The Power that Knows the Way

Are We Powerful or Powerless?

The Power that Knows the Way

Perhaps you have noticed the amazing paradox; as we recognize our inherent personal powerlessness, “new power flows in.” … Once we know ourselves to be Ocean in the form of wave, we become free to be ourselves in a way we never dreamed possible. It is as if we had spent our life driving with the emergency brake on and suddenly it is off… The enduring paradox and wonder of a spiritual awakening is the return of power. But this power has a completely different feel to it. It is impersonal. Without the bondage of self, the power of the Ocean plays out without resistance.

–Wayne Liquorman, from The Way of Powerlessness

Choice implies consciousness – a high degree of consciousness. Without it, you have no choice. Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present. Until you reach that point, you are unconscious, spiritually speaking. This means you are compelled to think, feel, and act in certain ways according to the conditioning of your mind… Presence is the key. The Now is the key.

–Eckhart Tolle

Everything is unfolding the way it should....There are no mistakes....Trust the Power that knows the way... You are that Power yourself... Why not awaken now? What are you waiting for? Make up your mind that you’re going to awaken right now, and allow your mind to turn into your Heart… Abide in the Now. Everything is perfect right now. Feel it. Don’t think about it. Feel it.

–Robert Adams

In 12-Step programs, it is said that we are powerless to stop our addictive behaviors, and that only a power greater than ourselves can transform and liberate us. So, we might wonder, if we are powerless, does that mean there is nothing we can do in the face of our human suffering and confusion?

Instead of rushing to answer this question, maybe it’s possible to not know, to be still and present with the question itself. And in this open listening, it might become clear what “we” are and what “we” are not and where the real power is and isn’t.

Many people understand that “higher power” as something outside of us, “up there” somewhere, and some folks find 12-Step language intolerable because it talks about God and prayer. But as I see it, God is simply another word for awareness, presence, Here-Now, intelligence-energy, this vast openness that Here-Now IS—and prayer is another word for "being here now" or "true meditation" or "listening presence" or “opening the hand of thought and letting go” or “dissolving into spaciousness” or “marinating in presence.” God is not “out there” somewhere; God is our own essential nature, this unbound awaring presence that is always right here, right now, being and beholding everything, the no-thing-ness (the freedom) of everything, the zero that makes all other numbers possible. The imaginary “me” is nothing more than a thought-form mixed with sensations, mental images, stories and beliefs—it has no power at all, no free will. All the power is in God—and remember, I’m not talking about some distant deity or separate force outside of us.

Through meditation (by which I simply mean being still, being silent, being present and open to what is) and contemplative exploration (by which I mean exploring with open attention rather than intellectually with thought), it may be discovered firsthand that the self that has no free will, and that is powerless over addiction (and over everything) is the thinking mind and the mirage-like character imagined to be at the center of “my life.” Our so-called personal will or intention is never really free. It is a conditioned happening, an appearance in a dream, an illusory sense of agency and choice, a thought-form rooted in the illusion of being a separate, solid, persisting, independent self. Liberation or freedom, on the other hand, is the absence of that sense of separation and solidity. It is  the felt-sense of wholeness, boundlessness, openness, spaciousness, seamlessness. It is the freedom for everything to be as it is, and the recognition that nothing is ever actually happening in the way we think it—that no-thing has any actual substance or persisting form.

That wholeness, the unbound awareness and intelligence-energy being and beholding everything, is the true power. But it is not a power that can be controlled by thinking, because control requires a controlling agent and a separate something to control, whereas in unicity or presence-awareness, there is no such division, no such gap.

Consider how it is when you want to jump from one stone to the next in order to cross a rushing river. You have to go beyond thinking and completely let go of trying to control the situation. You have to leap with a kind of trust that life itself will carry you from stone to stone. You surrender your self-concern and dissolve into presence. In sports, this is known as being in the zone. There is a felt-sense of being the undivided whole and acting effortlessly. There is no separation, no limitation, no second-guessing, no hesitation, no fear, no holding back, no grasping, no trying to control—in fact, there is no imagined “you” anymore, there is simply the flowing whole and you are that—there is only that. And you land perfectly on every stone (unless a fearful thought trips you up).

This open effortless being is what Eckhart Tolle calls “the power of Now,” and what Robert Adams calls "the Power that knows the way." It is this boundless awaring presence that every “I” most fundamentally is (if we don’t refer to thought, memory, imagination, or second-hand information). This presence includes everything but is not bound or limited by anything that appears. It is what illuminates everything, what reveals delusion for what it is, what beholds it all. Awareness is light—it illuminates and dissolves the darkness. And it is like unconditional love—it allows everything to be just as it is, and it holds on to nothing, which gives everything the freedom to move and transform.

Of course, in one sense, we can never be anything other than that undivided wholeness, but as we all experience, consciousness can become confused and hypnotized by its own creations—lost in its own dream. It can seemingly contract into the felt-sense of being separate, encapsulated and small, like a tight fist. To take the example I often use, if we think of Buddha and Hitler as different waves on the ocean of boundless being, both are equally movements of the ocean, both equally water, but Buddha knows that, while Hitler is caught in the delusion of being an independent autonomous wave, separate from the ocean and from the other waves, and this difference results in very different experiences of life and very different actions. We might say that samsara and nirvana are not one, not two—and that we all contain both possibilities in every moment.

Can we choose which one to be? Can we choose to wake up from the trance of separation, to “be in the zone” or to “be here now,” to see as Buddha sees? Any position we take on this question—yes or no, we can or we can’t—is a conceptual after-thought that begins by mentally dividing up reality into an imagined subject and a conceptual object. But the living reality can’t actually be divided up or pinned down in that way. We can’t truly land on either yes or no. Neither model can capture the actuality. Fixate on one model and you may disempower the true power that you are; fixate on the other model and you may end up overcome by guilt, frustration and blame when it doesn’t always seem to work. So can we stay with not knowing and with being open to discovery and surprise?

We might say that in response to its own capacity for confusion and being lost in samsara, consciousness has apparently dreamed up meditation and satsang and nonduality and Zen and Advaita and psychotherapy and 12-Step programs and all sorts of ways of waking itself up from this trance and realizing nirvana, which is actually never absent, only over-looked. And thus, it’s helpful both to consciously “be here now” (when we can) and to recognize that there is only here-now-being (no matter what). We might say that “being here now” (as a kind of experiential state or intentional practice) is something that here-now-being (unicity or totality) is doing. The Now is actually the natural state that is never not here, albeit it is sometimes overlooked or over-shadowed by the mesmerizing drama in the movie of waking life. But what comes and goes is the movie, not presence itself. Aware presence (the Now) is the common factor in every different experience.

As attention opens more and more to simply being present and aware, there is an awareness of thinking that begins to happen, a noticing of when the mind is spinning around in mental confusion, but without being caught in the spin, without mistaking the thoughts and stories for believable objective reports on reality. There is also a growing awareness of when the body is tense and contracted, when there is grasping or resisting, straining or seeking, and an ability to simply feel all this in the body as pure sensation, without labeling it, taking it personally, giving it meaning, and/or trying to get rid of it. This awaring-feeling-being isn’t resisting what is showing up or trying to change it—awareness allows everything to be just as it is. Awareness has an immense transformative power. We can’t make ourselves stop an habitual pattern of thinking, because that attempt to stop it is just more conditioned thinking, but the more clearly the pattern is seen—seeing both what is alluring about it and how it turns into suffering—the more it loses its allure and its grip, and the more it naturally relaxes and falls away. “Being here now” is an invitation to simply be here, open and present, listening to the sounds of traffic or wind, feeling the breathing, feeling the sense of presence itself, allowing everything to be just as it is.

We can’t prevent a fearful thought from popping up, but it can be seen for what it is and maybe not believed. We can’t make ourselves relax or let go of straining and seeking, any more than we can make ourselves fall asleep. But by giving it open loving attention, allowing it to be just as it is—not resisting it, not trying to get rid of it, sensing it in the whole bodymind, feeling it with curiosity and interest—something shifts on its own. In that effortless seeing and attending and allowing, we are being awareness itself—we are being unconditional love—we are no longer trapped in the tension as some kind of imagined victim of it—“we” have actually dissolved, the bubble of apparent encapsulation has popped (of course, it was never really there—it was only a mirage). Only wide open space and indivisible presence remains. And it’s clear that this vastness, this freedom, is never actually absent, that we are never really bound or encapsulated or separate. What comes and goes are only these imaginary bubbles, and the bubbles are never really a problem—they are imaginations. Even when thought and imagination create confusion, even when we feel like a separate “me” (a tight fist), even when we miss the stone in the river and land on our ass, all of that is only ever a passing dream-like appearance. Awareness is beholding (being and holding) it all. And in some way, all of it belongs. This is not the freedom to get what we want, but rather the freedom for everything to be as it is—and the recognition that what appears is an infinitely rich, ever-changing and ungraspable magic show that can never be captured by conceptual thought, although thinking is itself part of the magic.

Liberation is always right here. It is not the product of thought or effort or will. It is rather a relaxing, as when a tight fist opens. And that begins with simply noticing the tightness—and in the light of awareness, the relaxing happens naturally by itself. We notice that Here-Now (this boundless aware presence, this immediacy) has never actually been absent. Ultimately, we see that even the tightness is nothing other than this radiant presence appearing as tightness—that everything is included in what is, even all the things we think are wrong or terrible or evil—and that none of it is ever what we think it is, for reality is unfathomable and unresolvable.

If we look for awareness, or for God, we won’t find it, and in the act of seeking or searching, we’ll seem to be back in that encapsulated little bubble of “me,” the always deficient seemingly separate self, feeling again like something more needs to happen, that this can’t be it. That straining, grasping activity can be felt in the whole bodymind as a kind of tension or contraction, like a tight fist. So once again, can we simply see and feel the contraction—allowing it to be here, just as it is—exploring it with open attention, seeing what it is made of (thoughts, stories, ideas, bodily sensations), letting it dissolve by itself? We already are boundless awareness—we don’t need to find it, and we can never see it in the way we can see our kitchen table. It’s not some-thing. It’s not an object. The eye (the True-I) can never see itself. It can only BE itself. And it actually can never not be itself.

There can be endless arguments over words and formulations—and no words or formulations can ever truly capture the living actuality. The felt-sense or direct discovery of what is being pointed to here is what liberates, not thinking about it, and liberation is always NOW—not yesterday or tomorrow or once-and-for-all or forever after. All of that is dream stuff.

We can think about or imagine a progressive journey from childhood to old age, from delusion to enlightenment, from samsara to nirvana, from confusion to clarity, from suffering to liberation, and so on. But it always takes thought, memory and imagination to conjure this up—to conjure up the story of progress or lack thereof and the “me” at the center of the story, and the time in which it all apparently happened. But where is any of that right now?  How real was it?

Reality is always NOW. And right now, can there be a simple noticing when consciousness is lost in a story, identified as the separate “me,” spinning its wheels, suffering and creating more suffering? That whole habitual movement can be seen and seen through. We don’t “do” seeing; seeing happens—but being open and curious and giving attention to the non-conceptual, sensory-energetic realm can invite this on-going discovery. We are this boundless presence being and beholding it all, the open space of Here-Now in which all appearances come and go, ephemeral and dream-like, gone in an instant.

Presence might be called no-thing-ness, zero, emptiness, no-self. Or it might be called fullness, wholeness, everything, the One Self. It might be called God or the Tao or the power that knows the way. But we don’t need to call it anything. What matters is feeling this aliveness Here-Now—being a devotee of this vast aware presence that we are, a lover of letting go, of what feels most deeply real and true and alive and nourishing and wholesome—this here and now that is at once so ineffable and yet so utterly omnipresent and beyond all doubt. Just this—breathing, sensing, seeing, feeling, awaring, hearing the wind in the trees, the chirp of a bird, the sounds of traffic, the hum of the air conditioner, the listening silence being and beholding it all. What an amazing miracle!

Love to you all….