The Dream of a World

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Milton`s Mysterious Dream’ (part) – William Blake, 1816-20 – WikiArt

There is a fraud in our life. An illusion that makes us feel that life is going to get better. That time or circumstance will bring us to a place of understanding, where our troubles will come to an end, where there will be betterment, improvement, change. To believe this will make us miss that we are already here and now in a place of no change, of no betterment, where nothing can improve or get better. This place is our very self, our sense of being that we have never been able to affect or modify, no matter how relentless our life has been, no matter our despair, our sorrow, our losses. Nothing we have gone through has touched it in any way. All our stories and sufferings have taken the shape of our thoughts and beliefs about them. But while we are desperately trying to give a form to our life, a solidity to our body, a reality to our problems, and a truth to our beliefs, right here and now, right where it all is seemingly taking place, hidden within experience, enveloping it all, is already a presence, a vastness, a reality that is embracing everything, and that is our only reality, our only place, our only possible self in this living experience.

For there is not a world there where we could be in. That would be a lovely idea, but the fact is: there is no possibility to prove the existence of such a world. We can only assert it, marvel at it through our senses, study it, analyse it, but of a solid proof there is none. The existence of a world is dependent on our perceiving it, and perceptions are contained in our knowing them. Without the knowing faculty, there cannot be a world. The whole glory and misery of the world, of the whole universe, is all gathered in that fathomless fraction of knowing, or awareness. Without that simple, ungraspable, dimensionless, ethereal element of knowing, no world could ever come into existence. So in fact, knowing is all there is, consciousness is the essence of every single appearance that comes to be seen, heard, touched, or experienced. The world is shaped, or its appearance created, through our being aware of it. So the whole of our living experience is but a dream in consciousness, a game that can be played and enjoyed at the level of our body-mind, but whose reality is only the awareness of it.

Now, where are we if we are not in a world? Where are we if the world is not even there? What is this something that we feel we are in, and exists, and is undoubtedly? What is a world, an experience, when we have passed through all illusions, all beliefs, all shaky appearances? What is left here that holds our experience, that is indomitable, indestructible, present without a shadow of doubt? This place is our self, what we are, our very essence, the reason behind our saying ‘I’. So we live in our self, not in a world. We see our limited existence pass and consume itself within that which is creating it, which is our own aware being, the knowing that we are and could never not be. And there, in ourself, in being, where the world takes its apparent form, is found what we have been looking for in every direction, in a non-existing world, in experience: a sense of relief, peace, beauty, love, and the understanding of our essence, the explanation of it all. An explanation that is not conceptual, but a living one, a subjective one, something made plain by being it. We and life then become self-explanatory. The fraud has been diluted. All imagination has died down. Now our living experience has acquired the rawness of truth. Something that is, unlike the world or our experience, beyond doubt and absolute.

.

~~~

Text by Alain Joly

Painting by William Blake (1757-1827)

~~~

.

Website:
– William Blake (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

.

A Treasure of Understanding

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Dawn’ – Joseph Farquharson, 1903 – WikiArt

There is no such a thing as conceptual understanding in matters of spirituality. As soon as we form an idea, a concept, an image, a projection about ourself, we are still where we have always been: in our mind, in the known, in grounds we have already trodden a thousand times. These grounds are the grounds of our misunderstanding, where beliefs have already shaped and conditioned the idea we have about ourself. An idea that we rehearse and consolidate with every thought or act springing out of the field of our conceptual world. No understanding can ever come from this barren field. For one good, essential reason, which is that our understanding comes from only being. Being is the field of our understanding. Being is understanding itself. And the mind — with the ego which it gives rise to — is the only thing that is hindering our coming in contact with being in its purest form. That’s why concepts and ideas can never be understanding itself. They hide our clarity. In fact, they trample it.

So, should you ever want to come in contact with the pristine vibe contained in understanding, then a little digging is a necessary prerequisite. Don’t stay in your mind, take a new breath, be an explorer. You may use the tool of mind as you use a spear to dig a treasure. But please don’t take the spear for the treasure. This treasure is the treasure of being that stands unseen below the surface of your wrestling with concepts and ideas. Don’t let being be undermined by the description or explanation of the method. A beautiful image of truth will never be truth itself. It won’t hold the true taste of it. You won’t get its exquisite perfume, unless you see what stands under your mind and your ego. Understand your being by being only being. Throw the spear out. Finish the digging with your bare hands if required. Be yourself your treasure.

You come to an understanding when you stand under everything that is appearing or forming in your experience. Being is what stands under. It is the one thing that doesn’t change, that can never die or dis-appear, and out of which everything objective or knowable come into existence, and is under the scrutiny of your senses. But objective experience can never lead you to any understanding. Not out of its own will. You have to coerce yourself, make your own acquired, conceptual idea of reality recede and reveal its illusory, invented nature. You have to make what was, what will be, what should be, and what seems to be, into what is. That’s where understanding lives, in what is, in the here and now of your essential being. Understanding is implicit to being, and being explicit in understanding. Feel your being in its purest form, and see that you are yourself the understanding that you have craved to achieve through your mind.

So being stands under your apparent self which, in its light, is discovered to be non-existent, or rather only existent as being. That being is your true support, deserving all your praises. Actually, it is the support of everything, the great pervader — that’s why some have called it the creator. Not that it creates while being outside of its creation, but rather it is the substantial essence of everything — what makes a world possible and viable. So to understand yourself is to touch this essence through your being it, and to praise that part of yourself which you can never not be with, and which comes with a special flavour of well-being. That’s how you feel your true nature, through that subtle yet indestructible joy of simply being, which your never satisfied body-mind-self could never give you other than fleetingly. Understanding as being comprehends everything. It holds and embraces all life in the fullness of its presence. So to understand is to rest in your natural being, which requires no commenting or even understanding. You are, and this is that.

.

~~~

Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Joseph Farquharson (1846-1935)

~~~

.

Website:
– Joseph Farquharson (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

.

A False Impression

Posted on by Alain Joly

There is an impression that I am the one who knows, or is aware. But this is a false impression and an unfortunate one. In fact, we as a body-mind don’t know anything, for the good reason that there is no one here that is in charge of the knowing. We don’t have this ability. It is not for us to know anything. Knowing doesn’t belong to an individual, separate self. We owe our knowing to something that knows us first, and lends us that potential. That really gives a totally different perspective to our existence, and grants us a gorgeous humbleness: Knowing is without a knower. The knower is but a set of thoughts that we have superimposed on awareness. It is entirely made up. It is of our invention, to give us a wee importance — after all, we all want a little attention. Knowing is in the nature of being. And being is the nature of everything. Knowing is all there is. It is the light of our world, indissociable from our experience. We as selves are just shadows. Everything is dancing and taking place without our being in any way party to it. At best, we are just a colouring, a point of view, an avatar governed by some divine rules which we have perilously chosen to ignore. This is our feebleness: wanting to own and appropriate, being more than what we already are. But in doing so, we have in fact belittled ourself. We have made ourself separate from the life we live in. We have created a self where there is none. We have awakened the devil of suffering in us.

So leave the knowing in some more skilful hands. It will spare you a lot of trouble and misunderstanding. You won’t have to be a person — all the heaviness contained in it. You won’t have to be a self that knows, but knowing will appear to be your one and only self — the entirety of your being. This pure and sublime knowing will give a measure of beauty and happiness in your life. It will encompass everything. It will widen your perspective and make you profoundly secure. You will know your being with precision and clarity, and live both in remoteness and intimacy — remoteness for a serene view on your experience, and intimacy for the delight contained in oneness. And love will be your everyday companion, the deepest essence of your being. And you will be clothed in understanding, which you believed could be achieved through your being a knower. Not at all. Understanding comes when you cease being a self, a knower, when you let go of all identities and egoistic purposes. Then it comes: the understanding — the knowing that knowing is all there is, and that you don’t need to be any more than that. So learn to keep at bay all private, egoistic desires to be anything other than this impersonal, undivided presence of yourself, that has the capacity of being and knowing. You have no need to be a knower, or a doer of anything in your life. Let the show run by itself. Only give it your golden, loving indifference. That’s the most glorious thing you can do in this life. You will be showered by the benefits of it.

.

~~~

Text and photo by Alain Joly

~~~

.

Read this essay from the blog ‘The Impossibility of Knowing’…

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

.

The Scrutiny of Now

Posted on by Alain Joly

You cannot understand truth in the future. For one good reason which is simply: there is no such thing as a future. The future is forever doomed to be a projection of thought. In reality, you will never meet anything that is not now. You are eternally married to the now as presence. The now is where you are, when you are, and also what you are. The now is encircling you from all directions, and you are bound to it, caught in its perpetual enchantment. So if you long to understand who you are, look at yourself now. Don’t postpone it for another moment that exists only in your imagination. To postpone truth is to never come anywhere near it. Understanding will never happen in another place than the place where you happen to be now. Now is your cathedral of understanding. You are being showered by its benefits every time you look for its presence within, for this presence of now is nothing but who you are, what you are. So if you think of the now as a moment that exists outside or independently of yourself, you haven’t looked well enough. For you are in fact the now. I mean it: you, the totality of who you are, your purest essence, is that thing which is called, amongst various other names, now. The now is that which you refer to when you say simply ‘I’. I know it doesn’t look like it, but you actually draw your identity from the now, for there exists nothing under the sun but this timeless presence whose place of living is in and as the now. This is why you can only understand yourself now. No other moment is fit for it, for any other moment is nothing but your hiding place, your desperate attempt to avoid drowning into the timelessness of now.

So don’t ever run away from now. Face it now — the now. Don’t think you can meet it again tomorrow. Now is a rendezvous that you can never miss. It will happen only once, which is now. But the good news is that you have never been anywhere but now. You are under the scrutiny of now. You live by its rule. Only you have to see that, and to see it now. Don’t think about it, for any thought you may have about anything — including the now — belongs to the past or the future, which actually don’t exist outside thought. Don’t think that you live separate from the now, as an entity bound to the effects of time. So let us not be so malleable, so easily cheated on. We all play so many tricks to avoid being now — which we are anyway, and anyhow. Oh! The silliness of it all — that constant stepping away from that which we are; that repeated removal from our being simply now; and the fear and suffering involved in not abiding as and by the now. The effort that it takes — to be away from home, displaced, a self in denial of its true and inescapable identity, refusing to die in the grip of truth. ‘Not now! Not now!’ Well, ok… But when if not now? Truth is for every-where and for every-when. It has no place to live outside of now. We are an ocean of presence that is so inevitably present and pregnant, that it appears to be not here. The reason is: it has lent its being to timelessness. Now is the Eternal that we have mistakenly taken to be a moment. A mishap that hides only one thing: Myself — the ‘I’ that is the now, for times eternal.

.

~~~

Text by Alain Joly

Photo by Elsebet Barner

~~~

.

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

.

The Reluctant Messiah

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Christ on the Mount of Olives’ – Paul Gauguin, 1889 – Wikimedia

.

“Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me:
nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”
~ Luke, 22:42

.

Maybe it is more serious than you think. Maybe the line has been crossed without your noticing. Maybe there is no return to being what you imagined to be: A self, a person, self-contained in a body, armed with all the thoughts needed to represent you. Maybe there is no memory left of this old belief, and that you have to let it all go, all the kaleidoscope of separation, all the daunting suffering, all the interplay and thrill contained in being just one piece in the puzzle of life. Now all pieces have been joined to fade into one single presence with no pieces in it, a presence that you have espoused, that you have recognised to be your home — inherited and inhabited since before the dawn of time. Now you may have to move in with fear and reverence, for living in that new identity has consequences. It might transform you beyond your recognising, and in more drastic ways than you had expected.

It might shatter your dearest hopes and expectations, that were here in your heart, entertained to the point of cultivation. It might give you what you have sought all along, and stop dead every single desire for an ‘other’ to satisfy and fulfil you. It might demolish a dream, and disintegrate the map of yourself, that described who you were in such lively, never-ending details. It might silence you, when you so much enjoyed the delightful babbling of your anxious mind. And I won’t mention all your intimately held treasures of belief, all your ideas and opinions, that have put together that carefully built image of yourself: how they might be dampened, damaged, discarded for being found redundant.

[…]

Read more about how our resistance can be made into surrender… (READ MORE…)

.

The Harvest of Understanding

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Harvest’ – Zinaida Serebriakova, 1910 – WikiArt

There is a time to retire into yourself. There, is a cavern of knowing and being that was left unexplored, silenced, unable to adorn your life with its presence. This hide is where peace resides, and where life finds its shine and gold. It wasn’t kept secret. Only you needed to abandon an erroneous idea about yourself that had been polished with centuries of conditioning, so that took a little probing. Finally this cavern of being is met with the light of your understanding. And this light is discovered to recede yet another jewel. Happiness. The gentle peace of living, made beauty when your eyes embrace the world, and rendered as love in the company of another being. It is a simple realisation — rare enough I concede — but nevertheless within reasonable reach for whoever is willing to give his or her heart to it. Now the story doesn’t quite end there. For you will be tempted to indulge in your new discovery. The comfort of your newly found home is mesmerising, and you will be drawn to keep yourself cozy in the embrace of your own being. And it is fine, even necessary to a certain point. You need to get accustomed to the new light of your being. But then is when you should finally be kicked out…

There is a time for knowing, and a time to make a harvest out of it. There is a time to equate pure being with the world, to feel it as yourself, to make the transfer, enjoy the catch, go beyond the riddle. This is ultimate realisation. Don’t forget to transform the knowing of your own being into the pure delight and intelligence of being a luminous self in an enlightened world. Be the human that you were meant to be, that you had wanted to be all your life. In fact, we were never given a chance to be a true human. We have been one in the waiting. Only in and as God’s presence can you be made a true human being, an accomplished, apparent individual. One that is so, not for its objective qualities, but in reason of its sublime subjectivity. It is not an impossible attainment. It is here, now, just as you are, no matter the life you happen to have, or the person you believe yourself to be. Make your life proud of itself. Register that your self is gorgeous. Not just the light of pure being that you are of all eternity, but also that very body-mind, here, in this world. I think it is important to live as if. To be again just a human living in a world. Not to keep re-enacting unceasingly the realisation of your identity as pure being. Be yourself a living meditation. Let your life take the fresh wind of true being into a living practice. Give god a chance to wear the clothes of your human experience. Don’t forget the old Zen saying, “In the beginning, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; later on, mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers; and still later, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.”

There is a hidden reward concealed in experiencing the humility contained in being just a human in the world. This is how you will feel truly. This is how you will love sweetly, and register beauty beyond understanding. This is how you experience true relationship with others. This is how any moment can become a thrilling new adventure, never to be repeated again. And this is how you will come to experience the special grace contained in thinking and feeling, in having a body, in living in a world. The best wine is only so because of the exquisiteness of its taste. Drink life, drink love, through every pores of your body, through every windows of your feelings and perceptions. Experience it from a promontory freed from the constraint of beliefs. Choose love over wisdom. Your understanding will grow exponentially out of this second incarnation. God hasn’t done all this tiresome work of bodies and world if it wasn’t to build a beautiful home for you to live in. Engage your being in every aspect of your experience. Don’t leave the world aside. Yes, the world is often ugly, ridden with conflict and every kind of suffering, degraded, and often a dangerous place to be. But it may well turn out to be our paradise, if we upgrade it with and as the presence of our true self. It is not a selfish thing to enjoy. It is in fact a selfless act to be a servant of peaceful being. And remember that wherever you are and act can be a haven for everything and everyone coming in your echo chamber. For being attracts being. Be yourself a haven of life. Incarnate the teaching that was passed on to you — that’s how you pass it on to others. Make it a thing. Reap the enjoyment of it. Feel your participation in the world. Let your human experience be soaked with being. Make god resplendent.

.

~~~

Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Zinaida Serebriakova (1884-1967)

~~~

.

Website:
– Zinaida Serebriakova (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

.

Meditation Time

Posted on by Alain Joly

Okay. Now find a good place for yourself and sit down comfortably. Close your eyes. You are about to engage in your daily meditation. But don’t meditate today. For meditation was never meant to be an activity that a self performs. It never was for the person. Meditation is a space of supreme humility in which you notice your own redundancy as a self. It is the natural and unequivocal place of being in which no meditator is necessary, or even wanted. Your presence as a self will prevent it. It will sabotage your meditation. And this beautiful, selfless presence that you are will retreat in the background, unable to truly flower, crushed by the pretence contained in your wilful act of meditating. There is nothing to attain in this moment. Nothing to achieve. So forget about being a meditator.

Don’t meditate today. Why should you? Let your own presence reveal itself to you. Let it gently notice itself, rather than you striving to notice it. You are already a master of presence, so why should you be meditating? Be contented with only being as you are. That will suffice. See that the meditator in you has now shrunk to the size of a little voice erring purposelessly in the infinite space of your presence. Feel that you are but a dead, brittle leaf falling to the ground of your true being, pushed by the winds of understanding, attracted by the inescapable laws of truth. Notice that your meditation has no need for a meditator. See that your natural self as being doesn’t even comprehend the necessity of meditation. To meditate literally means to ‘contemplate’, ‘measure’, ‘assess’ [what is already here]. This is the ultimate meaning hidden behind that word.

So don’t meditate today. Why should you? Who told you so? Be the one that is beyond the possibility of meditation. Be seated in your unreserved, natural self, where you are already bathing under the sun of your own being. And should you feel an emotion, be reminded that it is but a brisk shower of rain falling in the wide expanse of your nature. And should you feel the limits of your body and sense perceptions, be reminded that they are but a wild and beautiful land appearing in your infinite self, that awaits your ploughing, and seeks your nurturing. Meditation is that space of being which you are of all eternity. It will never leave you, nor can it do so. This ultimate, eternal being is the warm bath of your self, already achieved, and in no need to be practiced. And the meditator has been irrevocably absorbed in it, diluted in this small death.

.

~~~

Text and photo by Alain Joly

~~~

.

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

.