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 Dream of a World

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Milton`s Mysterious Dream’ (part) – William Blake, 1816-20 – WikiArt

There is a fraud in our life. An illusion that makes us feel that life is going to get better. That time or circumstance will bring us to a place of understanding, where our troubles will come to an end, where there will be betterment, improvement, change. To believe this will make us miss that we are already here and now in a place of no change, of no betterment, where nothing can improve or get better. This place is our very self, our sense of being that we have never been able to affect or modify, no matter how relentless our life has been, no matter our despair, our sorrow, our losses. Nothing we have gone through has touched it in any way. All our stories and sufferings have taken the shape of our thoughts and beliefs about them. But while we are desperately trying to give a form to our life, a solidity to our body, a reality to our problems, and a truth to our beliefs, right here and now, right where it all is seemingly taking place, hidden within experience, enveloping it all, is already a presence, a vastness, a reality that is embracing everything, and that is our only reality, our only place, our only possible self in this living experience.

For there is not a world there where we could be in. That would be a lovely idea, but the fact is: there is no possibility to prove the existence of such a world. We can only assert it, marvel at it through our senses, study it, analyse it, but of a solid proof there is none. The existence of a world is dependent on our perceiving it, and perceptions are contained in our knowing them. Without the knowing faculty, there cannot be a world. The whole glory and misery of the world, of the whole universe, is all gathered in that fathomless fraction of knowing, or awareness. Without that simple, ungraspable, dimensionless, ethereal element of knowing, no world could ever come into existence. So in fact, knowing is all there is, consciousness is the essence of every single appearance that comes to be seen, heard, touched, or experienced. The world is shaped, or its appearance created, through our being aware of it. So the whole of our living experience is but a dream in consciousness, a game that can be played and enjoyed at the level of our body-mind, but whose reality is only the awareness of it.

Now, where are we if we are not in a world? Where are we if the world is not even there? What is this something that we feel we are in, and exists, and is undoubtedly? What is a world, an experience, when we have passed through all illusions, all beliefs, all shaky appearances? What is left here that holds our experience, that is indomitable, indestructible, present without a shadow of doubt? This place is our self, what we are, our very essence, the reason behind our saying ‘I’. So we live in our self, not in a world. We see our limited existence pass and consume itself within that which is creating it, which is our own aware being, the knowing that we are and could never not be. And there, in ourself, in being, where the world takes its apparent form, is found what we have been looking for in every direction, in a non-existing world, in experience: a sense of relief, peace, beauty, love, and the understanding of our essence, the explanation of it all. An explanation that is not conceptual, but a living one, a subjective one, something made plain by being it. We and life then become self-explanatory. The fraud has been diluted. All imagination has died down. Now our living experience has acquired the rawness of truth. Something that is, unlike the world or our experience, beyond doubt and absolute.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by William Blake (1757-1827)

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Website:
– William Blake (Wikipedia)

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Unaccompanied Awareness

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Woman in the Park’ – Ion Theodorescu-Sion, 1919 – WikiArt

Nothing is more beautiful than to be aware choicelessly, effortlessly, without involving a self, a thought that wants to do awareness, to control it, to achieve it. After all, awareness is by virtue of its being, and cannot be rendered more aware than it already is. So awareness blooms when it is left untouched, virgin of a self, free of an ambition or desire to be aware. Awareness is the kind that enjoys being alone, unaccompanied. It doesn’t like to be mimicked or carried by a somebody that feels superior, in charge of being aware. And yet this is what we are doing all the time, being like a commander, a figure of authority. No wander awareness is leaving the show, retreating in the background, he that has no desire, no ambition other than being, she that feels whole and sufficient, in no need of an other to possess her. You’ve got to let go of wanting to be awareness, for that desire is made of scattered little pieces of ego gathering together in a desperate attempt to keep some control on the situation. There is no desire involved in being aware, for the simple reason that awareness has no desire other than to simply be and shine. Awareness is here now beaming in and as our experience. Noticing is all we can do about it.

But noticing already implies awareness. Don’t think that you are the one who is going to notice awareness. The noticing is awareness itself recognising its own presence, acknowledging it, giving it the freedom to just be. So there is only awareness — no one here that is aware, or even noticing to be aware. That would imply that awareness needs a clutch, a somebody to be aware. This somebody is fictitious, fortuitous, disposable, redundant, not required. Awareness relies on itself only. It is bound together with itself. That’s why it can be depended upon with confidence. If you are awareness, well then you are awareness. Let yourself be taken in the embrace of it, without a second look for yourself. See that there is here and now only the activity of awareness, and renounce to your own, which is no renouncing at all, since there is here no such a thing as a self that is separate from awareness. Just see that you are not there, not at all. There are thoughts, sensations, perceptions, but of a self you won’t find any trace. If you do let go of the idea of a self, then you will come to see that what is left here is awareness alone, which is the only thing there is and that is in capacity of selfing.

So awareness is outrageously simple, since it is the only thing experienced, whether we know it or not. What is complicated is what is entangled, intertwined with awareness, that which has set itself up as an other, may that be a single thought… that’s enough. A single thought is enough to render yourself blind to awareness. Since awareness, or this quality of pure knowing, is all there is, then in a strange and fascinating way, it can be easily displaced or darkened. It needs only the slightest interference, the remotest identification, the minutest belief to be something — a self that has awareness — to send it into the hiding. Thoughts and perceptions have become experts in mimicking a self, stealing the space of awareness for their own purpose, and deceiving ourself into being an entity, a self. There is no self here separate from experience. There is but a plunge into your own being, a sea of awareness without an end or a limit, a free fall which no self could ever cope with, or grasp, or comprehend. This empty being with no objective quality is yourself, all there is to yourself, and its tissue is made of pure awareness. Experience then is realised to be only an appearance devoid of its own individual reality. It is made of that presence which is our essence, whose nature is awareness with nothing beside it.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Ion Theodorescu-Sion (1882-1939)

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Website:
– Ion Theodorescu-Sion (Wikipedia)

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Overflowing Questions

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Edge of a Lake (Souvenir of Italy)’ – Camille Corot, c.1855-60 – WikiArt

Wouldn’t you like to have a knowledge which cannot be surpassed, which amounts to everything? That has in its core the truth of living, the philosopher’s stone from which everything springs, and to which all appearances owe their existence to? Actually, don’t you already long for it, and have done so for as long as you can remember? Is it not what you secretly hope for in your life? To have this knowledge, this direct access to the peace of your being? To have it here at hand, like a secret bond which you can find under and within every difficult situation, every outrage, every burst of suffering? And wouldn’t you love to harvest what this intimate knowledge contains? Its most reliable sense of joy, of contentment, and see yourself plentiful, complete, enough, in an absence of need? Wouldn’t that be great? To uncover it, and let it find its natural place in you, and as you, easily, without your doing very much about it? Wouldn’t that be great? Would anything be more valuable to you? Would that not be worth a life? Any life?

And what if you were told that you are not this bunch of objects which you have believed yourself to be — these endless qualifications, and the myriad of thoughts and feelings to which you have tied yourself with? Wouldn’t that give you freedom, a sense of release? To be unattached, not bound to your body-mind, at least not in a fundamental way? Wouldn’t that be healing, to be not the body but what holds it in its embrace? Wouldn’t that be soothing, to be not the mind but that which lends it the space to wander about? What is to you more elating and convincing than finding yourself naturally, effortlessly, in a place of health and vigour? The body’s ailments? The mind’s silly wanderings? Well, what if they were not really yours? Wouldn’t you like to find out, what would be their fate when left alone? What could be their trajectory when you rest peaceful in your own healthy, infinite body of awareness? Wouldn’t that be great to make this discovery? To have the final answer behind all that has been troubling you for so long?

And what if you were to uncover some even bigger findings? That behind your long, busy, eventful, suffering life, there has been a stillness, a silence which couldn’t be stirred or broken? And that nothing truly ever happened in your life? That it has been just a passing dream? What would be the implications of that ? And what if you were to find out that the world is just only clothed by the awareness of it? That it is not there in the way you had imagined so far? And that behind it all was also dawning the certainty, the knowing of your immortal, undefeatable nature? Wouldn’t that be wonderful? To see, feel, touch the truth of it with your hands, that death is a myth? That it is not there? Not in the least? Wouldn’t that be extraordinary? That things do die but not you? That body does become ashes but not you — not that which you truly are? That mind withers away but not you — not your primal being which you have to concede is eternal, is infinite? Wouldn’t that take your breath away? Wouldn’t that blow your mind?

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Camille Corot (1796-1875)

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Website:
– Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (Wikipedia)

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An Abundance of Spirit

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Chateau Noir’ – Paul Cezanne, 1904 – WikiArt

We always go too far, too quick. We jump to the objective display of reality, and in doing so leave our reality behind. It is a strange phenomenon, this forgetting, this negligence, this hurry. In fact, we pass ourself by, and rush towards what we think matters the most, what we believe to be real. This is how we have made this life difficult, an impossible thing to comprehend, and a hardship: in this forgetting, in this passing by. Our suffering is the product of a simple, single act of absent-mindedness. We have put ourself into oblivion by having made the facile postulation that reality is in the objective, in what we can see, hear, touch with our senses. And then have clung to it, to the point of losing our mind inside it, and losing ourself with it. What an absurd thing to have done.

We ought to be slow and still, if we are to meet our nature. We need to be attentive, if we are to notice our being. Not the one-pointed kind of attention, that we are already so well-acquainted with, but the sluggish one. The lazy one, that doesn’t want to go out and stumble into the world. That doesn’t feel like wrestling with thoughts. That cannot be bothered with the threat or seduction contained in the last surge of a sensation or a feeling. I can assure you that there is already a lot to see, hear, feel, on our way to the vast, far-ranging world that our senses provide. So let us not have time or space on our schedule. Let us forget the agenda that our person has and wants to fulfil. Let us not form any concept, idea, or projection, and delve into what is here before every appearance.

We may see, in slowing down, that there is here a presence that stands still, transparent, and aware. We may hear the sound of a silence that stays unaffected by the clamour of existence. We may feel the world to be but the thousand colours of our sumptuous being. We may notice the pregnancy of spirit in what is seen, heard, felt, and realise this pregnancy to be our very own nature felt, heard, seen. This abundance of spirit in our life is but the disappearance of the entity that sees, hears, feels the world, and the surging of the One as our own and only reality or world. Then we won’t pass truth by anymore. Our own nature will be unmistakable, unmissable. It will meet us in the face at the first surge of an object seen, heard, felt. We won’t miss it because it is all there is. Because there is here the absence of a self living in separation, and the absence of a world as world. This absence is our presence, our nature, our self, our world, and there ends our suffering.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)

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Website:
– Paul Cézanne (Wikipedia)

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Creep

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Radiohead @ TD Garden (Boston, MA)’ – by Kenny Sun – Wikimedia

I wonder if you have ever seen the face of love, what loving indifference is? I have some days ago, while watching a concert by Radiohead on the internet. It was during the band’s most celebrated hit, called ‘Creep’. This song is the stage of an unrequited love. But I suggest it goes further than that. It is the story of a rage, of not being enough. We all have lived through expectations that were turned down. We all have made efforts that didn’t pay off. We all want to feel special, to belong, to be at peace. We abhor being behind ourself, faking our contentment and control. So we all have known this feeling of being a ‘creep’, or at least of not being good enough. That’s why we live so hectically, constantly looking for better and more, wanting to feel complete, enough at last. Maybe that’s why the song happened to be such a hit, beyond its obvious musical qualities: it is like an echo of the secret battle we are engaged in, of our quiet desperation, and of our repeated attempt to put an end to our suffering.

I was watching the song being played, the singer yelling its rage amongst the gnashing saturated blasts coming from Jonny Greenwood’s guitar, lights illuminating the stage like a flash of lightning would. Then it surprised me. For just a few seconds, the camera caught in the public a young woman whose attitude was quiet, mildly concerned, but deeply tuned to herself. Everybody around her was involved, shouting, dancing, taking their share, drawing their identity and happiness from the vibes of the music. But she was not. Didn’t need to. Her need was to be quiet. Peace was her home. Beauty was where she was, and where she had landed on. She was tasting her being. She was taking it all in, but with a peaceful, loving indifference. For her, separation had been slain, and she had become a silent watcher, a taster of being, a madonna.

There was no need for her to dance and shout the lyrics of her favourite Radiohead song, for she dwelled in silence. It was all taking place somewhere else, in a placeless place where time was nowhere to been seen or experienced. All our objects of adoration are never the point, are never the goal. They are the means to feel and taste in ourself this most profound sense of peaceful being that is always here, always now with us, and that we miss in reason of our obsessive attachment to objects, with their derived outcomes and rewards. When the love or enthusiasm for an object — a song, a piece of art, a football match — is brought to its paroxysm, we merge with it, and in this merging forget our own person. This forgetting is the stage set for a meeting with ourself, for an encounter with our own silent being. We feel what we could call, a paradoxical serenity. So the pleasure of the senses is never the object of our desire, and never what our seeking is about. We are after something more elusive, the harder catch that is our own being. We long for this profound sense of peace and security that lives there as our identity. This serenity is not dependent on circumstances, but lies naturally in and as our most intimate being. This pure being is our true identity, and is in fact what we are really seeking behind all our pleasure oriented pursuits. Pleasure can never be a match to being. Pleasure is but the child of separation, while being is the realisation of our deepest identity as love, and its expression as oneness.

Love takes over experience. Love dominates experience, it brings it down to its knees, reveals what it is made of. Experience appears to be of secondary importance, not because it is not important, but because its importance lies in the light that shines on it and gives it its reality and meaning. We cease to be personally involved. We are just present, and this presence is our most precious and efficient involvement. We are indifferent not because we do not care, but in reason of the preeminence of love in our heart, with its acute, unfocused awareness. Love responds to the whole. There is no personal self present, that feels separate and insecure, fearing and seeking. That one is absent, leaving all the place to the quality of simply being, with no preferences in it, but with a total, impersonal, peaceful engagement. This peace is the most profound signature or identity contained in every experience that we go through. To recognise the nature of ourself as peaceful being, is to recognise the nature of experience as that one same peaceful being. We will never have to complain: ‘I wish I was special’. Never have to say: ‘I don’t belong here’. In love, there is no being a creep.

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Text by Alain Joly

Photo by Kenny Sun (Wikimedia)

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Website:
– Creep (Radiohead Song) (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
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The End of Self-Improvement

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Shores of Normandy’ – Gustave Courbet, 1866 – WikiArt

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“To know that your Self has not changed,
this illustration itself is enough.”
~ Ramana Maharshi

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There is no ameliorating emptiness, developing the unborn, aggrandising what is, and expecting the timeless to be anything more or different than what it is. Being leaves no room for improvement because it is not a thing, it is not a result, a something that has a cause. How do you improve the non-objective? How does the infinite progress? How do you make better a self that is absent as self — as something different or separate from experience? So self-improvement is a misunderstanding and a form of violence. It is an imposition, a belief that we squeeze to fit our idea of reality, an objection to the innate perfection of what is. It is mind-made, a product, a progeny of conditioning. It is designed for the continuation of our belief in being a self or entity that can be objectively defined. And remember this: every object, every ‘thing presented to the mind’ — as Latin word ‘objectum’ stands for — is in fact nothing but something thrown in the way of your knowing who you are. This is the meaning of Latin ‘obicere’ — ‘ob-‘: ‘in the way of’ and ‘jacere’: ‘to throw’. The self that you believe yourself to be, and that you strive to improve, is your hindrance. It is what makes you blind to your true nature.

To improve on a self is to make it continue, it is to give it credit, to give it the existence it never had. After all, we all want to feel real, to see that we can act, and have a power on our self. So we have the desire to consolidate and sculpt our being through rendering it an object that we can manipulate. We want to make a profit of our self, and see a return on our investment. In fact, to improve myself is nothing but a form of merchandising. It is a trade and a transaction. It is retail management, the ‘cutting off’ of our self with the aim of maximising profits. But don’t ever forget that if you are able to improve yourself, you can therefore also make it deteriorate, worsen, decline, decay. So what then?… is self-improvement decay, error, illusion? Is it ourself going astray, being mislaid? Are we really so sure that our being could ever decay? That awareness is a so fragile thing?

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