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)

Suggestion:
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Hidden Fragrance

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Autumn’ – Andrew Wyeth – WikiArt

There is majesty in being your own gorgeous, naked self. But thoughts come and spoil it all. We are always running up and down the line of time, feeding on memories, fearing the future we imagine, leaning on our hopes and expectations, bleeding from our constant suffering, building multiple roads of escape. We never leave ourself alone, never stay with the peace that is naturally the nature of our being. We are always on the move, indulging in the landscape of our many objective experiences, getting lost in them — after all, they are so many, so attractive. They seem to hold the secret of our happiness. So we spend a lifetime shaping them to our convenience, but they are reluctant.

In fact our thoughts have become primary when they should be secondary. They have become the fabric of our life, along with our many experiences, when they should have stayed only an ornament. There is a ground that stays still and silent under our many involvements with things, perceptions, sensations. These crowd us by the thousands, but we should not be deceived. They will want us to believe that they are us — our one and only identity, but don’t listen. There is a oneness that is here taking them all in, enveloping them, lending them the quiet blanket of its peaceful, infinite making. So be careful where you put your emphasis on, what you choose to recognise yourself to be. You are not an aggregation of body and mind content. You are the quiet aware presence which holds the ten thousand things of experience in its loving bosom, and gives them a light to be seen and experienced. Put there your life emphasis, for that presence is your very lifeblood.

So be watchful of what you take yourself to be. Will you marry your identity with all things objective, or with what gives them the ground where they thrive, are born and die? Will you go with the passing or with the ever staying? Will you have a fascination for the many or for the One? Be careful to always stay where you truly are, where you were never born and could never die, where peace is like your true body — before you venture in experience — and where your silent being is seen as the home that harbours every portion of your life. This is how you stand where only the infinite is, and where place is like its humble attendant. This is how you have your days spent in eternity, and time is like its useful valet, for the sake of your daily activities. And that’s how you view your many activities and relationships as a gorgeous play, and the peace of your being as the space where they thrive and are nourished. Don’t let anybody make you think or feel otherwise: Peace is the crux and heart of your life — its sometimes hidden, sometimes revealed fragrance. 

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009)

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Website:
– Andrew Wyeth (Wikipedia)

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The Word ‘God’

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Italienische Landschaft’ – Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes – WikiArt

Long before any idea of a God, before any belief or possibility of a deity, of a divine command, God is already here, hiding within yourself. Or rather you yourself have just come hiding God. It means, don’t make God into an idea, a form, a projection born of your fears, of your eagerness for peace or relief. God is not ahead of you, or before you, or above you. God is not an entity, or anything that would not be your own.

God wouldn’t be God if it were an idea, a conceptual form far away from your self. For God is not something abstract, vague, distant. God is resplendent. God is shining. Not in a far away, unreachable place. God is brightly here, just as you are. You are, because of God. Because God is, you are. God is the very essence and quality of your being.

There is nothing above or beyond your being. It seems that there is, because you have limited your being by giving it a qualification. You have found it better to clothe your being with something. Then God goes hiding. Or you yourself are hiding your own divine self or essence, the possibility of your being only being. For there — in being — is the key to god.

In that being, God is. God is doing your being. That’s the extent of the presence of God in your life. In that, there is not even the possibility of a belief in God. In that, you feel God’s presence every time you feel your own presence, which makes God very present indeed in your life. In that, a belief in God would in fact trample God. It would make it an entity. A distant thing. A poor meaning. Not God at all.

Who do you think is ‘doing’ your being right here, right now? Think of that for a while. What is this being that I am? What is this I am that I am? Answer that in verity, through your actual experience, and God won’t be a secret to you anymore. God will cease being distant. You will be yourself made of the presence of God. No belief in God could ever match that.

But remember that once God’s being is recognised to be your being, then you won’t find room anymore to have your own personal being. Your own being will be lost to God. Now there is only God, which actually means there is no God at all. The idea of God is for when you have distanced yourself from God, when you don’t know yourself — that you are God’s being. In recognising yourself as God’s being, you will have lost both your being, and the idea of a God. It is a form of death.

So think twice before you say that you want to know God, or to know yourself. For this knowledge will leave you with being only. There won’t be a you. And there won’t be a God. There will be the purity of being, which is the everlasting life in death, which is to live as the One. You will lose your apparent doership, the control that you think you have, every objective identity that you believe makes you.

But in that loss is the finding of yourself, of who you are. In that loss is the end of your suffering, and the discovery of your nature as peace. This finding of your essence is the meaning behind the word ‘God’. In finding God, you will have rid of God, and of yourself. What is left is more than any word can tell. More than the word ‘God’ could ever convey. There would be no word at all. Except you. You would be the living word for ‘God’. 

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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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Not A Thing

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Seascape’ – Théodore Rousseau, 1831 – WikiArt

Although we feel to be inside the world, there is an identity in us that is not of the world. Rather the world is in that identity. The world — everything — has been made the likeness of ourself, should ourself be seen not as a thing, but as that which could never be made into a form of any kind. That’s how and when you know who you are, when you are not a thing, not an entity, not anything that can be named or qualified. There is not a thing here that you can be. We have inherited this habit, this insistence in being something. So we have pinpointed ourself and have given it a substance of its own. In this trying to be something, we have been rendered suffering adults, drenched in belief and habit, in fear and hope, addicted to security. We have lost our childhood, what is here before every qualification, and that we only worship remotely, as something precious and lost — our innocence, the playfulness contained in living, the not knowing, the absence of urge, the sense of awe, the leisure contained in plainly and simply being.

So be like a child, who has it all. Be like before every incarnation that you have been forced to identify with, in order to fit in, to feel aggrandised. Our urge to be something has deprived us from our being sufficient, fulfilled in and as our own being. By adding to being, we have lost what gave us our true essence, our identity, our security. It all came from that acquired, mindlessly rehearsed, and deeply ingrained belief that we are not enough, that we are separate, that we have to achieve, progress, be competent. There is no joy in fitting, in being proper. There is no competence involved in being who you are. Any child knows it. Babies are masters in knowing being. We’re just the bragging ones, the ones who have made life a travail, an ordeal, for silly reasons of being something. We spend all our precious time in alleviating the suffering and inadequacy we have ourself created.

There is no suffering in being. We should have left it there, when we were only being, contented in our own presence, before the thought arose that there had to be more and better than just being. The thought of it has made a mess. Now we are in the world rather than the world is inside us. Now we are something or someone, rather that being nothing that can be named, objectified, personalised, belittled or limited. Now we have created travail and conflict rather than staying quietly in the joy and peace contained in being only being. Now we are isolated beings rather than all gathered in our one shared being. Now we are many, divided, scattered, broken up, instead of being one before oneness itself, which is like being the one child of God’s undivided, unbroken, one being. This not being something is not a posture of the mind. It is the noticing of our true nature, of what is here in and as ourself that could never be made something. Our sense of being imperfect, isolated beings is born of a simple lack of attention. We have not seen the obvious. That we are the unborn, the infinite, the ‘not a thing’, and that as that, we hold in one single embrace everything that can be named and exists in time and place, everything that can be given a birth and a death, and that is now like the One inside the One. 

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867)

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Website:
– Théodore Rousseau (Wikipedia)

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Harp of the Spirit

Posted on by Alain Joly
Fresco of Ephrem the Syrian, 14th AD (part) – Protaton Church,  Mt Athos – Wikimedia

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If you go for its gems, you will find the Christian tradition to be unbelievably rich of the highest wisdom. The work of Ephrem the Syrian is one such gem. He was a prominent Christian theologian and hymnographer born in 303 AD, expressing himself in the Classical Syriac language of early Christianity, in the eastern part of modern-day Turkey. But he was also known for his outstanding poetry, which he used as a vehicle for theologian purposes. Over four hundred of his hymns have come down to us, and many more got lost along the way, that have earned him the title of ‘Harp of the Holy Spirit’. It is said that his poetic descriptions of the Last Judgment influenced Dante Alighieri in some sections of the Divine Comedy. There is no doubt that he had a passion to put his long years of studying and reading into the fire of experience, as can be felt in this eloquent verse:

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“On a certain day a pearl did I take up, my brethren;
I saw in it mysteries pertaining to the Kingdom;
Semblances and types of the Majesty;
It became a fountain, and I drank out of it mysteries of the Son.”
~ The Pearl, Seven Hymns on the Faith (1:1)

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Ephrem the Syrian is said to have been baptised as a young man, and to have been a deacon, with a more limited liturgical role than a priest, and a duty centred on service. He had a great knowledge of the Scriptures and was devoted to his mission as a teacher. He made theology accessible through his poetry, and is recognised as one of the first to introduce songs into the Church’s public worship. He was eager to transmit his passion and devotion in whatever way was possible to him.

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“In its brightness I beheld the Bright One Who cannot be clouded,
And in its pureness a great mystery,
Even the Body of Our Lord which is well-refined:
In its undivideness I saw the Truth
Which is undivided.”
~ The Pearl, Seven Hymns on the Faith (1:1)

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There is no doubt that he was an influential man, being honoured with titles like the ‘Sun of the Syrians’, or the ‘Column of the Church’. He lived a simple, ascetic life, embracing the ideals of poverty and celibacy. During the last decade of his life, he moved to Edessa, and stayed there in a small cave overlooking the city, devoting his time to his writings. In Hymns on Faith (VIII.9), he stressed that “the intellect was not intended to pry into hidden things”, emphasising the fact that our deepest identity as being cannot be understood conceptually, through the mind, but is a living, subjective reality. In his Hymns on Paradise, he described this with these exquisite words:

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“Your nature is far too weak
to be able
to attain to its greatness,
and its beauties are much diminished
by being depicted in the pale colors
with which you are familiar.”
~ Hymn on Paradise, XI:7

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Discover the hymns of ancient theologian Ephrem the Syrian… (READ MORE…)

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An Impeccable Death

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Death of Buddha’ – Odilon Redon, circa 1899 – Wikimedia

It is striking to think that the day when we die is always today. It is not happening tomorrow, will not take place in the future. Death is for now. This is where and when it takes place. In the present. In presence. The death of the body, its ending, may take place in the future, but is not death. It doesn’t have the implications, the magnitude of it. The death of the body is like a wave that ceases to undulate, to imagine its difference, its conflicting attributes, and finally breaks before we notice that it is not what we are, that there is here, before it, as our very making and identity, an ocean of peace. This ocean is what death is — before we imagine to be a self that thinks itself separate.

We have been moulded in and as a presence that was never born and could never die. This inability to exist or appear as something distinct, or different, is real death. This incapacity to cease or find an ending at our being, is true ending. It is a place where we can never go. This place of being has no objectivity. It is nothing that we can be or project ourself to be. It is pure being, done, final, already perfected, unattached, a free fall. It is a death so complete that it has no object. It is not the death of something, of an object, of an entity — for such death is not truly death. It is the realisation that we are not what we have believed ourself to be. That there is not here an entity, a self that could be dying, that has an existence of its own. That realisation, and above all what is left here to be and live by, truly is death. And in that death is contained, concentrated, achingly shining, the whole of life.

So death is now. It is happening now without our noticing. It is achieved — our death, the one that we fear, that we have pushed away, that we don’t want to envisage, envision, is done, gone through already. It’s a matter of noticing what is — that we are not here, that nothing was born, that it would be curious to die, that what we are has no other attributes than being. How would you put to death something that is without attributes or qualities? How would you end something that was never born? Moreover, no appearance, or thing, or body, could ever die without it being the expression or the modulation of something untouched by death. That something exists deathless is the sine qua non for the existence of death itself. That’s why life itself thrives through the exercice of death. What is deathless is our being. It is being — that which we all share in, which we call eternity, or the infinite, for it is one, and being one, it cannot be measured, qualified, or put to death. That’s how we are immortal — through only being, which we share as the experience of love. Death is when we cannot die anymore. It is obliterating objectivity — therefore our existence as an entity. An impeccable death comes at this price.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Odilon Redon (1840-1916)

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Website:
– Odilon Redon (Wikipedia)

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