The Only Bondage

What sort of answer are you waiting for?  The only confirmation you will receive is your own confidence and honesty.  In Vedanta it is called "Aham Brahmasmi" - I am Brahman.  What is Brahman - that is understood - and the identity with that is there.  That is - the identity with the whole itself.

Sailor Bob says it another way - One essence, expressing as everything.  

You are that.  Right now, you are that.  Not later, once this is understood, once some flash of wisdom comes, once some bright spiritual lights happen.  Now.  You are that.  The whole.  

If we continue our search from there, we are not far off.  If we believe we have to merge with the absolute, or become something other than what we are now, if we believe our experience needs to change, then we're a million light years from the answer.

The raindrop does not need to become water.  The chain does not need to find Gold.  The problem is that the pattern of drop or chain have taken precedence, preference - the focus is on that pattern.  The idea is wrong - the idea that existence comes wrapped up in individual servings - that when a new pattern emerges, a new existence or being emerges.  When we truly look into it, that simply isn't true.

Existence or Being never begins - only a new shape arises, a new expression.  One essence expresses AS that pattern or shape or drop or chain or body or thought or tree or rock.  Life.  Intelligence.  The Absolute. Whatever you want to call it - that which is by default formless - that FROM WHICH the form comes.  

Buddhism says - formlessness IS form.  It doesn't say it BECOMES form.  It IS form.  They are identical.  That tree IS Life, in expression, in experience, at play.  That thought, whether good or bad, is that Intelligence at work, acting as it's nature is, of curiosity, of expression, of creation and destruction.  

The gold chain tries so hard to find Gold, it's essence.  In the end it will always fail, as it cannot find what it is, it cannot become what it already is.  Chain has no existence of it's own - it is Gold which is the seeker and Gold which is the finder.  Chain cannot find anything - Gold finds that chain was only ever just a concept.

You are that one essence, that Brahman, that formlessness which IS form.  You are that now, without reading the next page of that spirituality book,without watching the next video or listening to the next talk.  Yet ironically until the idea of individual existence is eradicated, you remain trapped by your own ideas.  

This is the only bondage.  Maybe that's why Buddha was laughing.