Folly In Fools Bears Not So Strong A Note As Foolery In The Wise, When Wit Doth Dote.

The story of me in the kitchen with a knife is just that - a story, arising in wholeness. It was just what seemed to be happening. It really didn't have a lot to do with clear seeing, it was a story of clear seeing; and if there was some kind of recognition, or coming home, it had to do with understanding that what it is I had been looking for was just what is, just as it is. If, indeed, I had been looking. Comforting concepts can come up, like: there is nothing wrong with duality, there is nothing wrong with whatever the manifestation, or appearance, or whatever we're calling it today, seems to be doing, including doubt, questioning and the feeling that something will happen in the "future" that will bring about some kind of final revelation and bliss or whatever. However, those kind of thoughts don't seem to come up anymore. There really isn't a process, there is no time for a process to unfold; but it can seem that there is a process of deepening, that whatever exists is truly the only thing that is, and includes all the thoughts and feelings, which only ever are happening now. A deepening that seems to reveal "what is" as more and more beautiful, absolutely whole, completely what it is, and the only thing that is. What looks, is the only constant; the still point, consciousness, "I am", presence, whatever you care to label it. Nothing is a mistake, not even incongruous expectations. Such expectations arise and fall, or seem to, like everything else. There is nothing wrong with being disturbed. The "I" completely dissolving is just the story of the "I" completely dissolving, no matter how to the point that story seems to be. You are where you are, and that is perfect, no matter how it seems. "I" is oneness, "I-ing". Nothing wrong with it at all.

Maybe you have too many expectations about what "this" or "awakening" or "enlightenment" is. Your brain/mind can seem to "come back" and "claim" an experience; however you perceive
and label such an apparent happening is this too. There is nothing that is not this. That's what an "ah ha" moment means, and why it's so amusing. What you are looking for is everything, just the way it is. It is occluded by its omnipresence. It's so simple, your mind can't possibly believe it's so obvious.

Moments of peace are great, but they aren't especially "this". They are this in yet another guise. Doubt, resistance, fear - this in an egoic guise. However, when "this" is "realised", there seems to be less resistance, doubt and fear - but this isn't "let's make a deal". There are no guarantees about what the quality of life will be, in the story that seems to unfold, if wholeness is apprehended. The only guarantee is that whatever it is that seems to be happening, thought, or felt is this. EVERYTHING is what the seeker searches for. You can stop looking. THIS IS IT!


I've always liked the analogy of nonduality as a film; the characters have interesting lives, but cannot change what happens; and yet they are light itself; what we truly are is likened to the light that makes the projections possible. Well, let's play with that. What if the characters unravel reality and hop off the screen, no longer slave to the film and script? That's explored in Woody Allen's Purple Rose of Cairo. The characters that remain argue about who is the most important character. One bumbles on, and exits in a fluster; he's not due until the third reel. The ego and its imagination loves the idea that it has absolute freedom. Enjoy.

And Then This 'Should' Is Like A Spendthrift Sigh, That Hurts By Easing.

It is freeing when the ins and outs of life don't seem quite so important. Oh, they're there all right, just as they are, just as they are perceived. The mind can play all it likes with making the situations of life big or small, distressing or not, uncontrollable or precisely managed, existent or nonexistent. There can be big, all-encompassing experiences that are labeled "truth" and objectivity can be applied to them - or not. Fear can seem to drive all action, or there can be little drive but sheer momentum. There are as many ways to live a life as there are lives, it seems. There can be a lot of questioning of it all, a huge longing to know the truth of life, the underlying, fundamental, absolute answer to the question of existence, or there can be one single, narrow problem that absorbs all of life's energies. The common conclusion, subjectively, often seems to be "it's all for nothing."

Well, maybe so. Perhaps the moving and shaking, cringing and hiding, boldness and timidity that are just some of the qualities of living all come to nothing, and have no import beyond their intrinsic value, by the virtue of their existence. Perhaps a solid, unshakable system of belief isn't strictly necessary to live, or whatever the belief system there is, it can unfold gently and naturally, with not too much importance placed on absolute adherence to a set of rules based on imagination. Perhaps the less the will interferes with life, the "better," more efficiently, and more smoothly it goes...or perhaps "better" doesn't matter quite so much, and all the facets of emotion and circumstance can be relished, it not outrightly enjoyed.

Everything life requires is always present. If nothingness manifest, the formless formed, awareness without duality is how the mind likes to conceptualise existence, there is nothing wrong with that; but it's useful to remember that no matter how fundamental the concept of existence is, it's still a concept. Any idea about reality is one step removed from reality. Everyone is reality itself, before the mind gets hold of it and has a lot of fancy ideas about it. Enlightenment defined as awareness looking at itself, before the mind gives it time and objectivity, is fine. Some experience of life without the analysis of mind being the most important thing is probably desirable. Yet it doesn't matter; everything is everything, nothing is nothing, right now, no matter how the mind and ego interprets it.


This clip illustrates the frustration that can ensue when the nanny state is busy over-dictating each and every interaction with society. A million Londoners will identify with Edina (Jennifer Saunders), ranting in court in a fantastic episode of Absolutely Fabulous. The fact that she was very deserving of being in court is beside the point. Sometimes it's fun to take the story seriously!

O, Our Lives' Sweetness! That We The Pain Of Death Would Hourly Die Rather Than Die At Once!

The unfolding story of a life might be anything; the claiming of those incidents, feelings, thoughts, and attributes are what constitutes an ego. It is preached over and over again that the ego is undesirable. The ego is. The personality negotiates this bliss and sorrow and madness and sanity that is the world, the universe; or at least, it seems to. The mistake, we are told, is to take the mind's stringing together of what happens in time as the whole of our existence. The error, it is said by many, is to have the unfolding story informed and motivated by fear. No, no, say others, the problem is to pay any attention to the story at all. The story, after all, is comprised of a lot of past memories and future plans that have no more substance than a few electrical impulses in the brain. Live in the here and now, it is strongly suggested. No, no, that's wrong, say some, it isn't about living in the here and now; it's identifying with the here and now, it's the ego willing itself to be here, now that's the problem. The ego doesn't really exist. It is an airy-fairy construct. What you are is what comes before the ego claims and feels and interprets, before the ego decides it needs to be here and now. But what am I, say a chorus of people led by their ego, if not this thing that feels and decides and thinks and lives?

Well, say many, you are what the feeling and deciding and thinking and living arises in. All appearances of life are the same thing, but take many apparent forms. And the pensioner writing vehement letters about the local councillors neglecting to show up to council meetings, the soul very deeply enmeshed in the story, with no clue that the nature of existence is boundless and is comprised of limitless possibility itself, is just as infinite as the yogi abiding in I Am. The form is unimportant. The content is insignificant. The stories are as they must be, and that includes everything, including the impulse to action to change the story into something "better".

There is a huge desire, a massive (often implicit) aspiration of the egos that write about nonduality (or enlightenment or awakening) to show others their true nature, to help egos to stop identifying with the story the ego negotiates and the attributes the ego possesses. Just a few sessions will do it, some promise; others practice tough love and tell the egos to stop clinging to love and compassion, that it's just another trap for the ego to stick around, now considering itself to be pure unconditional love. Whatever is suggested, is suggested, and whatever is attempted is attempted. No matter how "to the point" the content of the story is, it is just another interesting manifestation of energy, which is, after all, what matter also is. No matter how deluded or how sensible the story is, it is all infinite and eternal, boundless and free, no matter how the mind interprets what is happening.

Enjoying it, even the "bad" bits, is always a possibility, for mere existence is wonder.


The clip is from Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful. How he makes use of the worst possible situation to amuse his son is the imagination's proof that anything, any circumstance, can be tolerable.

For Truth Hath Better Deeds Than Words To Grace It.

It doesn't matter what you do, and whatever you do, there is no one choosing to do it. All energies are equal, all insanities fitting, all deeds made moot by their fleeting non-existence; yet each form of the ever-changing, endless moment is rich in meaning and wonder. It doesn't matter how it is seen, this life, this existence; all perceptions are valid, all beliefs suitable, all thoughts appropriate, all action correct. Nothing delights in life; it is delight itself. The tug and pull of the quality of unconditional love as the pervasive and nascent quality of everything is compelling; we want it to be so; we need it to be so; it is so. Life makes no judgments on itself; it lives. The duality that exists so that life can take form necessitates good and bad, comfort and uneasiness, bliss and despair. What knows this, what sees this, and what notes this is what you are; you are not what is noted, although this case of mistaken identity is not wrong. Some scion of awareness crawls into the story and the story becomes all-important; and although a rising-above this is often encouraged, to be and feel and live the story is also a miracle, no matter what the story seems to be.

Without resistance, the unfolding story can flow into endless possibility, unhindered by the limited imagination. With resistance, the story can be intense in its emotions and rich in its synchronicity; remember no one chooses, all choices choose life, in yet another guise. To be free of the grasping ego is liberation, and to be caught up in the grasping ego is a privilege. Who judges that freedom is the ultimate goal? There are no true goals, only different energies, tasks appreciated or rejected, paths explored or uninvestigated. Life is life. There is no way to get it wrong; there is no way to get it right.

I love this clip from the ultimate pretentious, rule-breaking film of the eighties, My Dinner With Andre. The look on Wallace Shawn's face after Andre's interesting church story is priceless! Maybe imagination isn't so limited after all.

But The Wisest Beholder, That Knew No More But Seeing, Could Not Say If The Importance Were Joy or Sorrow.

Such a deep, dark, depressing crevasse to look down upon, the notion that all is meaningless. Yet it is, after all, just a notion, and the thing that believes it a construct. Constructed by what? By learning through time, which is a concept in itself; by thoughts taken seriously by themselves; and by reinforcement from a collective of thought constructs. Reality is airy-fairy. The solidity of matter, the mystery of life, and the consciousness that registers it all is a bonus, and enigma, and a wonder, no matter what the interpretation or quality of reality seems to be.

Much is made of the concepts by which our inadequate-to-the-task minds explain the very thing the mind arises in. Concepts suggest that concepts are in the way. Planned thoughts and actions, only accomplished through the convenient tool of time and more concepts, infer that there is a method by which the mind can be occluded and the seamlessness of existence be apprehended directly; and it is implied that this direct experience is always the case, and the thoughts that are "in the way" are actually part of the seamlessness. And, in fact, that there are no object or subjects, not even the consciousness that separates and labels things; that actually, whether it is labelled "oneness" or "twoness", reality is what reality is, however it seems to be. Period. And it is this reality, no matter how inadequate or painful, that's what is sought by everyone; and it is the inability to realise this that causes (in nonexistent time) the pain and the feeling of inadequacy.

There is nothing wrong, not even (or possibly especially) the feeling that something is wrong. The journey home starts from home, roves around the intricacies of the home we call all creation, and ends, amusingly, at home.

Mimi wo Sumaseba (Whisper of the Heart) is a lovely, gentle amime film that meanders placidly through the life of a little girl, Shizuku. A plot device is several rewritten versions of Country Roads by John Denver. The road home is also home.

'Tis In The Malice of Mankind That He Thus Advises Us; Not To Have Us Thrive In Our Mystery.

Discover your true nature...that is the promise, the future event, that brings seekers of the meaning of life to sites like this one. They come for meaning, and are either told there isn't any, or that their humdrum ordinary life is fraught with intrinsic meaning, if only they perceive it a bit differently. There are instructions (investigate the "I"), there are paradoxical teachings from people who insist they aren't teachers (no one can teach you to be what you already are), and there is the assurance that the comfy, cozy reality you've always known is, indeed, the very thing you seek; that it is the awareness that reality arises in that is truly reality; that, in fact, what you seek is what seeks; and that there is no change, not really, not even some perceptual shift. It is the realization of this, the fact that "you've" always already been "enlightened", and that enlightenment or awakening is simply (for the mind) at last being content with "what is" that constitutes awakening. In that acceptance of what is, the lack of resistance to what is, including the very resistance itself, lies the secret, the obvious conclusion; we are where we are, we are what we are, now. Whatever and wherever that is, is open to the mind's interpretation, and all interpretations are correct.

The mind will have lots of conditioned ideas about what all this means, and what actions are subsequently required. It will reject any apparent incongruities, i. e., teaching your children to share or engage in any behaviour that reflects a value system, because all value systems are a product of the ego taking itself and its role too seriously. However, it may become clear that you can't get it wrong. There are many words devoted to describing existence, and the concept of nothingness, and how everything that seems to be happening is not happening at all; if the mind ponders the possibility of nothingness, a sort of awe arises, and perhaps a thankfulness for mere existence, which comes to resemble a miracle in and of itself. It may become clear that the tools of duality that are so richly available (when nothing exists except perhaps a bit of cleverly arranged energy, devoid of judgment) are the very things we've been searching for. Maybe it becomes glaringly apparent that life, just as it is, is the very thing we've been traveling to Oz to find, when it has been living in our own back yard. Perhaps the ego and its baggage are something to relish. Perhaps the struggles of mankind, and his suffering, and his quest to relieve that suffering, are the priceless gifts of humanity. Maybe, just maybe, you've been doing it all along, even the doubting of it and the questioning and the restlessness, irritability and discontent.

Miller, the nutball from the entirely excellent film Repo Man, surely has this all figured out.

Thou Bear's Thy Heavy Riches But A Journey, And Death Unloads Thee.

In the unfolding story, if apparent cause and effect are taken note of and the journeys and bridges and waylayings are apprehended, and if some judgement of their worth and aspect are divined, with amusement and perhaps with pathos, it could be said that letting go completely (although the method, if there is one, of this surrender is disputed) doesn't squelch ambition, but simply makes ambition a goal unto itself. Unbridled, the undemanding ego simply undertakes whatever form of action furnished by whatever apparent source, and every action, freed from the necessity of validating the persona that carries it out, is an action seemingly fraught with fundamental meaning. The outcomes are perhaps not so conjectured, so the outcomes, if, indeed, cause and effect are even noted, are free to be whatever they can be, and not confined to simply whatever can be imagined. In this phenomenon of "being lived" lies the comforting answer to the still grasping, overburdened ego. You cannot fulfil infinite potential whilst still confined by fear and defences, although fear and defenses can often seem to play an important role; conditioning is conditioning, it is there, and our personas were all shaped by the multiplicity of apparent experience. To quench our flaws by an act of conscious will perhaps denies their usefulness. If the goal is unknown and the method of obtaining it a mystery, any defenses can naturally be discarded, or used for their full benefit; stubbornness, for example, is not always an impediment, and conscious compassion sometimes blinds us to some more useful form of "tough love".

The less you absolutely know what to do, the more potential fills that vacuum. Perhaps "what to do next" can become less some vexing mystery, and more some awe-inspiring discovery; if, indeed, "what to do next" is even noted, or pondered upon. The ego relieved of the burden of its own apparent journey is an ego freed to take the best possible journey, and that journey is no longer judged by a set of narrow rules and beliefs. In fact, the journey in time seems less a story with a beginning, a middle and and end; the journey is, in fact, just a timeless constant rearrangement of reality, there for the amusement (or bemusement) and edification of the parcel of awareness that we seem to be. It is frightening to let go. It is fearful to die, as a small person named Jim or Angela or Hassim or Nanako, and become an apparent slice of everything. However, paradoxically, that is already the case, no matter how stifled the journey seems to be, or how limited the character that takes it. Your confining persona could "die" at any "time", and if it doesn't, that is what is meant to be, and the boxed-in journey is not wrong, but exactly what is needed. If the mind is open, and the road is wide, there is no need for despair, except where despair can play its own hard role.

The Straight Story is a classic journey, taken by a stubborn old man named Alvin, who knows he has to travel to his estranged and very ill brother entirely on his own steam for the journey to mean as much as it does to him to his brother. Limited by lameness and blindness and having no drivers license, he decides to travel 240 miles from Laurens, Iowa to Mount Zion, Wisconsin on a lawn mower. It really happened, and was made into a film by David Lynch. Alvin just wants to be with his brother and look up at the stars with him again, like they did when they were kids. This is the end of the film. Simply sitting on a porch is wholeness, completeness, and perfection.

The Wheel Is Come Full Circle: I Am Here.

Words and concepts are all we have to play with in this forum. Yet words and concepts, tools of the dividing mind, will never bring anyone closer to what they already are. Even the clearest of ideas, related with succinctness of phrase and efficient eloquence, fail to describe fundamental awareness, the page on which all words rest, the plate all experience is supped from, the simple being that is before and after and during each thought, feeling, or happening. Words may nudge the mind into giving itself up as king, but whatever story of denial is indulged in, simple awareness is the book in which the story unfolds. You are: that is undeniable. And that beingness, the background for all things and thoughts and feelings that seem to exist, seems hidden; what looks for it is what looks.

In the book, on the page, any story may unfold. There may be a strong urge for the story to move from a destructive one to a creative one. There may be a story of less ego-fear, and more openness; less resistance because of less fear, and more creativity and compassion. Yet however painful the unfolding story may feel, and however strong the desire for less pain is, if there is no one that takes the story seriously, and no one claiming the pain, the pain ceases to be suffering. There is nothing wrong with pain; pain is yet another sensation that arises in awareness, as is confusion, and doubt, and struggle. In life, there is everything. A full life feels everything, and doesn't run away from what might be labeled "uncomfortable" or "difficult". There is nothing wrong, and more to the point, there is nothing wrong with you.

It might be possible to not put so much importance on words and ideas and concepts. It might be possible to just live, openly, honestly, and willingly, with not so much resistance; it might be possible to be alive to any and all possibilities that always exist, now. It might be that a better life is just around the corner, but that life won't involve anyone or anything that is more whole and complete and perfect than what is, right now, for everything is, right now. Anything might happen, and anything is possible, now. Words are the icing. They are not the answer; there is no answer but this, now.

Below is an example of just how useless words are; even the clearest and simplest of phrases may be misunderstood!

To Seek The Light Of Truth; While Truth The While Doth Falsely Blind The Eyesight Of His Look.

Memory and speculation happen now. Pain and separation happen now. Bliss and the quiet mind is happening now. The paradox, hated by the mind, that we are both all one yet seemingly alone, happens now. You are what you are now. Not in some nonexistent future; the future never is; all is now. There is much habitual delving back into the story, taken seriously by the mind which only sees itself. There is much lauding of practice, of readiness, in the mind for "enlightenment" to happen. It can certainly seem to be a practice, a practice that can be realised in many ways. All practice has the goal of stripping the ego of its importance, allowing what is to be more readily apprehended. Yet no matter what the apparent state of mind now, no matter what is perceived and how that perception is interpreted, you are what you are now.

What is - the wall, the keyboard, the faint hum of traffic, the feeling of the body on the chair, the thoughts that note these things - is often dismissed. The story that the mind tells itself about what is happening is similarly discredited. The feelings that arise as a part of it all cry out to the mind to be explained; the"why" of it is craved, the sense of it all being purposeful and orderly is demanded by an ego frightened of its own demise. All these thoughts and judgements and feelings are said to be nothing, meaningless, unworthy. Yet the paradox that the mind dislikes perhaps most of all is that those thoughts, sensations, and feelings are boundless, timeless existence, despite their seeming solidity and logic and narrowly defined importance. You are what takes note.

The practice of peeling away at the ego is laudable. It unfolds choicelessly. Whether it be at the foot of a guru, with the nose buried in a book or two or twenty, face to face with a sympathetic therapist, or in self-help groups, empathy and tolerance can convince the mind of the possibility of oneness and the unimportance (and beauty) of the ego. However, it must be said (by who?) that whatever you are, you are now, "before" the ego is "ready". The message that there is no teacher and no one to teach may paradoxically be the teaching that forces the ego to realise that there is nowhere to go, no blissful state to seek, nothing other than what is, now, because now is all there is, and whatever it is that is noted, it is the noting that never changes.

And now, for all you frustrated seekers. From The Wizard of Oz, the clearest parable of seeking, its lesson being that we always have the power to go home, and, in fact, are always home since the journey is but a dream. Here is the best reaction when the guru says you were always home in the first place.

He Is Too Good And Fair For Death And Me: Whom I Myself Embrace, To Set Him Free.

One of the hardest things for the ego to accept is that this, life, however it seems to manifest, just exactly as it is, is enough. It's depressing for the ego the accept that all the problems overcome in time, all the rigmarole, all the worthy concern, all the chaos perhaps finally ordered, is of nothing, to nothing, and for nothing. There is, however, an ambiance of the ego having its cake and eating it too. For an ego unbridled of itself, unmoved by itself, and revealed to be a mere construct is an ego freed to do its apparent job. When time is no longer the slave master, the story in time has cosmic perspective. The mind may not be able to figure it out, but the mind doesn't care so much; and in this apparent relaxation of the ego, it can be noticed that everything, just as it is, is enough. What has been called the "is-ness" of it seems enough. The manifest, all around, as it is, is noted; maybe thought about, maybe not, and is seen for what it is, without, perhaps, too many mind-filters to obscure it from itself. In the story in time, this is a possibility; but there is no time, so what is described here, with these concepts of "is-ness" and intrinsic worth is...just maybe...just perhaps...how reality is already perceived, by "you".

The quest for truth, the search for freedom, the seeking of enlightenment, and the thirst for meaning seem to happen. These journeys are imbued with importance and worth. The ego is consumed with itself, cannot see itself, cannot escape itself, until it sees there never was a prison. Yet the machinations of the ego are the spice of life; the ego's struggles and triumphs are poignant, genius, spectacular. They can still arise. Even if the illusion is seen through, it is only another story of seeing through an illusion; there is no end goal; there is only what is. And that is enough.

The Marx brothers, those great gurus of the twentieth century, once again encapsulate the Meaning of Life:

This Comes With Seeking You: But There's No Remedy; I Shall Answer it.

That quote usually attributed to St. Francis, "What you are looking for is what is looking", really nails it. Nobody will believe how simple this is. Nobody will believe there's nothing different, nothing special, nothing changed about awakening or enlightenment or whatever we're calling it today. There are a lot of handy dandy pointers, along the lines of "what you are is awareness and everything arises in that", or "what you are is present awareness, nothing more," or "you are one without a second". They're all concepts. These words are concepts. The seeker's frustration obscures the utter simplicity of what is. And even the obscuring is what is happening, now, in present awareness.

There can be looking for what is, or there can be what is. There can be a lot of tweaking of the story of life; there can be therapy, meditation, recovery, healing, looking at one's life story nakedly and accepting it all; these things may provide an open mind, ready for the message that what is sought is exactly what is right now. Yet there need be no readiness. You are what you are, timelessly, right now. There's nothing wrong with the tweaking, the healing, the changing of a life story from a "destructive" one to a "creative" one. But awareness is immortal, unchanging, not bound by time, not confined by space, taking up no space in fact, for space is just a convenience, as is time. As are thoughts. It doesn’t matter, therefore, what arises, as it’s all just a play for its own sake. So no matter what thoughts are doing, or whether you’re “getting it” or not, it’s all happening just as it must, for no particular reason. When the big “letting go” or “ah ha” thing seems to happen, all that is really plain; and the St. Francis quote makes perfect sense, both to the mind, which is finally in its somewhat more auxiliary role, and to awareness itself, which was always looking anyway. It all loops back around to the simplest of simple things: instead of looking for looking, there is just looking. And life is just as it ever was. Oneness is known to be awareness, the only thing; the content, just energy, and feel free to rename and hone those particular concepts.

You are this. You are this now. Whatever thoughts are flying, whatever feelings are strumming, whatever sensations are pulsing, whatever actions are unfolding - this is it. "You" are "there". We "all" are.

I'll bet Jackie Chan is too busy for an existential crisis. He CRAZY!

Simply The Thing I Am Shall Make Me Live.

I was listening to a friend describe his life; it was unbelievably profound, and went roughly like this: "...My work is patchy, and it's a pretend job anyway, the kind of thing your dad always told you to be ready to ditch at any moment because you'd never make a living at it - I don't really pay enough attention to my kids, which are the main thing and I know it - and I really think I'm messing up my marriage in a big way - I'm too lazy, I don't do even half of what I could in a day - and I'm not nice enough to people..." And here he paused, with commendable comic timing, and continued:

"...But so what?"

Oh, how we laughed!

That black hole, that void, that cause of all existential crises, the sure knowledge that life is meaningless inasmuch as the story of it is concerned, that nothingness that is reality – it’s a big bummer for the persona. The mysterious life force, the awareness that everything arises in, that which seems to animate reality, and the dead body at a funeral that is the proof of manifestation’s transience, will never be understood fully by the mind; although in the story of humanity, there are plenty of scientists and philosophers that give it a good go. That animating force that a corpse lacks - despite having the same mass as when it was Auntie Jane - is simply what you are, what is expressed by everything, and the mind can’t really grasp it because it’s what the mind arises in. But what consciousness can do, in witnessing the mind’s take on it – the take on it can be:

“Well, so what?”

And there, in that sort of complete letting go, absolute acceptance, cosmic f*** it, is the freedom that eludes the mind. Then, slowly, what arises is a chuckle, then maybe a slightly hysterical belly laugh.

Because all of that taking it oh so seriously that the persona was doing – the ego taking itself to be everything – is seen for the absurdity it is.

The ego will die. The small “me” will die. It can die right now. Death of the body and mind isn’t death of what they arise in. And those struggles and conniptions and flashes of bliss and happiness that are humanity can be truly relished, by themselves, by just doing what happens…which is all anyone ever does anyway.

What's Gone And What's Past Help Should Be Past Grief.

Why, why, why? How does it all work? These questions can be explored; the story of the exploration of these questions arises all the time. There's nothing wrong with it. Perhaps the difficulty is that the answer to these questions is what the individual believes will bring relief from suffering. Suffering, after all, must be relieved.

Live your life. Live it. That is what you are doing. There is no way to get it wrong. No matter what the quality of life, or its apparent circumstances, or how much it is plagued by internal, thought-bound activity, you cannot fail to live your life. The goal is met; existence is accomplished.

It doesn't matter that it isn't in perfect balance. Such a judgement is subjective anyway. It doesn't matter if you "fail" to be "selfless". Selfishness, or the appearance of that circumstance, and the firing neurons and belief systems and interaction with the environment that give rise to the judgement "I am not selfless enough" is just another story we tell ourselves about ourselves, with no more substance than the ghost of Christmas past. (All of Scrooge's ghosts were the embodiment of guilt.)

It doesn't even matter if your life is one, big, chaotic, unmanageable mess. There might arise some new revelations about your circumstances, and what blocks are in place that keep you running from reality (the "now"), whatever form the running takes: actual geographical change, working too much, reading too much, taking mind-altering substances, neglecting your responsibilities, or protecting yourself from engaging with others. There can be revelations, and a reckoning, and the healing of your ego, new risk-taking, meeting your responsibilities head-on, looking at your past nakedly and without the stories you've been telling yourself about yourself, and those stories losing their power over your behaviour. This is how the story can unfold. But these apparently momentous happenings, whilst making for an easier, less guilt-ridden, more efficient, and happier life story, are not the be-all and end-all. Beneath and beyond and infused with every happening, is simply what you are, untouched by the story, whatever that story may be; the story, of no import, is also the point. Whatever is happening, that is the point: simply that it is happening.

What you are is what you are. No matter what.

And Woody, life IS like this!

Not Knowing How To Find The Open Air, But Toiling Desperately To Find It Out.

Seekers of something other than what is are convinced there must be some extraordinary difference in the quality of experience other than that which is already known; the flavour of reality must change, and subsequently, the motives for all apparent actions. The very timbre of what is heard must be sweeter; what is felt must feel more whole; what is seen must seem to be more crystalline and defined, the very essence of reality contained in each apprehended atom of the appearance that shows up for us. Whatever is known now is disregarded as incomplete, is perceived as lacking in some way. All of us seek to imbue some greater consequence to experience than what is already experienced. Imagination intervenes to provide an expectation of a world imbued with more: more meaning, more light, more love, more sensation, more appreciation. Whatever simply is, is not enough. Whatever simply is, is judged to be lacking. Whatever the sights, sounds, feelings, sensations of the world that appears to show up for us is not enough; there must be more.

These expectations are what keeps the apprehended world from being, to our perception, something other than the miraculous whole it is. And yet, the expectations and judgements themselves are part of the tapestry of wholeness, sensible and appropriate, and are merely humanity's facility for exploration and self-consciousness at play. There is no better way, in the story of seeking meaning, to find meaning other than by feeling that everything is meaningless; there is no better way to find wholeness than to feel that life is incomplete. We are constructed flawlessly for the purpose of exploration and being, looking at itself. Far from being dismissed out of hand, the appearance of the world and our seeming interaction with it is the point. It doesn't matter what that interaction is. There is no perfect blueprint for being other than what is apparently presented. The questioning, the anger, the resistance are fitting and could not be any other than what they are.

Yet it can be seen that the most mundane actions, judged to be dreary and ineffectual, are in fact simply the miracle of consciousness in whatever guise seems to be presented. This, this life, showing up just as it does, is perfect, complete and whole just as it is. It is so ironic that we agonise and question and seek and judge lacking and struggle, hoping to find what is exactly what is. Even when this is accepted, there seems to be the need for some act of will or intervention from beyond to make whatever is more than it is. Awakening, enlightenment, or whatever we're calling it today, is simply seeing that what is, is what is sought. What was sought was the very seeking. What was lacking was appreciation of lack. There is nothing different, in some nonexistent future, that will bring you to what you already are. You are life; and there is no time beyond this now, this moment, this seamless reality that is always here, and never to be more than it already is. So read with interest about the ego, and its false assumptions, and its taking on of a role bigger than it is, and its case of cosmic mistaken identity. It is the reading that is the point, not the content. It is life, this very moment, that is the answer. And if it seems to help to conceptualise that you are awareness, and everything arises in this awareness, including the ego-construct, that's fine too. It is the thinking of these things that is life, not the conclusions. Here is everything. There is nowhere, no when, and no one but here and now and this.

This I Must Do, Or Know Not What To Do: Yet This I Will Not Do, Do How I Can.

Almost nobody, it seems, can believe how simple awakening is. Enlightenment, or whatever you want to label it, realisation as some call it, is simply what you are, right now. It's no different than what is happening - here, now. The thoughts that label whatever reality is for you, the thoughts that tell you that this isn't it, even they are it. The feelings that seem to be discontent or frustration, they are it too. Those thoughts that tell you that it couldn't be so simple...that it couldn't be any different than whatever it is you seem to have been experiencing all your life...they are what you are looking for. The thoughts that say "How could this possibly be it? This is boring!" Well, the boring-ness is it too, as are the thoughts that label it "boring". Those thoughts are just what's coming up in what you are. What you are is here and now. What you are is everything. What you are is not dependent on what your mind makes of it all. You will never be any closer to what you are than you already are. Those thoughts that it might be something different...those are it, too. Nothing is not it. Everything is what you are looking for. What looks is what you are looking for. Looking is what you are looking for. Here it is!

Enjoy.

For Nothing Had Begot My Something Grief; Or Something Hath The Nothing That I Grieve.

Writing about this, whatever this is, requires using concepts to dissipate concepts. The imperative is to describe the indescribable, pure existence, the thing that is whether thoughts are interpreting it or not. It's rather like painting a picture of someone eating an orange in order to describe an orange's flavour, or looking very closely at a mountain spring, marveling at its wetness and freshness, rather than going over and scooping up a drink of it. Contradictions abound the describing of it, for language is necessarily dual, and having mutually exclusive (yet simultaneously occurring) opposites is the nature of concepts. One moment you may read that there are no paradoxes, all is one; in the next book it may say that the appearance of time and the nonexistence of it is an unresolvable paradox.

It doesn't matter what you read, it is the reading that is this. Thoughts are much maligned in the search for enlightenment. Yet thoughts are this too; they cannot take you down the wrong path; there is no wrong path. It doesn't matter at all what is happening, how it is interpreted (or not) and what feelings come up about it all. Life is here, always. It doesn't matter what form it is taking, or appears to take. Life is life. Whatever arises is the same thing, in a different guise. Whatever arises is equally valid. And the mind will have a heyday interpreting, judging, comparing, and ferreting out relative truth and worth at every apparent new happening. But that interpretation, judgment, comparison and relativity are simply what is arising. The thoughts and feelings seem to come and go. They might be anything. They are of no importance, and they can seem fun and stimulating, or miserable and destructive. Whatever they may be, they are not what you are.

Trying too hard and desperate frustration may be the best labels for some thoughts and feelings that arise. Relaxing can come up too. Realising that the thing that wants death of the ego is the ego itself, and the ego has lots of problems with this, can rise to compassion, which can seem to ease the whole process (that isn't really happening at all). There is no prize that awaits; nothing can await; everything, infinity, eternity, and boundlessness are already the case. And if boundlessness is not obvious, then exploring the microcosm of life might reveal it, at last, to be a microcosm. Perhaps when "you" are least expecting it.

Look What You Do, You Do It Still i' The Dark.

There are a lot of pointers out there for those who seek enlightenment.

Some of them are along the lines of "there is nothing you can do to awaken. Anything that is done, is done by the ego, and the ego can't awaken; awakening is the death of the ego. So no matter how much you meditate or self-inquire, those actions of meditation or self-inquiry will only reinforce the ego's existence and importance. So do nothing. Or maybe go to a satsang or have a one-to-one talk with a teacher that resonates with you, where the present energy might make the obvious more obvious."

Others go something like: "You are the awareness that everything arises in. You Are That. Start with that; accept it fully. Investigate that fact of I Am. I Am is the only fact that cannot be deconstructed or denied. There is only I Am. I Am is not limited in any way. It is the present awareness that is infinite and boundless, the light that makes what arises possible. Try to deconstruct I Am and you will see that you are THAT."

Fans of the first pointers probably hope that the hopelessness of the message might cause the seeker to give up, and thus stop identifying with being a seeker, which makes awakening more of a possibility.

Fans of the second pointers are more direct, and encourage the seeker to deconstruct everything except the very basic fact of existence, thus freeing the mind of the many distractions and tangents it is liable to go on, all of which are decried as spiritual bullshit, although, if you're not a seeker, are often interesting blueprints of how the ego can conduct itself in the story in time that seems to unfold.

Both point to the same thing. There is always a danger of revering the pointer, or the one who points; it's the old "finger pointing at the moon" analogy, where the finger (or the owner of the finger) is worshipped, until the moon itself is seen, and sometimes the finger (or its owner) is so scintillating that the moon is never looked at.

All of these pointers are called pointers because they can never be what they are pointing to. All pointers are concepts. What is pointed to is present awareness, something that is possessed of "everyone" all the "time", even if that "time" is taken up with a lot of pondering and living in your head. No matter what seems to be going on, present awareness is always the case, whether we are poking it with a mind-stick or not.

If no pointers seem to work, and seeking has become an addiction, and starts to interfere with relationships and life, and truly is making the unfolding story a "worse" one, there is perhaps a practical suggestion that has nothing to do with non-duality or present awareness or enlightenment or whatever we call it during the holiday season.

Your mind can perhaps just accept enlightenment, or however you want to put it and describe it, on a conceptual level, which is after all the mind’s only level. It can say, “OK. I am the awareness that everything arises in. All this really solid-seeming appearance, I understand that it’s illusory, just so much energy, just so many electrical mind-interpretations, from a mind in a brain that is comprised of atoms that contain nothing. I fully understand that this is all meaningless, and that it’s just nothing, wanting to be something; life wanting to be. I completely accept that this is my true nature, that what I truly am is not knowable, and the day-to-day life I seem to lead is not lead by me, nor does it exist in time, and that feeling of being me is actually a big ME, common to everything and everyone, with different apparent content. All that stuff I’ve read and discussed, I know this to be true, true in an absolute sense, even if I can’t get around the need to understand what is ineffable.”

And then, just move on. Live your life with all your apparent tools. Stop identifying with being a seeker, because you know there’s no such thing…you are awareness, and you accept that. In the story of time that the mind will always facilitate for you, the “ah ha” thing, which you know is probably not anything different from what you already experience, will likely come…and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter, because you’re living your life in the best way you can, free from any notions that it will all be “better” “after” enlightenment because your poor, belaboured mind now accepts that everything you need – all of eternity and infinity – is already always the case.

This seems to work for a lot of frustrated seekers. And more importantly, you may find that the miracle of your family, the excitement and risk of engaging with the world, the world challenges you read about and discuss with your friends, the living you make, and you own sweet quirks, strengths and foibles will become beautifully intense and satisfying as you are more present for your life. You are already the passion that makes life possible. Perhaps you will be freer to BE that passion, rather than just noting it and poking it with your mind-stick.

These are more meaningless concepts, but fun and hopefully useful, if usefulness is the goal...and I'm not sure it is. But compassion arises, and these words are written, in the spirit of taking risks and engaging with the world in its "online community" guise.

Much love from one nonexistent ego to many apparent others!

To My Sick Soul, As Sin's True Nature Is, Each Toy Seems Prologue To Some Great Amiss.

There is so much tugging and pulling at the heartstings of the seeker; so many admonitions, so much advice, so many entreaties, so many commands. So many edicts to "dump the spiritual bullshit" or "get off the hamster wheel" or "stop circling the mountain and look up to see the mountain". I am not a teacher; I won't be telling any apparent person what to do, where to go, or how still to be to "get" this "enlightenment" stuff. A few words of advice might slip out now and again, but as the story seems to unfold to me, there are paths that work, paths that work for some "individuals" but not others, some who conclude the only path is no path, some who resonate with "there is no one" and some who resonate with "be still and see there is no witness". The "ah ha" moment might be a startling mind-event with bells, whistles, visions and bliss, or it might be a gentle shift that leaves the former seeker in gales of subdued chuckles, or it might "happen" and only be noticed "later" with an accompanying classic comedy slap on the forehead. In an unfolding story of common sense and mental health, it's clear that we don't often know what's "good" for us, and an endless circling of the mind, although frustrating, is often the fruitless series of events that needs to happen before a cycle is broken; before the hamster wheel slips from its fastenings, spilling us out onto the wood shavings where we look around and finally notice we're in a cage.

The most uncomfortable, tragic event can unfold into wisdom. The most futile, unprofitable enterprise is a journey of revelation. Some games may be more enjoyed than others, but each game is the expression of perfection, the reflection of that which longs to see itself, which is that longing and nothing more. The frustrated longing of the seeker is the sweetest, most apropos feeling, the clearest reflection of life's yearning to be. How strange and paradoxical that we cannot see what we are, when what we are is all we are.

We are not steeped in enlightenment; there is no enlightenment; there is only this, full stop, here now. Whichever teacher you are drawn to, listen. Whatever method you apply, delight in it. Whatever it seems you are doing, you are awareness, and everything you see, think, hear, touch, smell, feel and do, is arising in what you are, no matter what that is, no matter how to the point or not. You cannot run away from what you are. And if, by some accident, the illusion of reality is seen through, all those ups and downs and tragedies and joys can be savoured without the defenses of the ego in the way; but if all you seem to be is a bundle of defenses, savour them as well, for they are no less a perfect expression of being than anything else.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHu8LAWSKxU

For That Which Thou Hast Sworn To Do Amiss Is Not Amiss When It Is Truly Done.

All truth is relative. Every story, every system of belief is subject to disintegration if examined and deconstructed. Take anything, any notion, and ask, "is this true?" Can it be said to be true in every possible circumstance, every potential scenario? Every single thing that is what you've taken your life to be is an illusion, very tenuous in its existence; it is merely interestingly arranged energy. And existence, simple existence, is the only thing that cannot be deconstructed. This is the nub that so many seekers long to get to, as do we all, in so many interesting ways. These ways are the playground of existence. It's all very well, stilling thought, being present, seeing/being/knowing the true, unhindered nature of existence, unfiltered by the ego or anything else; the boundlessness of it, the lack of need for it to be captured and claimed, is something many try to express - and have tried, over and over, from the cave paintings to the lovemaking last night. We are the expression; we are the passion of being. We are the playground, and have ego and body and others and world and challenges and depression and unrest and tolerance and patience and children and time and space so many, many other playthings in order to express. Simple existence is the starting point; mind and time are the gift of awareness to itself. What we do, how we do it, when and where we do it is the game. It is delightful; it is devastating; it is relished. We construct belief systems that limit the game, and perhaps break free of them and change the game. We construct and hone the ego so that the player is known. The ego is necessary to negotiate the life game; and the player can change or grow, or regress, or be frustratingly stuck on a plateau; these are the nuances of the game. Ego can be good or bad, but the inherent nature of life is passion, life wanting to be, in all forms and every way. Our true nature is boundless, eternal, and infinite; and it is nothingness, nothing exists whatsoever, so the interestingly arranged energy that so many take to be the only reality is, in fact, miraculous. Once it is seen that nothing exists, despite appearances, and that indescribably essential and fundamental simple awareness is at last known, the game is seen for a game, and the game is no longer its own limitation. Just be; or if the game is still clung to, relish it, in all its many miraculous and gentle, astounding and cruel guises. There is nothing, that is not this.

My Fear Hath Catch'd Your Fondness: Now I See The Mystery Of Your Loneliness.

You could say that awareness isn't dependent upon consciousness. Awareness is, always, whether or not there are bits of electricity firing away in the brain to produce a solid reference point that is identified with. Whether those reference points are there or not, "corrupted" or not (as with brain injury, delusional psychosis, etc), awareness - life - always is. The small thing we seem to be is a convenience, perfectly crafted by itself to apprehend itself, with "aberrations" (altered states of mind, hallucinations etc.) thrown in for variety. Without consciousness, you are that indefinable thing variously labeled awareness, God, presence, Sunyata etc., not a thing, but some essence that simply is, and isn't bound by time or space. And that's what you are, completely boundless, infinite, and eternal, whether you like it or not.

So why do so many feel it as such a horrible thing? Probably because the reflection of the infinite - what we know as day to day life - has taken on the identity of Totality, and as each day to day story of a life comes to an end, we can't take the thought of not existing in what we believe is the only way. Fear of death, in other words. The small self loves to exist - it doesn't want to not exist. It's very understandable.

The possible "good" thing is - the reflection is no less "one" than the indefinable essence, awareness, that it reflects. Splitting it into two - awareness and reflection - is a head's up that the mind is involved, splitting away (as is its job). Take any concept with a massive grain of salt, no matter how brilliant, or simple, or direct, or seemingly "The Truth". When we just get on with it, be it, do it, think whatever we think without picking it to bits - and actually there's nothing wrong with picking it to bits - life is more smoothly lived, with less apparent suffering. And suffering itself is part of the appearance as well. Whatever it is that seems to be happening, it happening just as it must. If the small self can somehow let go of needing to be in charge of it, it can be much more efficient...but it doesn't need to be "more efficient". It only needs to be exactly as it is, or as it seems.

So many people want to train themselves to see what's right in front of their noses, and, in fact, is their nose, and the seeing of it. They are tortured by their thoughts. Well...remember that what we're calling "themselves" is probably the ego, suffering from a rather grandiose case of mistaken identity. There can certainly arise a story of the ego doing its best to train itself to see thoughts as objects, and the objects are not what you are etc., but maybe it's an easier story to just ignore those pesky thoughts. "My" thoughts can do what they like - doesn't bother me a bit. They're not "my" thoughts. They're just thoughts. Awareness is, no matter what. One way of calming down the hyper mind (that is the tool of duality) is to think of your thoughts as oneness (awareness), "thought-ing". Again, whatever thoughts come up, or seem to, are what thoughts must come up. Nothing "wrong" with any of them.

People seem to make a big deal of the story of the "awakening moment" - it's something solid the ego can hold on to and wait for, deflecting its death for "another time". Well, just remember that "what happened for me" is just another nothingness, made apparently "real", and exists only as memory NOW. It's always now o'clock. My fevered (and tolerated) brain tends to put a story to it along the lines of "I realised what I had been looking for all this time was my life, just exactly as it is." There seemed to be a "shift" but not much of one. The thing that seemed to die was the need for whatever was happening to be anything else than exactly what it was. And what it was, and is, is just life toddling along as it always has, unresisted. Very, very, very, very simple! The mind will complicate it; the mind can try explain the mystery of life in any of a billion billion ways. I don't think awareness gives a flying fart whether awakening happens or not. It's just more dust in the wind, a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing, but a hell of a lot of fun, and to be relished.

A good friend of mine (Mike over at http://thepeacefulself.com) says that the ego is comprised entirely of fear. That definitely strikes a chord. Perhaps this is a maxim: Anything you don't want, don't fight it. Go with it. Feel the fear. Actually, you don't have to do a thing...you just don't know it "yet"! And there is no yet. Awareness isn't hanging around, getting more aware while your thoughts fool around with trying to figure all this out. You are infinite, eternal, whole, complete and perfect NOW. There is only now. Full stop. And whatever it is you're looking for, it's not what you imagine it to be...boxing it in will keep it ever elusive...and paradoxically, boxing it in and trying to figure it all out is just perfect too. You're doing it. You've done it. You're here, even if "here" is doubts and pain and suffering and financial instability and bereavement. This. Is. It.