Liberation Here-Now
freedom from the illusion of separation, solidity, encapsulation and personal free will
Freedom from the illusion of separation, solidity, encapsulation and personal free will
Perhaps what we most deeply want is simply to be here, free from these powerful illusions that generate so much suffering—simply hearing the birds or the traffic sounds, enjoying a cup of coffee, breathing, thinking whatever thoughts are arising, seeing whatever is being seen—at ease with life as it is, knowing that nothing can be other than how it is in this moment, not needing anything more or less.
We are like waves in the ocean—ever-changing, inseparable movements of a seamless indivisible whole, and every wave includes the whole ocean. This one bottomless moment is ever-changing in appearance while never departing from the ever-present immediacy of here-now. The appearances vanish automatically as soon as they appear—they self-liberate as some traditions say—and there is peace in the simple immediacy of being alive, just as we are.
Thought poses as “me” and claims to be the thinker-chooser-doer, but no such entity can actually be found. Our thoughts, behaviors and apparent choices arise as movements of the whole. When we take it all personally and believe that we are small and separate and in control of our lives, feelings of deficiency, anxiety, guilt, blame, confusion and dissatisfaction inevitably follow.
Liberation from this kind of suffering can never happen in the future. It can only happen now, in the simple recognition that absolutely nothing needs to happen or not happen. Both the apparent suffering and the one who longs to be free are ephemeral appearances with no actual substance. All there is in every passing wave of experience, however it may appear, is the seamless indivisible ocean.
This "indivisible ocean" has been called by many names—consciousness, presence, awareness, intelligence-energy, God, unicity, the universe, the ground, the Tao, emptiness, groundlessness, no-thing-ness, one-without-a-second—but no name can capture the ungraspable openness of being. It is not a thing at all.
Recognizing the non-substantial, evanescent, impersonal nature of every passing experience and the absence of any separate, persisting, independent “me” at the center of the whole show is profoundly liberating.
It is profoundly liberating to recognize that all our urges, desires, impulses, intentions, interests, preferences, abilities, choices, decisions, thoughts and actions are impersonal movements of the whole, that the “me” who seems to be the thinker-decider-observer-chooser-doer is a kind of mirage that vanishes when we look closely.
By giving open attention to the actual experiential unfolding of thoughts, actions, choices and decisions, it is discovered that they all happen choicelessly, even the ones that involve carefully weighing options or extensive planning—each step in the weighing and planning process arises from an unfindable source.
None of this means that apparent decisions, intentions, choices and plans won’t continue to happen. They will! And conventionally speaking, in everyday life, we will still say that, “I decided to have lasagna for dinner,” or “You need to do your homework,” or “I realized that I had a serious addiction to alcohol, so I decided to go into a recovery program, and I stopped drinking, and now I maintain a discipline that supports my recovery.”
But if we truly see how reality is, it will be clear that this “I” who seems to be initiating and planning and doing all of this is not what we think it is. “I” is only a figure of speech, a grammatical convention, an idea, a mental image. No “me” can actually be found at the center of our experience. There is no separate, independent entity with free will running the show. That would be as absurd as imagining that a wave in the ocean can go whichever way it decides to go, independently of the ocean.
This mirage of “me” is generated by an ever-changing mix of thoughts, sensations, memories, ideas and mental images combined with aware presence. In fact, the whole universe or the dreaming consciousness is doing (or imagining) all of it: planning dinner, discipling our children, recognizing a problem, thinking about a solution, taking action, succeeding or failing to achieve the desired outcome. It’s all happening choicelessly by itself, even the apparent choosing.
Realizing the choiceless and impersonal nature of everything that happens frees us from guilt, blame, false pride, and many other painful and destructive feelings that arise when we believe that we are separate and in control of our lives, and that everyone else is in control of their lives, and that we all could and should be doing a much better job. Recognizing the impersonal nature of everything gives us compassion for ourselves and everyone else when we fall short of our ideals.
We could say that the whole movie of waking life, including the central character we identify as “me,” is very much like a nighttime dream, and in a dream, the dream character is not writing or directing the show. The dream character doesn’t even really exist. The entire dream world is a movement of the dreaming consciousness, and none of the apparent objects or events exist outside of the dream. Or, alternatively, we could say that everything that happens is the result of infinite, interdependent causes and conditions. But any way we describe, map or formulate the living actuality is only a map or a description.
The living reality itself is ungraspable, unpindownable and unresolvable into any kind of static “thing” that can objectified, labeled and filed away in the knowledge bank. It is what we are and all there is. Just as the eye cannot see itself, there is no way to step outside of unicity and observe it as an object. It is all-inclusive and nondual. There is no inside or outside, no self or not-self, no other.
Unicity is eternal, which means timeless, ever-present, NOW. It is infinite, which means all-inclusive, boundless, limitless, HERE. This NOW-HERE is all there is. Have you noticed? There is no way to step outside of this. It cannot be objectified, although any words we use to point to it do seem to do just that, so we have to use words lightly. We habitually want something to grasp, something to hold onto, but in holding on to nothing at all, there is immense freedom.
At first, we may take all this in as an interesting idea, a possibility. Maybe we find it comforting and turn it into a belief and cling to it, and then eventually we begin to doubt it, because doubt is always the shadow side of belief. Maybe we immediately find it threatening and disagree with it, building a case against it. But maybe we are moved to live with this possibility, to try it out, to investigate our actual experiencing, to feel into it, to look and see.
And of course, all such possibilities (believing, doubting, disagreeing, agreeing, investigating, exploring) are impersonal movements of that great shoreless ocean that goes by so many names: unicity, the universe, the Tao, consciousness, awareness, presence, intelligence-energy, God, the ground of being, emptiness, groundlessness, no-thing-ness, one-without-a-second, the unnamable. Many words pointing to this aliveness, right here, right now, utterly immediate. Before the words, during the words, as the words, after the words—EVERYTHING is included. There is nothing that is not THIS—this unfathomable wholeness. It is both ungraspable and inescapable.
There are no mistakes. There is no way to fail. This can’t be lost (or found). Of course, in everyday relative reality, in the dream-like movie of waking life, there are many apparent mistakes needing correction. The character in the movie can still see a therapist, treat a cancer, practice yoga or meditation, recover from an addiction, march for peace and justice, apologize for a hurtful remark, or change a flat tire.
And I’m never suggesting that we can or should ignore or dismiss the everyday relative dimension of reality. It’s real enough. But when we know it for what it is, it can be experienced in a different way, with much less suffering and more ease. And in the bigger picture, every mistake and every apparent imperfection is perfectly placed. There’s no way to get it wrong. There’s no “me” separate from the whole.
And this is never what we think it is, because thought conceptually divides, abstracts and freezes what is actually indivisible, immediate, and never the same way for even an instant. And yet, even thinking, conceptualizing, abstracting and dividing are also nothing other than unicity showing up as apparent thinking, conceptualizing, abstracting and dividing. The map is not the territory it represents, and yet, mapping is something the territory is doing. All there is in every passing wave of experience, however it may appear, is the seamless indivisible ocean.
What a huge relief!
A word about repetition
The same words and phrases appear again and again in my writing, the same essential messages are expressed over and over, and yet, as with the variations on a theme in music, they may be worded slightly differently each time, or the context may be different. My teacher and friend Toni Packer gave essentially the same six talks over and over on every retreat, at least in terms of subject matter, and yet, each time it was fresh and new because the listening presence and the speaking presence are alive here-now. As an old friend recently said, how can there be repetition or “I've heard all this before,” when one is hearing it right now?
Love to all…
As I was reading, I thought, “I must simply keep reading this continually, all day every day, and then I’d not lose this awareness.” Hahaha! The individualistic part of consciousness keeps wanting to control everything, even the not-controlling-everything. I deeply appreciate all your writing and the way you play with recurring patterns of language. Also, very recently a dear friend of mine died just a few weeks after diagnosis, and he told me how grateful he was for the non-dual perspective he’d been taught. You were one of the teachers who enabled him to experience much relief and freedom at the end of his life. Thank you so much.
Glorious Joan, thank you 🙏