Yes, I remember Brother David Steindl-Rast says that also. And I can go with either version. My point is the same either way, that opposites (or different things or experiences) can be seen both in their sameness and equality and also in their ways of being different.
One person emailed me after seeing the photo caption on this article and wondered if I am back in the hospital. No, I’m not. The photo was taken when I was in the hospital last March. I’m more or less fully recovered and in much better shape than I was before the surgery. All is well!
"Not this...not that" - for me, the foundational statement of fact underpinning any attempt to describe anything...no expression using words will capture the whole...
This foundation applies too to the sudden/gradual debate about awakening, in my view - neither is true if it excludes the other.
There is something very reassuring to me about what you have written here. Yes, I prefer to dwell in peace and love, but, when contraction or fear or anger happens, it can be self-revealing, if I can release the self-judgments. All of these can be included in the stream of what is. Nothing can expel me from the presence of my own being.
Right now often involves physical and mental discomfort. Understanding that this is just how it is and not mine or somewhat else's fault is helpful because I've learned to just relax into it all rather than escalate.
Thank you, Joan, for this piece — there’s a rare honesty in how you write about presence, especially your closing admission that even the wish to eliminate all mirages is itself just another mirage.
I want to offer a place where my own practice moves differently. When I fall back into the body, I land almost immediately in feeling and mood. But rather than exploring that feeling toward its unpindownable, self-liberating nature, I find myself doing the opposite: sinking further into it, letting it keep its full weight instead of discovering its emptiness.
For me, non-dual seeing has sometimes been less a discovery than a quiet exit — a way of stepping back from something difficult by recognizing it’s “just appearance.” True, perhaps, but also usable as an escape from the sheer density of what’s felt. What I’m exploring instead is descent rather than dissolution: staying inside a feeling long enough that it can’t be relativized away.
I’d also gently push on the here-and-now itself. Collapsing everything into this one timeless instant risks flattening what is actually a much richer, more vertical texture of experience — depth, sedimentation, things that reach down rather than only flashing up and vanishing. Life isn’t only what’s here and now; some of it runs deeper than any single moment can hold.
I suspect you’d say this falling-into-feeling is itself already an instance of the presence you describe. But experientially, the direction feels opposite: yours moves toward release through insubstantiality, mine toward fuller inhabiting of what feels substantial. Curious whether any of this means something from where you sit.
Thank you again for writing so clearly and unguardedly.
It's always impossible to know from their words exactly what another person is experiencing, especially in these more amorphous dimensions of life. But it seems to me we may be describing the same thing in different ways, at least in part if not entirely.
Having explored the body and somatic experience for decades in myriad different ways (including various different forms of meditation, several different kinds of psychotherapy including somatic therapy, Feldenkrais and other forms of somatic awareness work), I haven't landed on one "correct" way, and I don't find myself trying to see it as "just an appearance" or in any other way. I could easily call such exploration a "descent" into the depths. I think I even suggested several possibilities, not just one. Sometimes I find myself exploring or feeling emotion-mood, sometimes physical pain, sometimes ordinary sensations such as breathing. By fully inhabiting and going deeply into what seems substantial, I find nothing to grasp, but this is not nothing either!
I've never resonated with the "I am not the body" pointer, although when the body is explored, I find something unpindownable and boundless, and when the "I" is explored, I find no "thing" and everything. And yet, there is also the experience of being a particular bodymind in a particular location in time and space. (See my recent article on "Two Inseparables Truths").
When I notice that there is only here-now, I'm not dismissing past and future. This is a passage from my last book:
"Now is holographic—it contains the past and the future. Everything happens Now, and yet, a symphony wouldn’t make any sense, it wouldn’t be music, without the context, without a memory of the notes that have come before and an anticipation of what might come next, without the sense of progression and relationship between what came before and what is arising now, and without the expectation of what may come next. The same is true of a novel, a play or a movie. This is precisely what makes it meaningful to us. But at the same time, we can see that each note happens Now, that the future resolution will happen Now, and that the context for the whole unfolding symphony (or story) is Now. Past and future are Now, memory happens Now. “Relationship” is simply a description of this seamless happening that all happens Now. That Now-ness doesn’t deny past and future. It includes them. No concept can ever capture reality, so beware of fixating on one side of any imaginary conceptual divide. Life itself cannot be pinned down or captured by formulations." — from Death: The End of Self-Improvement
Finally, I'm a bit confused as to why you would hear me saying "the wish to eliminate all mirages is itself just another mirage" and then see that as an "admission" requiring honesty? What I actually said was: "that small 'I' who imagines itself lost or found, enlightened or deluded, is only a mirage. And it is only that mirage that cares about eliminating all mirages and purifying 'me.'" In other words, the me is a mirage, a mirage wanting to get rid of itself, a mirage trying to eliminate a mirage.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment and your words of appreciation and for being here! 🙏❤️
P.S. One more distinction I want to name. When you write about being in this streaming presence, the emphasis falls on dissolving the one who could stand apart — there’s no separate self to be in or out of anything. What I mean by “I’m inside my experience” is almost the reverse: not that there’s no self, but that there’s no outside — no place a self could withdraw to, even if it wanted one.
That's saying exactly the same thing in a different way, isn't it? No separation. As Steve Hagen put it in the quote of his I shared, "There’s only stream." No inside or outside (except in thought). Just THIS.
The first sentence of the John Astin quotes brings to mind one of the most encouraging observations I've ever heard: "Love can hold hatred, but hatred can not hold love."
Love is unconditioned and inclusive, evil is conditioned and exclusive.
'And it is only that mirage that cares about eliminating all mirages and purifying “me.”' I love it when you share your living experience - especially with getting lost in thought, pain and the human stuff. It takes away a lot of specialness that I attribute to this and notice the never ending purification attempts of 'me'. I love that you highlighted the gradual progressive clarity compared to the dramatic sudden ones (they get a lot of publicity and the mind loves to make this into something to chase). Thanks Joan.
The Hitler and Buddha waves might be the clearest resolution I've read to something I keep getting asked implicitly whenever I talk about one current running through everyone: doesn't that collapse good and evil into the same undifferentiated soup? It doesn't, and the reason is exactly what you're naming: Discernment isn't something imposed on the whole from outside, it's part of what the whole actually does. The ocean that includes both waves also includes the capacity to tell them apart.
Like you, Joan, I value “many different paths, pathless paths, direct paths, and non-paths.” Any religion fine; pick a faith that “fits” you … and no religion necessary. Spirit has no religion, so we all can rest in our true home in spirit; we’re already home, we just need to remember who we really are ….
“I was blessed to work with in person, and those I’ve known only from their books or recorded talks. They all encouraged me, and continue to encourage me (even when they are no longer living) to wake up right now.”
Hola ¡Sí Gaia es un planeta terra Viu, sinó com podria reciclar tot l'enrenou que ens portem en malbaratament d'estris que es podrien reutilitzar.
Les reticències que algunes persones posen a sentir-se plenament conciencia deu venir donada per que s'han afirmat en el seu jo d'una manera personal, com a dictador i defensor dels seus interessos i, llavors ellas mateixes es recriminen la seva vocació tossuda. Però tard o d'hora aquest jo s'anirà integrant a jo - conciencia.
Noto la seguretat enfront la indiferència o crítica a la meva persona i em meravella apreciar-los
Soc un defensor del jo, el jo només senyalador que distingeix informa de la seva singularitat únic distint irrepetible doncs cada cosa ho es
Ara al estiu quan llegeix-ho algun escrit llarg m'agafa son
I don't think that love and hate are opposites. They share an opposite: indifference.
Yes, I remember Brother David Steindl-Rast says that also. And I can go with either version. My point is the same either way, that opposites (or different things or experiences) can be seen both in their sameness and equality and also in their ways of being different.
last night, in the middle of the night, I woke up and wrote,
What is real?
Not these thoughts.
Interesting Jackie...are thoughts not real?🤔
One person emailed me after seeing the photo caption on this article and wondered if I am back in the hospital. No, I’m not. The photo was taken when I was in the hospital last March. I’m more or less fully recovered and in much better shape than I was before the surgery. All is well!
"Not this...not that" - for me, the foundational statement of fact underpinning any attempt to describe anything...no expression using words will capture the whole...
This foundation applies too to the sudden/gradual debate about awakening, in my view - neither is true if it excludes the other.
Go well Joan...🫶🈚️🐛
There is something very reassuring to me about what you have written here. Yes, I prefer to dwell in peace and love, but, when contraction or fear or anger happens, it can be self-revealing, if I can release the self-judgments. All of these can be included in the stream of what is. Nothing can expel me from the presence of my own being.
Courageously face shadow
Thank you Joan. Love to see your emails in my inbox. ♥️
Right now often involves physical and mental discomfort. Understanding that this is just how it is and not mine or somewhat else's fault is helpful because I've learned to just relax into it all rather than escalate.
Right up my alley. Love encompasses all, love being god, pure joy, we are at one with all things. Be here. Always ❤️
Thank you, Joan, for this piece — there’s a rare honesty in how you write about presence, especially your closing admission that even the wish to eliminate all mirages is itself just another mirage.
I want to offer a place where my own practice moves differently. When I fall back into the body, I land almost immediately in feeling and mood. But rather than exploring that feeling toward its unpindownable, self-liberating nature, I find myself doing the opposite: sinking further into it, letting it keep its full weight instead of discovering its emptiness.
For me, non-dual seeing has sometimes been less a discovery than a quiet exit — a way of stepping back from something difficult by recognizing it’s “just appearance.” True, perhaps, but also usable as an escape from the sheer density of what’s felt. What I’m exploring instead is descent rather than dissolution: staying inside a feeling long enough that it can’t be relativized away.
I’d also gently push on the here-and-now itself. Collapsing everything into this one timeless instant risks flattening what is actually a much richer, more vertical texture of experience — depth, sedimentation, things that reach down rather than only flashing up and vanishing. Life isn’t only what’s here and now; some of it runs deeper than any single moment can hold.
I suspect you’d say this falling-into-feeling is itself already an instance of the presence you describe. But experientially, the direction feels opposite: yours moves toward release through insubstantiality, mine toward fuller inhabiting of what feels substantial. Curious whether any of this means something from where you sit.
Thank you again for writing so clearly and unguardedly.
Warmly,
Bart
Hi Bart...
Thanks for all of this.
It's always impossible to know from their words exactly what another person is experiencing, especially in these more amorphous dimensions of life. But it seems to me we may be describing the same thing in different ways, at least in part if not entirely.
Having explored the body and somatic experience for decades in myriad different ways (including various different forms of meditation, several different kinds of psychotherapy including somatic therapy, Feldenkrais and other forms of somatic awareness work), I haven't landed on one "correct" way, and I don't find myself trying to see it as "just an appearance" or in any other way. I could easily call such exploration a "descent" into the depths. I think I even suggested several possibilities, not just one. Sometimes I find myself exploring or feeling emotion-mood, sometimes physical pain, sometimes ordinary sensations such as breathing. By fully inhabiting and going deeply into what seems substantial, I find nothing to grasp, but this is not nothing either!
I've never resonated with the "I am not the body" pointer, although when the body is explored, I find something unpindownable and boundless, and when the "I" is explored, I find no "thing" and everything. And yet, there is also the experience of being a particular bodymind in a particular location in time and space. (See my recent article on "Two Inseparables Truths").
When I notice that there is only here-now, I'm not dismissing past and future. This is a passage from my last book:
"Now is holographic—it contains the past and the future. Everything happens Now, and yet, a symphony wouldn’t make any sense, it wouldn’t be music, without the context, without a memory of the notes that have come before and an anticipation of what might come next, without the sense of progression and relationship between what came before and what is arising now, and without the expectation of what may come next. The same is true of a novel, a play or a movie. This is precisely what makes it meaningful to us. But at the same time, we can see that each note happens Now, that the future resolution will happen Now, and that the context for the whole unfolding symphony (or story) is Now. Past and future are Now, memory happens Now. “Relationship” is simply a description of this seamless happening that all happens Now. That Now-ness doesn’t deny past and future. It includes them. No concept can ever capture reality, so beware of fixating on one side of any imaginary conceptual divide. Life itself cannot be pinned down or captured by formulations." — from Death: The End of Self-Improvement
Finally, I'm a bit confused as to why you would hear me saying "the wish to eliminate all mirages is itself just another mirage" and then see that as an "admission" requiring honesty? What I actually said was: "that small 'I' who imagines itself lost or found, enlightened or deluded, is only a mirage. And it is only that mirage that cares about eliminating all mirages and purifying 'me.'" In other words, the me is a mirage, a mirage wanting to get rid of itself, a mirage trying to eliminate a mirage.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment and your words of appreciation and for being here! 🙏❤️
P.S. One more distinction I want to name. When you write about being in this streaming presence, the emphasis falls on dissolving the one who could stand apart — there’s no separate self to be in or out of anything. What I mean by “I’m inside my experience” is almost the reverse: not that there’s no self, but that there’s no outside — no place a self could withdraw to, even if it wanted one.
That's saying exactly the same thing in a different way, isn't it? No separation. As Steve Hagen put it in the quote of his I shared, "There’s only stream." No inside or outside (except in thought). Just THIS.
The first sentence of the John Astin quotes brings to mind one of the most encouraging observations I've ever heard: "Love can hold hatred, but hatred can not hold love."
Love is unconditioned and inclusive, evil is conditioned and exclusive.
That's beautiful! Thank you! 🙏
'And it is only that mirage that cares about eliminating all mirages and purifying “me.”' I love it when you share your living experience - especially with getting lost in thought, pain and the human stuff. It takes away a lot of specialness that I attribute to this and notice the never ending purification attempts of 'me'. I love that you highlighted the gradual progressive clarity compared to the dramatic sudden ones (they get a lot of publicity and the mind loves to make this into something to chase). Thanks Joan.
The Hitler and Buddha waves might be the clearest resolution I've read to something I keep getting asked implicitly whenever I talk about one current running through everyone: doesn't that collapse good and evil into the same undifferentiated soup? It doesn't, and the reason is exactly what you're naming: Discernment isn't something imposed on the whole from outside, it's part of what the whole actually does. The ocean that includes both waves also includes the capacity to tell them apart.
Like you, Joan, I value “many different paths, pathless paths, direct paths, and non-paths.” Any religion fine; pick a faith that “fits” you … and no religion necessary. Spirit has no religion, so we all can rest in our true home in spirit; we’re already home, we just need to remember who we really are ….
“I was blessed to work with in person, and those I’ve known only from their books or recorded talks. They all encouraged me, and continue to encourage me (even when they are no longer living) to wake up right now.”
A blessing to you Joan 🙏
Hola ¡Sí Gaia es un planeta terra Viu, sinó com podria reciclar tot l'enrenou que ens portem en malbaratament d'estris que es podrien reutilitzar.
Les reticències que algunes persones posen a sentir-se plenament conciencia deu venir donada per que s'han afirmat en el seu jo d'una manera personal, com a dictador i defensor dels seus interessos i, llavors ellas mateixes es recriminen la seva vocació tossuda. Però tard o d'hora aquest jo s'anirà integrant a jo - conciencia.
Noto la seguretat enfront la indiferència o crítica a la meva persona i em meravella apreciar-los
Soc un defensor del jo, el jo només senyalador que distingeix informa de la seva singularitat únic distint irrepetible doncs cada cosa ho es
Ara al estiu quan llegeix-ho algun escrit llarg m'agafa son
Tot i així Visca la Vida Visca l'amor ¡