It's Right Here, Right Now

THIS IS IT!

I want to begin with part of a poem called "What Will It Take?" by John Astin:

Do we really need more proof?
Another taste of joy,
another glimpse of truth,
another experience of this, that
or the other thing?
What will it take before
we finally stop and accept
that it is over, that this empty cup
has always been full?
How many more experiences
before we realize
that we could never have more
of what we already are?

In a flash of insight
I wake to this knowing...
this simple knowing that
I could never really add anything
to This that is already everything.

But then, like a punch-drunk boxer,
I drag myself up and
set out again on my search,
determined to find more proof,
More evidence, I cry,
That is what I need,
never quite believing
it could be so simple.

– John Astin, excerpted from a poem that appears in his first book, Too Intimate for Words

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I’m a classic example of that punch-drunk boxer, that spiritual addict, forever doubting and grasping and trying to pin down the one right way. Yes, I have deeply, experientially known the truth (and I’ll get to what I mean by that) for a very, very long time (decades). But then, in spite of knowing better, "I drag myself up and set out again on my search, determined to find more proof."

Forms of this search have definitely fallen away over the years, but if I’m honest, at least until very recently, there could still be an effort at times to bring forth or deepen or abide in some particular state of consciousness, and there continued to be periodic doubt and uncertainty giving rise to an addictive form of seeking that felt palpably different from the kind of healthy doubt and genuine curiosity and openness to new discoveries that has also shown up over the years.

I’ve spent decades now writing books and articles about right here, right now, and saying that “this is it,” maybe because that is exactly what I most need to hear. And it’s what so many people I talk with need to hear. It’s amazing how many times that punch-drunk boxer, that spiritual addict, that doubting mind can reassert itself, endlessly looking for something other than THIS, right here, right now.

Endlessly re-reading I AM THAT or THE POWER OF NOW or THE TEN THOUSAND THINGS or whatever other favorite promises a better moment than this one. Endlessly trying to land in one place with certainty and finality, as so many others seem to have done, and yet endlessly failing to do so. One moment overflowing with devotional love and God language, and another moment drawn to the sober, down to earth perspective of Zen, Toni Packer or Robert Saltzman. Endlessly trying to pick a side and stay there, and never able to do so.

And yet, in any moment, all this seeking and doubting and trying to pick a side can stop and there is only the sounds of wind and the feeling of breathing and the light playing on the leaves, and there is no me and no other and no problem and nothing lacking and nothing that needs to be any different. It’s so simple, so obvious, so utterly complete.

Until thought rises up again pretending to be me—this self-image, this character in a story, accompanied by this contracted thought-sense of being small and separate and encapsulated—and then thought begins shouting out headlines, spinning stories about what might be missing or what might be better, doubting everything I’m doing, suggesting that “I” am incomplete and not good enough—and the body hums along with more uneasy, contracted, anxious feelings which seem to confirm the truth of the stories.

But more and more, and recently in a bigger way, this all seems to be falling away, along with my fingerbiting compulsion. I’m cautious to announce such things because I know how quickly things can change and old habits can reassert themselves. But still, something seems to have shifted. Not in any big dramatic way, not in a giant flash of light, but gradually.

This shift seems to involve an end to these last vestiges of seeking and holding others above me, along with an embracing of the whole of me, rather than trying to find and land on the right version of me, or the right version of what I’m doing. There seems to be an ever greater willingness to be just as I am. It’s not a finish-line or an end to exploration and discovery—there’s no end to that. But there is a felt-difference between that kind of open, ever-fresh exploration and the kind of seeking that feels addictive and rooted in deficiency stories.

I mentioned earlier in this article that I have deeply, experientially known or grokked “the truth” for a very, very long time (decades), and I promised to explain what I meant by the truth, but really, it can’t be explained. It’s that simple, direct, nonconceptual knowingness of being just this, right here, right now, just as it is. It doesn’t exclude thoughts, ideas and concepts, but it isn’t hypnotized by them either.

Thought could put this truth that has been deeply known into many fancy words, but the words would only be descriptions of something that cannot be grasped. Words might describe it as the realization of thorough-going impermanence, interdependence and non-substantiality; discovering the absence of any separate, persisting, independent, pindownable self; realizing there is no past, no future, no-thing at all—just this—this choiceless, holographic, seamless, boundless, effulgent unicity here-now showing up as infinitely varied multiplicity—no-thing-ness appearing as everything; realizing that we can never really leave here-now, that this aliveness is actually never absent; finding the Holy Reality, the sacred, to be fully present in and as each moment—as the sounds of rain and wind, the taste of coffee, the felt-sensations of breathing and the undeniable awaring presence or present experiencing here-now that is impossible to doubt, this that is the common factor in every different experience.

Many fancy words and ideas, but the reality to which they point is simple, simple, simple. Never absent. Never hidden. Always obvious when we give more and more open attention to the living actuality instead of only or mostly to the conceptual maps (i.e., the definable world of apparently separate things).

And the great discovery is that reality is all-inclusive—obviously, because here it all is, just as it is—and thus, everything belongs. We don’t have to figure it out or choose this way over that way or have some different, bigger, better experience other than exactly the one that is happening right now. THIS includes everything from rational atheists to the Catholic Mass, from monks and nuns to prostitutes and drunks, from saints to serial killers, from the horrors of war to the idyllic beauty of the most gorgeous and peaceful countrysides, from the busiest and noisiest mind moments to the emptiest and quietest ones. It includes the conceptual and the sensory, the everyday and the transcendental. Nothing can be pulled out of this whole and nothing stays the same, and yet all of it is never anything other than this present experiencing, this awaring presence, this radiant aliveness that no word can truly capture. Everything is the path and the goal, the truth and the way. It’s all right here, right now.

As you walk the
Spiritual path
It widens
Not narrows
Until one day
It broadens
To a point
Where
There is no
Path left at all.

– Wayne Liquorman

As I think Wayne Liquorman also once said, and as I’ve quoted before, “Seeking is like having sex with a nine-hundred pound gorilla. You’re not done until the gorilla is done.” In other words, we can’t just decide to stop seeking (or biting our fingers or getting drunk or anything else life compels us to do). Seeking falls away when it falls away. And “we” (as the apparently separate self) are not really doing any of it. It’s ALL a movement of the whole, and in some way, it all belongs. It’s not personal. It’s not bad or wrong. It may be painful, like any other addiction or compulsion, but it ends when it ends, and some addictions and compulsions persist for an entire lifetime. So the most liberating realization is that it doesn’t matter whether it stays or goes. Whatever appears, it is all in some way the same no-thing-ness dancing, and that dance is a very all-inclusive one:

You cannot avoid one single misery. Ignorance. None of that can be avoided. All of that is what you are. No end to it. There is no happy end. That’s the beauty of it.

– Karl Renz

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Love to all…