What IS

Is there some place you can go to find the answer?

Is there a certain time that will come and bring the answer?

The answer is always here, yet it is overlooked because THIS isn't good enough.  As long as there is a preference, no answer will be found.

The only answer is what IS.  Discover what IS and what appears.

Discover what it means - I am the only reality - all else only appears.

It's so obvious, you constantly ignore it.

Face the Mystery

The root issue is - I am this body.  As long as that idea is there, the spiritual search is an endless vicious circle.  

The body is taken to be a thing among things - a small thing which came into being and will end.  From that idea the search goes on - trying to understand the wholeness of reality from a broken, separate perspective.  A thing is trying to become the whole.  It is an impossibility.  AS a thing, you will never find what you are searching for.  AS a thing you will forever be stuck in only an intellectual understanding.  Paradox.  

As long as this idea you have about yourself remains, no end is in sight.  A separate thing cannot find the reality of nonduality or wholeness.  You cannot intellectualize it away.  A thing cannot become the whole.

So all efforts should be directed at the investigation of the reality of the body-in-the-world idea.  The person.  Investigate it by any means possible.  Look at it without pre-conceived notions, like it was the first time you ever saw it, and didn't yet have any names for it, any memory of it, any ideas about it.  

Investigate the idea of the senses.  Investigate how the brain actually works.  Look as if a scientist trying to investigate some new discovery, something which is there but you don't know what it is.

It is only the persistent assumptions which seem to cover reality.  

How do you know the person or the body?  You know only of experience.  Raw experience which has not yet been given a name.  It has not yet solidified into a thing.  You know of changing experience to which you apply memory, assumption and belief.  Otherwise body is only mystery - you don't truly know what it is without this mechanism.  And there is fear to let loose of the assumptions/beliefs.  Because the mind cannot deal with mystery - it has to come to a solid concept about things.  It is left feeling uncomfortable and unstable when it cannot fit everything into nicely wrapped packages.  

Let that mystery come.  Truly taking an honest and unqualified look at what we know, we recognize that we really don't know what the Hell it is.  We realize that our entire life, the reality and identification with body and thoughts is truly only ever assumption.  It is like a splinter in the mind - it is unsettling - to the mind it is a source of fear and uncertainty.  Don't fight the splinter.  Let it stick.  Let it act.  Let it fester and infect.  

At some point the bottom falls out of the bucket - it is realized that there is nothing at all of our life story which can be said to be absolutely true.  It has always been a story, a tale told to cover the inherent mystery.  In that story there is a diminishing of the fear but along with that comes this insistent impulse to discover the truth about what we are.  

But we cannot discover what we are without facing that mystery, without letting that mystery be as it is without the immediate scramble to fill in the blanks with concepts and imagination.  

Until then, you, as a body, are stuck.  ARE you truly a body in a world?  Have a close look.  Face the mystery head-on.  Don't be afraid.  The snake in the room is truly only a rope.

The Wave cannot find Ocean

Does the wave need to wait to become Ocean?  Does the wave need a special experience to become or realize Ocean?  Is the wave "not there yet"?  Does the wave have just an intellectual understanding of Ocean?

It is only Ocean, taking itself to be just a wave, which leads to the notion that something must be done, some liberation must be found, to free itself from wave-ness.  Yet what can Ocean do, to become free of wave?

Ocean, in taking itself to be wave, searches for some special experience, some validating insight - it is searching for Ocean while all the while it IS already Ocean.

How to make the Ocean know itself AS Ocean?  

The only thing that can be done is for Ocean to give up the idea that it is wave.  To see through the relative perspective which has been given a name - "Wave".  To see through the form as Absolute.

We can only describe Ocean by pointing TO the wave - by pointing TO Ocean's expressions, it's manifestations.  Because Ocean cannot be defined any other way, except to say that it is the essence of all that appears.  It's then just another abstract concept.  Yet Ocean cannot be confined or defined by the name and form "Wave", however "Wave" IS Ocean in expression.

As such, YOU are that Oneness, that essence - yet in taking yourself to be just this limited expression, just this name and form, you limit yourself TO that expression, then look for a way out, look FOR that Oneness.  Just as the Wave, as this limited form you will never find what you are seeking.

Oneness or Essence can only give up that idea of "individuality".  But even if it doesn't, is it ever anything but that Oneness anyway?  Even if Ocean never gives up on the idea of itself as Wave, nothing is lost - nothing is wrong.  There is simply an incorrect idea about itself - due to taking itself to be the particular, the wave.

Either seriously question the idea of "individuality" or let that individuality be as it is.  The suffering is only due to this false idea - why make suffering worse because you believe "I'm not there yet"?

You ARE THERE - you have NEVER been anything but THAT - only you don't know it because you take yourself to be just a Wave.  Know it and be done.  Or don't.  Either way it's irrelevant, as the idea "Wave" cannot truly ever limit or bind Ocean.

Not Findable but Undeniable

Self-realization is simply coming to realize something that is already the case.  It is a falling away of the added-on concepts about your Self - the imagination called "I am a body", "I am thinking".

So any effort to reach this is an effort to change experience - simply because right now is IT.  Experience doesn't need to change.  Only the idea that there is a separate, finite body-person which is experiencing a world changes naturally, when that false belief falls away.

So it's not a change of the world, not a change of the behavior or condition of the body or mind.  It is noticing that world, body and mind are experience.  And you are that which is experiencing, right now.

So notice this.  Notice that the only quality you can give yourself is experiencing - noticing - observing - watching  - cognizing - feeling - knowing.  If we talk of a world - in other words - the subject vs. the object - then you must be the subject, yes?

So what is the subject, right now?  What really is it?  What is it's content?  What is it's nature?

The subject of any and all experiences is empty - it is not locatable - it has no attributes.  It is not another thing in experience.  It is not definable in terms of starting and ending, either in space or time.  It is simply HERE.  It is a presence.  You are clearly HERE but that subject is not findable.

That subject is not a thing from which you are knowing - it IS the knowing - it is like an open space or capacity. It is a mysterious, unexplainable, indescribable presence by which the world, body AND mind are known.  Is this not blindingly obvious?

But because it's unknowable - the mind has to create imagination for it.  It has to project something upon that subjective presence, simply because the mind can't deal with the unknown, the unfindable.  It's scary.  It's unsettling.  Like wandering into a dark room - the lights must come on.

But there is no light which can illuminate the subject - it cannot become objectified.  It IS the light by which the world, body and mind are known.

It is always there - overlooked.  It is not findable but it is always obvious and present.  It's YOU.  The presence or activity of knowing.

The subject of all experience is always awareness.  See if this isn't the case.