Simply Being

As we go about our day we are either attending to actuality or attending to a narrative.

Take a look. Every now and then (now and now) just stop and check to see what is being attended to. 

Nine times out of ten it'll be a narrative, a conversation in the head, a memory or plan*. This is the source of our sense of contraction.

Narrative creates a knot of separation where there is none. In present actuality there is no separation - there is simply this seamless happening of existence. 

It's only when we envisage entities out of their context of actuality - when we freeze frame and analyse them - that the concept of separation/independence arises. But that's not how life presents itself - life is this ongoing flow of datum, this unfolding event. 

In the absence of our freeze-framing, abstracting and conceptualising, energy flows as this ever-fresh unfolding. With this comes a sense of underlying ease, the ease of simply being.

* Obviously narratives have a place in our lives - but we can come to see that they are mostly unnecessary. 

Liberation From Separation

When we are deeply present with existence as it happens - it can become clear that all there is is existence as it happens. 

This sense emerges when narrative constructions of thought are dimmed or absent. There is a shift to the sense of existence as a flow or happening. We are all familiar with this to some extent: think of a time when you went on vacation. You're walking by the sea, the waves are crashing, the air is misty and cool. Everything is new, fresh… you feel alive, exalted, and extremely present. Suddenly it's as if life is a 3D film unfolding in real-time - there is no separation from the shifting scenario… the whole scene is alive. At this point the sense of the tightly constructed memory-based self has given way to the happening of the moment - the momentum of existence.

This is the essence of awakening: awakening from a sense of separation from the event of life.

The Perception Of A Happened Universe

Go for a walk - preferably in the countryside or a park where nature's buzzing momentum is obvious. Now just sit and be present with whatever is going on. Sounds and sights and sensations… whatever is arising.

In this present immediacy notice that there is nothing to be found that can be said to have happened. What I mean by this is that there are no happened things - every seemingly happened thing is really a happening - it is dynamic, energetic, active (plainly, some things are more obviously so than others yet with a little investigation it can be seen that all there is, is process, activity.) Look at something around you right now; a bird, a tree or a stone. Notice that you are not looking at something in the past - something that has happened - you are looking at an energetic, ever-fresh, occurrence. 

This present energetic happening is the nature of existence. Existence is a dynamic event presenting itself. The perception of a happened universe, happened things and a happened self is an illusion.

The illusion of the happened self (or self extended in time) is particularly sticky. This illusion comes in two persuasive variations; the past self and the future self. Both are projections - the past self is pure memory, the future self is a fantasy. The only thing that is real is this dynamic flux of existence occurring as it occurs - this present living event.  

When this shift of perception occurs and the happening state is revealed, it is clearly seen that the happening universe and happening self cannot be separated - they are the same dynamic movement.*

But don't get bogged down trying to figure this out - our habitual (left hemisphere) mindset gravitates towards division, analysis and abstraction - it defaults at a world of particulates. Instead... go for a walk - preferably in the countryside or a park where natures buzzing momentum is obvious….




* This is the revelation of no separation. It's not that there is not the appearance of discrete phenomena - persons, places and things, it's just that with careful attention they can be seen to be modulations (manifestations, expressions) of a singular event. A tiny child apprehends this - at birth its outlook is this energetic present happening... there is not yet a sense of separation from this primal life-energy.