Various Reflections
The Freedom of Groundlessness
The Freedom of Groundlessness:
The more we discover the unpindownable, ungraspable, unresolvable, fluid nature of everything, the more we see the dream-like nature of this movie of waking life, and the less certainty we have about our opinions, beliefs and conclusions. We know that memory is unreliable, and we realize that we can never see the totality of any situation, that we always see only a limited slice, never the whole picture.
As we tune into the centerless, boundless, seamless nature of present experiencing, the thought-sense of being a separate, solid, encapsulated self begins to melt away. We find that we are both no-thing at all and at the same time, absolutely everything. But this everything is not a solid or substantial something that can be grasped, pinned down or objectified. It is truly no-thing at all, but it’s definitely not nothing! After all, here it is—this whole happening!
This lack of substance and solidity can sound a bit frightening to the survival mind. After all, its job is to orient us, figure out where we are, determine what’s safe and what’s dangerous, and so on. On a practical level, this is all a valuable function. But it carries over into areas where it doesn’t serve us well.
As we begin to open more and more to the living actuality of what’s here, rather than our ideas about it, and as we directly discover the dream-like, non-substantial, unresolvable nature of waking life, instead of this feeling threatening, it begins to feel very open and freeing and magical.
There is no security in any apparent form, but the more we open to this ever-changing impermanence, and the more we realize we are this, paradoxically, the more security there seems to be. We’re not imagining ourselves as a boat riding along in a raging stream terrified of the approaching rapids. Instead, we are the stream. We are the rapids. We are the whole happening, the streaming aliveness that has no other. No separation. Nothing substantial is actually being created or destroyed. It’s all a kind of magic show. There is no longer any real danger, no “me” to die or take a wrong turn. There is only this whole happening, which has no beginning or end.
Yes, we can still get broken bones, our loved ones can still die, we can still find ourselves in a hurricane or a war zone. And yes, pain really does hurt. I’m not intending to deny or minimize any of that. But at the same time, nothing is happening in the ways we think it is. Samsara and nirvana, heaven and hell, are different ways of seeing the same magic show. And the show includes everything. It is never a one-sided coin. In fact, it is the no-thing-ness in which no “coin” ever actually exists as anything other than a conceptualized abstraction. And without the coin, there are no heads or tails, there is only wholeness, emptiness, no-thing-ness, totality, this one bottomless moment, always here now, always changing shape, never the same way twice.
A Comment and Response:
I’d like to share my response to a comment on my last post, Flowing Wholeness:
Comment: Everything becomes wide and boundless. But... I can't feel ‘I am That’ without it becoming narrower. It makes no sense to me at all to say "I am That " because at the same time "I am not". And even that is too much. It may be that I cannot feel something here, that I am not ready yet... or that it is still a remnant of my traumatic experiences from the past...
My response: It sounds like the experiential sense of boundlessness is fully present, and then thought comes up and tries to figure out or experience how "I am That," and suddenly that open boundlessness seems to shrink or narrow down to the thought-sense of being a little encapsulated separate self, and the story of "me" begins rolling: "I'm not getting this...maybe it's because of my traumatic past...maybe someday I will get it...maybe I won't..." etc. Can you see that this is all a story, however relatively true it seems to be? It's just thought.
You seem to see that "I am not," by which I assume you mean that this seemingly separate, autonomous, encapsulated self is a kind of mirage that can't actually be found, yes? So then thought asks, "If I don't exist, how can I be boundless?" Again, notice that this is thought trying to work this out. That thought activity immediately creates the mirage-like "me" who seemingly doesn't get it, and the imaginary problem that "I" somehow need to solve in order to "get it" and be okay.
To what does this word "I" refer? Superficially, in everyday life, it refers to the individual person. But if you go deeper in search of what the word most fundamentally refers to, what do you find? Maybe no-thing you can grasp? Maybe EVERYTHING, this whole experiential field? Maybe just the sense of being here, present and aware? If you don't refer to thought, if you stay with bare experience, does this aware presence have an age, a gender, a traumatic past, a boundary, a center? Isn't it no-thing appearing as EVERYTHING?
And even if you look at the bodymind person, can you find where this bodymind begins or ends? Would it exist without air, water, food, light? Is it really separate from the whole universe, or is it an activity of the whole universe, like a wave in the ocean or a whirlpool in the river? If you look closely at yourself, the person, the character, the bodymind, or anything else that appears, you find the whole universe is there. Each wave has the whole ocean behind it. So each person and each thing that appears is that infinite wholeness, and when you look for anyone or anything, you find continuous change inseparable from everything that is supposedly "not that thing."
And when you notice thought getting tangled up in trying to "get this" or figure it out or have some particular experience, just notice what's happening. Don't be bamboozled by the thinking mind. And when bamboozlement happens, simply notice that this, too, is simply something the universe (or consciousness, or totality) is doing. It's not personal. It doesn't mean "you" don't "get it." Because what are "you"? And what is "it"? The problem and the one who seems to have it are both creations of thought.
A few Non-Partisan Reflections on Political Disagreement:
Politics is about how we live together in groups. It involves issues vital to our survival, so it isn’t surprising that it triggers strong emotional reactions at times. As I’ve often said, what appears in the flow of experience is like ever-changing Rorschach blots that the pattern-seeking mind labels, divides, abstracts, over-simplifies, categorizes, interprets and seemingly concretizes into the apparently formed world that we see, and each of us sees a different world. No two are exactly the same. Everything we know and think about this world is from our own unique vantage point, conditioned by all of our own unique life experiences, our unique nature and nurture.
Most of what we believe about important issues is based on second, third, fourth hand information. We rely on the sources of information that seem trustworthy to us, again based on our unique conditioning. Not surprisingly, people see the same issue or the same person in wildly different and seemingly irreconcilable ways. Our way of seeing it seems absolutely real and true, and it IS absolutely real and true as our way of seeing it in this moment. But we mistake what we see for some objective outside reality, and then when others see what we believe is “the same thing” differently, this feels upsetting and deeply threatening, as if the ground beneath our feet were in danger of crumbling away.
We have a strong tendency to identify with our opinions and views, to feel personally threatened if these views are questioned, and to defend them in very self-righteous, close-minded, tight-fisted ways. I do this at times, and I think if we’re honest, most of us will have to admit that we’ve done this. It’s very hard to listen openly to a view we disagree with or to a person we’ve been told is evil, ignorant and/or threatening to us.
In recent years, as I’ve mentioned before, I began listening to more diverse sources of news and commentary, including conservative and liberal media of various shades and a variety of independent journalists and podcasters with differing viewpoints. I listened to people I’d been told were untrustworthy and awful and was often surprised to find that I liked much (not all) of what they said. All of this has opened my mind.
I found that different media organizations have different biases and will cover or emphasize different stories. There are stories you’ll hear only on conservative leaning media, and other stories you’ll hear only on liberal leaning media. And even when both of them cover the same story, they’ll often highlight different aspects and look at it in different ways. If you listen to both, you’ll get a much broader perspective on what’s happening and how it might be understood in different ways.
Instead of hearing only curated sound bites from a controversial figure designed to make them sound bad, I try now to listen to the person directly, taking in an entire talk or interview. I really recommend this kind of diversified and direct listening.
Politics is one of my interests in life, so I probably listen to and read more than many others would want to. But however much you consume, I really recommend a diversified spectrum. And I recommend actually listening to the people you’ve been told are terrible. Go beyond curated sound bites. Keep an open mind. Recognize that life is messy, that everyone makes mistakes and that people can change.
Can we live with the truth that we are all a mixture of many different things, some admirable and some not? Is it possible to stop demonizing anyone who disagrees with us or sees things differently?
The truth is, none of us really knows what’s happening here.
In Conclusion:
THIS truly is an ungraspable, unpindownable, unresolvable happening that never stops moving and changing shape. Everything is an interdependent whole, and we can’t step outside of it, so we don’t know how it all goes together. We don’t know what will turn out to be good fortune or bad fortune. Reality isn’t actually divided up that way—that’s all done through conceptual abstraction and reification, carving out “a coin” from the flowing streaming whole, and then we seem to have “heads” and “tails,” two distinct, opposite sides. But even then, we can’t actually find the place where one becomes the other.
In realizing this, we can be less attached to our current opinions, which may be different a year from now or even a week from now, and we can be more open to and curious about those who see things differently. We can behold the whole crazy show with unconditional love, seeing it as a great unfathomable mystery. And in that, there is peace, even in the midst of apparent conflict and chaos. We’re no longer being continuously tossed around and bamboozled by our thoughts and emotions. And yes, storms of emotion-thought, heated disagreements, identification with our views and the whole mess of human life may continue to show up at times—it probably will. But each time that happens, at some point, we wake up to what’s happening. We re-turn to the aliveness and the actuality of this moment. Every moment is fresh and new. Right NOW, the universe begins anew.
Love to all…
Thank you, Joan. Both the nominally spiritual and nominally political aspects of the stance, viewpoint, outlook, attitude, (non-)position you describe are deeply wholesome, as in unifying and helpful to the whole, at a time like this. Or rather, all the time. The realization or recognition that it's possible to take a non-partisan stance on people and circumstances -- "non-partisan" in the most deeply, even cosmically organic sense, the nondual sense -- while still acting helpfully in the world, and that in fact this stance is itself the most helpful thing because it short-circuits the mutual polarization and demonization that energizes and even creates the evil ("evil") things we hate -- this realization/recognition is so deeply needful right now.
Wonderful post Joan. Thank you again. You really hit the target in my opinion. Whatever the hell the target and “my opinion” are.