows by the center, or it seems to; it only ever did. This is that ever. The person it all seems to happen to, perhaps constructed so lovingly, or perhaps wrought in a furnace of anger and fear and hot confusion, that person, that construct, that conditioning, can slip away - or seem to - and be embraced and accepted and loved. Whoever you are, however you are understood, whatever poignancies arise for the person it all seems to effect and that affects others; wherever you are in your story, however inadequate the construct seems, or however powerful and in charge of it all you seem to be - you are perfect, complete and whole, just as you are. And although there is no formula, no road map, no proscribed handbook detailing How To Live the Perfect Life or How to Be the Perfect Human, there is this: compassion. Gentleness. What can arise is not judging yourself - your character - and others for being human. This isn't the goal, but when there is no one, or the self that seems to operate in the world is not so despotic, then a sense of compassion often seems to arise. "It's all about love:" so many non-duality writers are fond of this pointer. In fact, it's all love. All of life, the cosmos, our friends and family, war torn nations afar or in our back yard, rage and murderous anger, irrational self-righteousness, fear and its destructive, protective actions - all of it - is love manifest. You are that love. Completely, flawlessly, despite apparent flaws. The movement of life flows by, in perfection; you never move or change, and you are the apparent flow. When this is seen, compassion is likely, in any story that seems to unfold.

Best State, Contentless, Hath A Distracted And Most Wretched Being, Worse Than The Worst, Content.

What confusion, what bedlam, the mind can generate. There may be nothing wrong with it, but feeling uncomfortable comes with it some survival-driven urge to feel better. Pain is there, "they" say, to tell you that something is wrong; something being wrong is only valid in the philosophy that life must be maintained at all costs - organic life - and it is a philosophy and code of conduct easy to understand, borne of the evolutionary programming to survive, and create more organic life. So mankind struggles and survives, driven both by the questioning mind and the unquestioning body, the mind often questioning the simple drive to live right out of existence. Push and pull, tug and tussle, conflicts arise, so many of them contained within the small vessel of the individual, even before the handy conflicts between individuals get a chance to rev up.

So what is the goal in all this? What is the point? The message is there is no point; no answers, no questions, and no one who needs them. Whatever happens is the point, or whatever appears to happen. If what happens is a serene existence - the goal of many a seeker - then that is what is happening. Perhaps, in that story, there is a pining for the thrust and pull and challenge of the human condition, lost now in a haze of love; the moral of many stories of redemption and dreams realised, is that the psyche can still itch to have a challenge to pursue. Challenges can arise, no matter how fulfilled and content the protagonist in the story is. Resting forever in awareness, the mind will whisper, sounds boring. Perhaps it is, but it is likely that, without much claiming or discontent arising, the boundlessness of existence can be more obvious. The story of your life is not "just" a story. Contained in every apparent happening is the wholeness of what is; and whether it is seen or not, matters not. Life as it is lived, however that is, is the perfect expression, the parable of what is so simple it cannot be described. Life moves around the center, flows by, and the center never changes. The center, awareness, oneness, the absolute, I Am, whatever the label, is what both seeks and hides behind the seeking. There is not much in the story, the strand of cause and effect, that can illuminate the absolute, although it is in the story that so many look for it. It is what makes the story possible, and what is the story, and what is everything. So don't worry about an "enlightened" life being boring; don't hesitate to seek for fear of what is finally found may not be the ideal. There is nothing to find; it was never lost; and all that bedlam of the mind is just as beautiful an expression of it as anything that seems to be.

A Pack of Sorrows Which Would Press You Down, Being Unprevented, To Your Timeless Grave.

It's all very well, bandying about concepts or pointers or what have you along the lines of "there are no questions, there are no answers." So there aren't. What's left, when all the extra stuff of humanity is stripped away, conceptually or otherwise, is one, or presence, or the still source, or whatever we're calling it today. (I'm pretty keen on calling it Fred for awhile and seeing if that pointer moves "anyone". However, it might be confusing for the Freds of the world.) Fair enough if you've surfed and ended up here, or on any of these nonduality websites, a "spiritual seeker", having a moment of existential angst, doing that "what's it all about" thingy that has caused so much cosmic hand-wringing; these concepts are more or less what you expect. There are a lot of to-the-point pointers around, lots of good stuff about "you are the center, and life flows around you", or "how can 'awakening' possibly be something in the future, all is oneness, complete and whole as it is, so seek what is, right now"; or "you are all you see, feel, hear, touch, smell, taste and think," and don't forget "my" favourite: "nothing exists, despite appearances." Then some more concepts can fly about, stuff about the nature of the brain, the illusory essence of reality, just electrical impulses, what seems so solid isn't there at all, the very nature of matter itself seems, scientifically, a nature of nothingness, whose physics change when apparently observed (by itself). And we can marvel, and sort of get it, even the brain gets it, then it somehow becomes clear there is nothing to get. Whatever's been happening is all there is, and it's "been" that way "all along". So no questions, no answers, just the miracle of existence, lived.

But if someone surfs up to this website, or another similar one, and sees concepts like "there are no questions, there are no answers," they might get upset if they're not a typical "spiritual seeker". If they're an educator, they might get angry - it's difficult enough to motivate young people into the sciences, there is a shortage of scientists as it is; we certainly don't need anyone spouting off metaphysically about no questions and no answers! Happily, these websites are on the fringe, and the concepts they espouse are not probably going to take the world by storm; there is no need. Anyone concerned with the apathetic tendencies of humanity, another fruit of fear, will be outraged that to read of the idea that there is nothing wrong with suffering, taking that to mean that the oppressed should be left to their fate, with no intervention, or that the criminal should be unpunished, or that the heinous deed should be sympathised with. But any outraged reader is another step of the dance. So is the criminal, and the mercenary; so are the misguided enforcers of a limited brand of righteousness. Yet so is the healer, so is the red cross worker, so is Abdul Sattar Edhi and all the selfless, tireless workers for the dignity of humanity; they wouldn't be swayed by the ambivalent musings of some enlightenment devotee. Their role in the dance is clear. Anyone concerned that the noblest, best tendencies of humanity might be diluted by some fatalism or solipsism, some surrender that suggests that since nothing can be done, nothing should be done, perhaps may rest assured that each urge must have its opposite to even exist. Even those who fear the machinations of some elusive Illuminati, forever distracting us-we, the herd of common humanity-from holding any real power over our lives, they can go on with their crusade for societal freedom. Nothing changes, yet everything changes. There is nothing to be done, yet we will be lived. There is no separate entity, some little me or you, that can claim anything, though claiming may stridently arise. Everything ever sought, is right here, and what is sought is what seeks, always eluding any pat description. Revel in it.

It Prefers Itself And Leaves Unquestion'd Matters Of Needful Value.

There can be phenonmenon that seem to reinforce oneness, yet within those phenonmenon is always the story of duality trying to apprehend the source. It is sometimes easy to perceive that what is in one's field of vision occupies no space; it is, after all, an image in your brain, in your head, which is yet another image when a mirror or reflective surface appears. What feels so solid is just information, interpreted by the computer of the brain. And so you might wonder around with this new perception, and find it is accompanied by a feeling of great revelation and freedom; the illusory nature of reality is, at last, revealed; we are nothing but some fleeting energy, finding a temporary construct; and that goes for the stars, all the distant galaxies, even an achingly beautiful nebula. Space itself, you realise, occupies no space. That thing about nothing existing finally comes a bit clearer.

There is a unbridled feeling of awe in it, the tenuous connection that the little self has to the vastness of everything, revealed to be nothing. There is no reason to try to explain or describe it; it eludes all containment in concept, and the very nature of the revelation puts paid to any questioning or need for answers: there is truly no one who needs answers, there are no answers, no questions. Whatever you label your perceived scrap of humanity, it is the light and the window, it is everything and nothing, not a piece or a part, but all of it. For there is only one, and that is you, complete, whole and brilliant, whether there seem to be doubts or questions, bliss or sorrow, answers or despair, simplicity or chaos, or whatever it is that seems to be.