The Essentials
what it all boils down to
A brief excerpt from a book I’m working on:
What do I most hope to convey in this book? That you are okay just as you are, that the freeway and the bathroom are as sacred as the temple, that simply being alive is enough, that the perfect path is exactly the one you are on, that all paths lead nowhere (aka now/here), that there is always just this, that nothing could be other than it is in this moment, that there is no one running the show (no god, no you, no me), that there is immense freedom in no longer needing to know what this is or why it’s here, in simply being what you actually cannot not be—this one bottomless moment, this present experiencing, this awaring presence, this aliveness here-now, just as it is.
The awakening journey, as I see it, is about discovering the love, the beauty, the joy, the wonder, the wholeness of life right here in each ordinary moment. And sometimes it’s about feeling the pain, the grief, the anger, the sorrow that is part of being alive. It’s also about seeing (in the moment, as it happens) how thought, along with the habitual movements of grasping and resisting, create needless suffering and confusion. And it’s about discovering the open, spacious, unbound aliveness and wholeness of presence itself. This aliveness right here, right now is the heart of what this book is all about. And this is always already fully present, waiting to be noticed, enjoyed and explored. It is simplicity itself. Thinking is complicated. Presence is simple. It is always already here.
— from my book-in-progress, tentatively titled One Bottomless Moment
The Essentials
The only actuality is here-now, this immediacy or present-ness, this aliveness, this ever-changing present experiencing right now, this one bottomless moment. This is where the juice is.
The bare actuality of present experiencing here and now is impossible to doubt, but everything we think and believe about it can be doubted. Many people in the spiritual and nondual subcultures speak with absolute certainty, as if they know for sure how the whole universe works. I’ve probably done this myself on a few occasions. But in my view, that kind of certainty is delusion. This can’t be grasped or pinned down and it doesn’t need to be.
What’s being pointed to here isn’t about self-improvement or future (or past) attainments. There’s nothing wrong with improving the quality of life: eating healthy food, exercising, getting an education, seeing a therapist or a doctor, recovering from an addiction, treating a cancer, or engaging in activities designed to help the environment, save wildlife, make society more equitable and just, and so on. That’s all part of how life moves. But dropping bombs, carrying out genocides, and destroying the rainforests is also how life moves. It’s all happening, like it or not, and when we look closely, we find no one in control, although we are deeply conditioned to believe that we all have free will and that we all should and could be doing a whole lot better if only we tried a little bit harder. To see through that painful illusion brings great relief along with compassion for everyone and everything being just as it is (including our impulses and actions to change things). We still apparently make choices, but really, these choices and all our actions simply happen. The chooser-thinker-actor-decider is a kind of mirage—a thought, a mental image, a neurological sensation.
As babies and toddlers, we enjoy the wonder of simple being—the sparkling green leaves, the taste of food, the sounds of birdsong, the magical play of colors, shapes, movements, sounds, tastes, smells, the sheer magic of opening and closing our hands or rolling over—the miracle of this moment. We love to play. As we grow up, we tend to lose touch with this kind of wonderment. Instead, we become largely focused on stories, ideas, concepts and beliefs—the conceptual map rather than the living territory. The living actuality is evanescent, ungraspable, unpindownable, vanishing instant by instant, never the same way twice. The stories and concepts make it seem much more graspable. They create a kind of imaginary world that seems to be divided up into separate solid persisting parts, and our attention focuses on these apparent “things” and the dramas of their apparent interactions. We imagine ourselves as one of these separate, persisting “things.”
To some extent, this map-world is functionally necessary. It won’t ever totally go away, even as we begin to notice a different perspective, because conceptual mapping is part of how life operates. But some of this imaginary map-world can definitely become less and less believable, which is liberating because so much of it is at the root of our suffering and confusion.
When we feel separate, small and encapsulated, the ungraspable nature of the living reality makes us feel insecure and out of control. And because reality sometimes contains enormous pain and suffering, we are easily prone to adopting ideas and beliefs that seem to provide security, control, explanations and so on. But belief is always shadowed by doubt. And the truth is, we are clueless. We cannot see the whole.
But we don’t need to! When trying to get a grip falls away, it is actually a huge relief!
A few Quotes
In my books, I’ve always liked using epigraph quotes. It feels like a way of riffing and playing with other writers and speakers and offering different ways of seeing what’s being pointed to. In my book-in-progress, I find myself playing with different epigraph quotes at the very beginning of the book. These are the four quotes that I currently have at the beginning, although that might change. But I think that, taken together, they very nicely sum up what the book will be trying to express:
If you want to find the treasure, like a pot of jewels at the end of the rainbow, look no further than your normal experience. That everyday experience is the rainbow itself.
– Peter Brown
If you are interested in awakening, it is advisable, I say, to begin by discarding all beliefs you may have acquired, no matter what their source. Just wipe the slate clean and make your own inquiry, starting from scratch without depending on anyone or anything at all. Forget concepts. Forget what others claim to have known. Forget what you know… There is no path from here to here.
— Robert Saltzman
Spiritual liberation frees you from the misery-inducing fantasy of perfecting yourself. In this moment, I am what I am; you are what you are; we’re both the dance of the cosmos. Liberation isn’t the act of breaking free of this. Liberation is knowing it can’t be otherwise.
– Darryl Bailey
I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water.
– Eugene Ionesco
Last Words for Now
I’m off to have surgery on Monday morning, and tomorrow (Sunday) will be a full day of prep (fasting followed by laxatives and enemas to clean me out, antibiotics and multiple showers in antiseptic soap to ward off infection, more loads of laundry and other fun adventures, so I may not have the time or energy to read or respond to comments, but you’re welcome to leave them. I’ll be in the hospital at least a couple days, maybe longer. Thank you for all the good wishes and support I’ve gotten from so many of you. It has moved me deeply. And if all goes well, I’ll be back sometime in the not too distant future.
Love to all…
All best wishes flow your way, may your path be smooth and without hindrance.
Now(here) reminds me of the ‘hole’ in Wholeness…how there are two sides to everything…until you know yourself as the no-thing in everything. Thank you Joan.