The Only Real Cure

The awake presence here and now

The snow has melted here, the spring energy is palpable now. On a morning walk, everything is sparkling, dazzling, dancing with light. Birds are singing, the grass is as green as green can be, the creek is rushing wildly. The first few forsythia and daffodils are in blossom. So much beauty. The heart filled with love and gratitude.

At the same time, I know that many people are feeling worried, anxious and unsettled these days. The world can be a scary place, and human beings are fragile organisms, vulnerable to all kinds of pain and painful circumstances. We naturally seek security, comfort and control, and in search of this, we often turn to addictive pleasures, comforting beliefs and obsessive thinking, none of which really deliver the well-being and the certainty for which we long.

There is a place, a placeless place, right here now, that is beyond all doubt and free from all psychological suffering. We must each discover it for ourselves, and once discovered, there is the possibility of opening to it again and again, ever-freshly.

Sometimes it eludes us and the darkness overtakes us, but if we stop and allow everything to be just as it is, if we tune in to the stillness at the very heart of our being, our apparently separate self may dissolve into the boundless aware presence that we truly are. We may discover that the “me” who seems to be suffering, or alternately “getting it” and “losing it,” is nothing more than a mirage, and that the darkness has no actual substance.

We can begin to notice exactly how suffering is generated by thinking. In the light of awareness, this habitual activity begins to lessen and lose its grip. We discover what happens whenever attention shifts from the thought realm to the immediacy of what is actually here now—hearing, seeing, breathing, feeling sensations throughout the body—being here as this open, spacious, boundless presence-awareness, this one bottomless moment. In this immediacy, there is no gap between the seer and the seen—there is simply seeing, undivided and whole.

We can get very lost in trying to figure this all out mentally, trying to understand it, grasp it, get control of it, and so on. But the essence of this so-called awakening is very, very, very simple. It’s not complicated, mysterious or exotic. It doesn’t require years of training and study. It’s not in the future or the past.

It’s right here in the sounds of rain, the taste of tea, the dazzling light sparkling on the still bare branches, the aware presence beholding it all, the openness of being. It’s nothing other than this one bottomless, centerless moment that is what we are, this wholeness that has no outside or inside, this presence that is most intimate, closer than close, and at the same time, boundless and all-inclusive.

Don’t adopt “the only real cure” or “the awake presence here and now” as a belief or an idea. The words are pointing to the living actuality, what we are and what here-now is. Stop, look, listen. Be fully present. Feel into this aliveness, this openness. And whenever it seems to get lost, investigate what seems to be in the way, not by thinking about it, but by giving it open, nonjudgmental attention. See if this one who seems to have lost something can actually be found.

Perhaps this is what the world needs more than anything else—human beings waking up from the powerful hypnotic trance of ideology, division and apparent separation, waking up to the wholeness and the unconditional love that is at the heart of our being. It may seem that we are small and insignificant, and that this kind of devotion to presence can’t possibly affect the world at large. But we’re actually not small. Each and every drop contains and affects the whole.

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A Wonderful Short Video:

For everyone who is upset about world events, this is a short, 4 minute, spot on video from Simon Brown that I very highly recommend:

When we get involved in This vs That we are going Backwards

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An old treasure re-published and available now:

Darryl Bailey's first book, Buddhessence, has now been re-published by New Sarum Press. Darryl was at one time a Buddhist monk, and in this book, he distills the original, radical, core teachings of the Buddha about the absence of any persisting forms, and how, as we grow up, we get lost in the fantasies of conceptual abstraction and interpretation. The book also includes material from developmental psychology, Alan Watts and U.G. Krishnamurti. You can read an excerpt and find links to purchase the book here:

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Love to all…