The Open Mystery (Confessions Of A Spiritual Skeptic)

Seventeen years ago I had no interest in anything remotely spiritual - I'd never read a book on the subject and was casually skeptical. Then after trying meditation for relaxation purposes I had a spontaneous shift in perception (or opening) where time and separation seemed to recede and I saw that (and this is what I crudely scribbled down soon after the 'experience') "no thing exists… only everything exists". 

Now it wasn't important (or even relevant) to me to define what this 'everything' was/is. But over the years I became interested in similar stories of shifts in perception, awakenings etc. and of course came across the notion that ultimate reality is awareness. Right away, for me, this didn't feel quite right. It seemed too limiting to formulate ________ in this way even though I couldn't articulate why. 

Reality being ALL means that it is (obviously) also awareness - and since our 'experience' of Reality is dependent on awareness, for all intents and purposes the two are inseparable. But are they synonymous? Perhaps, but I don't know. When we define something or think that we've got a handle on it, we limit it in some way - I prefer to leave the question somewhat open… 

And the fact remains that we can wake up from the dominance of the 'me network' and acknowledge and live from a vastness and mystery that is wondrous and nourishing without the need to define it or commit to a metaphysical context.

Present Immediacy And The Gnosis Of No-Separation

In our everyday mode of cognition we believe that we somehow exist outside this very moment. This is a trick of the mind. It solidifies and reifies a memory-constructed self which we are convinced can stand apart from the immediacy of present experience. 

But look closely right now - is there anything that exists, that can exist apart from this unfolding immediacy? Other than as a narrative, where would it abide? 

When this is truly seen, the inner storyline that upholds this autobiographical self recedes and the body-mind-personality becomes functional to the happening of the moment. From here there can arise the gnosis of the ever-fresh living event simply presenting itself.

Separation is upheld in the mind and sustained by (psychological) time. In the immediacy of present actuality there is no past and future and no separation. There is only the ever-fresh unfolding of existence - this mysterious creative dance spontaneously presenting itself.

Existence Is A Verb

For the most part, our habitual mode of being in the world is that of a kind of obliviousness where we are not particularly paying attention to our experience. 

In this mode we experience through our narratives, abstractions and reflections and posit a world of discrete self-existing entities - a world of happened (past tense) things. This results in the illusion of separation.

When we pay special attention we can bypass this reflective fog and encounter existence as an ever-fresh spontaneous happening - an ineffable creative event presenting itself. 

Look… presently, no thing has happened - the only thing that is real is this happen-ing… now… this unmissable event of Existence. This is the fabled Oneness. There aren't two events - there is simply THIS as it presents.

No Secret

I've just come back from a long walk in the Cornish countryside. It's very raw out there today - cold and windy with heavy grey-green clouds. Hauntingly desolate and utterly enlivening. 

It's whispering a secret that's really no secret… there is only THIS… this IS-ness of Life presenting itself moment by moment. 

Don't think about this… just listen.