A Universal Cure

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Creation of the World XIII’ (part) – Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, 1906 – WikiArt

The part that we’re playing is not small. We are not living in a corner, limited by the skin of our bodies, and the world is not limited to the time and space in which it seems to unfold and have its conflicts and sufferings. The world has a foot in the infinite. In fact not just a foot, it is bathed in infinity, in eternity, and so are we, we who have been made small and suffering entities by our limiting beliefs and prejudices. We are ruling the world with our thoughts and then blame ourself for it. For the results are of course as limited as our thoughts can be. We have made the world the hostage of our limitations, and its hostility is in fact our own, that we have projected unto it. We believe and think we can only play small and limited, but in fact, we haven’t quite seen ourself as we are, and from this blindness comes the entirety of the world’s agony, and ours too.

Fortunately, ours and the world’s true essence comes spilling over in every possible way through the manifestation of beauty, and through the many expressions of love or peace. That’s what makes it so attractive in spite of all, and that’s where we should be way more curious than we are. Beauty, love, intelligence, peace, are not created by the random structure of a body and the passing thoughts in our mind. This is not where they are manufactured. They are born of infinity and wholeness. They are the expressions of the One, which we can never own. We are in fact rather owned by them, embraced by the infinity that is their reality. We must surrender to this god given identity. We don’t have to play small. Would we think of god playing small? So why would we of ourself, who are like the arm and willpower of God in God’s dream? So we don’t have to play small in this world. We ought to play our given, sacred part. We ought to be what we are and recognise ourself and the world as a whole, indivisible being. A being that is nothing but our own, that is experienced here and now every time we say ‘I Am’, and that we are fortunate enough to share in.

Act on the world from within. Mould it from there, from the source of yourself and of the world, from the ground of being that you feel as your own being, and that is the common ground of all beings and all things. This ground has the best ability. Religions haven’t called it Paradise or Eden for nothing. There is always a truth behind every misunderstood word. This ground of being is where you can play big, from within, from the interior of everything and everyone. You don’t have to create a new reality. It’s already there within and without, for the taking and for the looking. This reality is already here, already yours. There is love and harmony woven in the fabric of life, just here and now in and as our given experience. Our efforts to heal ourself and the world are veiling this reality, and so are our limited thoughts, which carry the false reality of there being persons and separation instead of the reality of one being and the peace contained in the infinite. Our own unlimited being is the ground where we can play big, for it is as large as God’s being if we are willing to notice its real, undefeatable nature. In fact, being is a universal cure, and it’s always at hand.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (1875-1911)

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Website:
– Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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The Treasure Within

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Morning mist in the mountains’ – Caspar David Friedrich, 1808 – WikiArt

There is something in us, a presence, a feeling of being, that can say I Am. Nothing else can. No body can. For how could a body say I Am, which is but a bundle of tissues, a physical structure that can only be seen as an object, at a distance. That which is at a distance cannot say I Am. I Am is for the innermost of your being, for what is here beyond a shadow of doubt, in you, as you, indissociable of yourself. Feel that I Am is for that which never moves, is never tired or sick, is never concerned by age, or beliefs, or any passing content of the mind. Go for what in yourself is indestructible, constant, that could never be hurt, and notice that that is the thing which is necessary, responsible for your being able to say I Am. I Am is your anchor, the lighthouse you must never depart from. If you do, you will be plagued with suffering and grab the first thing you could identify with, amongst others your body, and your mind content. Thought is a good client for providing you with a fake identity. It mimics a self to perfection where there is none, where there is only here a presence infinite, borderless, shared by all. Without that, no I Am would be possible. No I Am would be there, and no humans either, no beings, nothing at all, just a black, empty void.

I Am is the light that makes life possible, that renders it palpable, sensible, experienced. You could say that for an object to find its isness, its existence, there would have to be an I Am first, there would have to be an essence, a ground that gives all things and all beings their shape, length, width, and existence. This essence is that without which there’d be no you, no possibility to say I Am. That without which there’d be no support for your thoughts. That without which your body could not in a zillion aeons find its ground, its birth, its death, and its life and beating heart. Thought has nothing to do with your asserting I Am. It is in no way involved in it. It will try to convince you, that thought is behind it all, is the voice of your being, the one that can say I Am. The body has convincing arguments too. They two form a good pair. But don’t be deceived. These are not where you draw your sense I Am from. I Am is deeper. I Am is fundamental, not a passing thought or feeling, bound to an object, to a body. I Am embraces all things and all beings. Even the world could not be thriving and bubbling without having its grounding essence. It needs, for its rising and falling, for its being seen, heard, felt, a something that holds it and creates it, like the content of a dream needs the mind of a dreamer. The world would be at a loss without I Am.

And in fact it is: at a loss. For why do you think the world is plagued with suffering and conflict? If you ever find yourself suffering or in conflict, it is that you have lost your I Am. You have given it, bargained it to a body, or a story, or some mere random thoughts. You have exchanged it for an ambition, an eagerness to be something, somebody, and to feel the reward of it. I Am is without a reward, without a body, faultless, pristine. It doesn’t know the meaning of suffering, or conflict, or confusion. So keep it always close to you, don’t lose its splendid gaze. For your body, mind, and random thoughts are all craving to take on the role of a self and blind you, conceal in the process your gorgeous, inborn, god given identity. They’ll happily send I Am to the wrong place, to keep it unnoticed, forgotten. But I Am is always here, like a patient presence, holding even your ignorance in its benevolent hands. It will wait for your looking, your noticing, the better days of your realising who you are, that is found here nestled within I Am. You owe I Am everything, right to your feeling of being, behind the mere words.

For there is a Word behind the words, which I Am is the pointer to. A living, pulsating reality. Call it being, call it god, call it Word. We have made I Am into a mere body, a limited self, and have therefore compelled ourself to look outside for our peace and completeness. The seeking for our lost completeness is what is called suffering. But the way to overcome suffering and conflict in our lives lies within, in our very being, in what is hidden in plain sight every time we say I Am. A human being can never have its private sense of I Am, for being is shared in equal measure by all beings and things. It is boundless and has within it the peace and completeness that you had been looking for without, as a result of your misplacing I Am. I Am owns its peace and completeness through its being alone, whole, One, and therefore unable to be parted, or lost, or forgotten. So have a good look every time you say simply I Am, and recognise it for what it is, and not what you believe it is. Don’t limit I Am to a projected, illusory, made up entity. I Am is the gorgeously carved door to your being happy and whole, and to have the world reflecting that wholeness and happiness. It is your treasure within, that you have ignored, or misused. So repair the sense I Am in yourself, and give it back to its original, initial, pristine glory and undefeatable reality.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)

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Website:
– Caspar David Friedrich (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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Intimacy

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Untitled’ – Charles-Francois Daubigny – WikiArt

Spirituality is about intimacy. Nothing else. That is all you will feel, when you go to the right place, when your most tender being comes towering in your life: intimacy. Intimacy with everyone and everything. When you are not content about being a person, about only living the life of body and senses, about all things objective that can be seen, heard, felt, then is left something that you could never comprehend. Then comes that innermost part of yourself which is now found to impress and impregnate both you and your experience. Then comes something measureless. This was already your most familiar experience, although you have made it a stranger in your life, for engaging only with the shallow, with the surface, the easy, the habitual, the measurable. These will never take you to intimacy but to separation, remoteness, distance, and finally discord. So go to what is not only passing, but to what is inmost, intrinsic, that cannot be discarded and dispensed with. Your world will open to something precious beyond understanding, which is the intimacy contained in experience as a whole, when it is not dampened by your insistence in being something separate from experience.

Intimacy feels like being with a close friend, when nothing needs to be said other than simply to live, enjoy, and taste presence. Intimacy is to make yourself and experience as precious as a lover. In that process, it melts you down, so that you are nowhere to be found. This absence of yourself is love, which is your freedom, and the thriving of this presence which you are and have always been without your noticing. It will bring everybody and everything — the whole world — close to your self. So close that you won’t see a difference between your experience and your own self. You will be revealed as one boundless presence — the undefeatable essence of your being, before the thousands things of experience come to soil it, dampen it. You will be in love, inside love, for intimacy is just another word for it. Intimacy is about shared being. It may seem personal, but it is not. What makes it seem personal is that we involve the body-mind, that we think binds it. In fact, intimacy has nothing to do with the body and the mind. It is a warmth without limit or end.

In its purest form, being sends us in a place of immediate intimacy with everyone and everything, a sense of togetherness, of belonging that cannot be helped. Intimacy is a gathering in and as being, whether we are two people, or ten, or a hundred. We feel an absence of plurality, or otherness. It can be informed in a split of a second, deploying itself from a place unknown and unknowable. Its appearance is free, unconditioned by time. Its disappearance is impossible, only apparent or believed. It comes from a place which has neither a beginning nor an end, and is not bound to the limitations of space. It reveals itself as something fundamental to our living this life, but which we have failed to notice was here. It is the highest degree of your essence. Being intimate is the last place in yourself you will ever visit. There is no beyond it. It will come as your last day, your final breath, for there is no living as a separate entity, as a private being, once you have drunken at its source, and suffered its irrevocable implications. To be intimate is to die to yourself, and disappear in the radiance of only and simply being.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Charles-François Daubigny (1817-1878)

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Website:
– Charles-François Daubigny (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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‘I Am with You Always’

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The rest’ – Marc Chagall, 1968 – WikiArt

There is no ambiguity with God. This has been said in a thousand different ways, in every corner of every page of the Bible for example, that God is with us, that there is in us, as us, a presence hidden in plain sight, that won’t let go of us ever. That it is the very making of ourself, our sublime identity — what we live our life with and could never depart from. We couldn’t doubt it in the least, for with just the right kind of looking, and with no effort whatsoever, we could see it, feel it, sense it, that we are that, and not truly our body or mind, let alone our thoughts, our story, our problems, our suffering. “I am with you always, to the end of the age”, that’s from ‘Matthew 28:20’. So there is no worry to be had. We are not alone. That’s just an impression, an invention, that we are separate, insecure, fragile. In fact, we couldn’t be without it. In ‘Zephaniah 3:17’, they say “The Lord your God is in your midst”. That’s what they mean, that our mind finds its ground in this very presence, in this being of ours that is in fact borrowed from God’s being. In ‘1 Corinthians 3:16’, they are even more specific, clearer on that subject, “God’s Spirit dwells in you”. It couldn’t be plainer and clearer. Why don’t we listen?

And we profit from an inbuilt, intrinsic protection in our life. After all, haven’t we gone through illnesses and floods, through a thousand aches, and is not death itself called eternal rest? Haven’t we lived in the constant grip of desire and worry, hassled by a quiet, ever going despair? And yet, are we not beautiful now as we are, after having gone through all this? Are we not pristine beings, untouched by it all, made of this unsurpassable, never changing awareness of being? In ‘Isaiah 41:10’, God is reported to have said: “I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” And in ‘Zephaniah 3:17’, it is written that God is the “mighty one who will save”. They wouldn’t say that if they don’t mean it. But we won’t be saved in an hypothetical future, at the time of death. We are being saved now, kept virgin of every objective experience, if we are willing to look. Furthermore, there is an inner peace that has landed in and as our very being since time immemorial. This inner peace expresses itself as joy or love, which we have experienced even amongst our ignorance. Isn’t life worth living for these fleeting moments of joy? And isn’t love our most precious, cherished, sought after experience, that seems to be a miracle beyond understanding? In ‘Zephaniah 3:17’, they say, clothed in the most exquisite poetry: “He will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”

So, as is advised in ‘1 Chronicles 16:11’, “Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually!” Which means we ought to stay with that part of ourself that lies peacefully below the hustle and bustle of existence, before everything that can be pointed at and named, and that is therefore not truly ourself. But God is not happy with only being our being, with filling us with its own infinite being. This presence is also made of the gorgeous fabric of love. This is where love finds its reality, in the innocence of our being, in awareness. So if we love, this love is not our own. We have not manufactured it, let alone directed it. “We love because he first loved us”, it is said in ‘1 John 4:19’. This is what our being feels like, when it is kept pure, unsoiled by our attachment to experience. Love is what we feel when we have relinquished everything in ourself that is mistakingly taken to be us, but is not. In ‘1 John 4:19’, we are being reminded of this eternal truth, that “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” And this love, this being of God, is not something that can be had. It lives and breathes only through our being it. The world of things, of objectivity, cannot apprehend it, “cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him”, as is said in ‘John 14:17’. So we are it, not have it, not know it. As long as we believe to be an entity, a something, a someone, we have separated ourself from our reality as God or consciousness. Yet everything, everyone, is eternally made of this being, which is God’s being, and finds its identity and essence as that. After all, didn’t God make that very clear, when saying in ‘Jeremiah 23:24’, “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” To which God could have added: I am all beings and all things, their secret identity, their essence which is only spirit. As I have said and proved a zillion times: ‘I am with you always’.

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Quotes taken from the Bible

Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Marc Chagall (1887-1985)

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Website:
– Marc Chagall (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Shreds of Infinity’ from the blog…

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Daily Calling

Posted on by Alain Joly

It is easy to look, easier than we think. Yes we have seen temples and churches by the thousands, endless acts of devotions, and pilgrims whose faith seems indestructible. Yes we have marvelled at yogis whose ability and constancy is a subject of awe, at monks whose dedication and celibacy seem unattainable. It may have dawned on us that this path is too rigorous, that spirituality in only for the chosen few, for the dedicated ones, whose lives are set on a perfect course for it. So we have renounced to go there, finding excuses — that we don’t have what it takes, that God has for us no calling, that I wouldn’t have half of the rigour that a serious spiritual path requires. So we have stayed where we are, repairing here and there a few cumbersome habits, loving our loved ones, sharing our usual skills with the world, battling with our thoughts, dealing with our sorrows. We didn’t dare, didn’t quite believe that the spiritual endeavour was our path, or the path of the majority of us. We stayed put. We gave up without even the beginning of an understanding.

But spirituality is not what we think. It is not a path of renunciation or remoteness. It is not about belief, opinion, or even conviction. It is about reality. It is about looking what there truly is, here and now. What our experience is made of. What there is behind the gloss of experience. That’s how we are spiritual, by looking for that part of ourself that is not a thought, not a sensation or a feeling, not the body that we have come to be identified with. That’s how we are religious, by finding this deeper identity of ourself that is wholly and naturally related to others and to everything. By recognising that ungraspable, unfathomable, deeper being that is our eternal home, which we have lost sight of in the tempestuous world of our many experiences, a world that has so far attracted the totality of our attention without our objecting. We have simply missed, maybe indulgently, that spirituality is about knowing who we are, no more than that. Spirituality is not about practice or achievement, for its only aim lies in recognising what is eternally here as the very fabric of our self. It is not about age, for age will never affect what we are in the depth of our being. It is not about health, for there is a place in ourself that is forever stamped with wholeness, which is another name for perfect health.

So we don’t need to go to churches or temples, for where we are is our church if we know how to make it so, and inhabit it, not with our worries and projections, but with who we are as our deepest being. And remember that the world makes for a marvellous temple, when we connect to it with our deeper self, and bathe it with the peace of our own being. We will be in touch with our spiritual being every time we experience love in our life. That’s why people have pets, so that they can stay in touch with their heart. That’s why we so dearly seek the intimacy of relationship in our life, so we can lose the distance that our minds have imposed on us. That’s why we love fulfilling our desires, for we know that we find there, in this fulfilling, a taste of our own loving, untouched, unconditioned being.

So there is a mass or a puja going on in every corner of every experience that we may have. There are hallelujahs that can rise any time, anywhere, anyhow, if we are willing to pause and look at what our present experience is made of. And know that we will never be asked to believe, or corrupt any part of our gorgeous being, for we have a duty to be faithful to our self as it is. The only practice or prayer we will ever have to perform is to recognise and be aware of the nature of our being. This true and only identity or nature is lying just behind every temporary appearances and objects that can be formed, named, and pointed to in experience. Know that the formless is our most intimate companion, for it doesn’t live in time or place or objects, but in and as the very ground that is our one and only identity and being. This connection to that deepest, most intimate being in our everyday life, is in itself the most religious endeavour there is, where spirit is discovered to be the only thing in presence, and the home where we find our joy, and our undefeatable reality.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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On Desperation

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Jeremiah mourning over the Destruction of Jerusalem’ (part) – Rembrandt, 1630 – WikiArt

What needs to be seen and understood is that the story of humanity, the story of every life lived here under the sun, is the story of a desperation. We are fighting off the feeling that something is lacking. We want to reach or attain something, and this something that we are looking for is the same thing for everybody. Whatever form may take our life search, our drives, our dreams, our desires, our pleasures, they are all here to make us feel at peace, content, whole. They are here to free us from ourself, from our search, from our never-ending desperation. Outside, we may put on the appearance of control, normality, and responsibility, but inside we are burning, seeking, longing for that which we have never been able to put into words, explain, rationalise, or make sense of. But in fact, we are looking for something that we already possess in infinite quantity, although unknowingly. We are craving for the abundance that we already have, searching for a peace that is already given, begging for a joy that is throbbing unnoticed in the background of our everyday experience.

Our suffering or desperation is the symptom of this misunderstanding. We fail to notice that we have what we are looking for, that it is here in plain view, already achieved, already formed in and as our most intimate identity. Our self is made of that sweet fire of peace, contentment, and sufficiency. So the misery we are in is only apparent, imagined, made up by our thinking about it, and by our looking for peace unnecessarily, out there, in the wrong place, in experience. There is no amount of effort that will ever help us to attain something that is already attained. On the contrary, the disturbance involved in seeking what we have will cause us misery, in the form of a desperate, separate sense of self. We are too eager. We never sit still, always foraging our experience to harvest some scattered drops of peace or joy, when our very being is already overflowing with them.

The only necessity, or even possibility of being a self separate from experience is through managing the tension involved in seeking a peace that is already our most intimate nature. Our self is the story, the memory of this seeking. When peace is here, there is no self present, no tension that could make us a suffering entity. In fact, we seem to proceed by distraction. We are not looking, and then we complain that it is not there. All our efforts to obtain an enduring peace in our life are vain and doomed to failure for the simple reason that peace is not a thing that can be had. Peace is something that we have to realise is present here and now. It is our vey being, what we are made of, our unborn reality. So there is no real, substantial suffering here to be rid of. It is not that suffering is not experienced. It is that its only reality is only in and as our imagined self. It is but the friction that goes with believing to be a separate entity. Suffering is essentially made of our believed self, which is but our constant seeking to alleviate this apparent misery. The ending of the belief in being a self, which is also the ending of time, space, and separation, will make fully apparent our nature as peace and happiness, in which there can be no suffering, no self, no seeking, no desperation.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Rembrandt (1606-1669)

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Website:
– Rembrandt (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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The Taste of Being

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Oceanide’ – Jan Toorop, c.1893 – WikiArt

In life, you would never cross a friend or a beloved without smiling at him, giving her a greeting, at least an acknowledgement, or reaching for his hand. That’s the same with your inner being, with that beautiful, friendly presence that is the core of what you are. You’ve got to notice her, to be friendly. It doesn’t take very much, in the middle of your day, to smile at that quiet inner being, to acknowledge that it is here, no matter the hustle and bustle you may go through. It takes no time at all, to see that you are not alone, not a self separate from everything else, not a loner, that you’ve got a friend here for you, that longs to be seen as your very identity and being. After all, how long does a gaze take ? How easy is a passing attention? How little is a momentary taste of your quiet essence, lying just below any of your sufferings or worries, just before your many losses or shortcomings, mixed right within the script of your daily activities and thinking?

Only it is a shy presence, so you have to make the first move. You have to go and look for her in the crowd, amongst the ten thousand things of experience. Once you see him, once you catch his firm gaze, you will come to see only him, only that, at the expense of everything else in experience that now appears to be caught in that same all-pervading gaze. You will see how quickly you come to enjoy your friend after a time. Awareness has a natural eagerness for you. It is inclined to have you in its warm embrace. So you will fancy holding her hand a little longer, won’t be satisfied with a gaze or a smile. You will go for a cuddle, or a long warm hug, to get to taste of his loving presence. You will feel this taste to be more than a crush, or a quick passing relationship. You will feel drawn to stay there, to move in, to have her as the marrow of your self, to bring him so close so there is only him, only her, only that, but no you.

There comes a time when you won’t need to go very far to meet your beloved, for she is everywhere you are. You will notice that every experience you have is pervaded by his presence. So you don’t have to move with her, for you have already been married with this presence for ages upon ages. In fact, it is all you are, and there is none beside it, not even your own illusory self which you have come to believe in, and whose reality you take for granted. Now you begin to see that your beloved is not your beloved, but your very own self and identity. The moment you see that, you will lose him. You will remain alone. You will stop needing, begging, pretending. There won’t be any remembering who you are, because who you are will have been established without a shadow of doubt. You will be yourself the beloved you had previously pushed at a distance, to be sought or realised. You won’t be aggrandised by his or her presence anymore. This inner presence is so much your own self and identity, that you will happily surrender all your multiple identities to that one identity, and acquire the humility that goes with being only one being. There is no beloved but you, no other beloved than you. Let all your many sensations and perceptions melt into that one identity of your being. The taste of being is the pinnacle of experience, and its most refined, sought after savour. You come to taste it when there is here, in yourself, as yourself, only one being, one friend, one beloved, and one taste.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Jan Toorop (1858-1928)

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Website:
– Jan Toorop (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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