Sunday, October 11, 2009

Finally Home

Once all the myths surrounding spirituality are played with a bit and then discarded, once the special states and powers of the enlightened are coveted and eventually recognized to be false, a new openness is arrived at.

The material gains and positions in life have lost their shine.  No matter what has been achieved, nothing has filled that hole.  Nothing has bridged that gap we know and try to cross through spirituality.  At some point a seriousness comes in, a new desire which swallows up all these peripheral desires, a fatigue at playing the spiritual games.  This desire is the desire for freedom, the desire to know your Self, without the garbage dragged along through a lifetime of seeking.

At once a new earnestness comes in - a willingness to reach beyond the set of issued beliefs, the default assumptions which carve out what we call "existence".  No longer is there immediate discarding of these direct pointers but a new appetite for them, using them like a sharp tool which cuts through the amassed knowledge and translations from which we live.

A new freedom comes in, a freedom to question everything, a freedom to seriously question each and every thought.  It changes from a general wide floodlight in which we wade to a sharp spotlight shone upon the very root or foundation of our very existence.

We begin to question the very essence of all living and seeking - the idea that I am an individual, that I am a person, a human being, a separate and temporary entity.  Although this idea is quite depressing, that I come into existence and wait for the time I will die, it's held onto with all our might, simply because, even though it's a doomed existence, it's all we know.  We supplant that fear and anxiety with the generated beliefs in an afterlife, in reincarnation, and from there we get hooked on religious dogma.

We may turn to Vedanta, but it matters not what it is.  Anything which makes us seriously question what we have taken on in the form of beliefs will do.  Anything which kicks us in the gut, slaps us in the face hard enough, wakes us up to the daydream, the spellbinding nature of imagination, will do.

That's why Vedanta is sometimes called "an occasion for doubt".

We know that something exists.  Something IS.  Yet we do not know what it is.  The mind races and expertly constructs a world, yet to do so requires the existence of separate parts.  The existence of those separate parts, this idea of "thingness" is entirely imagination.  Nothing exists separately.  This computer, this desk, this room, this house, this planet, this universe - all of these things are only mental separations, concepts, divisions in mind only but not in Reality.

Reality is One, one Wholeness, which cannot be divided by the mind.  This Wholeness is all there is, and this Wholeness is not found elsewhere - it is only ever THIS, right here and now.  Any part, any piece which the mind creates, a chair, a tree, a body, a molecule, a cell - any part is a conceptual creation, not an actual separation.

When we are looking as an individual, there is a necessity for these parts to be real, simply because if they were not real "things", then the very individual who is looking would also not be real.  Therefore this idea of "thingness" is critical to the idea of the individual, and vice versa.

The individual person is entirely a creation of imagination and assumption.  It cannot be found.  It was learned and taken on as true, yet it crumbles the instant it's seriously questioned.

So what changes?  In one way, everything.  Yet in a very concrete way, nothing at all changes.  The very mechanism of this dualistic conceptualization is necessary for Reality to know itself.  So I am writing a blog, you are reading it.  There is the experience of an individual, yet that experience is known with conviction to be a creation of conceptualization, of imagination.  Therefore it can go on doing it - whatever comes is already THAT - whatever arises is simply a matter of the potentiality of Reality, of existence, expressing itself in many ways, yet never once dividing itself.

It's here until it's not.  And while it's here, it's perfect.  It's a perfect manifestation of Reality - we may say it's Oneness expressing itself as manyness.

We may say the essence is Life - that Intelligence which IS the form AND functioning of the universe - that Intelligence known as the planet and the cell, the quark and the cloud, the tree and the galaxy.

Or we may say nothing at all.

So as we walk outside, look up at the trees, the clouds, the planets - Life is literally looking at itself.  ME-seeing becomes Life seeing.  ME-seeing becomes Seeing-Oneness, yet that is also too much.

We sometimes just say - what you are is the SEEING itself.

If that earnestness comes - the falseness of imagination will stand no chance, because this reality of separate parts is of flimsy construction, entirely mind-made.  The mind will turn upon itself, devour itself, look beyond itself until all it can find is complete stillness and silence - it is that unchanging, indefinable background which is the Absolute Reality, staring back at it.

If that earnestness is strong, if the mind has finally had enough, then it will not retreat.  It will at once recognize that it is, after all, finally home.

9 comments:

jimmymc said...

Been reading your blog for some time, but my first comment.

Thank you Randall

Randall Friend said...

Hi Jimmy,

Good to hear from you, my friend..


love
randall

Lune said...

What a gorgeous post choc full of fullness; the last line sings.

"It's here until it's not."

Nothing more can be added to this.

Thank you,
Lune x

Anonymous said...

Very well put Randall.........
"Any part, any piece which the mind creates, a chair, a tree, a body, a molecule, a cell - any part is a conceptual creation, not an actual separation."

How simple, a conceptual creation not an actual separation.

Mulla said...

Hi Randall

Very nicely put. I also, as the last comment by Anonymous mentioned, find what you said, "Any part, any piece which the mind creates, a chair, a tree, a body, a molecule, a cell - any part is a conceptual creation, not an actual separation" a beautiful pointer.

I also would like to make the following comment:

The nature of light, that of reflection and refraction is what makes a mirage in the desert possible. That very nature is what makes the seeing of real water from afar possible also and it is what saves us from dying by not going off in a random search for water depending on our sense of touch only.
The same mind that leads to separation also leads to the recognition of separation and its limitation in the face of reality and it is also the same mind that comes to a stop, having reached the end of its tether, stands aside and let reality be.

Isn't this what you meant when you said;"The very mechanism of this dualistic conceptualization is necessary for Reality to know itself. So I am writing a blog, you are reading it. There is the experience of an individual, yet that experience is known with conviction to be a creation of conceptualization, of imagination. Therefore it can go on doing it - whatever comes is already THAT - whatever arises is simply a matter of the potentiality of Reality, of existence, expressing itself in many ways, yet never once dividing itself."

Love to you
Mulla

Steve said...

We live, no one dies (you would have to be alive to know you are dead), but for many, life is miserable and I would suppose it is only the inbuilt biological urge for survival (and fear of the process of dying) that causes us to justify continuing..
This is the human condition - who would choose to be born?

Anonymous said...

Steve,

The point of all this isn't to be able to describe your experience or the world in a different way or to give reason to anything. All the logic you just used in your response can be countered with other logic. It is pointless to go on like that, an endless endeavor.

You don't know of the "inbuilt biological urge for survival" unless you are thinking about it and taking it to be true. Taken to be true, it filters your experience and seems to reinforce the belief. "Oh look that dog over there moved out of the way of the car. It must have an inbuilt biological urge to survive." But that belief isn't true. It's just a thought taken to be true. Who knows why the dog moved?

The point of all this is to leave all the descriptions of and reasons for experience behind and just let it all be the way it is. Experience as it is... before the explanation. Let your explaining relax from its hyperactive state. It's very nice to just let all the thinking calm down.

-Chauncey B.

Anonymous said...

Randall,

This is all very simple, right?

There is no separation?

Any entity or object including "I" is just a simple, harmless concept?

The presence of awareness (what allows me to say I know, or I am, I) is always here, never moving or touched, solid, regardless of what appears or not, never separated at all?

I suppose I always expected the personal "I" to be something difficult to crack or something that I just couldn't see through. But in plain looking, it's already just not here. The concept itself is even so insignificant.

I expected that when separation was "seen through," everything would suddenly be different. But there's already no separation.

This is all correct, right?

-Edgar W.

Randall Friend said...

Edgar,

YES! Very well said.

"I expected that when separation was "seen through," everything would suddenly be different. But there's already no separation."

Exactly correct!

So what IS, is IT. Whatever THIS IS, is IT. THIS is nondual reality. It's only separate in this conceptualization, interpretation of mind, translation....

And that translation is THIS also.

There can only be one totality, one wholeness. You, the "real" you, are THAT.


love
randall