A History of Veiling

“Your life 
between so-called birth 
and death 
does not exist.“ 
~ Robert Adams

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Why was I never told? To all appearances, there is no world out there. The world is empty. With no real substance. Well a substance is at work. One with the most beautiful, exquisite shine. That explains the beauty. But look for solidity around you and you won’t find it. Look for something that exists of its own accord and you will grasp nothing but thin ether. So don’t believe what the mind tells you. Or you would send a bigger reality at bay, in the hidden. 

Yet nothing ever passes unseen. Not a thing. A thought, a feeling, a sound, a vision. They’re all being witnessed, known. They’ve all been soaked with light — their presence revealed. They have only been hidden from me, whatever ‘me’ is. A sound in the distance is left unnoticed for I was lost in thoughts, not present. I chose to be identified with only a small part of my total experience. I was busy, had an agenda with some words running in my head and oups!… There is that bird’s exquisite song that disappeared in the nimbus of my confused mind. 

Why was I never told? To all appearances, nothing really happened. My life is an empty thing. And yet I went through so many experiences, through so much. I sought and fought. I failed and rose. I succeeded and stumbled. I cried and rejoiced. I have acquired, built, chosen, improved. I have been good. I have been bad. I’ve had a thousand experiences. I have become. Become what? What have I done really? Did anything happen at all? I can’t really get hold of it. Was it all a dream with little consistence? Who am I really?

Is it that my life lacked choicelessness, that I was too involved, always eager to take side, have preferences? Is it that I have constantly been veiling some parts of my total experience with some other parts? Please see this. We’re only experiencing bits and pieces. Each veiling the other for we are attracted or entranced by the portion of our experience that threatens us, worries us, excites us. Which in turn becomes our story. At the expense of so many other experiences that will never take shape, acquire importance or meaning. We are sidetracked. Our life becomes a burial ground. Our choices dictate, smother, veil. We’re lost in a dream.

Why was I never told? There is no world. No real story of me. There is experience though. There is a reality at work. Something is constantly dancing in the field of my experience. But look carefully, deeply through it, and you will encounter a stillness, a silence, a deep, unmoved presence. Everything that seems to exist or happen are only ripples that bear little reality or substance compared with the totality of experience. Again, we’ve been veiling a part of our experience with another. But what is tragic here is that we are not just veiling a part. We are veiling the totality with an idea, a suitable belief. We are bargaining, exchanging our true identity and nature for a false and illusory one. We choose to have a world, a story, and deny for it the shining presence of god. We choose our thoughts over eternity, our little corner of experience over infinity, our confused attachments over freedom, our limited understanding over intelligence, and our preferences over unconditional love.

The good news is that we don’t have to stick to the false. We are free. No mistakes were ever made. No confusion ever overwhelmed us. No shame or guilt or any other believed stain on our identity were ever present. We can choose to look through and see that we are of all eternity spotless, innocent, unlimited. Nothing was damaged, fixed in the stone of our erroneous beliefs and identity. Our cast is not there, has not been moulded and never will be. We are un-made, for all that seemingly unfolded in our lives had no more reality than a dream in the mind of the dreamer. The dreamer only matters. The dream is easily left aside and forgotten. Is it not good news? Nothing is forever lost. Nothing has been so densely shaped and fixed that cannot be undone. No story ever fixed itself in a world that should bear the punishment of a thousand lives of suffering. No matter how the waves have raged and formed, they have done so in the depth and stillness of an ocean of unfathomable peace. What wave could veil an ocean? What self in a world could veil the infinite presence and boundless love of the infinite?

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Bibliography:
– ‘Silence of the Heart’ – by Robert Adams – (Infinity Institute)

Website:
– Robert Adams (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other short texts and divagations from the blog at Reveries into Oneness

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