The Bottom Falls Out

There is no reward waiting at the conclusion of the search.  As long as the person you take yourself to be remains uninvestigated, the search will continue to go on - why? - because from the standpoint of the person the search is a search for something better for ME - my life should get better - I should become more peaceful - I should be wiser - I should have amazing experiences or I should achieve a supreme state of some kind.

It is all a rejection of what IS right now and a preference for becoming something different.  That very rejection is the root frustration and lack of clarity.  Why can't I get this?  Why can't I experience that?  Why can't I discover?

From this standpoint we are completely missing the point.

It isn't something FOR the individual - it isn't something that the individual BECOMES.  It is a REALIZATION that the individual is false.  Once again - it isn't that the individual gets something - it is discovering that the individual never existed.

We might stop chasing these states and achievements and direct our search towards the investigation of the idea of the individual, the entity, the person, the existence which is individual, the one referred to by the word "ME".  Is it real?  Does it really exist?  Did it ever exist?  How do you know of that idea?  What is that idea based on?  Can you find it anywhere?  When does it appear?  Where does it appear?

So we might ask - why am I stuck?  Why do I see an outside world?  This question really means - why am I an individual?  The questions assumes that you ARE an individual and then something should change.  Can you see this?  That question isn't answerable because you never WERE an individual.  The search isn't about making something change so that you are no longer an individual or you are an enlightened individual.

The search never ends for the individual.  The search can end, however - it ends abruptly when it dawns that this idea you have about yourself, that you are a separate person, this idea is false.  There is no such thing as a person.  It's an idea - it's sort of like a prison because if you assume you are that person then you are really saying that existence is separate.  A person is a separate existence.  So you take yourself to BE that then try to GET OUT of it.  It's impossible.

Poke into that idea and see if it is true, if it ever was true.  If it is true then you can go on satisfied that you found your answer.  If it is not true then the bottom falls out of the search right that very instant.

The Only Presence is Life

Is there a world outside, right here and now?

Are you in a head looking out at a world?

Were you born into this body?

Did you really begin? Will you really die?

Are you just an insignificant, fleeting and temporary existence?

Or are you the whole of reality, already?

That's really the two possibilities. Either you are that independent, finite individual or you are the whole. Try to come to that recognition - it's only these two possibilities.

If the first one is true, then what good will searching do except entertain your imagination. Can a world of separate things ever be whole or undivided? What power can bring it together, except for maybe some reverse big-bang or something.

If the second possibility is true, then you already are that whole reality. You didn't need to do anything to be that. You didn't arrive at it or achieve it. You just ARE that. If that is the case, and you are seeking wholeness, then you must not know you are the whole - otherwise why would you seek it? If the second is true, and the second possibility is what Vedanta and sages for thousands of years have been saying, if the second is true, then the only work to be done is to find out why it is that you take yourself as this limited entity.

The search then isn't a march towards becoming something you are not, it is an unfolding or discovery of what you already are, a realization that you never were separate or divided as you have believed.

Let that sink in - that means right now, before anything else happens, before the next thought even, you are the whole - reality is undivided and you are that whole reality. That means that whole reality is presently aware of thoughts which proclaim individuality. That individuality automatically asserts separation.

So the only thing we need to do is to correct or see through that idea of individuality as reality. That means discovering yourself as the whole.

This orients the search in an entirely different direction. Instead of waiting and hoping in frustration for some new experience or state, we are actively trying to discover why we take this present experience as "ME-seeing-WORLD". Yes?

We then aren't trying to make the experience different but seeing if there is a different translation for what is already happening - a different explanation for it.

So imagine that you are the whole already - you realize you have mistaken yourself for someone who was born, someone who arrived in the middle of the party and will leave it someday.

When you go outside and look at the trees, the sky, the clouds, hear the birds sing, feel the warm breeze... is it really an individual aware of an outside world, or is it Life, at play, aware of itself?

Who is present? Some fleeting individual, or Life itself?

In fact is there anyone at all present?

Isn't that aware-presence Life itself?