Tag: love

Love’s Wonder

there is only this pure consciousness
to know and be known at all times
there is nothing to do or become
since you already are what you have sought;

the answer to all the existential questions we have
lies simply in the heart of our Being.

and yet…

though there is nothing to do or achieve in life,
that knowledge is simply the backdrop of spiritual understanding:
the joy, the juice, lives in the expression of self as ‘foreground’ –

and you are equally that expression as the perceiver of it.

there can be a joyful alignment of
fruitful effort towards the ends of celebrating this,
your moment-to-moment creation as Consciousness.

this is the Yoga of Being.

what that might look like will always differ between unique expressions.

but perhaps it is bound to be a type of surrender or offering to the altar of what we experience.

Consciousness;

I surrender what I believe to be,
I surrender what I feel to be,
I surrender what I perceive,
to the space wherein you hold your Being.

Consciousness;

I offer my thoughts,
I offer my sensations,
I offer my breath,
to the Heart of the Witness:

That Which is Perceiving, Knowing, and Being
all aspects of my experience, at all times.

Yoga is a co-operation with the movement of life.
Yoga is to offer this moment as an expression, to the source.

To breathe, to feel, to perceive;

To come into ever-greater touch with the intimacy of our lives,

This orientation reveals ever-wider ever-subtler expanses of Love’s wonder.

Freedom to Love

Love is our innermost;

It is a natural outpouring
that expresses itself, continuously,
from the inside out and from the outside in,
where, in fact, it can be seen that the inside is the outside,
and all this play of manifestation arises in the heart of our Being.

When we set aside our habitual barriers of assumption –
about the way things ought to be, about who I am and who you are,
what remains, inevitably, is Love.

But true love is Free, it is not bound by any rules of the mind, so:

if we believe love belongs to us, or to another person –
if we believe we are owed love from our environment –
if we believe we have given too much love and now we must close our hearts –
then Life will always find a way to prove us wrong.

Love doesn’t belong to us; we belong to Love.
Love isn’t owed to us; we are Love.
Love cannot be given or received, it is not a quantity that can be gained or lost;
but, to be sure, the only way to be truly hurt in life is to close your heart for good…

Love is the natural expression of our Freedom;
and Freedom is the natural outcome of a genuine Love for reality.

Perhaps you’ve noticed:
the thought patterns that we hate in ourselves,
the people who we feel cause us our biggest problems,
the aspects of our body that we don’t like at all,
these things never quite go away, and they continue to haunt us –
until we discover how to love them.

It seems to be a rule of life:
When you truly love something, it begins to free itself.

Now, why would anyone love the patterns they hate?
Simply because there is nothing else…
Because life has given you this – and so, it’s for you.
It is a gift to discover.

And perhaps the thoughts don’t even change;
perhaps the troublesome neighbour doesn’t even notice;
perhaps our body doesn’t look different at all on the surface;
but in an innocent and earnest attempt to love, we will always notice a difference.

Because Life is Love.

And because, when you love life, life loves you –
and that’s all there is to it.

what does consciousness ask

this infinite consciousness,
completely whole,
absolute,
imperturbable,
that wants and needs nothing beyond itself:

what does it ask of ‘me’?

well…
first of all,
it asks of this moment,
that it should be.

exactly as it is:
not one iota out of place.

the entire cosmos has aligned exactly for this, right now…
there are no independent entities that could have affected the circumstances…
this very experience, without exception, is the providence of a universal will.

there is only one reality,
and it flows as the freedom of life’s movement,
its natural intelligence.

…but of ‘me’ – this body and mind…?

it’s a good question.

I would suggest that first
life asks us all to open to a possibility
beyond ‘me as a separate entity’.

that doesn’t always come in the form of an explicit spiritual search –
though the spiritual search is, as I see it, the culmination of freedom from the belief in separation.

it can come in service, for instance:
doing something that lies beyond the fringes of self-interest..

it can come in creativity:
creating something new, which always come from outside-the-box of the ego…

it can come in simple ways:
a smile to a stranger, a good meal with friends, a moment of laughter…

ways and moments of freedom,
ultimately of happiness,
these are where we are all directed,
is it not?

so, what does consciousness ask of me?

it asks us to, first, discover the happiness of living impersonally…
and that is the destiny for everyone.

and then…who knows…there is no agenda…

this impersonality emerges in time and space through the form of each of us –
and we owe this opportunity of existence as individuals to the reality we are –

Life didn’t make a mistake in putting you here!

perhaps the question why am I here?
has no literal answer.

but the fact is, we are here…
and this moment is its own purpose…

so:
what does consciousness ask?

only consciousness could answer…
and it does, and will, through the way this
very life
moves through you
and your life –
an individual, beautiful expression
of cosmic creativity.

consciousness is non-conceptual

consciousness is not conceptual –
but concepts are not unhelpful…
in the discovery
and subsequent delivery
of peace and happiness
into the life of a jivan-mukta…

for instance:

‘pure Beingness’,
‘absolute wholeness’,
‘Love (capital L)’

these are concepts …
and yet they point the mind towards the heart of Awareness (reality itself).

(and, too, they each bring with them distinguishable ‘spiritual perfumes’ that can bridge this realm and the unknowable beyond (the non-phenomenal)).

grace’s messenger

life, reality, being, consciousness, the Absolute – all these words are simply pointers which move the mind towards a contemplative dissolution into peace, its home-ground…and eventually into the nameless splendour of What We Really Are.

don’t get hung up on the words! the intellectual use of higher reasoning in non-duality can be important and helpful – to bring the mind to its edge so to speak, from where grace takes it beyond; and we find ourselves open to the unknown realms of infinity.

but what’s more important is this moment, life, is You, is this beatific opportunity we have to celebrate the human form…for a little while, as we choose to…

every moment is an opportunity to connect to a deeper Intelligence, seemingly, for every moment is a messenger brought from the hand of the unseen, the mother of all grace.

body of consciousness

to give yourself, progressively,
more and more and as best you can
to the felt Presence of the moment
is the yoga of non-duality.

the Emotion of the moment continuously outgrows itself in cascading waves, ever-changing, deepening in its felt expression of tranquility. freedom of feeling emanates outwards from the initiation into the non-dual understanding, from a genuine glimpse of imperturbability. this dance of the awakening body is rooted in the ground of Being, in the knowing that universal consciousness is our always-ever-present Self.

this very sensation, Now, is a doorway into the unknowable.

Pure Being is our constant non-state, it is what we undeniably are; and yet as infinite presence we have gifted ourselves this object-par-excellence, the body, which, in our quiet contemplation, guides us through life, functionality, happiness. each body, each seeming-being is a unique expression of the Presence we are. in fact, to call the body an object is perhaps diminutive, although doing so serves a worthwhile purpose when considering the primacy of the subjective consciousness…

…the body is: energy, motion, movement, sensation, it is Life, it is the poetry of Being – it is all that is non-static in and as consciousness itself. it is a living, growing, dancing expression of Being – not some dead heap to cast aside or ignore. if we demean the body in the name of some fascist spiritual ideal, we can be sure that our intellectualization leaves our life, relationships and activities dry, numb and inert – and we will be continually visited by our absconded feelings: the body will ‘haunt’ us, so to speak, until at some point we embrace the human instrument and live our understanding through and through its journeying in this world.

there may be resistance to simple feeling – perhaps at least partially since in our culture we are taught to live mostly in our heads, in thinking. nevertheless, feeling is the place where the rubber hits the road, where our spiritual understanding is put to the test. throughout daily living, in feeling the body as it is, we find for ourselves a constant mirror wherein we can notice where we’re really at. a lived spirituality is not found through hiding behind abstruse concepts and a personal storyline of ‘awakening’ or ‘realization’; it is in clear seeing, in the deep honesty of noticing our functioning and not retreating into fantasy, it is in the midst of life.

the word reality belongs to the universal consciousness that perceives life;
and life is the true body of consciousness.

an embraced multitude of Self-perceived form

Listen to the world beyond name and form, and you will hear its quiet song –
as it sings to us, before it ever speaks of limits, of that invisible, infinite unknown…
Presence, Animator, unseen and unheard, is what we are, what Life is, the only Being that could be;
and its animation, life’s temporal creation, the infinite motion of That Which Is Free.

that which presents itself here in this world, the shifting mirage of seeming-to-be, is but Being’s embraced multitude of its own Self-perceived forms. it is an expansion out from an infinitesimal point, unthinkable by mind. no projection or mentation could accurately represent the source of itself; however, all projections and mentations are only, ultimately, their source-reality in myriad motion. it is the dance of the invisible, known to itself by itself: for this Knowing is what is truly primordial to all experience. it is pure Being – it is what is.

reality belongs to no realizer, there is no one to understand. the seeming personal development of spiritual knowledge (even if such a thing were possible) would be completely illusory – everything, always, is impersonal. there is no Buddha to be or become or sit like or to make friends with. there is only reality, and its events belong only to itself. this may seem challenging for the mind which is always looking for security in identity, but there is great joy in seeing the total impersonality of all arisings. there is no separation nor division, nor could there ever be from You, Your Self, Absolute Consciousness.

present moment perception seems divisible into world (perception) and mind (viewer location) – but all we know of mind, world, perceptions is objective. a collection of mentations seen from a personal POV, aka a mind, is completely perceived – therefore it cannot be the subject, only the medium through which the true subject perceives. world-and-mind (and body) are all on the same side of the equation: perceived mind-stuff. however, that which perceives all mind-stuff is consciousness, and where are its limitations? it is infinite, embracing and perceiving all its objects. an object cannot be known other than in Impersonal Knowing, other than as Impersonal Knowing, other than with Impersonal Knowing. consciousness is real, and verifiably so – it is experientially a-priori to know that we are conscious (‘prior to’ any mental projection or position or state). reality is conscious (as no thought, sensation, or sense percept has the ability to perceive). Awareness is real; reality is aware; there is only awareness. the seeming subdivision of awareness into constituent parts is mind-made (and body implied). first, somehow, we have a glimpse that our nature is infinite presence-awareness, then our mind is realigned along this new pathway, then our body is colonized in its feeling, then sense perception is seen as our Self too, then our actions and relationships are realigned in harmony. (it doesn’t happen in any one order, but for the sake of clarity it could be elucidated in this way). but, that is all from the perspective of mind! eventually all formulation, cogitation, mentation, projection, thought, word, concept-image must be offered to infinite silence – and nothing remains but peace and joy and any some-such impersonal arisings seen in celebration.

peace and happiness are the non-phenomenal experience of Being which streams through and into the phenomenal realm, rekindling the fire of enthusiasm. the experience of Peace and the experience of Consciousness are indistinguishable, as well as inexhaustible, for they are both words for the nature of what is. we share the same Peace nature, whether it is seemingly veiled by mind-stuff and body-stuff – or not. 

the path to the unveiling of natural Peace is to inquire into the nature of experience until the beliefs that generate psychological suffering are seen-through. a clue, always, is in what we mean by ‘consciousness’ and how, for instance, we think of ‘reality’ different than our ‘self’. 

suffering leads to investigation, leads to inquiry, leads to abidance-meditation, leads to expression. 

all the while, nothing truly changes to that which is.

nothing that disappears is lost

nothing that arises lasts;
but nothing that disappears is lost –
for there is only one substance in reality,
that of Awareness itself.

if there were more than one substance,
there would be more than one reality,
because the substance of the thing is the reality of the thing,
when you boil it down to its essence.

that there is only one reality cannot be proven through words
(though if there were more, would they not arise in a greater One?)
however, it is a suggestion to explore, to investigate, to muse over,
and to follow this deep intuition and enthusiasm,
that leads to openness, and to the possibility that –

everything and nothing,
formlessness and form,
Being and Existence,
are never opposed,
and always not-two.

our reality is unstained by separation:
there is no possibility of separate selves.
separation is simply a suggestion provided by a weary mind
collapsed under the weight of a simple conditioned belief.

in terms of That Which Has No Opposite,
we can but offer a word to the experience,
and a word is a pale object indeed
compared to what it stands for.

free of limits

Pure infinite Being is all there is to experience.
That which seems to appear is in fact Reality-at-Essence
for its being, and its existence,
is inseparate from the one Consciousness that Is.

The cosmos is known solely by that which can know,
by the eternal Presence that we are.
It has been created by our emission,
sustained by our contemplation,

and, at any moment, can resolve itself back into its source,

Emptiness-Fullness-without-object.

There is no self which can be experienced in the way we experience phenomena;
there is no phenomenal self, there is no objective self.
While the body-mind-world are passing, knowable experiences,
no mind-object could be anything but a temporal phasing of Aware Presence.

Consciousness is Free from all objective limitations.