The Ardent Disciple

Posted on by Alain Joly

We are strolling down a lane of a thousand gorgeous temples. Only we need to see it, to give ourself the gift of sightseeing. We need to open our life to this reality. But first, we must release this tension present in believing to be a self, and honour this temple of pure being that we are when all our beliefs and identifications have been met and dismantled. Then open your eyes. You are living in a beautiful, never yet visited land. Every fellow human being met, is a temple of consciousness. Every animal encountered, a temple of presence. Every living being that crosses our eyes, our ears, our touch, a temple of awareness, a reflection of our being. We are touring in a world of our self. Never in a distant, exotic land. Always in the comfort of our home as being. Forever linked to and as our deepest presence. We are visitors of presence, being both the presence that visits — as our self, and the presence that is visited — as apparent others.

Down this lane of presence, you will meet countless other temples. Every tree that stands majestic in your gaze, every flower that attracts you with its net of beauty, every fallen leaf on your path, every drop of rain landing on your skin, all temples of your own, scrumptious being. And every object surrounding you, a temple of isness. The clothes you are wearing are existing things. So is the watch at your wrist. Or the chair you are sitting on, or a pen, or a musical sound — the thousand fellow objects of your life. All sharing this same quality of presence, of isness. All temples that reflect the inner beauty or quality of your self, that can be met at every step. See them. Hear them. Touch them. Feel them as your own. Sense their making as your own. Honour them every time you can. They will tell you the story of your self. They are like sculptures of being in the temple of your life.

Don’t forget that every traveller or companion of life, is an altar of friendship, a temple for love. And every object distant or at hand, a recipient for beauty. And every felt presence, an echo of peace, and an occasion for happiness. All are hymns of the divine. All praises to god. But don’t stop here, for there is more to pray, or meditate on; more invitations to honour; more temples to enter; ever more heart openings to experience. Life is a dynamic thing. Bow to everything that shows up. Do not bypass the fact that behind every glance of most human beings you meet, and of many animals too, is also a temple with a cross of suffering. Be sensitive to it. That’s how you will come to exercise your compassion. And notice that within any word uttered by any conscious self, or behind any cry of a distant animal, is a sermon to learn from, by a priest in being. Listen to it carefully. That’s how you will come to exercise your humbleness, or your understanding. And in many actions or behaviours of many of your living friends battling through existence, you will be offered a lesson in equanimity, in courage. Be aware of it. Take it as the expression of your own living self, and an occasion for you to face your unmet challenges. These are the many temples placed at every step of your everyday life. A lane of temples to rest both your broken soul or your radiant being. Enjoy the sight. Be the ardent disciple of it all.

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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 Perpetual Retreat

Posted on by Alain Joly

I don’t know if you have ever been to a deep, meaningful spiritual retreat. And have found it ending, feeling yourself thrown out, returned into the common world of strife and wilderness, the cacophony of it all, trains, airports, and finally the habitual streets of your life. That moment is when you have to be a little watchful. For nothing has ended really. The peace experienced in your retreating into the heart of your true self is your real deal. And these peaceful days were placed here to remind it to you, to bring back this good old memory to yourself. So don’t crush it right away on the pretence that you are now back to your pseudo life of normality, where it is expected that you will be assailed by visions of separation, and returned to your good old suffering self. Please don’t do that. Know better. No retreat has ever ended except in your own imagination. You are now an attendee placed at day one of another beautiful and challenging retreat that starts afresh, loaded with promises, and ready to invite you in its grip. That grip is the feeling of being in yourself, which you can retreat to at any time, in any place, and anyhow. This is the ticket for entering your perpetual retreat. The longest and cheapest retreat you have ever been invited to. And you are being the glorious participant of it. That lucky one. — And there is more to it. You will be upgraded. You will become your own teacher, the teacher of your never ending retreat, always available, in all circumstances. For your sweet being hasn’t suddenly retreated at the end of the week. It is here. It is now. Continually present. Faithful to all dimensions of life, including the most apparently unconducive ones. He will guide you all along, if you’re willing to listen to her, and receive its presence at the heart of your self. Being is your infatigable teacher. Being is the new place for your retreat. It is the time for its sacred attendance. And it is placed at the perpetual height of your self. Keep going there. Make your life into a perpetual retreat, where you are at once the teacher, the participant, and the staff of that beautiful event that your life is, and in the exquisite venue that the world is.

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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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The Beatitudes

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Still Life with grapes’ – Giovanni Segantini, 1899 – Wikimedia

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The Beatitudes is the name given to eight blessings that Jesus pronounced at the beginning of his ‘Sermon to the Mount’ in the Gospel of Matthew (5:3-10). Each of these blessings begins with the Latin word ‘beātī’ (from ‘beātus’ meaning ‘happy’, ‘wealthy’), translated here as ‘blessed’. They are short and bold little sayings that I have come across lately, eight ways to be blessed, eight blessings on the path to our true being, each the recipient of some profound meaning which I have endeavoured to develop here. I hope you enjoy the reading…

“Seeing the multitudes, he went up onto the mountain. When he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He opened his mouth and taught them, saying,”
~ Matthew, 5:1-2 (World English Bible)

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“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
~ Matthew, 5:3

You’ve got to be empty. Not to indulge in your thoughts, feelings, and experiences, making them the owners of your kingdom. You’ve got to be empty. To not be seduced by every passing colours. To stop being a possessor, forever looking for what could enrich you. You’ve got to be empty. To not be involved, endlessly busying yourself with everything you have gathered to exist, looking in them for an identity. You’ve got to be empty, to stay away, to keep alone. To be the one disinterested, self-sufficient, which means finding peace in the essential of what you are. That essential is ‘being’. Simply being, devoid of anything that this being could be, or have, or think, or feel. Then this being will enrich you in its austerity, it will clothe you in nakedness, it will fill you in emptiness. Being is all you will ever own, for the simple reason that it is all you are. Nothing else is but being. This is the only asceticism worth living. Be blessed with that inner poverty.

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My reading on Jesus’ eight blessings from the Beatitudes… (READ MORE…)

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The Little Bud

Posted on by Alain Joly

Could there be a bigger relief than to realise, after a life of struggle and constant pursuit of fulfilment, that everything in our experience is already perfectly still and at rest, and already fulfilled? That we have it all as our birthright? That there is no need to run after ourself, to make everything up, to win our peace through our many efforts and achievements? That there is no need to believe and hope, to project and attain. No need to make life into a war, everlastingly caught between desperation and elusiveness, between all our ‘not quite’, ‘not yet’, and other ‘almost’ or ‘not really’. We put everything at a distance, therefore making happiness into an object, and pursuing it as something to attain or achieve; something dependent on how smart we are, or hard-working, or focused, or lucky, or god knows what. This is to make peace and happiness into something puerile and vulgar, some kind of expensive item to be bought in the marketplace.

Should we not get it right once and for all? Should we not have a definite and thorough look at ourself, and have it all crystal clear? There is no self, inside this body and mind of ours, that is placed at a distance from the objects of experience, and that can use them for its own fulfilment. To believe that there is such a self is what makes life into a battlefield, what renders us small and lacking, suffering our way through existence. We have invented this self. We have fabricated it with all the leftovers of the thousand things and events of experience. We have made ourself into an inextricable bundle which we can never fully know and get hold of. For the simple reason that it is not there. And yet, unfortunately so, this apparent self is our veil. This invented self is our loss. It is what makes us blind to the real life, transforming peace and happiness into objects that this self must attain and never can. How could it in a million years? This self has no reality!

The problem is: we have fabricated, given flesh to something — a self — that is inexistant, and by doing so have made our true and only self and reality into something that appears to be absent, fleeting, elusive. This fabricated self veils a presence that is immediate and intimate. A presence that doesn’t need to be projected. A self that doesn’t need to be arranged or perfected. This self is in fact that thing which we are taking to be just an instrument or function — a consciousness for our invented self — when it is in fact that very perfected self which we are desperately trying to attain. Our fascination for the world of objects has transformed a magnificent and fully grown flower into a little, hidden bud that we have seen and ignored a thousand times. This fully grown self is already what we are unknowingly, and its hidden presence grants like an intuition or memory to the illusory ’me’ which we are desperately trying to perfect. This self owns also, entwined in and as its very nature, the peace and happiness which we are looking for, already achieved and at hand, therefore never lacking, and never in need to be pursued.

Another thing is: there is singleness in our experience. Don’t look at the many, but contemplate the one as being their unique reality. See this reality as pervading everything to the point of being the very fabric of experience. See this reality as being your dearest self. And see this self as being the self or essence of all seemingly other apparent selves and things. This is how we vanquish conflict and suffering. This is how we annihilate struggle and effort. This is how separation is seen through. This is how we make our world a world of peace and harmony, whatever the forms the present dance may temporarily acquire. For you have seen yourself and the world as they are: pure, unbreakable peace. This is why some have called this presence God, on account of its grand, pervasive, loving, and all-encompassing nature or quality, and because it is forever here, forever now, therefore infinite and eternal. Our self and world have been discovered to be god’s being. The little, lost, suffering bud has been discovered to be flower. Its beauty and power therefore self-explanatory.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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The Glory of ‘I Am’

Posted on by Alain Joly
Stained glass by Adeline Hébert-Stevens in Church of Passy, France

First, you have to dig. You have to dig beneath every thing that qualifies you. You have to find that pure ‘I am’ hidden under all that this ‘I am’ is or can be. You have to find the raw substance of that which you are referring to when you say simply ‘I am’. What is this pure, unqualified ‘I am’? Over the years, piles over piles of experiences, beliefs, conditioning, have acquired substance and have overwhelmed this simple experience of ‘I am’. This substance has mutated into an apparent self, and ‘I am’ has been buried under it, and made into a collection of ‘I am this’, ‘and this’, ‘and this’, ‘and also this’. So that we can never ever truthfully feel ‘I am’ anymore. It is gone. ‘I am’ is gone with the wind of endless qualifications.

So we have now to resurrect that ‘I am’. To un-qualify it. To strip it bare of its qualities, of its acquired competences and idiosyncrasies. We have to purify the wine of our self, distil it to its essence. An essence that was never lost but only diluted, made secondary and unimportant, when it is in fact the only thing there is. This essence is simply the realisation of an emptiness that is the core of our being, that we never had the guts to look at, or enquire into, but which a simple question and a good-will to find out, could simply reveal with a dumbfounding ease and precision.

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A celebration of the purity of being, before it becomes qualified… (READ MORE…)

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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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A Plea Answered

Posted on by Alain Joly

For those of us who complain that god never answers their plea, let me tell you something. God is more subtle than that. He never was an entity, with a voice that could speak. She never even was a kind of object, however subtle, that could soothe at the level you are expecting, through the granting of a favour, the offering of a reward. Neither could god curse you with punishment. He doesn’t take sides. She never takes umbrage. God grants only one thing: Its glorious, infinite, loving presence. The lack of answer, the absence of favour, the withdrawing of reward, the malediction of punishment… it’s all on your side. Because you have blinded yourself to its eternal smile at you. Because you have covered your ears lest you might hear its constant whisper at you. For you were too busy thinking, pleading, complaining, expecting, reaching for an outside object or presence, that could give you, forgive you. For you were too engrossed in overwhelming feelings, worries, disputes, about yourself and others, and had definite certitudes about so many things, and such endlessly running opinions and preferences. In other words, you have isolated yourself, separated yourself, crippled yourself, and as a result made god silent and powerless — an empty void where it isn’t.

But god is never silent, if you turn towards where it lives. Its subtle presence at the core of your being is speaking endlessly, calling you with all the patience required. And that presence is never powerless, for it holds you eternally in its sweet embrace, as you can notice if you look at your own being with the same passion. And please don’t forget that your suffering is god’s answer to you. It is her calling disguised, what you had expected all along, the present that you didn’t bother to wrap with golden ribbons. And god also made you a favour. He came to live right at the heart of your being, so that you could never be at a distance from him; so that you could feel him as your own, ever-present self. And by the way, god wasn’t holding back anything. She is generous, offering you the constant reward of peace and happiness. Only you have to feel it in your heart, and not rush out for an auspicious circumstance or a desired object. And if you have ever felt the pang of a curse, understand that this indeed was of your own making. For you have cut yourself from god’s divine hold, and in doing so have lessened the abundance of its bounties. You have made yourself a lone traveller. You have shut your heart from the fountain of love that is steadily flowing as your own, ever-present, precious being, which is god’s being too. God has no power to curse, but you sure have, until you get the courage to open yourself to the infinite presence that sits in and as your self. That simple feeling of being, that all powerful god eternally crowing your self, will block all possible entry for a curse, and keep you safe.

And now for one last, precious recommendation: To live with the presence of god in your heart not only will protect you from your own talent at cursing yourself, but will open wide the doors of perception for the flooding of beauty. It will make your life a torrent of peace. For god will shower on you gifts after gifts of its benevolent presence. And he will grant you all possible rewards, all answers, all favours, clearing your path towards the blessing of immortal life, of unconditional love and objectless happiness. God was never disingenuous. She never was the void or absence that you took her to be. He/she is a presence so full that you could be his or hers for life eternal. Some have called it the Kingdom of Heaven, some Nirvana. And what blessing and surprise it is to find it right here, right now, as your very own self, veiled only by the plea of not having it, of wanting it, hoping for it, looking for it. Remember: you are not a self in your own right. Your self is nothing but god’s presence espousing you. For you share the same being, as the being of everything and everyone. But I won’t say more. Now you have your answer.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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