‘God Runs After You’

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Sea bay’ – Ivan Aivazovsky, 1842 – WikiArt

Through our constant effort, we keep the effortless at bay. Even if we seemingly don’t do anything, we are always after something. So this constant, subtle pleading, asking, begging is closing all doors for truth to come in, to reveal itself to us. We are already dating someone else. Our mind is full of its rushing out in direction of an object, something that is going to satisfy us, to give us an identity, to fulfil us in some way. We are never truly longing. We are never an empty shell — always seeking, filling ourself with one thing or another. We don’t dare giving up, being vulnerable. We think we have to be someone, an entity in charge, a doer, a knower. We live with an armour, with layers that are concealing our true nature, even repelling it.

We have identities. We are full of them. The body is one, which we believe to be and be limited by. The mind is another, which we have adopted as being ourself — the ‘I’ that I am. We too believe in our thoughts, that we think define us, shape our identity. We are in a prison of our own making, made of bricks of memories, beliefs, hopes, desires, fears, that all concur to build a non-existing self of which we have now become the slave, and with which we have a dysfunctional, love-hate relationship. Even our ambition for truth is too much of an identity. Our desire for enlightenment is still a desire for fulfilment, another thing to achieve, a someone to be. Our true identity as pure, infinite being is not a new identity. It is not concealed or limited. It is not resisting, desiring, lacking anything. It is its own fulfilment — an identity that cannot be had, named or measured.

That’s what a true longing is — to be without ambition or desire of our own. To have even not a desire for truth, for which we will need an ego, and which still is a wall against the truth we seek — maybe the thinnest of all, but still a wall. Reality is to be realised, not achieved. It is in the word: ‘reality’ — which is we are that which is. There is no need of even the subtlest move towards it. It is all in the way we long for it. All in the way we build nothing that can go against it, or that could conceal it. This is the meaning of humility. We have to be lowly, on the ground, at the root of ourself, which is to be with our selfless being. We have it already — the being that we are after. It is all a matter of how quiet and accessible we can be. How we can be without a wall, without an identity. This is the most powerful longing there is — to be without any longing of our own making. To be without imagination or belief. To be watching only. Present. Already being — which we are anyhow. Not being an ambitious of some kind. There is no need to run after God. As Krishnamurti once put it so beautifully, “God runs after you.”

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Text by Alain Joly

Quote by J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986)

Painting by Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900)

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The quote is the title of a book consisting of eight hitherto unpublished discussions with Krishnamurti held in Malibu, California in 1970.

Bibliography:
– ‘God Runs After You’ – by J. Krishnamurti – (Krishnamurti Foundation India)

Websites:
– Jiddu Krishnamurti
– Ivan Aivazovsky (Wikipedia)

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

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In a Room Quietly

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Gościeradz’ – Leon Wyczółkowski, 1933 – WikiArt

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“All of humanity’s problems
stem from man’s inability to
sit quietly in a room alone.”
~ Blaise Pascal (‘Pensées’)

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We have always our mind racing, going after something. Stillness is resisted. Staying in a room quietly is avoided. Being alone is dreaded. We want to be occupied. We’d rather not be made empty, so we always have a war raging. Is it that we want to be something, someone? Is it that we have judged only being to be not enough? That we have to pursue something, whether it is an identity, a belief, or an idea? We are chasing our own self — what we should have, what we should be. We are on a mission, therefore we can never be quiet. We need to achieve, arrive, get somewhere, be something. We want to satisfy and be satisfied. We won’t rest before we are fulfilled. We won’t stay in a room quietly. We will have our wars to obtain peace. Our escapes to not be where we are. Our resistances to not have what we have. We prefer to possess, which is to sit in the throne of power — in the Lord’s seat — and wonder where God is, or have a belief about Him. We are chasing experiences and circumstances. Anything but only and plainly being.

In fact, we are always in a room quietly. We just don’t want to see it, or don’t know how to notice it. Ourself is that space where we live and have our many experiences. Ourself is our circumstance. It is where we are, what we have, the peace that we are chasing everywhere but where it actually is, which is in our humble presence — in and as our being. So peace is our nature, if we don’t put it at a distance, if we don’t wish to have it. So don’t start a war. Stay quietly where and as you are, and your nature will slowly be revealed to you. You will find that your identity is in your nature. That you have already what you are chasing. That the experience of being is your so perfect circumstance. And that in the throne of your being is sitting God, for which you now need no belief. You have mastery over your life, not because you control it, but because you know the nature of it and of yourself, and in that process have put an end to your own seeking. You have quietened down, ended a war, and placed yourself in the only place worth sitting, which is in and as your own glorious being.

Now never leave it. That place of yourself. Never be dissuaded that you don’t have it. Never be influenced again that you need to be something other than what you already are. If you have moved away from home, go sit quietly where you are and stay there long enough to be persuaded again in the inevitability of your own being. It’s enough not to wish to be other. It’s plenty to stay unmoved, a humble watcher. To be in a room quietly. To close every exit. To be fascinated by yourself — not escaping the fact of your being. Don’t move away from the way you simply are. From the possibility that being is all there is. From the room you are forever in. Don’t give yourself an escape — there is no escape. Don’t buy the illusion that you can be something other than that — what you are now, what you are in, that very circumstance of your being. So begin where you are. It will bring a rebellion, an insurrection, a mutiny. It will stop you from being just a person. It will make you free, and bring stillness in your life. Resistance will recede, and you might even enjoy your circumstances, that are now pervaded with being. You will notice your aloneness, and have a gorgeous life in it. You will be aware of being as the one and only place you are in. You will have solved your most urgent problem — which is humanity’s too. 

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Text by Alain Joly

Quote by Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Painting by Leon Wyczółkowski (1852-1936)

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Websites:
– Blaise Pascal (Wikipedia)
– Leon Wyczółkowski (Wikipedia)

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

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A Study of Mind

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘Landscape with Two Oaks’ – Jan van Goyen, 1641 – WikiArt

Notice that your mind is inapt at staying still. Stillness is not its thing. It has always something to think about. It is always on the road, roaming, judging, comparing, evaluating. Mind you, it is its nature to do so, if you let it. The mind is a restless thing. But its restlessness has a virtue. It pushes you beyond it. It encourages you to go deeper, where stillness is your nature. Where there is quiet. Something abiding. A stability.

Go not to the mind, but to the presence that supports it. Be like the gentle arms that hold it. Notice that your mind is not alone. It needs a space for its functioning. Sink in the mind’s left vacant space. Go in the interstices, between your many thoughts, inside your overwhelming feelings. Attain to the very substance your mind is made of. Be like its gorgeous essence. Not the mind itself, but the depth of being within it.

The mind deals only with the superficies. It is changing its mind at the slightest disturbance. With the latest flip of an opinion. Don’t follow its many thoughts. They will convince you that you are a self separate from experience. They will tell you that you are lonely. They will make you a suffering entity, though there is none. Go to the bottom of your being. Where the mind is only an appearance. See that you don’t disappear. You can’t.

The mind is ever changing, not you. It has an idea in mind. Forever keeping an agenda, being interested in outcomes, seeking experiences — only happy ones. You have happiness enmeshed within your own being, as the nature of your own gorgeous self. You don’t need to manufacture one, to provoke it with circumstances. Go so deep within the mind that you cease to be involved with its productions. This is called peace.

Stay with your imperturbable essence. It will show you that you are married to the world. The mind believes in the many, in division, in separation. But it is its own invention that it passes on to you as the only reality. Reality is where the mind is only a puppet. Reality is when you are one. It is beyond even your sense perceptions. They have colluded with the mind in making you believe in separation. Reality is aware presence. The mind is not.

Now be careful. For the mind has appropriated the ‘I’. It too says ‘I Am’. But the mind is not ‘I’. It is not your real self. The mind is pretending to be you. It does it all the time. So often that you have come to believe a bundle of thoughts and feelings to be ‘I’. But ‘I’ goes deeper. It doesn’t live in such a shallow land. ‘I’ belongs to the ground, to your innermost being, to that part of yourself that is unmovable. Where there is no past or future. No other, beyond, or away.

So if you happen to meet the mind one day, and be entangled in its mesh, or if you have adopted it as your everyday identity, don’t stay there. Move away. Be bold. See that all that comes here with a beginning and an end, with a limitation, has very little to do with you. See that as you deepen in and as being, your mind will slow down, and acquire a strange transparency. Your thoughts and feelings may even appear to be clothed in the infinite.

Your mind now seems to be no mind at all, and is in no capacity to bring separation. It stops being a brigand, and becomes a precious ally. Thoughts may be used wisely, and feelings are seen as a reflection of love and its indispensable joy. Essence acquires a new meaning, as it pervades the world and every experience that comes your way. Your body is experienced as made of Mind, and Mind as your new body. Spirit is where you live. It is without end.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Jan Van Goyen (1596-1656)

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Website:
– Jan Van Goyen (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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Our Only Chance

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘A Windmill at Montmartre’ – Camille Corot, 1845 – WikiArt

I wonder if our life is not just spent in avoiding dying. If this is not where all our energy goes: in being a self, in assuming to be a body, a mind, and managing all the challenges that go with having to live that body-oriented life. If we are not applying the best of our mind in controlling our thoughts and feelings, and pretending that we know what we’re doing, and do what we’re choosing, and choose what we’re wanting. We spend our life pretending. But we secretly ache in our heart for knowing nothing of what we are, except for one thing: we want to be, to feel, to know. For we sense that we are not quite living. It doesn’t feel that this is life — what we are going through. It doesn’t feel that this is the end game, to be a person that suffers, seeks security, and dies miserably in due time. It doesn’t feel right. It is not a good situation. Not what we expected from being a human. There has to be more than that.

So we’re seeking, working, slaving at meeting our own expected greatness. We’re toiling at knowing, at being a self that we carry through place and time. We don’t want to die, to let go. We don’t trust that we have it, already know it, be it — the greatness that we seek, the happy living we’re chasing. We’ve got to be a person first, efforting through life. We cannot already be our own dream. We cannot imagine that the purpose of life is in being, which we already are to perfection. We cannot envisage that effort is not our path, and that living is not a thing that we have to work at. We cannot understand that our simply being is already bathing in the peace that we so relentlessly seek to acquire and secure. We cannot be convinced that our joy needs no other circumstance than the simple circumstance of knowing our own being.

So we won’t let go. We need to keep control. We don’t want to just be, which seems like a form of death. We don’t fancy dying. We think that our solace, our happiness, lies only in being a person. The fact that it never worked, that it was never implemented in life, is only accidental. It’s only a matter of time, circumstance, achievement, politics. Being doesn’t feel like a program. Dying to our own separate self is not the dream we expected. We cannot be dying. We’ve got to be a person. We’ve got to toil for our life. We’ve got to deserve being happy, secure, peaceful. Even if we end up missing our own salvation, our own dream, our very own given, gorgeous nature.

For we were given a very simple work to do. An easy realisation. The realisation that any addition to being — being a self, a person, a qualification, otherness, separation, the whole enchilada — is but an avoidance. It is not real, not in the way we think it is. It is but an illusion that we have created for ourself. Our solace is in dying. It is to stop being that which we are not and never will be. To stop manufacturing an entity where there is only seamless aware being. We don’t need to be grandiose. It is all here, in the simple looking at our own being — in going within. It couldn’t be more easy, if only we would accept to slow down, and die to our being a person. If only we could feel all that is hiding here, in our very act of being — this infinity that is the totality of our identity and the greatness of our humanity. There is no being anything, or anyone. Being alone is, and suffices. This is our only chance to know who we are. To be truly being, knowing, feeling. And paradoxically, to be at last the ‘something’, the ‘someone’, that we have always wanted to be.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Camille Corot (1796-1875)

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Website:
– Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
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The Person

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘Self-Portrait with Dishevelled Hair’ – Rembrandt, 1628 (Rijksmuseum) – Wikimedia

There is immense pleasure in being a person when we are not a person. Then, the body-mind, the person, is not a burden anymore, it is a companion. We begin to enjoy its gentle presence, for it is rid of the constant search for happiness, peace, freedom. It is not on him anymore. She doesn’t have to bring about her joy. Doesn’t have to condition her freedom to her circumstances. The person is delivered. It doesn’t have to resist and be a fighter. Doesn’t have to struggle, suffer, hope, be in the constant grip of personal achievement and success. He can stop being a seeker, endlessly looking for what could make him good, content, relieved. She can stop having peace on her everyday agenda. These are given — naturally — as our nature, as ourself. They stop being the work of a person, his everyday load that he has to achieve, perform, be a success at — all the tyranny of it.

There is a presence that we feel is our own, our identity, that already gives us everything that we as a person would spend a lifetime looking for, and would for certain — that’s a universal secret, believe me on that — fail to secure. We already have a wonderful, pristine self in the form of our naked, unconditioned being, so the person doesn’t have to create a non existent self for itself. It doesn’t need to have this belief, that it is a self, that it is separate, that it lives inside a body and a mind. Self and identity are already provided. We share them with everyone and everything. We don’t have to be lonely. Don’t have to be limited by a form, and imprisoned by the boundaries of birth and death. Appearance and age stop being an issue. Comparison dies down. We expand as limitless being, outside even the boundaries of time. The body-mind acquires transparency.

Then we take him or her by the hand — the form, the limited body-mind, the person. Then it is like our best friend, freed from everything that made it small, separate, fearful. Then our body, although limited, will acquire and ride on the infinite nature of its beholder. Then our mind, which is bound by the boundaries of time and thought, will wander on the grounds of the eternal, where our being has its permanent home. Then our personhood shines, precisely because we are not a person. We become beautiful, attractive, and our actions bear the signature of the infinite. Then, being a person is important. And it is not a hindrance to our recognising who we are. On the contrary. The person becomes an emissary of truth, both within and without.

Then ‘what is’ is what we desire, and we don’t mind our circumstances. They satisfy us. We are free. We can be a person and find it a beauty to be so. The person is only here to pass on the impersonal desire of the infinite. It is here for God’s will, which is to be and act on God’s premises, in Its gorgeous name. Not to have a private agenda, in the name of the endless insecurities of a nonexistent, separate self. Not to be burdened by life, but to be the messenger of its secret glory. Then, she as a person is clothed in the dress of a delightful being, shining with an identity that she borrows from God’s identity, and partaking of a self that is the very self of universal being. Then he doesn’t find his person to have an existence separate from his not being a person. Person, no person, being, consciousness, God, life, existence — all one same infinite thing and being. And the person, against all odds, thrives in it.

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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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‘Who Am I?’

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘St. Jerome kneeling’ (detail) – Rembrandt, 1630 – WikiArt

The question of who I am is a big question. It is not being asked very often though. At least not in the way it should. We do as if. As if we all knew who we are. As if it wasn’t worth asking. As if it was a waste of time to do so. When we do ask about who we are, it is to fill ourself with objects, qualities, identities. We are gathering informations about our body, our emotions, skills, idiosyncrasies, tendencies, but not about ourself. We live as if on a racing track, never actually stopping the course of our acquired, rehearsed, believed identities. We never watch, inquire as if for the first time, as if we didn’t know. We are bragging. We don’t want to be humble, and learn about something that appears to be so simple, and goes — so we believe — without saying. But the truth is: it scares us. We are afraid to know. We have picked up, from the beginning of times, that this question is a question of immense implications. It is a deadly question. One that changes you, finishes you, shakes your very ground.

It is a question for a sacred remembering, to just notice what we already are, what is already here, but that we have been too distracted to see. It is a question to prevent us from going out all the time, from escaping ourself, to help us return to where we have always been — in the home of our inner being. It is a question for which we have to let go of our bodily refuge. A question for which we have to lose the self that has been our anchor so far. It is a question for the mind, although its answer is to be found outside every consideration of mind, thought, image, memory. It is a free fall that pushes us to look beyond our limitations, and gives us the gift of our limitlessness. It is a question with no end, not because there is no answer to it, but because the answer is a living answer, whose reality can never come to an end. It is an impossible question, for even before we have the occasion to utter it, we find it already answered through the act of our simply being.

The living answer to the question ‘Who am I?’, is ‘I Am’, which contains its own undefeatable, eternal, inescapable reality. ‘I Am’ is before the question ‘Who am I?’. ‘I Am’ is the living answer which swallows every single question on our identity. It takes us into itself, and shows our identity to be only being, a being so pure that nothing can be added to it. It is the only sacred knowledge there is, which all the words and rites of every religion have sought to deliver as the name ‘God’. A knowledge that they have failed to pass on with accuracy for going too far, and postulate outside of ourself the reality that is in fact our very own self, hiding in plain sight in and as our own aware being. So ‘Who am I?’ is a prayer that is clearing the path, recalling God in ourself in the form of ‘I Am’.

It is a question that opens the door for the peace that we have been looking for in every possible direction, except in the direction of our innermost self alone. It is a question that we ask with expectation and inquiry, and answer with the peace and joy that we find already here, beyond any expectation or understanding. It is an implicit question that we cannot help asking in the secrecy of our mind, but that we fail to form explicitly, expecting the answer to be outside our own being. It is an absolute question, that needs no other answer than going to the very aware being that initiated it, because of  its longing to be freed from everything that seems to limit it and veil it. It is our returning to what we have never ceased to be, but are failing to see for reason of looking in a thousand directions outside ourself. ‘Who am I?’ is a question that takes you to ‘I Am’, which is the only accurate description there is of our true identity. 

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Rembrandt (1606-1669)

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Website:
– Rembrandt (Wikipedia)

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

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A Ghostly Thing

Posted on by Alain Joly

We only ever become within the course of time. We seem to always want to move cautiously, step by step. We don’t consider a becoming that could be achieved in an instant. Quicker even. A becoming free of the constraints of time or place, that could not be influenced by our thoughts, conditionings, beliefs, desires. A becoming that doesn’t find its worth in objective experience. A becoming that has no movement, that is still, confident, ever present. A becoming which bears in itself no change, and that was here before you even had the idea to change, or become, or evolve.

After all, when it comes to our identity, to who we truly are, ‘becoming’ seems to be a very poor idea. What could we become that we are not already? What is here in our very being that could become, that could be different, or better, or more? Our identity has been settled from time immemorial. It was here before even the appearance of time, which is but the product of our patterns of thinking. Before the appearance of place, which is but the product of our ability for sensing, seeing, hearing, touching. We have our identity and our perfection — our changelessness — hidden in being.

So, could we not become what we are? That’s the real question. How do we become our true identity? How do we espouse who we truly are, or be that thing which we are that cannot be deformed, changed, soiled, or even defined? That implies understanding both the one who wants to become, and that which he or she wants to become. There is a becoming, a change, a better or a worse, a less or a more, for the body-mind. But is there a becoming for ourself? Is there anyone here that could ever achieve becoming? Look for the one who wants to become, and notice that you will never find it. Becoming is a ghostly thing.

You cannot become. That’s a lovely idea, one that comes from another idea. From the belief that you are something, someone, that can change, evolve. There is in our being no room for change. Being is complete. It cannot be bent according to our beliefs, hopes, ambitions. So there is no becoming that which we are, and no one to become being — a better being, or a worse being. Being is the only thing shining in our being. There is no one here that could ever want to become. We may give to our body-mind more skills, more strength, better abilities, but to ourself, we can give nothing but the faculty of being only being.

So go only for what you already are. That’s truly what you want to become: what you already are. There is not a better becoming than that. That will spare you being a person caught in the effects and weariness of time and place. That will spare you being in the prison of a self, all the separation and loneliness involved in becoming anything or anyone. That will free you — to not become. That will give you exquisite joy — to only be what you are. That will give you certainty, confidence — to have your own being as your changeless, unbreakable horizon. May you become what you are. Believe me, this is heaven.

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“Creatures of a day! What is anyone?
What is anyone not? A dream of a shadow
Is our mortal being. But when there comes to men
A gleam of splendour given of heaven,
Then rests on them a light of glory
And blessed are their days.”
~ Pindar, 5th century BC (Pythian 8)

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Text by Alain Joly

Quote by Pindar (c.518-c.438 BC)

Photo by Alain Joly

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Website:
– Pindar (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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