The Joy of Heaven

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Rocky Bay with Figures’ – J. M. W. Turner, 1830 – WikiArt

There is a special joy in knowing who you are. And there is none like it. A joy that is here no matter what, quietly sitting in the background — you just have to see it. You just have to feel it, a presence which will never let you down. Actually it cannot. It stays with you wherever you go. There are no mistakes for it, nothing that you shouldn’t engage in. It doesn’t mind if you are sad, desperate, lost, furious. It is the best friend you ever had, for it can never leave you. Only it needs to grow, so you can notice it, engage with it, dance with the glory contained within it. You have to leave it the space it deserves, so that it can show you the extent of what you have in your heart. So you have to be still, a little quieter. You have to trust that there is behind everything that entangles you, everything that overwhelms you in experience, a space free from all that you believe yourself to be. A space that is yet your closest, most intimate, truthful self. It will show you that your nature is your friend, and that your identity contains all that you are longing for, which you discover impregnates your very soul and being.

There is a bliss in your being, an otherness in your being aware. Not the happy feeling that is only triggered with the experience that goes your way, with the desired object that you obtain, or with a matched expectation. There is a poignancy to this bliss, for it withstands every turbulence of experience. It is here for your noticing, if you stop identifying yourself with all that stirs and provokes. If you stop being something or someone, sometimes despising, sometimes enjoying your circumstances. You have to be disinterested, and stay with your naked being. You have to keep an eye on what is the deepest, unshakable part of yourself — that unmoved, steady ground. Feel that there is a bliss running behind every activity or experience you engage in. It is not a state of the mind. It is not for the person. You are not a person. You are that which is aware. So only settle for a verb. Make sure that you rejoice, that you delight in simply and only being. This is where bliss lives and thrives in all circumstances.

Bliss is a feline quietly lying in the background, watching over you. If you lose sight of it for a fascination for objects, it will doze off, turn its back on you. But give your whole attention to being solely being, and it will stare at you. You will hear its purr becoming louder and louder. You will feel the gentle breeze of bliss in whatever you do. Imperturbably accompanying every perturbation your body or mind might be the prey of. It is forgiving and compassionate. It is not quite of this world, not in the loud and the foreground. Not in the existing or the flimsy. It is the colour of the solid ground of being. This is why and how it is always here. It is essential, the very essence of what you are. You can snob it, veil it, forget it, but not altogether chase it off. So see yourself as a haven. Feel that you are big and welcoming, not a little thing tossed around. You are a heaven for yourself, the safe harbour for everything that takes place within it. You are a vault. This vault is the bliss of your own being. Some have called this bliss the joy of heaven, to separate it from the mere feeling of happiness that is of the world, dependent on circumstances. Bliss is at the source of what you are. Nothing is before it. It is the nature of everything. It can be seen everywhere, and you are the donor.

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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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The Silent Heart

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Silencio’ – Eliseu Meifrèn p, 1900 – Wikimedia

Silence in the spiritual endeavour is taken to be much more than the absence of noise. It is in fact stillness. Silence is the absence of movement. It is the quiet reality that lies at the very heart of our being. By silencing the mind, we get to our silent heart — the silent heart of being that lies deep down within ourself. In fact, not so deep down. This is one of these illusions, to think that our heart, our silent being lies deep down, hidden, buried. In fact, our silent heart is showering our existence. It is our natural state, teeming, unmissable, that we have made seemingly absent, that we have silenced with the deafening noise of our mind, of our endless chattering, and of this belief a million times rehearsed that we are something, a thinking entity divided from every other thing or entity, and a private, personal self that we believe is attached to the body.

In fact, our mind is made of that silence. Only, we have added so much to it that our silent, unsubstantial heart has been overwhelmed by our many thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions that got all our attention. We have crowded our mind and have stripped it of its natural identity, which is simply being. We have silenced silence. We have mixed it with everything objective, noisy, agitated. So it has seemingly disappeared, although still overwhelmingly present. It is not that it is hidden, but we have transferred our natural, silent identity as being, to a fake identity as body, thoughts, senses. We have exchanged being for existence. We have downgraded ourself from simply being to being something. From pure, unalloyed awareness to that which this awareness is aware of. From silence to the crowding of that silence. We are crowded beings, living at the surface of things, dancing and struggling with everything superficial. We have broken the pact that tied us to the infinite, which is our true home and identity.

It results that we have become a person, when we are truly this silent, depersonalised, but utterly intimate heart of being which is the birthplace of all things and all beings. We are that which is before everything that appears and is the prey to our senses. We are this non-substantial substance that allows everything to find an existence. But we are not ourself a thing existing, a person. We are the still and silent being that is the heart of ourself and of all possible existence. Being something is to transfer our identity to that which we are aware of. But this identity has no reality other than in our thoughts and imagination. It is a belief. In plainly and only being, devoid of the imagination of mind, of its restless and ephemeral content, there is an aware silence. A silent heart. Still beating as our eternal, undefeatable identity. We have to live there, for this is the life we are meant to live. Anything else is a corrupted, even poisoned position. The state of the world is here to prove it, to attest that we have displaced our gorgeous identity away from the silent ground of being, to live in and as an appearance, and to believe in what is only a passing dream.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Eliseu Meifrèn (1857-1940)

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Website:
– Eliseu Meifrèn (Wikipedia)

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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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