Current of Creation

Wake up… from the reflected world of memory, fantasy, rumination and abstraction. 

Wake up… to the real-time world of present actuality. 

Wake up… to THIS, exactly as it is - this current of creation - this primordial event of existence.

Realise that nothing stands apart from - or is other than - this primordial principle. Separation is a misapprehension upheld in reflective mind.

With this realisation there can be a release from the contracted sense of ‘little old me’ sitting, typing, walking, moving… to the spacious apperception of a living source simply articulating itself moment by moment. 

 

Primordial Principle

 

There is something rather than nothing. Beyond belief, beyond ideas, theories and projections, here it is .....

 

When you were tiny there was no conceptual separation from the happening of the body-mind and this primary principle. Separation comes later - it’s a kind of collective delusion which is upheld in the reflective mind. This is the implication of the ‘no self’ pointer. You don’t exist… as such, what exists is the primordial ‘happening’. It’s obvious really - nothing particularly mystical about it - you existing is a kind of category error.

To use a worn out analogy, think of this primordial principle as an ocean… all there is is an ocean of existence. You (the body-mind) are a fleeting wave which has no existence other than the movement of the ocean. So yes, of course, there is this phenomenal expression which we call you or me (that’s how I’m able to address you right now.) This is not denied (Buddhists call this the conventional self.) But it is not a separate, fixed, independent or inherently existing entity - such a thing does not exist.

Reflectively we envisage ourselves as noun-like entities in a world of other noun-like entities and thus have sense of separation and fragmentation. When the divide and abstract tendency of the reflective mind is absent the primordial ‘happening’ of existence (the universal verb if you like) is once more unobscured. And it can dawn that right now there is nothing other than THAT. 

 

AS IT IS

It can be helpful to make a clear distinction between what we might call the reflected world and the real-time world. (Or the happened world and the happening world.) The reflected world is the familiar world of the mind. A world which consists of narratives of the past and future, a world of reflection, rumination and abstraction.

In contrast to this is the wide-awake present actuality of the real-time world - THIS - right now - as it is.

It should be immediately clear how these two modalities differ - though it’s often the case that even in this real-time unfolding the reflected world is still operative to varying degrees (some of which is obviously useful in practical terms.)

Yet when a deep and complete awakening to the happening - non-conceptual - living world occurs, something unexpected can become obvious:

There is no separation! THIS... is without separation or division. Separation is strictly in the past-future axis. Right now in this wide-awake present actuality there is no past, no future, no borders and no separation.

This will be difficult to grasp when reflected upon - but see, that’s where the problem lies. It’s not about reflection, it’s about actualisation. That’s the point. (This is how meditation/solitude can be helpful - just to give the analytical mind a rest.) We are leaving behind the reflected world and inhabiting the real - the living world - THIS - as it is.

In this wide-awake - real-time happening, life becomes real simple. There is this… now it’s this… now this… THIS is a non-dual unfolding - an indivisible event. Twice-ness is strictly conceptual.

THIS Realistion

Without projections of the past and future… life simply IS.

And that is exactly and only what is going on… Life simply is - as it is.

To truly realise this undermines the seeking project - the striving - the doubt - the sense of inadequacy - the comparison of paths - the spiritual materialism.

There’s nothing to attain… there is simply the - already the case - BE-ing of what is… AS IT IS… exactly THIS… YES! THIS, RIGHT NOW… AS IT IS.

In this present moment realisation (and it can only be the present moment) the mind upheld past and future recedes and along with it the extended narrative self leaving the simplicity of the unfolding present - free from drama and compulsion… just this - however it falls.

You Knew This

You knew this. That time on vacation - up on the cliffs overlooking the sea. The sun was luminous. The waves crashed against the rocks below. The air was electric. And it was glorious. You felt utterly alive. Gone were the projections of the past. The future was nonexistent. And the construct of separation dissolved as the event of Life unfolded in real-time.

In this scenario the mind-made happen-ed self is absent. Only, what we might call, the happen-ing self (the functional self/body-mind) is operative - and this happen-ing self is simultaneous with everything in this present unfolding - right now. The happened self (the history self/future self of our stories and anticipations) has no actual existence in the bloom of the present.

We carry a virtual storehouse of memory, history, narrative around with us. It’s vast and burdensome and takes up a huge amount of resources. We spend much (most) of our time there - recollecting, ruminating or rearranging (in the form of future planning.)

In the instant that we let it go something else suddenly becomes apparent. Something real, immediate, alive, vital… This is the natural state.       

You knew this as a small child. It never left - it’s just obscured.

Life As It Happens

In our default, narrative oriented mind-streams and memory, we tend to think of ourselves in terms of horizontal time-lines which stretch back through the past and forwards towards the future. Each line drags its extended past-self around with it. Each line is separate.   

On inspection this can be seen to be a misapprehension - created by and sustained in the mind. Presently - in exactly THIS… NOW… this horizontal time-line version of you has no actual existence (though the mind may insist that it has*.) Instead, the semblance of a ‘you’ that can be found is simultaneous with everything (it’s in this sense that we can frame the concept of no-self), there is no separate, fragmentary, horizontally-extended ‘you’. There is THIS - yes, exactly THIS in which the ‘activity’ of a body-mind-personality (the ‘you’ of thought) is co-arising and is co-existent with the Totality.

When we give up pretending that anything but the present is real - when we stop investing in an imaginary past and future fantasies - we become consciously aligned with the ineffable intelligence of Life as it happens - and from here it may dawn that this (THIS) is all there is.  
             


* This is not to deny that forms have a history, a past-story.

The Natural State

It will be clear to most seekers (especially those who have tried meditation) that the mind operates in two significant modes.

The first is how we normally go about much of our day where our minds are occupied with things that have nothing to do with the task in hand. For instance we can sit in the car for hours and have no recollection of approaching junctions, joining main roads, parking etc. We are (as the phrase goes) lost in our heads - involved in some kind of narrative, planning, remembering, ruminating, holding conversations with ourselves.

The second mode* is that where we are attentive to what is actually going on in the moment. We are not lost to past or future narratives - we experience existence directly as it unfolds in real time (so to speak.) A state of immediacy that is sometimes referred to as presence.

For this post I’ll refer to the two modes as cogitation mode and experiential mode.

It’s my experience that one mode doesn’t cancel out the other (although in extreme cases it seems to), rather, one mode becomes dominant and the other takes a back seat. And this happens to varying degrees along a spectrum. In a heightened sense of the experiential mode, cogitation is almost absent (though mentation is still present and names and places are still recognised etc.)

A heightened and ongoing sense of the experiential mode - in which there is the sense of life simply presenting as it is without a sense of separation or fragmentation - is what is sometimes known as the natural state. This natural state** is a felt-sense or experiential gnosis - as opposed to an intellectual understanding (although an intellectual understanding often accompanies it.)

Although there are no formulas for arriving at this heightened mode/natural state, there are a couple of approaches which orient towards an opening in which it might be revealed (it’s already the case but is obscured by the dominance of the cogitation mode and its distorted perceptions.)

The first could be thought of as a kind of top-down approach. This involves the direct realisation/recognition that Life - as it is - THIS… is inescapably already the case. Without effort-ing, struggling, modifying or obsessing, Life or Wholeness or _____________ is already and always presenting itself. As mentioned, this is an experiential realisation/recognition - a kind of felt sense. It’s no use looking to mind for it - that will only push back to the cogitation mode (this is the reason that stories of ‘I had it then I lost it…’ are so prevalent.)

The other approach is that of mindfulness/meditation. This could be said to be a bottom-up approach where moment-by-moment attention is kept on the actuality of what presents itself. In this approach there is the dissolving of internal dialogue/narrative resulting in a reduction of 'me making' and delusion forming. In this absence of delusion forming there arises the apprehension of life simply happening exactly as it is happening in which narratives of a past, future and a sense of an abiding separate entity are not upheld in mind.


* From a neuroscientific point of view these modes roughly correlate with brain circuitry known as the default network and the direct experience network. This is not to say that the states are merely brain states.

** By this do I mean enlightenment? Well I don’t really know what enlightenment is - everybody seems to have a different take on it. But what I can say is that in this immediate state of wholeness, concepts like enlightenment become utterly irrelevant, even slightly laughable - so it could be said to be a cure for the sickness of enlightenment.
 

The Being Of What Is

At any given moment there is simply the happening or be-ing of ‘what is’. No matter what I (as in the body-mind-personality) do or how I do it - it is always, already the happening of ‘what is’.  

‘What is’ refers to this which is inescapably the case - existence, reality, life, be-ing, creation, source, oneness, tao. Some refer to it as awareness or consciousness. Those who are the most cautious simply point to THIS or thus-ness…

Whatever we call it, this realisation gives rise to the sense of a greater ordering of things beyond the confined sense of a separate self. In the moment of this insight, the sense of ‘I’ points straight through the body-mind to that which gives rise to it - the radiance of reality itself.

Mistaken Perception

Imagine waves on a vast ocean. The ocean (which is a living principle in this thought experiment) has, over time, assigned a limited degree of sentience and perception to each wave. Via each wave the ocean comes to know itself. Each wave can rightly proclaim, from its unique perspective, ‘I am the ocean.’ The wave is the portal through which the ocean manifests a form of self-reflection.

Now, over time the ocean forgets about this self-reflection business and eventually new generations of waves ponder and reasonably conclude that they are, in fact, waves. They forget that they are the ocean’s play, portal and expression and in error believe that they are somehow independent, separate and inherently existing. With this comes a sense of existential anxiety and fear of annihilation. 

This is a caricature of the nub of our existential predicament which is basically a case of mistaken perception. From an early age we overlook the ineffable obvious and identify as the limited expression/portal. My intuition (and in some sense it almost feels like a memory) is that when we came out of the womb - if we could have articulated it - we would have naturally assumed that we were this _______, this dynamic occurrence that is Life itself - nothing less.

Something is happening, something is going on, something ultimately inexplicable - and in moments of quietude there can be a sense/recognition 'ahh… this is so obvious… THIS is what I am… I am Life*… that's what this is… Life simply happening…'

And with the seeing of this we can drop our straining for enlightenment, the endless perfecting of the self, the religious dogma and pedantry, the ceaseless compulsions… and rest here, now, THIS… That’s all… because that’s all there is, THIS... creatively unfolding.



* Life is the placeholder I’m using in this particular post. Tao, Source, Reality, God, Awareness… etc. are equally adequate/questionable.

Dream Of Separation

Stop for a moment and do nothing. Very soon the momentum of existence will reveal itself - this event of Life simply happening. It is mysterious to human cognition - not because there is anything supernatural about it but because its deepest nature is beyond the limitations of human comprehension.

It presents as an ineffable power, creativity and intelligence - effortlessly generating black holes, repairing cells and DNA, converting light into sugar, creating the orbital energy of the electron and the poetry of Rumi.

Nothing stands apart from it - yet it arises as endless variation, individuation, uniqueness and complexity. It is conceiving you/creating you, sustaining you, directing you, determining you, realising you… and yet the mind identifies as a separate, enduring and inherently existing form within this event of Life. Waking up to no-separation is waking up from this habitual dream of separation to the simplicity of just THIS - as it is.

And although the body-mind-matrix is the apparent locus of experience (after all, experience happens here) and we conventionally ascribe sovereign functionality to it, it is not other than a movement and expression of this radiant principle which knows no separation.

abide as a verb

go for a walk

become present with what is going on

anchor yourself in the unfolding current of life

this vast and ungraspable dance

abide as a verb and you abide as the whole

the great event of existence

which knows no separation

The Sun Never Sets

About twenty years ago I lived in a rural location where at certain times of the year I would climb to the top of a hill from where I could sit and watch the sun set. But of course the sun never did set. I came to clearly experience the 'sunset' as the Earth slowly tipping backwards until it obscured the sun. This is a weird and slightly thrilling feeling.

Now imagine not having prior knowledge about the rotation of the Earth and just spontaneously having that felt-sense insight. Well a kind of parallel to that happened to me about eighteen years ago when I tried meditation as a form of relaxation. I wasn't a seeker (in fact I was a skeptic about anything spiritual.) I had a spontaneous shift in perspective. Everything stayed exactly the same (as with the Earths rotation) but was seen in a new light (so to speak.)

There can be the felt-sense that there is no separate entity moving about in Life… Instead Life, THIS (the whole thing - or the whole no-thing if you prefer) is the movement. It's as if there is a switch from the focus being on this fragment (me) to the sense of the whole event that is. It's not that there is no you or no individuated perspective, it's the seeing that this too is a movement/play of Life.

Of course when anyone asks me about this I say try meditation (simply being open to what is) or spend some time in nature. To me this seems obvious and natural. But I realise that this is my bias - this is part of my interpretation of this core realisation. Someone who has come to this by questioning existence might suggest doing that… and so on. The core realisation is universal but the descriptions, elaborations and stories of shifts and awakenings, pointers and paths are subject to biases and conditioning. 

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.

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. 

The Immediate State

In our normal mode of being we have the perception of a self identity that is extended in time - a 'me and my story' that extends back into the past and forwards towards an anticipated future. We might refer to this identity as the extended self or autobiographical self (it could also be known as the psychological or conceptual self.)

Contrasted with this 'normal' mode of being is a state that is revealed in certain circumstances (often at times of absorption or quietude; meditation, moments of intense experience and immersion in nature etc.) In this mode there is the apprehension of life simply happening exactly as it is happening (in real time - so to speak.) Past and future are suspended in this immediacy. 

This might be called the immediate self or the empty self (though it is somewhat paradoxical to call it a self since in this immediate present unfolding, autobiographical considerations are absent - this is why it is sometimes referred to as 'no self'.) 

In this state of immediacy where life is simply happening exactly as it is happening there is conscious alignment with the real-time creative unfolding of the universe. From here there is the certainty that there is nothing that can stand apart from (nothing other than) this ever-fresh unfolding. In this certainty, strain and struggle become redundant and an underlying sense of ease and harmony arises.