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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‘I Am with You Always’

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The rest’ – Marc Chagall, 1968 – WikiArt

There is no ambiguity with God. This has been said in a thousand different ways, in every corner of every page of the Bible for example, that God is with us, that there is in us, as us, a presence hidden in plain sight, that won’t let go of us ever. That it is the very making of ourself, our sublime identity — what we live our life with and could never depart from. We couldn’t doubt it in the least, for with just the right kind of looking, and with no effort whatsoever, we could see it, feel it, sense it, that we are that, and not truly our body or mind, let alone our thoughts, our story, our problems, our suffering. “I am with you always, to the end of the age”, that’s from ‘Matthew 28:20’. So there is no worry to be had. We are not alone. That’s just an impression, an invention, that we are separate, insecure, fragile. In fact, we couldn’t be without it. In ‘Zephaniah 3:17’, they say “The Lord your God is in your midst”. That’s what they mean, that our mind finds its ground in this very presence, in this being of ours that is in fact borrowed from God’s being. In ‘1 Corinthians 3:16’, they are even more specific, clearer on that subject, “God’s Spirit dwells in you”. It couldn’t be plainer and clearer. Why don’t we listen?

And we profit from an inbuilt, intrinsic protection in our life. After all, haven’t we gone through illnesses and floods, through a thousand aches, and is not death itself called eternal rest? Haven’t we lived in the constant grip of desire and worry, hassled by a quiet, ever going despair? And yet, are we not beautiful now as we are, after having gone through all this? Are we not pristine beings, untouched by it all, made of this unsurpassable, never changing awareness of being? In ‘Isaiah 41:10’, God is reported to have said: “I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” And in ‘Zephaniah 3:17’, it is written that God is the “mighty one who will save”. They wouldn’t say that if they don’t mean it. But we won’t be saved in an hypothetical future, at the time of death. We are being saved now, kept virgin of every objective experience, if we are willing to look. Furthermore, there is an inner peace that has landed in and as our very being since time immemorial. This inner peace expresses itself as joy or love, which we have experienced even amongst our ignorance. Isn’t life worth living for these fleeting moments of joy? And isn’t love our most precious, cherished, sought after experience, that seems to be a miracle beyond understanding? In ‘Zephaniah 3:17’, they say, clothed in the most exquisite poetry: “He will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”

So, as is advised in ‘1 Chronicles 16:11’, “Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually!” Which means we ought to stay with that part of ourself that lies peacefully below the hustle and bustle of existence, before everything that can be pointed at and named, and that is therefore not truly ourself. But God is not happy with only being our being, with filling us with its own infinite being. This presence is also made of the gorgeous fabric of love. This is where love finds its reality, in the innocence of our being, in awareness. So if we love, this love is not our own. We have not manufactured it, let alone directed it. “We love because he first loved us”, it is said in ‘1 John 4:19’. This is what our being feels like, when it is kept pure, unsoiled by our attachment to experience. Love is what we feel when we have relinquished everything in ourself that is mistakingly taken to be us, but is not. In ‘1 John 4:19’, we are being reminded of this eternal truth, that “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” And this love, this being of God, is not something that can be had. It lives and breathes only through our being it. The world of things, of objectivity, cannot apprehend it, “cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him”, as is said in ‘John 14:17’. So we are it, not have it, not know it. As long as we believe to be an entity, a something, a someone, we have separated ourself from our reality as God or consciousness. Yet everything, everyone, is eternally made of this being, which is God’s being, and finds its identity and essence as that. After all, didn’t God make that very clear, when saying in ‘Jeremiah 23:24’, “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” To which God could have added: I am all beings and all things, their secret identity, their essence which is only spirit. As I have said and proved a zillion times: ‘I am with you always’.

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Quotes taken from the Bible

Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Marc Chagall (1887-1985)

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Website:
– Marc Chagall (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Shreds of Infinity’ 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:
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The Taste of Being

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Oceanide’ – Jan Toorop, c.1893 – WikiArt

In life, you would never cross a friend or a beloved without smiling at him, giving her a greeting, at least an acknowledgement, or reaching for his hand. That’s the same with your inner being, with that beautiful, friendly presence that is the core of what you are. You’ve got to notice her, to be friendly. It doesn’t take very much, in the middle of your day, to smile at that quiet inner being, to acknowledge that it is here, no matter the hustle and bustle you may go through. It takes no time at all, to see that you are not alone, not a self separate from everything else, not a loner, that you’ve got a friend here for you, that longs to be seen as your very identity and being. After all, how long does a gaze take ? How easy is a passing attention? How little is a momentary taste of your quiet essence, lying just below any of your sufferings or worries, just before your many losses or shortcomings, mixed right within the script of your daily activities and thinking?

Only it is a shy presence, so you have to make the first move. You have to go and look for her in the crowd, amongst the ten thousand things of experience. Once you see him, once you catch his firm gaze, you will come to see only him, only that, at the expense of everything else in experience that now appears to be caught in that same all-pervading gaze. You will see how quickly you come to enjoy your friend after a time. Awareness has a natural eagerness for you. It is inclined to have you in its warm embrace. So you will fancy holding her hand a little longer, won’t be satisfied with a gaze or a smile. You will go for a cuddle, or a long warm hug, to get to taste of his loving presence. You will feel this taste to be more than a crush, or a quick passing relationship. You will feel drawn to stay there, to move in, to have her as the marrow of your self, to bring him so close so there is only him, only her, only that, but no you.

There comes a time when you won’t need to go very far to meet your beloved, for she is everywhere you are. You will notice that every experience you have is pervaded by his presence. So you don’t have to move with her, for you have already been married with this presence for ages upon ages. In fact, it is all you are, and there is none beside it, not even your own illusory self which you have come to believe in, and whose reality you take for granted. Now you begin to see that your beloved is not your beloved, but your very own self and identity. The moment you see that, you will lose him. You will remain alone. You will stop needing, begging, pretending. There won’t be any remembering who you are, because who you are will have been established without a shadow of doubt. You will be yourself the beloved you had previously pushed at a distance, to be sought or realised. You won’t be aggrandised by his or her presence anymore. This inner presence is so much your own self and identity, that you will happily surrender all your multiple identities to that one identity, and acquire the humility that goes with being only one being. There is no beloved but you, no other beloved than you. Let all your many sensations and perceptions melt into that one identity of your being. The taste of being is the pinnacle of experience, and its most refined, sought after savour. You come to taste it when there is here, in yourself, as yourself, only one being, one friend, one beloved, and one taste.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Jan Toorop (1858-1928)

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Website:
– Jan Toorop (Wikipedia)

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

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The Dream of a World

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Milton`s Mysterious Dream’ (part) – William Blake, 1816-20 – WikiArt

There is a fraud in our life. An illusion that makes us feel that life is going to get better. That time or circumstance will bring us to a place of understanding, where our troubles will come to an end, where there will be betterment, improvement, change. To believe this will make us miss that we are already here and now in a place of no change, of no betterment, where nothing can improve or get better. This place is our very self, our sense of being that we have never been able to affect or modify, no matter how relentless our life has been, no matter our despair, our sorrow, our losses. Nothing we have gone through has touched it in any way. All our stories and sufferings have taken the shape of our thoughts and beliefs about them. But while we are desperately trying to give a form to our life, a solidity to our body, a reality to our problems, and a truth to our beliefs, right here and now, right where it all is seemingly taking place, hidden within experience, enveloping it all, is already a presence, a vastness, a reality that is embracing everything, and that is our only reality, our only place, our only possible self in this living experience.

For there is not a world there where we could be in. That would be a lovely idea, but the fact is: there is no possibility to prove the existence of such a world. We can only assert it, marvel at it through our senses, study it, analyse it, but of a solid proof there is none. The existence of a world is dependent on our perceiving it, and perceptions are contained in our knowing them. Without the knowing faculty, there cannot be a world. The whole glory and misery of the world, of the whole universe, is all gathered in that fathomless fraction of knowing, or awareness. Without that simple, ungraspable, dimensionless, ethereal element of knowing, no world could ever come into existence. So in fact, knowing is all there is, consciousness is the essence of every single appearance that comes to be seen, heard, touched, or experienced. The world is shaped, or its appearance created, through our being aware of it. So the whole of our living experience is but a dream in consciousness, a game that can be played and enjoyed at the level of our body-mind, but whose reality is only the awareness of it.

Now, where are we if we are not in a world? Where are we if the world is not even there? What is this something that we feel we are in, and exists, and is undoubtedly? What is a world, an experience, when we have passed through all illusions, all beliefs, all shaky appearances? What is left here that holds our experience, that is indomitable, indestructible, present without a shadow of doubt? This place is our self, what we are, our very essence, the reason behind our saying ‘I’. So we live in our self, not in a world. We see our limited existence pass and consume itself within that which is creating it, which is our own aware being, the knowing that we are and could never not be. And there, in ourself, in being, where the world takes its apparent form, is found what we have been looking for in every direction, in a non-existing world, in experience: a sense of relief, peace, beauty, love, and the understanding of our essence, the explanation of it all. An explanation that is not conceptual, but a living one, a subjective one, something made plain by being it. We and life then become self-explanatory. The fraud has been diluted. All imagination has died down. Now our living experience has acquired the rawness of truth. Something that is, unlike the world or our experience, beyond doubt and absolute.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by William Blake (1757-1827)

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Website:
– William Blake (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
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Unaccompanied Awareness

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Woman in the Park’ – Ion Theodorescu-Sion, 1919 – WikiArt

Nothing is more beautiful than to be aware choicelessly, effortlessly, without involving a self, a thought that wants to do awareness, to control it, to achieve it. After all, awareness is by virtue of its being, and cannot be rendered more aware than it already is. So awareness blooms when it is left untouched, virgin of a self, free of an ambition or desire to be aware. Awareness is the kind that enjoys being alone, unaccompanied. It doesn’t like to be mimicked or carried by a somebody that feels superior, in charge of being aware. And yet this is what we are doing all the time, being like a commander, a figure of authority. No wander awareness is leaving the show, retreating in the background, he that has no desire, no ambition other than being, she that feels whole and sufficient, in no need of an other to possess her. You’ve got to let go of wanting to be awareness, for that desire is made of scattered little pieces of ego gathering together in a desperate attempt to keep some control on the situation. There is no desire involved in being aware, for the simple reason that awareness has no desire other than to simply be and shine. Awareness is here now beaming in and as our experience. Noticing is all we can do about it.

But noticing already implies awareness. Don’t think that you are the one who is going to notice awareness. The noticing is awareness itself recognising its own presence, acknowledging it, giving it the freedom to just be. So there is only awareness — no one here that is aware, or even noticing to be aware. That would imply that awareness needs a clutch, a somebody to be aware. This somebody is fictitious, fortuitous, disposable, redundant, not required. Awareness relies on itself only. It is bound together with itself. That’s why it can be depended upon with confidence. If you are awareness, well then you are awareness. Let yourself be taken in the embrace of it, without a second look for yourself. See that there is here and now only the activity of awareness, and renounce to your own, which is no renouncing at all, since there is here no such a thing as a self that is separate from awareness. Just see that you are not there, not at all. There are thoughts, sensations, perceptions, but of a self you won’t find any trace. If you do let go of the idea of a self, then you will come to see that what is left here is awareness alone, which is the only thing there is and that is in capacity of selfing.

So awareness is outrageously simple, since it is the only thing experienced, whether we know it or not. What is complicated is what is entangled, intertwined with awareness, that which has set itself up as an other, may that be a single thought… that’s enough. A single thought is enough to render yourself blind to awareness. Since awareness, or this quality of pure knowing, is all there is, then in a strange and fascinating way, it can be easily displaced or darkened. It needs only the slightest interference, the remotest identification, the minutest belief to be something — a self that has awareness — to send it into the hiding. Thoughts and perceptions have become experts in mimicking a self, stealing the space of awareness for their own purpose, and deceiving ourself into being an entity, a self. There is no self here separate from experience. There is but a plunge into your own being, a sea of awareness without an end or a limit, a free fall which no self could ever cope with, or grasp, or comprehend. This empty being with no objective quality is yourself, all there is to yourself, and its tissue is made of pure awareness. Experience then is realised to be only an appearance devoid of its own individual reality. It is made of that presence which is our essence, whose nature is awareness with nothing beside it.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Ion Theodorescu-Sion (1882-1939)

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Website:
– Ion Theodorescu-Sion (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
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On God’s Existence

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Calm on the Mediterranean Sea’ – Ivan Aivazovsky, 1892 – WikiArt

There is no god. God is an invention that we have placed far away, out there, as an object for our prayers and hopes. As an entity to whom we can address our suffering. God was given that role so that we are not alone. We have divided ourself up into a self here and another greater self there, between which reside our secret longings and our beliefs. We have made god into a handy projection, for our convenience. A soothing presence who will be there for us after death, whom we can trust and rely on, whom we can give ourself to, and find protection in. We feel good in that undoubted certainty of a god.

But there is no god outside of ourself, no distant god, either in place or time. Of this we can be sure. Because wherever we may travel, however far we may go, we find only ourself. We are bound to our own being which we feel in a ‘here’, and in a ‘now’. So we fail in going somewhere that is outside ourself. It’s an impossible task. We cannot go there. Not in a million years. So god cannot be found outside of ourself. Nothing can. Everywhere is here. And every time is now. The only place for god to be is in our own being. There is no other place to be — even for god. There is no way around it. But we have first to understand our own being, our own nature. There, in ourself, is the resolution of the conundrum of god.

So what is this place of ourself, to which we are bound? What is it made of? If we leave our body aside, and our many thoughts and sensations, if we leave the world out of the picture, what is left of ourself that we can say is here, is now? What is this consciousness that we have lived with for as long as we can remember, and for which we seem to have but little interest ? This thing which has held our peace, our happiness, our perceived sense of beauty, even if only experienced rarely or fleetingly? This consciousness that is holding us, that is giving us our very existence, holding our suffering and our conflicts? Should we not feel grateful to have been held with such consistency? To have been held with our feelings, whether happy or sorrowful? To have been lent a body, whether healthy or sick, and a mind, though both may be just a passing dream?

This thing which is here undoubtedly, showing that peace is possible, that beauty is real, that happiness is within reach, is this not our most profound self? Is it not our very being? What we are here? What we are now? And this god which cannot be anywhere outside of ourself, could this god not be this, this very presence of ourself? Our very being? Our very consciousness? Which we are by nature every day of our life? That which can be felt in every bit of our heart and soul? That can give an explanation for ‘there is no god’? That can give a reality to ‘there is god’? That can show that, in fact, not only there is god, but there is only god? That everything, all that we are and experience, is god? That the god which we had thought at a distance, is nothing but the loving presence and reality of ourself and of everything? That life is nothing but the living, pulsating being of god, which we are only and wholly? And which we share with every other apparent being, and every possible appearance? And that this, is the one thing that ever was, and will ever be? And that this, is not inside ourself, for of ourself it is seen that there is not? And that this, is not outside either, for there is no being outside something inexistant? And that now, at the end of our journey, and all things considered, is realised that god is not even god? Because for a god to be, there would have to be separate things and selves to give it a form, and to call it god. There would still have to be a trace of suffering. There would still have to be separation. So there’s got to be no god. God is only for the poor fellows. But for who we are, there is no god. Only being being, at the most. Beyond that, nothing much can be said, lest we should invent some other god.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900)

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Website:
– Ivan Aivazovsky (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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