Christ (noun)
What We Have to Do
Well, now you know what to do, don’t you? All this time spent in the contemplation of truth must have served some purpose. The countless hours sitting on the cushion. The days in the company of Meister Eckhart or Rumi. And the sage of Arunachala. All these masters of presence. Surely they must have made a lasting impression on you. Now you won’t be seduced by experience anymore. You won’t be dragged into the train of every thought or worry that passes by. You won’t fall entranced by feelings, no matter how pregnant they may appear to be. You won’t let any of your sensations attach themselves to yourself, and suck your attention. Now you know better. You won’t be caught again. The time has come to find yourself just where you are. In that essential in yourself. Not at the periphery. Not in the weather of life, but deep down, in silence, in that presence that falls to nothing but itself. This is where you have to be. This is where your sacred interest lies. But we know that so well by now, don’t we? No need to stress that point again.
Well. But let’s rehearse it again. Just in case. Some part of it may have slipped away from our attention. There is never any harm in repeating what really matters: The important is never in the many, but lies secret in the reality that hosts every seeming appearance. So now we know, don’t we, where to look, where the promise hides, where that non-spoken truth is spoken. We know where is our duty to God. It is there, where you know, close to yourself, behind the behind, present as your most intimate identity. Don’t let yourself be drawn outside of it. Don’t fall to any passing occurrence, to anything that is not the entirety of you. That’s simple enough to make the difference. Stay with that part of yourself that is unmovable, that cannot be divided, set apart, isolated, looked at. That part that will never fail you, no matter hard you may try. And if you find anything, any thing, that stands to be noticed in your mind, an obstacle in yourself, then be unconcerned, go behind it, go for the space that holds it, that last frontier beyond it. And should that obstacle, that thought, that feeling, that perception, be so pregnant as to occupy the whole space of your self, then be bold, dive into it, right at the centre of it, free fall into it, on the other side of yourself, in this unknown, never visited part of you. Then… Then, you may come to that spaceless space, to that newness. Let it shower you, cleanse you. Be it and don’t move away from it no matter what. You won’t regret it.
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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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Arise, O Krishna!
‘The Rasa Mandala Dance of Krishna and the Gopis’ – Anonymous, 1760 – Wikimedia
Arise, O Krishna! This is not a time for discretion. There is enchantment around the lake of experience. Ladies have come with fine clothes and jewellery to be adorned by you. You have to be their cup-bearer, the one presence giving to every forms of experience their gorgeous light. For what is a thought without the cup in which it grows, stands for a second, and disappears? Krishna, you alone are the meaning and beauty attached to every object that inhabit our daily living. So this is not a time to hide, but to reveal, to shed light, to glorify. The Gopis — the milkmaids of the Krishnaite folklore — have come to you in the effervescence of their longing. You are the reason for their looking so beautiful. They come to you to be revealed and embellished by your presence, by the one being that is their most precious jewel. So enter the round, O Krishna, and dance with every one of them.
Give to the thoughts that come and wander for a time in our minds their chamber of peace. Clothe them with clarity and intelligence. Appease the suffering of which they are the vehicle, and offer them the rest they deserve. Don’t let anyone unattended. Not a feeling should be left alone, frightened or sad, without benefiting from your warm embrace. No sensations should come along without your building for them a temple of awareness. Be the one present for all, infallible, unswerving. Should a Gopi be lost in the contemplation of nature, and you are here showering her vision with beauty. You are the noble harmony of every experience, and what confers to the dance of life the sweetest of melodies. And have you noticed, O Krishna, how your absence can throw a shadow of sorrow on every experience that passes unseen by you? And have you witnessed how acute is our longing for you, when you withdraw your loving gaze from the many happenings of our lives?
So now, with flowers in their hair, and boundlessness in their hearts, do the Gopis join in your endless round, O Krishna. You hold everyone, every experience, every object that stands lost and alone, in your loving arms. You create around them an armour of beauty, and clothe them in truth’s brightest apparel. That’s how we find the peace at the heart of experience: by marrying every appearance to the gentle presence that holds them. And that presence is ourself — who we are — now giving shape to every perception, every occurrence, sheltering them in the being that gives them protection and form. That’s how the Gopis are experienced as an emanation of Krishna, and how Krishna is seen to be their primordial cause. So now arise, O Krishna! Truly arise! We have come here in celebration of truth, to contemplate you and be contemplated by you. The set for the dance has been arranged. We have come to you enamoured as humble milkmaids, as the fervent Gopis of your heart.
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Text by Alain Joly
Painting by Anonymous (1760-65)
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Website:
– Raslila (Wikipedia)
Suggestion:
Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…
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Let’s be very Clear!
What a pity! That truly is a pity isn’t it, that the Divine isn’t an object? Consider for a moment: if God’s nature was objective, a thing to be acquired, we’d all be running after it with eagerness. Nothing could stop us from getting it. The path to it would be clear, easy, rehearsed a thousand times, with unmistakable steps. We would all be happy — the shy, lazy ones only in a small measure, but clearly so; and the greedy ones probably piling chunks after chunks of happiness at home, for the bad, chilly days. No doubt that after a while, happiness would be placed in the market place, to be simply bought — a democratic God, available to all. Only, God would then become so pricy, that only the rich amongst us could afford it. The poorest would have to stay unhappy, miserable. After some time, the rich ones would no doubt find God boring, to be replaced by another more exotic good. And happiness would be set aside, discarded as a thing of a time past. Dreadful prospect, isn’t it?
But thank God, the Divine wasn’t made into an object! So none of this could ever have happened. Not to God! To anything else yes, but not to god, not to happiness! The price for God had been set, right from the beginning, as an inestimable one. And the way to acquire true happiness was made into such a subtle, noble pursuit, that no money could ever be of any use for it. We may try, as we did for centuries, to make God’s being into another subtle object, something convenient, setting methods, churches, temples, ashrams, where it could be practised, and happiness made into a precious ornement to be obtained. But none of that was found to be effective, in final analysis. Only a few rare, lofty, unmatchable seekers were able to find God where it truly lived, and make themselves so available to it as to become of it themselves. These rare beings have found there a joy so ineffable as to appear unreachable, and God was downgraded to a celestial being or an exotic state, to be idealised and worshipped. That’s not yet an ideal situation, is it?
So let’s start again and be very clear from the beginning! God has never been, will never be, and could never be found as any kind of object. It is not something to be attained, and its presence is not at a distance from us. The difficulty in recognising its presence lies in God’s utter subjectivity, and in the abundance of it in ourself. So don’t move from where you already are. This place of yourself is the only suitable enough spot for happiness to thrive, and a precious enough container for God’s humble, sublime home. And don’t wait for another time than this present time of now. God is only accessible here and now. You will find it nowhere else. Stay there. In yourself. As yourself. But go to the very heart of it, at the core of what you are and always have been. Who you already are is the secret cabinet where God dwells, and has dwelled all this time, without your noticing.
Now I’ll tell you a secret. Ask yourself the question: What is the only portion of my present experience that is exempt of objects, of things known? Find this place in yourself where you cannot be any thing, where you cannot be located, where you cannot even be named, where you are made no existence at all, where you cannot know anything but your own present being, where you and the whole world can be embraced in one subtle presence that cannot be found but is paradoxically all there is, all that you were, and all you will ever be. Feel this presence in yourself, as yourself. See that you have been in God’s home all along. Gently notice its glory being slowly revealed. Delve in it, and as it, patiently. This is what God’s being feels like — that subtlest presence that you are in fact referring to when saying ‘I’. There! Do you feel it? Rest and live only as that.
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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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On Passing Away
We think that most of our life is taking place in the field of body, thoughts, feelings, and sense perceptions — all of these making a self and a world, and the myriads of experiences that come as a result. This is what our life seems to be for the most part. But look again. Because in fact, no. It is not like this. That’s where the misunderstanding lies. Most of our human experience — not to say the whole of it — is spent in being. In emptiness. In vastness. Of course there is a body here that can be sensed. And feelings can be felt. And objects perceived. And thoughts are occurring all the time. And with them a sense of a separate self has been born. And all this joyous team seems to have acquired reality, and has in consequence been cursed with a measure of drama and suffering. But much was missed along the way. For in fact, none of these really took the place we imagined. None of it is taking any place, any space, or occupying any length of time. For the whole space of experience is already occupied by our sense of being. Life in its totality is made of one indivisible reality that fills our experience to the brim. This reality as being precedes experience — experience being nothing but being manifesting itself within itself.
So this is an announcement for the deceased self that we have been engrossed in all this time. Body, thoughts, feelings, senses, will continue their existence, but will lose their identity as a self. Custody will be returned to whom it always and forever belonged: pure, unlimited being. In its quality of the only inheritor of the feeling of being, ‘I’ or consciousness is now made the one true identity for all selves, and the only essence or ‘is-ness’ for all objects of experience. For we are in fact eternity, which our presence as a time-bound self has veiled. We are in truth the infinity of being, which our insistance in being a separate being has limited. And we are in reality peace itself, which our relentless seeking for happiness has sent in the hidden. There never was a self, and there never was a world. Not in the way we have imagined it. Not with the reality we have conferred to them. Being has drowned them long ago; and has given them the only reality to which they are entitled to belong. That’s how anyone, and anything, and any experience can be made to rest in peace: In giving in to being. In passing away.
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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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Tainted Self
Sometime, presence is eluding you. It hides, and you are left with nothing but your old tainted self. These are the sad days. When thoughts have invaded your being and replaced it with ideas and concepts about your self. When feelings have plagued that gorgeous presence which is you, and have contaminated it with worries and rage. When you are caught and find yourself being something and someone, some kind of hard entity that you cannot forget and shake off yourself. That’s when your beautiful, empty being is tiptoeing where it never left and waiting for better days. That’s when you cannot help yourself seeing a world in front of you. That’s when objects have filled your world and animate it with all the inbuilt suffering they imply. Oneness has been choked by them, and has retreated. It won’t fight its way back. It won’t raise a finger for itself. After all, does the sun need to fight for its own light? Is the sun the least bothered when a layer of clouds has formed? No. The sun will continue doing what a sun does. It will illuminate the clouds, sculpting their gorgeous forms, painting them in all shades of whites. The sun illuminates as surely as awareness makes your thoughts and feelings knowable. That’s how you can judge yourself to be anything. An old, tainted, worrisome, raging, hard, stubborn self. That’s how you can know that. Because of your presence. Because of its knowing, illuminating talent. That’s it. That’s what you are. That obvious, inescapable luminosity that is the only thing in presence. The only you in presence. The only presence. And in no time will you then have a clear sky. With no clouds around. No tainted self. And worries blown up. Rage pacified. That’s when the thoughts about yourself are tiptoeing in the empty space where they have come to form themselves. That’s when your feelings are being chased by the wind of knowing, melted by the warm and pure air of being, where you are discovered to be no self. And that’s how you make the thousands objects of your world retreat into oneness. And you are left alone. Here. Now. Sweet and whole. A presence never tainted. Never eluded.
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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 Ardent Disciple
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 Dawn Within 