A Safe Harbour

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Sea against a rocky shore’ – Ivan Aivazovsky, 1851 – WikiArt

In our relative existence, we are always only a simple human being, a disciple of truth. We are seeking to merge the relative with the absolute, and to raise the finite where the infinite compels it to be. There is no being a super human, with a perfected soul. There is no being a specialist in the field of spirituality. The knower is a so shy and humble presence that it won’t show up when you are there. You will hide it with the boastful assertion of your own self. So if you want to espouse your true nature, you will have to feel yourself as almost nothing. You will have to stop reifying yourself, and make your person a servant of truth. There is a soothing freedom from pride and arrogance to be experienced in our human life.

The feeling of separation is what makes you assert yourself. To only and simply be is felt to be insufficient. You need to be or have something that makes you whole and happy, which you then seek through objects, qualities, qualifications, events, circumstances. To be somebody, to be important is the privilege of incompleteness. Being has no privilege, is not a superior position. it won’t make you anything. It won’t give you an advantage. You’d have to be miserable for that. You’d have to be limited. Your nature as peace doesn’t belong to you the person. When you have realised yourself as the one being that you truly are, then it won’t make you anything, it won’t give you a pedestal. Your knowing is in not knowing. In simply being.

There is a special, humble glory that lies in not being a self that feels separate. Peace is the perfume of your divine nature, that stands unaffected before the person that you happen to be. It is the nature that lends itself to the making of the world and to the selfing of its myriad of apparent entities. It is the secret power behind all appearances. Your nakedness is the key for its being seen and felt in your existence. You will then live from the stand of that knowing presence. Your self will cease feeling separate and superior. Your person will be depersonalised, will have infinity as its ‘I’ identity, and love as its guiding principle. But you won’t get any pride out of it, for your person is now devoid of its own, personal substance.

It is no accident that the life of many truth seekers is expressed through poverty and nakedness. In not possessing, in being undefended, as is the case for nuns, monks, hermits, anchorites. There is joy in not owning your own self, and your own identity. There is release in being at the service of the loving, silent being which you have discovered yourself to be. You have lost the prestige and identity contained in being a seeker. For there is no seeking in being. Being contains the gist of that which you want to obtain or achieve through your constant seeking — the juice of it. Being is the heart of life, and its reward. The Eden which you have placed far and away, as a cherished belief or possibility, is now found here, in the simple knowing of your being.

So there are no Shris, Maharshis, Bhagavans, Rinpoches, Maharaj-s, or Your Holiness, at the level of the person. There are even no sages. All these titles are only for ‘being’, for the reverence of truth, for the One. There is always only one Bhagavan. One Rimpoche. One sage. The peace contained in simply being is not another quality that is added to you as a person. A person, a body-mind, doesn’t have peace. Peace or understanding doesn’t belong to you. It is not for the person. It is all contained in that which lends you consciousness. It is in the presence that makes you, out of which you draw your personhood, and which allows you to love, live, and share. You are not an autonomous, self-contained person. You are infinity lending itself to a portion of finitude. How would an appearance be conscious, if it wasn’t for the presence which contains and creates this appearance? This peaceful, infinite presence is all there truly is. The One you have to bow to. Your teacher and your beloved. Your safe harbour in the storm of appearances.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900)

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Website:
– Ivan Aivazovsky (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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What is Sought

Posted on by Alain Joly

“You are what needs to be found –
you are not the finder of anything –
the truth is in back of us,
not in front of us.
That’s why it can never be reached,
it can never be understood,
it can never be felt,
it can never be sensed —
because we are what needs
to be sensed, felt and seen.
We are not the seeker, 
we are what is sought.”

~ Eric Baret

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Quote by Eric Baret

Photo by Alain Joly

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The quote is excerpted from an interview in ‘Science & Nonduality’ entitled ‘What is Truth?’…

Bibliography:
– ‘Let the Moon Be Free: Conversations on Kashmiri Tantra’ – by Eric Baret (translation by Jeanric Meller) – (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform)

Website:
– Eric Baret (in French) 
– Eric Baret (YouTube Channel) 

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Other quotes from the category Beauty in Essence

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The Mystique of Freedom

Posted on by Alain Joly

Bob O’Hearn is my newly invited guest in ‘The Dawn Within’. Bob has a number of blogs and his writings were somewhat influential when I took on the journey of writing myself. I found his essays particularly crafted and it’s a pleasure to share here with you one of them: ‘The Mystique of Freedom’, excerpted from his blog ‘The Conscious Process’. Bob lives with his Beloved Mate, Mazie, in the foothills of the Northern California Sierra Nevada Mountains. 

 

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“Pleasure and pain alternate.
Happiness is unshakable.
What you can seek and find is not the real thing.
Find what you have never lost,
find the inalienable.”
~ Sri Nisargadatta

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In the vast library cataloguing exceptional human experiences, daunting adventures, and intriguing explorations, the tales of humanity’s search for spiritual liberation are some of the more compelling, and have even formed the basis for most of the world’s religions and philosophies. We all love a good story!

However, as fascinating as the reports may be — these bold testimonies of spiritual heroes and heroines persevering through all manner of adversity to finally attain the pinnacle of human potential, pull the sword from the rock, and ascend blissfully beyond the dreary fate of ordinary mortals — the actual truth is that they are all based on a fundamental case of mistaken identity.

It’s not so much that they have often been seriously ‘airbrushed’ (although that is a regrettable though all too common fate of many of these hagiographies), but rather that they were embarked upon under false pretenses from the beginning. That many of these characters burst out laughing in recognition of that fact at the culmination of their quest does provide a saving grace element to the reports. Let’s examine why. …

Continue reading Bob O’Hearn’s essay… (READ MORE…)

 

The Path

Posted on by Alain Joly

A monk asked: 
« What is the true path on earth? » 
Fayan said: 
« Not a single path on earth is true. » 
~ Fayan Wenyi

 

I’d like to tell you a story, a parabolic tale I wrote long ago. It’s a story that has already been posted here on its own. It is called ‘The Truth Seeker’, but could have been called ‘The Path’, as it exposes, describes some of the stages we find along the spiritual path. This expression has been used, overused in spiritual circles. There seems to be so many paths, so many avenues of understanding. The Christian path, the Sufi path, the Advaita path, the tantric path, the direct path, the progressive path. The story that I’m about to tell you was written in Madras, on the grounds of the Theosophical Society, where the young Krishnamurti was ‘discovered’. Twenty years later, he rejected all organisations built around him and pronounced these famous words: “I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.” So what is this path we so often hear about? What is its reality? The title ‘The Truth Seeker’ gives us a clue. It would be reasonable to say that a path, spiritually speaking, is everything that results from the activity of seeking truth. That’s one way of seeing it, but in that case, as seeking can be endless and so often leading nowhere, such a path is really not a path at all. Let’s see what our story has to say: 

     « A man, Admita, was living in a harsh and hostile desert. Surrounded by sand and swirling winds, he led a life of wandering without help or hope. He has well heard of stories that described places of lush greenery and great beauty, where valleys, forests, meadows, rushing streams and great rivers were home for countless animals, where mountains stood above deep blue seas, where the sun was warm and the air filled with a gentle breeze. He did not believe that such places really existed, but in front of so much loneliness and adversity, he could not help thinking about it and hoping to discover this wonderful land. » …

A playful exploration into the nature of the spiritual path (READ MORE…)

 

 

The Truth Seeker

Posted on by Alain Joly

9DF6C27B-1BF6-4BED-949F-40F4B6360333long time ago, in India, lived a man named Admita. All his life had been spent in a harsh and hostile desert, surrounded by sand and dry, swirling winds. He led a life of wandering without help or hope on this desolate land. He had well heard of stories that described places of lush greenery and great beauty, where valleys, forests, meadows, rushing streams and great rivers were home for countless animals, where mountains stood above deep blue seas, where the sun was warm and friendly and the air ever filled with a cool and gentle breeze. He did not believe that such places really existed, but in front of so much loneliness, sorrow, and adversity, he could not help thinking about it and hoping to discover this wonderful land.

One day, one hot, scorching, blazing day, when winds were competing to torment the atmosphere, he thought that truly his last hour had come, for there was no hope of ending the killer storm. Suddenly, in the midst of swirling sand grains, he realised that he was standing right on the edge of a vast, profound precipice. He saw that there was a green carpet on the floor down below; he sniffed the air that was sweet and he could hear thousands of sounds, whispers, and cries of great beauty. “Surely,” he thought, “it must be that marvelous land that the stories mention.”

A short fairy story, a spiritual parable (READ MORE…)