Dear Joan, I read this early in the morning, a little after waking up. That familiar unpleasant feeling of being isolated, empty and lost came up like it does every day. Then I read your post. I haven't grokked "the truth" yet.Still seeking, hoping, wanting to "fix". I hope the gorilla gets done soon and if it doesn't... could I at least feel some pleasure in the meantime?
A line I heard decades ago from Gangaji comes to mind: "When you're free to smoke, you're free to quit." You've also grokked the truth, and it's being grokked right in this very moment, but you want it to look and feel different from how it looks and feels. ❤️
Reading your comment this came to mind. “everybody wants a place to rest, everybody wants to have a home, don’t make no difference what nobody says, ain’t nobody wants to bd alone.” I tear up just typing it.
Not sure I could relate more. There’s nothing to add. All those plays of mind. This article has freed me from ‘me’. What service is our own beingness. Thankyou 🙏🏾
Joan your words flow like a river in fullness. No hesitation which I must say I admire . its voices like your self Robert ,Toni, Karl and many others that remind us of this one glimpse of being a human being is IT. Love June Durkin
What struck home was that it does not matter whether the seeking comes or fades temporarily or goes entirely.
This is so reassuring for a rather brainwashed Buddhist who had come to believe that liberation is possible in THIS lifetime; not that this teaching is wrong, it seems to me it is just not the whole story.
The whole story, as far as I can understand from what you wrote, Joan, is that liberation is NOW, and then maybe it isn't, and then it's NOW again; and I can die at peace, knowing that I am just that which is aware of this liberation alternating with "incarceration," and that it doesn't matter whether this flip-flopping keeps happening or ends during the lifetime of this body.
Maybe liberation is being free from the need to be liberated, or from the idea that liberation is anything other than this moment, just as it is. I've noticed that the one who needs liberation, the one who seems to go back and forth, the one evaluating its progress and status, is a kind of phantom that can't actually be found. And yes, liberation is only ever NOW. 🙏
Yes, absolutely Joan. The constant checking on my state and my progress is very obvious to me - and such a seemingly ingrained tendency. I can see the wish to control which is implicit in this habit. Thank you.
This really hit home for me John…”I can die at peace, knowing that I am just that which is aware of this liberation alternating with "incarceration”, just something so penetrating about what you said here. Thank you
If we were together in a space and time, and if it was okay, I would hug you. Feeling love, gratitude, empathy, compassion, and more both nameable and not. Not two. Not one. 🩷
I love your sharings so much. Wonderful little surprise presents to open and delight in. Often, they almost identically echo what's up with me. Kinda like real evidence of "movement of the whole",
or, hey, look what's being dreamed up now!
Exploring and revisiting philosophies and practices that appear and disappear in my attention, as you mention, recently feels both for fun, just because... like any other activity I could be interested in, but also, sometimes, because maybe I have my fingers crossed behind my back, as in, hey what can it hurt to have a little insurance policy by exercising muscles for self- illuminating clarity and emptiness. Which clarity and emptiness, of course, is never not the case. And then it all gives me a big hearty laugh, because none of it can have final resolution, even if sometimes I think it can. It's just what's apparently happening. Do I really need to wear a badge declaring " all seeking has officially stopped once and for all" ? Nah. When it truly doesn't even matter, it doesn't matter. Not a whit.
When I reached the part in your article where you quote Wayne Liquorman, my next thought was... and really, it does not matter whether it stays or goes! Then, that was the very next thing you wrote, adding the wonderful Karl Renz quote.
It's that sublime relaxation. Trying too hard and being too serious about anything (or, no-thing, for that matter, haha) is kind of like living in a "little box made of ticky-tacky". There really is no fencing in, and if I feel a fencing in sometimes, well, that's the way it is, and the way it is is constantly morphing. Although I can also notice that nothing really happens at all.
As you often say....both/and. Much love and appreciation ❤️
I read part of this in bed this morning (like Marina).....then came downstairs to make coffee. As I was doing that, the song "Is that all there is?" began to play. "Then let's keep dancing, let's break out the booze...." etc. Wow. So - boy did it resonate. Just then my crow (there is a family) appeared. I was thinking to tell you about him or her - 'they' now show up every day and I give them something. Sometimes one of them sits on my Buddha statue ;-) Once in a while they poop on it....
I think we are about the same age, Joan - I am 75 and a half...and what you post v. often coincides with where I am at. Recently did not pay for another month of Waking Up - feels like I am pretty Woke ATM. And for now there is no need to do anything about anything.
Joy for me is looking closely at a flower, watching cat videos, cooking, growing food, dahlias. Different folks like Eckhart T, Pema C. Thich NH....have pointed me in a direction....anyhow thank you for what you post.
Beautiful! Yes, close to same age. I turn 76 in a week, so it's taken a while to arrive where I always already was and always am, and who knows what the next moment will bring, but it sounds like we're much in the same placeless place. 🙏❤️
Thanks Joan. I am much younger than you ;-) 76 in late October. Yes - I felt 'at one with everything' then the mind took over once again. "I should exercise" was one of them. Wish we could hang out! Wanted to send you a photo of the flower on a Passiflora ....
you could google it. We have them at work and like other flowers they are some kind of miracle. xoxoxo
For the record, I'm a strong believer in exercise. Not that anyone "should" do it, but in my case, I very much want to do what I can to slow down macular degeneration and perhaps prevent having a stroke or dementia, and to stay mobile and able to take care of myself for as long as possible, and exercise and diet are the two things most frequently mentioned as helpful for all of this. Also, I notice I feel better if I exercise. Of course, there are no guarantees, and que sera sera. And I still indulge to some degree in foods that are enjoyable but not helpful, and I don't always make it to the fitness center as often as I intend to, etc--and I'm okay with it being as it is.
To be clear, I did not mean to suggest that any of the 3 books I mentioned (I AM THAT, THE POWER OF NOW, and THE TEN THOUSAND THINGS) is in any way promising or intending to promise a better moment than this one. In fact, they all point to THIS moment, this one bottomless moment, here and now. It was the spirit in which I was often reaching for and re-reading them to which I was referring when I mentioned them. They are 3 of my personal favorites, and I'm deeply grateful for all 3 of them. All 3 were transformative for me.
Liberating take, Joan. Thank you for this perspective.
This is my first time reading this quote: "Seeking is like having sex with a nine-hundred pound gorilla. You’re not done until the gorilla is done." I mean... so good. It's this.
There is a kind of sentiment I've heard expressed by some in the circles of non-dualism, that any non-durability around the knowing is an indication that the message did not land. It's not exactly that sentiment, but that's how I've interpreted it.
The perspective you've shared seems more true, at least for this tiny mind.
Thanks, Damon. I'd say that some people are full of bullshit. Some are lying to others and some even to themselves. Some are simply not very keen observers of their own mind stream. But sometimes, it depends on what is meant by "knowing" or "liberation" or "duration," and whether the person is speaking as boundless here-now-presence or as a person.
I might say that knowing-awaring-being is ever-present, and that what comes and goes is the thought-sense of being a separate, autonomous character and all the many thoughts and stories and mind-states and emotional reactions that follow from that (including the story that "I" am getting it or losing it). These appearances can SEEM to obscure the knowing-awaring-being (aka presence, present experiencing, here-now), but only seemingly, because ALL of that is simply another momentary shape this here-now-being is showing up or appearing as. It is all a movement of the whole. None of it is really ever personal. We can't ever really step out of here-now.
But if a so-called teacher or guru is claiming that they personally are always THIS, and that most everyone else isn't, or if they're claiming that that they never ever experience any kind of identification as the person, or any kind of ego-related emotion-thought, then I would be very dubious of this claim. Perhaps in rare cases it may be true, but really, who cares? (Only the little me).
All of this stuff seems to get paradoxical as soon as we talk about it. Is there something to get or isn't there? Yes/No. Is there a process of unfolding or no process at all? Yes/No. Whatever you say, it's never quite right. 🙏
It could be that there was a failure of language. The impression seemed to be that once the knowledge on the non-dual nature is clear, there is never an identification with the person anymore. But, I may be mapping on my own stuff. I'm going to go back and re-listen to the conversation.
Some amount of identification as the person is necessary for functioning. Otherwise, you wouldn't respond to your name, know which hole to put the food in or whose mail to open, or have the ability to perform the simplest of everyday tasks. The part of identity that can become more and more transparent and that can fall away more and more is the self-image, the thought-sense of being encapsulated and separate, and the notion of being the author-thinker-chooser in control of our lives. And it can be realized that "the body," "the mind" and "the person" are labels for an unpindownable and ever-changing movement that can never really be separated from everything else. Space and time can be seen to be functional appearances that only ever appear here-now. But in everyday life, we need the ability to discern distances and tell time in order to function. So I'd say, none of this disappears permanently, short of a brain injury or neurological disorder. It just becomes more transparent and can be held more lightly. The involvement in the me-story gets thinner and thinner.
Wayne Liquorman's newsletter just arrived in my in-box:
Hello my loves!
There are so many ways to look at things. For example I am very comfortable saying that, as Wayne, all I am is my story. Wayne is born and Wayne does stuff and Wayne dies. This is the story of Wayne.
As Source I am Nothing. The idea that by ridding myself of my story I will become more Source is ludicrous. All Wayne is is Source. It is impossible for me to become more Source. This idea is just another bogus attempt at attainment.
I am not the problem. Trying to rid myself of myself is like standing in my boots and attempting to lift myself off the ground by pulling up on my bootstraps.
We suffer because we are saddled with the sense of being independent entities. When this is seen through, Peace is revealed as our birthright.
"Seeking falls away when it falls away".....it's repeatedly very surprising to me when the lack of any deliberate agency in behaviours that I manifest is thrust into consciousness. And very amusing. Thanks as always Joan....
People, we'll do almost anything to keep from feeling the way we feel, and spiritual seeking is one of the less damaging and dangerous strategies that I've used. But, as Jack Kornfield said, "You just can't no self it away." I had visions of myself as some kind of spiritual adventurer, but I'm just a guy who wouldn't allow himself to feel grief and fear for fear of being overwhelmed by the grief and fear that are unavoidable facts of life. Learning that I can watch them come and go because they are temporary and empty has been really helpful in seeing that life is so hard for everyone that I need to be kind and patient with myself and with everyone I meet.
Dear Joan, I read this early in the morning, a little after waking up. That familiar unpleasant feeling of being isolated, empty and lost came up like it does every day. Then I read your post. I haven't grokked "the truth" yet.Still seeking, hoping, wanting to "fix". I hope the gorilla gets done soon and if it doesn't... could I at least feel some pleasure in the meantime?
A line I heard decades ago from Gangaji comes to mind: "When you're free to smoke, you're free to quit." You've also grokked the truth, and it's being grokked right in this very moment, but you want it to look and feel different from how it looks and feels. ❤️
Wow! Such a straightforward direct answer! I need to really absorb this one. Thank you Joan😘
Reading your comment this came to mind. “everybody wants a place to rest, everybody wants to have a home, don’t make no difference what nobody says, ain’t nobody wants to bd alone.” I tear up just typing it.
Not sure I could relate more. There’s nothing to add. All those plays of mind. This article has freed me from ‘me’. What service is our own beingness. Thankyou 🙏🏾
Joan your words flow like a river in fullness. No hesitation which I must say I admire . its voices like your self Robert ,Toni, Karl and many others that remind us of this one glimpse of being a human being is IT. Love June Durkin
What struck home was that it does not matter whether the seeking comes or fades temporarily or goes entirely.
This is so reassuring for a rather brainwashed Buddhist who had come to believe that liberation is possible in THIS lifetime; not that this teaching is wrong, it seems to me it is just not the whole story.
The whole story, as far as I can understand from what you wrote, Joan, is that liberation is NOW, and then maybe it isn't, and then it's NOW again; and I can die at peace, knowing that I am just that which is aware of this liberation alternating with "incarceration," and that it doesn't matter whether this flip-flopping keeps happening or ends during the lifetime of this body.
Something like that, I wonder?
Maybe liberation is being free from the need to be liberated, or from the idea that liberation is anything other than this moment, just as it is. I've noticed that the one who needs liberation, the one who seems to go back and forth, the one evaluating its progress and status, is a kind of phantom that can't actually be found. And yes, liberation is only ever NOW. 🙏
Yes, absolutely Joan. The constant checking on my state and my progress is very obvious to me - and such a seemingly ingrained tendency. I can see the wish to control which is implicit in this habit. Thank you.
This really hit home for me John…”I can die at peace, knowing that I am just that which is aware of this liberation alternating with "incarceration”, just something so penetrating about what you said here. Thank you
If we were together in a space and time, and if it was okay, I would hug you. Feeling love, gratitude, empathy, compassion, and more both nameable and not. Not two. Not one. 🩷
Hugging you back. ❤️
LOVING just This😍
Being..Peace..Silence..Contentment always Here. Thoughts will only deter what is Complete, perfect, As It Is💝
And also, thoughts cannot deter, nor can anything, what is always complete, as it is. Love you, Bill. ❤️
I love your sharings so much. Wonderful little surprise presents to open and delight in. Often, they almost identically echo what's up with me. Kinda like real evidence of "movement of the whole",
or, hey, look what's being dreamed up now!
Exploring and revisiting philosophies and practices that appear and disappear in my attention, as you mention, recently feels both for fun, just because... like any other activity I could be interested in, but also, sometimes, because maybe I have my fingers crossed behind my back, as in, hey what can it hurt to have a little insurance policy by exercising muscles for self- illuminating clarity and emptiness. Which clarity and emptiness, of course, is never not the case. And then it all gives me a big hearty laugh, because none of it can have final resolution, even if sometimes I think it can. It's just what's apparently happening. Do I really need to wear a badge declaring " all seeking has officially stopped once and for all" ? Nah. When it truly doesn't even matter, it doesn't matter. Not a whit.
When I reached the part in your article where you quote Wayne Liquorman, my next thought was... and really, it does not matter whether it stays or goes! Then, that was the very next thing you wrote, adding the wonderful Karl Renz quote.
It's that sublime relaxation. Trying too hard and being too serious about anything (or, no-thing, for that matter, haha) is kind of like living in a "little box made of ticky-tacky". There really is no fencing in, and if I feel a fencing in sometimes, well, that's the way it is, and the way it is is constantly morphing. Although I can also notice that nothing really happens at all.
As you often say....both/and. Much love and appreciation ❤️
Beautiful!
I read part of this in bed this morning (like Marina).....then came downstairs to make coffee. As I was doing that, the song "Is that all there is?" began to play. "Then let's keep dancing, let's break out the booze...." etc. Wow. So - boy did it resonate. Just then my crow (there is a family) appeared. I was thinking to tell you about him or her - 'they' now show up every day and I give them something. Sometimes one of them sits on my Buddha statue ;-) Once in a while they poop on it....
I think we are about the same age, Joan - I am 75 and a half...and what you post v. often coincides with where I am at. Recently did not pay for another month of Waking Up - feels like I am pretty Woke ATM. And for now there is no need to do anything about anything.
Joy for me is looking closely at a flower, watching cat videos, cooking, growing food, dahlias. Different folks like Eckhart T, Pema C. Thich NH....have pointed me in a direction....anyhow thank you for what you post.
Beautiful! Yes, close to same age. I turn 76 in a week, so it's taken a while to arrive where I always already was and always am, and who knows what the next moment will bring, but it sounds like we're much in the same placeless place. 🙏❤️
Thanks Joan. I am much younger than you ;-) 76 in late October. Yes - I felt 'at one with everything' then the mind took over once again. "I should exercise" was one of them. Wish we could hang out! Wanted to send you a photo of the flower on a Passiflora ....
you could google it. We have them at work and like other flowers they are some kind of miracle. xoxoxo
For the record, I'm a strong believer in exercise. Not that anyone "should" do it, but in my case, I very much want to do what I can to slow down macular degeneration and perhaps prevent having a stroke or dementia, and to stay mobile and able to take care of myself for as long as possible, and exercise and diet are the two things most frequently mentioned as helpful for all of this. Also, I notice I feel better if I exercise. Of course, there are no guarantees, and que sera sera. And I still indulge to some degree in foods that are enjoyable but not helpful, and I don't always make it to the fitness center as often as I intend to, etc--and I'm okay with it being as it is.
I’ll be 76 in December, we’ve got a little club going here❤️all of us walking each other home
Oh wow. Amazing. I got goosebumps ;-)
Grateful to have this article to start my day right.
Grateful for you, Bob.
To be clear, I did not mean to suggest that any of the 3 books I mentioned (I AM THAT, THE POWER OF NOW, and THE TEN THOUSAND THINGS) is in any way promising or intending to promise a better moment than this one. In fact, they all point to THIS moment, this one bottomless moment, here and now. It was the spirit in which I was often reaching for and re-reading them to which I was referring when I mentioned them. They are 3 of my personal favorites, and I'm deeply grateful for all 3 of them. All 3 were transformative for me.
Liberating take, Joan. Thank you for this perspective.
This is my first time reading this quote: "Seeking is like having sex with a nine-hundred pound gorilla. You’re not done until the gorilla is done." I mean... so good. It's this.
There is a kind of sentiment I've heard expressed by some in the circles of non-dualism, that any non-durability around the knowing is an indication that the message did not land. It's not exactly that sentiment, but that's how I've interpreted it.
The perspective you've shared seems more true, at least for this tiny mind.
Thanks, Damon. I'd say that some people are full of bullshit. Some are lying to others and some even to themselves. Some are simply not very keen observers of their own mind stream. But sometimes, it depends on what is meant by "knowing" or "liberation" or "duration," and whether the person is speaking as boundless here-now-presence or as a person.
I might say that knowing-awaring-being is ever-present, and that what comes and goes is the thought-sense of being a separate, autonomous character and all the many thoughts and stories and mind-states and emotional reactions that follow from that (including the story that "I" am getting it or losing it). These appearances can SEEM to obscure the knowing-awaring-being (aka presence, present experiencing, here-now), but only seemingly, because ALL of that is simply another momentary shape this here-now-being is showing up or appearing as. It is all a movement of the whole. None of it is really ever personal. We can't ever really step out of here-now.
But if a so-called teacher or guru is claiming that they personally are always THIS, and that most everyone else isn't, or if they're claiming that that they never ever experience any kind of identification as the person, or any kind of ego-related emotion-thought, then I would be very dubious of this claim. Perhaps in rare cases it may be true, but really, who cares? (Only the little me).
All of this stuff seems to get paradoxical as soon as we talk about it. Is there something to get or isn't there? Yes/No. Is there a process of unfolding or no process at all? Yes/No. Whatever you say, it's never quite right. 🙏
Thank you for this deeper dive, Joan.
It could be that there was a failure of language. The impression seemed to be that once the knowledge on the non-dual nature is clear, there is never an identification with the person anymore. But, I may be mapping on my own stuff. I'm going to go back and re-listen to the conversation.
Again, thank you.
Some amount of identification as the person is necessary for functioning. Otherwise, you wouldn't respond to your name, know which hole to put the food in or whose mail to open, or have the ability to perform the simplest of everyday tasks. The part of identity that can become more and more transparent and that can fall away more and more is the self-image, the thought-sense of being encapsulated and separate, and the notion of being the author-thinker-chooser in control of our lives. And it can be realized that "the body," "the mind" and "the person" are labels for an unpindownable and ever-changing movement that can never really be separated from everything else. Space and time can be seen to be functional appearances that only ever appear here-now. But in everyday life, we need the ability to discern distances and tell time in order to function. So I'd say, none of this disappears permanently, short of a brain injury or neurological disorder. It just becomes more transparent and can be held more lightly. The involvement in the me-story gets thinner and thinner.
Nicely stated. The term non-attachment came to mind as I read that.
Wayne Liquorman's newsletter just arrived in my in-box:
Hello my loves!
There are so many ways to look at things. For example I am very comfortable saying that, as Wayne, all I am is my story. Wayne is born and Wayne does stuff and Wayne dies. This is the story of Wayne.
As Source I am Nothing. The idea that by ridding myself of my story I will become more Source is ludicrous. All Wayne is is Source. It is impossible for me to become more Source. This idea is just another bogus attempt at attainment.
I am not the problem. Trying to rid myself of myself is like standing in my boots and attempting to lift myself off the ground by pulling up on my bootstraps.
We suffer because we are saddled with the sense of being independent entities. When this is seen through, Peace is revealed as our birthright.
May it find you now.
With much love,
Wayne
I love what you share as always....I have had to grapple with the compulsion to "continue seeking" also.
When I free to think I can be still xx
"Seeking falls away when it falls away".....it's repeatedly very surprising to me when the lack of any deliberate agency in behaviours that I manifest is thrust into consciousness. And very amusing. Thanks as always Joan....
People, we'll do almost anything to keep from feeling the way we feel, and spiritual seeking is one of the less damaging and dangerous strategies that I've used. But, as Jack Kornfield said, "You just can't no self it away." I had visions of myself as some kind of spiritual adventurer, but I'm just a guy who wouldn't allow himself to feel grief and fear for fear of being overwhelmed by the grief and fear that are unavoidable facts of life. Learning that I can watch them come and go because they are temporary and empty has been really helpful in seeing that life is so hard for everyone that I need to be kind and patient with myself and with everyone I meet.
Beautifully written ❤️