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.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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The Watcher

Posted on by Alain Joly

I remember the old odd days when I would sit in the woods on a tree trunk, or on a bench by a meadow, and watch nature playing its part in front of me. I would just watch, thinking very little. I’d leave my life aside, with all its worries and miserable sides. It was not worth looking at, not now, not at this point. For now I’d be a watcher. I knew there might have been a secret here, in this watching, in this looking at anything, at shadowing trees, flowers dancing in the breeze, stack of woods, clouds drifting in the sky. I intuited that it was all there, contained in the watching, enveloped within my experience. In this gaze was the answer. In this questioning was life throwing its identity at me, revealing its essence at last. At least I believed so. But it had to be a skilled watching. It had to have no intention intertwined with intention. It had to stand on this fine line. There was a strange alchemy taking place here, somewhere between the seer and the seen. A sacred, secret brew where reality could be unveiled, if only I could watch with the right, finely tuned focus.

After all, what other reality do we have than this one simple reality of ourself? What other than this presence? Just this presence, this watching, this being, this feeling. Just this. After all, this is all there is. I may look as much as I might, I won’t find anything outside of it. It is all there. I am stuck with it. So I might as well be there, stay there, dissect it, pull it apart. I might learn something of myself, of this looking at something, at anything. As if right there was concealed a hint never caught before, never encompassed, something which could resolve a miserable life. I was quite certain that if I looked hard enough, not at what I was seeing, not at anything out there, but at what this watching is made of, what it consists of, then I might free fall a long way within myself, to land in a new place, a new way of being, a freshness. So I stayed silent, enclosing myself with myself, and watched. Some may call it meditation. But I didn’t know that.

Well, my intuition was right. There is right here, a secret to be felt, guarded behind the limitations of my mind. A hint that my thoughts had concealed, along with my feelings, my identifications, memories, perceptions, sufferings — all that endless, formidable toil. And just there, right in the middle of it, something awakens, slowly pervades it all, and shows me what I am. Ah! If only we could clothe all that we are doing with this quality of watching. And all that we are watching with this quality of being. When all that you are looking at is looking at you. When all that is seemingly other is discovered to be yourself. When you can live and breathe at last, and feel who you are truly. And stay there, in the woods, in the sunlight, amongst shadows, but above all in your newly discovered self. There only exists the song of a bird, the river rushing by, and the silence breathing into it all, the fantasia of my life suddenly melted within one single being. This is where duality is stripped of its reality. Where the One has it all. And where the thousand things — including my old self — are clothed and replaced by their essence.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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The River of Peace

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Landscape with a River’ – Aleksey Savrasov – WikiArt

I think it is important to rest in the peace of our being. To gain that position and stay there, rejoice in it, find one’s home in it. To have peace as our perennial identity. To live in its aura. Then we might hang one thing on the door of our sweet cabinet of peace, a notice with these simple words written on it: ‘Do not disturb’. Why should I be disturbed? Should a thought come, out of habit, and visit me, claiming to break my peace for an adventure out of myself, in search of a moment of excitement, a share of happiness, or an elusive instant of peace, then I might gently tell her to stay away. Why should I break my peace for an activity whose only purpose is to find the peace that I already am? Peace then becomes my best manual to navigate through the many demands of life. It will ease my many battles with choice. It will bring my thousand little craving digressions down to a few necessary ones, that will serve me with something that I don’t already have. It will simplify my quest. I won’t have to be so dispersed, grabbing every opportunity to gain a shadow of peace when peace shines for me like a thousand suns. Peace is like a wide, silent, powerful river that follows one destination only: itself. It won’t deviate from its course. It is already made of the many rivulets that come unable to really feed it, of the thousands raindrops that fall and won’t trouble it, of the ocean that it never in a thousand years needs to expect. As for the storms, they only become an opportunity for the river of peace to flood every single thing found on the shore of experience, drowning them in its everlasting course and presence. What would a storm of peace be? What could it be but the sweetest of contamination, where every possible experience is discovered to be peace itself being stirred out of itself, and landing back within itself. This is when you might change the notice on your cabinet’s door and write simply: ‘Come in for peace.’

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Alexei Savrasov (1830-1897)

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Website:
– Alexei Savrasov (Wikipedia)

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The Sieve of Life

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Mont Sainte-Victoire’ – Paul Cezanne, 1890 – WikiArt

Consciousness wants to have it its ways. That’s how we meet life on such a bumpy road: Because we oppose the naturalness of being or consciousness, with our views and ideas. We too want to have it our ways. So there is a friction here at play. This friction is our suffering. This friction is the expression of our ego. It is our way of fighting through life, of being stubborn, willing, desiring, at the expense of the truth of our being. The world is not just a world. It is truth in action, with its laws and momentum. They cannot be ignored. They require our understanding, our consensus, our unanimity and harmony, our unison. This unison commands us to look in the same direction, in that very sacred meadow where being can be met. Don’t look for the world to be such a place of meeting. There is an obligatory passage before you can meet the world and your life at the level they must be met. This passage is yourself at its deepest. It is but the hidden expanse of your being. So being is your exploration field. It is your developer liquid, that will give your life its true colours. This is how the world is to be met — through the intercession or filter of being. This is where you will be handed the gift that you have been relentlessly looking for. A gift that will never disappoint you, for it has been uniquely designed for your needs.

So meet the world in being. Meet your life in being. You will smoothen your bumpy road into a path of truth. Life will stop being an achievement, to be only the natural consequence of your internal exploration. Contemplate your being in all occasions, and you will render to your life its ultimate, pristine, innate perfection. You will stop using your life for your own private objectives, distorting it to your conditioned, egoistic convenience. Cease trying to acquire things, bending them to meet your own preferences. Notice that the harshness of life is always on your side. We command suffering and conflict, we invite difficulties. They are the pointed head of the army of our egotistical tendencies. Remember separation to be your worst enemy. Don’t let it come through your door, no matter how seductive it may appear to you. Don’t make it your special guest. Any entity that forms inside your self as an object is only a treacherous self. Trust only formless, undivided being. Pass your life experience through its sieve. Let being be your guide, that one thing which comes first, which is preeminent in your life, and through which life ought to be lived. Sieve your life through the natural influence of being. That’s how you avoid friction. That’s how you annihilate conflict. That’s how you kill all possibility of suffering in the egg. And that’s how you invite the gift of happiness, love, beauty, and eternity in your life — these coveted needs of yours.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Paul Cezanne (1839-1906)

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Website:
– Paul Cezanne (Wikipedia)

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A Simple World

Posted on by Alain Joly

Keep it simple. Don’t even give in to spirituality. Don’t run after dreams of enlightenment, or new states of consciousness. Don’t go there at all. Keep it utterly simple. Simplicity will give you everything you need for this endeavour. For this is not about religion or spirituality. This is about you. Only you, with no other considerations. So cease conceptualising, being attached to words and ideas. Leave all the big words behind you — awareness, consciousness, meditation. They won’t help you. And please, leave God out of this. Stay only with yourself — that which you are. This will do. This will be enough — being yourself. Simply. Plainly. Leave all your thoughts behind, all that you have gathered about yourself, your beliefs, your hopes, your old identifications. Leave them alone. Be unconcerned. You need one thing only: this simple sense of being yourself — this recognising yourself as being only being. This alone is the most majestic, omniscient, exotic, pedagogical teacher you will ever have. So keep to yourself. Feel the presence that is giving birth to yourself. That first thing that springs out of you. The first brick. That’s simple enough to do.

Don’t leave yourself ever. For they will all try to seduce you — your thoughts, the feelings attached to them, your perceptions in CinemaScope, and these never ending stories about yourself. They will make you take distance, run away into imagination. Don’t let them fabricate you, determine you. Stay simple. Be only with that part of yourself that cannot be twisted, impaired, injured. Be with your unmoving self. It is never going to be more complicated than that. Truth is the simplest affair you will ever come across. You are that which allows for the simple feeling of being. There is no need to add anything to that feeling. Not even a single thought is necessary. You are being yourself before you sit, or stand, or eat, or think. Being yourself requires nothing of you. It is the simplest thing you will ever do. It is baby-level spirituality. So don’t be grandiose. Simply find yourself and stay there. And you won’t find yourself in the many. Simplicity refers to something ‘made of one constituent’, ‘one-fold’ — that’s the etymology of it. You are made of one block. One being. Everything that appears twofold is not yourself. It is duplicity — deceitfulness. And don’t even say that this is about being happy. That will only make you seek happiness. Only look to be yourself. There is nothing to seek in being yourself. Be overly simple. That will make you contented and contained. Gathered in the one single self or reality there is. Therefore unlimited and unbridled. Therefore loving. And the world — phew! How simple it has become!

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Hidden Vastness

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Monk by the Sea’ – Caspar David Friedrich, 1808-10 – WikiArt

Infiltrated with your experience is hidden a vastness. Don’t let it be unseen, a thing lost, blind to itself, and yourself mistaken with merely a few passing sensations and some thoughts erring with little purpose. You’ve got to notice, just notice, quietly, almost inadvertently, that most of your experience consists of a shy, unassuming, happy presence that stands behind every single occurrence that proceeds proudly in and as your experience. That shy being is not to be missed or snubbed. That background blessing is of utmost importance in your life. It is everything to you, although you may not know it. So you’ve got to thin your experience out, and not let it be so loud, so invasive — maybe snub it for a while, to make it transparent to what is saturating it. This shy presence is in fact yourself wanting to be truly seen. It is yourself pushing the boundaries of experience, to befriend you. It is your lover who seeks to seduce you, and that you push away every time you give objective experience this undue, primary importance. So be attentive, sensitive to the discreet manifestation of presence. Don’t be so rude for once.

Let presence reveal its shining, pervading nature. See every appearance through. Notice the presence of your self through and behind every experience that forms before your eyes. You’ve got to give yourself all the attention you deserve, to see that you are everywhere, all at once, and that you in fact pervade the world. And the more you see yourself as you are, the more interesting will the world become to you. You will be in love with your fellow humans and with the world, and that love is nothing but the presence of your self pervading every experience, being one with it. To love is to witness the disappearance of your old, limited, worn out sense of self, and the discovery of a limitless, incorruptible, astounding self. A self with no substance, yet highly substantial, highly present, overwhelmingly so. A self that is the very hum of the world, and its vibrating essence. A self that is but the simple feeling of being when it is disengaged from the filter of experience. A self that is fresh, untamed, vibrant with its own innate innocence. So learn to simply be, in spite of all your so tantalising experiences. Life is solely composed of this one, single, ravishing experience of being. Stay firm with that fact.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840)

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Websites:
– Caspar David Friedrich (Wikipedia)
– The Monk by the Sea (Wikipedia)

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The Will of God

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Wind Blows’ – Hugo Simberg, 1897 – WikiArt

God’s will is what is happening now. Not as a body or an entity, not as a form or any kind of event. The reason is: form has already happened. Every object comes from the past. It has traversed at least a length of time to land in the field of awareness. Like a thought has. A thought is never now. It is the termination of something that took place a moment ago. It is an achieved result. But there is something in our experience that doesn’t come from the past, that hasn’t travelled any distance to be here, and that hasn’t moved through time to be now. So if you want to know what is God’s will, find the only thing in your life that is not a thing, that hasn’t yet taken form, and therefore needs neither space nor time to be. Find that which cannot be found, that which is formless, that which hasn’t travailed. For God’s will doesn’t come second, it cannot be a result, for such a thing would need a cause for itself to be. No. God’s will is first. As a ‘first’, it is in capacity to initiate, to create. But what is created is never itself God’s will, for it is already formed, with a life of its own. It is corruptible as form. So go to the essence, the origin. Find the incorruptible in yourself — that one uncreated thing — and take that only to be the will of God.

So we are in our essence uncreated. This is our identity, to be without form, forever here, forever now, eternally landed, therefore without a will of our own. For what would a separate will be but a thing already formed, an effect with already a cause; and therefore not the causeless, therefore not God’s will. So if we want our life to follow a divine trajectory, we have to give our utmost attention to who we are. That will condition the rest of our existence. That matters the most: that little name we give to ourself, that little identity. Start with the truth of who you are, and be only concerned with the tail of that star. Make yourself bright with it — that’s how to follow God’s will. Be that one that is in no capacity to be a follower. Stand as and for the truth of being and be concerned with nothing else but that. That is the only possible will you can afford. Any other kind of will is not your own, although it may appear to be. So don’t expect to have a will, for a will is but an appearance that has formed in yourself. Go to yourself first. Go for that part of yourself that has no will but God’s will. You will find there a will that encompasses all other wills — for what is a will but the will to be happy, rested, fulfilled? Only at the condition of being without a will of your own can you embrace the one will of your true identity as being. Being is in fact its own will, for it has as its DNA the purpose of all wills, which is the peace of living. From that peace firmly set in your heart, any will is the will of God.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Hugo Simberg (1873-1917)

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Website:
– Hugo Simberg (Wikipedia)

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