God’s Alliance

Posted on by Alain Joly

God is not a romantic. He wants the best for you, and will make sure that you have no peace until you know yourself exactly as you are, which is as He is. God is a tough mother. She will lead you to feel that you come from her very womb, and that you have within yourself the memory that you are as She is, which is infinite and eternal. God has no idea that you exist as a person. He knows none of your ideas or beliefs, none of your attachments or suffering. Your problems are of no interest to Her. If you want God to know you, make sure that you go to that part of yourself that is without qualifications, that is like your naked essence — what gives you the consciousness of everything. Make sure that you become just as Her being, and that you share of Her divine characteristics. Then God will know you as surely as He knows Himself. And you will know God as firmly as you know yourself. But don’t play the part of the poor little me. For you won’t see a single tear on the face of god, and will attract no compassion from Him. God knows you the moment you know God. That’s the beauty and magic of Her infinite presence.

Partake of the same ground of being that is God’s being, and you will come to love everyone in the way She loves you. Share the being of God Himself and you will bathe in the peace that God knows, and that is your own peace too. Know your being as being God’s being, and you will experience the joy that comes from the ease of simply being. The only way God can know you is through that part of yourself that is of the nature of His being. And the only way you can see God is by seeing yourself in the way He sees Himself. There is no knowing God through relationship. He is knowable through sameness only. Oneness is the common home that we all share. Everything and everyone partake of the same ground of being, and find their identity in God’s identity. This alliance of God with the ten thousand beings and things of existence is one of supreme intimacy. Once this intimacy with God has been established in your life, you will come to know God as you know yourself, and to know everything and everyone as God’s intimate being. Her interior as to say. His loving heart.

And God is a lover of the strictest reality. The idea that you have of yourself can never know God. And God can never know the belief that you have formed about yourself. They are mutually exclusive. If you want to be a person of your own, away from God, then God will retire and become absent from your life although still holding you in the most humble and loving way. The person that you believe yourself to be has no reality and cannot share of God’s reality. This is why you suffer, and know the plight of loneliness and separation. Give the idea of yourself up, and you will find yourself as having the self of God Himself. This is God’s special bond with you, to know you through His very being, which is your being too. This alliance with God suffers no approximation. Be of God’s humble nature, and She will share with you Her blissful being, offering Her infinite body as the world you live in and mix your being with. But be with your own limited, separate self, and God will know nothing of you, and you nothing of Him. You will be just a passing cloud with no reality, absent from even the most insignificant thought of God.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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The Resurrection

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘The Resurrection’ – Piero della Francesca, 1460 – WikiArt

There is a sleeping involved in our present living. It doesn’t seem to be so, but experience has become so habitual that it has put us in a sort of slumber, in a lethargy, so that we never feel what we are as we are. We live according to an idea, to a belief, and this idea of ourself is limiting us at every moment. It is hiding our own true, essential being in plain sight. And in this sleeping, in this ignorance of our own nature is contained all our suffering, all our many lacks, and the never ending conflicts that our life seems to harbour day after day.

Yet in our slumber is a reality that is only asking to rise to our noticing and to our knowing. It wants to resurrect. It longs to rise again. To show up after having been forgotten. It was never far — an already formed reality that we only need to remember, to re-form in its original and never diminished splendour. We have forgotten it because we overlooked that our self has been consistently made up over the years. We are the result of a long standing habit or belief. We have formed a belief of ourself, of who we are, unwaveringly, unceasingly, experience after experience, and then have forgotten that we ever did that.

We still believe to be pure, virgin, real, when we have in fact already pre-fabricated ourself, and have been soiled by experience. When the awareness of our being has been mixed, degraded, corrupted by the overwhelming presence of our senses, and by the many prints and traumas they have left in their wake. We have lost the freshness of our being to venture into time and space. We have lost our infinity for believing to be an entity, a person with personal qualities, fragilities and idiosyncrasies.

But notice that you are an already risen reality. That we have been raised eternally above the limitations of our body and mind, and have received the gift of our living in the peace of our spaceless being. We are a fully awake and never ending being, rising above all existing objects, entities, experiences. We are a being unmoved, that gives its indestructible reality for the possibility of time and place, of birth, movement, and death, but being itself unborn, immobile, and immortal.

The resurrection is the moment when we rise again, not as a body after its death, not as a mind after its dissolution, but as the unlimited nature which we are now the sons and daughters of — the undivided being that we are the being of. Our resurrection is the simple noticing of this true nature of ourself, that rises not because it was diminished or laid on the ground, but because it is eternally risen in and as our glorious being, were it not for our looking in the wrong direction, towards the only blind spot where it disappeared for a time from the slumber of our mournful gaze.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Piero della Francesca (1415-1492)

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Websites:
– Piero della Francesca (Wikipedia)
– The Resurrection (Painting) (Wikipedia)

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The Hand of God

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘Hand of God, stained glass – Dayton Saint Mary Catholic Church – Wikimedia

Isn’t it extraordinary that our whole life is spent in the present ? That no part of it, ever, happened somewhere, sometime, that was not the time or place of now ? We speak of the past or the future all the time, but in fact, we are prisoner of the now. We can never leave the present, which is in reality nothing but presence. It would be tempting to think that we are a body, somebody progressing in time through a succession of moments. But it is a naive way of thinking, for we can never find that moment — that ‘now’ — in time. It is elusive, doesn’t know a border, is reluctant to have a beginning and an end. The now has a smooth, timeless reality. It cannot move, cannot know place or time. The now is of the order of essence. It is a fundament. You can never go beyond it, or before it. It is you. You are not in the now — you ‘are’ the now. You are yourself where you live in. ‘I Am’ is the only time there is, which is no time at all. And you are not a prisoner, for there is an infinite amount of freedom in the absence of time, an infinite amount of space in the absence of place.

Time is for objects, not for you. If you think to be one such object, then you are in its claws. For your body has a beginning and an end, just like every object in existence. So choose who you are carefully. Don’t be tempted to be exclusively your body and mind, for time will affect you in the most vicious way. It will lie to you, telling you that you have an age and a limit, that you are as fragile as your body or mind can be, destined to wither and die. Time is a handy construct of thought that measures activity, movement, appearance, decay. But before the appearance of body, mind, world, is a space which is immovable, inalterable, inalienable. This space is not to be found outside yourself. It is your very essence, who you are at your deepest, when you have ceased giving your attention to what is only living and thriving at the surface, and are willing to dive in the most substantial essence of who you are.

So notice that where and when you live is only experienced now. This is no accident. See that the future is unattainable, except in the now. Understand that there was only a past as the experience of ‘now’. So now is the only reality — not time, not place, which are only appearances created by thought and sense perception. See through the many appearances of life, to land where and when you have always been — in your own inescapable presence here and now. The now is not a fleeting moment, it is massively here. It is stretching itself to infinite proportions, and renders time a ridiculous, though necessary passing notion. The now has the flavour of something new, for without the conditioning of the past and the expectation of the future, is a life that is fresh, embedded in unknowing — notice that you can only know the past or the future. The now is also something that stands right in the middle of yourself, that is at no distance, that knows no separation as past or future, whose immediacy is total for it is blended in and as your very essence. So comes a time when the now loses its time-related signification to expose its true nature as presence. The now is maintained right through as the very nature of everyone and everything. The now is how the infinite keeps you in its hand. It is the hand of God.

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Text by Alain Joly

Photo by Nheyob on Commons

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Website:
– Hand of God (Art) (Wikipedia)

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On Being Apart

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Two Men by the Sea’ – Caspar David Friedrich, 1817 – WikiArt

We are never far from our deepest reality. That’s a fantasy — to think that we are far, separate, apart. To think that truth is at a distance, that there is a god, a reality away from our own reality as being. Ourself is the only reality there is. We won’t find another one, something grander, truer than ourself. There isn’t. It’s all here within, already taking place in and as our own being. But we are limiting ourself with a thought. The thought that we are circumscribed to our body, restricted to our mind, and that we have our own personal being different and apart from somebody else’s being. This is how far we have gone from ourself. This is the distance we have created, the separateness we have invented. We have set ourself apart from ourself with a single thought. That’s our negligence, to have let ourself be governed by a belief, by a lie. To have drowned in our own absent-mindedness. We have, as it were, kept ourself on the sidelines.

But we can play the central role with the single thought that there is, at all time, only one reality. We are the only reality there is. Have this thought, that nothing exists outside yourself, that we have it all in our own reality as being. That we can rely on no other authority than the authority of ourself. That we can seek nothing other than our own self as being. That the world, everything, God, truth, the answer to our suffering, are all gathered within the single reality of our being present here and now. So state quietly in yourself that there is only ‘I Am’, that apart from ‘I Am’, well… there is no apart. No part separate from the totality has ever come into existence. There is only the totality playing the many parts of life, but staying itself complete, unbroken, one, whole as our own being. This is how simple we are — One. This is how much we matter. This is how close we are to the reality of everything, to this intimate, never distant truth that some have called ‘God’.

Think of your simple, everyday act of being aware as being everything, as the one and only reality there is. See what it entails, to have no projection of there being something, any kind of reality outside awareness. It means everything you need to know and understand is contained in and as your own sense of self. So watch it. Isolate it from every object that you are aware of, including your thoughts, feelings, perceptions. Feel naked awareness alone, and see how it grows, expands out of proportions, out of time and place, out of the world of objective experience. As you walk on the street, or wash the dishes, or do anything in the course of a day, remember that this simple experience of ‘being myself’ is all there is. That no reality exists outside yourself. That ‘I Am’ is all there is. Feel what it does to you, to think that you are one and alone, the only one being there is. Feel the shock of it, that nothing real, true, reliable, can be found outside yourself. And that this self of yourself encompasses everything, holds every passing, existing thing in its own reality. That you share this being of yourself with the being of everyone, and everything. Feel that you cannot be told apart.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)

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Website:
– Caspar David Friedrich (Wikipedia)

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A Love Affair

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Evening Star’ – Camille Corot, 1864 – WikiArt

It is really just a love affair. Nothing else. If you want to know yourself, you have to be interested, to be passionate. You have to love yourself. And if you love yourself, down the line, you will come to love god. Because god and yourself have had a love affair from beyond the frontiers of time. So love is the key.

And don’t tell me that you cannot love yourself. Don’t serve me this. Don’t argue about the shape of your body, or your insufficient mind. Don’t dive into your story, your failures, your many shortcomings. Don’t blame your circumstances. Be with yourself. That’s all. Be here, now, present with that part of yourself that is untouched by your line of multiple experiences.

The past doesn’t play any part in who you truly are. Neither the future which doesn’t exist at all. Not in the least. Start afresh. Be with what is taking place, all the place, in any experience that you may have. Any experience will do. Don’t be choosy. See that this experience is taking place somewhere, inside a reality. It cannot avoid you. You are always with your experience. Without you, your experience is nothing, has no feet to stand on. See how important you are. The beauty that lies in your being present. That’s the beginning of love.

Don’t think that to love, you have to find the perfect situation, the handsome circumstances. Love is easy to find. It is at every corner of your life, under every stone, every thought, behind even the most tedious moment. In watching yourself passionately, you will come to be drawn to that most charming part of your identity. To that which will never let you down, whatever the conditions you are in. To that which you can only admire, for it withstands every tempest. To that which holds the world in its infinite arms. You will come to love yourself for you will find out that you are a most gorgeous being, which is not the prey of age, limitation, lack, hope, envy, desire for being more, better, different. You will fall for yourself, for everyone, for everything.

Be passionate about who you are — whatever you are. Start wherever you are. Be important. You are significant. You bear weight or consequence, more than you think. You have in yourself the ultimate secret of life. You are interesting, which literally means you ‘are between’, in the middle part, a doorway, halfway between being something, someone, and being the infinite. You hold the key to your own enigma. You stand in the right place. So love yourself. If you do, love will find you. You will find that right here, within your own being, contained in your saying ‘I Am’, is your beloved, the one you were secretly longing for.

Seduce yourself from within. Don’t be sidetracked by your experiences, qualities, thoughts, everything that is the prey of your likes and dislikes. To love is always only about being with the other’s being. So be with yourself. Admire your own home, where you live. Be drawn to your own being. Watch yourself with wonder, like you do for the stars. Be considerate. Stand by yourself. It is all it takes.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Camille Corot (1796-1875)

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Website:
– Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (Wikipedia)

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Love Actually

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Sarbatoarea primaverii’ – Arthur Verona – Wikimedia

Love is the essence of everything, and our very nature. Because we don’t live separate and afar. We are not distant from each other. Nothing is. We have a natural intimacy with everything and everyone. This is not a theory, or a philosophical argument that we posit. This intimacy is our deepest reality, what we are, the property of our natural being, which we can feel, see, experience, but whose evidence has disappeared from our eyes. The reason is, we have preferred a theory to the reality, an illusion to the truth. Our life has stopped being natural. We have been faking it, living it according to beliefs, habits, conformity. But here, blatant in and as our very being, is a reality in which there is no time or place, no distance or separation, no otherness. And as we all know from experience, love is the abolition of time, of distance. Love is the end of separation, of otherness.

Love, which we may call beauty, for everything that we love is beautiful. Love, which we may call understanding, for to see love as the essence of life is the ultimate form of understanding. Love is to ‘stand in the midst of’. It is to stand with everything that is under, everything that is existing in our reality. It is to be connected, to be together with, to be of the same essence. So love is an expression of oneness, of our nature as the one and only reality there is. In the absence of separation — which is truth — we find love. In the absence of otherness — which is our reality — we find intimacy. We make love every time we are aware of our reality as only being. We manufacture love when time is discovered to be an idea, and separation a belief. To be in love is to realise our nature as being one with everything and everyone. It is to be unable to part with anything. It is humility at work. It is where division is only possible in a figment of our imagination. It is to be with what is, with no pulsion of escape or resistance. Love is both in the ache of separation and in the desire to be reunited. All seeking is done in the name of love.

To love is to stand in the midst of, to see no separation between an ‘I’ and a ‘he’ or a ‘she or a ‘it’. The more we stand as the quality of being aware, as that which knows all things, the more we have love as our daily companion. It is extraordinary that we can feel to be a body and a mind, when there is before these, in the subjective, the vast and unmissable expanse of that which is aware of them, which we have pushed away as a mere function of that body-mind. The body is something that we are aware of. We are not in the body. We are in the ‘aware of’. This being aware is our home, where we live, where we have our life. This is our placeless place. That which we cannot not be in. That which we cannot part from — our most intimate, unchanging identity. To be that knowingly, to live as that, is to love naturally and unconditionally. Every time we notice that there is a reality, a consciousness, a knowing presence before our body, thoughts, feelings, experience, world, then love appears to be the very material we and the world are made of. The first and last brick of our house. Our everything.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Arthur Verona (1868-1946)

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Website:
– Arthur Verona

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‘Who Am I?’

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘St. Jerome kneeling’ (detail) – Rembrandt, 1630 – WikiArt

The question of who I am is a big question. It is not being asked very often though. At least not in the way it should. We do as if. As if we all knew who we are. As if it wasn’t worth asking. As if it was a waste of time to do so. When we do ask about who we are, it is to fill ourself with objects, qualities, identities. We are gathering informations about our body, our emotions, skills, idiosyncrasies, tendencies, but not about ourself. We live as if on a racing track, never actually stopping the course of our acquired, rehearsed, believed identities. We never watch, inquire as if for the first time, as if we didn’t know. We are bragging. We don’t want to be humble, and learn about something that appears to be so simple, and goes — so we believe — without saying. But the truth is: it scares us. We are afraid to know. We have picked up, from the beginning of times, that this question is a question of immense implications. It is a deadly question. One that changes you, finishes you, shakes your very ground.

It is a question for a sacred remembering, to just notice what we already are, what is already here, but that we have been too distracted to see. It is a question to prevent us from going out all the time, from escaping ourself, to help us return to where we have always been — in the home of our inner being. It is a question for which we have to let go of our bodily refuge. A question for which we have to lose the self that has been our anchor so far. It is a question for the mind, although its answer is to be found outside every consideration of mind, thought, image, memory. It is a free fall that pushes us to look beyond our limitations, and gives us the gift of our limitlessness. It is a question with no end, not because there is no answer to it, but because the answer is a living answer, whose reality can never come to an end. It is an impossible question, for even before we have the occasion to utter it, we find it already answered through the act of our simply being.

The living answer to the question ‘Who am I?’, is ‘I Am’, which contains its own undefeatable, eternal, inescapable reality. ‘I Am’ is before the question ‘Who am I?’. ‘I Am’ is the living answer which swallows every single question on our identity. It takes us into itself, and shows our identity to be only being, a being so pure that nothing can be added to it. It is the only sacred knowledge there is, which all the words and rites of every religion have sought to deliver as the name ‘God’. A knowledge that they have failed to pass on with accuracy for going too far, and postulate outside of ourself the reality that is in fact our very own self, hiding in plain sight in and as our own aware being. So ‘Who am I?’ is a prayer that is clearing the path, recalling God in ourself in the form of ‘I Am’.

It is a question that opens the door for the peace that we have been looking for in every possible direction, except in the direction of our innermost self alone. It is a question that we ask with expectation and inquiry, and answer with the peace and joy that we find already here, beyond any expectation or understanding. It is an implicit question that we cannot help asking in the secrecy of our mind, but that we fail to form explicitly, expecting the answer to be outside our own being. It is an absolute question, that needs no other answer than going to the very aware being that initiated it, because of  its longing to be freed from everything that seems to limit it and veil it. It is our returning to what we have never ceased to be, but are failing to see for reason of looking in a thousand directions outside ourself. ‘Who am I?’ is a question that takes you to ‘I Am’, which is the only accurate description there is of our true identity. 

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Rembrandt (1606-1669)

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Website:
– Rembrandt (Wikipedia)

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