Already Accomplished

So... all there is is Totality.

Doing, acting, creating etc. are movement or expressions of Totality.

And in a sense... the rest is irrelevant.

Much philosophical ink has been spilt debating the essential nature of this Totality. This can be an interesting sideline - but the need to work this stuff out, to decode or solve something... falls away in this revelation that Totality/Source is the doer, actor, author.

Look right now! Things are already manifesting without struggle in the absence of concepts, compulsions and solutions.

And this is the fabled freedom; everything is already happening... already accomplished in every moment - however that moment expresses.

Who Awakens?

Firstly, what is awakening? There can be a lot of over-elaboration and magical thinking surrounding this question. The plain truth is that awakening is simply a fresh seeing or recognition of how things really are. A recognition that cuts so deep as to be better described as a paradigm shift.

So who or what has this recognition? Well, let's use the old ocean/wave analogy for a moment. The wave goes about its business believing that it is a wave. One day it comes to recognize that it is in fact not other than the ocean - the ocean is its source, power and essence. Now, from here it wouldn't be in any way accurate to say that the wave has awakened since the wave is without power, autonomy or agency. Instead, the awakening can be seen to be a play of the ocean.

So, the apparent entity does not awaken - but the pattern and process that is the mind-body organism is the mechanism through which a recognition occurs. In fact recognition only has relevance within the finite play of the organism. Beyond this play, the need for a recognition is without meaning.

You see, awakening or recognition could be said to be a corrective to a delusion. The delusion of separation is out of kilter with an underlying intuition of wholeness. This schism fuels certain psychological drives that eventually induce the spiritual quest towards completeness. Recognition simply reveals that completeness is and was already the case.

A Conversation About Consciousness

You seem certain that consciousness is not our true nature.

Firstly, there are uses of the word which are interchangeable with Oneness or Reality etc. In these cases I'm sure that we are talking about the same thing.

But I do think that it's best to have a little caution regarding fixed descriptions of the nature of reality. The concept of an absolute transcendent witness - a dissociated eternal knower, can ultimately be found to be incoherent. What is beyond doubt is that there is 'something' as opposed to nothing - I've referred to this as Source or Reality - I think of consciousness as we know it as an emergent condition of that.

Surely it's the case that consciousness is the limitless knower of all that appears? Consciousness must be primary - nothing can be without it.

Well 'to be is to be perceived' is the mantra of the idealist. I have touched on the fallacy of this elsewhere but to summarize; all that the idealistic approach confirms is the tautology that things cannot be perceived to exist without them being perceived. As for the claim of limitless knowing? In my experience I have never met anyone coming to this teaching who didn't ask: if I am consciousness, why is it the case that only this first-person perspective of the organism (this specific sensory matrix) is ever evident? Now this seems a fair enough question given the claims about the all knowing nature of consciousness.

Hmm, but isn't it the case that in the absence of a self or separate entity, consciousness is left as that which sees, hears, thinks etc?

(For the moment I will go along with your use of consciousness for 'all that is' - bearing in mind that Reality or Source is preferable - as we go on it hopefully will become clear as to why.)

Consciousness (Reality) could indeed be said to be the actor, thinker, perceiver etc... but only via its shifting manifestations. For example, in order for consciousness to make a cup of tea, it plainly must manifest the components of that scenario; hands, cup, hot water, tea etc.

Similarly for consciousness (Reality) to actually taste the tea it would need to manifest sentience, sense perceptions, taste buds etc. We can go on to apply this understanding to other actions, perceptions, feelings and thoughts etc. In each case a host of complex conditions are required for said action, perception, feeling or thought to be manifest.

Ultimately we might come to see that the same approach must be applied to the phenomena that is consciousness (as we know it) itself. Consciousness becomes conscious as we know it via the manifestation of a constellation of complex conditions.

By this point we can see why the word consciousness is perhaps not the best designation for Ultimate Reality (not that there is ever a good designation.) Reality/Source manifests as ALL conditions including action, thinking, feeling, perceiving and consciousness.

I have to add here that I'm really not sure how worthwhile it is to work through this sort of stuff. We can never determine such a thing as an absolute identity. All such absolute identities, however we conceive them, are by default manifestations of the same indeterminable mystery.

Mysterian Ways

 

By now, if you have been following this blog, you might suspect that there is a type of mysterianism going on. It seems clear to me that some things are just unknowable or cognitively out of reach. Questions regarding the nature of Source fit this category. This does not mean that Source is somehow concealed - only that an understanding or description of its ultimate nature is concealed (in the same way that an understanding of Shakespeare is forever concealed to a cow.)

Here's something that I wrote recently:

The attempt to determine what we are is fraught with metaphysical difficulties. Although there can be a certainty that there is a 'something' from which the organism appears, all attempts to understand and describe this 'something' are limited to mind made concepts. THAT which is the Source of life is clearly not limited to life's limited ideas - in the same way that the source of a dream is not bound by the content of the dream.

On the other hand, the discovery of what we are not has a natural logic to it - it's plain to see that the organism doesn't generate reality. It does not create itself. It cannot be found to be separate and autonomous. It's not responsible for its thoughts and feelings. It is rather the case that there is a Source/Reality in which the apparent organism arises. The 'me' like all other objects, gross or subtle, is inescapably contingent on something that could be said to be 'more essential' than this ever shifting body-mind matrix.

So, we cannot determine what this Source is - yet we know that it is. At best we may have a loose, intuitive recognition of its all-encompassing nature. The more prosaic way to envisage Source is as the natural ordering of the cosmos - a creative power expressing as this particular shifting matrix. My being is dependent on continually shifting conditions - those conditions are themselves dependent on a myriad of shifting conditions and so on - like a Indra's net stretching out to infinity.

A deeper intuitive leap reveals Source as THAT which generates reality. In an imaginative sense, Source could be said to be dreaming this reality into existence - yet Source is ultimately utterly unknowable and mysterious: how could we begin to have any notions of what is sourcing this particular manifestation?

Either way (or any other way) the essential point is that in this life as it is right now (without notions of beyond and before), we can begin to recognize a radically different yet natural and ordinary paradigm at work. Life is happening of its own accord, events happen, deeds are done without the need to put a separate doer at the helm. Source is the doer (so to speak). As already said; the organism doesn't generate Reality. It does not create itself. It cannot be found to be separate and autonomous... It is being done. THIS is being done....... enjoy the ride.

At The Absolute

What's the most startlingly obvious thing?

That there is something!

Miraculous!!

Something IS... and all else proceeds from here.

Now... after a while the somethingness will get usurped into a story about somethingness.

This will be another appearance proceeding from somethingness.

It will tell us that somethingness appears due to this and that... and will vanish due to this and that - because this is true of all things.

But all along this will be a story/appearance in somethingness.

EVERYTHING is a story/appearance proceeding from somethingness.

Except somethingness........... until you attempt to grasp it.

Revelation

Two interlocking themes emerge from these musings. The first is the very heart of nonduality: the revelation of no separation. The second is a consideration of that which is beyond description.

Nonduality could be said to be about the dissolving of a significant misconception to reveal a radical but very ordinary truth; there is no separation!

Everything is the emergent of a 'singular' whole. There are distinctions but no separation. If I really look to see what is going on right now, all that can be found is seamless reality - no separate pockets of self origination, just the emergence of a seamless THIS.

Another way of putting this is that there is no inherent-ness. Nothing is isolated, independent, self sustaining and permanent. Each seeming thing is dependently co-emerging with other seeming things like moving ripples on a lake.

This lack of separation doesn't just apply to objects and forms, but to ideas and feelings and perceptions. It's all the 'doing' of an undefined Reality.

This radical application of 'no inherent-ness' leads to a consideration of that which is beyond description:

What can be said about this 'undefined Reality'? Not a lot really. Since anything posited about Reality is 'downstream' of it, there can be no such thing as a final view. The best we might say is that Reality IS. From here our identity as the body-mind can be seen as yet another limited idea that has no inherent foundation.... Undefined, we are free to just be.

Dream Logic

Our 'true nature' is truly a mystery.

That we are the witness or knower, the eternal seer or consciousness etc. are reasonable ideas that may have some value.

But in a sense, these sort of descriptions are still a kind of transposition of the body-mind idea. They are limited by the logic of the body-mind modality. It's a bit like having a dream about living in a tiny cave and supposing that when you wake up... it will be in a spacious cave.

All explanations, understandings and descriptions, no matter how wonderful and convincing, are equally constructions appearing in an unborn that is by its very nature unable to be bound and limited by its own formations.

This unborn (and yes, calling it the 'unborn' is already saying too much) that is 'prior' to all constructions could be said to be analogous to dreaming in the sense that it cannot itself appear as an object in the dream.

Completely ungraspable and utterly mysterious...

Yet.......................

Unborn Field

There is an unborn field...

Giving rise to all conditions.

It is not a thing amongst other things - it is the suchness of ALL possibilities.

Not a state relative to other states - but the unborn 'somethingness' of all states.

It is not subject to coming and going - coming and going along with other appearances of temporality, manifest within it.

Absence of the field is an impossibility - if there were such a possibility, it would be the field manifesting as such.

Attempts to comprehend this mysterious unborn can never succeed - the field itself cannot possibly be known as an object within the field.

Yet... that there is anything... is an expression of this unborn light.

And... try as you may, you cannot escape its expression.... you are its expression.

Like this.

Fully Accomplished

You have never put a foot wrong... you can't...

There is only the being of what is.

This is the fabled freedom.

Nothing is required for 'what is' to be the case.

No way to lose it or move towards it.

Always already fully accomplished.

Already home.

Fact Of Life

Eventually an interest in nonduality will lead to the classic conundrum:

1. Is Beingness merely a product of the human brain?

Or:

2. Does the construct of an entity with a brain arise from Source/Beingness?

If it is in fact the case that Beingness/Reality is the source of any possible appearance, then why should any particular appearance be relied upon to provide an authoritative and definitive explanation of the truth of your being?

Yet already... before, beyond and during the stories that appearances tell us is a SOMETHINGNESS that is never not the case.

This primordial SOMETHINGNESS (which is not a something at all) out of which all things spring is known as the Absolute or the nondual... and is not other than this present Actuality.... wide open, fresh, inescapable reality principle... the very suchness of all activity, events, happenings, forms, thoughts, sensations, perceptions...

...the sheer fact of Life.

Actual-ness

'That' in which these words appear...

'That' which has to be in order for these words to appear.

Beyond subtle, unfindable, unnamable, unfathomable...

Yet... unmissable as this wide open 'Actual-ness'.

Not a thing, not a viewpoint, a perspective or perception...

This 'Actual-ness' can never be found as another appearance...

Not two... not even one... just _______

Beyond Understanding

BEING is beyond understanding.

Trying to make BEING conform to ideas that arise and fall as appearances is about as reliable as studying the test card in order to understand the workings of a television.

The best that might happen is that after a while it might dawn that the test card appears by virtue of the TV being on...

This ON-ness is the 'substance' of all that appears.

Nondual Suchness

It becomes clear that the essence of nonduality cannot be found in the conceptual twists and turns of appearances.

Yet it is already plainly evident right now as the very suchness of appearances.

Just pause and taste the certainty of this... the certainty of THIS.

From here, any lingering doubt or confusion can be instantly recognised to be just more display...

And even seeming directives to 'just pause...' or whatever, cannot violate the utter nondual suchness of this unstoppable free fall. 

Radical Tao

Only Tao

Ever fresh...

Yet not arriving

Never gone and not returning

Only flow

No separate little you standing apart from Tao's mysterious course

Whatever arises - however it appears...

Is already given

Inescapably THIS

Of course...

It is this THIS.

THIS... not a place or set of events...

But the being of whatever IS.

Utterly nondual even as it appears dualistic.

THIS is always the case... before, during and beyond concepts.

Only thought might disagree (and even deny THIS...) yet thought itself is appearance in THIS.

Whatever arises... thought, feeling, sense, nonsense, confusion, doubt, wonder... is already inescapably THIS.

And so the question of who or why or how etc... becomes liberatingly irrelevant.

Always only THIS...

The being of whatever IS.

Lateral Life

LINEAR LIFE is the way that life is perceived and understood conventionally.

Each life is like a line. It stretches back through the past and forwards to the future.

Each line is separate from the next.

LATERAL LIFE is the true nature of things.

All there is, is the present. There is no past or future. No line stretching backwards or forwards... just this... here... now.

An analogy would be to compare life to a screen and its changing scenes.

There are no lines of separation... just the seamless arising of what is.