A Ground for Life

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Awakening’ – Xavier Mellery – Photo by Jean Louis Mazieres (Flickr)
The difficulty in this endeavour is that as long as you feel yourself to be a person, you will never know your most profound being. As long as you see the world as being an other-than-yourself, you will never feel the presence of your utmost being. For you will be like above ground — not grounded in your self. You will be a wanderer, forever looking for a destination in other things or beings. And nowhere will you find the home of your true being, for you are forever lost in a world of which you are only a part. And never will you know who you are, for you are living in a place to which you do not belong — a place that is separate from life itself. This unfortunate place has taken the form of a fake, created self or entity, which is but an imagined representation for an equally imagined world. Life has escaped you. And you will keep being above ground, out of tune, forever misplaced, making yourself a sufferer, and a sinner. You will then lose sight of your original mistake. You will start thinking that you have been placed here powerless, doomed to win your happiness at every time-bound step on the road. You will start bending under the weight of this so-called fate of life, from which you will try to escape over and over again. You will lose sight of your self, looking blindly in all possible directions, except in the direction of your beloved home, which is your own, eternally present being. That’s how you become headless, engaged with a thousand things, in a thousand directions, and attempting to find in them a purpose and a peace of living for your bruised self. You have been led through mysteries which only existed as projections. And you have kept running steadily away from your one and only true mystery: the beloved and forever here, forever now, home for your self as being. Here is the truth: Plain being is the ground and the destination; the only existing home for your peace and thrill of living. And life’s purpose is to cancel the imagined distance between your supposed, suffering self living above ground, and the true and happy ground of being which you already are here and now.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Xavier Mellery (1845-1921)

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Website:
– Xavier Mellery (Wikipedia)

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Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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Masters of Knowing

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘At the discretion of River’ – Shitao, 1656-1707 – WikiArt

It seems to me that, at some point, we have to cease worrying about our lives. There will always be something to worry about, to be concerned with, to hope, regret, project, expect, envy. This is an endless, futile road with no visible finish line. And it also seems to me that, at some point, we have to question our constant spiritual reading, listening, this position of being forever a stranger, one who needs to know, to gain his or her position as being. Not that there is no beauty in reading an expression of truth from a talented seer, or listening to a perfect line of reasoning that brings you to the open field of your eternal self. Not that there is no necessity of seeing oneself as a humble beginner in matters of truth. Not at all. But we must come to the simple realisation that we have it all exposed in front of us, in our everyday, every moment experience of being. We are innate specialists of being.

Any sincere and thorough looking at our simple sense of being, any visit to the temple of our presence, always at hand, always on the map of the now, always accessible, contains in itself treasures of learning and understanding. This is our place of abiding — this being. Our cherished home. Never at a distance. Not a painstaking enterprise. Not requiring the perfect set-up or circumstances, the right number of retreats, the sufficient amount of reading, or the many hours spent on the cushion — for being is always present, always on display, in no need of practice or effort whatsoever. Being has the naturalness of something that can never leave us. It is closer than our blood and breath. So we have to abide by its rules, and notice it rather than seek to attain it.

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Continue reading this praise to being’s intrinsic, evident nature… (READ MORE…)

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The Shallow Well

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘View from the Ganges of the burning ghats’ – Edward Lear, 1873 – Wikimedia

We are but a layer. Our sense of identity has been downgraded to being just a thought whose presence is by now so habitual and pregnant that it is likened to our very self. This shallow well, this dubious layer, seems to be all that we have access to, and our thoughts and feelings have been upgraded to ridiculously important and all-consuming proportions. We have the identity of a thought imbued with itself, satisfied as it is to block the view to any deeper reality. It is ironical that the wonder and blessing of truth can be so effectively buried under the thin layer of a single thought about ourself. A thought that is so pervasive and convincing that few are the ones who have even the idea or curiosity of digging beyond it. But try it. A little probing works wonder.

Try to localise the shallow well of your illusory self. If you have to live your life from its vantage point, you might as well have a security check before embarking in such a serious journey. Is this all we are, this shallow thought that’s tossing itself about in our head? Is this all we are, this little body at the mercy of any impending death? Why such fatuous view about ourself? Was this beautiful mind of ours — that can behold the moon and the starry sky, that can fathom the silence and embrace the vision of beauty, the infinite expanse of love — was this mind created only to end up being likened to a thought? It really is a mystery that we have come to be satisfied with a shallow well, when we have at our hand the infinite and largely unexplored field of consciousness: that thing in us that is responsible for our very experiencing and without which no thing or being could ever exist or appear.

The idea we have about ourself is not our real self. We are satisfied with a vague representation, with a limited understanding. We don’t go all the way. We feel it okay to live our whole life — even build empires — without knowing who we are. But this essential knowledge of ourself should really be where we start our journey from. And a good look is worth many books of spiritual knowledge. We only have to notice that we have misplaced our focus. We have been seduced by the objectivity implied in the functioning of our sense perceptions. We feel we have to reach for ourself in the same way, and so we create this dubious sense of self as a projected idea. This mesmerisation is the shallow well — or shadow well — where we do nothing but go round and round in repeated circles of self-assumed ignorance. Only step aside once and you will realise that this thin paper-like layer of yourself is but a bundle of accumulated beliefs.

Only step aside once and you will realise that your self is a deep, unfathomable well that cannot be seen unless you merge with it and become of it. Feel your being as being that emptiness with no end. Be the aware quality behind your very seeing and hearing. Be this divine threshold of pure awareness. Don’t take refuge inside a shallow well. Realise its hidden depth. Relinquish the whimsical thought that stands in the way. Move just below or beyond this idea of and about yourself. There is some courage needed in this small death, but the reward is the path taken from limitation to freedom, from suffering to happiness, from death to immortality, from shallowness to infinity, from lie to truth, from pretending to truly being.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Edward Lear (1812-1888)

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Website:
– Edward Lear (Wikipedia)

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Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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The Essence of Life

Posted on by Alain Joly

We hardly ever listen to the sound of a dog’s bark,
or to the cry of a child or the laughter of a man as he passes by.
We separate ourselves from everything, and then
from this isolation look and listen to all things.
It is this separation which is so destructive,
for in that lies all conflict and confusion.
If you listened to the sound of those bells
with complete silence, you would be riding on it —
or, rather, the sound would carry you
across the valley and over the hill.
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Meditation is not a separate thing from life;
it is the very essence of life,
the very essence of daily living.

~ J. Krishnamurti (‘The Only Revolution’)

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Quote by J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986)

Photo by Alain Joly

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Bibliography :
– ‘Krishnamurti’s Notebook’ – by J. Krishnamurti – (Krishnamurti Publications of America, US)

Website:
– J. Krishnamurti

Suggestions:
– Beauty in Essence (other pointers from the blog)
– A Day at Brockwood Park (Homage to J. Krishnamurti)

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The Puzzled Self

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Bridges’ – Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, 1905 – WikiArt

We succumb to this original mistake again and again. That error has been enforced in the system through thousands of years of repetition, belief, conditioning, habit, and its illusory power has strengthened itself to the point of being a truth. The mistake is: we’re looking for something outside ourself. We’re reaching out. All the time. We’re craving for. We are deemed insufficient. Needy. In consequence, we have broken the world apart, have created chasms and distances, have invented time when it is not needed. We have made life into a battle and a struggle. We have given rise to suffering and confusion. And the worse of it, we have isolated ourself. We have projected everything that is not our body and mind as something that is ‘other’, different in nature, and have made that ‘other’ the only open source available for the rising and falling of happiness in ourself.

Quite a mouthful isn’t it? What an inextricable bundle we have created! And our self? Well, it has been reduced to something marginal, that forever needs to be reassured, consoled, fulfilled, aggrandised. We have created an insatiable monster that destroys everything in its path. Its hunger can never be satisfied. And its thirst is unquenchable. It will want to be forever filled. And that process will make us the target of unbelievable constraints. It will divide our world into fragments, and will scatter them around like a gigantic, incomplete jigsaw puzzle. With ourself being only one of its lost pieces. What a dreadful prospect! Well, we have made it ourself, all alone; and the responsibility for it goes nowhere but in the direction of our very own self. But don’t try to fix, arrange, mend, repair. Don’t go back in the wrong direction. Don’t go again after your lost happiness. Don’t do more of the same. There is no hero needed here. What’s needed is something a bit more subtle. And way easier believe me.

You have to look. Just to look. To look and to see. To look is on your part. To see is not. It’s a given. You have to look at your self, at all the scattered pieces of your self. And you have to remove just one element of the puzzle that acts like a wrongdoer, a confusing piece, the error in the system. Remove your well-rehearsed tendency to look for happiness outside yourself. Just take that possibility away from yourself. That’s the grain of sand that blocks everything, and engages you on a road a thousand-time trodden, to no avail. Feel the wonder of that one last element of escape out of the system. Nowhere to go. Nothing to be. Dare for once to look at that simple truth in the eyes, which is: you won’t find anything of value outside your own being. It all falls back on you now. The whole world. The thousand scattered pieces of yourself. The suffering. The confusion. The whole paraphernalia. Everything. On yourself. Then…

Then you will see that you are alone. All alone. Not isolated but alone. You will see what you truthfully are. You will see that you are made of one single piece that only works for and as your self. That piece is the missing element of your puzzle. The one that was unseen, forgotten, and which had been replaced with a clumsy, invented, unfitting one that placed your life into this unresolvable puzzle of suffering and loss. That piece is the unifying factor, the one that will make chasms into a bridge of Life, and your broken world into a fitting piece of Oneness. For that piece has a magical touch that will make every pieces of yourself fall back into place. For there were never any scattered fragments in your Self. There was only Being, the one and only owner of that which you are, and of all that which can possibly be. And that feeling of being, with its supreme knowing, is enough to give you the peace and happiness that you looked for in a thousand directions or scattered pieces. Being is your aloneness. And in that aloneness is the golden spring from where happiness is seen as your only possibility. That’s it. This is the given. What you needed to see… Puzzle completed!

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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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Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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The Great Replacement

Posted on by Alain Joly

You can always add to experience. You can always have more thoughts. Or different ones. More refined ones. Changes can always occur and always will. You can always fall down to the lowest of the lowest, and judge yourself undeserving. And that is more thoughts about yourself. You can always imagine anything. This is endless, all this activity. It will never stop. It will never reveal any truth worth of the name. It will keep going, headlessly, aimlessly, meaninglessly, like an illusion feeding on itself in order to give itself a seeming reality. Go anywhere in your objective experience, be it your feelings, your sensations, your perceptions, your body, the world out there, none of these will bring an inch of the happiness you are desperately running after. This enterprise is doomed to bankruptcy. It will leave you broke, feeble, mortal, prone to regular fits of unhappiness. It will leave you with not a penny of certainty, not a pebble of solidity, and a very little share of that life-giving energy which you are naturally entitled to. So what are we going to do now? We cannot stop thinking, feeling, perceiving, doing. We need a new comer in the picture. A special adviser. A rock of solidity in our changing sea of uncertainty. Who is going to win the game? When we have turned round and around the table for a new name, a new shareholder, another hope, another fake answer, another bout of shaking certainty, then maybe, it might dawn on us that:

The prodigal son is already at home. Everything we need is present within and without, here and there, now and then, enveloping our vey experience with its all pervading knowing. This something cannot be named, cannot be emptied of itself, and will not make the slightest effort for you. It was here all along, ignored, unnoticed, yet having the dimension of a sky, the solidity of a rock, and the certainty of something that was here before the coming of universes beyond universes. It is like discovering in yourself the wisest of gurus present at hand, in all circumstances. It is your eternal refuge waiting for you to come in. But beware now, for that unfailing refuge, that wisest of gurus, that beloved amongst the beloveds, is you. It is you, you understand? Not something to be reached. Not something far and away. You have nowhere to go, nothing to be, no time to wait for, except being your own unfailing, wise, beloved self. You are it all. Here. Now. Whatever. Whenever. Wherever. Release that old, worn out Chief Operating Officer of yours, and replace it with being. Look around now and relax. Being is all there is.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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On Parmenides

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The School of Athens’ – by Raphael, 1509 (fresco at the Vatican City) – Wikimedia

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“There is nothing,
and there will never be anything,
outside of being.”
~ Parmenides (trans. Francis Lucille)

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The Oxford Dictionary wrote this very concise description of Parmenides: “Greek philosopher. Born in Elea in south-western Italy, he founded the Eleatic school of philosophers. In his work ‘On Nature’, written in hexameter verse, he maintained that the apparent motion and changing forms of the universe are in fact manifestations of an unchanging and indivisible reality.” This statement is a quintessential definition of non-duality, and a summary of Parmenides’ work expressed as far as the early fifth century BC, in the cradle of western civilisation. The depth of understanding and vision required to make such statement has puzzled and influenced many a philosopher since, and has aroused the interest of countless spiritual seekers. This spiritual message is worth a good attention here.

Parmenides is the author of one single work, a poem of which only fragments have remained over the years. It survived because the around 800-verse original poem was abundantly quoted by his pairs, and could be re-formed in a shorter version, as known today, of 160 verses. His poem, today translated as ‘On Nature’, ‘On Reality’, or simply ‘Fragments’, is comprised of three parts of which the second and most important has survived in its almost entirety.

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A study of Parmenides’ statement of truth in his poem ‘On Nature’… (READ MORE…)

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