Tuesday, August 2, 2011

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?

10 comments:

Velcro said...

Beautiful post :)

Thank you!

benjamin said...

"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."

This is the difficult part really. Isn't finding a "different translation for what is" not another way of saying "to produce a different knowledge of the self"? Isn't this translation or knowledge we expect to find another form of experience too? It is easy to get caught in words and find oneself denying what one's intent really is.

Trying to see things differently or understand things differently is an elusive attempt at finding some form of control on the universe. From where does this need arise? What is the premise or assumption? Do we really need to see things differently? To understand? Is there really and end to illusion?

To me the obvious endlessness of it is an invitation to rest.

Randall Friend said...

Velcro and Benjamin,

Thank you for your comments.


love
randall

Harald said...

So the only thing we need to do....
It`s sound so very easy, so very true
so attractive.
A big rock is still standing before.
But it`s crumbling.
Thanks and love
Harald

Randall Friend said...

Harald,

The idea of the big rock is the only obstacle. See if there is any obstacle before assuming one in place.

What must Life do to know itself but experience whatever arises without effort?


love
randall

billtys said...

Hello Randall,

Thank you for a great post...and I do love the concluding line in the post above.

Yes... what can one do except take it as it comes.

Nisagadarta said something like 'I am that by which I know I am' which must mean something along the lines of 'you are already that wholeness which you seek'.

If one does an ernest investigation it is clear and obvious that some significant misinterpretation is happening if the believed in entity persists.

Love Bill

Randall Friend said...

Hey Bill - good to hear from you my friend.

Yes - it can be said a hundred different ways - the search is not to benefit the individual but to see through the individual. This leaves no accomplishment FOR someone but freedom FROM that idea we call the individual entity.

The individual can only be seen through as false if it is directly questioned. Was I born? Did my existence begin? Will my existence end? Is existence partitioned into individual servings? Or is existence beginning with the beginning of the form?


IF we are willing to dive into this inquiry thoroughly, the individual cannot come out intact. It is dangerous business - you are losing the very idea which makes you what you THINK you are.

Yet in the end nothing can be lost because it never was there to begin with.


love
randall

da229 said...

Maybe we are that undivided reality but how does that help if I still the belief that I am a separate, finite individual?

If the idea of a separate self is true I am wasting my time. But even if it weren't true I am still caught up in this very powerful illusion that tells me that I am bounded.

How to stop seeing the mirage as a mirage when it looks so real?

Thanks for you post.

Daniel

billtys said...

Hello Randall,

Yes...I like your point about the investigation not being for the benefit of the individual... but to see through the individual... that the individual has never been...

Otherwise who would the benefit of the investigation be for? A me?

Thank you.

Love Bill

Randall Friend said...

Daniel,

If you are that undivided reality then what help do you need? If that belief remains, what difference does it make? Does the belief MAKE you anything different?

If you walk up to the mirage, or at least try, then the mirage will recede, the illusion reveals itself. You realize that what appears is not reality. When that realization has happened it doesn't change the appearance, the mirage still appears, yet there is no longer a belief that it is water in the road.

The ultimate point is that there appears to be water but there is not. When the belief is water in the road, we might run after with our bucket. When the belief is gone, we don't run after it. Either way it never was water. Only the illusion has been seen through.

In the same way, we realize that appearance is not reality - we believe there is a universe of separate things - that means we believe that existence arises with form and dissolves with form. When we really look into this, we realize we have been ignoring the truth, ignoring the facts, ignoring reality. Existence didn't come new with the form - in fact existence just IS what IS - reality - the form is a form OF that existence, just like wave is a form OF water. When the form comes there is not a new existence - existence is FORMING itself - existence is expressing AS - whatever that essence is - whatever that Intelligence is - we know it as tree and rock and sky and cloud and body and thought and anything - one essence expressing as everything.

What else can you be but THAT? Then Daniel is a convenient concept but ultimately is just a name for a form - a form OF that essence. You must be that essence or Intelligence, we might call it Life.

Right now what you call Daniel is Life, taking itself as limited. That presence you know so well, that presence which hasn't aged one bit, that presence which has remained exactly the same through a lifetime of changes, that is Life or Intelligence, not Daniel.


love
randall