The Adventure of Thought

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Head with Flowers’ (part) – Odilon Redon, 1907 – WikiArt

Thoughts are a strange thing. For they seem to be both indelibly ours and strangers passing in our sky. We have an ambivalent relationship to them. Sometimes they are part of us like a lover can be, so intricately woven to our being that they seem to have been sculpted out of our very essence. On other occasions, we see them from afar, unwanted, a despicable thing that we judge unworthy — thieves that have come to set us on a wrong course, rendering us unrecognisable to ourself. We have a love-hate relationship to our thoughts. We love the ones we judge to be good and worship them, befriend them, glorify them, and hate the ones that come to upset us, the bad ones that we refuse to endorse, or have a responsibility for. The ones that we leave scared and alone, ready to multiply and threaten our very being. They are like the obeying soldiers of our wounded self, the dark agents of our fears and of our rancour.

Thoughts end up being prey to our likes and dislikes, treated like objects are, judged as being often disloyal, incompetent, insufficient. We seem to be separated from them, to have little to do with them. But thoughts have been supremely important to us. In a way, they have created us, through our identifying with them. They have formed the limits of our self as a separate entity. In fact, thoughts are thinking us. We are the prey to their conditioned making, and are at the mercy of their limited expression. So we are most of the time reduced to being ourself a thought, a thought thinking itself out, and believing that it is representing nothing less but what we are at the core. Yet we are truly far from the mark. Thoughts have deluded us, have drifted from their being a simple tool to stealing our very identity by faking the appearance of a self separated from its thoughts, when that self is in fact just a magnified, engrossed, elaborated thought that bears no resemblance to what we truly are. Thoughts thrive on confusion, they flourish and fatten on the prosperous soil of ignorance.

But try to go beyond thoughts, to pass them by, to ignore them as being unimportant and move on, deeper, towards the very centre of your self. Notice the sense of being that is here before them, and that hosts them in last analysis. Touch the silence behind thought. Embrace who you are before you associate with things. Go to the place where no identification is possible, where you are free from conceptualisation, where thoughts have become unrelated to yourself, lost entities that have no relationship whatsoever to your truest being. You will begin to disconnect thoughts from yourself, to render them innocuous, and stop looking to them for your security or identity. You will discover a way of living where thoughts are scarce and rarify. You will have no room for thoughts. You will have disencumbered yourself, and will stop being blind to what is. For you will notice that your being extends to all possible things, and all times and places. It is a presence so unified that thoughts are being gradually expelled from your deepest being by losing their unifying justification. They become redundant to your self. They become what they should never have ceased being: a wonderful tool at the service of unity, a practical thing that is but the expression of the one. You will have stripped them of their being an impostor. That’s how you stop being a thought. Because you don’t need one to be yourself.

.

~~~

Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Odilon Redon (1840-1916)

~~~

.

Website:
– Odilon Redon (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

.

The Fall

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Storm Clouds Sunset’ – J.M.W. Turner, 1825 – WikiArt

What a strange thing to have believed that we are not enough just as we are. That we need to be something other than this very sweet being or presence that makes us whole in a superb manner. Well, there must have been a belief that got in the way, that separated us from this plain and natural contemplation of our self. We must have come across a division, must have lost the thread, fallen down somehow, sometime, from this inner, blatant clarity. Where did the fall take place? How did we come to lose that which makes our very being, and can therefore never be lost, unless we were to disappear into oblivion? Was it just a simple belief, a little thought that did that? That made us think that we had to start from scratch, from a position of being flawed, insufficient, and that we had to do it all ourself: to succeed or fail, achieve even our happiness or our miserableness? That there was no given in being ourself? That we were small, incompetent in just living contented and blessed?

In fact, we have spoiled the game. We started with the wrong move. We have introduced a defect, a grain of sand that jammed the whole machine. That is: we have made ‘I am’ into ‘I am this’, have blemished being by objectifying it, have introduced a new entity where there was no need for one. I suppose we just wanted to do well, to bring our own contribution, presupposing that something was lacking when all was already perfectly whole and harmonious. So the first thing now is to stay away, to not indulge in being anything, to stop characterising our self when it is already fully characterised by itself, full to the brim with its own being, in no capacity of being more or better than what it is. How would you embellish splendour? How would you add anything to the sublime? Try it and it is but a fall from heaven to hell, from the inherent happiness contained in being complete to the suffering induced by separation and lack. So stop thinking that you can bring anything to yourself. Leave your ambition to be perfected, arranged, aggrandised. Notice that the simple fact of being cannot be improved on. You will never do better than God. Leave your self as pristine as you found it when you first breathed into its transparency.

.

~~~

Text by Alain Joly

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

~~~

.

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

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

.

A Gathering of Friends

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Meal of Holy Communion’ (Agape) – Unknown author, 2nd to 4th AD – Wikimedia

There’s been a gathering of friends lately. All gooey with being. It took place somewhere, in a place unknown, unlocated, kept somehow secret, where they all came to share wildly, and taste of a love supreme. You may want to know that place, to locate it, to find it as being somewhere where you can go and share some of that exquisiteness too. Well, now you have to think twice. For as the dictionary says, unlocated means ‘not surveyed or designated by marks, limits, or boundaries’. It is a place of no location. A place that has no geographical situation other than being here. A place that you cannot find within any noticeable limits but that englobes every known location. That place which you cannot find or reach, which has no known address, and which is kept secret behind the usual, well-trodden frontiers of your everyday experience, is yourself. Not your usual self, which you are well acquainted with. That one you have to be cautious of, or even warned against. No. Not that one. There is more to yourself. There is more than this located entity, with marks, limits, and boundaries. More than where your thoughts and beliefs have placed you in. There is a place in yourself that is not a place, that finds itself in no well-marked location, but that you could never not be in. Would you want to go there, that you would have to notice first that you are already in, already placed at the seat of honour, already warmed by its blazing hearth. This only is the heartfelt, spaceless, timeless location for all gatherings of friends. This is the land of your supreme heart, that you share with all living beings under the sky. There you have lived of all eternity without your knowing it. There you cannot go but only be. This is the event you are already signed in for, a retreat where you share the secret address of your deepest being with other fellow friends, and lit a bonfire of love. It may be a gathering of one or a hundred, in company of the wise or the ignorant, with the lighting of a sumptuous blaze or many a scattered sparkle or glitter, it doesn’t matter — there’s been a gathering of friends here and you as being were its gorgeous venue.

.

~~~

Text by Alain Joly

Fresco of Agape by Unknown Author (2nd to 4th AD)
(from Greek chapel, Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome)

~~~

.

Websites:
– Catacomb of Priscilla (Wikipedia)
– Agape (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

.

Being’s Glorious Life

Posted on by Alain Joly

There is no being inside you. Being is a presence that knows no inside and no outside, unless the inside is outside, and the outside inside. What a strange thing to have believed that there is a space inside us that could accommodate being. It would make ‘being’ just a wee sensation, maybe located in our chest, side by side with the pressure experienced at the moment of anxiety, or any other kind of sensation. We would have being like a thing that we possess in our body, a feeling that belongs to ‘me’, that would be one just for me, cherished as being me and only me, and to which I would attach all the things that I believe belong to me — like my qualities, my thoughts, my experiences and failures, and that sticky, stubborn feeling of suffering. And that’s how being gets lost: because of these many other grandiose feelings and sensations in ourself, that bring much excitement, when being is so discreet, so unassuming, doesn’t want to show off, and gets forgotten. Really—we think—there is not much to it.

But being has resources. For being is not only being. It is not just that I am. I also feel that, know that — that I am. Being has the capacity to know, to be aware. So it extends itself to all things. It has no frontiers, doesn’t like to be located, doesn’t fancy being imprisoned inside something, anything, be it a body. Being is adventurous. It likes to go for an outing, and experience its intimacy with all things that can be seen, touched, heard, and multiplied to constitute a world. So being creates the world by being aware of it. Being is the architect of everything, for without its patient knowing and nourishing, nothing would be in capacity to exist. I don’t like to say so, for you won’t fancy that, but you are superfluous to being — I mean you as your body, your thoughts, qualities, excitements, failures, sufferings, all the mountain you have accumulated, all that: just a small, secondary, inessential, barely noticeable expression of being. Being has stolen the show long ago, and you haven’t yet noticed it: That your body is just an interface between being and being. That what seems to be inside you is in fact just as much outside you. That what seems to be outside you is in fact just as much inside you. That your wee sense of being is all there is, and all that you are, of all infinity and of all eternity. That being’s glorious life is what love is, and where it lives. That being is one for all. And that there is no else or besides it.

.

~~~

Text and photo by Alain Joly

~~~

.

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

.

The Unknowable

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘I don’t know anything about myself’. That’s where to be in life — in this position of not knowing. We are always piling up informations about ourself. We are so eager to. That’s our money. Knowledge is our currency. But see what knowledge has done to us. This constant knowing that I am this, and I am that. This knowledge hurts us, brings shame on us, or regrets, judgement, suffering, hope, belief — it fills us with what we are not. I understand that you so want to fill yourself up, that you fear being nothing. But try it. Try it once — to not know anything about yourself, which is a position of truth. You can know about anything in life, but see that you can never know yourself as an object. If you know something — anything — about yourself, this thing is in fact what you are not.

Therefore know that what you are has to be kept thoroughly empty. Believe me. Don’t fill it up ever. Yourself must be left unknown, pristine. This is from where you can fully watch and listen, from where you may invite anything and anybody in: In yourself — which is not yourself — and which you cannot know. I know, you have been told on other occasions, to know yourself. But they in fact meant: Know yourself as that which is spotless, innocent, untouchable, and absolutely unknowable. Keep it that way. Don’t crowd it with ideas or beliefs. Don’t think that you know it. You can’t. Keep yourself virgin of knowledge, and invite anything or anybody you meet along the way in that place of emptiness, in that clean spot of sacredness. That’s the place to be in, the place which you borrow from God’s being and which you can never know. This is the place of no suffering, of no shame or regrets, of no hope, and of no thing to battle with. This is what happens when you don’t know yourself: you don’t judge, you have no contempt — for you know that the other is as yourself, unknowable.

That’s the beauty of it, that I cannot know anything about myself. I remain free — free of accumulation, free of being something. Therefore open, available, fearless, which means peaceful and contented. But it is not something you should do or stop doing. Just notice it, that you yourself is the only thing in the picture which you cannot know, that you yourself is the unknowable element of your living experience, the one thing that you cannot touch in any way. Anything that you may do about yourself will be a corrupting factor. For what you are doesn’t need to be changed or improved. In fact you cannot, so you might as well not start in the first place. Stay away. Keep your deepest self or being as that unknowable portion of yourself. Leave it as it is: uncorrupted and incorruptible. Experience the space and freedom that you acquire as you take your stand as that deeply cherished and unknowable self. Be unknown to yourself.

.

~~~

Text by Alain Joly

Photo by Elsebet Barner

~~~

.

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

.

Finding Relationship

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Hazy Relationship’ – Rinaldo Wurglitsch – Wikimedia

If you think you are having a relationship with another, you’re telling yourself a story. Literally. For this is what ‘relationship’ truly means: ‘to recount’, ’to relate’, ‘to refer’. More precisely, it means that something has been ‘brought back’, or ‘carried back’. So relationship is not an innocuous word. It expresses something fundamental, that for our relationships to be, we have to conjure up the past, or some kind of knowledge. We have to refer to something, to bring back some old memories, some kind of object or image. We have to bring the past into the now. And this is what we have done so far, to attach our relationships to some kind of reference to the past. We have learnt that we cannot be related to another outside the field of memory or images, without making concepts, without burying our relationships into the impasse of storytelling. But in fact, real relationship only takes place when we stop relating anything to another person or object. It is the moment when you are emptying yourself and the apparent other from the past or the future, which is from knowledge.

Relationship as we know it is a process that involves separation. It is an interplay between two entities that have been brought about, fabricated, their reality made into selves out of fear, habit, convenience, or ignorance. These objective, illusory selves are so brittle that they are incapable of making true connection. They are like empty shells with no real substance. The only possible connection between human beings is love. Just think about it for a moment. Why do we hug anybody? Is it because we acknowledge the powerlessness of words and rather mimic our deep connection through the use of body language and silence? How do you convey what cannot be conveyed? What can you do when words come short, other than fall into silence and cancel the space or division between you and another? This annihilation is the act of love itself. It is the acknowledgement of being or ‘isness’ as the only possible connection. It is the truth of ‘what is’ when all conceptualisation has come to an end, when memory has been brought to its knees.

True relationship is the flowering of consciousness. It is the coming to the foreground of the reality that stands behind all apparently existing things. It is the noticing of the reality that is here amongst beings and things — the ciment behind it all, the nature of everything, the deepest connection there is, before which all other connections pale into insignificance. The irony is that you can only have true relationship with another when you don’t make up a relationship, when you don’t bring in any idea or judgement, when you don’t invite fear or former hurts, or condescendence, or even respect for that matter. You must stay silent, empty of qualifications. You have to be who you truly are, to let the natural relationship of love come to the foreground and act itself out through you, and in spite of you. Let it carry you where you are, at the right place of your pure, innocent self where relationship is not anything you do but what you are as being. It is ‘what is there no matter what between beings’ — be they human or otherwise.

So be watchful of what you bring. For the qualities of the world will depend on the quality of your relationships. That’s how a world is being experienced — through relationships. So don’t start with yourself, with a self, any self, and relate from there, from this position of untruthfulness, of deceitfulness. You’d make an insane world. A world where we use, impose, abuse, misuse, mistreat. That’s how wars are launched, through biased relationships and crooked selves. See how fundamental relationship is, how it can make the world a place where hurt, anger, ignorance are being acted out. Or how it can make the world a place of peace, harmony and love.

.

~~~

Text by Alain Joly

Photo by Rinaldo Wurglitsch

~~~

.

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

.

God’s Favourite Child

Posted on by Alain Joly

You are not alone, not just anybody left in one corner of the world, with no resources. You have been given a world that cannot go wrong, except in your own imagination. So you may relax now, and let yourself be. Just be. You can give it all away, all your worries, all your concerns about a future. Keep only this one reality close to yourself: you are. In that being is contained all that you need. Be only concerned with that, with presence. Feel it to be your nurturing essence, your progenitor. You are God’s favourite child. We all are. We worry and suffer until comes the day when we realise it. Know this filial nature as your only reality, your one solid insurance in life. God is as close to you as your sense of being is. It won’t leave you ever. It has been building a gorgeous house for you to live in. This house is the one you already are in. It is yourself, who you are of all eternity, although you may not have noticed yet. It has soft, silk drapes on the walls. For there is luxury in being yourself. And the only thing that brings you closer to putting an end to your suffering is the knowing of that — the knowing of being — with its inescapability and the soothing comfort contained in it.

There is a special sense of gratefulness that comes with simply being. Have you tried it? To simply be the one which you are. With no supplement needed. No artifice in the least. This very sense of being is God showing to yourself how he cares for you. How much you matter to her. You don’t need to add anything to that. Actually, you shouldn’t: that will make you drop from god’s sweet embrace. So be always under the warm influence of being. Feel that you are it, and that you are in this way as God’s being itself. You will never have to look for an identity outside yourself. For there is only one drama currently running in this world. It is that they made you think that God is far and away. An impossible task while it is in fact the nearest, most accessible thing there is in your life. One that needs only a little attention. The attention of being. The curling up in the warm blanket of your self. Just that. Simple and easy. The only thing you do not have to reach. God gave you the favour to only be. So stay acquainted with it. Do it justice. Return the favour. Be only being. That’s how God can recognise you as its favourite child.

.

~~~

Text and photo by Alain Joly

~~~

.

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

.