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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Wherever You Go

Posted on by Alain Joly

Listen to this: you are not meant to go anywhere. You may travel to the end of the earth and beyond. You may climb mountain after mountain, and dive deep into seas and oceans. You may visit the heart of the busiest cities, or be quietly at home. Wherever you go, please give it a close look. For you will never be where you go. Where you go is not where you will find yourself. The reason is: there is no geography outside yourself. Your self is the only geography for everywhere you go. Your self has mountains, cities, oceans and a home for you to live in. Your self has a body attached to it, for you to play the role of a person having a life in a world. But don’t be deluded. It is not because you always happen to be where your body is, that your self is located inside your body. There is a temporary, secret connection between your body and your self. But the truth is: your deepest self is free from any contingencies. It is not to be found anywhere in space, for it is itself owning the space you appear to be in. It has no habitation to live in. It cannot be conditioned, and its essence is impossible to move, or be transported from one place to another. So be always interested in that deepest part of yourself. Dedicate yourself to always know where you truly are. Not the superficial location of your body — not at the levels of names and forms. For where you are is not a place you can go to. It is not a place you have to reach or make an effort to attain. And your body is useless for you to know the place where you are. Where you are has no ‘where’. So in order for you to be where you are, well, then you have to only ‘be’. ‘You are’. Be only interested in that. In the fact that you are. That will give you your true location — where you truly are, wherever you are. That alone matters. Not your diving into seas and oceans. Not your roaming through cities. Not your being quietly at home. These are only distractions, making you head in the wrong direction. Where you have to go is always to your self first. Be there, in your self, in being, and all will appear pristinely simple. All places will fall into place — into your place as being. Then, wherever you may roam, you will reach the highest peak of your self. Then, wherever you may wander, you will be in the beating heart of your self. And wherever is the mellow sofa you may rest in, you will be resting in the sweet home of your self. See: you are not meant to go anywhere.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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That Flickering Flame

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Mary Magdalene with Oil Lamp’ (part)  – Georges de la Tour, 1630-35 – WikiArt

The simple feeling of being — away from the contingencies of being a separate self enthralled, or assailed by objective experience — that feeling, that wee flame, needs to be attended at all costs, watched over patiently, and finally protected. Otherwise it will wither in no time, pushed by the winds of our egocentric activities, wiped out by our stubborn beliefs. Being can be such a shy being. But always remember: it is eager to shine; it is eager to warm your life up with its soft, tender flame. And it will bring you that little light you need, to find your way through the maze of existence. That flickering light is stronger than you think. At first, it might appear to be hesitant, wavering as if to die with any sudden burst of a boastful thought, or the surging of a distressing feeling. But look closer. For the apparent flickering of that little, intermittent flame is yours. You are that angry shadow threatening to shut its light off yourself. You are that cold gust ready to send its warmth far and away from your life, and leave you freezing like a lonely being. So be yourself that shyness, that hesitancy. Watch that you don’t come to disturb the flame of your self. Be that flickering entity, always ready to retire and fade your cumbersome presence off that joyous fire of being. That’s the extent of your attending: your not being there, your acceptance to die or surrender, your willing to fragilise that imposant self which you have identified yourself with along the way — that invention of yourself. That is all this wee flame needs to set fire to your existence, to inflame your being as to show it to be indestructible, and to shed a bright light on your true nature as being infinite and eternal — not that shy, fragile, flickering, coming and going presence. For presence is a wildly enthusiastic blaze if you let it be. It can burn you in a second, so as to render you inexistent. It is a firestorm that will scatter you in a thousand fluttering ashes, to leave you as you truly are: A peaceful being. A flame of happiness. Shining brightly like an ebullient sea of love. See what a little attending can do — a little nurturing! The humble succouring of a wee, flickering flame…

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Georges de La Tour (1593-1652)

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Websites:
– Georges de La Tour (Wikipedia)
– Magdalene with the Smoking Flame (Wikipedia)

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God’s Blind Spot

Posted on by Alain Joly

Understand that there is something present now, that stands ready to record your experience. This something or presence is massively here. You cannot budge it no matter what. It is here the moment you are seeing anything, and the moment you are hearing what you are hearing. No matter what it is you are perceiving, that thing is here to allow you to do so. Should you be thinking, and your thinking is immediately known. Should you be feeling, and your feeling spreads itself in the very thing that is knowing it. Your body is under its scrutiny, through its being aware of a sky of sensations. It will follow you no matter where you go, and yet you cannot make it go anywhere. You cannot hide anything from this observing eye — he’d be the one hiding it. This thing has no shadows. It is bright day and night. And should you undertake an inquiry about that sun, she’d be the one conducting it. In short, the whole of life is being played within something without which there would be no life to be experienced. It is conditioning everything to itself without itself being conditioned by anything. But the most extraordinary of all is that we manage to miss it, to not notice it, and finally conceal it. Which means that this presence is itself the one concealing itself. And that bit of shadow that is left behind is who we think we are! We therefore only exist in a vacuum. The self that we believe ourself to be is the only thing that can neither experience nor be experienced. It is not in the picture. Nowhere to be found. Evaporated! Just an invention. The unreal cannot in a thousand years be experienced by the real. So the real is left completely alone. One with itself. And we are that: An ocean of knowing that knows nothing of the wee self we pretend to be. It only knows our having never, ever been here. In other words, we are God’s only blind spot.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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One Sublime Being

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Winter Night in Rondane’ – Harald Sohlberg, 1913 – WikiArt

The body-mind is not an apparatus that stands on its own. It is an instrument of awareness. It is supposed to bear and implement the innate qualities of its owner as pure, unlimited being. This is why it has pain and suffering: When all such qualities have failed to be transmitted. When awareness is being short-circuited. Suffering is the complaint of God that is inbuilt in the body-mind system. It is God’s intelligence revealing itself to ourself when we have become blind to our true nature. So we have to align ourself to the depth contained in the knowing of our being, to be ourself that vastness, and allow it to shine in our experience. This is the golden avenue to peace: to be ourself an expression of the divine being that is lending itself to our constitution, lending its body to the body of our bones, blood, and skin, and lending itself as a container for our thoughts, sensations, and perceptions.

We never had a solid body with a life of its own. A dying body is not just a body that fails to sustain itself. It is consciousness calling itself back to itself, and in that process making the body-mind instrument ever more soft and porous, leaving it ever more shining, ever more acquiring the qualities of its essence as pure being. It is also a mind that is made less ambitious, losing its carapace of wanting, needing, seeking, expecting — the suffering that it all implies. A mind that is slowly giving itself in, to return to where it never left, and espouse its natural receptacle as pure awareness. This is how death comes to be so readily accepted. In the course of this transition. In the gift that death is in last analysis. For your body is not your body. It is God’s being in disguise. As for your mind, it is but God’s infinite mind borrowed. So you never truly lose your body. You never truly lose your self. And you are not confined to your body-mind in this life. You just come to realise the presence of another truer, finer body. A body that extends itself to the width and length of the world. And you notice that your mind is not restrained to the perimeter of your skull, but hosts unbridled, measureless, the world that is your body, with its infinity of variables. This is how body, mind, world, God, life, death are discovered to be one sublime being, bound together by the vital fluid of love.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Harald Sohlberg (1869-1935)

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Website:
– Harald Sohlberg (Wikipedia)

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What We Have to Do

Posted on by Alain Joly

Well, now you know what to do, don’t you? All this time spent in the contemplation of truth must have served some purpose. The countless hours sitting on the cushion. The days in the company of Meister Eckhart or Rumi. And the sage of Arunachala. All these masters of presence. Surely they must have made a lasting impression on you. Now you won’t be seduced by experience anymore. You won’t be dragged into the train of every thought or worry that passes by. You won’t fall entranced by feelings, no matter how pregnant they may appear to be. You won’t let any of your sensations attach themselves to yourself, and suck your attention. Now you know better. You won’t be caught again. The time has come to find yourself just where you are. In that essential in yourself. Not at the periphery. Not in the weather of life, but deep down, in silence, in that presence that falls to nothing but itself. This is where you have to be. This is where your sacred interest lies. But we know that so well by now, don’t we? No need to stress that point again.

Well. But let’s rehearse it again. Just in case. Some part of it may have slipped away from our attention. There is never any harm in repeating what really matters: The important is never in the many, but lies secret in the reality that hosts every seeming appearance. So now we know, don’t we, where to look, where the promise hides, where that non-spoken truth is spoken. We know where is our duty to God. It is there, where you know, close to yourself, behind the behind, present as your most intimate identity. Don’t let yourself be drawn outside of it. Don’t fall to any passing occurrence, to anything that is not the entirety of you. That’s simple enough to make the difference. Stay with that part of yourself that is unmovable, that cannot be divided, set apart, isolated, looked at. That part that will never fail you, no matter hard you may try. And if you find anything, any thing, that stands to be noticed in your mind, an obstacle in yourself, then be unconcerned, go behind it, go for the space that holds it, that last frontier beyond it. And should that obstacle, that thought, that feeling, that perception, be so pregnant as to occupy the whole space of your self, then be bold, dive into it, right at the centre of it, free fall into it, on the other side of yourself, in this unknown, never visited part of you. Then… Then, you may come to that spaceless space, to that newness. Let it shower you, cleanse you. Be it and don’t move away from it no matter what. You won’t regret it.

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Text by Alain Joly

Photo by Elsebet Barner

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Arise, O Krishna!

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Rasa Mandala Dance of Krishna and the Gopis’ – Anonymous, 1760 – Wikimedia

Arise, O Krishna! This is not a time for discretion. There is enchantment around the lake of experience. Ladies have come with fine clothes and jewellery to be adorned by you. You have to be their cup-bearer, the one presence giving to every forms of experience their gorgeous light. For what is a thought without the cup in which it grows, stands for a second, and disappears? Krishna, you alone are the meaning and beauty attached to every object that inhabit our daily living. So this is not a time to hide, but to reveal, to shed light, to glorify. The Gopis — the milkmaids of the Krishnaite folklore — have come to you in the effervescence of their longing. You are the reason for their looking so beautiful. They come to you to be revealed and embellished by your presence, by the one being that is their most precious jewel. So enter the round, O Krishna, and dance with every one of them.

Give to the thoughts that come and wander for a time in our minds their chamber of peace. Clothe them with clarity and intelligence. Appease the suffering of which they are the vehicle, and offer them the rest they deserve. Don’t let anyone unattended. Not a feeling should be left alone, frightened or sad, without benefiting from your warm embrace. No sensations should come along without your building for them a temple of awareness. Be the one present for all, infallible, unswerving. Should a Gopi be lost in the contemplation of nature, and you are here showering her vision with beauty. You are the noble harmony of every experience, and what confers to the dance of life the sweetest of melodies. And have you noticed, O Krishna, how your absence can throw a shadow of sorrow on every experience that passes unseen by you? And have you witnessed how acute is our longing for you, when you withdraw your loving gaze from the many happenings of our lives?

So now, with flowers in their hair, and boundlessness in their hearts, do the Gopis join in your endless round, O Krishna. You hold everyone, every experience, every object that stands lost and alone, in your loving arms. You create around them an armour of beauty, and clothe them in truth’s brightest apparel. That’s how we find the peace at the heart of experience: by marrying every appearance to the gentle presence that holds them. And that presence is ourself — who we are — now giving shape to every perception, every occurrence, sheltering them in the being that gives them protection and form. That’s how the Gopis are experienced as an emanation of Krishna, and how Krishna is seen to be their primordial cause. So now arise, O Krishna! Truly arise! We have come here in celebration of truth, to contemplate you and be contemplated by you. The set for the dance has been arranged. We have come to you enamoured as humble milkmaids, as the fervent Gopis of your heart.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Anonymous (1760-65)

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Website:
– Raslila (Wikipedia)

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