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

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On God’s Existence

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Calm on the Mediterranean Sea’ – Ivan Aivazovsky, 1892 – WikiArt

There is no god. God is an invention that we have placed far away, out there, as an object for our prayers and hopes. As an entity to whom we can address our suffering. God was given that role so that we are not alone. We have divided ourself up into a self here and another greater self there, between which reside our secret longings and our beliefs. We have made god into a handy projection, for our convenience. A soothing presence who will be there for us after death, whom we can trust and rely on, whom we can give ourself to, and find protection in. We feel good in that undoubted certainty of a god.

But there is no god outside of ourself, no distant god, either in place or time. Of this we can be sure. Because wherever we may travel, however far we may go, we find only ourself. We are bound to our own being which we feel in a ‘here’, and in a ‘now’. So we fail in going somewhere that is outside ourself. It’s an impossible task. We cannot go there. Not in a million years. So god cannot be found outside of ourself. Nothing can. Everywhere is here. And every time is now. The only place for god to be is in our own being. There is no other place to be — even for god. There is no way around it. But we have first to understand our own being, our own nature. There, in ourself, is the resolution of the conundrum of god.

So what is this place of ourself, to which we are bound? What is it made of? If we leave our body aside, and our many thoughts and sensations, if we leave the world out of the picture, what is left of ourself that we can say is here, is now? What is this consciousness that we have lived with for as long as we can remember, and for which we seem to have but little interest ? This thing which has held our peace, our happiness, our perceived sense of beauty, even if only experienced rarely or fleetingly? This consciousness that is holding us, that is giving us our very existence, holding our suffering and our conflicts? Should we not feel grateful to have been held with such consistency? To have been held with our feelings, whether happy or sorrowful? To have been lent a body, whether healthy or sick, and a mind, though both may be just a passing dream?

This thing which is here undoubtedly, showing that peace is possible, that beauty is real, that happiness is within reach, is this not our most profound self? Is it not our very being? What we are here? What we are now? And this god which cannot be anywhere outside of ourself, could this god not be this, this very presence of ourself? Our very being? Our very consciousness? Which we are by nature every day of our life? That which can be felt in every bit of our heart and soul? That can give an explanation for ‘there is no god’? That can give a reality to ‘there is god’? That can show that, in fact, not only there is god, but there is only god? That everything, all that we are and experience, is god? That the god which we had thought at a distance, is nothing but the loving presence and reality of ourself and of everything? That life is nothing but the living, pulsating being of god, which we are only and wholly? And which we share with every other apparent being, and every possible appearance? And that this, is the one thing that ever was, and will ever be? And that this, is not inside ourself, for of ourself it is seen that there is not? And that this, is not outside either, for there is no being outside something inexistant? And that now, at the end of our journey, and all things considered, is realised that god is not even god? Because for a god to be, there would have to be separate things and selves to give it a form, and to call it god. There would still have to be a trace of suffering. There would still have to be separation. So there’s got to be no god. God is only for the poor fellows. But for who we are, there is no god. Only being being, at the most. Beyond that, nothing much can be said, lest we should invent some other god.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900)

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Website:
– Ivan Aivazovsky (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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Anatomy of a Desire

Posted on by Alain Joly

You must not desire the truth. You must let the truth desire you. For truth has the greatest desire, the most efficient one, to which yours is but a pale copy. It is the desire to be itself alone, unaccompanied, unsoiled. In the fulfilment of that desire, truth will swallow you, will undress you and render you transparent, nonexistent, naked. You’d be inspired to let go, to give in, to trust that desire which is so greater than yours. For your desires are small, inadequate, vile, selfish. They won’t get you where you truly want to be. They will miss the mark. Every time.

So don’t desire truth. Don’t make it like something you can possess. Truth is in fact already possessing you, the only one in command. So undress your being of the superfluous. The superfluous is all the beliefs attached to yourself, that makes you a self that feels separate, an entity in a body, delineated by its thoughts and feelings, that looks up to experience, and betrays its profound suffering through its constant desire for fulfilment.

Notice that your desire has no true owner. The one that desires is not really there. It is but an idea, a desperate attempt to feel that you are complete. But you won’t feel complete by means of desiring, for desire is already the sign of your incompleteness. The problem with being a desirer is that it places you ahead of your natural identity as being. It is a position of ignorance with a plan and a hope. The desirer is a made-up entity whose unacknowledged goal is to consolidate itself. So don’t make truth like a projected goal to be achieved. The desired object of enlightenment, or realisation, was never intended. It was in fact all for the desirer, to strengthen your false identity as a self, to adorn the temple of separation, to attach yourself to another idea. Liberation is not in desiring to be liberated.

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Continue this exploration of desire in matters of truth… (READ MORE…)

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The Possibility We Are In

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Old Sarum’ – John Constable, 1834 – WikiArt

Whatever there is is God’s presence felt. And whatever we may feel of God’s presence, is what there is here and now, including what exists and appears. It is all here for our recollecting, all here that we can be and be god like. Every experience that we may have, every sorrow and every joy, every fear or trust, every ugly or beautiful appearance, is felt and seen because of our being first. To watch anything is to be watched in return by a presence watching. We can make ourself disappear in it, and be without a self, without the self we have always known and colluded with. And we can share of that impersonal, infinite being that is not ours, but that we can be and embrace as our own. So ‘I am’ is the secret door opener within us, that will give us the world we are in. We will have an aggrandised property, or a world made of the very size of ourself, infinite, manageable, and towards which our being may shine a benevolent beam of light and peace. That I feel is a possibility.

The world will have its secret identity disclosed to us. And we too will have our secret identity revealed. Both being made one, and ourself being of it. Others will cease being others. They will join us as that shared one being. There won’t be any jealousy or comparison, but a rejoicing in and as that oneness felt. Our fate and destiny will be contained inside us, within our own being. There won’t be a time to hope for, or a place to fail in, or a self to mess up. There won’t be a fear of tomorrow, or a regret of yesterday, for both will have merged in and as the being that we are. Time and place will have come to be only convenience. And our very being will have come to be the time and place we are in. That too is a possibility.

The knowing of our own being will have come to be our only experience. The many will have shrunk into the one, and the infinite will have subdued our senses, and made itself seen, heard, touched, and contained within our experience. Happiness will cease being a temporary achievement, and will become the flavour of our shared being with people and things. We will have joy woven into every single corner of our life. That’s the possibility we have at hand.

Movement will be seen as the manifold expression of stillness, and silence recognised as the only component of our living symphony. Turmoil will be felt as this last bit of ourself that we have yet to embrace — not something to be afraid of, but an opportunity that we welcome. We have to see this as a possibility.

So this life is the garden of Eden we once extricated ourself from, but have in fact never left otherwise than in our imagination. And love is not an occasional encounter, but the very air we take our breath from. I’m just throwing the possibility in the air.

Now we recognise after all, that the being of God is what we are — the possibility we are in, without there being a God or a ‘we’.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by John Constable (1776-1837)

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Website:
– John Constable (Wikipedia)

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

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The Birth of Personhood

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Flower of Blood’ – Odilon Redon, 1895 – WikiArt

It is consciousness — not body, not thoughts — that gives us the impression that we are a person with a continuity. There is absolutely no chance that a bundle of thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations, could give us that impression. We borrow our personhood to consciousness, to the fact of being aware — to this light that creates us in the darkness that are otherwise thoughts, feelings, body. Our sense of continuity belongs to consciousness, to presence — that portion of ourself that is empty, unchanging, not objective, but full to the brim with itself. Our thoughts are but isolated events that are changing over the course of time, and so are our feelings and bodily sensations. The content of our mind is like a passing, unpredictable weather. So continuity in that area is absurd. Our essential self is to be found in and as being. What makes us is in that which is unmade. That impersonal part of ourself is what paradoxically gives us the chance of being a person. We are therefore nothing but empty, undivided being playing ‘being a person seemingly characterised by body and thoughts’. We have got it all upside down: Our person is not prior to consciousness. Consciousness is prior to our person, and the sine qua non of our existence or appearance.

Our thoughts are far away from each other, inconsistent, contradictory, confused, hesitant. They are not the voice of our self, are incapable of forming an identity of any kind. Our identity is to be found somewhere else, in something that we cannot get hold of, or limit, or name. The only thing that could link the different events of thoughts, feelings, sufferings, bodily sensations, and perceptions — all that for us constitute our self, a person with a name and form — is the presence of consciousness. We owe the impression that we are something solid, a real person, to emptiness, silence, stillness. So our person is actually non-existent, or rather has its existence in that which stands unseen between the happenings or events that we think make us. So our story, our thoughts, our body, become evanescent, losing their reality, disappearing within the experience of our massive sense of being — its coming to our attention. Being is seen to be the nature of ourself, which we had imagined in passing, isolated, impermanent, objective events and qualities. And believe me, that makes for a beautiful, gorgeous person — the one we have always wanted to be! A person is infinity being born.

The fact that there is a certain coherence in being a body-mind, and that we are able to live a life, is nothing but the expression of a play, a ‘lila’ as the Hindus are saying. We are nothing but a character in the hands of an actor. A body-mind is the little necessary to carry our wider identity to its term. In fact, all that we seemingly are — a person with an apparent life — is just the vehicle for a bigger quest. We are pretending a body-mind, so that we can realise our divine being. We are carrying infinity on our back, on the back of the finite, giving it the seeming, temporary life of an entity progressing in time and space. But this story, this appearance of a life, is but an excuse, something marginal that serves a wider purpose. We are meant to carry God on our shoulders for a while. At first unknowingly. Until we know God knowingly. Until God has acquired enough substance, and has sufficiently widened Its being in our life. Until God can in return carry us on Its own shoulders. And move us. And swallow us. Then, we find the security and courage to surrender ourself in God’s solid being and be like God Itself. We transfer our being in and as God’s being. And die there.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Odilon Redon (1840-1916)

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Website:
– Odilon Redon (Wikipedia)

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

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The Face of the Infinite

Posted on by Alain Joly

For many things in life, we are exigent, demanding. We won’t let things be as they are. We are picky — we want more and better. We expect, hope, resist, desire, and are rarely satisfied. We are seekers of advantageous situations, and have a good idea of what they can be. Yet when it comes to ourself, to knowing who or what we are, we lose all inquisitiveness. We take ourself for granted. We may want to be more loving, less violent, have more of the good qualities, and less of the bad ones, but who is the ‘I’ that desires these things, we don’t want to know. Maybe we have an intuition that there is great danger in uncovering our true identity. After all, it was never talked about, a sort of family secret that society doesn’t want you to interfere with. Even religion is not clear about it, that encourages you to rather follow, pray, and submit yourself to God, but not to know who you are. At least not in a clearly stated way. You may know about anything you want, but please keep yourself out of it. In fact, ‘Know Thyself’ is the least encouraged commandment in this world of ours, and that alone should be enough to fuel our curiosity.

So who am I? What is my identity? What is this last part of my experience that is yet to pioneer and fully settle in? Which has remained untouched, virgin of our constant and fanatic rummaging? Which hasn’t yet been recognised for the simple reason that it is not a place we can know, let alone go to? It is so ourself that it cannot be seen, felt, experienced as something objective, or as an entity. This land of ourself has slipped out of our attention. We are blind to our eternal home. We have left behind us, untackled, unidentified, in the darkness of our wilful mind, the vibrant sky of our being. So what is my true identity? What is this unchanging substance that is the formless form of my being? In other words, what am I identical with, or the same as? ‘Same’, in its most ancient etymology, has the meaning of ‘one’. So we can rule out all the separate, isolated objects that we project ourself to be — that includes our body and our mind, and the many thoughts we’re thinking. Our identity is not in something which we identify with, but in the expression of oneness — the one being that is by definition free from all identification. This identity with the One has been achieved from time immemorial. We don’t need to come back to it, to rehearse it, or affirm it. Our identity has dissolved into the One, which is identified with no other than itself.

Where does unity or oneness live in my experience? In what portion of my conscious being can I feel an absence of otherness? Where do I find in myself no distinction, variation, or divergence, not even a breach that would differentiate me from reality? Where am I wholly and only being? What is it that I truly am, with no intervention of a past or a future? Where is this within that is also without? What is this ‘I’ that I could never ever cease to be? Who am I when all objectivity and multiplicity have died down? Where do I find an absence of ‘me’ in myself? Or rather, where do I find a sense of ‘me’, in me, that is not already the ‘me’ of everything and everyone? Where am I when every remnant of a seeking mind has left? Where do I find an individuality that is not universality? Where could I not find God’s presence in my experience? Where is this ‘where’, where I can never say where, what, when, how, why to what I am? And lastly, where have now all my questions dissolved? Only settle for a living, silent answer. Any other verbal or conceptual answer at this point would ruin it all. It would be like slamming the door in the face of the infinite.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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