‘Come to Me’

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘Norham Castle, Sunrise’ – J.M.W. Turner, 1845 – WikiArt

Sometimes you’re left with just three words. I read them under a statue of Christ in a cathedral, three simple words from the Gospel of Matthew, but a whole teaching if you listen. “Come to Me”. There is immense simplicity and clarity in these three words. They have a vertiginous meaning, if you follow the course of their true destination. If you accept the invitation. Not from a somebody, a person that existed. Not from a God, or a Son of God. Not from anything in particular, any objective presence which you could go to. The invitation is from yourself to yourself. In fact, ‘Come to Me’ is better read as ‘Come to the me’. Go to the ‘I’. Abide in what you are, be that presence of yourself. Be just as you are — don’t add a thing to yourself, don’t play the game of projection or belief. Don’t give yourself to somebody or something that is not you. Stay right there, right in what you already are, just as you already are. But still, there is a movement implied — a solicitation, a passage from place to placeless place. It says ‘Come to Me’ for a reason. In that paradoxe is contained the totality of our spiritual endeavour.

It is not a place you have to go to, but rather the noticing of the place you are in. The beholding of your true nature. What is this ‘I’ that we stumble on every time we say ‘I’? What is this being conscious, this being aware that I am? Did we look well enough? Did we miss something that we have to come to it, take a new invitation, be encouraged? See that you have made your ‘I’ into an assumption, a pretence, an affectation, something not worth a visit, not worth a discovery or an enquiry. In fact, we have been asked to function and obey, which means to follow. The rest has been wisely swept under the carpet of belief or religion. As if we had already discovered everything about what we are. As if consciousness wasn’t worth a second look. As if from then on, for our nature, we had to rely only on imagination, belief, things fancy, whimsical, hopeful, devoid of reality. Reality has been covered — so we think. There is no new land here, no new discovery or journey within, nothing that hasn’t already been charted.

But there is a coming that is subtle to the point of not implying time or place. A coming that cannot be measured by instruments, that cannot be objectified, seen by the senses. There is a coming where we already are, but with a new light shed on it. A light that we have missed for directing it all on objects, with the complicity of the senses. So the light of what we truly are was lost in its being misdirected. Our true nature was lost in our belief in being a body, a self, a person. Our purity of being was hidden inside our fascination for qualifications and objects. Our happiness was lost in our suffering. Our peace squandered by our restless seeking. So there is a journey within. A journey with no distance to be covered. A coming to where we already are. A coming or moving into view. A becoming perceptible. A coming back to ourself.

‘Come to me’. You may discover that you have God within. That this is what the God of religion is — what they meant — the ‘I’ within, your true being. Come back to yourself. Become perceptible. Come into view. Know yourself as you are. Come into the light which you are already in. See that you are, and who you are. Abide in the purity of plainly being. Be yourself for the first time. Be ‘I Am’ alone. ‘Come to me’.

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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 ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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The Chamber Within

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘Woman at the piano’ (detail) – Théodule Ribot – Wikimedia

You have your own little chamber at hand, where you can retire. It is called yourself. A place which has no place to be, and is in fact your own being — what you are, where the totality of yourself is, and which gives you the space to live and act. It is a chamber without a door, without an in or an out, but where you can only be in or be out. You are out of your secret, intimate chamber when you have all your focus on the outside, which means on all the things which you are not, but appropriate as if they were an identity to you. That includes your thoughts which you cherish as being your own production, the outspoken part of yourself, but are in reality strangers that pay you a visit. That includes your perceptions which you take to be a window on the reality of the world, but are in reality facets of your own being, where your whole experience has its home and its refuge. That includes your sense of being a self separate from experience, with a thousand attributes, when of a self you have only empty being, and of attributes only the one attribute of being you, which is ‘I Am’ without an attribute.

You are in your own intimate chamber when you are aware of being. It is a chamber without walls, for it expands beyond anything that you have so far known or been aware of as objects. You are in your chamber when you have no other quality than the quality of being, and when you feel the world you live in to be but your own, shared infinite being. You are in when you have a view on the reality of yourself as being, before you have one on the ten thousand non-existent things of experience. You are in when you have not an object as your subject, which means not a body-mind as an identity. This chamber has nothing secret about it, for it is anywhere you can possibly be. It is openly yourself, though you may hide from it in an infinite number of ways. Your making it a chamber is when you are out of it, and need to go within to find it, in your being which you yourself have made a secret of — something hidden. When you are in it, well then you have no chamber to be in, for the chamber has been discovered to be plainly you, the ‘I’ that you truly and only are, which you find to be neither in nor out.

So your chamber is both within and without, both secret and revealed. You are always abiding in it and as it, though your thoughts and perceptions may have convinced you out of it. So the threshold between being in or out of your intimate chamber of being is wherever you happen to be. You are always on the threshold of being either a suffering, separate, invented entity, or the spacious, unmoved expanse of infinite being. You are always on the brink of yourself, which is you either notice that you are already within that inmost chamber of being, or you ignore, disregard, pay no heed to it. The difference between the two is in the width of a thin hair. You are always on the verge of knowing your identity as being, or of staying behind, in your thoughts, dancing with a belief, being what you are not. There is an edge at any place or moment you are in. A precipice of knowing. You either choose to cling to your living in the limitations of time and space, or free fall where only the infinite and eternal is your reality. The difference between the two is as subtle as the coming of dawn. It is the realisation — the making real — that you have been your chamber of being all along.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Théodule Ribot (1823-1891)

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Website:
– Théodule Ribot (Wikipedia)

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

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A Study of Mind

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘Landscape with Two Oaks’ – Jan van Goyen, 1641 – WikiArt

Notice that your mind is inapt at staying still. Stillness is not its thing. It has always something to think about. It is always on the road, roaming, judging, comparing, evaluating. Mind you, it is its nature to do so, if you let it. The mind is a restless thing. But its restlessness has a virtue. It pushes you beyond it. It encourages you to go deeper, where stillness is your nature. Where there is quiet. Something abiding. A stability.

Go not to the mind, but to the presence that supports it. Be like the gentle arms that hold it. Notice that your mind is not alone. It needs a space for its functioning. Sink in the mind’s left vacant space. Go in the interstices, between your many thoughts, inside your overwhelming feelings. Attain to the very substance your mind is made of. Be like its gorgeous essence. Not the mind itself, but the depth of being within it.

The mind deals only with the superficies. It is changing its mind at the slightest disturbance. With the latest flip of an opinion. Don’t follow its many thoughts. They will convince you that you are a self separate from experience. They will tell you that you are lonely. They will make you a suffering entity, though there is none. Go to the bottom of your being. Where the mind is only an appearance. See that you don’t disappear. You can’t.

The mind is ever changing, not you. It has an idea in mind. Forever keeping an agenda, being interested in outcomes, seeking experiences — only happy ones. You have happiness enmeshed within your own being, as the nature of your own gorgeous self. You don’t need to manufacture one, to provoke it with circumstances. Go so deep within the mind that you cease to be involved with its productions. This is called peace.

Stay with your imperturbable essence. It will show you that you are married to the world. The mind believes in the many, in division, in separation. But it is its own invention that it passes on to you as the only reality. Reality is where the mind is only a puppet. Reality is when you are one. It is beyond even your sense perceptions. They have colluded with the mind in making you believe in separation. Reality is aware presence. The mind is not.

Now be careful. For the mind has appropriated the ‘I’. It too says ‘I Am’. But the mind is not ‘I’. It is not your real self. The mind is pretending to be you. It does it all the time. So often that you have come to believe a bundle of thoughts and feelings to be ‘I’. But ‘I’ goes deeper. It doesn’t live in such a shallow land. ‘I’ belongs to the ground, to your innermost being, to that part of yourself that is unmovable. Where there is no past or future. No other, beyond, or away.

So if you happen to meet the mind one day, and be entangled in its mesh, or if you have adopted it as your everyday identity, don’t stay there. Move away. Be bold. See that all that comes here with a beginning and an end, with a limitation, has very little to do with you. See that as you deepen in and as being, your mind will slow down, and acquire a strange transparency. Your thoughts and feelings may even appear to be clothed in the infinite.

Your mind now seems to be no mind at all, and is in no capacity to bring separation. It stops being a brigand, and becomes a precious ally. Thoughts may be used wisely, and feelings are seen as a reflection of love and its indispensable joy. Essence acquires a new meaning, as it pervades the world and every experience that comes your way. Your body is experienced as made of Mind, and Mind as your new body. Spirit is where you live. It is without end.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Jan Van Goyen (1596-1656)

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Website:
– Jan Van Goyen (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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Our Only Chance

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘A Windmill at Montmartre’ – Camille Corot, 1845 – WikiArt

I wonder if our life is not just spent in avoiding dying. If this is not where all our energy goes: in being a self, in assuming to be a body, a mind, and managing all the challenges that go with having to live that body-oriented life. If we are not applying the best of our mind in controlling our thoughts and feelings, and pretending that we know what we’re doing, and do what we’re choosing, and choose what we’re wanting. We spend our life pretending. But we secretly ache in our heart for knowing nothing of what we are, except for one thing: we want to be, to feel, to know. For we sense that we are not quite living. It doesn’t feel that this is life — what we are going through. It doesn’t feel that this is the end game, to be a person that suffers, seeks security, and dies miserably in due time. It doesn’t feel right. It is not a good situation. Not what we expected from being a human. There has to be more than that.

So we’re seeking, working, slaving at meeting our own expected greatness. We’re toiling at knowing, at being a self that we carry through place and time. We don’t want to die, to let go. We don’t trust that we have it, already know it, be it — the greatness that we seek, the happy living we’re chasing. We’ve got to be a person first, efforting through life. We cannot already be our own dream. We cannot imagine that the purpose of life is in being, which we already are to perfection. We cannot envisage that effort is not our path, and that living is not a thing that we have to work at. We cannot understand that our simply being is already bathing in the peace that we so relentlessly seek to acquire and secure. We cannot be convinced that our joy needs no other circumstance than the simple circumstance of knowing our own being.

So we won’t let go. We need to keep control. We don’t want to just be, which seems like a form of death. We don’t fancy dying. We think that our solace, our happiness, lies only in being a person. The fact that it never worked, that it was never implemented in life, is only accidental. It’s only a matter of time, circumstance, achievement, politics. Being doesn’t feel like a program. Dying to our own separate self is not the dream we expected. We cannot be dying. We’ve got to be a person. We’ve got to toil for our life. We’ve got to deserve being happy, secure, peaceful. Even if we end up missing our own salvation, our own dream, our very own given, gorgeous nature.

For we were given a very simple work to do. An easy realisation. The realisation that any addition to being — being a self, a person, a qualification, otherness, separation, the whole enchilada — is but an avoidance. It is not real, not in the way we think it is. It is but an illusion that we have created for ourself. Our solace is in dying. It is to stop being that which we are not and never will be. To stop manufacturing an entity where there is only seamless aware being. We don’t need to be grandiose. It is all here, in the simple looking at our own being — in going within. It couldn’t be more easy, if only we would accept to slow down, and die to our being a person. If only we could feel all that is hiding here, in our very act of being — this infinity that is the totality of our identity and the greatness of our humanity. There is no being anything, or anyone. Being alone is, and suffices. This is our only chance to know who we are. To be truly being, knowing, feeling. And paradoxically, to be at last the ‘something’, the ‘someone’, that we have always wanted to be.

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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:
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The Person

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘Self-Portrait with Dishevelled Hair’ – Rembrandt, 1628 (Rijksmuseum) – Wikimedia

There is immense pleasure in being a person when we are not a person. Then, the body-mind, the person, is not a burden anymore, it is a companion. We begin to enjoy its gentle presence, for it is rid of the constant search for happiness, peace, freedom. It is not on him anymore. She doesn’t have to bring about her joy. Doesn’t have to condition her freedom to her circumstances. The person is delivered. It doesn’t have to resist and be a fighter. Doesn’t have to struggle, suffer, hope, be in the constant grip of personal achievement and success. He can stop being a seeker, endlessly looking for what could make him good, content, relieved. She can stop having peace on her everyday agenda. These are given — naturally — as our nature, as ourself. They stop being the work of a person, his everyday load that he has to achieve, perform, be a success at — all the tyranny of it.

There is a presence that we feel is our own, our identity, that already gives us everything that we as a person would spend a lifetime looking for, and would for certain — that’s a universal secret, believe me on that — fail to secure. We already have a wonderful, pristine self in the form of our naked, unconditioned being, so the person doesn’t have to create a non existent self for itself. It doesn’t need to have this belief, that it is a self, that it is separate, that it lives inside a body and a mind. Self and identity are already provided. We share them with everyone and everything. We don’t have to be lonely. Don’t have to be limited by a form, and imprisoned by the boundaries of birth and death. Appearance and age stop being an issue. Comparison dies down. We expand as limitless being, outside even the boundaries of time. The body-mind acquires transparency.

Then we take him or her by the hand — the form, the limited body-mind, the person. Then it is like our best friend, freed from everything that made it small, separate, fearful. Then our body, although limited, will acquire and ride on the infinite nature of its beholder. Then our mind, which is bound by the boundaries of time and thought, will wander on the grounds of the eternal, where our being has its permanent home. Then our personhood shines, precisely because we are not a person. We become beautiful, attractive, and our actions bear the signature of the infinite. Then, being a person is important. And it is not a hindrance to our recognising who we are. On the contrary. The person becomes an emissary of truth, both within and without.

Then ‘what is’ is what we desire, and we don’t mind our circumstances. They satisfy us. We are free. We can be a person and find it a beauty to be so. The person is only here to pass on the impersonal desire of the infinite. It is here for God’s will, which is to be and act on God’s premises, in Its gorgeous name. Not to have a private agenda, in the name of the endless insecurities of a nonexistent, separate self. Not to be burdened by life, but to be the messenger of its secret glory. Then, she as a person is clothed in the dress of a delightful being, shining with an identity that she borrows from God’s identity, and partaking of a self that is the very self of universal being. Then he doesn’t find his person to have an existence separate from his not being a person. Person, no person, being, consciousness, God, life, existence — all one same infinite thing and being. And the person, against all odds, thrives in it.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Rembrandt (1606-1669)

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Website:
– Rembrandt (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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God’s Alliance

Posted on by Alain Joly

God is not a romantic. He wants the best for you, and will make sure that you have no peace until you know yourself exactly as you are, which is as He is. God is a tough mother. She will lead you to feel that you come from her very womb, and that you have within yourself the memory that you are as She is, which is infinite and eternal. God has no idea that you exist as a person. He knows none of your ideas or beliefs, none of your attachments or suffering. Your problems are of no interest to Her. If you want God to know you, make sure that you go to that part of yourself that is without qualifications, that is like your naked essence — what gives you the consciousness of everything. Make sure that you become just as Her being, and that you share of Her divine characteristics. Then God will know you as surely as He knows Himself. And you will know God as firmly as you know yourself. But don’t play the part of the poor little me. For you won’t see a single tear on the face of god, and will attract no compassion from Him. God knows you the moment you know God. That’s the beauty and magic of Her infinite presence.

Partake of the same ground of being that is God’s being, and you will come to love everyone in the way She loves you. Share the being of God Himself and you will bathe in the peace that God knows, and that is your own peace too. Know your being as being God’s being, and you will experience the joy that comes from the ease of simply being. The only way God can know you is through that part of yourself that is of the nature of His being. And the only way you can see God is by seeing yourself in the way He sees Himself. There is no knowing God through relationship. He is knowable through sameness only. Oneness is the common home that we all share. Everything and everyone partake of the same ground of being, and find their identity in God’s identity. This alliance of God with the ten thousand beings and things of existence is one of supreme intimacy. Once this intimacy with God has been established in your life, you will come to know God as you know yourself, and to know everything and everyone as God’s intimate being. Her interior as to say. His loving heart.

And God is a lover of the strictest reality. The idea that you have of yourself can never know God. And God can never know the belief that you have formed about yourself. They are mutually exclusive. If you want to be a person of your own, away from God, then God will retire and become absent from your life although still holding you in the most humble and loving way. The person that you believe yourself to be has no reality and cannot share of God’s reality. This is why you suffer, and know the plight of loneliness and separation. Give the idea of yourself up, and you will find yourself as having the self of God Himself. This is God’s special bond with you, to know you through His very being, which is your being too. This alliance with God suffers no approximation. Be of God’s humble nature, and She will share with you Her blissful being, offering Her infinite body as the world you live in and mix your being with. But be with your own limited, separate self, and God will know nothing of you, and you nothing of Him. You will be just a passing cloud with no reality, absent from even the most insignificant thought of God.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Suggestion:
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The Resurrection

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘The Resurrection’ – Piero della Francesca, 1460 – WikiArt

There is a sleeping involved in our present living. It doesn’t seem to be so, but experience has become so habitual that it has put us in a sort of slumber, in a lethargy, so that we never feel what we are as we are. We live according to an idea, to a belief, and this idea of ourself is limiting us at every moment. It is hiding our own true, essential being in plain sight. And in this sleeping, in this ignorance of our own nature is contained all our suffering, all our many lacks, and the never ending conflicts that our life seems to harbour day after day.

Yet in our slumber is a reality that is only asking to rise to our noticing and to our knowing. It wants to resurrect. It longs to rise again. To show up after having been forgotten. It was never far — an already formed reality that we only need to remember, to re-form in its original and never diminished splendour. We have forgotten it because we overlooked that our self has been consistently made up over the years. We are the result of a long standing habit or belief. We have formed a belief of ourself, of who we are, unwaveringly, unceasingly, experience after experience, and then have forgotten that we ever did that.

We still believe to be pure, virgin, real, when we have in fact already pre-fabricated ourself, and have been soiled by experience. When the awareness of our being has been mixed, degraded, corrupted by the overwhelming presence of our senses, and by the many prints and traumas they have left in their wake. We have lost the freshness of our being to venture into time and space. We have lost our infinity for believing to be an entity, a person with personal qualities, fragilities and idiosyncrasies.

But notice that you are an already risen reality. That we have been raised eternally above the limitations of our body and mind, and have received the gift of our living in the peace of our spaceless being. We are a fully awake and never ending being, rising above all existing objects, entities, experiences. We are a being unmoved, that gives its indestructible reality for the possibility of time and place, of birth, movement, and death, but being itself unborn, immobile, and immortal.

The resurrection is the moment when we rise again, not as a body after its death, not as a mind after its dissolution, but as the unlimited nature which we are now the sons and daughters of — the undivided being that we are the being of. Our resurrection is the simple noticing of this true nature of ourself, that rises not because it was diminished or laid on the ground, but because it is eternally risen in and as our glorious being, were it not for our looking in the wrong direction, towards the only blind spot where it disappeared for a time from the slumber of our mournful gaze.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Piero della Francesca (1415-1492)

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Websites:
– Piero della Francesca (Wikipedia)
– The Resurrection (Painting) (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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