Not A Thing

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Seascape’ – Théodore Rousseau, 1831 – WikiArt

Although we feel to be inside the world, there is an identity in us that is not of the world. Rather the world is in that identity. The world — everything — has been made the likeness of ourself, should ourself be seen not as a thing, but as that which could never be made into a form of any kind. That’s how and when you know who you are, when you are not a thing, not an entity, not anything that can be named or qualified. There is not a thing here that you can be. We have inherited this habit, this insistence in being something. So we have pinpointed ourself and have given it a substance of its own. In this trying to be something, we have been rendered suffering adults, drenched in belief and habit, in fear and hope, addicted to security. We have lost our childhood, what is here before every qualification, and that we only worship remotely, as something precious and lost — our innocence, the playfulness contained in living, the not knowing, the absence of urge, the sense of awe, the leisure contained in plainly and simply being.

So be like a child, who has it all. Be like before every incarnation that you have been forced to identify with, in order to fit in, to feel aggrandised. Our urge to be something has deprived us from our being sufficient, fulfilled in and as our own being. By adding to being, we have lost what gave us our true essence, our identity, our security. It all came from that acquired, mindlessly rehearsed, and deeply ingrained belief that we are not enough, that we are separate, that we have to achieve, progress, be competent. There is no joy in fitting, in being proper. There is no competence involved in being who you are. Any child knows it. Babies are masters in knowing being. We’re just the bragging ones, the ones who have made life a travail, an ordeal, for silly reasons of being something. We spend all our precious time in alleviating the suffering and inadequacy we have ourself created.

There is no suffering in being. We should have left it there, when we were only being, contented in our own presence, before the thought arose that there had to be more and better than just being. The thought of it has made a mess. Now we are in the world rather than the world is inside us. Now we are something or someone, rather that being nothing that can be named, objectified, personalised, belittled or limited. Now we have created travail and conflict rather than staying quietly in the joy and peace contained in being only being. Now we are isolated beings rather than all gathered in our one shared being. Now we are many, divided, scattered, broken up, instead of being one before oneness itself, which is like being the one child of God’s undivided, unbroken, one being. This not being something is not a posture of the mind. It is the noticing of our true nature, of what is here in and as ourself that could never be made something. Our sense of being imperfect, isolated beings is born of a simple lack of attention. We have not seen the obvious. That we are the unborn, the infinite, the ‘not a thing’, and that as that, we hold in one single embrace everything that can be named and exists in time and place, everything that can be given a birth and a death, and that is now like the One inside the One. 

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867)

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Website:
– Théodore Rousseau (Wikipedia)

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An Impeccable Death

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Death of Buddha’ – Odilon Redon, circa 1899 – Wikimedia

It is striking to think that the day when we die is always today. It is not happening tomorrow, will not take place in the future. Death is for now. This is where and when it takes place. In the present. In presence. The death of the body, its ending, may take place in the future, but is not death. It doesn’t have the implications, the magnitude of it. The death of the body is like a wave that ceases to undulate, to imagine its difference, its conflicting attributes, and finally breaks before we notice that it is not what we are, that there is here, before it, as our very making and identity, an ocean of peace. This ocean is what death is — before we imagine to be a self that thinks itself separate.

We have been moulded in and as a presence that was never born and could never die. This inability to exist or appear as something distinct, or different, is real death. This incapacity to cease or find an ending at our being, is true ending. It is a place where we can never go. This place of being has no objectivity. It is nothing that we can be or project ourself to be. It is pure being, done, final, already perfected, unattached, a free fall. It is a death so complete that it has no object. It is not the death of something, of an object, of an entity — for such death is not truly death. It is the realisation that we are not what we have believed ourself to be. That there is not here an entity, a self that could be dying, that has an existence of its own. That realisation, and above all what is left here to be and live by, truly is death. And in that death is contained, concentrated, achingly shining, the whole of life.

So death is now. It is happening now without our noticing. It is achieved — our death, the one that we fear, that we have pushed away, that we don’t want to envisage, envision, is done, gone through already. It’s a matter of noticing what is — that we are not here, that nothing was born, that it would be curious to die, that what we are has no other attributes than being. How would you put to death something that is without attributes or qualities? How would you end something that was never born? Moreover, no appearance, or thing, or body, could ever die without it being the expression or the modulation of something untouched by death. That something exists deathless is the sine qua non for the existence of death itself. That’s why life itself thrives through the exercice of death. What is deathless is our being. It is being — that which we all share in, which we call eternity, or the infinite, for it is one, and being one, it cannot be measured, qualified, or put to death. That’s how we are immortal — through only being, which we share as the experience of love. Death is when we cannot die anymore. It is obliterating objectivity — therefore our existence as an entity. An impeccable death comes at this price.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Odilon Redon (1840-1916)

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Website:
– Odilon Redon (Wikipedia)

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A Universal Cure

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Creation of the World XIII’ (part) – Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, 1906 – WikiArt

The part that we’re playing is not small. We are not living in a corner, limited by the skin of our bodies, and the world is not limited to the time and space in which it seems to unfold and have its conflicts and sufferings. The world has a foot in the infinite. In fact not just a foot, it is bathed in infinity, in eternity, and so are we, we who have been made small and suffering entities by our limiting beliefs and prejudices. We are ruling the world with our thoughts and then blame ourself for it. For the results are of course as limited as our thoughts can be. We have made the world the hostage of our limitations, and its hostility is in fact our own, that we have projected unto it. We believe and think we can only play small and limited, but in fact, we haven’t quite seen ourself as we are, and from this blindness comes the entirety of the world’s agony, and ours too.

Fortunately, ours and the world’s true essence comes spilling over in every possible way through the manifestation of beauty, and through the many expressions of love or peace. That’s what makes it so attractive in spite of all, and that’s where we should be way more curious than we are. Beauty, love, intelligence, peace, are not created by the random structure of a body and the passing thoughts in our mind. This is not where they are manufactured. They are born of infinity and wholeness. They are the expressions of the One, which we can never own. We are in fact rather owned by them, embraced by the infinity that is their reality. We must surrender to this god given identity. We don’t have to play small. Would we think of god playing small? So why would we of ourself, who are like the arm and willpower of God in God’s dream? So we don’t have to play small in this world. We ought to play our given, sacred part. We ought to be what we are and recognise ourself and the world as a whole, indivisible being. A being that is nothing but our own, that is experienced here and now every time we say ‘I Am’, and that we are fortunate enough to share in.

Act on the world from within. Mould it from there, from the source of yourself and of the world, from the ground of being that you feel as your own being, and that is the common ground of all beings and all things. This ground has the best ability. Religions haven’t called it Paradise or Eden for nothing. There is always a truth behind every misunderstood word. This ground of being is where you can play big, from within, from the interior of everything and everyone. You don’t have to create a new reality. It’s already there within and without, for the taking and for the looking. This reality is already here, already yours. There is love and harmony woven in the fabric of life, just here and now in and as our given experience. Our efforts to heal ourself and the world are veiling this reality, and so are our limited thoughts, which carry the false reality of there being persons and separation instead of the reality of one being and the peace contained in the infinite. Our own unlimited being is the ground where we can play big, for it is as large as God’s being if we are willing to notice its real, undefeatable nature. In fact, being is a universal cure, and it’s always at hand.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (1875-1911)

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Website:
– Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (Wikipedia)

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The Silent Heart

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Silencio’ – Eliseu Meifrèn p, 1900 – Wikimedia

Silence in the spiritual endeavour is taken to be much more than the absence of noise. It is in fact stillness. Silence is the absence of movement. It is the quiet reality that lies at the very heart of our being. By silencing the mind, we get to our silent heart — the silent heart of being that lies deep down within ourself. In fact, not so deep down. This is one of these illusions, to think that our heart, our silent being lies deep down, hidden, buried. In fact, our silent heart is showering our existence. It is our natural state, teeming, unmissable, that we have made seemingly absent, that we have silenced with the deafening noise of our mind, of our endless chattering, and of this belief a million times rehearsed that we are something, a thinking entity divided from every other thing or entity, and a private, personal self that we believe is attached to the body.

In fact, our mind is made of that silence. Only, we have added so much to it that our silent, unsubstantial heart has been overwhelmed by our many thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions that got all our attention. We have crowded our mind and have stripped it of its natural identity, which is simply being. We have silenced silence. We have mixed it with everything objective, noisy, agitated. So it has seemingly disappeared, although still overwhelmingly present. It is not that it is hidden, but we have transferred our natural, silent identity as being, to a fake identity as body, thoughts, senses. We have exchanged being for existence. We have downgraded ourself from simply being to being something. From pure, unalloyed awareness to that which this awareness is aware of. From silence to the crowding of that silence. We are crowded beings, living at the surface of things, dancing and struggling with everything superficial. We have broken the pact that tied us to the infinite, which is our true home and identity.

It results that we have become a person, when we are truly this silent, depersonalised, but utterly intimate heart of being which is the birthplace of all things and all beings. We are that which is before everything that appears and is the prey to our senses. We are this non-substantial substance that allows everything to find an existence. But we are not ourself a thing existing, a person. We are the still and silent being that is the heart of ourself and of all possible existence. Being something is to transfer our identity to that which we are aware of. But this identity has no reality other than in our thoughts and imagination. It is a belief. In plainly and only being, devoid of the imagination of mind, of its restless and ephemeral content, there is an aware silence. A silent heart. Still beating as our eternal, undefeatable identity. We have to live there, for this is the life we are meant to live. Anything else is a corrupted, even poisoned position. The state of the world is here to prove it, to attest that we have displaced our gorgeous identity away from the silent ground of being, to live in and as an appearance, and to believe in what is only a passing dream.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Eliseu Meifrèn (1857-1940)

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Website:
– Eliseu Meifrèn (Wikipedia)

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One Living Being

Posted on by Alain Joly

Truth is when the one who desires truth is not there. That one is a flaw. It is superimposed on the truth it is looking for, and veils it, makes it unreachable. It tramples it, literally. It makes it misty, obscure, mysterious. But truth is an obvious reality, if we don’t put it at a distance. If we don’t imagine it as something. Truth is not a thing, a concept. It is what we are — present, alive, real. Only we have to leave, recede, tiptoe. It’s all it takes, to not be boastful about it, to not think we don’t have it, to not assert the lie of our being someone. Being someone will push truth into the darkness, unseen therefore forgotten, hidden therefore to be sought. Our looking for it is the difficulty. Truth is to be approached with subtlety and utmost delicacy. Not that it is fragile, it is not. But it is sensitive to our feeling separate from it. It doesn’t like it. It shrinks at the thought of it, that we are looking for it, wanting it, being ambitious about it. Truth is not to be conquered, practised, refined. Truth is here fully dressed. It is our most fitting attire. The very being of our being. Massive. Obvious. If we let it open up, unfurl, spread its all-pervasive presence, and its creative, mind-blowing, self-evident, undeniable power and eminence.

But if we think we’re not enough, well then we’re not enough. If we want to indulge in being a person, a poor me, then we fall from a great height. We suffer from being separated from our essence, our quintessence. We feel the burden of our constant, intrinsic, congenital seeking. It becomes our identity, to be a self seeking, to live in separation, to be fearful of this condition, and a believer of ideas. We live in our mind, struggle with our beliefs, conflict with experience. We are not what we should be, and we feel it, know it, dread it. And we are crippled by our impending death, which we cannot understand, fathom, and marvel at. So it really comes down to ending a belief, a simple belief, that cheated us. That our body, our thoughts, feelings, senses are substantial when they are but a dream. That our being finds its reality in our body and mind when our essential is not there. Our essential draws its reality from a presence that is infinite, eternal, unfathomable, loaded with love, peace, and a creative impetus. Nothing else than this presence is at play in our experience. We realise that we are just one living being, which cannot be divided, and has no other than itself. We realise that we are that, in spite of all evidence and impression. This self that we believe ourself to be is in fact secretly made of that, if the mist of its fallacious reality breaks apart and reveals its hidden nature. There is no separate, distinctive, solitary self. Only this shared, glorious one being. Then it falls into place that, for exemple, “I and my Father are one.” (John, 10:30) And that “In him we live, and move, and have our being.” (Acts, 17:28)

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Holy Ground

Posted on by Alain Joly

We have no being of our own. We have built our existence as a person, as a body, as a bouquet of perceiving faculties, on a ground that is not our ground. We are borrowers, incomplete entities, which is the reason for our restlessness, for our many lacks, and for our sense of insufficiency. Wholeness and plenitude are attributes of the ground or essence. This essence is hidden because we are overlooking it. We, on our choice, have displaced our attention to what we mistakenly take to be ourself: our thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions — all that makes a narrative, that gives us an appearance, a consistency, an existence. But one such existence is a fraud. It is not what we essentially are. We have displaced our self, our identity, from the ground to the landscape, from the essence to the superfluous appearances that owe their existence to that universal, infinite being or ground.

But an appearance can never make us. A thought doesn’t make an identity. An idea, an image, a body, are not what we are in essence. But they all have a common ground, hence our confusion in our perceived identity. This common ground is our deepest sense of being, the consciousness that is found at the root of ourself. If only we were aware that what is seeing, thinking, perceiving in us, is actually the ground, not ourself; that what is experiencing, what is aware in our everyday life, is in fact this supreme, infinite ground, then we would acquire a very different idea or perception about ourself, another responsibility, another awe, another reverence for our reality. Our reality would be discovered to be the ground of all beings, called ‘god’ in the spiritual literature. God is not a word for a thing or a person, but for a living experience, a taste, the feeling of being that has its reality here and now. It is not distant, not dependent on a belief. It is a hard reality, accessible in all experience. It is our true nature, what we are, and what we know we are, without a shadow of doubt.

God is not a guess, a maybe, a question. God is a certainty, an evidence, and the answer to our suffering. It is our very conscious sense of being, the very thing which in us makes for the feeling ‘I’, for what I am in truth and in depth. It is our one and only reality. If we do live from that essential ‘I’, then we live from inside the holiest of temples. We cease living and acting from a private, separate sense of an individual self. Behind the veil of our mist, of our everyday fascination for mind, body, appearance, existence, is a presence that is revealed when we let go of ourself. It bears in its DNA the savour of holiness, and of a quiet, unbreakable happiness. Holiness is not an attribute of things, places or people for which we may have reverence. Sacredness doesn’t belong to the landscape, or the object. It is rather the natural expression of our true self, of ‘I’. It is in abiding in our true nature or essence that we feel a deep reverence for everyone and everything. What is sacred is our intimate, infinite being, and this being draws its holiness from its one pristine, untarnished, infinite nature. Wholeness makes for holiness. Holiness belongs to the ground, and the ground has it in its nature to shower benevolence to all hosted appearances. This is how we have, shining in our experience, the qualities of peace, love, beauty. They are all offsprings of the holy ground, which is ourself.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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The Taste of Being

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Oceanide’ – Jan Toorop, c.1893 – WikiArt

In life, you would never cross a friend or a beloved without smiling at him, giving her a greeting, at least an acknowledgement, or reaching for his hand. That’s the same with your inner being, with that beautiful, friendly presence that is the core of what you are. You’ve got to notice her, to be friendly. It doesn’t take very much, in the middle of your day, to smile at that quiet inner being, to acknowledge that it is here, no matter the hustle and bustle you may go through. It takes no time at all, to see that you are not alone, not a self separate from everything else, not a loner, that you’ve got a friend here for you, that longs to be seen as your very identity and being. After all, how long does a gaze take ? How easy is a passing attention? How little is a momentary taste of your quiet essence, lying just below any of your sufferings or worries, just before your many losses or shortcomings, mixed right within the script of your daily activities and thinking?

Only it is a shy presence, so you have to make the first move. You have to go and look for her in the crowd, amongst the ten thousand things of experience. Once you see him, once you catch his firm gaze, you will come to see only him, only that, at the expense of everything else in experience that now appears to be caught in that same all-pervading gaze. You will see how quickly you come to enjoy your friend after a time. Awareness has a natural eagerness for you. It is inclined to have you in its warm embrace. So you will fancy holding her hand a little longer, won’t be satisfied with a gaze or a smile. You will go for a cuddle, or a long warm hug, to get to taste of his loving presence. You will feel this taste to be more than a crush, or a quick passing relationship. You will feel drawn to stay there, to move in, to have her as the marrow of your self, to bring him so close so there is only him, only her, only that, but no you.

There comes a time when you won’t need to go very far to meet your beloved, for she is everywhere you are. You will notice that every experience you have is pervaded by his presence. So you don’t have to move with her, for you have already been married with this presence for ages upon ages. In fact, it is all you are, and there is none beside it, not even your own illusory self which you have come to believe in, and whose reality you take for granted. Now you begin to see that your beloved is not your beloved, but your very own self and identity. The moment you see that, you will lose him. You will remain alone. You will stop needing, begging, pretending. There won’t be any remembering who you are, because who you are will have been established without a shadow of doubt. You will be yourself the beloved you had previously pushed at a distance, to be sought or realised. You won’t be aggrandised by his or her presence anymore. This inner presence is so much your own self and identity, that you will happily surrender all your multiple identities to that one identity, and acquire the humility that goes with being only one being. There is no beloved but you, no other beloved than you. Let all your many sensations and perceptions melt into that one identity of your being. The taste of being is the pinnacle of experience, and its most refined, sought after savour. You come to taste it when there is here, in yourself, as yourself, only one being, one friend, one beloved, and one taste.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Jan Toorop (1858-1928)

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Website:
– Jan Toorop (Wikipedia)

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