A False Impression

Posted on by Alain Joly

There is an impression that I am the one who knows, or is aware. But this is a false impression and an unfortunate one. In fact, we as a body-mind don’t know anything, for the good reason that there is no one here that is in charge of the knowing. We don’t have this ability. It is not for us to know anything. Knowing doesn’t belong to an individual, separate self. We owe our knowing to something that knows us first, and lends us that potential. That really gives a totally different perspective to our existence, and grants us a gorgeous humbleness: Knowing is without a knower. The knower is but a set of thoughts that we have superimposed on awareness. It is entirely made up. It is of our invention, to give us a wee importance — after all, we all want a little attention. Knowing is in the nature of being. And being is the nature of everything. Knowing is all there is. It is the light of our world, indissociable from our experience. We as selves are just shadows. Everything is dancing and taking place without our being in any way party to it. At best, we are just a colouring, a point of view, an avatar governed by some divine rules which we have perilously chosen to ignore. This is our feebleness: wanting to own and appropriate, being more than what we already are. But in doing so, we have in fact belittled ourself. We have made ourself separate from the life we live in. We have created a self where there is none. We have awakened the devil of suffering in us.

So leave the knowing in some more skilful hands. It will spare you a lot of trouble and misunderstanding. You won’t have to be a person — all the heaviness contained in it. You won’t have to be a self that knows, but knowing will appear to be your one and only self — the entirety of your being. This pure and sublime knowing will give a measure of beauty and happiness in your life. It will encompass everything. It will widen your perspective and make you profoundly secure. You will know your being with precision and clarity, and live both in remoteness and intimacy — remoteness for a serene view on your experience, and intimacy for the delight contained in oneness. And love will be your everyday companion, the deepest essence of your being. And you will be clothed in understanding, which you believed could be achieved through your being a knower. Not at all. Understanding comes when you cease being a self, a knower, when you let go of all identities and egoistic purposes. Then it comes: the understanding — the knowing that knowing is all there is, and that you don’t need to be any more than that. So learn to keep at bay all private, egoistic desires to be anything other than this impersonal, undivided presence of yourself, that has the capacity of being and knowing. You have no need to be a knower, or a doer of anything in your life. Let the show run by itself. Only give it your golden, loving indifference. That’s the most glorious thing you can do in this life. You will be showered by the benefits of it.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Read this essay from the blog ‘The Impossibility of Knowing’…

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The Incandescence of Being

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Wharfedale’ – John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1872 – WikiArt

Spirituality is not a contest. It is not in achieving something, and knowing myself is not about aggrandising what I am. It is not in holding on to an idea, be it a most noble one. It is not in perfecting my being. ‘I am’ is self-sufficient and already fully realised. Any desire for perfection or achievement will keep you at the level of a self. You won’t have let go of yourself. You won’t have fully opened the door, will have kept a space which is but an escape or exit out of your primal being — the death that it implies. It is always tempting to not let what is be, to keep colouring our essence, to still want to hold a share, a participation, a glory, an advantage. Somewhat, our desire to be something prevents us to just notice and be that which we are already, without a single addition to it — not even a last little perfecting, not even a criticism or the rectifying of something, not the desire for more freedom or less ego, nothing to compare or compete with, nothing at all. Otherwise we remain just a part longing for the One, and therefore keeping it as an object to be attained, and rendering ourself separate or insufficient just as we are. There is no comparing what is. There is no arguing with the One. So just allow yourself to be, with nothing else behind it. Let go of all that you are, or should be, or will be, in an instant, with not even a second look. Enter where you have never ceased to be, and finally come to be what you are, just as you are. Daring that — to make no further step, to cease wanting anything, to give your last breath and descend into your utmost, pristine being. For there is no ascending being, but simply recognising that being — such as it is — is all there is to myself.

You see: all the spiritual practices, all the teachings, and the long hours of meditation, are only here in the waiting of something very simple to happen. They are here to help you realise that you have it already, that you have already arrived where you want to be, that you already bask in the peace and happiness you covet, and have been trying to secure in a thousand useless, pointless ways. So really, the spiritual endeavour is nothing at all. It is the simple retirement or returning into your essential am-ness, just as it is now, right in the middle of your agony. Why is it such a tedious task: to arrive at last where you are, to be what you are already being, and accept to receive what has already been given to you? The very presence or intimacy in which you are spending your hours and days is all the light you need, and contains all the understanding that you have been striving to possess year after year. And this treasure of life isn’t even wrapped or hidden. It was there all along with you and as you, open and thriving as the very being with which you are now living your present day confusion and suffering. You have been all the way showered by its thousand glorious alleluias, while imagining yourself as deaf and blind. So don’t think that this cannot be enough — what you are. It has all been nicely packed for you, right at this moment, just as you are, offered to your noticing. So don’t keep pushing, adding, expecting. We are far too zealous. Remember that anything you may see, hear, feel, think, is contained in one essential and pristine matrix of being. This matrix is this big light of knowing that we must learn to recognise as our very self, before any sense of time, space, world, perception, quality, or doing, is added to it. We just need a little look — to precise our vision — and we may see, just now, just here, in this present experience, that all the passing objects of our life are but the colouring of an incandescence. This incandescence is our being, and our very self.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893)

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Website:
– John Atkinson Grimshaw (Wikipedia)

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The Scrutiny of Now

Posted on by Alain Joly

You cannot understand truth in the future. For one good reason which is simply: there is no such thing as a future. The future is forever doomed to be a projection of thought. In reality, you will never meet anything that is not now. You are eternally married to the now as presence. The now is where you are, when you are, and also what you are. The now is encircling you from all directions, and you are bound to it, caught in its perpetual enchantment. So if you long to understand who you are, look at yourself now. Don’t postpone it for another moment that exists only in your imagination. To postpone truth is to never come anywhere near it. Understanding will never happen in another place than the place where you happen to be now. Now is your cathedral of understanding. You are being showered by its benefits every time you look for its presence within, for this presence of now is nothing but who you are, what you are. So if you think of the now as a moment that exists outside or independently of yourself, you haven’t looked well enough. For you are in fact the now. I mean it: you, the totality of who you are, your purest essence, is that thing which is called, amongst various other names, now. The now is that which you refer to when you say simply ‘I’. I know it doesn’t look like it, but you actually draw your identity from the now, for there exists nothing under the sun but this timeless presence whose place of living is in and as the now. This is why you can only understand yourself now. No other moment is fit for it, for any other moment is nothing but your hiding place, your desperate attempt to avoid drowning into the timelessness of now.

So don’t ever run away from now. Face it now — the now. Don’t think you can meet it again tomorrow. Now is a rendezvous that you can never miss. It will happen only once, which is now. But the good news is that you have never been anywhere but now. You are under the scrutiny of now. You live by its rule. Only you have to see that, and to see it now. Don’t think about it, for any thought you may have about anything — including the now — belongs to the past or the future, which actually don’t exist outside thought. Don’t think that you live separate from the now, as an entity bound to the effects of time. So let us not be so malleable, so easily cheated on. We all play so many tricks to avoid being now — which we are anyway, and anyhow. Oh! The silliness of it all — that constant stepping away from that which we are; that repeated removal from our being simply now; and the fear and suffering involved in not abiding as and by the now. The effort that it takes — to be away from home, displaced, a self in denial of its true and inescapable identity, refusing to die in the grip of truth. ‘Not now! Not now!’ Well, ok… But when if not now? Truth is for every-where and for every-when. It has no place to live outside of now. We are an ocean of presence that is so inevitably present and pregnant, that it appears to be not here. The reason is: it has lent its being to timelessness. Now is the Eternal that we have mistakenly taken to be a moment. A mishap that hides only one thing: Myself — the ‘I’ that is the now, for times eternal.

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Text by Alain Joly

Photo by Elsebet Barner

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The Coveted Jewel

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Meera and Krishna’ – City Palace Museum, Udaipur – Wikimedia

With god, or with our utmost being, one shouldn’t be too clinical. Presence is better seen, better felt, as our beloved. That’s how you have truth nearer, when you’re in love with it, and want to bring it close, so very close to you. Because its most intimate essence is not at a distance from you, but has merged in you, and as you, from the eternal now, so that you could remember him on all occasions, and feel her, feel him, as the very core of your eternal being. So your beloved is already hugging you, forever holding you in its infinite, most loving embrace. That’s where you draw your unabated search from, for who wouldn’t do anything, anything at all, to seek to reunite with the love of his life. And how could you not cross the most ruthless torrent to marry the intimate essence of her wondrous being. So go through love. Seek her in your tender heart, where she has been aching for your presence. Look for him in your innermost bosom, where only he longs to surrender. And feel the pang of separation, for it is itself the pathway to your beloved.

And there is more to it: love is uncompromising. So you won’t fancy being separated, won’t like finding yourself away from the warmth of your beloved. So your gaze will never wander far and away from your lover’s tender eyes. And you won’t find difficult to spot her even in the wildest display of experiences and activities, where objects come to assail you. You won’t be easily seduced by another than your beloved, for who would want to leave the bliss of a shared love for the chill contained in seeking an outside pleasure, far so far away from your lover’s beating heart. But be careful now, for this love for the beloved is a unique love. Beware! You can never love your loved one as an other. Love is indivisible. The love you feel is always only the expression of your own silent being. So you will have to let your lover go, not because you separate from her, but rather because you merge your being with his being, and in so doing become one being. This one beingness of the lover and the beloved is the truth of eternal love. Love cannot be split in two, and the love you feel for the beloved — for any beloved — doesn’t belong to you. Love is a burning flame that consumes itself into itself. For there is always ever one mind, one love, one being, regardless of the number of apparent lovers. This is what makes love the most coveted jewel of our lives. Because you disappear, and in that disappearing, you find your gorgeous, luminous, infinite self.

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Text by Alain Joly

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A Gorgeous Feeling

Posted on by Alain Joly

Have you ever tried being yourself? Being me is the most valuable experience one can have. But most of the time, we are not being ourself, we don’t know what it feels to simply be me. We are being anything but me. We are being our thoughts that haven’t asked for this, that were just passing by, and never solicited our identifying with them in such unreasonable proportions. We are being our so-called material body that limits us all the time, even more so when growing older. We are being our identifications, our justifications, our longings and stubborn desires, our most hideous feelings, but never do we simply stop and remain with the gentle expression contained in simply being me and nothing else. We are being our attachments to fear, worry, hope, security, avoidance. We love them and forget ourself in them. And we are being our beliefs, all kinds of them — endless expressions of them — especially the ones which tell us that we are separate from everyone and everything around us. These are the worst ones, rendering us sad, lonely, insecure, suffering from not simply and courageously being ourself. ‘Being me’ is being crushed under the weight of it all.

The feeling of being myself doesn’t come from our various experiences, qualities, memories. These may be feeding our conceptual idea of ourself, yet our formidable inner state of corruption makes us believe that we are them, that this is what ‘being me’ is: to be caught in a forest of objective experiences, to be coloured by their endless expressions, and to be filled by the dark shades contained in them. But the feeling of being me is not located there. It is not coming from any particular. On the contrary, it derives its gorgeousness from its being whole, unstained, unqualified, unconditioned. We owe this feeling of ‘I am myself’ to the pure, simple, hidden reality of awareness. ‘Being me’ is like a sumptuous light that is intimately connected to our deepest reality, and is teeming with beauty and simplicity. Let’s imagine a life where I would be me all the time, with clarity. The feeling of it all. Being me. Being me being all there is. Being me being not anything in particular. Being me being the essence of life — its most intimate and gorgeous component — common to all beings and all things. Being me is the purest expression of ourself, the jewel contained in every possible experience, but which is felt only when being independent from every such experiences, while containing them all. All beings ought to be feeling that very quintessential feeling of ‘being me’, that gorgeous self which was prepared for us all, and which we have longed for again, and again, and again. In fact, it is as simple as this: finally being me — who I am — and that is that.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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A Trail of Glory

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The River of Light’ – Frederic Edwin Church, 1877 – WikiArt

If you happen to feel your being one day, don’t let it go out of sight. Follow it everywhere it is. Let it be your only guide. Be gently intoxicated by it, by yourself, by who you are, truly, when you have relinquished this obsession of being a body, and a mind. This is your one and only duty, to stay there, with being, to abide in it, and let yourself be moved by its unmoving current. Don’t go off at a tangent. Don’t take a single step, unless you have with you, as you, this being that you are, and that you could crush at any time, with the single thought that you have your own, separate being. Remember it to be your ultimate identity, the widest circle of your self, without any border, limitless, unfettered by any condition whatsoever.

Feel it in you, as being you, when you go to apparent places. Being tends to stay at home and let your body do the moving. For being never goes anywhere — it is not the travelling type. This is how you can simply go to buy some bread in your street and live a captivating adventure, or explore the farthermost recesses of the earth while feeling quietly at home. Feel that you as being are housing the world, that being is the landscape in which your life is taking place. So be only concerned with the landscape and life will then flow of its own accord. Don’t start believing that you have a life of your own. That’s only the prerogative of the suffering self. No life can be lived happily with an architecture or a design outside being.

And remember that being is a love affair. A renouncing of your own limited self, for a marriage with the beloved truth of your being. A free, princely, bounteous bowing to the infinite. So don’t start making an effort to be, for any effort is an attempt from the part of a belief to reassess its position as a distant, separate, other being. That’s how your nature becomes unseen, when you have replaced it with your own fake one, with your own invented self. For being never hides, if you don’t let it disappear under the weight of your seeking it, of your being somebody that is lacking. So don’t let your being escape you. Don’t lose its trail of joy and glory. Don’t be the one fleeing, running away, desiring to be yourself, by yourself, and then seeking to bring yourself back to the happiness that you have lost, in so many, so many immoderate, superfluous, inappropriate ways. Seek your bliss in being — where it only lies.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900)

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Website:
– Frederic Edwin Church (Wikipedia)

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A Light to Yourself

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Sun’ – Edvard Munch, 1911-16 – WikiArt

There will come a time when words will slow you down. When you will want to explore yourself on your own, without the help of a book or a teacher, free from explanation or guidance. You will want to follow your own trajectory, to be a grownup, and experience your beloved, impersonal, undivided self by yourself and through yourself. You will want, as Krishnamurti said, to “be a light to yourself“. You will find your own security there, in this light, at the source of your transparency, where you will find no division from where to be insecure. You will find your happiness bubbling from your infinite being, where no self can be located, and therefore no suffering. And you will be under the authority of your own being, that will show you the way, through a door eternally open and inviting. You will be on an eternal visit of yourself. And you will meditate, not to reach who you are, not to get there, but to rejoice in it, and give your whole attention to your beloved — though you already have her, have him, all day, on all occasions, near you, close, so very close to you. And you will feel her love as being so fully yours, that you will need no incentive, no set hours, to be being her own being. And you will see around you, and within you, so much beauty, that you will not have to look for it, other than by being with him, and within him. And you will be in need of no thought, of no TV show, to distract yourself from yourself, for how would you want to be distracted from being so wholly in love with the love of your life? So books will have become a bore to get you there, but you’d still read them as you read poetry. And a teacher will be of no use to you, but you’d still be eager for the company of a friend. And you’d go about your life with confidence, because you’re not alone to deal with it. Rather, your life will have become your being, and your being, your life. And at the same time, you will be alone, self-sufficient, in no need of anything, of anyone, to be fully yourself, to be happy. Therefore, you’d give yourself to all, to everything, you’d be a sharer of being, and a passionate lover of beings, and of things. Yes. That’s it. You’d be a light to yourself. A light to yourself.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Edvard Munch (1863-1944)

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Websites:
– Edvard Munch (Wikipedia)
– J. Krishnamurti

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