The Hand of God

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘Hand of God, stained glass – Dayton Saint Mary Catholic Church – Wikimedia

Isn’t it extraordinary that our whole life is spent in the present ? That no part of it, ever, happened somewhere, sometime, that was not the time or place of now ? We speak of the past or the future all the time, but in fact, we are prisoner of the now. We can never leave the present, which is in reality nothing but presence. It would be tempting to think that we are a body, somebody progressing in time through a succession of moments. But it is a naive way of thinking, for we can never find that moment — that ‘now’ — in time. It is elusive, doesn’t know a border, is reluctant to have a beginning and an end. The now has a smooth, timeless reality. It cannot move, cannot know place or time. The now is of the order of essence. It is a fundament. You can never go beyond it, or before it. It is you. You are not in the now — you ‘are’ the now. You are yourself where you live in. ‘I Am’ is the only time there is, which is no time at all. And you are not a prisoner, for there is an infinite amount of freedom in the absence of time, an infinite amount of space in the absence of place.

Time is for objects, not for you. If you think to be one such object, then you are in its claws. For your body has a beginning and an end, just like every object in existence. So choose who you are carefully. Don’t be tempted to be exclusively your body and mind, for time will affect you in the most vicious way. It will lie to you, telling you that you have an age and a limit, that you are as fragile as your body or mind can be, destined to wither and die. Time is a handy construct of thought that measures activity, movement, appearance, decay. But before the appearance of body, mind, world, is a space which is immovable, inalterable, inalienable. This space is not to be found outside yourself. It is your very essence, who you are at your deepest, when you have ceased giving your attention to what is only living and thriving at the surface, and are willing to dive in the most substantial essence of who you are.

So notice that where and when you live is only experienced now. This is no accident. See that the future is unattainable, except in the now. Understand that there was only a past as the experience of ‘now’. So now is the only reality — not time, not place, which are only appearances created by thought and sense perception. See through the many appearances of life, to land where and when you have always been — in your own inescapable presence here and now. The now is not a fleeting moment, it is massively here. It is stretching itself to infinite proportions, and renders time a ridiculous, though necessary passing notion. The now has the flavour of something new, for without the conditioning of the past and the expectation of the future, is a life that is fresh, embedded in unknowing — notice that you can only know the past or the future. The now is also something that stands right in the middle of yourself, that is at no distance, that knows no separation as past or future, whose immediacy is total for it is blended in and as your very essence. So comes a time when the now loses its time-related signification to expose its true nature as presence. The now is maintained right through as the very nature of everyone and everything. The now is how the infinite keeps you in its hand. It is the hand of God.

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Text by Alain Joly

Photo by Nheyob on Commons

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Website:
– Hand of God (Art) (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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A Manual for Happiness

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Field of Poppies’ – Claude Monet, 1873 – WikiArt

We can’t get hold of happiness so easily. It is elusive, coming at odd times, sneaking in surreptitiously without our noticing. When we know it, it had already been there for a while, although we realise it only now — its quiet presence — a thing that seems to come from eternity, and that we could live with for ever. It doesn’t have the crude expression of a boastful, egoistic eruption of joy, or the bourgeois, replete manifestation of satisfaction. Happiness is more charming, something rare, valuable, that comes uninvited, on a propitious moment. By the way, this is the etymology of ‘happy’: ‘hap-‘, which means ‘lucky’, ‘good fortune’. Happiness seems to come by chance, ‘falling’ on us, as the Latin ‘cadere’ for ‘chance’ conveys. There is an exception though, in Welsh, where the word ‘happy’ had once the meaning of ‘wise’. Maybe after all, being happy is not a matter of chance. Maybe it better comes with some understanding and wisdom.

So what is this chance, or this bit of luck that comes propitiously for happiness to appear? Maybe our good fortune is simply in what is present now, shining beyond any shadow of doubt. Being happy is when we have the good fortune to let ‘what is’ be, occur, without any interference. Being happy is when we let ourself plainly be. This allowing may be the best manual for happiness. And this has nothing to do with a person or entity being happy. Happiness doesn’t belong to us personally. It is not in the obtention of something we desire, but rather thrives in times of desirelessness. Happiness is a detachment. It is a permission. It is a confrontation with truth, and therefore the abandonment or removal of our idea of being a person. There, in that removal of oneself, is the advent of truth or reality, and the blooming of happiness. Truth, having no perturbation in itself, no friction, no contradiction, no lie, or illusion, or pretence, is manifesting its pure joy of being just as it is. Happiness is a manifestation of truth. An indication of presence. The bubbles of being that come at the surface with a fizzing sound of well-being.

Happiness doesn’t happen to us. It is in the air, in the essence of everything, in what makes us intimately. It is indivisible from who we are when we have removed this block of beliefs, concepts, certainties and doubts, that constitutes our alleged self, with its regiment of hopes, regrets, and resistances. Happiness has no relationship whatsoever to our body and mind, but they will find a great relaxation in experiencing its echo. Thoughts will rarify accordingly. Of course there may be an appropriation of happiness by the so-called person we have convinced ourself to be. The mind recuperates it to its advantage. The self is using this timeless moment to boast itself up. It objectifies happiness and reduces it to being simply an emotion — the equal of fear, or anger. It reduces happiness down to a form of tension that consolidates its belief in being a person, a body-object that is the only subject of its life.

In contrast to happiness, suffering belongs to us, and so do fear, anger, hatred, which are all tensions coming from a misappropriation or misapprehension of life — a violation of truth. We are mistaking ourself for what we are not. We are resisting what is with what is not. And it generates all manners of conflict and discomfort. But if we don’t react; if we let ourself feel this pure, unattached inner being, and don’t leave it, don’t conceptualise it, don’t distance ourself from it for a refuge in the comfort of our body-mind. If we stay there, in the subtle identity of our most intimate self. If we rest still and in complete harmony with our purest sense of being. If we stay humble, and enjoy the delicacy contained in just being, for no reason other than simply being. If we enclose ourself within it, and let ourself be permeated by its most subtle essence. If we feel it to be our lifeblood, and let our old sense of self be seized, or snatched away by it. If we don’t resist in any way, including through our appropriation of happiness, which is a subtle form of resistance. Then… Then happiness is revealed as just the ease of being — what comes naturally when we connect to the truth of our deepest self. It is then what we could call, our good fortune.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Claude Monet (1840-1926)

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Website:
– Claude Monet (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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On Being Apart

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Two Men by the Sea’ – Caspar David Friedrich, 1817 – WikiArt

We are never far from our deepest reality. That’s a fantasy — to think that we are far, separate, apart. To think that truth is at a distance, that there is a god, a reality away from our own reality as being. Ourself is the only reality there is. We won’t find another one, something grander, truer than ourself. There isn’t. It’s all here within, already taking place in and as our own being. But we are limiting ourself with a thought. The thought that we are circumscribed to our body, restricted to our mind, and that we have our own personal being different and apart from somebody else’s being. This is how far we have gone from ourself. This is the distance we have created, the separateness we have invented. We have set ourself apart from ourself with a single thought. That’s our negligence, to have let ourself be governed by a belief, by a lie. To have drowned in our own absent-mindedness. We have, as it were, kept ourself on the sidelines.

But we can play the central role with the single thought that there is, at all time, only one reality. We are the only reality there is. Have this thought, that nothing exists outside yourself, that we have it all in our own reality as being. That we can rely on no other authority than the authority of ourself. That we can seek nothing other than our own self as being. That the world, everything, God, truth, the answer to our suffering, are all gathered within the single reality of our being present here and now. So state quietly in yourself that there is only ‘I Am’, that apart from ‘I Am’, well… there is no apart. No part separate from the totality has ever come into existence. There is only the totality playing the many parts of life, but staying itself complete, unbroken, one, whole as our own being. This is how simple we are — One. This is how much we matter. This is how close we are to the reality of everything, to this intimate, never distant truth that some have called ‘God’.

Think of your simple, everyday act of being aware as being everything, as the one and only reality there is. See what it entails, to have no projection of there being something, any kind of reality outside awareness. It means everything you need to know and understand is contained in and as your own sense of self. So watch it. Isolate it from every object that you are aware of, including your thoughts, feelings, perceptions. Feel naked awareness alone, and see how it grows, expands out of proportions, out of time and place, out of the world of objective experience. As you walk on the street, or wash the dishes, or do anything in the course of a day, remember that this simple experience of ‘being myself’ is all there is. That no reality exists outside yourself. That ‘I Am’ is all there is. Feel what it does to you, to think that you are one and alone, the only one being there is. Feel the shock of it, that nothing real, true, reliable, can be found outside yourself. And that this self of yourself encompasses everything, holds every passing, existing thing in its own reality. That you share this being of yourself with the being of everyone, and everything. Feel that you cannot be told apart.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)

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Website:
– Caspar David Friedrich (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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A Love Affair

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Evening Star’ – Camille Corot, 1864 – WikiArt

It is really just a love affair. Nothing else. If you want to know yourself, you have to be interested, to be passionate. You have to love yourself. And if you love yourself, down the line, you will come to love god. Because god and yourself have had a love affair from beyond the frontiers of time. So love is the key.

And don’t tell me that you cannot love yourself. Don’t serve me this. Don’t argue about the shape of your body, or your insufficient mind. Don’t dive into your story, your failures, your many shortcomings. Don’t blame your circumstances. Be with yourself. That’s all. Be here, now, present with that part of yourself that is untouched by your line of multiple experiences.

The past doesn’t play any part in who you truly are. Neither the future which doesn’t exist at all. Not in the least. Start afresh. Be with what is taking place, all the place, in any experience that you may have. Any experience will do. Don’t be choosy. See that this experience is taking place somewhere, inside a reality. It cannot avoid you. You are always with your experience. Without you, your experience is nothing, has no feet to stand on. See how important you are. The beauty that lies in your being present. That’s the beginning of love.

Don’t think that to love, you have to find the perfect situation, the handsome circumstances. Love is easy to find. It is at every corner of your life, under every stone, every thought, behind even the most tedious moment. In watching yourself passionately, you will come to be drawn to that most charming part of your identity. To that which will never let you down, whatever the conditions you are in. To that which you can only admire, for it withstands every tempest. To that which holds the world in its infinite arms. You will come to love yourself for you will find out that you are a most gorgeous being, which is not the prey of age, limitation, lack, hope, envy, desire for being more, better, different. You will fall for yourself, for everyone, for everything.

Be passionate about who you are — whatever you are. Start wherever you are. Be important. You are significant. You bear weight or consequence, more than you think. You have in yourself the ultimate secret of life. You are interesting, which literally means you ‘are between’, in the middle part, a doorway, halfway between being something, someone, and being the infinite. You hold the key to your own enigma. You stand in the right place. So love yourself. If you do, love will find you. You will find that right here, within your own being, contained in your saying ‘I Am’, is your beloved, the one you were secretly longing for.

Seduce yourself from within. Don’t be sidetracked by your experiences, qualities, thoughts, everything that is the prey of your likes and dislikes. To love is always only about being with the other’s being. So be with yourself. Admire your own home, where you live. Be drawn to your own being. Watch yourself with wonder, like you do for the stars. Be considerate. Stand by yourself. It is all it takes.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Camille Corot (1796-1875)

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Website:
– Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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The Joy of Heaven

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Rocky Bay with Figures’ – J. M. W. Turner, 1830 – WikiArt

There is a special joy in knowing who you are. And there is none like it. A joy that is here no matter what, quietly sitting in the background — you just have to see it. You just have to feel it, a presence which will never let you down. Actually it cannot. It stays with you wherever you go. There are no mistakes for it, nothing that you shouldn’t engage in. It doesn’t mind if you are sad, desperate, lost, furious. It is the best friend you ever had, for it can never leave you. Only it needs to grow, so you can notice it, engage with it, dance with the glory contained within it. You have to leave it the space it deserves, so that it can show you the extent of what you have in your heart. So you have to be still, a little quieter. You have to trust that there is behind everything that entangles you, everything that overwhelms you in experience, a space free from all that you believe yourself to be. A space that is yet your closest, most intimate, truthful self. It will show you that your nature is your friend, and that your identity contains all that you are longing for, which you discover impregnates your very soul and being.

There is a bliss in your being, an otherness in your being aware. Not the happy feeling that is only triggered with the experience that goes your way, with the desired object that you obtain, or with a matched expectation. There is a poignancy to this bliss, for it withstands every turbulence of experience. It is here for your noticing, if you stop identifying yourself with all that stirs and provokes. If you stop being something or someone, sometimes despising, sometimes enjoying your circumstances. You have to be disinterested, and stay with your naked being. You have to keep an eye on what is the deepest, unshakable part of yourself — that unmoved, steady ground. Feel that there is a bliss running behind every activity or experience you engage in. It is not a state of the mind. It is not for the person. You are not a person. You are that which is aware. So only settle for a verb. Make sure that you rejoice, that you delight in simply and only being. This is where bliss lives and thrives in all circumstances.

Bliss is a feline quietly lying in the background, watching over you. If you lose sight of it for a fascination for objects, it will doze off, turn its back on you. But give your whole attention to being solely being, and it will stare at you. You will hear its purr becoming louder and louder. You will feel the gentle breeze of bliss in whatever you do. Imperturbably accompanying every perturbation your body or mind might be the prey of. It is forgiving and compassionate. It is not quite of this world, not in the loud and the foreground. Not in the existing or the flimsy. It is the colour of the solid ground of being. This is why and how it is always here. It is essential, the very essence of what you are. You can snob it, veil it, forget it, but not altogether chase it off. So see yourself as a haven. Feel that you are big and welcoming, not a little thing tossed around. You are a heaven for yourself, the safe harbour for everything that takes place within it. You are a vault. This vault is the bliss of your own being. Some have called this bliss the joy of heaven, to separate it from the mere feeling of happiness that is of the world, dependent on circumstances. Bliss is at the source of what you are. Nothing is before it. It is the nature of everything. It can be seen everywhere, and you are the donor.

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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)

Suggestion:
Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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Love Actually

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Sarbatoarea primaverii’ – Arthur Verona – Wikimedia

Love is the essence of everything, and our very nature. Because we don’t live separate and afar. We are not distant from each other. Nothing is. We have a natural intimacy with everything and everyone. This is not a theory, or a philosophical argument that we posit. This intimacy is our deepest reality, what we are, the property of our natural being, which we can feel, see, experience, but whose evidence has disappeared from our eyes. The reason is, we have preferred a theory to the reality, an illusion to the truth. Our life has stopped being natural. We have been faking it, living it according to beliefs, habits, conformity. But here, blatant in and as our very being, is a reality in which there is no time or place, no distance or separation, no otherness. And as we all know from experience, love is the abolition of time, of distance. Love is the end of separation, of otherness.

Love, which we may call beauty, for everything that we love is beautiful. Love, which we may call understanding, for to see love as the essence of life is the ultimate form of understanding. Love is to ‘stand in the midst of’. It is to stand with everything that is under, everything that is existing in our reality. It is to be connected, to be together with, to be of the same essence. So love is an expression of oneness, of our nature as the one and only reality there is. In the absence of separation — which is truth — we find love. In the absence of otherness — which is our reality — we find intimacy. We make love every time we are aware of our reality as only being. We manufacture love when time is discovered to be an idea, and separation a belief. To be in love is to realise our nature as being one with everything and everyone. It is to be unable to part with anything. It is humility at work. It is where division is only possible in a figment of our imagination. It is to be with what is, with no pulsion of escape or resistance. Love is both in the ache of separation and in the desire to be reunited. All seeking is done in the name of love.

To love is to stand in the midst of, to see no separation between an ‘I’ and a ‘he’ or a ‘she or a ‘it’. The more we stand as the quality of being aware, as that which knows all things, the more we have love as our daily companion. It is extraordinary that we can feel to be a body and a mind, when there is before these, in the subjective, the vast and unmissable expanse of that which is aware of them, which we have pushed away as a mere function of that body-mind. The body is something that we are aware of. We are not in the body. We are in the ‘aware of’. This being aware is our home, where we live, where we have our life. This is our placeless place. That which we cannot not be in. That which we cannot part from — our most intimate, unchanging identity. To be that knowingly, to live as that, is to love naturally and unconditionally. Every time we notice that there is a reality, a consciousness, a knowing presence before our body, thoughts, feelings, experience, world, then love appears to be the very material we and the world are made of. The first and last brick of our house. Our everything.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Arthur Verona (1868-1946)

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Website:
– Arthur Verona

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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A Living Thing

Posted on by Alain Joly

The emphasis that Krishnamurti places here on space and silence is very important in my view. Space and silence are what connects us to everything, and gives us a sense of intimacy. To not be confined in the borders of our mind, but be aware that we live in a place of expansion and no borders. To not be limited by what thought tells us, but to touch that deep silence that is our reality deep down, and where everything takes place and has its birth and death. Unless we make space and silence our home, we won’t know what being alive truly means. Mind is not just function. It is the whole thing. It is life itself…

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“If your mind has space,
then in that space there is silence —
and from that silence everything else comes,
for then you can listen,
you can pay attention without resistance.

That is why it is very important
to have space in the mind.
If the mind is not overcrowded,
not ceaselessly occupied,
then it can listen to that dog barking,
to the sound of a train crossing the distant bridge,
and also be fully aware of what is being said by a person talking here.
Then the mind is a living thing, it is not dead.

~ J. Krishnamurti (‘Think on These Things’, ch.18)

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Quote by J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986)

Photo and introductory text by Alain Joly

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Bibliography :
– ‘Think on these Things’ – by J. Krishnamurti – (HarperOne)

Website:
– Jiddu Krishnamurti (Wikipedia)

Suggestions:
– Beauty in Essence (other pointers from the blog)
– A Day at Brockwood Park (Homage to J. Krishnamurti)

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