God’s Knowledge

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Blue Rigi Lake of Lucerne Sunrise’ – J. M. W.  Turner, 1842 – WikiArt

We know so many things. Everything is based on knowledge, and maybe that’s the way to live, as long as there is a body and a world. Knowledge is the score we need to play our part. But to know something, anything, seems presumptuous. It implies another kind of knowledge — that there is somebody here, a person at a distance, that knows and is a recipient of knowledge. Knowledge fixes us. It gives us a dubious identity — that I am a man or a woman, of a certain age, with certain qualities, and with a whole lot of knowledge, identities, beliefs. That I am unhappy, clever, stupid, happy. That I am a cook, or a carpenter. That there is a chair, a world. That I have skills and preferences. I even have the knowledge of my spiritual attainment.

But there is no knowing anything. To think we know something is a mistake. If we know something, then we haven’t looked well enough. We have stayed at the surface of our illusory world and existence. What we ought to know is the knowledge of our reality, of ourself. That’s the only knowing there is. That’s our world: Knowing. Being aware. All other knowledge is superfluous, is not real knowledge. For what would any such knowledge be, when we discover that there is no entity here with the capacity to possess that knowledge. Go only for the knowing of being, a knowledge which is owned by itself. Notice that you don’t know anything — that’s important to know. We have no knowledge other than the knowledge of our being. Apart from that, everything exists only as in a dream.

We may play the part of the one in the dream, and that’s a beautiful part. There may be a world here that is gorgeous, with many ‘things’ that are known. There may be relationships that have meanings. But this world of things borrows its beauty and making from the reality in which it exists for a time — knowing. And the meaning of relationship is found through its reality, which is love — shared being. Everything happy and true in our life is borrowed from our reality as awareness — the only knowledge there is. If we live or act while ignoring that one knowledge, the world and ourself will appear ridden with conflict and suffering. So notice that the ten thousand things of life — all our knowledge — are transparent, ephemeral, ethereal. What is here massive and solid is their reality as being — the supreme essence of everyone and everything. The truth we live in. Ourself. What is. Not somebody that knows.

There is no other real knowing than the knowing of our essence, of our true nature or identity. This knowledge of ourself is not something we can possess as a person. It is nothing more than pure, objectless, impersonal knowing, and this knowing is all there is, all we are. Everything, everyone, have died in it. That’s why we cannot know anything, for how could we know something without there being first a knower and things with their own reality. The only thing we in fact truly know is ourself, our essence. Our knowledge of anything has died inside pure knowing long ago. It is still available, but its reality is apparent. That’s why we can never be sure that there is a chair, or a world. That’s why every object passes, is not there, is only an appearance.

Even ourself cannot be known objectively. We are alone. Nobody knows us. We as a person are absent. We don’t have a reality as an entity, or a self of any kind. So we are known by God alone, who knows us by knowing Its own being. We are all in the knowledge of God. What follows after the sentence ‘we don’t know anything’ is ‘the only knowledge there is is God’s knowledge’. Or ‘know God, love god, and you will know what you ought to know’. It all boils down to ‘knowing, knowing knowing’. Paul said it all very clearly in the First Epistle to the Corinthians: “If anyone thinks that he knows anything, he doesn’t yet know as he ought to know. But anyone who loves God is known by him.” (8:2-3).

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851)

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Website:
– J. M. W. Turner (Wikipedia)

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Effortless Being

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Quiet Moonlight (beyond Catalina Island)’ – Granville Redmond, 1907 – WikiArt

Be effortless. That’s the clue you need if you want to meet yourself. Because yourself is for ever here, a natural presence, a stillness in the background, that is your silent being. If you look, you will see it, feel it — who you are, the nature of yourself. So don’t assume too quickly that you know who you are. That who you are is in your body, in your thoughts, in being someone, an entity. Don’t believe that what you are is tied to and dependent on your body-mind, and that you find your true expression in being a person, preferably a successful one, that can be improved, and is subject to death. These are beliefs, concepts that you have learned but never took the time to verify. Don’t accept the subtle tension that is implied in being someone. Go for that part of yourself that is here without effort, that never moves or changes, that is beyond the apparent boundaries of birth and death.

Don’t even try to be spiritual, for the effort you will apply to bring that identity in, will ruin everything. Be exactly as you are, when you are not anything that can be pointed at. Learn to go beyond everything that you are not, so that you can land on the true ground of your effortless being. That may require just a little bit of effort, a redirecting, a gentle looking, the release contained in a moment of relaxation. That is enough. Don’t go for a strain, an ambition, a glory of any kind. These go too far, will take you to a self, a fake identity that will stand in the way of your innate nature. You are already yourself. Nothing new or other than what you already are is needed. Spirituality is a gentle reminder. It is for you to remember that you are almost as nothing, a breath within a breath, a spirit that you will never in a thousand years be able to own. Spirituality is only about being — being effortlessly. This is your natural, unavoidable skill — what you could never not be.

To make an effort is to pull yourself out of your natural being. It is also the veiling of yourself, for any movement that takes you away from your true nature, will own an identity that is acquired, not innate, and that will close the door in the face of your awareness of being. This little bit of effort is you trying to be a person — what you are not — and refusing to be who you are. Through the absence of effort, you will be introduced to yourself, to your true nature. There is a vast expanse there — in fact infinite — that is the very ground of your being. There is a life there, in yourself, as yourself, that some have called bliss or paradise. Not because it is giving you a new place to be, but in reason of the lack of effort or tension there is in being yourself. In effort is contained suffering, fear, lack, hope, conflict, separation, everything that makes your life a burden. To be yourself without effort is the meaning behind the word ‘bliss’. It is the sweetest fall you will ever experience — to be yourself in this free, unconstrained, unforced way. To be without strain, even of the most subtle kind. The blissful is in the absence of effort. In being carefree. Not that you don’t care. But you have your care — which is love — lodged in naturally being, and don’t need any kind of effort for it.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Granville Redmond (1871-1935)

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Website:
– Granville Redmond (Wikipedia)

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Hidden Desire

Posted on by Alain Joly

If you have any desire, any craving, make sure that you crave for yourself first. Make sure that you want yourself more than anything else. Check it. That before you go for something, you have first the will for yourself, for your sweet inner being, for that which sustains you, for that which is behind every one of your desires. Make sure that the one who desires is really you, not an impostor, not a fake self that mimics you but is not you. Make sure that you desire from that part of yourself that is real, that is here, not the will of a secondary thought, of an illusory, separate self, not a fake desire. Fake desires won’t work, won’t take you where you want, won’t give you what you seek. Go for a desire that comes from real you. Check that you know who desires your desire.

How do you know who desires your desire? Well first desire yourself, give at your sweet being a loving gaze, then see if your desire is still there. If it didn’t swiftly go, escape, disappear suddenly, didn’t have the guts of showing up, let alone showing off. If your desire doesn’t stand yourself, doesn’t survive the plain looking at your inner self, at your sense of knowing, of being aware, then your desire is not worth the name, doesn’t deserve to be fulfilled. Make that simple effort first. To watch your own being, to check your presence, melt for a second in it, with it, and then welcome any desire that comes. Sometimes desire can surprise you. Sometimes desire desires the most unexpected thing. Sometimes you find yourself desiring yourself more than anything else.

So please, before having the desire for something, desire yourself first. Stay there, in yourself, with yourself, have a sweet moment in the company of your being. See that you might be desiring it with all your heart, that no desire could ever compete with the desire for your self. See that could make a life of the desire for yourself. That you’d never want to leave yourself, even for a second. That what you want is to fully inhabit yourself — being yourself, which is being your sweet being, ravishing in its presence. Make sure that it becomes your primary desire. The most important one, which you want to fulfil, expose, indulge in. Indulge in yourself first. Don’t part from yourself, break up, and then indulge in the most silly, inefficacious, incompetent things. Don’t ever do that. Indulge after you have indulged all your might in yourself. Then see what you might further indulge in.

So always see yourself as the first object of your desire. This desire doesn’t always need to be expressed. You will notice that it is fulfilled by simply being. You have all your desires — expressed or in potential — fulfilled through the act of simply being. Being is like a magical formula, a universal recipe, the desire behind all desires. Being is the sweetest object of desire. Yourself is your bliss, where peace lives, where love is like your very essence. Your many desires for so many things have concealed yourself. So it’s only a matter of desiring the only thing worth being desired — yourself. Then you may have a thousand more desires, it doesn’t matter. They are not yours anymore. They have come from the hidden, unfathomable, inexpressible place of your inner self and being. Desire this place of no desire, of completeness. Respect it. Try to fulfill it. This is God’s hidden desire. After you have fulfilled God’s desire, be wild and determined with any other desire that may remain.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Suggestion:
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A Virtue of Old

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Portrait of an old man’ – Paul Cézanne, 1868 – WikiArt

Od age and ailments have an astonishing virtue. They teach us that our body and our mind have a weak reality, that they soften, do not last, crumble. They are like everything else. Their reality is passing, illusory, and ours is not what we have taken it to be. For we notice that as our body weakens, falls apart, we do not with it. We stay as strong as ever. We shine as something else. Not a body. Not a mind. Not an apparent self. But spirit. Our spirit strengthens. Our presence widens — if we care to look at all, to be aware, to not attach ourself to a dying object, to a withering skill. If we stay as our solid being, as that which we haven’t been attentive to so far, for reason of an irrational and obstinate fascination for our body-mind-experience, and our puny self.

So when these, that didn’t have a true reality, go; when these, that didn’t stand the mark of eternity, wither; then our fascination shifts for that which cannot go, wither, or crumble. For what stays massively behind. This reality of ourself hits us in the face — what we are, what we were even when we weren’t looking, weren’t interested, had our life within the limitations of our body-mind. Then it comes soothing us, telling us of our nature, of our grandeur. Then, what falls apart is not just our body or our skills, but also our beliefs about our mistaken reality. Our error as to what our nature is. Now we have a conversation with the infinite, and a rising love affair with the eternal. Now we have a compassion for what we believed ourself to be — body, mind, self, skill, experience — and that now have the humility to show their frail existence. Now we stop minding so much about them, and we find the peace that it is to do so.

So where do we choose to go when we cannot go anywhere, when places become fewer, when time stops being a promise, when circumstances lessen? Where is this place that our body cannot take us to, and that comprehends all that we as a body were chasing relentlessly? What is it that our thoughts cannot give us, and that we now find is here behind and before every thought, every belief, hope, or fantasy? There is a sumptuous gift behind every body or mind that loses grip on the objective world. There is a treasure in the quiet home of our self, when we are asked to stop seeking our happy self in a thousand places, practices, or experiences.

There comes a time when we cannot chase our preferences anymore. When we have to leave behind our dearest experiences. When we have no more time to become, attain, grasp that which we want to grasp, attain, become. But there is offered a time for letting go, for a sweet abandon, for uncovering that which in us can never wither, weaken, age, crumble, suffer any kind of ailment. There is a place which holds the whole world in its loving heart, and this place of love is ourself when we have renounced to find it within time, place, or circumstance. There is a virtue in not expecting from body, mind, world, experience, what they can never give us. There is a virtue in resting where we are, where we swallow body, mind, world in an instant, and are free in spite of circumstances.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)

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Website:
– Paul Cézanne (Wikipedia)

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Our Human Condition

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Winter Scene on the Ice’ – Jan van Goyen, 1641 – WikiArt

There is not a person in a thought, or in an assembly of thoughts. Not anymore than there is a person in a body or an emotion, or an activity of the body, a reaction after the emotion. These are but things that exist, but don’t make the complexity and radiance required in there being a person, an animal, or any kind of entity. This world is populated by objects, by appearances, by bodies, but not by persons or entities as such. There are no persons, nobody here that could claim to have its own, independent, separate reality. To think that there is, is an illusion, an invention, one of our many well-rehearsed thoughts.

But of course, beliefs have magic. If we believe to be a person, then we are one. If we believe that there are individuals, a world, untold suffering, then the source is obliging. It will create the reality of one such world, will give us the suffering we claim to have, will manufacture all our many conflicts, which we have come to be attached to, and to believe in. Everything is only a temporary, dreamlike appearance in and of reality, but not reality itself. The more you will believe to be a person, the more you will be one. The more consistency this person will acquire, the more suffering he or she will experience, and the more conflictual will be the world, for you have given them a reality they do not have — except for the reality of consciousness.

We have to keep knowing that we are aware, that we are awareness itself. Being a person is about knowing, not about a body, or a handful of thoughts. The body comes second to knowing. There is knowing first, and then a whole world unfolds, makes itself known. The reality of the world is in knowing, not in there being a world, not in there being a person. Knowing takes it all, wins the game. We’ve got to be aware of that. Then the world is shining. So is the person. They may not be truly here, in reality, but they shine with the transparency of knowing.

Every entity that exists, finds its reality within, from an inside experience. So to be a person is not to be a person, not in its reality. We are a person only from the vantage point of a thought, a belief, a representation, but not from inside, not from the depth of being. There, there is no person, no separation, no suffering, only the infinite body of knowing. After all, could a world with its own individual reality be harmonious or beautiful? Or is beauty or harmony conferred to the world by the grander reality of knowing? A world with its reality conferred by thoughts, beliefs, contains conflict, difficulties, suffering, for it is not recognised for what it is. We have confused the world with our misunderstanding, have rendered it an insecure place, and have made ourself an insecure person, constantly seeking its security in the insecurity of a world, which obviously is a vain enterprise.

So if there ever is to be a person, there is a person in infinity. If there ever is to be a world, there is a world in eternity. The world, our body, our thoughts, are all playgrounds for the infinite. Nothing more. If we do not know that, then we will be a suffering self, a person, living amongst the endless conflicts of the world. If we know we are infinity, then the world will oblige, and acquire the colours of the infinite. As for us, we will be playing being a person, or a thought, but with none of the sufferings or conflicts usually attached with their invented reality. We will remain infinity, eternity, in all occasions, no matter how much we live in time and place, and adopt for a while the limited vantage point of a body and a mind. Our own infinite reality will stay the only reality there is.

Now, imagine a world, a society of people where the only reality there is, is the reality of the infinite, of the eternal. What would this world be? What would our many personhoods be? Where could our suffering and conflicts stand in infinity? Where would our life turmoil thrive in eternity? The whole world — conflict, suffering, everything — stands within one single belief or misunderstanding. For the rest, eternity only is the one shaping the world. Infinity the one making a person — that is our human condition.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Jan Van Goyen (1596-1656)

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Website:
– Jan Van Goyen (Wikipedia)

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A Word of Glory

Posted on by Alain Joly

Words don’t apply to truth. What we are cannot be described. We may have a lot to say about our preferences, our thoughts, our body, our circumstances and conditionings, but we won’t be able to say anything about who we are. We may try to. We may give a thousand explanations. We may come as close as possible, by saying that we are that which is aware, that we are consciousness, being, and a thousand other expressions. But we won’t get closer to the truth of who we are. Truth is not something that can be made into a concept, or an object. It is before every concept, before every object. It is before even ourself as a body-mind, as a person. It is before every single thought that we may have about ourself. It is the living, throbbing embrace of everything.

We cannot catch truth and put it in a box, or made it into a thought. It is elusive. We won’t find it in the world, no matter how hard we may look. It is within. It is who we are. It is what there is — our very being. We cannot miss our own being, what we are made of, what there is here that we call ‘myself’, or ‘I’. If we do miss it, then we are taking ourself to be what we are not. We have given in to an idea, to a concept. We have given allegiance to everything objective, easy, to stories about ourself, but not to ourself. We have not been ourself yet. Belief doesn’t reveal our true identity. It tramples it. It hides it. Truth requires no thought, no belief, no person or entity, even no world. Truth is only about itself. And to see truth is to see ourself, to be our own self that shines with glory. There is no truth but ourself. We know truth, when we know ourself.

All the words about truth are here to point to the truth without words. For when we know ourself, the reality of who we are, there is no thinking about truth, or about god, for we live and abide where words have melted into the reality they were pointing to. We have given in to our own reality. We have died in our own living presence. We have noticed that we are that which we were looking for, and that there is no looking beyond it. We are settled. We are made real, alive, complete. The relief contained in knowing who we are at last, this falling of ourself into the place of being that we have been and are eternally — that in itself feels like a tremor of peace, joy, and freedom. This place of being is unconditional love, wordless reality, living oneness. All things and all beings find their essence in it, and lose their own, individual reality. They are as if one word — a word whose only function is being its own living, glorious reality.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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A Ghostly Thing

Posted on by Alain Joly

We only ever become within the course of time. We seem to always want to move cautiously, step by step. We don’t consider a becoming that could be achieved in an instant. Quicker even. A becoming free of the constraints of time or place, that could not be influenced by our thoughts, conditionings, beliefs, desires. A becoming that doesn’t find its worth in objective experience. A becoming that has no movement, that is still, confident, ever present. A becoming which bears in itself no change, and that was here before you even had the idea to change, or become, or evolve.

After all, when it comes to our identity, to who we truly are, ‘becoming’ seems to be a very poor idea. What could we become that we are not already? What is here in our very being that could become, that could be different, or better, or more? Our identity has been settled from time immemorial. It was here before even the appearance of time, which is but the product of our patterns of thinking. Before the appearance of place, which is but the product of our ability for sensing, seeing, hearing, touching. We have our identity and our perfection — our changelessness — hidden in being.

So, could we not become what we are? That’s the real question. How do we become our true identity? How do we espouse who we truly are, or be that thing which we are that cannot be deformed, changed, soiled, or even defined? That implies understanding both the one who wants to become, and that which he or she wants to become. There is a becoming, a change, a better or a worse, a less or a more, for the body-mind. But is there a becoming for ourself? Is there anyone here that could ever achieve becoming? Look for the one who wants to become, and notice that you will never find it. Becoming is a ghostly thing.

You cannot become. That’s a lovely idea, one that comes from another idea. From the belief that you are something, someone, that can change, evolve. There is in our being no room for change. Being is complete. It cannot be bent according to our beliefs, hopes, ambitions. So there is no becoming that which we are, and no one to become being — a better being, or a worse being. Being is the only thing shining in our being. There is no one here that could ever want to become. We may give to our body-mind more skills, more strength, better abilities, but to ourself, we can give nothing but the faculty of being only being.

So go only for what you already are. That’s truly what you want to become: what you already are. There is not a better becoming than that. That will spare you being a person caught in the effects and weariness of time and place. That will spare you being in the prison of a self, all the separation and loneliness involved in becoming anything or anyone. That will free you — to not become. That will give you exquisite joy — to only be what you are. That will give you certainty, confidence — to have your own being as your changeless, unbreakable horizon. May you become what you are. Believe me, this is heaven.

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“Creatures of a day! What is anyone?
What is anyone not? A dream of a shadow
Is our mortal being. But when there comes to men
A gleam of splendour given of heaven,
Then rests on them a light of glory
And blessed are their days.”
~ Pindar, 5th century BC (Pythian 8)

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Text by Alain Joly

Quote by Pindar (c.518-c.438 BC)

Photo by Alain Joly

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Website:
– Pindar (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
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