Let’s be very Clear!

Posted on by Alain Joly

What a pity! That truly is a pity isn’t it, that the Divine isn’t an object? Consider for a moment: if God’s nature was objective, a thing to be acquired, we’d all be running after it with eagerness. Nothing could stop us from getting it. The path to it would be clear, easy, rehearsed a thousand times, with unmistakable steps. We would all be happy — the shy, lazy ones only in a small measure, but clearly so; and the greedy ones probably piling chunks after chunks of happiness at home, for the bad, chilly days. No doubt that after a while, happiness would be placed in the market place, to be simply bought — a democratic God, available to all. Only, God would then become so pricy, that only the rich amongst us could afford it. The poorest would have to stay unhappy, miserable. After some time, the rich ones would no doubt find God boring, to be replaced by another more exotic good. And happiness would be set aside, discarded as a thing of a time past. Dreadful prospect, isn’t it?

But thank God, the Divine wasn’t made into an object! So none of this could ever have happened. Not to God! To anything else yes, but not to god, not to happiness! The price for God had been set, right from the beginning, as an inestimable one. And the way to acquire true happiness was made into such a subtle, noble pursuit, that no money could ever be of any use for it. We may try, as we did for centuries, to make God’s being into another subtle object, something convenient, setting methods, churches, temples, ashrams, where it could be practised, and happiness made into a precious ornement to be obtained. But none of that was found to be effective, in final analysis. Only a few rare, lofty, unmatchable seekers were able to find God where it truly lived, and make themselves so available to it as to become of it themselves. These rare beings have found there a joy so ineffable as to appear unreachable, and God was downgraded to a celestial being or an exotic state, to be idealised and worshipped. That’s not yet an ideal situation, is it?

So let’s start again and be very clear from the beginning! God has never been, will never be, and could never be found as any kind of object. It is not something to be attained, and its presence is not at a distance from us. The difficulty in recognising its presence lies in God’s utter subjectivity, and in the abundance of it in ourself. So don’t move from where you already are. This place of yourself is the only suitable enough spot for happiness to thrive, and a precious enough container for God’s humble, sublime home. And don’t wait for another time than this present time of now. God is only accessible here and now. You will find it nowhere else. Stay there. In yourself. As yourself. But go to the very heart of it, at the core of what you are and always have been. Who you already are is the secret cabinet where God dwells, and has dwelled all this time, without your noticing.

Now I’ll tell you a secret. Ask yourself the question: What is the only portion of my present experience that is exempt of objects, of things known? Find this place in yourself where you cannot be any thing, where you cannot be located, where you cannot even be named, where you are made no existence at all, where you cannot know anything but your own present being, where you and the whole world can be embraced in one subtle presence that cannot be found but is paradoxically all there is, all that you were, and all you will ever be. Feel this presence in yourself, as yourself. See that you have been in God’s home all along. Gently notice its glory being slowly revealed. Delve in it, and as it, patiently. This is what God’s being feels like — that subtlest presence that you are in fact referring to when saying ‘I’. There! Do you feel it? Rest and live only as that.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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

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The Greatest Trick

Posted on by Alain Joly

In fact, the understanding of our true nature is the simplest thing on earth. We have to, repeatedly, not be doing anything. The problem is: we cannot help but doing something, hoping something, trying something, anything, to get us where we think we should be. Where we are is never enough; never somewhere we should go to. What we are is not satisfying; we have to attain something that is better, no matter what. Even being, we think that we have to be being it — as if we were not already being. In all analysis, there is in fact such a thing as ‘nothing to do’ in spirituality, but only at the point when we are already not doing anything. If we are doing something, well, then we are doing something. This doing is an expression of our belief in not being ‘there’ yet, in our incompleteness, in our striving to get somewhere, to be someone. Then we have de facto missed all possibility of realisation: for we are already established in doing, in efforting. At this point, it is too late to not be doing anything. We need to revise our judgement.

We have been overtrained in doing. Maybe this doing is in fact what we have become — the essence of our self as a seemingly separate entity. We are born the moment we have the impulse of doing something, of being a doer, a knower. This is our original mistake, what we should never have been doing. We think we have to be somebody; to be nobody is a curse, a shame, an emptiness that we have to fill at all cost, even at the cost of losing ourself. So there is comfort in being a self, a somebody, in achieving something, in doing anything at all. The fact that we should be suffering for it, and be limited by it, well that’s the nature of existence, are we told. We are willing to pay that price for doing something, for being somebody. So let me do. Let me be. That’s how to feel ‘I am’ for now. That’s the story which was handed down to us. That’s how we have been regimented by society. And we have by now rehearsed it long enough, to perfection. We think that we’re not doing it when the doing has already been achieved. We are in fact implementing doing all the time while believing we are not doing it. This is the greatest trick that was ever performed on us.

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A playful reflection into the question of the doer… (READ MORE…)

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A Cathedral of Grace

Posted on by Alain Joly

We always want to be at a distance from experience. In fact, we keep behind, we don’t get involved — at least not entirely. We are aloof. We keep experience at bay. That allows for a certain safety, we think. But that distance is the distance we keep from ourself. This is the chasm we have opened, through which we have numbed ourself. So we had to fill this chasm with a belief in separation, with the idea of a being separate from other beings and things. In this chasm is born our loneliness, and the vast field of our search for happiness. This search is but our desperate attempt to fill the gap we have created and nourished. And this chasm is how we have been made to think ceaselessly about ourself. How we have been made to judge, hope, project, regret, complain, expect, believe. These are — we think — the measure of our control in life. But they are in fact the loss of our innocence. For this chasm or distance is what our suffering is made of. It is the way we have found to not be wholly being — being appearing to be a dangerous flame, of a consuming nature. So we have stepped safely aside. In this keeping away from the flame, in this refusal to die, is our chasm, our whole precipice of pain.

But this flame of being is in fact our fountain of peace. It is what makes us present, uncompromisingly one with experience, with nowhere to go but ourself, and nothing to be but that which we already are. In this place of being, we are not allowed distance, and time is proscribed. There is nowhere to go in being. Nothing to be but being. This flame of being will cancel the distance that was your safety. It will devour you, digest all your hopes and projections, burn your regrets, crush your fear, and debunk all idea of separation. You are thus crashing in being, and are consumed in its flame. Experience is now revealed to be nothing but the experiencing of your self within your self. You are given no room for separation, and are discovering yourself to be the sublime core of all that can possibly exist. You may look all you want, you won’t find yourself anywhere, for the simple reason that there is no location for you to be in. And you will find no space for a self to have experience, for the experiencer has dissolved in experiencing. This merging of your self with experience is how suffering is made impossible. This is how you are made present here and now, one with everything and everyone. And this is how you are made to feel in awe with what you see, hear, and touch. You are ravished to just be, and are suddenly placed at the teeming heart of your self, unable to not fully, gorgeously be. You are entering a cathedral of grace, and are placed in a well of light, amongst songs of glory.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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

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The Falling of a Feather

Posted on by Alain Joly

The most extraordinary thing about this understanding is that nothing needs to perish inside you in order to access your essential being. Not a supposed self that might be getting in the way of your realisation. Not some kind of entity that you painstakingly have to dismantle before you can access the truth of your being. There is nothing to dismantle. Not a single little thing. That apparent, undesirable self is made of the fully formed self that is yet to be revealed. So don’t be fooled. Don’t even be interested in that limited self that you have bought into. There is no such self. Just a few random thoughts hanging around, and being amused by the trick they have played on you. Don’t give that self even a second glance. What kind of spiritual seeker would you be, wasting your precious time and energy on a self that has not even the beginning of a reality? Don’t get involved with any single idea about yourself.

So don’t fiddle with yourself, get busy suppressing, controlling, practicing, re-ordering. No toughness is required. No crime needed here, and not a bit of violence necessary. Only the noticing that the self you imagined yourself to be is not here. Believe me, there is an awful amount of effort that you can spare yourself. The path is already all cleared. Your true nature is in plain view just as you are. See that what you are looking for is no more than the quiet and gentle falling of a feather of awareness on your experience as it presents itself. Nothing more. A non-happening. The letting go of an idea. So be vigilant. Keep your heart open. See how wide your vision is already. Get accustomed to the light of simply being. You may need time to make it your default experience. But don’t forget that non-violence always prevails with God’s grace. But could you expect any less coming from such a loving being?

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Meditating on the gentleness of the recognition process… (READ MORE…)

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On Passing Away

Posted on by Alain Joly

We think that most of our life is taking place in the field of body, thoughts, feelings, and sense perceptions — all of these making a self and a world, and the myriads of experiences that come as a result. This is what our life seems to be for the most part. But look again. Because in fact, no. It is not like this. That’s where the misunderstanding lies. Most of our human experience — not to say the whole of it — is spent in being. In emptiness. In vastness. Of course there is a body here that can be sensed. And feelings can be felt. And objects perceived. And thoughts are occurring all the time. And with them a sense of a separate self has been born. And all this joyous team seems to have acquired reality, and has in consequence been cursed with a measure of drama and suffering. But much was missed along the way. For in fact, none of these really took the place we imagined. None of it is taking any place, any space, or occupying any length of time. For the whole space of experience is already occupied by our sense of being. Life in its totality is made of one indivisible reality that fills our experience to the brim. This reality as being precedes experience — experience being nothing but being manifesting itself within itself.

So this is an announcement for the deceased self that we have been engrossed in all this time. Body, thoughts, feelings, senses, will continue their existence, but will lose their identity as a self. Custody will be returned to whom it always and forever belonged: pure, unlimited being. In its quality of the only inheritor of the feeling of being, ‘I’ or consciousness is now made the one true identity for all selves, and the only essence or ‘is-ness’ for all objects of experience. For we are in fact eternity, which our presence as a time-bound self has veiled. We are in truth the infinity of being, which our insistance in being a separate being has limited. And we are in reality peace itself, which our relentless seeking for happiness has sent in the hidden. There never was a self, and there never was a world. Not in the way we have imagined it. Not with the reality we have conferred to them. Being has drowned them long ago; and has given them the only reality to which they are entitled to belong. That’s how anyone, and anything, and any experience can be made to rest in peace: In giving in to being. In passing away.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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

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The Straight Story

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Straight Story’ – by David Lynch (with Richard Farnsworth)

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“When I catch an idea for a film,
I fall in love with the way cinema can express it.”
~ David Lynch

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Have you ever seen a film made of love? Well, I have. And no further than this morning. A modest, not very well-known masterpiece by David Lynch, called ‘The Straight Story’. It is based on a true story: In 1994 in the United States, Alvin Straight — an old man — decides to pay a visit to his brother who has just suffered a stroke. They haven’t spoken for ages, out of an old rancour, so he wants to repair and reunite. With a clear mind, he embarks on a 390 kilometres journey from Laurens, Iowa, to Mount Zion in the Wisconsin, but he does it in his own inimitable way. On a riding lawn mower!… With bad hips and two sticks for help, and a refusal of doctors. With a maximum speed of about 8 kms per hour, and a trailer to pull. And with love as a luggage.

As often when it comes to starting a spiritual journey, it all begins with a fall and the subsequent realisation that something needs to be changed. And in order to make our quest a successful one, we have to make the journey just as important as the destination. And this is what Alvin does. His trip becomes an occasion for adventure. Everything he meets, he does with the eyes of wonder, and the now is the only time in which his travel takes place. Everything is important. Everything matters. The journey is not just a means to an end. We don’t reach infinity step by step anymore than we meet eternity in time. Every meeting with truth is made in truth’s home. And every encounter with our true nature is made within, in and as our innermost sense of being. No matter the extent of our understanding, in order to be, we have to be being. And Alvin, clearly, knows it all too well.

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Some reflections on seeing this film by David Lynch… (READ MORE…)

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Isn’t Life a Simple Thing?

Posted on by Alain Joly

We as an apparent body and mind are nothing but the conditions met for the apparition of a world and all the resulting experiences that take place within it. We are simply housing the thoughts, feelings, and sense perceptions necessary to enact experience, and give it a shine of reality. But the essential of what we are is neither in thoughts, nor in feelings, nor in sense perceptions. The essential of a mind is made of consciousness. Awareness is its structure and its backbone, without which there would be nothing left. If it wasn’t for its awaring quality, our mind would be no mind. Our thoughts would crumble and disappear to never reappear. Our feelings and sensations would suddenly blacken and decay in an instant, to be never formed again. And the world would be swallowed back into infinity, if it wasn’t for the consciousness that gave it its essence and knowability. Look as you may, you won’t find a mind of your own anywhere. At best, just a few scattered thoughts, and the momentary and illusory appearance of a self.

Observe carefully. A few thoughts can never make a mind; and neither could some random feelings. You couldn’t own the necessary self that you need to function in a world, without some inseparable and indispensable measure of knowing. So it is all about knowing. It is all about being conscious. Awareness holds it all together — your body; your thoughts and feelings; your world as sense perceptions. All of these come into existence at the only condition that an ‘awareness’ is present. If awareness goes, you go. If consciousness goes, everything with you go. The world goes. No bodies viable. No flower fields. No Milky Way. Everything falling apart. Universe shut black. Just a mess! That’s the power of consciousness! Far from being a mere function of the body, awareness is what holds the body and the world together. It is the essence of everything. It is the indispensable matrix. It is the ocean in which the waves and currents of thoughts, sensations, and world are dancing. And it has no home where to rest but itself. In fact, it is itself a resting place for all apparent minds, bodies, things, selves that make up a world. Consciousness gives existence with its being, allows relationship with its knowing faculty, and brings the consolidation of happiness with its loving nature. Then it returns into itself and stays there, in utter peace and completeness — replete with itself. And when you have seen it all as it is, and yourself as you are — indivisible being — then might come simply a swell of awe. God, isn’t life a simple thing?

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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

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