One Essence

If there is only One, then choice or no choice, free will or no free will, has no ground. There is only this.

When you speak, I hear it over here. So where is the separation?

When I turn and see you, I experience the seeing here, so how can you be over there?

When I touch your body, I experience it in me. So where is the boundary?

Unconditional love is simply the recognition that all emanates from the One Essence, expressing itself without judgment.

All that the apparent person can experience is nothing other than the One Essence experiencing a focal point.

Only the body mind sees good and bad. And there is nothing wrong with that. But it is a limitation!

Right and wrong have their place. It lets one protect the body. Remember that only the body, and the desire to keep and enjoy it, create right and wrong.

Right and wrong keeps culture intact and markets functioning. All to keep our bodies sheltered and fed. The mind is just a memory bank of how to do that.

But the mind gets stuck in its culture, in its milieu, and in protecting itself, comes to believe it is the only game in town.

There is nothing wrong with this self protection. There is nothing wrong with right or wrong. It's just a condition imposed by the body. A limitation, a contraction of the One.

Knowing this, one acknowledges right and wrong, but one also knows that it is not the truth of the One. Awareness knows no right or wrong. It is unconditional. It is always love.

I am Everywhere

I am is everywhere, yet sometimes thinks it's this or that. All the personal work has its use in undoing conditioning.

First there was contraction, then openness. The yin and yang of experience.

We were before we thought, and are after thinking is done. Curiosity killed the cat, and curiosity took this one down as well. So what was the harm in thinking?

The true mind knows it's limits. The true mind knows something is beyond. The true mind knows it can relax and let things be. The rest is just play.

I was the one before I knew I was the one. So who was I when I thought I was someone? The One of course. Who else could I have been?

Personality thought it was the root, but turns out it wasn't. Resonance lead elsewhere.

When chaos and randomness fall into Being, nothing is left out of place.

The Liberated Mind

What is the state or non state when seeking for deeper understanding is going on, but there is no one doing the seeking?

Who is doing the search for deeper understanding when there is no sense of someone doing the seeking?

When there is seeking, or non seeking, and in either case there is no one seeking, who is seeking? Is anyone seeking, or is this just the mind tripping along trying to understand, because it is it's nature to do so?

Does the mind, when liberated, go on seeking its limits, exploring the boundaries of its limitation? Can it actually enjoy this search for the boundary and limit of itself? Or is there something deeper, some wholeness, that enjoys the mind finding it's limit?

That is the sense here. There is not seeking for The Answer. But there is enjoyment of letting the mind play, watching the mind play. This mind thing likes to play with thought, likes to watch it soar and crash.

That is the sense here. That there is joy in creating a deeper facility through the mind with words, in order to describe the indescribable, to describe what is, with no one here.

It's just a game. The mind knows only so much. It knows that it is limited, but it still enjoys the push to see deeper, to describe more adeptly what cannot be captured.

So it is a game. The end is already assured, whether the mind gets a final answer or not. This character is playing the tune it hears, that it likes sometimes, and not others.

This character is playing the part of its conditioning, while knowing it is conditioned. It also knows that the character is only part of a painting. Yet what I am is the painting, and the wall, and the building, and the city, and the world, and the universe.

Bus Line Meditation

ATA Bus line Meditation

I recall a conversation with a guru in which a student complained about wanting to meditate, but a car garage was below his flat, so there was constant noise. The guru told him to move.

Perhaps the guru had this guy figured out and wanted him to move out of the neighborhood so he wouldn't ask any more stupid questions. Easier to get him to move than throw him out.

For this one, the place I am most alone is riding the bus to work. There is no place that is quieter for me. But the bus is noisy, and there is banter among the talkers that congregate at the back.

No one has created a pattern of sitting next to me, and no one has decided I was the one they needed to talk to. Perhaps I have an aura that says, "Leave this guy alone."

So the bus ride to work is the best meditation time I have. Since I don't really know anyone, any judgments I have are surface only, they have no roots. The scenery I know by heart. Car lanes don't particularly inspire me to keep my eyes open.

I can read the paper on the bus before it starts to move, but once it gets going, reading is not very pleasant. I close my eyes, and begin to meditate. Before I experience two minutes passing, the thirty-five minute bus ride is over.

Meanwhile, during the lapse of time, I have traveled inside my body, pronounced it healthy, forgiven my fellow bus riders for being superficial, and blessed my enemies. By the time the bus stops downtown, I am forgiven. What a blessed way to begin the day.

Riding the bus has provided me more meditation time than anything I've ever tried. I don't like to sit and meditate at home. There was always something else I'd rather do, like get up and have some coffee.

So providence (the word for today) provided the bus; my personal vehicle just for meditation. I've begun to suspect though, that providence is efficient, because I've noticed a few others, head bowed, eyes closed, but not asleep. Perhaps they're praying the heart out too.

Helpful Gurus

There are a number of enlightened folk around these days. Some are more helpful than others.

There are many that say we are all enlightened and there's nothing to be done. At a certain level of awareness this may be true? But is it helpful?

The non dual police will now say, "Helpful to who?" They know there is ultimately no one to help?

However, there are still millions of apparent poor souls out there searching, wanting help. Who will help them?

In this body-mind's search I can only say that of the hundreds of books I've read, and the teachers I've met, some were helpful, some not.

I can hear it again. Helpful to whom? Helpful to this apparent body-mind, this illusion, this seeker, this whatever you want to call it.

Pain can be helpful. Granted. But pain and anguish can also demoralize and destroy, and where pain can be assuaged, or sidestepped, it's a good thing.

Where pain is already established, and can't be ignored, then it's necessary and good to feel it. And it must be felt and experienced down to the core.

I have wailed and cried, and screamed till I was horse. I have felt pain that I did not think I could bare. But this body-mind, this apparent self, this illusion, did benefit.

From intense therapy, and intense feeling of pain, I was able to leave it behind. Suffering to a large degree stopped. Would I like to have avoided it, yes! Could I be who I am if I had not felt it? No. If I had found a way around it, would I have benefited? Who knows?

Real or unreal, illusion or not, I avoid suffering where I can. To those who helped me avoid further suffering, by helping me get in touch with my pain so I could feel it, I am ever grateful.

As much as I like abstract theory, esoteric spirituality, and enlightenment, I also like what works! I'll take what works over non dual theory any day. Call it practical enlightenment if you wish.

Some teachers are helpful and some aren't. A suffering person can be called an illusion, an apparent energy field, whatever. That doesn't lessen the suffering. It doesn't help.

If there is suffering, help is called for. If there is suffering and I can help, I want to help. I could care less whether the suffering person is illusory or not. I could care less if the sufferer is only an illusory energy field.

Duality and non duality are part and parcel of the same oneness. There is no separation. But if separation is felt, and someone is in pain, those that are helpful, seem to me, more in touch with the One Love.

A Permanent State of Bliss

Ah, to have that permanent state of bliss. Don't you want it?

We want that unshakable assurance that we know. The kind of assurance that can't be questioned because the authority of it is so profound, and the experience so subjectively felt, that we cannot doubt it. An experience that is so far beyond logic, that no argument could even begin to lap at its feet.

We may be programmed to want this - to search for this. We don't get this desire from reading books. However, books or a teacher may make us aware that such a desire was already nascent in us.

A touch of spiritual insight just uncovers that desire. Then the search is on! We don't get this desire for profound assurance from reading. It is our true nature. Our true Self wants this. Our true nature is sure. Somehow, that allness wants to experience itself through through us.

As for such high experiences coming and going? It appears to be a normal progression. Cyclical, like most of nature.

There are gurus who express what they know from an assurance of permanence. Mooji often says "I don't understand how you say you got it, and then..., and then.... What is this and then?" Obviously Mooji is implying, if you get it, it should be permanent.

My own experience is that I have had the complete and total experience of oneness and meaning so profound that all normal feeling and experience is meaningless in comparison. And yet that state, experiences of that state, don't remain permanent in this body/mind.

This doesn't mean that I am not changed radically from having had such experiences. I had to let these states go because I just couldn't function in this world and remain in such states. More likely it wasn't a choice. I just couldn't stay there. And I couldn't stay there because there was no "me" there.

Would I like to be able to stay in a state of bliss, without fear, in total oneness, and assurance that it was permanent? Of Course I would. Could I? Who knows?

What helped me a lot with this question of states of bliss and oneness and their lack of permanence was reading "The Experience of No Self," by Bernadette Roberts. She describes high states that come and go. Then even higher states that come and go. Her point is that once one is in a new experiential state for awhile, one gets used to it, so it is no longer experienced as a "high." It becomes the norm.

The bottom line is to know what you know, but remain in the unknowing of what you don't know, even acknowledging that you don't know what you don't know.

If extremely high states are not permanent, then there is more work to do, or such a permanent state is not in the cards for you. It's the journey that matters.

Our intellect does want as much understanding of the mystical as possible. Even though spiritual experience is beyond the intellect and logic, the intellect does want as much understanding as possible.

It seeks a level of satisfaction. If it can get a level of understanding, it actually relaxes. And that relaxation may allow the spiritual seeker to really let go, since with enough feeding, the intellect sees its own limits and accepts them.

Permanence and impermanence are in a dance. We are the dancers. Enjoy the dance.

Let's Go Play

If one knows that one is Source appearing, and Source is eternal, what does that do to time? Sort of makes it irrelevant. Well, in the Big picture anyway.

So, here we are, sitting in the Big picture. The eternal has no beginning and no end. With no beginning, and no end, there is only now. So time becomes irrelevant.

Who cares? The apparent body cares. It is programmed to want to live, and therefore to eat and sleep and have shelter, and few other joys.

Can there then be peace while the body-mind goes about getting its needs met? Perhaps, if one actually grasps the fact of being eternal. If the mind acts on that, perhaps it can do all the things necessary, to be on time, for work, dental appointments, etc., and yet do it all peacefully, because ultimately, we have all the time in the world.

But, if we have a soul, and that soul also has a place in eternity, then perhaps it does make a difference in how we go about getting our food and shelter. Perhaps if we do so lovingly, our eternal place may be different.

Some say this is a school, some say only a playground. Perhaps it's a playground for Source, but a school for us.

Perhaps Source doesn't care how we perform, but does reward accordingly. Perhaps not. Some say we are punished by our sins, not for our sins. Seems fair to me.

If we can see that some people are far more conscious than others. If we can see that some are at peace with everything. And if, as Hawkins points out, there are levels of consciousness, and those with a higher level of consciousness are more at peace. Then perhaps it does make a difference here, and in the ever after.

I certainly see growth in myself and in others. I certainly prefer to be around people who are more highly evolved, more conscious, more loving, more peaceful, more open, more forgiving. And if that's a higher level of consciousness, I prefer to be around those.

As to the consequences of this (levels of consciousness) in the afterlife, why would it be any different there than here? If we can have one life in a body, it makes sense that we could have another, unless of course, if we are just a body.

But, if we are spirit, and just inhabiting a body for a time, then we could inhabit another one here, or another one in some other dimension. And if we are individuated here, we probably will be individuated there.

Of course, this doesn't mean that we are not all one and all Source only. It's just that if we can appear separate here, we can appear separate there, or anywhere. This dimension or any other.

If we are not individuated in the next life as well. Who is going to play? How else does the play of Lila go on?

I suspect that in all this play, there is also growth. I suspect that the growth of the individual spirit does happen. I suspect that I am spirit and not just a body. And I suspect that in the next dimension (since life is actually eternal) I will also have the opportunity to play and to grow.

Most games have rules. We just don't know what the Big rules are. I do know that it's a lot more fun to play when you know you really can't die. It's certainly less stressful.

I have only found one Big rule, and that is love. OK, boys and girls, lets go play!