Friday, May 7, 2010

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.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Hammer! Sucked me in again... :)

Don't know how you could make it any clearer than this.

su said...

:)

Randall Friend said...

What is being sought after is already present, it is the necessary foundation for the search to even happen. No search can find what is already present and obvious?

To seek it is to overlook it.

The proper spiritual search is only to discard what is false, to realize what is imagination and what is reality.

Mike is imagination.


love to you
randall

Shamash said...

Thanks for your website and online virutal stuff. Love the pointers :)
I like your last line - ever present and perfect - I think that says it all, and that's all that needs to be heard in the end.

My blog's over at http://youareawarenes.blogspot.com
Check it out and I'd be happy to share links with you if you like it!

Best wishes,
Shamash

Julian said...

We just come looking for fresh air and we find it here always. Until we learn to use our own lungs - which are not ours, so we shouldn't really worry - we seem to keep coming.

JP

Randall Friend said...

Shamash,

Yes, and even that's too much.


love to you
randall

Randall Friend said...

Julian,

Recall the gold chain, which seeks to know it's true nature. Can the chain, which is nothing but gold, find gold? Does an appearance of gold itself become anything separate from gold?

It is not chain which realizes it's essence is gold. It is gold which realizes it was never bound by the name, form and appearance called "chain".


love
randall

Anonymous said...

Maybe I've been at this too long because this interaction between what seems to be those who have it and those that don't no longer makes sense.
I look at these sites that address the subject of "non duality" and I see common themes such as
"There is no one that is searching and nothing to search for" or "you are not what changes but that which is always here and never changes".
What I wonder is that if there is the awareness of oneness, of presence, the realization that there is no other, why bother to say anything about it.
It seems like its a done deal at that point. Yet web sites such as this continue to post
dialog that address this apparent dichotomy of those who haven't realized and those that have. If there is the realization of oneness which is the
"the peace that surpasses all understanding" why not just shut up and enjoy it.

Randall Friend said...

Jeffrey,

It is the mind which needs a purpose. There is no purpose to it.

Looking at a world of separate individuals, some who "have it" and some who don't, is the root illusion. Without it, can a question as to why sites like this exist even arise?

Instead of trying to figure out why, look to that which you cannot deny about yourself, that which never changes, that which is always here - despite the various experiences.

That presence requires no purpose nor does it require some nonduality website. If that true nature is recognized and the imagination of individuality is seen through, there will be no impulse to question such things.


love
randall

Unknown said...

Hi Randall,

Thanks for the pointers. I'm fairly new to these perspectives, speaking here as the provisonally accepted independent entity I, of course, am not (to get that out of the way).

Here is a couple of things:

I see these suggestions and variations of them on all websites and blogs that we do something- inquire into, rest as, look into, realize this, and most frequently, give up this. Stop that. Give up seeking. Stop the search.

All of this assumes that there is an independent entity that can do something, do they not? Is this not "the search, the seeking"? How can I stop the seeking by seeking?

It seems to me that all is awareness and I am an appearance in awareness, as is everything - everything arising from nothing. And if this is true (Awareness as subject and everything that arises as subject-object with no separation) then Awareness has no attributes outside of manifestation, and thus can not "do" anything. Is this an adequate summation? This writing is simply happening and likewise any "realization" or "liberation" from this body-mind I belive myself to be will or will not simply happen.

The suggestion to drop the search, stop seeking is particuarily complexing to me. It seems to me that the illusion of this independant entity IS the seeking. It is not something that is done, but something that I believe myself to be. Its easy to interpret "stop the seeking" as stopping the spiritual search- meditation, practices, ect. But..isn't seeking everything? Every desire, from buying a new car to finding a girlfriend, to pleasing a spouse, everything is a desire to fill that perceived lack that is a result of the misidentification as this separate self? Saying "stop the seeking to realize that you are not the seeking even though as awareness you cannot stop or do anything anyway" gives my mind no place to land. Perhaps that is the point! heeehe.

the "who am I" inquiry does not resonate, but the "what am I" seemed to, and last night I began this inquiry- the mind does not like it. I was kept awake all night- everytime I would drift off, as though the search was over and I could finally rest in the space of sleep, the mind would pull me into the inquiry and would race incessently and though fighting for it's very life. It was painful.

Perhaps we could talk more. I'm very out of touch with the new stuff- never have used skype (don't have a PC at home). Perhaps I could call you if you have some time in your busy schedule? If not, I may be able to figure the skype thing out on a borrowed laptop or something..

Thanks again for this wonderful blog!

Michael

Randall Friend said...

Michael,

As long as you take yourself to be this limited entity, then there is the idea of doing something. Better to direct that away from the idea of some future attainment and to the nondual reality of this present moment.

The search cannot be dropped. As you say life as an individual IS seeking itself. Every desire really is a desire to fill that hole felt as a by-product of the inherent limitation of the individual.

Instead of "who am I" or "what am I", ask "what IS I?" What IS it? At the moment it may be a body, an intellect, a person. Yet that "I" can't actually be quantified in this way. That true "I" is the subject, and the subject, being the subject, has no objective attributes. The first description and it becomes conceptual, yet it's ever there.

So what really is that "I"? Can you find it or locate it? Can you describe it? Can you say what is it's color or size or shape?

If you say it's the size and shape of a body - the body is objective TO "I", yes? Something is aware of those sensations called "body".

Are you aware of "I" or is "I" that aware-ness?


love
randall

Unknown said...

i was sleeping in the afternoon today, and started to have a lucid dream. I went in and out of the dream consciously, it made me realise that the world is but a dream happening within me. anything objective that arises including my body, my story, my thoughts about myself and others, my perceptions is a dream? if that is so, who is dreaming?can the dreamer ever be found? no. but do I know who the dreamer is, yes.its non conceptual, and cannot be in the field of experience.its me, unadorned, plain and simple.