God’s Flower Bed

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Fleur’ – Jean Benner, 1860 – WikiArt

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The difficulty in the spiritual endeavour is that we have to question the unquestionable. We have to doubt the obvious. We have to turn the stones that we have carefully placed here to pave the road. One such indisputable truth is that we choose our thoughts. That the decisions or actions we are taking, the thoughts or attitudes we are having, are the products of a controller, of a self that has them, chooses them. But is it so? Have we even tried to question it? Have we ever looked if there truly was a self here in capacity to choose? What if there wasn’t? What if this self, this ‘I’ that we seem to be, only drew its existence from our imagination? What if our own self was just another thought? If this entity that we love to pamper and strengthen was not there, not at all? If we have played a game with ourself? If there is here no person outside our indulgence in having the thought of one?

Many of our conflicts and problems in life come precisely from the belief that we are the chooser of our thoughts, that there is an ‘I’, a person here that runs the show when there is not. That’s the mistake, the original sin, to think of ourself as a doer, a thinker, a separate entity that has control, that manufactures happiness, freedom, and is responsible for our experience such as it is. We want to carry the load of our DNA, of our body, thoughts, habits, suffering, or even happiness, and not let them go. We want to be grandiose. The truth is: there is no personal ’I’ that can act on our thoughts or decision-making. These are better left alone, and informed by the only ‘I’ there is, that finds its true essence in the infinity of being, which is selfless. With this understanding or realising, we would come to treat what we have as a jewel of the most precious kind — beyond control but lovingly tailored for us by the universe and its supreme intelligence.

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An enquiry on our ability to choose our thoughts or not… (READ MORE…)

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On Desperation

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Jeremiah mourning over the Destruction of Jerusalem’ (part) – Rembrandt, 1630 – WikiArt

What needs to be seen and understood is that the story of humanity, the story of every life lived here under the sun, is the story of a desperation. We are fighting off the feeling that something is lacking. We want to reach or attain something, and this something that we are looking for is the same thing for everybody. Whatever form may take our life search, our drives, our dreams, our desires, our pleasures, they are all here to make us feel at peace, content, whole. They are here to free us from ourself, from our search, from our never-ending desperation. Outside, we may put on the appearance of control, normality, and responsibility, but inside we are burning, seeking, longing for that which we have never been able to put into words, explain, rationalise, or make sense of. But in fact, we are looking for something that we already possess in infinite quantity, although unknowingly. We are craving for the abundance that we already have, searching for a peace that is already given, begging for a joy that is throbbing unnoticed in the background of our everyday experience.

Our suffering or desperation is the symptom of this misunderstanding. We fail to notice that we have what we are looking for, that it is here in plain view, already achieved, already formed in and as our most intimate identity. Our self is made of that sweet fire of peace, contentment, and sufficiency. So the misery we are in is only apparent, imagined, made up by our thinking about it, and by our looking for peace unnecessarily, out there, in the wrong place, in experience. There is no amount of effort that will ever help us to attain something that is already attained. On the contrary, the disturbance involved in seeking what we have will cause us misery, in the form of a desperate, separate sense of self. We are too eager. We never sit still, always foraging our experience to harvest some scattered drops of peace or joy, when our very being is already overflowing with them.

The only necessity, or even possibility of being a self separate from experience is through managing the tension involved in seeking a peace that is already our most intimate nature. Our self is the story, the memory of this seeking. When peace is here, there is no self present, no tension that could make us a suffering entity. In fact, we seem to proceed by distraction. We are not looking, and then we complain that it is not there. All our efforts to obtain an enduring peace in our life are vain and doomed to failure for the simple reason that peace is not a thing that can be had. Peace is something that we have to realise is present here and now. It is our vey being, what we are made of, our unborn reality. So there is no real, substantial suffering here to be rid of. It is not that suffering is not experienced. It is that its only reality is only in and as our imagined self. It is but the friction that goes with believing to be a separate entity. Suffering is essentially made of our believed self, which is but our constant seeking to alleviate this apparent misery. The ending of the belief in being a self, which is also the ending of time, space, and separation, will make fully apparent our nature as peace and happiness, in which there can be no suffering, no self, no seeking, no desperation.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Rembrandt (1606-1669)

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Website:
– Rembrandt (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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Humanness

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Human Mountain: Towards the Light’ – Edvard Munch, 1927-29 – Wikimedia

There is no human being. This is quite extraordinary to think of it, and even positively mind-blowing. But turn it around as much as you may, the true self of man is not where a body is. It doesn’t take shelter there. A body, or even a mind for that matter, is way too small and inappropriate to house your beautiful being. There is no room there. For how could the infinite enter something that is finite, limited, prone to decay and death? How could something that knows no beginning and no end, be contained in a passing thought, in a mind which is changing, developing, forgetting, believing, cheating and being cheated? In being, you won’t find the beginning of a change, won’t find even the possibility of death. In being, there is no forgetting who you are. Only a mind can forget its own nature, not because there is something there that can forget, but because thoughts, feelings, perceptions, when they are believed to be yourself, are hindering your true nature, rendering it as if absent. What is left is only a cheating thought that believes itself to be real as self, when it is not.

There is nothing depressing in not being a human being, and nothing demeaning. Being is such a malleable thing that we still retain the illusion of being a human being, a person, as we do now, but with the difference that this illusion won’t hide the reality that is behind it, and that is our true identity. Losing our identity as a person doesn’t mean that we won’t feel compassion for another, or love for our beloved, for love is not contained in being a self separate from an other. Love doesn’t need to be directed. We are not doing love, let alone giving it. Love is the expression or signature contained in our simply being. It is the feeling of being that irradiates in every directions, and that is shared as that which we are here and now. And don’t think either that you will lose your ambition, but it will be reoriented to be not your ambition, but the very contagion of being in every aspect of your life and world. And don’t think that you will miss out on happiness, for happiness was never yours, never your expression, never contained in achieving or obtaining a thing that thought has said you desire. Happiness is the very feeling of being, that we cannot contain or limit, but which splashes over to colour life with a golden hue of oneness.

So there is only being taking momentarily the clothes of a human being. But being itself has no qualifications, no colours which would render it a definable entity. The colours and the qualifications are not pertaining to being. They are the property of everything that appears in being, but is not being. They are in body, thoughts, sensations, perceptions, in all the existing things that come and go, dancing to make the form of a world, of what we call a human, a dog, a mountain, or the parking lot in which we park our car. To be being won’t diminish our feeling of being a person. It will enrich it, for being is the essence of a person. Being is the essential of our experience as a human being, only we don’t see that, don’t know that. Our focusing on the belief to be an objective entity that thinks, feels, and perceives has made us blind to our reality. So let’s remind ourself that there are no limited human beings, but only one unlimited being. This knowing and feeling of being only one unlimited being is a source of constant awe in life. And this vision is what gives its true colour and reality to our imaginary humanness.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Edvard Munch (1863-1944)

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Website:
– Edvard Munch (Wikipedia)

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

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The Fantasy of a Self

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Moonlight’ – Winslow Homer, 1874 – WikiArt

We only ever land where we are. There is no escape from where we are. Where we are, is all there is. I mean this deepest place of ourself, from which we have never been separated, is the very thing which we have been looking for in a thousand distant places, in endless situations, in hopes and expectations, in projections, attachments, identifications. Our mind has been thirsting for this place of peace for as long as we can remember, and it has been escaping us with perfect consistency. For there is a rule attached to this place: we can’t find it outside of ourself. And the reason is: there is no place outside of ourself. Ourself — what we are here and now — contains all that we could long for. It is the home which we have left through our contant looking for it in the wrong direction. Our seeking is way too aggressive for its tender being. Our peaceful home lies in the nest that our being is, and this nest of being is where all existence finds its birth and takes its journey.

The problem with accessing our being — our peaceful home — is that we have introduced a self. We have posited a self that is separate from the peace it is looking for. And if peace is situated at a distance from ourself, therefore where we are is the place where peace is not. We have superimposed a self on our peaceful being, and in doing so have invited suffering, which is but the seeking for our lost peace or happiness. It all comes from the connivance of a few thoughts, feelings and sensations, which have set themselves up as a self. It is all part of a scheme on their part, and a gross one if you ask me. For how could something that is coming and going have a self? Something as flittering as a thought, or a sensation, could never produce a self. The self that we think we are, and that we feel is at a distance from experience, is fabricated. It is a product that we have elaborated to feel secure. But we cannot find security in a self. Security is rather the absence of a self, and the merging of ourself with experience, which is felt as oneness.

This self, without our noticing, has created untold damages, it has made life into a havoc. It has invented a within and a without, a here and there, a now and then, when there is in fact only a seamless experience. All these distinctions are of course necessary for our functioning in a world, but they are not the reality. And to ignore their reality is to transform them from a few peaceful, useful devices into brigands that have made experience either something to be feared and avoided, or desired and pursued. In other words, being a self has made experience into a dependence, a battlefield for our own imaginary benefit. But in fact, there is in reality only a now that is ever present and eternal, and a here that has no boundary, no limit, and is infinite. And there is a within that we will cease seing within, for after all thoughts and images are filtering experience to the point of making it their own creation. Thoughts are not just within. They are scattered all over the field of experience, colouring everything we see or hear. And the without will cease being without. For where could without be if not in our intimate experience. So the trees, the houses, and the dog we meet in the street are part of our very own being, for there is only one being out of which they could make an appearance. Where would another being than our being be? To posit another being than our being, or a without without, or a within within, or a there, or a then, is to be absent to our true being or nature, and to live in a world scattered about and fragmented, where reigns every bit of suffering and conflict. But to live as the One renders without within, within without, there here, then now, and our being just only one being. The rest is but a fantasy which we can either buy and suffer from, or borrow and play with.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Winslow Homer (1836-1910)

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Website:
– Winslow Homer (Wikipedia)

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

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Anatomy of a Desire

Posted on by Alain Joly

You must not desire the truth. You must let the truth desire you. For truth has the greatest desire, the most efficient one, to which yours is but a pale copy. It is the desire to be itself alone, unaccompanied, unsoiled. In the fulfilment of that desire, truth will swallow you, will undress you and render you transparent, nonexistent, naked. You’d be inspired to let go, to give in, to trust that desire which is so greater than yours. For your desires are small, inadequate, vile, selfish. They won’t get you where you truly want to be. They will miss the mark. Every time.

So don’t desire truth. Don’t make it like something you can possess. Truth is in fact already possessing you, the only one in command. So undress your being of the superfluous. The superfluous is all the beliefs attached to yourself, that makes you a self that feels separate, an entity in a body, delineated by its thoughts and feelings, that looks up to experience, and betrays its profound suffering through its constant desire for fulfilment.

Notice that your desire has no true owner. The one that desires is not really there. It is but an idea, a desperate attempt to feel that you are complete. But you won’t feel complete by means of desiring, for desire is already the sign of your incompleteness. The problem with being a desirer is that it places you ahead of your natural identity as being. It is a position of ignorance with a plan and a hope. The desirer is a made-up entity whose unacknowledged goal is to consolidate itself. So don’t make truth like a projected goal to be achieved. The desired object of enlightenment, or realisation, was never intended. It was in fact all for the desirer, to strengthen your false identity as a self, to adorn the temple of separation, to attach yourself to another idea. Liberation is not in desiring to be liberated.

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Continue this exploration of desire in matters of truth… (READ MORE…)

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The Intimacy of Experience

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘First Leaves, near Nantes’ – Camille Corot, 1855 – WikiArt

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I will tell you where to be. Be where every experience feels an equally good experience. Don’t be attached to judgment and comparison. These are the mind’s favorite tools and activities. The mind tricks you to believe that experience is an uneven ground. That according to the content of your experience, you will be gifted with either happiness or suffering, peace or conflict, harmony or disorder. So the experience you are having becomes extraordinarily important. We become dependent on what happens to us, and come to dread it. So we retire into the secure place of our habitual self, with its cortège of worry, control, expectation, and manipulation.

There is a place in us where you don’t find experience to be such a determining factor. Where you will not let experience determine you, fix you, limit you. You won’t be shaped by its content. You won’t be made into something, someone, with qualities and flaws, to be judged, evaluated, compared with — the likeness of experience — in fact, just another object. The mind is a manufacturer of objects, entities, persons, fixing the insubstantial nature of your being into a self to be moulded and made either happy or miserable. To be made happy by an experience is to be cheated on by it: we are being manipulated, and made to believe an illusion. To let experience make us miserable is sheer deceitfulness, it is us being easily dazzled by the treachery and artifice of objects.

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Continue this exploration of the nature of experience… (READ MORE…)

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A Holy Formula

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Woman in the Wilderness’ – Alphonse Mucha, 1923 – Wikimedia

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“Consciousness is an internal relationship to the whole.”
~ David Bohm

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You cannot suffer when the world in which you live is discovered to be you. That’s mathematical. A formula that will work magic in your life. For you don’t live separated from everything else. You are not limited to your body, and the world is not something that is distinct from you, at a distance from you. You discover that the jump was made long ago, that you have been the totality already from the beginning of ages, eternally one with it, and that there never was an inch that separated you from the world you live in. That’s how you are complete, by knowing no separation, by entertaining no difference, and therefore having no preference. So you cannot be lacking anything, and suffering is always only the lacking of something, which is born of separation. So stay there, in your inseparable essence, in your world of completeness. Notice that this is what you are, or rather what there is, when you stop fantasising yourself being somebody. You never had an existence of your own. You are the flowering of something deeper. If you ignore or overlook this simple truth, well… then the trouble begins, all the travail of life, and the never ending seeking for fulfilment. This never was about you. Life is bigger, wider than that, and you are here only to honour that and to live by its gorgeous rules.

Then you enter into sacredness. You leave the limitations of being somebody — a projection, an idea that thought has sculpted over time — for a merging with infinity, with who you truly are. This is what sacredness is: an entering into your true self. A visiting of the truth of your being. The anointing of your self with its reality. This entering is a sanction from truth. It is the death of an old idea which you have entertained, for a ride into unknowing. It is a ceremony in which you are being elevated to a reality that you have been blind to. You are being sanctified, or made true. You were already that, already living as that reality, already tasting of that firmament, but were distracted. You were drawn to be something, insisted in being exclusively yourself, by yourself, so you have ignored it. You missed the chance to know yourself truly. You worked too hard to be what you are not. You lacked passivity. Not that you don’t have to do anything to come to this understanding. But rather, this understanding is nothing you do. It is here in you, as you, without your doing anything about it. It doesn’t need your participation, or rather it needs your non-participation, your staying away, your keeping quiet. Your abandonment. The hardest thing of all.

Then you enter into holiness. You taste of your true home, which happens to be the home of god. You are made holy, which means whole, uninjured, healthy. You realise where you are, what you are, the stone you are made of. You notice your true body — the consciousness of everything. You connect with a reality that could never be transgressed or violated. A reality which you could only fall in love with, for it is your beloved self, which you have lost sight of, and are now reunited with, consecrated in, and which you would never want to leave, or not live by. You are made of the same golden dust that the stars are made of. I don’t mean just your body, but what you are at the core, the essence of your self, what you happen to be when you say simply ’I am’. You are made into “an internal relationship to the whole”, as David Bohm expressed so beautifully. And you will struggle to see the world as a collection of different parts, or to see yourself as one such part amongst many others. The One will come to be your only experience. But you will be defeated again and again. You will come to feel a part again. You will be seduced to be somebody time and again. You will want to feel separated again, to win another last adventure or advantage for yourself. You know: your little devil wanting to be the likes of god. But keep going. Keep going. Until one day, it may dawn on you: you are no more.

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Text by Alain Joly

Quote by David Bohm (1917-1992)

Painting by Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939)

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Websites:
– David Bohm (Wikipedia)
– Alphonse Mucha (Wikipedia)

Suggestions:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…
– A page from the blog dedicated to David Bohm: ‘Insights into Wholeness’…

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