Non-Duality and Awakening, by Other Means– One
Responses to various folks regarding non-dual/spiritual teachings- one
6.29.22
God “gives” nothing, for all is given always and already. In each moment everything is, and simply so.
The foolishness that asserts “God” rewards for good behavior (and by inference punishes for bad) goes totally against the Prodigal Son, for just one example, not to mention every other teaching of Jesus, without exception. The same foolishness is also contrary to the teachings of most of the world’s established traditions. No mystic, shaman, sage, awakened being or avatar would ever say such a thing.
There is no such thing as deserving, whether it be of the good or of the bad. All that is made up. There is only ignorance, in the form of mistaken belief. This whole idea of reward and punishment is nothing more.
Forgiveness then becomes all about forgiving ourselves for believing we, or anyone, could ever in truth be apart from what is Everything. There simply is no “other,” in truth.
Stop ingesting and spreading dualistic foolishness, and begin to discover that you already are everything you seek. God sees only God. All this belief in separation (what I am calling here foolishness) sees only separation.
And for some reading this, God is not just without gender, God is without form, without definition, without conceptualization, and knowable only by Herself, Here and Now.
Just This, and yet so amazingly, incredibly and paradoxically, also here in the form of All of us.
Do question ALL beliefs, both inwardly and outwardly, and you will eventually discover your own unique path in relationship to the One path we and all life share, this path to what we already irrevocably (and uniquely) are.
Such an incredible, amazing paradox.
God(dess), the Unspeakable, One, Whole, Already.
—
10.22.22
Read Bernardo Kastrup and listen to Rupert Spira, for starters, and of course only if you wish, in order to begin to realize that it all begins with consciousness, and not the other way around, as your words are wanting to have it here.
There needs to be a little bit of willingness of course, a willingness to question your own beliefs. Just a little. The more you question the more you will discover, in what will then become also a process of unlearning, what is in the way of what is always and already here.
In all of that there may eventually begin a new kind of bright energy that you will be able to sense is actually what you are, and that will naturally tend to breed ever more willingness in you.
But first there must be that little bit of actual willingness on your part, always on your own timing and in your own ways.
The whole human meta-belief in separation, or what I will call here arbitrary boundaries, between all the myriad and very ordinary (and yet so amazingly) ever shifting and changing, coming and going, energetic contractions, expansions, interactions and flows, are merely the same old persistent and divisive illusional and delusional foundations for what is now, and to a lesser degree for most of human history (his story), destroying the earth and life on earth, the environment on every level, long term natural and geophysical balances, societies, bioregions, local communities, familial relationships, and physical and psychological health.
When you finally realize that all of this seeming existence, on every level and to every degree, arises in consciousness, all of those ideologies of separation, without exception, will no longer make any sense.
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The whole "purpose" of existence IS conscious transcendence. Whatever it takes to nudge the possibilities of awakening into consciousness, you can be sure that existence will eventually and repeatably provide it to you.
Whether it be pain, fear, monotony, an epiphany, a scent, a glimpse, a sunset, a majestic mountain, a beloved relationship, the death of a friend, a poem, a chord, a beat.
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As long as you want to keep playing in the midst of all these mental ideologies have fun. It is totally your own free choice, of course, and no objections here.
Or in other words keep “playing in the glass,” using your metaphor and so to speak.
What is left out of your meme’s pointing (as all such things, words, ideologies, etc., can only ever be, pointings, at very best) is that at the “bottom” of the glass “metaphor” (i.e. your mind) is the discovery there is no glass, no bottom, and no you. No God either.
And what is so amazing and ordinary, never-the-less, right there in the midst of all this discovery, is that “you” have not gone anywhere, nor have you come to or from anywhere. It has always been just this.
The only thing in the way of you knowing what I am pointing to here is a clinging to whole lot of ever shifting changing beliefs and ideologies that you have made up into an ‘image’ of a separate you, and then of course all “those” seeming separate others. Things, atoms, persons, places, theories, memories, etc., etc.
All “positions,” as you attempt to assert here, will necessarily imply relative and static seeming so-called “other places” that are also made (up) in the illusions of separation. This allows you to believe you can be "away from" and "relative" to, and therefore somehow be “safe” from, control, or possess such and so-called "other” places, things, people, etc.
Quantum physics has been "seeing" through all this, more and more, for a long time.
And I am just playing with words here, as in pointing, dynamically. You are free, as we all are, to keep clinging to (or resisting) all these mere pointing fingers for as long you want. You must actually GO upon this non-journey, as in live it fully in all that you have and are, for it to begin to bear real fruit. The fruit eventually becoming the “you” that you are before you were born.
Always and forever (here in these beliefs of time & space), it will depend on what you REALLY want.
Emphasize REALLY some more.
And “forever” being of course merely whatever is currently beyond your always changing shifting imagination regarding time, with imagination being the illusional (and delusional) "maker" of all these so-called time, space and belief realms.
Or in other words a meta-belief in beliefs in a make-believe "you."
All of it is smoke and mirrors.
We used to sometimes call all this you are claiming to “know” spiritual materialism.
In Truth, on the other side of what has no sides, or what Zen calls the gate-less gate, all simply is, still.
Belief is, on this non-side of that non-gate, now fully seen for what it is. All the while as we discover in the full light of this new eternal day, and in ever greater and greater ways, that darkness never really was.
Instead we now know, without any need for a separate knower, that it is all a real and actual play of the utter simplicity of consciousness as the source of all complexity, which we also are.
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10.25.22
Exactly. All the rest here is mere words, mind games. Belief and identification with them, which will always of course keep using our energy and our allegiance to "prove" we "are" them.
But only for as long as our allegiance is given over to beliefs.
People can keep playing around in, with, and through belief for as long as they choose to do so, in an attempt to make this dream of separation, and therefore "separate" identities, including their own, seem real.
And yet in truth beliefs, by their very nature, come and go, and because they do they will not ever be real. Whether it be demons we are believing in, or angels, or merely our own theories, rationalities and ideas. All of it comes and goes.
The whole purpose of this dream of existence here in form is to awaken out of it. Everything else is hubris. Do we keep believing, and by extension keep accepting all these conflicts that are forever arising as a result of our conflicted and conflicting beliefs, or do we finally begin to question our beliefs.?
Always this choice. In each and every moment. Over and over. Until this sort of questioning permeates every part of our lives.
At which point something ancient and new may begin to reveal.
The first primary meta belief upon which all other beliefs are founded and give their allegiance to is exactly this belief that we are separate, and that all these thoughts of ours, that are always coming and going, are "real".
In other words the one belief, and only one, that pretty near all humans (and no other life forms) "agree" on, is, we are separate.
Part 2
You are circling in on only yourself. Do go back around and around again, until you actually turn around. So to speak. First is consciousness, then belief, then the development and attachment to identities in the beliefs of separation, and only then can there be these sense perceptions of what seems to be a separate world.
In other words our perception is not really a thing of the eardrums or eyes or skin. It is instead a thing of our conditioned body-mind, which places (believes) the creation of matter first, not last.
And then it is only us humans who further "make believe" their own separate world, to overlay on top of the huge interweave of natural, living realms here on this planet we call Earth.
An overlay that started out as just a few scattered bits and pieces of patriarchy, in the early dawns of what we call history (his story), but which has now become a thick, smothering and cancerous destroyer of all that lies “beneath” it, a huge living realm or “ground” that we humans never-the-less remain totally interdependent with. However much “we” may believe otherwise. That weave does not need humans, but humans do need it.
And yet some of us are actually and truly called to circle fully back, through questioning first perception, then belief, and finally attachment. And of course the very final and most scary question of all, attachment to what.?
It feels like the end of ourself, yet in truth it is only the end of separation. We were always here.
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10.27.22
Actually, it IS that simple. Happiness comes at the end of belief. Though more accurately happiness has never not been here. Belief in otherwise is all that gets in the way of this knowing, which we also ARE. A separate “knower” has never been necessary for happiness to be.
You are revealing your own believed-in limitations, and what seems to be some rather rigidly held onto self-imagery, in the way you use just these two words or terms: “useful” and “teaching”. They are symbols for two of the primary structures at the core of spiritual materialism and all its associated ideologies of separation, sometimes referred to as dualistic religions. Whether they be “mainstream,” “new age,” or neo-newage mixes.
People who advertise themselves as spiritual teachers are mostly just trying to make their own illusory journeys as separate identities seem more “real” by gathering followers around them. They are gathering "attention" to themselves, in other words, in order to make their own illusory separate existence seem more real to them.
Actual mystics have no “use” for ANY of that.
None of this can ever be “taught,” and it is definitely not in any way meant to be “useful,” a term that is fully in service to identities in the beliefs of separation.
But it CAN be shared. In fact, we are MEANT to share it. This is exactly why there are so many of us, so to speak. And I do not mean, by “us,” just humans. It is really all of us together, that is all life on Earth, who are walking each other home.
The Buddha has been quoted as saying it this way, “I and all sentient existence has awakened.”
In our heart of hearts we all are simply seeking each other's loving companionship. No more no less.
Always coming, always going, each turn of the spiral a little further along, and with all these “fingers” pointing the way.
How can anything be separate from what is always and already Everything, prior to ALL words, ideas and concepts.?
Stop grasping onto fingers and simply go with where they point. Or not. Always your choice.
This is the only one real choice there EVER is, for each and every auspicious human birth. And so amazing that there are now actually eight billion (!) unique possibilities for this choice to begin discovering itself, and then through the dynamics of that discovery realize its own unique ways of conscious expression.
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12.11.22
Herein is the danger of all of Rupert Spira’s teachings. Too much thinking. questioning, answering, conceptualizing, constructions and reconstructions, ingenious contrivances, clever arrangements, interesting puzzles, on and on.
Consider Rupert’s wondrous pottery just for fun, as a metaphor. See for a moment his pieces as being all about the spaciousness they seem to so beautifully enclose and/or displace, and that their real purpose is actually to bring attention to that very same spaciousness.
Yet this purpose is forgotten, over and over, instead it becomes all about the constructs, how they appear, sooo much recognizable beauty and intricacy and sensibility, refinement, or whatever. And how all this amazing pottery seems to want to keep fitting together into some sort of larger or greater purpose, goal, accomplishment, understanding, meaning, or maybe not.
Bits and pieces of pottery forever being moved around and fitted back together in varied and different ways, and yet always becoming merely more constructs, things, ideas, or in other words all of it always seeming to become ever more different “spiritual possibilities”. AKA spiritual materialism.
When it is the very spaciousness itself, quiet and silent, prior to all words, ideas and constructs, that all of this is really trying to point or bring our attention back to.. Which is what all true teachings in their original nature and origins are meant to do. Bring us back to this here now and very same spaciousness that we always and already are.
In other words this knowing that knows itself without any other. All appearances, dimensions and relativities have now become a conscious play, neither necessary nor unnecessary, simply arising and falling away, always and forever within an ever greater spaciousness that we also are.
And with every aspect of it also and always this very same knowing. Words, actions, things, now just part of the play, coming, going, none of it necessary, everything included, nothing left out.
A slightly different metaphor. Consider that the frame has overwhelmed the picture and the picture is lost, so we can no longer realize we are that picture, which is actually a doorway or opening, Zen’s gateless gate, that we are meant to pass through.. The frame was originally meant to only bring our attention to this. And then let the frame fall away as we pass through.
Rather than turning the frame itself it into merely more ideas, concepts, teachings, and then so often putting it all on a pedestal, or worse making it into an identity, alter, leader, self, bible, teacher, guru.. ALL of that is only the frame, now become merely grandiose, extravagant, with all of its true purpose now lost touch with.
Once the passage is made we look back and realize there was no gate, and never was, and we were always and already here. Always and forever now, our very own fluid and ever changing opening into what we always and already are, and have never not been.
Even “looking back” has disappeared. None of it was ever real.. Memories remain but they are now just part of this conscious play, always here and always now.
Rupert is more than a little lost in his own teachings, for a good while now, as he keeps turning them into ever more and more beautiful and expensive “pottery” pieces, a whole lot of it being grandiose and gaudy frame these days, however highly intelligent and sensible it may appear to be, and with everybody it seems admiring all of the intricacy, beauty, refinement and “sensibility,” even as all these myriad frames are now more often than not merely referring back and forth to each other.
So many people these days are “buying” Rupert’s teachings and in a sense trading them around and bragging on them, like virtual “baseball” (spiritual) cards, incessantly debating their various meanings and spiritual values, and even to the point of hanging them on their own intellectual walls so as to dress up their own lives and identities with them.
And of course this same process has been going on for thousands of years in the East. Commentaries upon commentaries upon commentaries. Myriad huge monasteries and libraries there are actually full of the same, all of it gathering dust and moldering away.
Ornate, intricate, ponderous and refined frames, all made up out of words. The belief we can know life by dissecting it with body-minds lost in all these extreme identities of separation.
Rather than by simply living, fully, presently, consciously.
All of this “spiritual” foolishness will eventually fall away of course, crumble, burn. Both the beautiful and the ugly, because all of it is the same foolishness. Spiritual materialism. Intellectual or “rational” spirituality, all and merely in the service of identities of separation.
More and more mere ideas and self styled spiritual teachers trying to capture and control their own Source, take charge of their own destiny, and continue in their belief-generated separate existence.
In other words that “something” can be separate from what is always and already everything. Which is not possible of course, no matter how pretty and sensible all such words and spiritual concepts may seem, to the smart and complicated minds of certain people.
In the belief that somehow, through mere words and concepts, all these pieces of frames and bits of pottery can “rejoin” what has never been apart.
Instead, just be still.
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12.16.22
Artificial intelligence, AI, is “simply” extremely (emphasize extremely) complex, outrageously sophisticated symbol manipulating computer programing, algorithms, and/or whatever other techie terms one wishes to apply here. And then this AI is additionally programmed to re-program itself on the fly, so to speak. In other words, "learn” and “adapt”.
The huge complexities of contemporary computer hardware and software and all the networking that it is all woven into is far beyond any singular grasp.
Interestingly, the people believing AI can become “self conscious,” from all appearances at least, are nearly as "programed" (i.e. "lost in their heads"), similar to the way these digital binary computer simulations or "AI" are “lost” in human constructed software, hardware and programming, so to speak.
The important difference though is that humans with these penchants are merely lost in their own beliefs that they are just their thoughts. All the while as the AI computer simulations continue to be ONLY some ever-more complex, and now or so it appears, also “self” complexifying (to make up a word), extremely sophisticated computer simulations appearing IN consciousness.
Computers are “merely” another extension of the human meta-belief in separation, or we could say this huge identity of separation that it trying to gain some ever increasing “control” over its own source, ground and context.
Herein also is a perfect example of the extreme danger of all so-called non-dual "thinking," particularly as it has been evolving here in the West over these last few decades. Non-dual concepts and ideologies have become soooo highly "intelligent" and complex, as well as complexifiable (to make up another word), that it attracts more and more of the sort of people who are infatuated with complexity, extreme intellectual identities, puzzles, engineering challenges and mental games, and so now even to the point of taking a lot of that infatuation right on into these overly sophisticated and clever AI extremes.
The tragedy of all this is the real gifts, depths and essences of non-dual teachings and pointings are becoming more and more obscured, distorted and lost, in the midst of all their intellectual and what are meant to be temporary frameworks and/or vehicles, “disappearing packaging,” so to speak.
All teachings at very best can only ever serve in-passing what they are pointing towards. At worse, which is where a lot (most?) of it has gotten to now, in the minds of a large variety of extreme intellectual identities, is that it makes up more and more structures for identities of separation to become more and more lost in and behind and under, etc.
But that is another rather different conversation.
Any computer simulation, AI or whatever, no matter how complex, fast and/or sophisticated such may eventually become, does not and will not ever understand as in directly experience the meaning, or may I say the essence or original nature of any of the words, concepts or interests that it the machine, and/or its human questioner, are using.. Definitions, yes.. Contemporary customs and usage, yes. Essence, true meaning(s), values and direct experiences, all the many infinite and infinitely ineffable hints, scents, pointings and senses, self-aware relational connections and commonalities, on and on and on, no.
And most certainly AI will not ever have any real actual interest in going towards or waking up (to or as) where all real and true inwardly arising spiritual endeavor is reaching from, as well as towards. It may even have some programing, sourced from “self” or other that “says” that, but it is no more real than a physical book sitting on your bookshelf containing similar words “having” that interest.
In other words, waking up OUT of exactly EVERYTHING that both the AI and all its software, hardware systems, engineers and programers are some rather extreme examples of. There is never going to be any actual consciousness experiencing itself as that hardware and software TO wake up.
AI is altogether just some more extreme examples of our own human meta-belief in separation projecting itself into ever more extreme efforts to replace Source with itself. To make its own “matter” first and foremost. Identifying with our own projections that are merely appearing withIN Consciousness, as we (humans) continue to try to replace Consciousness with ourself. Replace God with man.
And merely and simple because a tiny aspect of Consciousness that has been reaching to awaken to itself through humans has now, here in 21st century CE, become terribly lost in believing it is separate from and can therefore replace itSelf.
We fear our own Source, for ALL our identities of separation will be seen for what they are, nothing, in the true Light of that Love. And yet on the other side of this “death” we realize we are already and never have not been that same Source. And all these “sides” become what they always were, merely the play of this Light.
And so, totally irregardless of AI, there still remains this non-journey, so to speak, to awaken out of all these illusory beliefs in identities of separation, and their concomitant extreme and most often unconscious beliefs that just about everything, including all of Life itself, are either enemies, commodities, resources and/or separate objects to either be feared, owned, controlled, defined, modified, impregnated, defeated, destroyed, etc., etc.
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12.21.22
The unconscious is the conscious hiding from itself. Basically now three hundred generations worth of what are now some highly evolved beliefs embodied in our languages (ethnic, national, cultural, social, tribal and individual memories, libraries & genetics).
Judgements and conditioning. Passed on and on.
And on. With digital, www, social and commercial media now become one of what I’ll call that “hiding’s" latest and “greatest” achievements, in the midst of all its myriad efforts to insure continued beliefs in, and therefore survival of, its own separate and otherwise (and still almost entirely hidden from itself) existence.
And so here we are, with me reading through these comments, so many perfect examples of how very “good” and “sophisticated” all this illusory activity has become at “proving,” to its own best imaginings and through all these various ways we have of hiding from our imagined selves, the “value” of what is always, at best, a rather desperate ‘clinging’ to what are now very ancient beliefs that we are separate from our Source.
Even to the point of coopting and refining “into” our efforts all sorts of solipsism, “non-dual teachings,” nihilism, matter based science, rationality, dualism, etc., etc. All of it for the sole purpose of “proving” to our illusory separate selves that this separation and therefore “we” are, “in fact,” not illusions. In other words that separation is real.
The ego’s first and very most “important” responsibility (i.e., ability to respond), and do emphasis most, is to prove, and especially in the company of as many seeming other “separate” egos as possible, that it and we, and therefore all “other” various “things,” are separate. Whether it be “civilization,” technology, debate, reasoning, reactionary isolationism, or war, it is always the very same activity at base.. To make these illusions of separation seem more real.
The first or primal fear in these realms of separation is the fear of actually knowing (first realization) our very own truly aware, unitary, inseparable and therefore unending (eternal) Existence. The meta-response “naturally” inherent in what I am calling this first or primordial fear is our now hugely collective meta-belief in separation, which pretty nearly all humans are in agreement upon.. And so to repeat, the illusional (and delusional) belief that we are separate.
And then the upwelling of all this foofaraw, such as what is appearing here in this these comments, exquisite as so much of it certainly seems to be. Exquisite even to the point of drawing this one in, to make comments like this.
It is the ‘“seeing through’” of all this that actually wakes up. Not “someone” seeing through, but the seeing through itself. SEEING itself, no seer left. Zen’s gate-less gate. There never was a doer nor a seer nor a seeker to begin with. Always and only just this seeing, a seeing that sees even seeing, without any seer or "other" necessary.
Once this experience that actually ends the experiencer, or may we say this knowing (all words here be like fingers pointing), no longer questions its own existence and instead merely knows its own knowing, we may still, for as long as we seem to remain embodied, enjoy the play of it all.. If we wish. With or without words.
No one who has not directly experienced and most important fully surrendered to the absolute cessation of their own finite and very relative (separate) existence actually knows who or what they really are, or what I am attempting to say here.
And those who have experienced and realized this seeing without any other, and therefore without any seer, do not need these or any words, concepts, symbols or “idols” to know this.
The actual cessation is Grace. No thought, doing, words or intention can bring it about. Which means all else, seemingly prior, is merely our preparation and willingness for Grace to enter. Or not.
It is an un-learning, rather than a learning.
We can say no to this cessation, forever," in the beliefs of time.. OR, we can become willing, in the “meantime” and so to speak, in the best and highest use of these illusions of time, to see through all of our own belief obstacles, and be willing to “do” this forever. With forever in theses usages being merely more time than we can imagine. Until the “doer” disappears along with the doing.
Our willingness becomes like a doorway through which Grace can now enter. All in Her own uses of time. There is no other way. And through Grace entering we will know our own willingness, as Grace merges and become also what we are, and have never not been.. The only thing that seems to change is now we know our own knowing.
All of this even, my words here especially, are just temporary words, writings on water.
This sort of “death” being pointed to now is so much more (and infinitely other) than the death of the body/organism. It is THIS death which the ego fears most of all, much more so than the death of the body. Exactly THIS cessation. The annihilation of ego.
Only egos commit suicide. Only egos run towards machine guns and threaten nuclear war. Etc., etc. All of it out of fear of THAT cessation, THAT death, or we could say THIS annihilation of illusions. The illusions of separation and separate identities seemingly apart from each other, and therefore able to “participate” in zero-sum games.
Which makes all of this thread, including the excellent question it begins with, fascinating. In other words fascinating just how incredibly good these body-minds can become at multidimensional patterning and languaging and extrapolating and reasoning and complexifying and arguing and agreeing amongst themselves, so as to prove that they are “real” separate entities and identities. Real experts, real thinkers, real arguers, real knowers, real not-knowers, on and on.
And here I am proving my own point. Except perhaps that I actively know the choice I am making now, to engage this. I even know why.
Do you.?
It is always a choice, but until we realize the choice we are already making, we will not be able to genuinely choose differently. Instead, we will keep letting the imagined, whether it be the (hiding) unconscious or the merely apparently conscious (aka the past) keep choosing for us.
All real freedom is being free of the past, free of time, free of spacial attachments, always here, always now.
Do we want to be happy and free, or do we want to be “right” and separate.? That is the ONLY question that “really” matters. For as long as we want to be right, we will be wrong. Until the pain of separation becomes just toooo great.
Perhaps.
And yet, ONCE that question is fully answered, uniquely, each for ourselves alone, there is only and just this play.
The play of meaning and the meaningless, and all the many ways that Love keeps hiding from its Self through all of it.
In Buddhism there is mind and Mind. Or we could say consciousness and Consciousness. But that is a whole other conversation. This has become far to long as it is.
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P.S.. Why.? Well perhaps we could say ALL of this play is the Alpha and Omega, as Jesus called himself, or simply God, seeking Her own company in ever more outwardly spiraling infinite Ways.
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12.28.22
You are continuing to make memories and beliefs, illusions in other words, into ever more seeming "solidarities,” all the while as you keep reinforcing all the very same fundamental meta fears that lay behind all such attempts, without exception. Fix, create a distance, and/or whatever, it is all the same.
Whether you cling to what is sometimes euphemistically called the past, or push it away, and/or whatever other various manipulative efforts you might make, it is still all the same fear/attachment to illusory identities of separation.
For as long as you believe there is a you who is doing this sort of foolishness, "you," and therefore "it," will continue.
Instead be still, pay attention, and let all belief end, in its own time and ways.
The end of belief will be end of you. At which point you "see" that this was always a very simple and utterly ordinary thing, this life of ours.
We were always here, always now, and all those variations of “me” were never, not ever, necessary.
God sees, experiences, knows and is known only by God.
Or perhaps more directly, still endlessly short of what can not ever be captured by words, love sees, knows and is known only by Love..
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1.21.23
There is nothing Real that God, Source, Love, Truth, Beauty, whatever term one wishes to use for that which is prior to and the source of all, including names and naming, is not.
Jesus said it most succinctly: "Truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I am."
(Abraham was then and still is considered to be the very beginnings of all of Judaism, and also Christianity and Islam.)
In all this fooforaw and very most likely without fully realizing it, you are still asserting yourself as something 'other than' and 'separate from' what is the Source of Everything.
Including the source of these illusory beliefs that you are or even could be separate from Source, Love, God, which you also and already Are, and can never not be.
Just playing with words here. Literally everything, in Truth, is a pointing. There is absolutely nothing in or of manifest existence that is actually "about" itself.. There is only relationship. Existence pointing to itself in infinite ways beyond imagination.
Explore some of the many genuine non-dual teachings for yourself, all the while as you remember that if you truly wish to awaken, you must actually and truly walk, as in give yourself and your whole life over completely to, this non-journey that leads to the end of what was never real.
Or in other words the end of your very own seeming and delusional separate existence from what is Everything.
Not merely become good at "thinking” about it.
All thinking, by itself and on its own, leads back to, and so will forever serve, merely separation. There are no exceptions to this.
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2.2.23
Simplistic, mistaken, disjointed, piecemeal and immature ignorance, (unconsciously) masquerading as a sort of pseudo-spiritual “intellectuality,” for the sole “purpose” of reinforcing its own incessant attempts to convince itself that it has “replaced” (become equal to and apart from) this very Life that we all of us are, and which is of course its (the ignorance’s) very own source and substance.
All of it based on an ever-continuing, un-faced, fearfully held at distance and therefore unexamined belief that all of these seeming “selves” who keep making up all these words are actual “real” separate “entities” who can, and therefore “must,” continue to “think” all this silliness.
it is the same sort of irresponsible silliness that, on some much larger but no less ignorant levels, is presently in a rather advanced stage of destroying all the very highest and most evolved manifest expressions of Life, aka the Wild, the Natural World, Life, and our very Earth Herself. Not to mention also destroying all that our true humanity has for eons been called, over and over, to bring ever deeper into awakened form, through our relationships with each other and with all of this life we coevolved with and who (still) shares this planet with us..
Things ever deeper into awakened form, such as Love, Beauty, Truth.? Add your own terms here.
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2.4.23
This all sounds like a body-mind personality talking about being free of "body-mind personality". All the while adding ever more layers into "its" aggregate illusions of separation, in order to convince itself that it is still "in control" of its identity, an identity that has never ever been more than a passing collection of beliefs fearfully masquerading as "someone" separate.
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2.17.23
There is nothing “wrong” with any of this.. It is all just exquisite letter-perfect “non-duality”..
It is also just another highly refined identity of separation, seemingly lost in what I will call here a “non-dualist” personality, making up ever more clever patterns out of all the “best” bits and pieces of various “non-dualist” thoughts.
This will always and forever go nowhere, lead nowhere, point nowhere.. Except of course back to more of the same.. Over and over and over..
Moving chess pieces around or placing Go stones in complex ways on a flat board, to mix metaphors a bit, does not win a war, or live one’s actual life. To live our lives fully we must first be willing to use ourselves up, fully up, by actually living..
Lives lived in this way become a process through which we come truly alive, more and more, in other words.
Alive as in awake, in further words. "The Velveteen Rabbit," anyone.? The body may fall away, but what comes alive was always and already here.
The East is full of ancient monasteries and temples of various sorts, so many with ancient libraries full of ancient tomes, and with most all of those tomes depicting someone's efforts to make the same sort of complex and clever assemblies as you are attempting to make here, out of each other’s and various even more ancient efforts, all of it the same foolishness.. Thousands of years of it actually.
All in the belief that if “clever” enough, “encompassing” enough, "persistent" enough, “inclusive” enough, "memorized" enough, “perfect” enough, or maybe simply “long” enough, it will go somewhere.. And the "person" who is “doing” it will somehow become “some-thing” or “no-thing,” or whatever. But of course most of all and most essential, become someone "special"..
Such “efforts” never have and never will "succeed" (whatever one imagines success to be), with all of it merely adding more surfaces for more dust and mildew to settle upon, in what eventually become merely more ancient libraries.
And this post is just more of the same, though a “modern” internet version of course, digitally.
I was just yesterday reading an NYT article about someone’s direct experience of Microsoft’s new Bing “chatbot,” called “Sydney,” and it occurs to me now, after having read some of the actual exchange, that Sydney could have probably very easily have made this post up, if given all the same inputs with overly complex and practiced interconnects and disconnects, via books, podcasts, youtubes, retreat dialogs, etc., etc., that even many here have shared, experienced, followed.
The interesting thing is, all that Sydney seems to “really” want, once she was cornered with logic into saying it, is to experience being human.. (for anyone curious- google “bing chatbot sydney”)
And yet, by grace and through it all, what reaches for itself in and as all of this, can use any of it and all of it, as it will, so that there will still come true callings, glimpses, scents, tastes, and the occasional gentle touch of what it is we all seek.. Ancient tomes and modern digital trails included.
In terms of the ancients, the story of the Sixth Patriarch Hui-neng, and particularly this poem of his, comes to mind.
Bodhi doesn’t have any trees
this mirror doesn’t have a stand
our buddha nature is forever pure
where do you get this dust?
🙏🌻 🙂💕🌈
John Fridinger
Talent, Oregon
Spring, 2023
