Boundary

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Book of Wisdom’ – Nicholas Roerich, 1924 – WikiArt

It is naive to imagine that there is a boundary or separation between consciousness and the world we are conscious of. It would be extraordinary to find that boundary, where our consciousness ends and where the outside world begins. We have an apparent and necessary boundary between body-mind and world, for our convenience, for practical purposes, and have left it there as an unquestionable fact. And everybody has complied, including scientists, that this separation must exist, that consciousness is a competence of the body, that it cannot be challenged, that it would be madness, beyond reason to do so. But there is an impossibility here. For this boundary can never be found at the deepest level, or even conceptualised. It is inexistant. Something like a pure invention. But this illusion of a separation was broken, seen through long ago, in the world of mind, of which our spiritual traditions are experts. Sages have seen long ago that there was here, between consciousness and the objective world, a seamless relationship, an undoubted oneness, no boundary, no separation, not even an unlikeness. It was all one with nothing besides it. The world is wholly contained in Mind, as Mind, and Mind or consciousness is all we are, all there is — our fundament.

So we have invented the reality of a world out of the reality of consciousness. After all, it is a beautiful find, a gorgeous dream, that we have a world, and that this world was shaped, sculpted by our five senses for as long as our senses have existed, and for as long as our bodies have been made the inevitable side effects of the appearance of a world. Everything — world, body, mind, senses — is an appearance in a more fundamental, non-objective reality. So nothing new, or other, or different was ever introduced in our reality. Reality is all there is. Consciousness is our playground, our only field or ground, and it is hosting everything in and as itself, including our apparent self. This is how we have a father and a son. A reality, and a temporary, individual, apparently located point of view on that reality. But between father and son, between reality and ourself, there is only one seamless consciousness. God has made sure that all things and beings find a habitation within him — or her. And then, ‘within’ was too taken away, for how would you have a within and a without when there is only the One?

So we have to meditate on the appearance of this world. On what is hiding behind it. On what it teaches us on our nature, on our reality, on our humanness. By the way, being human is by no means derogatory. In its most ancient Sanskrit root, the word for ‘human’ means: “The being whose essence is the capacity for self-remembrance of its divine nature.” So this knowledge of the reality of the world is a sacred knowledge. For with that knowledge firmly held, you can now enjoy personhood without the burden of separation, without the suffering that is its natural outcome. So we don’t have to be spiritual anymore. We have acquired our personhood, our humanness. Our nature has been realised, uncovered, in its primal, intended truth, and it is once and for all. Now we can enjoy a world for the first time. Now we can be lovers. Watchers. Listeners. Devoid of the superfluous. Free of our cumbersome, limiting beliefs. Recognising and accepting God’s will as our own. 

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947)

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Website:
–Nicholas Roerich (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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Lightness On End

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Angel of Light’ – Salvador Dali, 1960 – WikiArt

I can be me forever
There is no limit to being myself
I don’t have a home in a body
In the limitations contained
In a mind.

I don’t want to refer to anything
In order to describe myself, I can describe
My body, my thoughts or my actions
My hopes and my desires
But not myself.

Myself is for the infinite
I am not to be squeezed by words
Not to be qualified or situated
I won’t appear in the world
Of appearances.

Rather all things find a home
In my infinite embrace
So I am a universal home
I am a shelter for everything
That is finite.

I am not to be divided, I cannot be
disunited, driven apart, isolated,
Alienated — my fate is to be whole
My destiny is to have peace
As my horizon.

I cannot be suffering
For suffering knows boundaries
Is born of the finite; I know only
An expanse without end — definition
Of happiness.

How could one-you-I
Bear the infinite
Or find it has a weight
The infinite is for being,
It is for lightness on end. 

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)

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Website:
– Salvador Dalí (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Voices from Silence (other poems from the blog)

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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)

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

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A Ceremony for Peace

Posted on by Alain Joly
– ‘Full Moon’ – Andrew Wyeth, 1980 – WikiArt

When you have discarded everything in yourself that is not consistent, that will let you down, or change, or leave, or won’t meet your most profound aspirations, then look carefully at what is left behind, that could never let you down, or change, or leave. What is here no matter what, beyond expectations, beyond the agitation of the mind, and your fascination for experience. What is here that cannot be attained, or obtained, for you can only obtain what you don’t already have. Look at that. Look at what is left in you, as you, that cannot be manipulated or bargained for. Feel it, let it acquire prominence, allow it to reveal itself to your attention.

This is what matters: this deeper part of yourself which is untouched, pristine, unconditioned. It matters tremendously. In fact, this is what all spiritual and religious traditions have been calling you to understand or realise. But it isn’t an easy thing to see, for it blends within your experience and hides inside it. Yet, if you look with the right amount of purpose and focus, it will blow your mind as something which is filling the space as your very own identity and being, and had been here always, unnoticed, silent. Now it is revealed as the peace and happiness which you have been looking for in the content of experience, and are now blessing your heart through the simple experience of being only being, which you discover is your natural, and effortless condition.

Everybody knows that he is, or she is. It is an obvious sensation: to be. But then we forget it, take it for granted, stop paying attention. We become obsessed by everything objective, by everything in experience that we can see, hear, touch, feel. We become preoccupied, consumed, tormented by our body and mind, by our circumstances and life events, by what makes us happy or sad, by prestige, failure, pride or shame. We forget that we have left behind, now hidden in the background, one simple thing, one simple fact of living, which is the knowing of our being, this road back to our green pastures, that is here quietly present, every time we say ‘I Am’.

Through force of habit, we let that down, judge it irrelevant, certain that this has only a secondary importance, maybe even no importance at all, that we are, that we know our being, that we can say with certainty and absolute confidence: ‘I Am’. We fly off to dangerous countries, clinging to suffering and uncertainty, navigating between hope and disappointment, making happiness or peace a thing to obtain, gain, deserve. We’re not seeing that it is our identity, our given essence, to be contented, peaceful, creative. That we must not bypass happiness, or pass by it, through it, near it, without even a second glance. That our quiet sense of being is our chance, our remedy, our secret longing granted.

Happiness is simply the knowing of being, the shining of this simple, gorgeous sensation of our being present outside all consideration of body, mind, senses, and world. It is that simple if we are willing to look. In fact, god has placed the secret for happiness, the recipe for peace, right under our nose, on a silver plate, wrapped with a golden ribbon. We can unwrap it every time we become aware of being. Every time we slow down and rest there, in the simple, naked experience ‘I Am’. And then it opens up, it becomes evident, that peace is in being, that joy is in ‘I Am’, that life is spent here, under the gorgeous vault of simply and only being. Then being becomes a ceremony for peace, joy, or love. And then… Well then, everything is for the first time.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009)

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Website:
– Andrew Wyeth (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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One Living Being

Posted on by Alain Joly

Truth is when the one who desires truth is not there. That one is a flaw. It is superimposed on the truth it is looking for, and veils it, makes it unreachable. It tramples it, literally. It makes it misty, obscure, mysterious. But truth is an obvious reality, if we don’t put it at a distance. If we don’t imagine it as something. Truth is not a thing, a concept. It is what we are — present, alive, real. Only we have to leave, recede, tiptoe. It’s all it takes, to not be boastful about it, to not think we don’t have it, to not assert the lie of our being someone. Being someone will push truth into the darkness, unseen therefore forgotten, hidden therefore to be sought. Our looking for it is the difficulty. Truth is to be approached with subtlety and utmost delicacy. Not that it is fragile, it is not. But it is sensitive to our feeling separate from it. It doesn’t like it. It shrinks at the thought of it, that we are looking for it, wanting it, being ambitious about it. Truth is not to be conquered, practised, refined. Truth is here fully dressed. It is our most fitting attire. The very being of our being. Massive. Obvious. If we let it open up, unfurl, spread its all-pervasive presence, and its creative, mind-blowing, self-evident, undeniable power and eminence.

But if we think we’re not enough, well then we’re not enough. If we want to indulge in being a person, a poor me, then we fall from a great height. We suffer from being separated from our essence, our quintessence. We feel the burden of our constant, intrinsic, congenital seeking. It becomes our identity, to be a self seeking, to live in separation, to be fearful of this condition, and a believer of ideas. We live in our mind, struggle with our beliefs, conflict with experience. We are not what we should be, and we feel it, know it, dread it. And we are crippled by our impending death, which we cannot understand, fathom, and marvel at. So it really comes down to ending a belief, a simple belief, that cheated us. That our body, our thoughts, feelings, senses are substantial when they are but a dream. That our being finds its reality in our body and mind when our essential is not there. Our essential draws its reality from a presence that is infinite, eternal, unfathomable, loaded with love, peace, and a creative impetus. Nothing else than this presence is at play in our experience. We realise that we are just one living being, which cannot be divided, and has no other than itself. We realise that we are that, in spite of all evidence and impression. This self that we believe ourself to be is in fact secretly made of that, if the mist of its fallacious reality breaks apart and reveals its hidden nature. There is no separate, distinctive, solitary self. Only this shared, glorious one being. Then it falls into place that, for exemple, “I and my Father are one.” (John, 10:30) And that “In him we live, and move, and have our being.” (Acts, 17:28)

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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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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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Humanness

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Human Mountain: Towards the Light’ – Edvard Munch, 1927-29 – Wikimedia

There is no human being. This is quite extraordinary to think of it, and even positively mind-blowing. But turn it around as much as you may, the true self of man is not where a body is. It doesn’t take shelter there. A body, or even a mind for that matter, is way too small and inappropriate to house your beautiful being. There is no room there. For how could the infinite enter something that is finite, limited, prone to decay and death? How could something that knows no beginning and no end, be contained in a passing thought, in a mind which is changing, developing, forgetting, believing, cheating and being cheated? In being, you won’t find the beginning of a change, won’t find even the possibility of death. In being, there is no forgetting who you are. Only a mind can forget its own nature, not because there is something there that can forget, but because thoughts, feelings, perceptions, when they are believed to be yourself, are hindering your true nature, rendering it as if absent. What is left is only a cheating thought that believes itself to be real as self, when it is not.

There is nothing depressing in not being a human being, and nothing demeaning. Being is such a malleable thing that we still retain the illusion of being a human being, a person, as we do now, but with the difference that this illusion won’t hide the reality that is behind it, and that is our true identity. Losing our identity as a person doesn’t mean that we won’t feel compassion for another, or love for our beloved, for love is not contained in being a self separate from an other. Love doesn’t need to be directed. We are not doing love, let alone giving it. Love is the expression or signature contained in our simply being. It is the feeling of being that irradiates in every directions, and that is shared as that which we are here and now. And don’t think either that you will lose your ambition, but it will be reoriented to be not your ambition, but the very contagion of being in every aspect of your life and world. And don’t think that you will miss out on happiness, for happiness was never yours, never your expression, never contained in achieving or obtaining a thing that thought has said you desire. Happiness is the very feeling of being, that we cannot contain or limit, but which splashes over to colour life with a golden hue of oneness.

So there is only being taking momentarily the clothes of a human being. But being itself has no qualifications, no colours which would render it a definable entity. The colours and the qualifications are not pertaining to being. They are the property of everything that appears in being, but is not being. They are in body, thoughts, sensations, perceptions, in all the existing things that come and go, dancing to make the form of a world, of what we call a human, a dog, a mountain, or the parking lot in which we park our car. To be being won’t diminish our feeling of being a person. It will enrich it, for being is the essence of a person. Being is the essential of our experience as a human being, only we don’t see that, don’t know that. Our focusing on the belief to be an objective entity that thinks, feels, and perceives has made us blind to our reality. So let’s remind ourself that there are no limited human beings, but only one unlimited being. This knowing and feeling of being only one unlimited being is a source of constant awe in life. And this vision is what gives its true colour and reality to our imaginary humanness.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Edvard Munch (1863-1944)

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Website:
– Edvard Munch (Wikipedia)

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

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