The Glory of ‘I Am’

Posted on by Alain Joly
Stained glass by Adeline Hébert-Stevens in Church of Passy, France

First, you have to dig. You have to dig beneath every thing that qualifies you. You have to find that pure ‘I am’ hidden under all that this ‘I am’ is or can be. You have to find the raw substance of that which you are referring to when you say simply ‘I am’. What is this pure, unqualified ‘I am’? Over the years, piles over piles of experiences, beliefs, conditioning, have acquired substance and have overwhelmed this simple experience of ‘I am’. This substance has mutated into an apparent self, and ‘I am’ has been buried under it, and made into a collection of ‘I am this’, ‘and this’, ‘and this’, ‘and also this’. So that we can never ever truthfully feel ‘I am’ anymore. It is gone. ‘I am’ is gone with the wind of endless qualifications.

So we have now to resurrect that ‘I am’. To un-qualify it. To strip it bare of its qualities, of its acquired competences and idiosyncrasies. We have to purify the wine of our self, distil it to its essence. An essence that was never lost but only diluted, made secondary and unimportant, when it is in fact the only thing there is. This essence is simply the realisation of an emptiness that is the core of our being, that we never had the guts to look at, or enquire into, but which a simple question and a good-will to find out, could simply reveal with a dumbfounding ease and precision.

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A celebration of the purity of being, before it becomes qualified… (READ MORE…)

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At Heaven’s Gate

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Dante rencontre Béatrix’ – Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin, 1898 – Wikimedia

There is a guard posted at the entrance of the Kingdom of Heaven. Mind you it’s a gentle guard, open, benevolent, understanding, but she has her ways. Not everybody can enter. You need to fulfil some precise requirements. She has seen it all — people wanting to enter with all their heavy luggage. Trunks after trunks of thoughts, beliefs, hopes, memories, loaded with cumbersome feelings. People have such unreasonable faith! That’s when she smiles gently:
— Well, you need to empty yourself… It’s not the way to qualify for happiness. Besides I guess that with such a heavy load on your back, you must be coming with your share of suffering. Suffering is not wanted here. It’s a no go. You cannot enter with it. Sharpen your vision first.
— But… are you some kind of select, private club? Can I not come as I am? With all my sore feelings and my crap?
— Mmm, technically you can, but you must first present us with a correct identity. We need to know who you are — without your feelings and your crap, as you said. Without your sorrow and self-pity, without your dreams and hopes, all your fears and concerns, your prayers and righteousness. Without all the things that situate you and render you like a self which you never were. You need to know who you are before all that you think define you. Did you ever look at it?

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A playful interaction and dialogue recorded at Heaven’s Gate… (READ MORE…)

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The Essence of Life

Posted on by Alain Joly

We hardly ever listen to the sound of a dog’s bark,
or to the cry of a child or the laughter of a man as he passes by.
We separate ourselves from everything, and then
from this isolation look and listen to all things.
It is this separation which is so destructive,
for in that lies all conflict and confusion.
If you listened to the sound of those bells
with complete silence, you would be riding on it —
or, rather, the sound would carry you
across the valley and over the hill.
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Meditation is not a separate thing from life;
it is the very essence of life,
the very essence of daily living.

~ J. Krishnamurti (‘The Only Revolution’)

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Quote by J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986)

Photo by Alain Joly

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Bibliography :
– ‘Krishnamurti’s Notebook’ – by J. Krishnamurti – (Krishnamurti Publications of America, US)

Website:
– J. Krishnamurti

Suggestions:
– Beauty in Essence (other pointers from the blog)
– A Day at Brockwood Park (Homage to J. Krishnamurti)

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A Loss and a Gain

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Voyage of Life: Old Age’ – Thomas Cole, 1842 – WikiArt

Well, at some point in our lives, we may start to make a rapid calculation. It may dawn on us that if we had counted on this body and mind to represent us right through the end of life, well… let’s be blunt on this: that’s certainly not our best investment. Old age will make it clear that, after a certain time, if we wait long enough, everything begins to go wrong with our bodies — and so with our minds. We-our body are losing it. New pains arise. Strength diminishes. Memory capacity fades. And disease is lurking. There are threats accumulating, to say the least. We have to come to terms with this plain fact of existence: we will never go back to where we were. We cannot keep holding on to our body, continue having faith in it. This constant hoping for a better body, or a healthier mind, has to end, and this is now. In a way, it really is something to laugh about — a sort of cosmic joke. How could we have been so naïve? This simple and inescapable fact shows — if we needed that kind of confirmation — that this body and mind is not the place for a healthy sense of being. We need to find a way out of this faulty understanding.

We find health in our innermost being. That is the answer. And the body is not this being. It doesn’t represent it. It is not its temple. The body exists but it is not being. Only being has the right and capacity to be. The body is at best a distant vassal. A tool. It is not the home of our being, but rather, it finds its home in being. It rests there. It can borrow its qualities. It can make Being its beloved teacher, if it is wise and humble enough to espouse Being’s extraordinary traits. Then the body and its companion as mind might feel enlarged. They might find their true essence as infinity and eternity. They might acquire a soft and gentle making — less heaviness. And the body-mind will be lit with a strange transparency. It will slowly give up its hard matter-like making in favour of a more airy essence. It might surrender itself slowly while still being alive. Then the natural flaws of its ending will have very little meaning — not something to be afraid of. For its death has already been achieved in love — its true essence. Then its apparent shortcomings and loss will be found to be the supreme gain of life itself. We enter a new kingdom, where death can never be death. It is simply the extinction of everything that wasn’t truly ours in the first place. It is a gentle clarification, and the revelation of our essence. “You may die, my dear body, you may fail and disappear, with your companion-mind, but I will meet you on the burning ground and see you rise again as ‘I’”. This is the meaning of old age and death. This is the gift of our apparent failures. To be raised and revealed as essence. See… we won’t lose it.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Thomas Cole (1801-1848)

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Website:
– Thomas Cole (Wikipedia)

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Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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