Sunday, July 24, 2011

The Individual is a Play

There is a big difference in these feelings or realities:

I am an individual and I am going to later discover something that I don't know or don't have now. When I discover that I will have a different feeling, a different experience, a new and better experience. My life will improve.

This statement may be somewhat aligned with your own ideas about enlightenment or liberation. This idea may have been held for a long time. A lot of effort may have gone into it. It may be difficult to let go of this idea because you've invested a lot of time and effort into it. But let's be perfectly clear.

It's bullshit.

You are not an individual at all - the idea that you are an individual is itself the bondage you wish to be free from. There is nothing to come later in the form of experience. What you call life may or may not improve but it's irrelevant.

Here is the other statement:

I am the whole, I am limitless being. I know myself through this mechanism we call Mind or Consciousness. Mind or Consciousness forms, so to speak, into this world, body and thoughts. Identification is another form within this and it is that identification or we can call it Imagination which "creates" the world with you in it as an individual who is temporary and separate.

This is already the case. Nothing needs to happen to make this so. Because you presently take yourself to be the individual, you also believe something must be done to reach or arrive at this. This is false. Nothing is needed, nothing is added. You are presently the whole. Therefore it is not about getting some new experience but about realizing the present idea you have is false. Therefore it is not about experience but about ignorance of yourself. The only solution is knowledge.

If that is so, what does that mean? It means that right here, right now, at this very moment, you are THAT. You ARE THAT Wholeness. It means we must stop looking for something new in the form of experience and understand that if this is so, then our present experience MUST already be it. Our present thoughts MUST already be it. Whatever is presently going on, must ALREADY be it.

That means we don't need to manipulate anything, to change anything, to resist anything that is present now. We just need to look at it in a different way, understand it as an expression OF that Wholeness and not an OBSTACLE to it.

If we start from the fact that you already ARE that, as the mystics and ancients have been saying for thousands of years, then our spiritual search goes from a frustrating hobby to a serious life and death thing.

Looking at it this way, we are forced to look into things we may never have thoughts about, specifically the ideas that we were born and will someday die. This has been our idea for so long but now we are truly in the position to question that idea, to doubt the idea that what you are was born, that what you are will die. It is funny that we dread to even think about that but when asked to question it we will defend our impending death.

We are now forced to question whether or not we were born and will die, that we began as independent entities and our existence is finite. If you are already THAT, if reality is already WHOLE, then the birth/death idea MUST be false. So our line of seeking changes - we now have our doubting caps on as we trace back our birth, look forward to the death of the body. We are forced to look upon the world of appearance differently. We cannot look at it the same way. We can no longer afford to be fooled by appearance. We are earnest in our dissection of our long-held beliefs. We are now not longing for some new state or experience to come but actively chopping away at our default set of issued beliefs and assumptions. Our energy in seeking isn't focused on hoping for some mystical revelation to dawn on us, it is directed towards the destruction of the false.

If you get one thing from this blog, it should be that the way we usually seek in terms of acquiring something new is false. This is only about correcting the idea you have about your Self. You take it as separate and then later want it to become nondual or whole or something. The point is that you were never separate, reality was never divided, and the only thing that needs to happen is to realize that this is true.

If the individual is gaining something it is still ignorance. The individual can stay and play if you understand that it is merely an expression of present, whole reality. Then there is nothing wrong with the individual. It is free to come and go as all expressions do.

3 comments:

Roeland said...

Dear Randall,

Thank you for this clear post. I have done spiritual retreats, workshops and trainings for 25 years and I must say it is all bullshit.
Sure I have met great people and it was fun, but trying to reach oneness using whatever method is not only unnecessary but not possible because one is it.
There are so many 'teachers' that do not have this basic insight and instead are encouraging people to do more trainings and groups.
But that is part of this great play also.

Love,
Roeland

Randall Friend said...

Roeland,

Good to hear from you again, my friend.


love
randall

netineti said...

Wonderful, as always.

Seeing through the false for yourself, and not simply accepting someone's word for it, may not happen all at once, like stories which go "one day I was sitting in the park and all of a sudden..." It may be more like leaves falling from a tree during a long autumn (one falsehood after another dropping away). It matters not which way, only that you see the false as false.