The End of Self-Improvement

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Shores of Normandy’ – Gustave Courbet, 1866 – WikiArt

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“To know that your Self has not changed,
this illustration itself is enough.”
~ Ramana Maharshi

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There is no ameliorating emptiness, developing the unborn, aggrandising what is, and expecting the timeless to be anything more or different than what it is. Being leaves no room for improvement because it is not a thing, it is not a result, a something that has a cause. How do you improve the non-objective? How does the infinite progress? How do you make better a self that is absent as self — as something different or separate from experience? So self-improvement is a misunderstanding and a form of violence. It is an imposition, a belief that we squeeze to fit our idea of reality, an objection to the innate perfection of what is. It is mind-made, a product, a progeny of conditioning. It is designed for the continuation of our belief in being a self or entity that can be objectively defined. And remember this: every object, every ‘thing presented to the mind’ — as Latin word ‘objectum’ stands for — is in fact nothing but something thrown in the way of your knowing who you are. This is the meaning of Latin ‘obicere’ — ‘ob-‘: ‘in the way of’ and ‘jacere’: ‘to throw’. The self that you believe yourself to be, and that you strive to improve, is your hindrance. It is what makes you blind to your true nature.

To improve on a self is to make it continue, it is to give it credit, to give it the existence it never had. After all, we all want to feel real, to see that we can act, and have a power on our self. So we have the desire to consolidate and sculpt our being through rendering it an object that we can manipulate. We want to make a profit of our self, and see a return on our investment. In fact, to improve myself is nothing but a form of merchandising. It is a trade and a transaction. It is retail management, the ‘cutting off’ of our self with the aim of maximising profits. But don’t ever forget that if you are able to improve yourself, you can therefore also make it deteriorate, worsen, decline, decay. So what then?… is self-improvement decay, error, illusion? Is it ourself going astray, being mislaid? Are we really so sure that our being could ever decay? That awareness is a so fragile thing?

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On how there is no improving our self and being… (READ MORE…)

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A False Impression

Posted on by Alain Joly

There is an impression that I am the one who knows, or is aware. But this is a false impression and an unfortunate one. In fact, we as a body-mind don’t know anything, for the good reason that there is no one here that is in charge of the knowing. We don’t have this ability. It is not for us to know anything. Knowing doesn’t belong to an individual, separate self. We owe our knowing to something that knows us first, and lends us that potential. That really gives a totally different perspective to our existence, and grants us a gorgeous humbleness: Knowing is without a knower. The knower is but a set of thoughts that we have superimposed on awareness. It is entirely made up. It is of our invention, to give us a wee importance — after all, we all want a little attention. Knowing is in the nature of being. And being is the nature of everything. Knowing is all there is. It is the light of our world, indissociable from our experience. We as selves are just shadows. Everything is dancing and taking place without our being in any way party to it. At best, we are just a colouring, a point of view, an avatar governed by some divine rules which we have perilously chosen to ignore. This is our feebleness: wanting to own and appropriate, being more than what we already are. But in doing so, we have in fact belittled ourself. We have made ourself separate from the life we live in. We have created a self where there is none. We have awakened the devil of suffering in us.

So leave the knowing in some more skilful hands. It will spare you a lot of trouble and misunderstanding. You won’t have to be a person — all the heaviness contained in it. You won’t have to be a self that knows, but knowing will appear to be your one and only self — the entirety of your being. This pure and sublime knowing will give a measure of beauty and happiness in your life. It will encompass everything. It will widen your perspective and make you profoundly secure. You will know your being with precision and clarity, and live both in remoteness and intimacy — remoteness for a serene view on your experience, and intimacy for the delight contained in oneness. And love will be your everyday companion, the deepest essence of your being. And you will be clothed in understanding, which you believed could be achieved through your being a knower. Not at all. Understanding comes when you cease being a self, a knower, when you let go of all identities and egoistic purposes. Then it comes: the understanding — the knowing that knowing is all there is, and that you don’t need to be any more than that. So learn to keep at bay all private, egoistic desires to be anything other than this impersonal, undivided presence of yourself, that has the capacity of being and knowing. You have no need to be a knower, or a doer of anything in your life. Let the show run by itself. Only give it your golden, loving indifference. That’s the most glorious thing you can do in this life. You will be showered by the benefits of it.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Read this essay from the blog ‘The Impossibility of Knowing’…

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

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Twisted Rainbow

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Hope’ (detail) – George Frederick Watts, 1886 – WikiArt

Unhappiness is a strange thing, for against all appearances, and under serious investigation, it is not really found. We are making it up as we go along. In fact, there is no such thing as an absence of happiness. Yet we are nurturing this absence with great consistency, designing our so called unhappiness with care, through our thoughts, our memory, our attachments, our stubborn persistence. But only try to experience its effects outside your thoughts and feelings, in the absence of your mind, and you’d have to confess that you can’t find here anything like a misery. The reason is: unhappiness is not a thing in itself. It is veiled happiness. It is the covering up of your innate peace. It is past residues and future expectations tossing the tranquillity of the now. But all such disturbances, discomforts, or distresses, are always only temporary events, passing weathers distracting us from what is always here, always faithful, always to be trusted: the peace contained in simply being. This peace is in fact the very making and backbone of our lives, its solid background. It could never leave you no matter how hard you may try. Its not being felt is a form of snobbery. You have missed your innate joy in reason of your not looking in the right place. You have neglected your true, natural being for wanting to be somebody. You have been scorning yourself out of vainglory. In fact, unhappiness is but the simple mourning of a loved one who is missed: our true self. It is but a distraction from the boredom of our ignorance. Or a warning for a wrong turn taken.

Unhappiness is not found in physical pain, or in the natural grief following a loss. These are all compatible with happiness, as is a shared, compassionate sorrow. These are wise and healthy responses to life situations and challenges. Unhappiness is of a different nature. It is more like a habit or an indulgence. Often, we would rather be unhappy than shatter a well-rehearsed idea of ourself, in which we have invested our most cherished identity. Unhappiness is also the result of a fallacy, and a form of delusion. It is a shadow which we nourish through our belief in being a person caught between seeking and resisting, and the reward of fulfilment. Unhappiness is only as real as our limited self is. One will follow the other both in death and in birth. So really, unhappiness is a self-inflicted pain. In a way, we could say that it is a sin. It is ourself being driven away from our happy, forgotten nature, and bound to the suffering self which we have identified ourself with. It is our twisted rainbow in the sky of ignorance, that appears naturally without being truly there. It is created by the rain of all our renouncements, of our constant search for security and approval, through accumulation and avoidance. So next time you meet some measure of unhappiness in your life, don’t believe it. Don’t be caught up and allured by its convincing appearance. See through it until you find its referent. See that unhappiness is not real as affliction or suffering. It only exists as the sum of all that hinders the happiness which is the nature of your self as being. Your misery may in fact only be a passing, unassuming thought, maybe an innocent, unchallenged belief, or just a feeling hovering about, which you are taking too seriously. Not very much really. Hardly enough to send you far and away from the delight of simply being.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by George Frederic Watts (1817-1904)

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Websites:
– George Frederic Watts ( Wikipedia)
– Hope (Watts) (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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The Reluctant Messiah

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Christ on the Mount of Olives’ – Paul Gauguin, 1889 – Wikimedia

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“Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me:
nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”
~ Luke, 22:42

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Maybe it is more serious than you think. Maybe the line has been crossed without your noticing. Maybe there is no return to being what you imagined to be: A self, a person, self-contained in a body, armed with all the thoughts needed to represent you. Maybe there is no memory left of this old belief, and that you have to let it all go, all the kaleidoscope of separation, all the daunting suffering, all the interplay and thrill contained in being just one piece in the puzzle of life. Now all pieces have been joined to fade into one single presence with no pieces in it, a presence that you have espoused, that you have recognised to be your home — inherited and inhabited since before the dawn of time. Now you may have to move in with fear and reverence, for living in that new identity has consequences. It might transform you beyond your recognising, and in more drastic ways than you had expected.

It might shatter your dearest hopes and expectations, that were here in your heart, entertained to the point of cultivation. It might give you what you have sought all along, and stop dead every single desire for an ‘other’ to satisfy and fulfil you. It might demolish a dream, and disintegrate the map of yourself, that described who you were in such lively, never-ending details. It might silence you, when you so much enjoyed the delightful babbling of your anxious mind. And I won’t mention all your intimately held treasures of belief, all your ideas and opinions, that have put together that carefully built image of yourself: how they might be dampened, damaged, discarded for being found redundant.

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Read more about how our resistance can be made into surrender… (READ MORE…)

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The Voice in Your Head

Posted on by Alain Joly

There is a voice inside your head that is a true tyrant. It has an opinion on everything, always judging, evaluating, commenting — a gossip of the worst kind. It constantly informs you of its likes and dislikes, without you ever truly asking for it. Notice that most situations don’t fit its expectations, for it is a hard one to satisfy. But more than being a tyrant, it is cunning and deceitful. For it pretends to be the voice of an entity — the very person that you are. And it is a mentor so convincing and attractive, that you would follow it anywhere — anywhere, and at any cost — including at the cost of being unhappy, uncertain, fearful, dispossessed of your beautiful self. So please remove yourself from its spell. And do it now. For this voice is not your self. It is placed much too far ahead of yourself. This fake identity is a hesitant one, desirous, not grounded, forever running after its own projected, illusory, unreachable recipe for happiness.

This constant judging and seeking may look like a quest for happiness but it is not. You are not doing it well. This is not the way to happiness: to be a believer, a follower, gullible to the point of endorsing the first voice that comes up in your mind. But only observe it, and you will see that this voice is as thin as the blink of an eye, as barren as a thought can be when it pretends to be the self from which it derives its trifling existence. You have to rewind it all, back to a place of not knowing. For this voice’s pretentious knowing to which you have succumbed, diverts you from your goal, from this innate peace which is here, quietly dormant at home, in your self, as that which you are before all knowing, all judging, all beliefs, curled as your inborn, unsoilable innocence. This unborn stillness is your true self, innocent but all-knowing, still but with the activity of a thousand suns, unborn but bearing the life of a universe, vulnerable to your noticing, but whose presence is unbreakable and therefore immortal.

That one is a more trustable match if you ask me. That one doesn’t need a voice to represent itself. It is the unguarded one, that needs no protection and no incentive for being itself, wide-open, naked as no one and no thing ever was naked before, and will ever be. Its apparent vulnerability is the measure of its utter invulnerability. This inner being or presence is all that a thought, or a voice in the head, could never be. It is humble to the point of espousing the reality of everything, bright to the point of being transparent, undoubtedly present to the point of seeming not there, and so intimately woven in the now that it is overlooked and sought only in the future, which is nothing but a thought in your head. So leave your outer voice and remain as your inner being only. Or rather see that this assertive voice is rendered to its ridiculous and idiotic redundancy, when you observe it from the right perspective of being. So the voice in your head is found to be just a ghost. It never was there as the self you believed it to be. It is the empty shell of an absent being. But its mimicry is nevertheless hiding the voiceless, headless silent being that is your true and only self.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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The Nature of Everything

Posted on by Alain Joly

We don’t apprehend reality, or ‘what is’, directly, fully. Thought is in the way. There is a thin screen — in fact not so thin — that prevents us from seeing reality. This layer between ourself and our true being has the consistency of an old, worn out thinking habit. We have projected a pseudo reality of ourself as an entity, before we have even comprehended the reality of everything. So we have made a mash up of it all. We have made thought into a confused and a confusing device, entangled as it is with feelings and perceptions. So thought is slowing us down. And the result is that we as thought have created this world such as it is: divided, broken up, split apart, and therefore confused, angry, in capacity to hate another. Then, thought has set itself up as the one that can solve it all. Don’t get me wrong here, thought can help solving many intricate problems, and can create the most wonderful things. But it can never be the saviour of our world, or of ourself. It has first to go down its pedestal and take a step aside.

For thought is not just thought. It is much more than that and this is where the problem lies. Thought, strengthened by feelings and experience, has developed to the point of being us. We are a thought that has grown two legs. This is how we imagine ourself to be separate: by thinking ourself to be a body and mind; and by thinking the world to be out there. But thought has here produced an illusion. In trusting thought, we have failed to see that we are not on an equal footing with the world. We are not an existing thing along with ten thousand other existing things. We are the presence that is hosting every single existing thing including our body-mind, in its one infinite, all-pervading embrace. So we never have the right focus. We are always wrongly favouring the dictates of thought, which is the most conditioned instrument there is. So thought has become that bit of haziness in front of our vision. It is that made up confusion in front of our inborn clarity. It is an illusion made entity. But a well-conducted thought can be of help to see itself as being the problem. It can be the thorn that helps removing the thorn, and then is discarded. When the thought of ourself gets out of the way, our being is then seen to have espoused reality. The distance between ourself and ‘what is’ is seen to be non existent. And we will then have vision and clarity, for our self as a being separate from reality is nowhere to be found.

Without a self, whose structure is nothing but a thought swollen by its many identifications with feelings and experiences, the nature of reality is seen in a new light. Without a self to break it up, the structure of reality appears undivided. Because it is undivided, it is one. Because it is one, nothing in it can appear that is other than itself. Not a person. Not a thought. Not a world. Nothing. The world, the person, the thought, everything, has been revealed as being the One — a reality so infinite that nothing can be by its side, with its own separate existence. Therefore this reality can only be who we are, since it is the only one thing that is in capacity to be. So we are that. Or rather ‘that only is’, since there cannot even be a ‘we’ to be it, let alone to become it. So we don’t need a thought to exist, or to represent us. We don’t need an idea of ourself. And our identity is not dependent on objects of any kind. We are ourself by ourself. And this recognition can never be made by thought. It is alive. A living truth whose reality can only be seen, like something that suddenly comes into focus. Then our self, the world, everything, is that living truth — what we all participate in. This shared being is sometimes called love. Unless you prefer to call it happiness. Or God.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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A Trail of Glory

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The River of Light’ – Frederic Edwin Church, 1877 – WikiArt

If you happen to feel your being one day, don’t let it go out of sight. Follow it everywhere it is. Let it be your only guide. Be gently intoxicated by it, by yourself, by who you are, truly, when you have relinquished this obsession of being a body, and a mind. This is your one and only duty, to stay there, with being, to abide in it, and let yourself be moved by its unmoving current. Don’t go off at a tangent. Don’t take a single step, unless you have with you, as you, this being that you are, and that you could crush at any time, with the single thought that you have your own, separate being. Remember it to be your ultimate identity, the widest circle of your self, without any border, limitless, unfettered by any condition whatsoever.

Feel it in you, as being you, when you go to apparent places. Being tends to stay at home and let your body do the moving. For being never goes anywhere — it is not the travelling type. This is how you can simply go to buy some bread in your street and live a captivating adventure, or explore the farthermost recesses of the earth while feeling quietly at home. Feel that you as being are housing the world, that being is the landscape in which your life is taking place. So be only concerned with the landscape and life will then flow of its own accord. Don’t start believing that you have a life of your own. That’s only the prerogative of the suffering self. No life can be lived happily with an architecture or a design outside being.

And remember that being is a love affair. A renouncing of your own limited self, for a marriage with the beloved truth of your being. A free, princely, bounteous bowing to the infinite. So don’t start making an effort to be, for any effort is an attempt from the part of a belief to reassess its position as a distant, separate, other being. That’s how your nature becomes unseen, when you have replaced it with your own fake one, with your own invented self. For being never hides, if you don’t let it disappear under the weight of your seeking it, of your being somebody that is lacking. So don’t let your being escape you. Don’t lose its trail of joy and glory. Don’t be the one fleeing, running away, desiring to be yourself, by yourself, and then seeking to bring yourself back to the happiness that you have lost, in so many, so many immoderate, superfluous, inappropriate ways. Seek your bliss in being — where it only lies.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900)

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Website:
– Frederic Edwin Church (Wikipedia)

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

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