The Prayer of the Devotee

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘The Angelus’ – Jean-François Millet, 1857 – Wikimedia

Nowadays, we never think too much of the bells ringing from a distant church. Yet they were once set for a reason. They are the reminder of a practice of prayer called the ‘Angelus’. And it was precisely named so, after the moment when ‘The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary, and she conceived of the Holy Spirit’: “Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariæ”. So it is a message from a messenger of grace, lifting our spirit from the body, taking our experience at the level of what it truly is. It wasn’t just the recitation of a prayer. It was for our recalling. It was for being — for being held for a while in God’s bosom. It was for being reminded of our true nature, of our being the children of a deeper, forgotten presence which we are the incarnation of. It was an opportunity to remember. An invocation. A call from within.

This is a unique prayer, that some have named the ‘prayer of the devotee’. It was a prayer meant to be pronounced three times a day: in the morning, at noon and in the evening, accompanied by the ringing bells of the Angelus. A prayer inside which a few words strike with a special resonance. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us“. It was a testament to the sacrifice whereby God has made sure to leave in us a part of himself — his Son. A part of himself within ourself, which is more than our body and our qualifications, more than our mind and our many thoughts, beliefs, and identifications. It is that naked being or consciousness that is hidden in the maze of our many experiences, but is in fact our own, still, peaceful, never born identity.

So Mary has procreated while staying virgin, for the object of her nativity was herself, her true being which she has shown to the world to be the being of every other being. Jesus was a man, but Christ was that part of the man, and of us all, that didn’t need to be given a birth. It is the infinite, naked, ever-present being that is at the source of our sentiment of existing, of that very unique sense which is meant every time we say simply ‘I Am’, — I am, being, throbbing, living, never departing of that pure, godly, unqualified, indestructible essence, where infinity and eternity are like our most fitting attire. Nothing grandiose in these two words. They simply mean that I am not bound by time and place, by birth and death, by now and then, by here and there.

So three times a day, be it in the field as we were gleaning the wheat, or on the fishing boat in the middle of a river, we were called to stop and become a devotee for a timeless moment. Time and place were suspended, and our being recollected. It wasn’t anymore about harvesting the grain, or lifting the fish on the boat. It was for recognising in ourself the true nature of our being, and that special grace contained in being human — the child of a presence that abides in our very sense of being aware. For this apparently fleeting consciousness that is ourself is in fact the solid presence of God’s being, that is both sheltering and giving form to our body-mind-world. In this presence lives the peace that we are seeking everywhere, and that was placed here where it could never be missed, if only we are willing to listen to our inner call.

As very often in the religious world, there is the meaning intended, hidden, and the actual practice. The teaching, the message, and the poor understanding. The lifting grace, and the descent into belief and imagination. Here, the meaning intended, the teaching is: “Just be”. It is a prophetic, loving injunction for our sake, for our knowing, for our recognising. It is saying: notice that there is here and now, in and as yourself, a quality of being in which is contained life itself. It is saying: ‘God is with us’, which by the way is the meaning of one of the names given to Jesus, ‘Emmanuel’. So every time you hear the sound of a bell from a distant church, or the softer chime of your heart aching for peace, treat yourself with an Angelus, be like a devotee of your own being. Pause and go within, where you are forever being given a new birth, kneeling and offering your illusory identity in front of your one and true reality as being.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Jean-François Millet (1814-1875)

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Website:
– Jean-François Millet (Wikipedia)

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The Second Coming

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘Last Judgement’ (detail) – William Blake, 1808 – WikiArt

There has been a seed planted, a first coming. There has been for all appearances to exist, for the world of things to expand, the creative and pervading quality of a ground. This is where all beings and all things have tapped in for their own being. We have all sheltered it without our knowing it, for the ground of being is invisible to our eyes, not accessible to our senses. We have believed ourself to be a body and a mind, and have consequently been busy with the objective world, taking as a fact that our senses were reflecting back to us a true image of a dual universe. We have tried to conform to this idea, to this consensual representation of our reality, and this is the reason for our suffering and our innumerable conflicts. We have accepted our body-mind as an identity, and our life as the toiling for our security and happiness in a generally hostile, mindless, material world. We couldn’t be farther from the truth.

So there has been the promise of a Second Coming. The ‘returning of the Saviour at the end of time’, as some religions have stated. Well, maybe that formula bears some truth, if it wasn’t taken for what it is not. But there won’t be the first sign of a separate entity coming again in the world to free us. The Second Coming is taking place in our heart. This is where it lives and has its home, waiting for our realising, longing for our returning. This is the ground set for a meeting with ourself, with our reality. A truth unmoved, still, unqualified, that is abiding here in and as ourself, but has been forgotten, neglected, therefore left unnoticed. The remembering of it gives us the illusory impression of its coming again. But no. Its coming again is us coming out of our self-imposed dream. It is us seeing the world and everything in it as the many faces of God, which means the world exchanging its believed reality as matter for the luminous vibrancy of infinite consciousness.

So there is a Second Coming. It is only an apparent one for we have in fact never moved out of it. It is our infinite, eternal reality — in fact God’s very being — which we could never part from. This ‘coming’ is rather a revelation, an ‘epiphany’, as the Greek word for the coming again of Christ indicates. In Islam, this is called the ‘return’ (al-raj’ah), the ‘turning again’ towards ourself, our knowing of ourself — consciousness. It is a revolution, the ‘rolling back’ of a false idea, of a belief, to reveal, or return to our own reality as aware being. It is the coming into view of something that was here, but hidden by our looking in the wrong direction. It is our true nature or reality becoming perceptible again, a new light sprouting out of our lazy, habitual, and a thousand times rehearsed imagined identity as body and mind.

In fact, the Second Coming was simply called ‘Parousia’ in Greek, which literally means ‘being present’ — how could we have missed such level of clarity! So now the traditional, religious promise of the ‘returning of the Saviour at the end of time’ could be read in its new light of truth. It is our true nature as God’s being, or infinite consciousness, and its becoming perceptible again when all idea of time, sequence, saviour, hope or belief has left us. It is the ground of being, being present, and shining as our one and only peaceful reality, saving us from a lethal misunderstanding. The last judgment being nothing but the punishment given to the separate self, the fatal blow of its being non existent, and the rise of infinite consciousness as the only self there is, the reward of its quietly blissful nature.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by William Blake (1757-1827)

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Websites:
– Second Coming (Wikipedia)
– William Blake (Wikipedia)

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Lost in Temptation

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘Temptation’ – Odilon Redon, 1912 – WikiArt

You have to keep close to yourself. You cannot escape on a line of thoughts, thinking yourself out of your present experience of being. You cannot bring about another world — imaginations, beliefs, projections — on top of what you are already, on the mountain of being which you sit and already spend your whole existence on. You have to stay with what you are deeply — that unmoved, unchanging identity of being which you have been immersed in from time immemorial. It is too easy to take advantage of your senses and believe the world to be outside yourself. Too easy to pretend that you are separate, and that you live in the limitations of your own world as body and mind. Don’t move anywhere out of the very confines of your unlimited, dimensionless being. Keep very close to that. Believe me, that’s your only solace. They will try to convince you otherwise, but keep at it unreservedly.

You cannot move out of consciousness, out of the knowing of anything. You have your eternal home inside that knowing. You have your consciousness always with you, and every place you go to is already soaked in it. You have already curled yourself up in that place of being and found your anchor there. So don’t pretend you have to go out to find the sustenance of objects for your own happiness. You can’t find anything worthy outside yourself. Stay where you have already your essence in. Keep very close. It is tempting I know, to go out for a ride on a fleeting joy, or the promise of temporary happiness. It is compelling to suspend your suffering, even for a moment. But trust me, there is nowhere in this world where you could go and find a peace which you don’t have already within, waiting, sighing for your returning. So keep so very close to your own reality as being. Stay there uncompromisingly.

And don’t think yourself small there. Your being is not what you think. It is not a vague sensation inside your body, lodged in the recesses of your mind. You made it small because you have lost touch with it. You have buried it under the shine of your many experiences. You have scattered it in a thousand wrong identities. Your being is vaster than you think. It is the infinite which you have lost faith in and replaced by the little space provided by your senses. It is the eternal that you have pushed and imprisoned in the cage of time, which is but the activity of thinking. Nourish your inside. See that in doing so, in living in the heart of your true identity as pure, unalloyed being, just under the surface of objective experience, the within will be shown to be without, and the without within. You will come to notice that being is all there truly is. You will see the world finding its true, most fitting place in and as the consciousness from which you have once exiled it from. So pay a constant visit to yourself. Check that you don’t flee from home, no matter the circumstances you are in.

Be under the constant protection of your being. Live there. Find no temptation outside the plain attraction contained in the inevitability of being. You have been placed here for a reason. This is where you find yourself to be whole and therefore peaceful, your suffering being but this covenant broken. This is where the world is clothed in its innate beauty, which is conferred by your being both in this shared place of being. This is where love thrives and finds its origin — in being, when it is seen to be shared by everyone. The same being — not two, not many. One and the same for all, therefore evenly distributed as love. Love is not a feeling that appears when the other fits your own selfish requirements. It is the nature of being and of yourself when you recognise your own, given, divine nature. This is what is meant by the ‘love of God’. Not the love of a parent for its infamous, ungrateful children. But the love immense and unconditional that being shelters and showers upon itself, and which you have now recognised to be your own self, and the self of all.

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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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‘Come to Me’

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘Norham Castle, Sunrise’ – J.M.W. Turner, 1845 – WikiArt

Sometimes you’re left with just three words. I read them under a statue of Christ in a cathedral, three simple words from the Gospel of Matthew, but a whole teaching if you listen. “Come to Me”. There is immense simplicity and clarity in these three words. They have a vertiginous meaning, if you follow the course of their true destination. If you accept the invitation. Not from a somebody, a person that existed. Not from a God, or a Son of God. Not from anything in particular, any objective presence which you could go to. The invitation is from yourself to yourself. In fact, ‘Come to Me’ is better read as ‘Come to the me’. Go to the ‘I’. Abide in what you are, be that presence of yourself. Be just as you are — don’t add a thing to yourself, don’t play the game of projection or belief. Don’t give yourself to somebody or something that is not you. Stay right there, right in what you already are, just as you already are. But still, there is a movement implied — a solicitation, a passage from place to placeless place. It says ‘Come to Me’ for a reason. In that paradoxe is contained the totality of our spiritual endeavour.

It is not a place you have to go to, but rather the noticing of the place you are in. The beholding of your true nature. What is this ‘I’ that we stumble on every time we say ‘I’? What is this being conscious, this being aware that I am? Did we look well enough? Did we miss something that we have to come to it, take a new invitation, be encouraged? See that you have made your ‘I’ into an assumption, a pretence, an affectation, something not worth a visit, not worth a discovery or an enquiry. In fact, we have been asked to function and obey, which means to follow. The rest has been wisely swept under the carpet of belief or religion. As if we had already discovered everything about what we are. As if consciousness wasn’t worth a second look. As if from then on, for our nature, we had to rely only on imagination, belief, things fancy, whimsical, hopeful, devoid of reality. Reality has been covered — so we think. There is no new land here, no new discovery or journey within, nothing that hasn’t already been charted.

But there is a coming that is subtle to the point of not implying time or place. A coming that cannot be measured by instruments, that cannot be objectified, seen by the senses. There is a coming where we already are, but with a new light shed on it. A light that we have missed for directing it all on objects, with the complicity of the senses. So the light of what we truly are was lost in its being misdirected. Our true nature was lost in our belief in being a body, a self, a person. Our purity of being was hidden inside our fascination for qualifications and objects. Our happiness was lost in our suffering. Our peace squandered by our restless seeking. So there is a journey within. A journey with no distance to be covered. A coming to where we already are. A coming or moving into view. A becoming perceptible. A coming back to ourself.

‘Come to me’. You may discover that you have God within. That this is what the God of religion is — what they meant — the ‘I’ within, your true being. Come back to yourself. Become perceptible. Come into view. Know yourself as you are. Come into the light which you are already in. See that you are, and who you are. Abide in the purity of plainly being. Be yourself for the first time. Be ‘I Am’ alone. ‘Come to me’.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851)

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Website:
– J. M. W. Turner (Wikipedia)

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A Word of Glory

Posted on by Alain Joly

Words don’t apply to truth. What we are cannot be described. We may have a lot to say about our preferences, our thoughts, our body, our circumstances and conditionings, but we won’t be able to say anything about who we are. We may try to. We may give a thousand explanations. We may come as close as possible, by saying that we are that which is aware, that we are consciousness, being, and a thousand other expressions. But we won’t get closer to the truth of who we are. Truth is not something that can be made into a concept, or an object. It is before every concept, before every object. It is before even ourself as a body-mind, as a person. It is before every single thought that we may have about ourself. It is the living, throbbing embrace of everything.

We cannot catch truth and put it in a box, or made it into a thought. It is elusive. We won’t find it in the world, no matter how hard we may look. It is within. It is who we are. It is what there is — our very being. We cannot miss our own being, what we are made of, what there is here that we call ‘myself’, or ‘I’. If we do miss it, then we are taking ourself to be what we are not. We have given in to an idea, to a concept. We have given allegiance to everything objective, easy, to stories about ourself, but not to ourself. We have not been ourself yet. Belief doesn’t reveal our true identity. It tramples it. It hides it. Truth requires no thought, no belief, no person or entity, even no world. Truth is only about itself. And to see truth is to see ourself, to be our own self that shines with glory. There is no truth but ourself. We know truth, when we know ourself.

All the words about truth are here to point to the truth without words. For when we know ourself, the reality of who we are, there is no thinking about truth, or about god, for we live and abide where words have melted into the reality they were pointing to. We have given in to our own reality. We have died in our own living presence. We have noticed that we are that which we were looking for, and that there is no looking beyond it. We are settled. We are made real, alive, complete. The relief contained in knowing who we are at last, this falling of ourself into the place of being that we have been and are eternally — that in itself feels like a tremor of peace, joy, and freedom. This place of being is unconditional love, wordless reality, living oneness. All things and all beings find their essence in it, and lose their own, individual reality. They are as if one word — a word whose only function is being its own living, glorious reality.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Our Sole Horizon

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Forest Distant Views’ – Ivan Shishkin, 1884 – WikiArt

The key in spiritual matters, is that we have to keep it very simple. We must not blow it out of proportion, exaggerate it, make a conundrum out of it. It is just a matter of looking, of breaking a little, stubborn habit. Nothing extraordinary. We keep looking away from our own being. We act as if we knew all about who we are, as if it were understood, that we are our body, that we are these thoughts that keep coming, which we judge, influence, direct according to what other thoughts say. We live in a little corner of ourself, feeling like a little king in our kingdom. We are so used to our own ways, to our concepts and explanations, to our beliefs and repetitive actions, that we have taken for granted to be just a person in a world. That’s what we were taught. That’s what we were conditioned to think. In fact, we are only followers. We play small. We are protecting our own establishment.

But we know more than that. In fact, we are all experts at being, without our realising. We are masters of freedom. We know that with just a little looking, a little asking, we could rock our lifeboat. We could make our life sensational, attractive, happy, tranquil. We have that hint in ourself, otherwise we wouldn’t be seeking, or working for happiness, improvement, progress, with such undeterred faith. We know that in spite of everything, the world has magic, and our life keeps inside it secrets of glory. That’s how we can face unspeakable suffering, trauma, violence, and the looming threat of death. Because we have in ourself the warmth and security of being, which we try to reenact in every possible and unreasonable ways, in our pleasures and our hopes, in our beliefs and our addictions.

The problem is that we have put a belief in front of what is. We have invented a self where there is only the wide expanse of being. Our whole identity is in being. We have no space to be anything else than being. Our whole life is being. Our body doesn’t even come close to being what we are, and neither does our mind. Being as consciousness takes it all, the whole of what we are, and of what everything is. Every appearance finds its essence in it, and lives in the gorgeous space it provides. We have all our senses embedded in being, and the world finds its reality in the reality of being. Consciousness has it all. It is all we will ever find. All that ever is. It may hide from our gaze, that being is our only landscape, our sole horizon, but it shows blatantly in every corner of experience, if we are willing to look.

In fact, it is so much here, so reachable, so knowable, that we are blind to it, unable to know it. That’s because we have attached ourself to another pseudo reality inside our own reality of being. We have chosen the lie of being somebody over the truth of being only being. We have chosen to be something, a body, a thought, an idea, a self, and have as a result lost, forgotten, limited the infinity of being, that is pervading our life to the point of being the only thing in presence. The truth is that we can never be something other than being. It’s a nice try to believe it, but it won’t happen, to be a suffering self, a limited body, and a mind with its own separate agenda. Everything that we think we are, we are not. We have to distance ourself from every qualification, from every belief, from every identity. We have to be naked of every addition to being in order to see our naked being, and to be in its gorgeous grip.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898)

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Website:
– Ivan Shishkin (Wikipedia)

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Boundary

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Book of Wisdom’ – Nicholas Roerich, 1924 – WikiArt

It is naive to imagine that there is a boundary or separation between consciousness and the world we are conscious of. It would be extraordinary to find that boundary, where our consciousness ends and where the outside world begins. We have an apparent and necessary boundary between body-mind and world, for our convenience, for practical purposes, and have left it there as an unquestionable fact. And everybody has complied, including scientists, that this separation must exist, that consciousness is a competence of the body, that it cannot be challenged, that it would be madness, beyond reason to do so. But there is an impossibility here. For this boundary can never be found at the deepest level, or even conceptualised. It is inexistant. Something like a pure invention. But this illusion of a separation was broken, seen through long ago, in the world of mind, of which our spiritual traditions are experts. Sages have seen long ago that there was here, between consciousness and the objective world, a seamless relationship, an undoubted oneness, no boundary, no separation, not even an unlikeness. It was all one with nothing besides it. The world is wholly contained in Mind, as Mind, and Mind or consciousness is all we are, all there is — our fundament.

So we have invented the reality of a world out of the reality of consciousness. After all, it is a beautiful find, a gorgeous dream, that we have a world, and that this world was shaped, sculpted by our five senses for as long as our senses have existed, and for as long as our bodies have been made the inevitable side effects of the appearance of a world. Everything — world, body, mind, senses — is an appearance in a more fundamental, non-objective reality. So nothing new, or other, or different was ever introduced in our reality. Reality is all there is. Consciousness is our playground, our only field or ground, and it is hosting everything in and as itself, including our apparent self. This is how we have a father and a son. A reality, and a temporary, individual, apparently located point of view on that reality. But between father and son, between reality and ourself, there is only one seamless consciousness. God has made sure that all things and beings find a habitation within him — or her. And then, ‘within’ was too taken away, for how would you have a within and a without when there is only the One?

So we have to meditate on the appearance of this world. On what is hiding behind it. On what it teaches us on our nature, on our reality, on our humanness. By the way, being human is by no means derogatory. In its most ancient Sanskrit root, the word for ‘human’ means: “The being whose essence is the capacity for self-remembrance of its divine nature.” So this knowledge of the reality of the world is a sacred knowledge. For with that knowledge firmly held, you can now enjoy personhood without the burden of separation, without the suffering that is its natural outcome. So we don’t have to be spiritual anymore. We have acquired our personhood, our humanness. Our nature has been realised, uncovered, in its primal, intended truth, and it is once and for all. Now we can enjoy a world for the first time. Now we can be lovers. Watchers. Listeners. Devoid of the superfluous. Free of our cumbersome, limiting beliefs. Recognising and accepting God’s will as our own. 

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947)

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Website:
–Nicholas Roerich (Wikipedia)

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