Your Self at Play

What are you presently aware of?

The first answer you give is already false.  Any answer is born from memory, from accumulated, relative knowledge.  The word used is entirely arbitrary - it could have been called anything.  This learned knowledge is not absolute - it is subject to re-definition, to re-interpretation.  Once the world was seen as flat - it was seen as the center of the universe.  This was absolute until someone took a boat to the edge or developed a telescope strong enough.

The world you take as real, made up of things, is entirely false.  It is merely a changing totality - if we must call it anything we can call it Consciousness, as Consciousness is the totality of it.  This world of things and people comes anew each morning and passes without a trace at night.  What we CALL Consciousness IS itself the world - in fact you never see anything BUT Consciousness. 

Consciousness is not a property of an individual - the individual is a relative appearance IN Consciousness.  Is this not the most obvious fact?  Without Consciousness this individual cannot be formulated, conceptualized, the various sensations and perceptions cannot be put together in a sweeping imagination and called "ME".

We can narrow the definition of reality down to two things - You and Consciousness.  YOU are that which knows Consciousness, including all that comes with it - the imagination which creates the idea of "World".  Yet what we CALL Consciousness is not actually apart from YOU.  When we look at it this way, it might become clear that Consciousness is simply a movement of that presence, a wave of that present ocean of knowing.  For Consciousness is not a thing apart from YOU.  It is simply a shadow of the absolute reality that you are.

Nothing needs to be done except to give up the relative definitions, the imagination which is taken for absolute reality.  When the appearances of Consciousness are no longer attached to, when the various changing attributes, the names and forms, are no longer taken as independent things but aspects of the totality, there is the possibility to recognize the wholeness of your Self.

Then that Self is not special, not new, not some spiritual revelation but the most ordinary and obvious reality.  It always has been this way, only it was taken as separate, a world of independent things.

All you ever know is Consciousness - and Consciousness is simply your own Self at play.

The easiest puzzle

No questions need answered.  No experience needs to come.  No realization is required.

Reality is one, one happening, one potentiality, one IS-ness.

The only way to grasp it is to not grasp.  The only way to find it is to be it.

The only way to see it is to be the seeing.  But you cannot DO that because you already ARE that.

Only the imagination about what you are falls away.

Without imagination reality has no walls, no borders, no separation.  Without imagination reality has no individuals, no lives, no deaths.

Without imagination reality has no subject nor object, although even the descriptions, in which subject and object are put, are not other than reality.

It's like the eye trying to see the eye or the finger trying to touch itself.  It is a puzzle which only has one piece.

It is so close it cannot be apprehended.  It is not hidden but the most obvious thing you've ever known.

Stop - you're looking in the wrong place.  Any place is the wrong place.  Any thing is the wrong thing.

Look where no one can possibly look and you will find what never needed finding.

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The person is a product of imagination

What do you actually know? 

There is present Oneness - undivided Reality.  That's already the case.  Reality is nondual.  It doesn't need to be reached.  It doesn't need to be MADE nondual.

That present Oneness is conceptually divided beginning with the knowledge of existence - I AM - as soon as that recognition that you exist comes - it's a conceptual division.  I AM cannot be grasped by the mind as Oneness or Wholeness - therefore all that is NOT ME comes in as imagination.  That imagining is the root of limitation, lack, because to assert something other is to limit what you are.

Then there must be a quantification of reality - we must know what it is.  We must define it, label it.  So present reality is divided conceptually - we call it sensation/perception.  Experience.  And an experience must have an experienc-er.  Therefore reality is given an equation to make sense of it - subject/object.

That is an object and "I" am the subject. 

That "I" then must be defined.  What is it?  Imagination must be used to say.  That "I" is a person, a soul or spirit, an entity which came as part and parcel of this body-mind. 

But wait - what is the body or mind?  We haven't yet defined them.  This nondual reality must be sliced and diced even further to make some intellectual sense of it.  There are present sensations - experiences - a bundle of feelings - THAT must be the body.  There are various patterns - language - those are "thoughts".  We've now given a label, a name, a way of making it more comfortable because now we believe we know what it is.  It's no longer a mystery.  It makes intellectual sense.

So here we are, persons living in this body-mind, living in a world of things.  Now we're comfortable - we have it all figured out.  But along with these definitions, these quantifications, these translations of reality, there is by default a sense of limitation.  To define yourself this way naturally creates a division or limitation - you limit yourself by all that you are not.

So the spiritual search comes - now we want to find out what we are - we've long-since forgotten it was all conceptual, all imagination in order to make sense of it, to wrap borders around everything to obscure the inherent mystery and stillness.  We want to BECOME whole, because AS a thing, a defined entity, we are not whole. 

But we cannot BECOME it.  It was always only imagination.  It was always only conceptual, a translation, an interpretation of nondual reality. 

Reality is already nondual.  There is no making it so.  In applying any definition or concept there is a concurrent limitation imposed.  Simply recognize this inclination to describe reality.

Seeking nonduality is absurd.  What form or practice can change the inherent nature of reality?  What experience can reveal Oneness when an experience is by definition the opposite of Oneness?

What you are seeking is already the case.  Can there ever be a point when the individual person finds Oneness?  It's an impossibility.  The person is a product of imagination.

This Life Story

Realization of your true nature is very easy.  Simply give up all ideas about yourself that you have.  This isn't just roles or accomplishments, but the very life story which has been the center of everything you have ever known.

For this life story is a story of a phantom, a false character, a fictional individual who was born and is headed towards death.  This life story includes all goals, attachments, likes and dislikes, successes and failures.  This life story includes every other person imagined to be in existence. 

This life story holds no reality - it is a projection of memory, a figment of imagination.  The very individual you have taken yourself to be is in fact not real at all, outside of the appearance of various sensations and other objective experiences.

You are not an experience - you are the experiencing itself, the light by which all experiences are illuminated, known.  The experiencing includes all ideas of an object experienced and a subject experiencer.  Both arise as concepts within the present non-conceptual presence of awareness.

Realization is not for the individual - as an individual you are on a dead-end street.  It is only when the individual is examined honestly and anything which is objective is discarded, that the fragrance of realization is found. 

That fragrance is not presently hidden or difficult.  It is the most obvious aspect of this very moment.  Although experiences have come and gone, changed constantly, this present light or subjective presence is intimately known at all times.  It is ignored because it is so obvious and ordinary.  Yet it is the limitless realization which you've spent a lifetime pursuing.

This limitlessness is not a product of the spiritual search.  You aren't going to find it anywhere.  It isn't going to arrive anew.  It is the very foundation of each and every moment. 

Look to this moment and nowhere else.  Recognize what it is about yourself which is always here and never changes.  That presence doesn't require a search.  All that is required is to give up all ideas you have about yourself, realize the falseness of the life story, and be what you already are.

Ever-present and perfect.

Enlightenment is the absence of the seeker

No matter what experience comes, the undeniable fact remains that you are here and aware of it.  It's very existence isn't absolute - it's existence depends on your being aware - your presence, which really is the same thing.

In spirituality we are focused on the experiences, reaching or achieving a special state, some rare experience.  To achieve this goal we feel we must manipulate the world, the body or mind.  This common belief is exactly the wrong direction.

THAT you are here and aware is the realization.  So-called liberation isn't getting something new.  It's a seeing-through of the very idea of the individual - that individual is itself bondage, limitation.  It's noticing that the individual or sense of individual self is an idea, a thought, a story, a feeling, an objective experience. 

You remain, as always, present and aware - aware of that experience - that experience of limited self.  The experienc-er is limitless, because it isn't definable.  It has no structure, no image, no quality other than it is obviously whole, complete and perfect already.  It requires no manipulation.  It is not in need of improvement to reach some pie-in-the-sky state of enlightenment.

That aware presence or presence-awareness IS itself the enlightenment which is sought after.  And it's discovery isn't in the pursuit - it's found in the absence of pursuit or seeking.

It's found in the absence of the SEEKER.  In fact, it's already here.  Enlightenment isn't in need of finding.  Looking for it creates the seeker.

And even that is perfect.