Chain Cannot Become Gold

The gold chain is seeking to know what it is.  It begins it's search in meditation, hoping to calm the chain-mind and discover what it is.  It reads lots of books, blogs, and Facebook posts, looking for that little nugget to set it free, free from it's limited chain-life, a life that began, an existence which will some day end.

 

The chain visits a guru - a chain-guru - that guru tells the chain - your true nature is Gold.  You cannot seek it or reach it, for you ARE it.  Chain is mystified by this concept "Gold".  Gold is this formless, undefined, inconceivable thing - since chain cannot conceive of it, it looks elsewhere, to practices, new states, new experiences that it can have to find out what it is.  Chain-guru just smiles.

 

Chain seeks far and wide, reads every book on the topic, including the most famous chain-guru of them all Nisargadatta Chain-maraj.  Nisargadatta says, you were never born, you are THAT which you seek.  Chain is so confused but since Chain-maraj said it, chain decides to stop looking outside, to stop looking for some new experience or state, and look at WHAT it is, in essence.

 

Chain finds that it didn't actually begin - that it is the product of some melting, some bending, some polishing...  that something was already there before chain was formed, and "something" was formed into what we call "chain".  Well the chain now knows that whatever it is, chain is merely a pattern or formation OF that substance, that essence, whatever it is. 

 

Chain is shocked to find that this "Gold" isn't a thing at all, it is a formless essence - it shapes into chains and rings and bracelets - all those "things" are Gold, in essence.  So chain realizes it is Gold after all.

 

But that's not really true, is it? - chain didn't realize anything.  Chain was only ever Gold.  It is not chain that realizes it is Gold.  It is Gold that realizes, it was never only Chain, never only ring, never only bracelet.  All these are expressions OF Gold.  It is Gold, experiencing itself AS chain, AS ring, AS bracelet, which caused the original illusion and the eventual realization.  When chain is formed, nothing was born, nothing was created, no new EXISTENCE came about.  When chain is gone, nothing will die, nothing was destroyed, no separate EXISTENCE ended. 

 

In the same way, you are Life itself.  You are seeking Life outside yourself.  Like the chain, Life has formed or patterned and that pattern is intelligent with the capacity of consciousness.  Life now can look upon itself, and even question WHAT it is.  And maybe Life realizes it was never JUST that organism. 

 

Existence isn't something which comes and goes - all things are patterns OF existence or Life - when the pattern ends, existence remains.  There is one essence, expressing as every "thing".  Dive into your idea of existence and see if you can find where existence ever began in anything.  Don't stop until you arrive at an answer to your satisfaction.  Don't look outside yourself for the answers and remain confused as the chain was. 

 

You can never reach it, for you ARE it.  In Vedanta pure existence is called Brahman.  It is said that you cannot find Brahman - it is Brahman which is doing the looking.