Our Sole Horizon

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Forest Distant Views’ – Ivan Shishkin, 1884 – WikiArt

The key in spiritual matters, is that we have to keep it very simple. We must not blow it out of proportion, exaggerate it, make a conundrum out of it. It is just a matter of looking, of breaking a little, stubborn habit. Nothing extraordinary. We keep looking away from our own being. We act as if we knew all about who we are, as if it were understood, that we are our body, that we are these thoughts that keep coming, which we judge, influence, direct according to what other thoughts say. We live in a little corner of ourself, feeling like a little king in our kingdom. We are so used to our own ways, to our concepts and explanations, to our beliefs and repetitive actions, that we have taken for granted to be just a person in a world. That’s what we were taught. That’s what we were conditioned to think. In fact, we are only followers. We play small. We are protecting our own establishment.

But we know more than that. In fact, we are all experts at being, without our realising. We are masters of freedom. We know that with just a little looking, a little asking, we could rock our lifeboat. We could make our life sensational, attractive, happy, tranquil. We have that hint in ourself, otherwise we wouldn’t be seeking, or working for happiness, improvement, progress, with such undeterred faith. We know that in spite of everything, the world has magic, and our life keeps inside it secrets of glory. That’s how we can face unspeakable suffering, trauma, violence, and the looming threat of death. Because we have in ourself the warmth and security of being, which we try to reenact in every possible and unreasonable ways, in our pleasures and our hopes, in our beliefs and our addictions.

The problem is that we have put a belief in front of what is. We have invented a self where there is only the wide expanse of being. Our whole identity is in being. We have no space to be anything else than being. Our whole life is being. Our body doesn’t even come close to being what we are, and neither does our mind. Being as consciousness takes it all, the whole of what we are, and of what everything is. Every appearance finds its essence in it, and lives in the gorgeous space it provides. We have all our senses embedded in being, and the world finds its reality in the reality of being. Consciousness has it all. It is all we will ever find. All that ever is. It may hide from our gaze, that being is our only landscape, our sole horizon, but it shows blatantly in every corner of experience, if we are willing to look.

In fact, it is so much here, so reachable, so knowable, that we are blind to it, unable to know it. That’s because we have attached ourself to another pseudo reality inside our own reality of being. We have chosen the lie of being somebody over the truth of being only being. We have chosen to be something, a body, a thought, an idea, a self, and have as a result lost, forgotten, limited the infinity of being, that is pervading our life to the point of being the only thing in presence. The truth is that we can never be something other than being. It’s a nice try to believe it, but it won’t happen, to be a suffering self, a limited body, and a mind with its own separate agenda. Everything that we think we are, we are not. We have to distance ourself from every qualification, from every belief, from every identity. We have to be naked of every addition to being in order to see our naked being, and to be in its gorgeous grip.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898)

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Website:
– Ivan Shishkin (Wikipedia)

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Salvation

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Storm by a Lake’ – Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, 1780 – WikiArt

Many religions have spoken of salvation, but the idea of being ‘saved’ is not fancied by most people. We don’t like it. People have their self-esteem. They want to feel that they can be responsible for themselves, that they have the resources to overcome whatever needs to be overcome in their life. They don’t want to rely on a god, or an external agency, or even a power. They don’t like to be put down, don’t fancy being a poor thing in need of being saved.

The good news is that there is no such external power or entity. We have it all in and as ourself, as our own being. Nothing exists or stands beyond or aside our being. This simple being that we are, which we are made of, which we draw our very existence from, is the only thing that has a reality. We won’t find a reality at a distance of our own being. The idea that there is a reality other than our own reality as being is only a belief. We won’t find a power beyond our own power, that could come to save us. This world of ourself was perfectly designed. It was made whole and one, so that we hold within ourself our own resource, our salvation, everything needed to live a gorgeous, peaceful, meaningful life.

So the idea of a salvation took us on the wrong track. It had us waiting, hoping, praying, expecting, while at the same time abhorring the idea of needing help. It gave us the idea or impression that we were an entity, a person with its own personal, separate being. It manipulated us to think that we were our story, and that we needed to be fixed, aggrandised, improved, saved. For after all, let’s be honest, we do need to be rescued from a peril. We do need to be delivered from the danger of suffering, of separation, loneliness, conflict. We do need to save ourself from our belief, idea, concept that we are squeezed in our body-mind, and limited by it.

With such an idea in mind, we have but the semblance of a life, but not life itself. We have been simulating having a life, pretending to know who we are, and then acting as if everything is as it should, as if suffering couldn’t be avoided, as if it were intrinsic to living. We have in fact ourself created the idea of a salvation, of a person at a loss, needing help. But the truth is, there is really no such a thing as salvation. Salvation is implied, or contained in being. Salvation means ending a belief. It means not taking ourself to be what we are not. It is the returning to our natural state of simply being.

This conceptualisation of our being into being a self, an entity, a separate being, is the road towards separation, isolation, suffering, conflict, and therefore salvation. It is our wrongdoing, our ‘sin’. But the sinner is an entity that we have created. We have made a sufferer, a sinner where there was only the peace of being. Through this creation of an illusory self, we have invited separation, duality, and have divided being into a self separate from other selves and things. We have given the world a reality independent of our own, and have made the glory of being into a self that has retired into the limits of the body-mind.

Our salvation is in the sin itself, in its ending. It is in being, before the birth of the idea that being requires being something, or someone. Before our identification with our body and mind, which has made suffering and conflict our daily companions. So salvation is always only an acknowledgment, a noticing. It is the knowing of our being as it is, and not as we have made it, through belief and habit. This is how we are doomed, in being a self separate from everything. And this is how we are saved, in being only being. This understanding does save for it tells to a mortal that he is immortal, and it assures a suffering self that she is blessed with a peaceful being. A sin is an unfortunate addition to plainly being. It is a simple exaggeration. We have created, invented a sinner where there was nothing but our gorgeous, infinite being.

But this is something that can be reversed. Salvation is natural, already here, achieved, contained in and as our own being. Salvation is being. The one in need of being saved is not there, has no reality other than in our mind. The idea of salvation or deliverance itself must go. It had found its use and meaning when we were but the thought of being someone. When this idea of being someone goes, when the qualification withers, being stays behind, resplendent, in no need of being saved whatsoever.

All this, the whole spiritual enchilada, is only a convenient story for the poor me. Deliverance is achieved in being. The sinner is an illusory superimposition on being, which is intrinsically already free. We have limited being, have made it an impotent thing. So there is ultimately no sinner, and no salvation. This is why we say that God is forgiving, because there is always at hand the realisation that there is in ourself, in being, no room or possibility for an entity separate from experience, and therefore for a sinner. In this discovery of our being whole, and One, is the birth of a love and a peace that is beyond understanding, beyond any making. In fact, we have been saved and safe all along. 

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750-1819)

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Website:
– Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (Wikipedia)

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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)

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A Universal Cure

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Creation of the World XIII’ (part) – Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, 1906 – WikiArt

The part that we’re playing is not small. We are not living in a corner, limited by the skin of our bodies, and the world is not limited to the time and space in which it seems to unfold and have its conflicts and sufferings. The world has a foot in the infinite. In fact not just a foot, it is bathed in infinity, in eternity, and so are we, we who have been made small and suffering entities by our limiting beliefs and prejudices. We are ruling the world with our thoughts and then blame ourself for it. For the results are of course as limited as our thoughts can be. We have made the world the hostage of our limitations, and its hostility is in fact our own, that we have projected unto it. We believe and think we can only play small and limited, but in fact, we haven’t quite seen ourself as we are, and from this blindness comes the entirety of the world’s agony, and ours too.

Fortunately, ours and the world’s true essence comes spilling over in every possible way through the manifestation of beauty, and through the many expressions of love or peace. That’s what makes it so attractive in spite of all, and that’s where we should be way more curious than we are. Beauty, love, intelligence, peace, are not created by the random structure of a body and the passing thoughts in our mind. This is not where they are manufactured. They are born of infinity and wholeness. They are the expressions of the One, which we can never own. We are in fact rather owned by them, embraced by the infinity that is their reality. We must surrender to this god given identity. We don’t have to play small. Would we think of god playing small? So why would we of ourself, who are like the arm and willpower of God in God’s dream? So we don’t have to play small in this world. We ought to play our given, sacred part. We ought to be what we are and recognise ourself and the world as a whole, indivisible being. A being that is nothing but our own, that is experienced here and now every time we say ‘I Am’, and that we are fortunate enough to share in.

Act on the world from within. Mould it from there, from the source of yourself and of the world, from the ground of being that you feel as your own being, and that is the common ground of all beings and all things. This ground has the best ability. Religions haven’t called it Paradise or Eden for nothing. There is always a truth behind every misunderstood word. This ground of being is where you can play big, from within, from the interior of everything and everyone. You don’t have to create a new reality. It’s already there within and without, for the taking and for the looking. This reality is already here, already yours. There is love and harmony woven in the fabric of life, just here and now in and as our given experience. Our efforts to heal ourself and the world are veiling this reality, and so are our limited thoughts, which carry the false reality of there being persons and separation instead of the reality of one being and the peace contained in the infinite. Our own unlimited being is the ground where we can play big, for it is as large as God’s being if we are willing to notice its real, undefeatable nature. In fact, being is a universal cure, and it’s always at hand.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (1875-1911)

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Website:
– Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (Wikipedia)

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The Treasure Within

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Morning mist in the mountains’ – Caspar David Friedrich, 1808 – WikiArt

There is something in us, a presence, a feeling of being, that can say I Am. Nothing else can. No body can. For how could a body say I Am, which is but a bundle of tissues, a physical structure that can only be seen as an object, at a distance. That which is at a distance cannot say I Am. I Am is for the innermost of your being, for what is here beyond a shadow of doubt, in you, as you, indissociable of yourself. Feel that I Am is for that which never moves, is never tired or sick, is never concerned by age, or beliefs, or any passing content of the mind. Go for what in yourself is indestructible, constant, that could never be hurt, and notice that that is the thing which is necessary, responsible for your being able to say I Am. I Am is your anchor, the lighthouse you must never depart from. If you do, you will be plagued with suffering and grab the first thing you could identify with, amongst others your body, and your mind content. Thought is a good client for providing you with a fake identity. It mimics a self to perfection where there is none, where there is only here a presence infinite, borderless, shared by all. Without that, no I Am would be possible. No I Am would be there, and no humans either, no beings, nothing at all, just a black, empty void.

I Am is the light that makes life possible, that renders it palpable, sensible, experienced. You could say that for an object to find its isness, its existence, there would have to be an I Am first, there would have to be an essence, a ground that gives all things and all beings their shape, length, width, and existence. This essence is that without which there’d be no you, no possibility to say I Am. That without which there’d be no support for your thoughts. That without which your body could not in a zillion aeons find its ground, its birth, its death, and its life and beating heart. Thought has nothing to do with your asserting I Am. It is in no way involved in it. It will try to convince you, that thought is behind it all, is the voice of your being, the one that can say I Am. The body has convincing arguments too. They two form a good pair. But don’t be deceived. These are not where you draw your sense I Am from. I Am is deeper. I Am is fundamental, not a passing thought or feeling, bound to an object, to a body. I Am embraces all things and all beings. Even the world could not be thriving and bubbling without having its grounding essence. It needs, for its rising and falling, for its being seen, heard, felt, a something that holds it and creates it, like the content of a dream needs the mind of a dreamer. The world would be at a loss without I Am.

And in fact it is: at a loss. For why do you think the world is plagued with suffering and conflict? If you ever find yourself suffering or in conflict, it is that you have lost your I Am. You have given it, bargained it to a body, or a story, or some mere random thoughts. You have exchanged it for an ambition, an eagerness to be something, somebody, and to feel the reward of it. I Am is without a reward, without a body, faultless, pristine. It doesn’t know the meaning of suffering, or conflict, or confusion. So keep it always close to you, don’t lose its splendid gaze. For your body, mind, and random thoughts are all craving to take on the role of a self and blind you, conceal in the process your gorgeous, inborn, god given identity. They’ll happily send I Am to the wrong place, to keep it unnoticed, forgotten. But I Am is always here, like a patient presence, holding even your ignorance in its benevolent hands. It will wait for your looking, your noticing, the better days of your realising who you are, that is found here nestled within I Am. You owe I Am everything, right to your feeling of being, behind the mere words.

For there is a Word behind the words, which I Am is the pointer to. A living, pulsating reality. Call it being, call it god, call it Word. We have made I Am into a mere body, a limited self, and have therefore compelled ourself to look outside for our peace and completeness. The seeking for our lost completeness is what is called suffering. But the way to overcome suffering and conflict in our lives lies within, in our very being, in what is hidden in plain sight every time we say I Am. A human being can never have its private sense of I Am, for being is shared in equal measure by all beings and things. It is boundless and has within it the peace and completeness that you had been looking for without, as a result of your misplacing I Am. I Am owns its peace and completeness through its being alone, whole, One, and therefore unable to be parted, or lost, or forgotten. So have a good look every time you say simply I Am, and recognise it for what it is, and not what you believe it is. Don’t limit I Am to a projected, illusory, made up entity. I Am is the gorgeously carved door to your being happy and whole, and to have the world reflecting that wholeness and happiness. It is your treasure within, that you have ignored, or misused. So repair the sense I Am in yourself, and give it back to its original, initial, pristine glory and undefeatable reality.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)

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Website:
– Caspar David Friedrich (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
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Daily Calling

Posted on by Alain Joly

It is easy to look, easier than we think. Yes we have seen temples and churches by the thousands, endless acts of devotions, and pilgrims whose faith seems indestructible. Yes we have marvelled at yogis whose ability and constancy is a subject of awe, at monks whose dedication and celibacy seem unattainable. It may have dawned on us that this path is too rigorous, that spirituality in only for the chosen few, for the dedicated ones, whose lives are set on a perfect course for it. So we have renounced to go there, finding excuses — that we don’t have what it takes, that God has for us no calling, that I wouldn’t have half of the rigour that a serious spiritual path requires. So we have stayed where we are, repairing here and there a few cumbersome habits, loving our loved ones, sharing our usual skills with the world, battling with our thoughts, dealing with our sorrows. We didn’t dare, didn’t quite believe that the spiritual endeavour was our path, or the path of the majority of us. We stayed put. We gave up without even the beginning of an understanding.

But spirituality is not what we think. It is not a path of renunciation or remoteness. It is not about belief, opinion, or even conviction. It is about reality. It is about looking what there truly is, here and now. What our experience is made of. What there is behind the gloss of experience. That’s how we are spiritual, by looking for that part of ourself that is not a thought, not a sensation or a feeling, not the body that we have come to be identified with. That’s how we are religious, by finding this deeper identity of ourself that is wholly and naturally related to others and to everything. By recognising that ungraspable, unfathomable, deeper being that is our eternal home, which we have lost sight of in the tempestuous world of our many experiences, a world that has so far attracted the totality of our attention without our objecting. We have simply missed, maybe indulgently, that spirituality is about knowing who we are, no more than that. Spirituality is not about practice or achievement, for its only aim lies in recognising what is eternally here as the very fabric of our self. It is not about age, for age will never affect what we are in the depth of our being. It is not about health, for there is a place in ourself that is forever stamped with wholeness, which is another name for perfect health.

So we don’t need to go to churches or temples, for where we are is our church if we know how to make it so, and inhabit it, not with our worries and projections, but with who we are as our deepest being. And remember that the world makes for a marvellous temple, when we connect to it with our deeper self, and bathe it with the peace of our own being. We will be in touch with our spiritual being every time we experience love in our life. That’s why people have pets, so that they can stay in touch with their heart. That’s why we so dearly seek the intimacy of relationship in our life, so we can lose the distance that our minds have imposed on us. That’s why we love fulfilling our desires, for we know that we find there, in this fulfilling, a taste of our own loving, untouched, unconditioned being.

So there is a mass or a puja going on in every corner of every experience that we may have. There are hallelujahs that can rise any time, anywhere, anyhow, if we are willing to pause and look at what our present experience is made of. And know that we will never be asked to believe, or corrupt any part of our gorgeous being, for we have a duty to be faithful to our self as it is. The only practice or prayer we will ever have to perform is to recognise and be aware of the nature of our being. This true and only identity or nature is lying just behind every temporary appearances and objects that can be formed, named, and pointed to in experience. Know that the formless is our most intimate companion, for it doesn’t live in time or place or objects, but in and as the very ground that is our one and only identity and being. This connection to that deepest, most intimate being in our everyday life, is in itself the most religious endeavour there is, where spirit is discovered to be the only thing in presence, and the home where we find our joy, and our undefeatable reality.

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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)

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