THROUGH THE MIST

as gazing happens here at the top of the apparent hill where this sitting happens, there is the arising of mist and the occasional moving through of imagery containing apparent trees, rocks, birdlife and even a kangaroo or two.


there is a reminding that beyond mist is always apparent sky and that in reflection of this apparent arising, the 'inner' sky is always present as that which holds the representation of image and of experience that seems to arise around an apparent observer


thoughts and sensations 'act as mist' to cover and seemingly make elusive what is always there


this 'always there' is all that is and mist simply an illusion arising as mist seemingly arises and moves in to mask the seeing... apparently


just what is... under, within and AS the mist

ALL OF LIFE AS THE 'YES'

The tendency of all humans 'experiencing life' is to resist life itself.
For the purposes of this writing the word 'ego' will be replaced with the phrase
'construct manager'. This will de-personalise 'ego' and simply give what appears to be actively alive a technical descriptive term. 'ego' has too much cred now with a million and one books discussing the 'ego' and its role and ways to 'get  rid of 'ego'. Getting rid of the 'ego' implies of course that there is a someone and an 'ego' with relation to that someone and therefore the 'ego' has become a problem for the someone to 'fix' or 'change'. Ironically the way the construct manager works is to manage ALL doing, fixing, changing, bettering, monitoring, improving and general work of transformation..... it is however, the work of transforming or improving or bettering or fixing or healing the very 'ego' that seeks to fix. It is then an actual 'ego' improvement. It is believed that since the construct manager is in essence who and what 'you' seem to be that bettering this construct manager will better 'you'. Even this 'ego' improvement will only ever seemingly improve things as much as the 'ego' deems safe and within previously 'known' boundaries.


The construct manager is ever vigilant apparently keeping the 'you' safe and in familiar territory. Uncharted waters are frowned upon by this construct manager
so most things that raise the alarm as different or unusual or out of the safety paradigm are closely scrutinised and most often refused, pushed away, fought against or looked at as a problem to solve. 'Enlightenment' is a common 'problem to solve' experienced by the seeker on the spiritual path.


Of course the construct manager has managed the construction of all the stories leading to beliefs leading to customised behaviour leading to control leading to the sense of having developed a map for life along with the necessary 'knowing' required to navigate the waters of life... safely and in 'known' ways.


The construct manager's mantra is 'NO.... not this'. So the search for something better than this continues using the 'no' as weaponry in the arsenal of the construct manager as its apparent job is carried out... 24 / 7.


This refusal of life itself and the totality of experience keeps the construct manager busy and with purpose in life... apparently.


The constant contraction of the 'no' operating whenever life happens in a way that the construct manager sees as not safe begins to take its toll and pain and suffering arise.


The assumption that 'i' know better than life itself what is good for 'me' is an innocent and mistaken viewpoint attempting to control the very essence of life itself.


This way of seeing fuels the belief that if 'i' just do things a certain way then 'i' will get what 'i' want and need in life. In fact 'i' can learn ways to manifest whatever 'i' want in life by changing the way 'my' mind operates and by raising 'my' vibration and by allowing. Sadly what is busy allowing is the construct manager and based on what this matrix 'knows' this allowing will, by the very nature of the construct manger, be extremely limited and totally conditional... apparently.


In this way there is a complete bypassing of 'what is' in order to attempt to effect change over 'what is' and to seek an improvement on 'what is' as soon as possible.


As if this was not enough to do, the construct manager is also looking apparently for ways to effect change on all those pesky people 'outside me' who make 'me' feel less than 'i' would like to be. If only 'they' could understand 'me' and support 'me' getting what it is 'i' want and need... NOW. Out comes the weaponry as the construct manager goes into hyperdrive to manipulate change one way or another by influencing, coercing, pleading with, pushing, arguing, offering, apologising, flirting with, crying, blaming, seducing and on and on and on.


It is endless because the construct manager has a built in survival chip so to speak that keeps it going ad infinitum simply with the goal of continuing existence.


The fear that the heart 'leaning in to something' to listen closer may not be safe or certainly not sensible becomes the default setting by which the human organism functions under the thumb of the construct manager which after all is just doing its job... seemingly. The construct manager has erected a structure of knowing and of proving and of solving that takes care of everything that passes through the filter of experience for the human being in life.


The presence of a softer, clearer and vastly natural 'existing within life' whatever evolves, seems vulnerable and not strong and likely to just allow whatever life brings to happen without a fight, without a question, without a challenge, without an improvement, without a doubt, without a proving otherwise, without avoiding the pain. This would seem like living with the doors unlocked for anyone or anything to enter. Pull up the drawbridge and protect the safety of the 'me' that is resisting life itself because 'i' don't always like what life has to offer 'me'.


This need to control is innocent arrogance at best as the 'ego' asserts its prior knowledge of the 'me' in order to keep safe the structure that has been so painstakingly built to weather the storms and to seek betterment... within limits.


What you are is the embrace that is life itself flowing eternally.


The refusal of this embrace and the resistance to what is creates tension and contraction and the 'no' battles on claiming victory after victory while there is this nagging sense of missing 'something' in life. Conversely at times the construct managers only way of feeling ok or alive is to say 'yes' to actions that are dangerous or wild as the rush of adrenaline through the organisms system makes the organism feel alive and vital. Ironically this 'yes' is really the 'no' to the feeling of needing a rush or a sensory experience to feel really alive.


Perhaps a gentle, fiercely graceful resting in only what is, just this free of judgment or the refusal simply allows life to be... as it always is beneath the stormy waters of the 'egoic mind' and its battles with life.


This is no mere letting go or allowing as a project for the mind to engage in but a giving up the need to control everything, everyone, every impulse, every action, every thought, every belief, every experience, every outcome, every situation. Control is the domain of the seeming 'ego' as it pretends to be the leader, the royalty, the top dog, the driver, the director... 'ego' thinks it is GOD!


Feel into what is 'true'. Soften into what is. Be in clarity. Be life. Let life. Get out of the way.


The 'yes' already is. 'You' are the 'yes'. 

HOW TO ATTAIN ENLIGHTENMENT

THERE IS NO SUCH 'THING' AS ENLIGHTENMENT AND 'YOU' ARE ALREADY IT.

NO OTHER

The implication of 'other' is that there appears to be relationship at play... this and that... you and me...
here and there... now and then... division... this and something other than this.


If 'someone' is seen to be acting in a way that is non-supportive or destructive they are sometimes called divisive.... in other words there is a separating or coming between something or someone creating division... seemingly.


Most of the world seems to operate in this divisive manner as everything becomes the 'you and me' or the 'this and that'... subject and object.


'Mine', not 'yours' begins in childhood once the innocent, open, purely aware existence of life itself falls into the dream of individuality by 'getting the concept' that 'i am' therefore 'you' must also be.


The child learns it has a name... jonas 'you' are separate from 'me' because 'your' name is jonas.
'you' are a good boy or 'you' are bad. This goodness or badness is 'yours'... and the child owns this goodness or this badness as if it is 'its own' to have.


Faded now is the wonder of being ONE with all things that appear to be in the phenomenal world of form arising from the ONE.


The child then associates through mind, as ego appears, and begins to understand that 'i' must be this 'good' that 'others' are speaking of and it seems this 'good' is a better thing than the 'bad' so the 'good' is sought in all experience as an expression of the now apparent separate person being 'good' and receiving praise or support. Being this 'good' equals 'happy' so there must always be a seeking of this 'good' in order to feel 'happy'. At some stage this feeling of 'good' can also begin to embrace whatever the senses seem to find 'good' and certainly some foods begin to take on the 'good' feeling as well as some physical sensations so the seemingly 'outside' world begins to take on the form of the provider of 'good'. The parents with their praise become the source of this 'good'. The teacher with the 'good' marks offers this treasure when 'they' seem pleased. The sexual awakening feels 'good' and seems to make 'others' feel 'good' so the more of this the better as the search for 'good' intensifies and expands to encompass everything that motivates the dream person. The substances that seem to make 'good' feelings become another way to BE 'good' once again sourcing this 'good' from outside seemingly. A need for 'good' arises apparently in the 'experience' of the individual life.


'Me' here and 'you' out there... 'you' are something 'other' than 'me'... 'you' seem to be able to either make 'me' feel 'good' or 'bad' or 'frightened' or 'in love' or 'competitive with' or 'in awe of' ... 'you' have sometimes more power than 'me' it seems so 'i' must be cautious in case 'you' get the upper hand or the control over 'me'. 'You' out there seem dangerous and a potential threat to 'my' sense of 'peace' and 'happiness'. 


Likewise if the dream child sees that apparently nothing 'i' do is 'good' enough then either why bother doing anything at all or the struggle to prove 'i' can do 'good' things overwhelms the dreamer and the ego seems to kick into hyperdrive in the act of proving the world wrong about 'me' or alternatively never bothering with anything as no matter what 'i' do it is never 'good' enough for anyone 'else'.


The patterns of the ego matrix become locked in apparently in the dreamer and the modus operandi circle and circle again and again and again and...


All the while the dreamer seems to have a deep sense buried within that there must be something more than this or there must be a way to feel more whole or more happy or more at peace or more content with 'my' life and with 'me'.


So the dreamer begins to seek and to investigate and to try to find what will 'make me happy' in many different ways that present themselves seemingly. Some seek through money, some through work, some through love, some through sex, some through drugs, some through spirituality, some through religion, some through books, some through food, some through the disempowering of 'others' in order for the 'me' to feel more powerful... the myriad apparent choices within seeming form tease and call the seeker to find them'selves'. 'Self' help... 'self' improvement, 'self' empowerment, 'self' realisation...
all in the name of improving 'my' 'self', empowering 'my' 'self', realising 'my' 'self' and all the while engaging the apparent ego to be more powerful... to feel better... more happy. Ego development is an industry with hundreds of thousands of books, courses, workshops, teleseminars, blogs, teachers, dvds, cds, mp3s, methodologies, religions, practices, paths, ways that promise a better 'you'. Ego continues to seem to control the 'getting' of this happiness or peace that the individual 'me' seeks relentlessly. In truth the ego is relentless in its need for the illusion of control over 'outside' circumstances that seem to affect the 'me' powerfully. "Cause and effect are after all what life is all about is it not", says the ego.
'I' do this and then that happens, reinforces the ego. 


Life simply happens and if there is a removal of the illusion of 'the other' there is the seeing that this IS life. This 'you' IS life itself and nothing 'else'.


This robs the apparent ego of anything to do and a battle ensues to regain the seeming control of the organism and the fanning of the flames of individual personality... and so the seeking continues supported purely by the apparent ego as it assumes its role of driver and director and sentinel and guard. This can be a very spiritualised ego form that plays the role of the awakening personality with enlightenment to gain or add to its cv of experiences.  This constant mind / ego appearance clouds the presence of pure awareness and true nature that breathes beneath the apparent surface.


Only ONE. Just THIS. Only EVER this... NO OTHER.

TRY HARDER

Life appears to be the never-ending quest for something or someone or to feel a certain way, usually better or happier or more peaceful. The relentless striving for betterment, for more, for the answer, for the success, for the money for the love, for the house, for the peace, for the acceptance, for the recognition, for the fame, for the contentment, for the enlightenment.....

It seems there is never enough. That no matter what is done there is a sense of more, more, more. Higher. Better. Up, up, up. Reaching, climbing, attaining, wanting, desiring, stretching for, working for, pushing for, manipulating for, looking for, seeking..... and on and on it goes. Seemingly.

If 'I' just get this one next thing 'I 'will be different.... improved, better, more than 'I' was before. 'I' will be happy or satisfied or 'I' will be 'there' finally!

No wonder there is a sense of lack of 'time' and exhaustion in the human existence. All this running and proving and striving and getting is all about the 'me'. 'I' did this or that. 

This does not mean that the natural apparent arising of things in the miracle of life need not happen. In fact life happens without 'your' controlling any outcome. Life happens without 'YOU'.

Children are rewarded when seen to be trying hard or harder than 'another'. Plunging deeper into the illusion of separation is the need for trying harder in order to do 'your' best and preferably something even better than someone 'else'. 

Competition. How much do human beings love the competitive edge. If not personally then certainly within sports, exam scores, scholastic achievement, beauty pageants, games, competitions of all sorts. Television is filled with a plethora of programming pitting one person against 'another' for gain and glory of the winner.

Winners, heroes, gods of glory and celebration.

The teaching of separation and the struggle to succeed begins with toddlers. Who has not seen parents encouraging their children to jump higher, to do more, to push further, to run faster, to speak earlier, to be smarter than, to grow taller than, to get a concept faster than, to know good behaviour faster than, to be more artistic.... ad infinitum.

Does the sky try harder to present cloud formations? Do blades of grass try harder to emerge from the earth? Do frogs try harder to jump? Does rain try harder to lash the trees? Do trees try harder to rustle in the wind? Is there trying in nature?

One might say a lion stalking his prey is trying.... but this is really simply apparent natural action taking place in the dream of form.

Might the' trying' fly in the face of being and the natural allowing of what is happening to arise? Perhaps 'trying' equals resistance. Perhaps 'trying' is just an action that happens within the dream.

Ultimately the 'trying' implies a person doing the 'trying'.

The mind/ego will of course argue that without 'trying' nothing would get done. Why would anything need to be done if the action is apparently happening anyway naturally and without anyone controlling it. Or seeming to control it within the dream.

There is a seeing that perhaps the 'trying' takes the seeker away from that which is already there and happening without force or effort or cause and effect at all. Or so it seems to be.

Mind/ego loves the chase, the fight, the challenge, the goals, the proof, the knowing, the result, the game, the problem solving, the honour, the valour, the achieving, the glory, the judging, the criticising, the reminding, the conceptualising, the 'getting it'. Mind loves the busy, ever moving, ever continuing loop of trying with result. Controlling so that things turn out with all the familiar outcomes. Even the so called 'bad' outcomes are at least familiars and allow for a whole lot of effort and trying.

This seems to be why often the seeker will get to the point where they are spent. They feel they can no longer try anymore. They have tried everything. They have tried meditating. They have tried stillness. They have tried manifesting. They have tried loving. They have tried compassionate seeing. They have tried higher vibrational work. They have tried chakra balancing. They have tried a million workshops. They have tried a million books. They have tried a million cds. They have tried a million courses. They have tried a million ways. They have tried a million paths. They have tried a million teachers. They have tried a million therapies. They have tried a million modalities. They have tried a million practitioners. They have tried a million processes. They have tried a million types of yoga. They have tried a million spiritual methods. They have tried a million spiritual advisors. They have tried a million spiritual substances.

They have tried and tried and tried. Along the way they have experienced perhaps some amazing experiences or some incredible states of being or some phenomena or some sensations of expansion.

All held the promise that 'THIS TIME' the answer will be there. 'THIS TIME' I will be more happy or more spiritual or more awake or more enlightened or more high vibrational or more 'myself'. The very word 'MORE' implies being somewhere other than this. Somewhere greater, higher. Somewhere over 'there'. Beyond this. Away from this. Better than this. Higher than this. More important than this. More spiritual than this. There must be something more than THIS.

All of this is mind. Apparently. The dream. Apparently.

THIS IS ALL THERE IS.

Absolute energy.... life itself requires no other. No more. No better. No-thing other than what appears to be happening.

Just this and no more. There is no 'trying' in this. Nowhere to go or to be or to find or to experience or to grow into or to get to or to move towards or to discover.

Each moment of life existent is a discovery. Totally new as arising energy apparently takes form within the apparent dream to apparently reveal itself.

Right now there may be an attempt to try to find meaning within these apparent words.

Stop TRYING. No really.... STOP TRYING. Not that there is anyone trying anything but within the dream there seems to be some trying happening. So don't stop it. Don't allow it. Don't appear to be doing anything at all. 

SOMETHING will happen and NOTHING will also happen.... or so it seems.

Dissolving into nothing is not an action. No amount of 'you' trying will produce anything at all.

Do you try to breathe? Or does it happen without 'you'?

Notice this but don't try to notice.

As the Beatles once said... let it be.

(but no need to 'try' the letting it be)

None of this is personal at all.

           

     

'SELF' AUTHORSHIP... fact or FICTION?

So this appearance of 'you' has a story. 'You' have a name and as that name 'you' appear as the main character in 'your' story.

The title of this story might be named 'The adventures of ...........' (insert 'your' name here)

The story is written by 'your' mind/ego. 

It seems to be an autobiography. 'You' writing about 'you'.

This story seems to sweep the main character up in a myriad of experiences, adventures, happenings, tales, meetings, encounters, relationships, studies, events, occasions, outcomes, states and an endless string of one thing after another designed to keep the character going.

The author sees an endless potential for sequels and is always writing 24/7 to keep the adventures going in order to keep the character going in order to keep the author going. The game is survival and the author must survive and keep going no matter what.  This is after all 'you' who is keeping going. Invention is the name of the game as the author continues to use what is known about the main character from previous experience as well as adding more to the repertoire of knowledge as the character encounters challenges and triumphs of gaining and adding and getting somewhere.

The main character may take on a sense of autonomous life so strongly that it believes it is living the adventures in its own story and is able to make choice and to set its own course in life. It develops the sense of personal will and a sense of creating and doing that seems to propel the character forward in life always toward a goal or a preferred outcome.

'You' are after all writing 'your' 'own' story here.

Yet always the author writes the adventure causing the character to experience and to perceive and to relate to what is happening from a separate perspective.

The author retains all rights to this work and all its sequential volumes.

The author is driven to continue and perhaps to realise the dream of a pullitzer or a major literary award along the way to further ensure the continuance of the work. The author is never satisfied and seems to be a perfectionist always fine tuning and adding perspectives to this character using old themes and merging these old themes within new adventures and experiences of the character.

The author and the character get to feel that they are the most important and the most significant offering to come along ever and the continued proving of the value of this work keeps the seeking and reaching and desiring and greater goal setting going like a raging bush fire that is fuelled by the oxygen of the trees it consumes.

The given and previously developed conditions of this character provide the author with a well spring of information to use whenever the character finds itself in a situation that seems to require a response or reaction. The character is

celebrated for its ability to respond to various happenings with a recognised and previously tested series of actions or reactions that have always seemed to be safe or ended in life continuing.

The filter of previous experience is always there in the author's head providing them with a set of likely outcomes to be applied to any given situation within which the character finds themselves.

After all the author and the character are one and the same are they not?

Somewhere within the character who has arisen out of the mind of the author lies a sense of something fake or not quite real or something lacking as the exhaustion of the continued reaching and grabbing for success or forward movement begin to exhaust the character to its core. The endless desiring and getting and failing to get are becoming impossible to hold onto for the character and it begins to feel that it is driving too fast and too hard. The character begins to get a sense of the presence of the author in its life and begins to wonder who is running this show actually?

The character begins to question and to seek for something more than this rat race that seems to be generated by the author. The character begins to feel restricted and imprisoned by the author's control over what happens.

Simultaneously the author begins to sense that its main character creation is assuming a sense of separate life and is pulling away or questioning everything. The author takes the reins more strongly to avoid disaster or losing control. This sense of the potential to lose control sends the author into hyper sensitivity as it begins to use everything it knows to avert danger and the threatening of its role as author of 'The Adventures of ......

The character stumbles upon a teaching that seems to suggest there is only ONE. This sends both the character and the author into tailspin as both begin to attempt to understand this idea of ONENESS. The author being the driver attempts to decode this information of oneness and to make sense of this idea of only ONE and within this is revealed the notion, according to the author, of nothingness.

The author rebels and switches back into all that it knows in order to circumnavigate the threat of nothing as surely the story cannot continue without a creator, a writer, a seeker, a character, a person, an individual to make things happen. The author finds the idea of nothing extremely boring and without the buzz of creating 24/7 and anyway, 'What would I do if there was only nothing?'

Unimaginable!

The character has now felt this openness of absolute emptiness of which this nothingness is both made and not made, formed and not formed. The character falls through the sense of author, beyond into absolute reality and awakens to the illusion of all things.

The author continues to speak and to offer and coerce the character to continue the path of seeking and of reaching for something and so the character slips between authorship and self and nothing until a series of seeming happenings dissolve the character as this illusion fades into life itself and the library of separate stories and persons and places and times and spaces falls into nothingness where they have always existed as illusion that rises and falls from and back into nothingness, emptiness absolute reality, life.

The character has faded into simply being. No character needed. No author needed. Life plays out as pure existence happening.

The author seems to surrender its role and disappears along with the illusion.

There is no book, no library, no writer, no characters, no story, no beginning, no ending, no concepts, no contents.... no-thing at all.


There never really was an author... just the appearance of one.

Everything just IS.... and from this arises....

ALL AND NOTHING

The usual saying is 'all OR nothing' immediately underlining the illusion of separation that floats up as an aspect of the play of life itself. This OR that. Mind appears to be part of life itself as 'you' also appear to be part of life itself. In the forgetting of the ONE is the potential for remembrance and for the 'coming home' that is the 'goal' of so many on the spiritual path.

The 'goal' and the 'path', the 'coming home' and even the 'forgetting' are constructs of the mind needing to attach meaning, attain something, do and problem solve that which just IS.

Mind likes to be the driver, the leader, the instigator, the impulse for action, the do-er.

Action simply rises naturally as part of emptiness, not separate from as in a deed or a project or an achieving, but simply an unprompted flow of energy that arises as an expression of life.

Mind wants to lay claim for all that happens. Mind wants to say 'I' did that! It is like the child wanting others to notice what they are doing..... 'Mommy look at me!' 'You, Mommy' over there and 'me' over here doing something that needs to be looked at.

Actually thought does not precede action as is assumed (by mind) but action arises followed by thought.
Perhaps notice this... it is split second but it is so. Apparently.

Mind is the commentator. Mind remarks upon that which is happening anyway. Not unlike a football game on television where the commentator remarks on every play that happens after the play happens. It may seem that they are commenting as the play happens but in truth they have observed and then comment. Or so it appears to be. Action followed by thought arising. Life is happening without mind's directorial guidance. Apparently.

In truth it is all a dualistic illusion anyway including the football game, the mind commenting, the television, the popcorn, the chair and yes, 'YOU'. There is no 'two'.

The ALL is the NOTHING is the ALL is the NOTHING is the ALL is the NOTHING is the ALL is....

Pure energy, free of construct or meaning or form. Being.

Not even containing freedom. Not a container. Not even nothing.

Free even of awakening, enlightenment or certainly a 'you' to 'become' any-thing. How could a 'you' become what is already there?

and yet ALL... and... NOTHING.

That which is sought after exists in the stillness, in the movement, in the noise, in the silence, in the light, in the darkness, in the sky, in the earth, in the skin, in the water, in the mouth, in the bones, in the wings, in the petals, in the boughs, in the cells, in the linoleum, in the music, in the needle, in the honey, in the gun, in the child, in the silkworm, in the bucket, in the stone, in the elephant dung, in the smile, in the slander, in the forgiveness, in the grace, in the rapist, in the open air, in the chalice, in the spectacles, in the chair, in the monk, in the illusion of all this.

The totality of being is dualistic and non-dualist and also neither and both.

JUST BEING. Only ever BEING.

JUST THIS. ONE. ALL and NOTHING.