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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The Scrutiny of Now

Posted on by Alain Joly

You cannot understand truth in the future. For one good reason which is simply: there is no such thing as a future. The future is forever doomed to be a projection of thought. In reality, you will never meet anything that is not now. You are eternally married to the now as presence. The now is where you are, when you are, and also what you are. The now is encircling you from all directions, and you are bound to it, caught in its perpetual enchantment. So if you long to understand who you are, look at yourself now. Don’t postpone it for another moment that exists only in your imagination. To postpone truth is to never come anywhere near it. Understanding will never happen in another place than the place where you happen to be now. Now is your cathedral of understanding. You are being showered by its benefits every time you look for its presence within, for this presence of now is nothing but who you are, what you are. So if you think of the now as a moment that exists outside or independently of yourself, you haven’t looked well enough. For you are in fact the now. I mean it: you, the totality of who you are, your purest essence, is that thing which is called, amongst various other names, now. The now is that which you refer to when you say simply ‘I’. I know it doesn’t look like it, but you actually draw your identity from the now, for there exists nothing under the sun but this timeless presence whose place of living is in and as the now. This is why you can only understand yourself now. No other moment is fit for it, for any other moment is nothing but your hiding place, your desperate attempt to avoid drowning into the timelessness of now.

So don’t ever run away from now. Face it now — the now. Don’t think you can meet it again tomorrow. Now is a rendezvous that you can never miss. It will happen only once, which is now. But the good news is that you have never been anywhere but now. You are under the scrutiny of now. You live by its rule. Only you have to see that, and to see it now. Don’t think about it, for any thought you may have about anything — including the now — belongs to the past or the future, which actually don’t exist outside thought. Don’t think that you live separate from the now, as an entity bound to the effects of time. So let us not be so malleable, so easily cheated on. We all play so many tricks to avoid being now — which we are anyway, and anyhow. Oh! The silliness of it all — that constant stepping away from that which we are; that repeated removal from our being simply now; and the fear and suffering involved in not abiding as and by the now. The effort that it takes — to be away from home, displaced, a self in denial of its true and inescapable identity, refusing to die in the grip of truth. ‘Not now! Not now!’ Well, ok… But when if not now? Truth is for every-where and for every-when. It has no place to live outside of now. We are an ocean of presence that is so inevitably present and pregnant, that it appears to be not here. The reason is: it has lent its being to timelessness. Now is the Eternal that we have mistakenly taken to be a moment. A mishap that hides only one thing: Myself — the ‘I’ that is the now, for times eternal.

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Text by Alain Joly

Photo by Elsebet Barner

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

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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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At Heaven’s Gate

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Dante rencontre Béatrix’ – Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin, 1898 – Wikimedia

There is a guard posted at the entrance of the Kingdom of Heaven. Mind you it’s a gentle guard, open, benevolent, understanding, but she has her ways. Not everybody can enter. You need to fulfil some precise requirements. She has seen it all — people wanting to enter with all their heavy luggage. Trunks after trunks of thoughts, beliefs, hopes, memories, loaded with cumbersome feelings. People have such unreasonable faith! That’s when she smiles gently:
— Well, you need to empty yourself… It’s not the way to qualify for happiness. Besides I guess that with such a heavy load on your back, you must be coming with your share of suffering. Suffering is not wanted here. It’s a no go. You cannot enter with it. Sharpen your vision first.
— But… are you some kind of select, private club? Can I not come as I am? With all my sore feelings and my crap?
— Mmm, technically you can, but you must first present us with a correct identity. We need to know who you are — without your feelings and your crap, as you said. Without your sorrow and self-pity, without your dreams and hopes, all your fears and concerns, your prayers and righteousness. Without all the things that situate you and render you like a self which you never were. You need to know who you are before all that you think define you. Did you ever look at it?

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A playful interaction and dialogue recorded at Heaven’s Gate… (READ MORE…)

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