No matter what state dawns at this moment, can there be just that? Not a movement away, an escape into something that will provide what this state does not provide, or doesn't seem to provide: energy, zest, inspiration, joy, happiness, whatever. Just completely, unconditionally listening to what's here now, is that possible?
—Toni Packer
Be free. Be who you are. See that everything is already resolved, here and now. That is the way of freedom.
—Salvadore Poe
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel lost, filled with an inexplicable sadness, a hollow emptiness, a feeling of doom. Thought tells me that everything I’ve written or done in my life is bullshit—that I know nothing, I’ve failed completely, my life is an unmanageable train wreck. In such moments, there is an impulse to find comfort or relief, to get a grip. In the distant past, I would have poured myself a strong drink and lit up a cigarette. But those comforts have been left behind, and they never really cured this dark emptiness or satisfied the deep hunger for peace and freedom. In more recent years, I might reach for a spiritual book or watch a spiritual YouTube, and sometimes I still do that, and sometimes I do find a helpful reminder there of where peace and freedom are actually found. But the truth is, I already know. I know that it’s right here. It’s not in any belief or idea or in any book, but in the willingness to simply be as I am. Not as I think I am, but as I actually am.
Picking up a comforting belief will only provide temporary comfort, like a drink or a cigarette. And just as a hangover follows excessive drinking, belief is always shadowed by doubt, and just as the hangover demands another drink to cure it, the doubt demands another belief to dispel it. This cycle doesn’t end well. Any addictive comfort inevitably proves unsatisfying. Expectations and hopes turn to disappointments and disillusionment. No one can save us. No substance or idea can save us. Nothing outside of us can save us.
But perhaps we don’t actually need to be saved. Perhaps the problem itself and the one who seems to have it are both imaginary. Perhaps, right here now, there is no problem at all.
The sensations that thought labels with the words “sadness” or “a feeling of doom” are certainly real enough, but without the labels, what are they actually like? What is the actual experience itself? Is it solid and unchanging, or is it moving and ungraspable? And an hour or a day later, when everything has changed and this sadness has disappeared completely, how real was it?
And what about the thought-stories that surround, evoke and sustain these sensations: “Everything I’ve ever written is bullshit…I’m a total fake…I don’t know anything…I’m lost…” Are these thoughts true? Are they an objective report on reality or just old, conditioned habits? And even if they are true, would that be a terrible thing? And to what exactly is the word “I” in these thoughts referring? Is it this undeniable aware presence or this ever-changing present sensory-energetic experiencing? Is it this bodymind organism? Or is it a kind of mental image, a mirage-like phantom, the main character in the story of my life? And how real is that character?
What happens if I don’t reach for anything—no drink, no cigarette, no book, no YouTube, no comforting belief or idea, no salvation, no cure? What if I simply stop and BE this very moment, just as it is? What is it like to be right here, open and undefended, resisting nothing, seeking nothing?
When we have physical or emotional pain, we tend to think and feel that this pain is something “out there” outside of us that is attacking and threatening us. At the bottomline, we are afraid it will kill us. We will drown in this seemingly unbearable darkness and be wiped out. So we resist it, run from it, or battle with it. And all of that seems to make the pain more real, more seemingly unbearable and more painful. That’s the overlay on top of pain and painful circumstances that I call suffering.
When we stop running away and resisting, when we simply open completely to bare sensation and energy, with no storyline and thus no separation, suddenly what seemed unbearable and threatening is bearable, no longer threatening, maybe even interesting. It’s not solid. It doesn’t stay the same. It is ephemeral, changing, without any real substance or inherent existence. It comes and goes, cloudlike, and what is ever-present before, during and after it is this vast, spacious, open presence, this stillness in which all the movement happens, this unbound awareness that we are.
Opening to this isn’t a one-time event that turns “me” into an awakened person. Any such idea is just more thinking, more imagination. In such thinking, we’re back into the dream of separation, apparently being a separate, persisting, independent someone in some kind of apparently permanent state. But whatever experiential state has come will eventually go. Yes, it can be realized that this aware presence is always here, even in the midst of suffering and confusion, but experientially, being awake to that feels entirely different and brings forth very different activity than when the attention is lost in the dream-world of mental suffering.
We long for a permanent experience of peace and happiness, free from pain. We imagine and hope that someday, in the future, we will become a permanently awakened person. We imagine that this person will be flawless—always equanimous, happy, compassionate, loving, free from all doubts and uncertainties and all unwanted habits and tendencies. But no such unchanging “person” ever actually exists—a person is like a wave in the ocean—it doesn’t hold still, it is never the same way twice or even for an instant.
And awakening can only ever be NOW, never in the future. And right now—without thought, memory or imagination—there is no “me” to be awake or not awake—there is simply this unbound, aware presence and this ever-changing, centerless, present experiencing in which no-thing ever actually forms in any substantial or persisting way. When we give complete open attention to what we call “sadness” or “a toothache,” we find only ever-changing sensations—no solid or persisting “thing.”
Waking up from the trance of suffering and confusion only happens NOW—and in this awake presence, there is no separate “me” and no-thing “out there” threatening me. There is simply this one bottomless present moment, the ever-present Here-Now. We can call this NOW by many names: presence, awareness, intelligence-energy, spirit, God, no-thing-ness, unicity, emptiness, wholeness—but the living actuality can’t be captured or nailed down by any word-concept. Those are only pointers.
What is this, here and now, if we don’t refer to thought, memory, imagination, or second-hand information and acquired knowledge? To what does the word “I” most deeply refer, prior to name and story? These are not questions to think and reason about, or to answer with some word-label, but rather, they are questions to explore directly and wordlessly with open attention.
This direct, undeniable, undoubtable knowingness of being here now, present and aware, and this infinitely varied seamless present experiencing are never actually absent (except in deep sleep, where none of our problems remain). We may not be noticing this aware presence or the no-thing-ness of experiencing. Our attention may instead be focused on the conceptual-imaginary thoughts and stories about it. And that’s where the suffering and the confusion is. And from that suffering and confusion, consciousness can awaken—not forever after, but NOW.
Even after this open awake presence has been noticed, and even after we’ve experienced the instantaneous freedom and peace that is always here-now, even then, the thoughts and stories can and almost always will return. We might then try to use “being here now” in the same way we once used smoking and drinking, but that doesn’t seem to work—because truly being here now is not result-oriented. It’s the absence of all that. It’s a complete openness to what is. Sometimes, when we have a moment of simple open presence, the mind may want to grasp it as “The Answer,” something to believe in or use to my advantage, and then inevitably a doubtful thought will pop up and say, “So what? What’s the big deal about here-now?” But over time, and always NOW, these thoughts and impulses become more and more transparent as what they are and less and less believable.
And the more we open to simple aware presence (the ever-present NOW), the more readily available this freedom seems to become, and the less tenacious the thought-stories tend to be. But we’re still human beings—that dimension of this living reality doesn’t vanish. It may disappear entirely from experience when our attention is dissolved into boundless aware presence, but it inevitably returns to one degree or another as we engage in everyday life. The bodymind is subject to pain, disability, illness, old age and death, not to mention desire, fear, heartbreak and deeply entrenched habits, compulsions and addictive tendencies that can persist for a lifetime. We don’t get to choose the weather conditions of our unique bodymind organism, and everyone’s weather patterns are different.
So the question is, how do we meet all of that? When we meet it from the perspective of being a small, vulnerable, separate self, it can seem overwhelming. And when our individual weather is taken personally and given meaning, there can be shame, guilt and frustration over the ways we are apparently still imperfect—still sometimes caught up in anger, anxiety, depression, addiction, feelings of doom, or whatever it might be. We’re still not the perfect saint we had hoped to become, always blissful, never upset, never confused.
But there is a different possibility, a possibility that is only available NOW (not tomorrow or forever after). That is the possibility of letting go of the thought-story (not forever after, but NOW), and opening (or shifting attention) to this that is closer than close, this open spacious presence and the simple suchness of this moment, just as it is—allowing it all to be exactly as it is.
The illusory “me” can’t make that happen. It won’t happen through effort or willpower. It’s more like a relaxation, a surrender, a letting go. And we each have to discover for ourselves how that happens—it can’t be laid out in a formula or a set of instructions. It’s not unlike relaxing a tight muscle—in simply giving open attention to the tightness, it begins to release and let go naturally.
When teachers and sages say such things as, “this is it,” or “there is nothing to attain,” or “ordinary mind is the way,” they don’t mean that life sucks and that’s just how it is, that enlightenment is a myth and we should settle for a life of misery, or that just being lost in our ordinary, habitual thought-stream is all there is. That would be a very sad misunderstanding of pointers that are directing us to what is utterly simple, right here and now, often overlooked but never actually lacking. There is indeed something to recognize. And there is indeed what we might call enlightenment. But it isn’t a permanent condition that some imaginary character is permanently in. It can’t be attained because it’s always already right here, but it can be overlooked.
When it is said that there is no path and no practice because we are what we are seeking and it’s always right here at zero distance and this is it, that doesn’t mean there is no point in meditating (taking time to be silent, not doing anything else, simply being present), or working with teachers, or reading books, or hearing talks, or going on retreats, or whatever else is helpful in bringing forth this recognition, marinating in it, deepening it, and living in devotion to it. None of those things are essential or necessary for everyone—we all have a unique journey—but they can be helpful, and many of them certainly have been, and sometimes still are, for me.
It’s true that we can become dependent on teachers and books and so on, much like any other addiction (although I will say that those things are far less harmful than alcohol, cigarettes or heroin). Those addictive tendencies can be seen through and can fall away. The real answer is always right here, in wordless, formless presence itself, not in the pointers. Awareness is the great transformer.
Awareness sheds light. It reveals when we’re reaching for, or clinging to, anything in an addictive way—when meditation turns into a quest for bigger and better experiences, or when we’re using various teachings as a kind of security blanket, or reading I AM THAT for the tenth time as a way of avoiding and never actually letting go and BEING just this moment—endlessly reading the menu, in other words, instead of actually eating the meal. To the me-identified, thinking mind, reading about awakening seems much safer than actually being awake now—to the me-identified, thinking mind, that open letting go—not holding on to anything at all—seems scary and dangerous. But when the letting go actually happens, that open presence is not scary at all. It’s a huge relief!
We may also discover that we are strangely attached to our suffering and to our stories of being lost or imperfect. These stories are familiar, and they become a kind of identity. They keep the “me” alive. They offer a certain safety. Who would we be without them? To the me-identified thinking mind, being no-thing at all can sound scary. And we can’t make any of this attachment stop happening, but it can be seen for what it is, and that awareness is what transforms. The thinking mind (“me”) doesn't control awareness. Awareness is upstream from thinking. Awareness illuminates, reveals and dissolves the thought-constructed prisons we seem to be in along with the thought-constructed self who seems to be trapped in them. But it doesn’t do it on any thought-constructed timetable. It happens when and as it happens. We often call it grace. And as someone once wisely said, everything is grace when we see it as grace.
The paradox in trying to express any of this is that it can’t really be put into words, and nothing we say is ever entirely right or completely true. So it’s helpful not to get stuck or fixated on any conceptual idea or formulation, such as free will or choice, something to do or nothing to do, self or no self, etc. No formulation can capture the living reality. The word water is not water. The map is not the territory, the menu is not the meal. These truisms sound obvious, but it gets subtler and subtler because the mapping impulse runs deep, and the maps are ubiquitous and very easily mistaken for reality in ways we often don’t notice.
Pain and painful circumstances are unavoidable, but our suffering and confusion is always in the map-world. And, of course, the point isn’t to stop thinking or mapping. Short of a brain injury, that would be impossible to do in any sustained way because those activities are part of how life moves. Liberation is in the growing ability to discern the difference between map and territory, and at the same time, to recognize the all-inclusive unicity in which everything is included.
Waking up is a lifelong journey, and yet it only happens NOW. No matter how far we travel, we are always HERE in this immovable present immediacy. Liberation can’t be found in the past or the future or someplace else. It’s always NOW-HERE. The appearance never stays the same, and yet it is always just this. What we truly are is always already free. It’s simply a matter of noticing this. Waking up from the trance of thought. And living in devotion to here and now, to open aware presence, to the utter simplicity of what is, just as it is.
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I remain agnostic on the ultimate nature of reality. It seems clear to me that some degree of awareness is present even in deep sleep or under anesthesia, thus I call it ever-present. I sometimes also speak of awareness synonymously with Here-Now and thus describe it as immovable. I don't know if it is unchanging. On that, I remain agnostic. I use the word awareness in different ways...sometimes as the ever-present screen on which the movie plays, the Here-Now timeless immediacy, the common factor in every different experience, and sometimes I use it to mean the light of attention that reveals things, sees thoughts as thoughts, and so on--in that sense, it is something that can be cultivated, and someone can be said to be more or less aware in that sense of the word. My background is more in Zen than it is in Advaita, although I've been with a number of Advaita teachers (Jean Klein, etc), and I've read I AM THAT many times, and other Advaita classics and scriptures. My own approach and perspective is a mix of Zen and Advaita and other things that have influenced me as well (e.g. Christianity, Sufism, Taoism, radical nonduality). My main teacher, Toni Packer, was a former Zen teacher who had a great affinity with J. Krishnamuti, so that's in my background as well. I don't feel that there is only one correct spiritual path or perspective. I say, go with what resonates and works for you.
Dear Joan, just a few hours ago, this morning (I'm In Italy) I felt just like you describe, totally lost, miserable, empty, useless. I'm recovering from Covid and after one week of having to give up any contact with others and all my usual activities, this morning I woke up feeling deeply depressed and desperate for some kind of escape from my mind and feelings. Forty years ago I too would have lit a cigarette. Instead I grabbed my phone and searched Insight Timer for a guided miracle meditation (didn't find one with the right voice), then my Podcast list and YouTube to find some comforting guru ,then my Waking Up App for a practice and on and on until I just broke down in tears and surrendered to the whole catastrophe. Then it lifted. Don't know how or why, but it all just changed. I didn't make it happen, as much as I had tried. Grace, presence, awareness,God, whatever we call it, is always just waiting for us to let go, to give up trying to fix or run away. Knowing that I'm not alone in this and that even someone I consider far more ahead then me on this journey towards wholeness can feel just like I feel is truly comforting and I thank you for writing about it. Can I tell you I love you?