The Silent Prayer

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘Dawn in the Hills’ – Robert Julian Onderdonk, 1922 – WikiArt

We have been taught that we are only a part. A body with some private thoughts and feelings, an entity separate from everything that we can see, hear, touch outside the boundaries of our body-mind. We have been encouraged to believe in separation, in effort and suffering, in reward and punishment, in a happiness that is only a passing experience which we have to strive for, and in brief, elusive moments of peace. That is the way of our life. But in fact, no.

This is all in our mind, only one particular, rehearsed representation of reality. It is all one wrong path taken, a momentary belief. Life was never meant to be fragmented. It was never meant to be tiresome. Our true reality is one of wholeness, with nothing outside of it. There is nothing out there that is not the expression of our own self, that is not included in our saying ‘I’. We may think that our ‘I’ is just this little, private, separate corner of the vast field of life. But if we look with utmost attention, if we let go of everything that we have been taught to believe, we will notice that our ‘I’, our most common, everyday, every hour mention of ‘I’ refers in fact to the vast field of life with no corner inside it.

Our awareness of everything expands beyond everything that is the prisoner of our senses. There is nothing with a boundary in our saying ‘I’. ‘I’ is the infinite that has been brought for a while in a world of time and space, of within and without, of objects which our body-mind is only a part of. Don’t be deluded by appearances. Don’t have a simple belief running your life. See that there is, beyond the many appearances, beyond the body and the many thoughts, beyond our seemingly suffering life, a reality that knows no limitation of time and space, and that has found refuge here in our simply saying ‘I’, or ‘I Am’.

There is nothing small about ‘I’, nothing that it doesn’t include, no time or space that it doesn’t transcend, no corner that is in fact not the infinite, no moment that has not been dipped in the eternal. So keep in mind that every time we cook a meal, do some shopping, or go for a walk, we are in fact inviting the infinite with us. We are inviting meaning, and beauty, and the peace that goes with being whole. The ‘I’ that we are doesn’t have to be restricted to a body, to the limitations of thought, to our physicality. There is eternity in our daily life if we are willing to look.

‘I’ is the absolute which we have wrongly attributed to our little idea of a limited person. We have squeezed the unlimited inside a belief, mixed it with a few sensations, lost it within the world of our many experiences. We have expelled God outside something that exists only in our mind, pushed It beyond the boundaries of an apparent entity, when it is but our very eternally present reality, hidden behind a wrong attribution, and shared as the one essence for all.

‘I’ was never private. We have belittled it for the sake, or the service of our own fantasy. We have downgraded it to a mere body, and in doing so have invited division and suffering. Think about it the next time you are saying ‘I’. Don’t ever say it mindlessly. Watch to where it extends. See the vast field that it is. Have it constantly with you, as the One that is both your true self and the harbour of every possible appearance.

Make ‘I’ your silent prayer.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Robert Julian Onderdonk (1882-1922)

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Website:
– Robert Julian Onderdonk (Wikipedia)

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One Sentence for Truth

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘Girls by the River Prut’ – Arthur Verona, 1905 – Wikimedia

Sometimes a simple reminder is worth a thousand books, the simple reminder that this consciousness with which we live everyday, and at every second of the day, that is our companion in all circumstances, that allows us to hear the many voices of the world and be aware of the people and of nature, that is responsible for the knowing of our thoughts and feelings, without which no world, idea, hope, memory, suffering would be experienced, let alone understood, without which there would be no hurts or rushes of joy, no fear or sense of peace felt, or ruthless agitation, this very consciousness that is in fact our life, our only possibility for existing, for knowing and being, for experiencing anything — this consciousness conceals a treasure that is waiting for our recognition, and that is more than what we think and have been accustomed to believe,

a treasure that contains the understanding that this consciousness is so habitual and taken for granted that it seems like almost nothing, hardly felt or thought about, and so humble that it recedes behind our thousands experiences, allowing them the freedom to obsess or fascinate, and the power to conceal the extraordinary and the obvious — that this consciousness is in fact not our personal, private consciousness, that it is not what we have believed it to be, that it is not hidden, casual, a function among others, but the very answer revealed inside our humanity, the one and only thing in presence, the shared essence of everyone and everything, and what all religions have been trying to tell us in the first pristine intention of their founders, sometimes delivering the message with almost painful clarity, sometimes blurring it to the point of corruption and defect,

a message which is that consciousness — our consciousness — is in fact the Absolute, beyond which there is nothing, and before which none has ever existed, that it is our identity, our very self or being, what we are before every mournful identity or qualification that we adopt in our desperate attempt to be somebody, that it is the happiness which we have sought in objects or circumstances, when it is truly only the nature of our being felt, a consciousness which is peace itself, which is one and therefore experienced as love, which is the thing, or power, or being, or reality hidden behind the word ‘God’, behind every possibility of being, every tender blade of grass, every smile on a face, or flight of a bird, or starry night lit, every knowing of woe or wonder — the very reason for beauty and meaning, the One without a second of the Hindus, the Father of the Christians, the Buddha nature of the Buddhists, the Beloved of the Sufis, the before and the after, both contained in an eternal now, the here and there, and everywhere, since the infinite is its body, the only possibility of our immortality, and the I that I am at every second of our life.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Arthur Verona (1867-1946)

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Website:
– Arthur Verona (painter)

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The Burning Ground

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘Fort George Island’ – Thomas Moran, 1880 – Wikimedia

There is no looking away from God. What we are, think, do, feel, experience, is already belonging to something that is prior. We don’t live inside one limited, time-bound reality and have to look for another grander reality for a form of relief, or resolution. We are already living in the reality that we are seeking, already tasting of the eternal life that we are longing for, already having the infinite as our most precious body. Our many thoughts are prayers, although they don’t seem to be. They are born out of desperation and have a mission. They are seekers, soldiers, working at a form of freedom and happiness, trying hard to go beyond their own limitations. They are clumsy, but they keep their gaze fixed on the eternal which they come from and which they desire to merge with again. We know our home though we have lost touch with it, and are seeking it back in every possible way. So look at what your thoughts are aiming at, the ground of being where they once were born and formed. Be and abide as that place of being, which is their playful ground. Be the motionless where they can live and thrive, and be relieved of their seeking.

Our actions are prostrations before the One. They are not born of an endless line of causation. That is only their superficial clothing. Our feet, and our doing are already treading the infinite that we are looking for, without our knowing it. This vastness without end or dimension is the stage for our many experiences. Everything we do, we do in the hope of retrieving our original essence. Our actions are either escapes from suffering and death, or attempts to reach a state of harmony or meaning. So look only in the direction toward which they prostrate themselves and at which they aim. Find that placeless place where they have the freedom to appear. Be what they are restlessly bowing before. Feel that we are their ground of being, where they come and are consumed one after the other into the One. We are but a burning ground, swallowing everything that comes and goes into the flame of motionless being. Our actions are already ashes, and we are the flame inside which they for an infinitesimal time live before disappearing. In fact, we have our whole life taking place and shape in a spark of eternity. Now see that what we are, think, do, feel, perceive, is better experienced from the position of that burning ground of being. There we acquire unity and meaning, and everything clothes itself in the peace which is our essential being.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Thomas Moran (1837-1926)

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Website:
– Thomas Moran (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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The Chamber Within

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘Woman at the piano’ (detail) – Théodule Ribot – Wikimedia

You have your own little chamber at hand, where you can retire. It is called yourself. A place which has no place to be, and is in fact your own being — what you are, where the totality of yourself is, and which gives you the space to live and act. It is a chamber without a door, without an in or an out, but where you can only be in or be out. You are out of your secret, intimate chamber when you have all your focus on the outside, which means on all the things which you are not, but appropriate as if they were an identity to you. That includes your thoughts which you cherish as being your own production, the outspoken part of yourself, but are in reality strangers that pay you a visit. That includes your perceptions which you take to be a window on the reality of the world, but are in reality facets of your own being, where your whole experience has its home and its refuge. That includes your sense of being a self separate from experience, with a thousand attributes, when of a self you have only empty being, and of attributes only the one attribute of being you, which is ‘I Am’ without an attribute.

You are in your own intimate chamber when you are aware of being. It is a chamber without walls, for it expands beyond anything that you have so far known or been aware of as objects. You are in your chamber when you have no other quality than the quality of being, and when you feel the world you live in to be but your own, shared infinite being. You are in when you have a view on the reality of yourself as being, before you have one on the ten thousand non-existent things of experience. You are in when you have not an object as your subject, which means not a body-mind as an identity. This chamber has nothing secret about it, for it is anywhere you can possibly be. It is openly yourself, though you may hide from it in an infinite number of ways. Your making it a chamber is when you are out of it, and need to go within to find it, in your being which you yourself have made a secret of — something hidden. When you are in it, well then you have no chamber to be in, for the chamber has been discovered to be plainly you, the ‘I’ that you truly and only are, which you find to be neither in nor out.

So your chamber is both within and without, both secret and revealed. You are always abiding in it and as it, though your thoughts and perceptions may have convinced you out of it. So the threshold between being in or out of your intimate chamber of being is wherever you happen to be. You are always on the threshold of being either a suffering, separate, invented entity, or the spacious, unmoved expanse of infinite being. You are always on the brink of yourself, which is you either notice that you are already within that inmost chamber of being, or you ignore, disregard, pay no heed to it. The difference between the two is in the width of a thin hair. You are always on the verge of knowing your identity as being, or of staying behind, in your thoughts, dancing with a belief, being what you are not. There is an edge at any place or moment you are in. A precipice of knowing. You either choose to cling to your living in the limitations of time and space, or free fall where only the infinite and eternal is your reality. The difference between the two is as subtle as the coming of dawn. It is the realisation — the making real — that you have been your chamber of being all along.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Théodule Ribot (1823-1891)

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Website:
– Théodule Ribot (Wikipedia)

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