Yearning 101
There's this element that's almost never noticed. Let us call it the only part of us that is truly alive. People used to call it spirit until that term became confused with some kind of ghost and lost all meaning.
This truly alive component lives me and all else, while remaining completely unaffected by the coming and going of all things, including 'me', much to my terror and possible infinite relief. This paradox of the non-duality of Transcendent Witness and All Things Witnessed, abiding as it does in the midst of apparent duality, is beyond the capacity of the mind to unravel. Our best physicists ignore the paradox. Our very best physicists express awe and humility, beholding the disappearing ink with which boundaries between subject and object are drawn.
Consciousness cannot be located in time and space. It is NOT an object. It is that which is aware of all objects, including thought-objects, hunch-objects, intuition-objects, mystical vision-objects and, oh yeah, the 'object' that cannot be located in time and space. Paradoxically, no objects exists outside of Consciousness, rendering the ultimate difference between subject and object a tad moot.
Both consciousness and its objects are noticed by something prior, something weightless, colorless and dimensionless which Nisargadatta calls 'Awareness'. Consciousness, unlike awareness, requires objects. The 'con' in the word means 'with' - knowing with or by means of objects. Awareness has no such requirement.
It is pointless to try to find awareness. It is what you already ARE. Your thoughts about yourself-as-awareness are not awareness. They are merely more objects of which awareness and its handmaiden consciousness are aware.
These insights appear annoyingly repetitive, but for a reason. The true status of awareness is an ordinary miracle so simple, so profoundly present that it is almost universally overlooked. Hence the need for the humorously impossible task of pointing to what IT IS, again and again. I say 'pointing to' because it can never be adequately described. It is extraordinary how much we take the blessing of awareness for granted. I mean, look at what we use it for. Card games for crying out loud. Yet, notice how awareness makes no judgments on how it is used. It is infinitely kinder than the punitive, judgmental thought-gods we project. Awareness, that 'prior to Consciousness' thing that Nisargadatta points out, is truly un-Englishable and yet nothing at all can be said to exist without it.
Sensing all this about awareness elicits the most startling feelings of devotion and gratitude, as we intuit that we don't even have to do anything to deserve the beatitude of awareness. It is who and what we are, no matter how convincingly the cosmic swarm of objects clamors for attention and even, shudder, identification.
Identification with objects. There's the rub. The sticky briar patch rub. Struggling to free oneself from identification is the really sticky part of the illusion, for there is no separate self apart from the activity of identifying. That activity is the original meaning of sin, from the Greek word, 'hamartia' which means 'to miss the mark.'
This truly alive component lives me and all else, while remaining completely unaffected by the coming and going of all things, including 'me', much to my terror and possible infinite relief. This paradox of the non-duality of Transcendent Witness and All Things Witnessed, abiding as it does in the midst of apparent duality, is beyond the capacity of the mind to unravel. Our best physicists ignore the paradox. Our very best physicists express awe and humility, beholding the disappearing ink with which boundaries between subject and object are drawn.
Consciousness cannot be located in time and space. It is NOT an object. It is that which is aware of all objects, including thought-objects, hunch-objects, intuition-objects, mystical vision-objects and, oh yeah, the 'object' that cannot be located in time and space. Paradoxically, no objects exists outside of Consciousness, rendering the ultimate difference between subject and object a tad moot.
Both consciousness and its objects are noticed by something prior, something weightless, colorless and dimensionless which Nisargadatta calls 'Awareness'. Consciousness, unlike awareness, requires objects. The 'con' in the word means 'with' - knowing with or by means of objects. Awareness has no such requirement.
It is pointless to try to find awareness. It is what you already ARE. Your thoughts about yourself-as-awareness are not awareness. They are merely more objects of which awareness and its handmaiden consciousness are aware.
These insights appear annoyingly repetitive, but for a reason. The true status of awareness is an ordinary miracle so simple, so profoundly present that it is almost universally overlooked. Hence the need for the humorously impossible task of pointing to what IT IS, again and again. I say 'pointing to' because it can never be adequately described. It is extraordinary how much we take the blessing of awareness for granted. I mean, look at what we use it for. Card games for crying out loud. Yet, notice how awareness makes no judgments on how it is used. It is infinitely kinder than the punitive, judgmental thought-gods we project. Awareness, that 'prior to Consciousness' thing that Nisargadatta points out, is truly un-Englishable and yet nothing at all can be said to exist without it.
Sensing all this about awareness elicits the most startling feelings of devotion and gratitude, as we intuit that we don't even have to do anything to deserve the beatitude of awareness. It is who and what we are, no matter how convincingly the cosmic swarm of objects clamors for attention and even, shudder, identification.
Identification with objects. There's the rub. The sticky briar patch rub. Struggling to free oneself from identification is the really sticky part of the illusion, for there is no separate self apart from the activity of identifying. That activity is the original meaning of sin, from the Greek word, 'hamartia' which means 'to miss the mark.'
Separating fracked from friction
Is God so egocentric that He/She wants to be worshiped? So cheap that He forgives a debt only on the condition that it be paid? (see: law of karma)... So jealous and judgmental that he insists unbelievers be put to death? So heartless that He creates billions of animals who tear each other to pieces with tooth and claw? So nasty that he makes it okay for so many humans to suffer relentless pain and torment, unable to find what heals? So sadistic as to give us free will and ignorance at the same time? Such a God, who seems to figure largely in most major religions, doesn't seem godlike at all, more like a projection of those parts of ourselves most desperately in need of simple kindness and good will.
Is God so egocentric that He/She wants to be worshiped? So cheap that He forgives a debt only on the condition that it be paid? (see: law of karma)... So jealous and judgmental that he insists unbelievers be put to death? So heartless that He creates billions of animals who tear each other to pieces with tooth and claw? So nasty that he makes it okay for so many humans to suffer relentless pain and torment, unable to find what heals? So sadistic as to give us free will and ignorance at the same time? Such a God, who seems to figure largely in most major religions, doesn't seem godlike at all, more like a projection of those parts of ourselves most desperately in need of simple kindness and good will.
Beware of anyone who tells you what anything is
I don't mean in terms of practical things of course. If you're learning how to set up Windows 10 or use a new espresso maker, it really helps to have someone tell you what things are, what they're called and how they're used. However, when it comes to such matters as the meaning of life, the nature of awareness, the essence of being or, shudder, ultimate truth, beware of anyone who purports to tell you how it all is. Even in giving you this warning, I am purporting to know a lot more than I do.
Years ago, I attended a group therapy class run by a sagacious seventy-four year old psychiatrist who exhibited an uncanny knack for seeing through psychopathologies of all shades. One thing that really stood out for me in his classes was that when he exposing someone's act and the person confessed their brokenness, their terror, their weakness, their confusion, their dread, their self-loathing etc., that very person in question would suddenly find themselves open heartedly received and honored by the group in ways that were moving and transformative. We weren't rewarding weakness or self-loathing, rather acknowledging the truth and wonder of showing up honest.
How wonderful it would be if we could all bring such stark honesty to such issues as faith, belief, truth and the meaning of life and death. We know dickall, really. Honesty should be our starting point. This, just this that we are living together always-right-now-only is a wonder that outshines all theories, concepts, conjectures, and judgments. It is an ordinary material that seems to escape us. We take it for granted while filling libraries and data bases filled with mind forged descriptions and definitions that miss entirely what it is.
Oddly, we don't notice that, whatever it is, it animates us. We derive awareness and life itself from it, not as though it's some big power station in the desert somewhere pumping life juice through one and all, but rather, that it is the life of all lives arising forever once-only here and now. It is given to us so freely, so utterly, that there is just the gift. How do we ever repay a gift that is given so freely that we can't find a giver to thank? The more open and receptive we become to what this is that we're actually living, the more it eclipses all our hoary conceptual projections of Deities in the Sky.
Must stop now, stating to sound like some know it all prick who thinks he knows what it is. (insert sweating grin smiley here).
Years ago, I attended a group therapy class run by a sagacious seventy-four year old psychiatrist who exhibited an uncanny knack for seeing through psychopathologies of all shades. One thing that really stood out for me in his classes was that when he exposing someone's act and the person confessed their brokenness, their terror, their weakness, their confusion, their dread, their self-loathing etc., that very person in question would suddenly find themselves open heartedly received and honored by the group in ways that were moving and transformative. We weren't rewarding weakness or self-loathing, rather acknowledging the truth and wonder of showing up honest.
How wonderful it would be if we could all bring such stark honesty to such issues as faith, belief, truth and the meaning of life and death. We know dickall, really. Honesty should be our starting point. This, just this that we are living together always-right-now-only is a wonder that outshines all theories, concepts, conjectures, and judgments. It is an ordinary material that seems to escape us. We take it for granted while filling libraries and data bases filled with mind forged descriptions and definitions that miss entirely what it is.
Oddly, we don't notice that, whatever it is, it animates us. We derive awareness and life itself from it, not as though it's some big power station in the desert somewhere pumping life juice through one and all, but rather, that it is the life of all lives arising forever once-only here and now. It is given to us so freely, so utterly, that there is just the gift. How do we ever repay a gift that is given so freely that we can't find a giver to thank? The more open and receptive we become to what this is that we're actually living, the more it eclipses all our hoary conceptual projections of Deities in the Sky.
Must stop now, stating to sound like some know it all prick who thinks he knows what it is. (insert sweating grin smiley here).
Spontaneous Wednesday prayer: Save me from the hubris of thinking that only Absolute Awareness is worthy of attention.
