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)

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

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The Impossible Deed

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Pond in the wood’ – Albrecht Durer, 1496 – WikiArt


We are used to knowing. We have been trained in it, brainwashed with it, and drained by it. Knowing has been privileged at the expense of being. So we have become expert knowers, professional doers, but at being, we are infants, clumsy, penniless. We are without a self worth the name. We are homeless without knowing it. We are without a solid ground — a trembling, uncertain little thing living in the wilderness of objects, battling in the haziness of beliefs, having no place to truly be, to truly rest. We are a wanderer of ignorance, a nescient soul lacking the elementary knowledge of its own being.

But OK, I will give us that. I understand this urge to know. Knowing gives us a bright, shiny sense of self. A fantastic ego. It is rewarding. Being gives nothing, is completely unproductive. At least, so we think. But this knowing of our being is not any kind of knowledge. The will to know the ‘I’ is a sacred will, a holy endeavour. If we want to know ourself, we will come to know it. This is a desire that cannot be left unfulfilled. This knowledge cannot resist any serious enquiry. It will give in sooner than we think. But it is a hard one to desire. The difficulty resides in wanting to know. We shy away from that desire. There is something there we’d rather stay away from. We would rather know beforehand what we have to know, and remain on shallow land. We don’t want to rock the boat of our being. After all, this is where we stand. We don’t want to be swept away from our cherished ideas and beliefs, and be deprived of the security we have so dearly earned. We would rather stay a seeker of the known.

But try it now — to know yourself. And do it with your mind, with your usual knowing faculty. Go there, at the heart of your self. Decide it. Make it your goal: to know who or what you are. It doesn’t matter where you begin. But go not to the periphery, to that which you can know as an object. Go to the heart of your self, to that thing which you have called ‘I’ all your life. What is this ‘I’ that you are being all the time? This ‘I’ is never visited. But now is the day. Go there. Find out what it is. See that you will meet there like an impassable, impenetrable wall. You will find closed doors. All your knowing, your ego, your accumulations: this has made a blocking stone. This has barred the entry, has prevented all true seeing, all knowing worthy of the name. Feel that you cannot go there with your mind. But this impossibility is gold. So keep at it. Keep pushing. Don’t be shy. Use both shoulders if needed. Give it all the strength you have. It will recede. I promise you. Everything can be known. This is no exception.

Notice that what you come against is yourself. This impossibility of knowing the ‘I’ lies in your belief in being an entity. The knower is the obstacle, the impassable wall that bars the way. To know yourself is an impossible deed. You can never know who you are, because who you are is only contained in ‘you are’ — in the feeling of ‘I am’, of being. We are so unaware of our being. Being has been forgotten, relegated in the background, replaced by a knower, a doer, a busy self that insists on knowing who he or she is. But to know ourself, the knower has to first realise itself as being. To know is to be, and to be knowingly. This knowledge dips its reality in being. There is no knowing ourself without being first. Knowing here is only achieved through being, which is the knowing of ‘I’ without a knower. The will to know dissolves into being, which is the only knower there is and will ever be.

This knowledge is found in and as the being of the one who wants to know. You can only know who you are by being it, or rather by simply and only being. In that field of self-knowledge, being is knowing. Being is the knowing done without a knower, and therefore without an object known. It is a pure, unalloyed knowing. Everything you ever wanted to know, to be, attain, achieve, all the content of every sacred book, all happiness, all longings, is found in being, in that which you already are. Your amness is the gate code cracked. You will find who you are on the other side of knowing, which is being. And it is delivered with peace, which is the nature of being. This knowledge is the only knowledge that doesn’t take place in duality. It is achieved in the oneness implied in plainly being. So this impossible deed has now been transformed as the infinite being that we were all along, but had veiled through our insistence in being a knower of the known. We don’t know who we are with our knowing faculty. Ourself is the only thing we cannot know as an object. We know our identity through the fact of simply being. There is no other knowing than being. Being is what we are, without a single ripple of a knower knowing. Know that and you will be reborn as the unborn.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528)

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Website:
– Albrecht Dürer (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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