Realizations do not come from the known, so the mind is useless.

There is nothing mind can do to make a realization happen. I kinda like Silence's "grace" because realizations are a kind of grace. A realization is kinda sorta when Truth collides with a belief and the belief is exposed as a fiction.

My first realization sufficiently significant to remember was one that I described in a past post. Two or three years after Carol and I got married, we made a New Year's resolution one year not to prosyletize anyone with our ideas. We didn't like being around people that we called "True Believers," and we decided that because we sometimes acted the same way it would be a good idea to stop doing that. We talked about it, and decided that when attending parties and having discussions with friends, we would not talk about existential stuff, Zen, reality, etc. We had decided to change this "bad" character trait.

Today, looking back, this idea we had seems extremely funny because we were both totally consumed by our inquiry into the nature of reality and our interest in truth. Carol was asking, "Who am I?" and I had my own list of forty or fifty major questions. The idea of not talking about the most important thing in our lives is hilarious, but that's what we did.

Subsequently, we went to some parties and stayed away from our favorite subject. We talked about what anyone wanted to talk about, and refused to let the conversations morph into the one area we found most interesting. As we did this, an internal pressure began to build up. As an extrovert who loves to talk and teach about everything, my psychological effort to adhere to a crazy idea could only keep the truth of who I was at bay for a limited period of time.

One day I was driving along and I suddenly had an epiphany--a realization--that could be summed up as a shout of joy and an exclamation, "I AM a prosletizer! I love to talk and teach!" That was the truth of who I was at that point in life. A belief in a stupid idea, and a great deal of internal confusion, had caused me to suppress my true nature. Once seen, the truth was hysterically obvious, and I felt incredibly stupid to have put myself artificially under the spell of a silly idea.

Most realizations are like that. The truth is suddenly seen, and beliefs are blown to bits. I have no idea how that happens. Its sort of like a collision between mind and reality, and reality is way more powerful.

Most beliefs are not self-imposed in the way described above. They are more subtle and come from conditioning by parents, friends, teachers, culture, etc. and that is what SomeNothing was pointing out. We gradually acquire all of these crazy ideas about the world, and NONE OF THEM IS TRUE!

Little children do not need to have realizations, because they haven't yet gotten psychologically invested in all of adulthood's crazy ideas. They are still innocent of the world.

You may have enormous faith and confidence in the power of mind/intellect, but it is useless for directly seeing the truth. This is why people talk about being humbled. You maybe haven't yet realized that all of your knowledge and intellectual brilliance is worthless in the search for truth. Until you are willing to let go of all of your ideas, you will remain trapped in an artificial abstract dead meta-world created and projected by mind. You are NOT who you think you are, and the world is NOT what you think it is. You will be much more likely to find the truth by shifting attention to what can be seen or heard for a few weeks than by a million years of thought.

The truth is staring you in the face, but you haven't yet seen it. Give up everything you know and become like a little child again, innocent of the world. Go for a walk in the woods and just look. You already know what you want to know. Now, relax, stop thinking about it, and just look!

A realization

...is simply seeing a truth that is contrary to something that has previously been thought or something that remains unsuspected. People have all kinds of realizations all the time, both big and small. The small ones are usually so insignificant that we don;t reflect about them. Maybe we're driving somewhere new and the road signs in relation to our map don't make sense. At some point we suddenly realize that we're driving in the wrong direction. The truth dawns on us, and we turn the car around.

I've had a postural headache for almost six weeks, and that is something I've never previously experienced. This morning at 3AM I woke up and suddenly realized what is probably causing the headache (a combination of some prescribed drugs, the dosage of which was changed about six weeks ago).

These are minor examples compared to existential realizations because they don't affect strongly conditioned thought structures. The idea that there is an objective reality, and that we are separate entities existing in space and time, etc. are, by contrast, strongly held beliefs. Seeing through these kinds of ideas is a major brain revolution by comparison, and probably explains a lot of the phenomena associated with such realizations (euphoria triggered by the release of endorphins, unusual perceptual phenomena, etc).

In the field of science a "eureka" moment is a conceptual realization, and can be quite powerful. In one of Whitehead's books (Creation? Creativity? Something like that) he recounts several of the more famous eureka moments, like the guy who suddenly "saw" the molecular structure of the benzene ring. Many scientists have written about how stunned they were when the solution to some problem suddenly hit them.

These kinds of moments are trivial when compared to major existential realizations. Our ideas about the world are extremely powerful, and when they collapse and the obvious truth is seen, it can be an earthshaking event. When I look back, I can identify several very powerful realizations that changed my understanding of the world, and I'm sure you can, too. The big ones always caused me to laugh because the truth was so obvious compared to what I had previously thought.

I recently read about a guy who was a stockbroker who wasn't very happy with his work. It's a long story, but one day right out of the blue it suddenly dawned on him that he had always wanted to be an artist. He had become a stockbroker for a long list of reasons, ideas, events, and conditioning, and when it sudedenly dawned on him that he had always wanted to be an artist, he started laughing at the obviousness of it. He immediately quit his job, began doing art, and was happy as a clam. He suddenly got in touch with some deep truth of his being and it revolutionized his life. He realized that he didn't care anything about money; all he wanted to do was paint, sculpt, and draw, even if it meant being poor compared to being a rich stockbroker. This guy got in touch with something deeper than mind. Leading up to the moment of realization there was probably lots of internal questioning about the nature of his life, but the actual realization occurred suddenly.

Even this example is fairly trivial compared to breaking through the ingrained idea of an objective reality or the idea of selfhood. Those beliefs, and the conditioning behind them, are incredibly powerful, so when they are suddenly penetrated and the truth becomes obvious, the effect can be monumental.

The reason that shifting attention away from thoughts to what can be seen or heard is likely to trigger existential realizations is that ingrained patterns of thought are bypassed and something deeper becomes more accessible. Everyone already knows the answer to every question they have, but a certain amount of mental silence may be necessary to access those answers. This will vary from person to person.

In my case I had been utterly consumed with existential questioning for almost twenty years, so it only took a few months of formal meditation and internal silence for the truth to break to the surface, so to speak. To penetrate the big issues idle curiosity is not enough; the interest has to be all-consuming because the conditioning that needs to be penetrated is so powerful.

The definition of enlightenment

...that seems most accurate to me is: "Enlightenment is the realization that the one seeking enlightenment does not exist and has never existed. Personal selfhood is seen to be an idea, only. The realization, itself, has nothing to do with understanding, and does not occur over a period of time. It is instantaneous. It is a collapse of the thought structure that supported a sense of selfhood and separateness. Until that very moment, the body/mind thought of itself as an entity. Suddenly, that thought is totally seen through, and it literally evaporates.

Everyday life

...does not feel any different than it feels to anyone else, so I don't want to encourage the idea that there is any woo wooness to it. "Flow" is the only word that doesn't carry the feeling of a noun, or the sense of any special attributes, so it's the only word that seems applicable from this body/mind's POV. Even then I'd prefer to say that the body/mind is in flow rather than in a state of flow. It probably just be a semantic thing.

When I use the term "THIS"

...I am pointing to a unified all-inclusive mysterious beingness that cannot be grasped by mind. During big woo woo experiences it is realized, directly, through some unknown source of perception, that THIS is vast beyond comprehension, intelligent beyond conception, alive, and radically present.

In what we might call "the standard model of seeking the non-dual" the first big psychological shift for the seeker occurs when the imagined individual encounters the vastness of THIS (Suzanne Segal called it "The Vastness" for good reason). This initial realization might be summed up as "Whoa! Reality is not what I thought it was; it is not an orderly logical stable objective universe located in space and time. What reality IS is mind-boggling, conscious, and whole." Zen calls this initial realization "passing through the gateless gate."

There are many additional realizations that can occur as various other ideas sequentially collapse, but the final "enlightenment" realization is that the seeker never existed in any sense (it was only an idea), and that there is only THIS. This realization might be summed up as "Whoa! I am not who I thought I was; I am THIS."

This realization has many psychological effects because the ramifications of ideas about selfhood extend into the deepest levels of the psyche. Ignoring a discussion of these effects for now, eventually life continues without the past habit of self-reflection. Life returns to being ordinary, but there is no imagined person at the center of it. It is like being part of a mysterious dynamic happening that is impersonally personal. The body/mind goes about everyday life without imagining the kinds of things that most people imagine. Activities are simple and direct. There are no states or experiences; there is just a seamless flow of activity. Separation can be imagined and discussed, but such things are not believed to be anything other than products of imagination.

The mind is sometimes silent and sometimes talkative or thinkative. The body/mind scratches an itch, drives a car, drinks coffee, types on a computer, eats a meal with family or friends, and does what all other body/minds do, but there is no belief that there is a separate personal entity at the center of the action. There is no special sense of peace, but there is no seeking, so some people might regard that kind of equanimity and acceptance of "what is" as a form of peace.

The relative truth

...in the minds of physicists is based on ideas. Particles and waves are ideas ABOUT the truth, and are imaginatively inferred. The living truth, the absolute truth, the spiritual truth of sages is a seamless whole--THIS. THIS contains no separateness and no things. It is a verb rather than a noun. When a sage says, "I am the truth," it is equivalent to saying, "I am THIS, the infinite, without division."

Zen eschews abstraction

... (except in the few cases where abstraction is useful and necessary). If the mind stops spinning with intellectual nonsense, things become simple and obvious.

The spiritual path is challenging because it can rev up the mind until it is spinning faster than usual. If attention is shifted away from thoughts to what can be seen or heard, or to inquiry, the mind loses its grip, so to speak. Silence engenders realizations that sequentially collapse thought structures until the truth becomes laughingly obvious.

If someone were to ask me, "What is the meaning of YOUR life?" I would answer, "Typing this note."

If someone were to ask me, "What is the meaning of HUMAN life?" I would answer, "Typing this note."

If someone were to ask me, "What is the meaning of UNIVERSAL life?" I would answer, "Typing this note."

If someone were to ask me, "What is the meaning OF THE MEANING of life?" I would answer, "Typing this note."

Notice the different forms of abstraction in each of these questions. Zen calls these kinds of subtle abstractions "thought-hooks," and most koans contain them. The challenge is to remain calmly present, refuse the intellectual bait, and respond directly to the truth of "what is."

Consider the koan, "If you meet a deeply enlightened woman on the path, how can you greet her with neither words nor silence?"

There are two thought hooks in this koan. The first is "deeply enlightened woman." Each of these three words is designed to hook the mind and send it running off on a wild goose chase. Oh wow, a woman, and a deeply enlightened one at that. How rare! How could such a rare and unusual person be greeted correctly?

The second mind hook is the double bind "with neither words nor silence." Gosh, what other choices are there? Ha ha.

If we look through the words and don't let the abstractions paralyze us, we silently wave, or bow, or pantomine a hug, or blow a kiss, or pantomine shaking hands, or say "Hello."

A great number of posts on this forum hook the mind and start it spinning, but what is most important? Staying stuck in the mind and spinning, or getting clear? How is clarity attained? By shifting attention away from thoughts to THIS. In this moment what can be seen, heard, felt, tasted, smelled, or sensed? What can be attended beyond any comment, distinction, evaluation, judgment, cognition, fantasy, reflection, assumption, imagining, .....ad infinitum?

The Buddha once taught a parable on this subject. He said its like a man who gets shot with an arrow. The man begins asking where the arrow came from, who shot it, how it was made, etc. The Buddha asked his disciples, "What is more important, knowing a hundred things about the arrow or pulling it out?"

Each person who comes to this forum would do well to keep this parable in mind. Knowing brings one no closer to the truth (no pun intended). Ideas, definitions, and intellectual understanding are useless here. Any thought of self, or thought of self-centered desire, or thought of self-progress, or thought of self attainment, or thought of self lack, or thought of resistance, or thought of acceptance, or thought of allowance, reinforces the idea that there is an entity "in here" separate from what is "out there." No such entity exists.

To find the truth open-eyed not-knowing is the way.

There really never is a problem

...there's just THIS. Fourteen years ago I spent some time talking to a cool guy I met, a serious Zen student, while traveling through China. We shared a lot of stories while riding together on a train, and at the end of the day I told him about a major problem in my life that I hadn't yet resolved. After I told him about the problem, he looked at me very directly and said very slowly and distinctly, "You don't have a problem!" He said it in a way that totally stopped my mind. I didn;t understand what he was pointing to at the time, but several months later I realized that he was right. I still get a chuckle every time I remember that conversation.

Stick with pure being and no cognition

...and forget the "no awareness" thing. Niz said all kinds of stuff, some of which was nonsensical, mis-translated, misunderstood by the transcriber, or contextually confused.

With no cognition there is no separation. It is your ordinary life lived in non-abidance. This is why an old Zen Master once said, "Not-knowing is most intimate."

Ricebag

Remember the story about the long-time seeker who visited a famous Zen Master? The ZM asked, "Where are you from?"

The seeker said, "I'm from the province south of here."

The ZM replied with a derisive snort, "You ricebag; first wandering around south of the city and now north of the river?"

Hearing these words the guy woke up.

Most intimate involves no distance.

THIS

...is not affected by either talk or silence. THIS walks, talks, thinks, laughs, remains silent, and sometimes pokes fun at Itself on the internet. Have a great day!

The Tao Te Ching

The Tao Te Ching is a wonderful text. No one is disputing that, but it is not necessary to read the TTC to discover what it is pointing to. Getting attached to the idea that old Zen Masters and old writings are more important that what can be discovered here and now through attentiveness is a spiritual pitfall. No old books, old writings, old Zen Masters, magic, miracles, woo-woo experiences, or special states are necessary for finding the truth. Simply shift attention from thoughts to what is in front of your eyes.

A student once asked a Zen Master, "Master, where is the place to enter (the Absolute)?" The master pointed to a bubbling stream beside them and replied, "There is the place to enter."

A student once asked the Christian mystic Jacob Boehm the same question. Boehm replied, "If thou canst for a moment throw thyself into THAT WHEREIN NO CREATURE DWELLETH, thou wilt hear unspeakable words of God."

The world "wherein no creature dwelleth" is always in front of our eyes. Thoughts, alone, obscure it.

Let go of ideas

Ramana Maharshi never read anything written by ancient masters. He was a sixteen-year old soccer-playing kid who one day looked inward in order to understand what's going on. He woke up and spent the next seven years in silent contemplation and samadhi. He became a sage and master because he saw what is always here and now, and he realized that he was one-with THAT.

The ineffable cannot be understood; it can only be lived.

The truth is shining in all directions. Don't let ideas block out the light. Not-knowing is the way. Shift attention away from thoughts to THIS.

This may be hard to believe, but the truth IS obvious. All you have to do is let go of ideas and look.

Zen master koan

Which Zen Master, old or new, is the correct Zen Master? Which Zen Master, old or new, is the most useful Zen Master? Which Zen Master, living or dead, is the real Zen Master?

This koan points out that as long as masters are thought to be "out there" somewhere, either old or new, the real master continues to go unnoticed. Who IS Lao Tzu? Who IS Chuang Tzu? Who ARE the patriarchs of Zen? Where are they NOW?

If we throw away all of the old and new masters and throw away all of their words, what's left?

Thought

...makes it appear that there is a separate someone doing something. There isn't. THIS is undivided.

Ordinary life

Even after a body/mind has experienced all kinds of amazing mind-states, sooner or later, there is a return to ordinary life in the here and now. There is no continuing peace that passes all understanding and no endless bliss. Experiences still happen, but they happen to no one. A body/mind may periodically experience samadhi, but sooner or later samadhi ends, and it’s once again time to do the dishes. If a body/mind sees through the illusion of selfhood completely, the grasping, seeking, observing, experiencing, efforting self is seen to be imaginary, and is ceases to be the center of thought. Life continues, but without the usual sense of there being a separate entity. The body/mind has a name and responds to it, but it is not imagined that the name corresponds to anything other than a pattern appearing in THIS.

There is no one who can make progress toward anything or attain anything because THIS is all there is; THIS is what we are; and there is nothing separate from THIS.

I am THIS

...and you are THIS, and we are THIS. THIS is what we ARE. Isn't that fantastic?

Beliefs

...make a stronger prison than iron bars.

There is no experiencer as a separate entity

...except when the mind imagines one. "What is," undivided, is all there is. Is there a way of living where the body/mind moves about and does things in the absence of an imagined experiencer? Sure. That "way of living" is the fundamental issue underlying every discussion on this forum.

When selfhood/separateness is seen through clearly, all seeking and grasping ends because it is realized that all past efforting was founded upon a product of imagination, a structure of thought. Life then continues without the imagined self and all of its convoluted stuff. There is nothing to get and nowhere to go. Each body/mind stands at the center of the universe.

If thoughts about selfhood are not re-engaged, the body/mind goes about its business freely and non-reflectively. It does what needs to be done, and then it does the next thing that needs to be done. Life is ordinary and matter of fact, and the mind functions freely without hindrance. If sadness appears, sadness. If happiness appears, happiness, but there is no solid entity to whom anything is happening. There is simply the empty mysterious flow of life that occurs in an everlasting now.

I have compared it to getting lost in an intense game of tennis where time, space, and selfhood vanish into the action. The body/mind intelligently responds to what is happening without any reflective thoughts ABOUT what is happening.

Joy koans

What is joy?
Where is joy?
When does joy appear?
What is infinite joy?
Is infinite joy possible?
What is the meaning of joy?
What remains in the absence of joy?

If a single thought arises, the point is completely missed.

If we look deeply enough

...we discover that this world, just as it is, is what we really want. It is the reason every mystic returns from a cosmic consciousness experience and says, "The universe is perfect." Not perfect in the sense of good or bad, but perfect.

If I could change the world so that nothing "bad" would ever happen to anyone, I wouldn't do it. Anyone who really understands the issue and all of the implications, would never choose the conventional concept of heaven, or nirvana, over what is already present. The real heaven is here and now.

This is the world that everyone would create if they were put in charge and considered the alternatives. They would realize the value of not knowing what will happen next, and they would choose the mystery.

Looking within and finding nothing

...is obviously not a joyous experience for some body/minds. For others it results in bliss beyond imagining.

I remember reading an account somewhere of an adult's recollection of a game of monopoly he once played as a child. As a child newly introduced to the game, he got strongly attached to what was happening on the board, and began to suffer extreme angst as he began losing properties to his older opponents. At an extreme point of despair, he suddenly realized that it was all just a game, and he exploded with joy and laughter. The older opponents he was playing with did not understand why he jumped up, left the game, and mirthfully ran outside to celebrate his re-discovered freedom. On a larger scale this is the kind of freedom and joy that many people experience upon losing a sense of selfhood. It is like, "Oh, how wonderful, the weight of identity is gone!"

Why some people experience the opposite effect of this is one of the underlying themes of this thread. Segal seems to have found the joy of no-self after a decade of fear and suffering, but because the story (told by others) of her life following the writing of her book provides such mixed messages, it's hard to reach any conclusions.

Tolle is the only person who comes to mind who reportedly suffered extreme (almost suicidal) despair, had a major realization, woke up (?) and subsequently remained clear. Most of the other well-known teachers, as far as I can remember, did not report suffering extreme long-lasting despair in the way Tolle did.

I think the main point is that THIS is a mystery. There is no separate person who can do anything to become enlightened or to even stay enlightened. There is no escape because there is no one separate from THIS. Realizing this fact may help lead to the acceptance of whatever is happening. It may be that the body/mind of Segal suffered extreme fear and anguish precisely because there was strong attachment to the idea that life is supposed to be a certain way. Who knows?

Gangaji and other spiritual teachers often ask seekers if they can feel/be/accept "what is" without trying to run from it. This is the challenge that is presented to anyone who is psychologically resisting the obvious. Rather than giving advice on how to "fix" an apparent problem, there is simply the invitation to be.

The structure of thoughts supporting selfhood is strong.

Even after many realizations and insights into what's going on, selfhood will continue to manifest on subtler levels. The idea arises that one has made progress until one thinks, "Hmmmm, who is it that thinks s/he is making progress?"

Trungpa's "Spiritual Materialism" is the first book I remember reading that explained how the mind deceptively coopts the search for truth. After reading that book, I remember thinking, "Well, crap; how in the world can I get around this sneaky ego when it puts on its spiritual disguise?" Ha ha. This is why I get such a laugh out of the idea of "suppressing ego." Who would the suppressor be?

It is that same kind of crazy insight that plunged Tolle into the void. He realized that he wasn't two people, so when he had the thought, "I cannot live with myself any longer," he saw the strangeness of the statement and wondered which of the two selves implicated in that statement was real. That question stopped his mind, and whoosh! He was sucked out of his conventional perspective and plunged into the unknown.

When we write about ego as if it were a distinct thing

...we give a certain kind of solidity to the idea. In fact, there is no such thing as an ego, except as an idea, or group of ideas, or structure of thought. The ego, because it is a structure of thought, cannot realize anything. The structure of thought collapses when it is clearly seen by THIS to be a structure of thought, only. The sense of being a separate entity arises as a result of repetitive thoughts and disappears as a result of leaving such thoughts behind for a sufficient period of time (which will vary from body to body).

If a person is being chased by a tiger through the woods, there is just run run run. Rocks, trees, and everything else will cease to exist separately in the isness of the moment. Things reappear as separate things when there is time to reflect about the world. When a jet pilot experiences an emergency, there is no time to think; the body goes into a pure-action mode flipping switches and doing other practiced maneuvers in an effort to save the plane. Selfhood disappears until the plane is saved or the pilot has parachuted out. Many pilots who have experienced life-threatening emergencies report that there was no fear because there wasn't enough time to think about what was happening.

If the mind becomes sufficiently quiet, selfhood can be seen to arise and disappear repeatedly throughout the day. There is no constant self referentiality. We use the term "egotist" to refer to someone who is obsessively self-referential, and attaches great importance to his/her imagined identity.

Many reactions--pride, shame, guilt, etc--result from a sense of selfhood, and these reactions can significantly diminish or disappear even before selfhood, as a product of ideation, is seen through. They can diminish even more, or disappear completely, after the illusion of selfhood is seen through.

After the structure of thoughts supporting a sense of selfhood has collapsed, the body/mind still distinguishes separateness, but without identifying with separateness. Yes, the body/mind has a name and does thus and so, but there is no belief that the body is solely who one IS. The body is seen as a unique manifestation of who/what one is. Bodies come and go in THIS; THIS has no boundaries; and THIS is who/what we are. When this is clearly seen, there is a relaxation of body and mind. There is no identity that needs to be defended or enhanced, and it no longer matters whether or not there is thinking. The imagined controller of the body/mind has been seen through.

On a related subject, is there any guarantee that a body/mind freed from the illusion of selfhood will not re-construct the illusion? No. If the body/mind starts thinking self-referentially a great deal, then selfhood may reappear. Isness is always mysterious and unpredictable.

What joy IS is different than the idea of joy.

What a tree IS is different than the idea of a tree.

To talk or think about joy, or an experience, or a tree, the mind must divide/cognize/imagine abstract aspects of what is actually a seamless field/flow of being. "What is" is different than the idea of "what is." What non-duality IS is different than the idea of non-duality. I suspect that this issue lies at the heart of the dispute in this thread.

If people are told that trees are imaginary, most of them will not understand what the words are pointing to. There has to be a fundamental realization of wholeness before people can understand that the mind freeze-frames "what is" into imaginary parts. The truth is a verb whereas the mind can only deal with nouns.

Headless chicken

When writing about Segal, I've used the pronoun "she," but from the POV of Vastness, no such person ever existed. Segal was something like a chicken whose head has been cut off; the body continued with its usual functions, but the mind ran in circles of fear having no center to connect with or act as a reference point. The mind became literally untethered from its past mooring.

I doubt that anyone who reads her book will think that any sort of selfhood continued after her "collision with the infinite." Her writing is so clear on this subject, and her story is so compelling, that I would be surprised if anyone on this forum would doubt that the events unfolded exactly as she described.

A few other body/minds have experienced a sudden and complete disintegration of selfhood, but in every other account I've read about the mind accepted what had happened, and did not fight to regain a sense of selfhood as a point of reference. Segal's story simply illustrates that human beings are complex little suckers, and the range of possible experiences is as vast as the vastness itself.

If we contemplate the stories of Ramana, Segal, Tolle, Niz, Ramesh, and hundreds of other non-standard-model-following peeps, we can only conclude that no rules (concepts) can be applied to how the vastness may choose to wake up to itself.

This afternoon the woman called me who asked if I had ever experienced any of the negative stuff she had mentioned to me (existential angst). I told her that when I was in college, I suffered what I then considered to be a severe case of it. I was reading Camus, Sartre, et al, and began to see life the same way that they did--absurd and meaningless. This often made me feel as if I were outside the house of life looking through a window at the activity inside. I don't remember any depersonalization or disassociation, but I certainly remember a strong sense of alienation and surrealness caused by incessant thinking. Today, it is obvious to me how incessant thinking separates the apparent individual from the flow of life, psychologically, and creates the sense of being a "pitiful me in here" looking at "a happier world out there."

Apparently, whether someone has blissful experiences or unpleasant experiences on this path is determined solely by the luck of the draw. My advice to the woman who called me was to shift attention away from thoughts to..... blah blah blah. She replied, "But if I do that, won't I be running away from the unpleasantness?" I could only chuckle. I said, "Your question is a good example of how the mind conjures up confusion for itself, koan after koan. You have several choices. First, you can trust me and do what I'm suggesting; second, you can sit and contemplate this new koan that your mind has just generated; third, you can investigate who is having unpleasant feelings; or fourth, you can continue thinking about, reinforcing, and resisting the feeling that life is unpleasant. Life is what it is. Resisting the obvious can be exhausting. Accepting the obvious leads to easier isness."

Segal

Segal is an extreme case because in one blinding flash she experienced a total loss of selfhood that never returned, ever. It scared her unimaginably, and she did everything she could think of (unsuccessfully) in an effort to recover a sense of normalcy. Her awareness of the vastness as the vastness became her timeless experience, and she reports that the vastness was awake 24/7 whether the body was awake or asleep. In her case, which is obviously pretty rare, the vastness totally woke up to itself through the sense organ/circuitry by which it is aware of itself, and never regained the remotest sense of individual selfhood. From her POV there was never again a person (nor had there ever been a person) to whom her name applied. What she calls "the vastness" is the only actuality, and I think all sages are in total agreement with this.

If the mind is quiescent

...there is only the flow of isness uninterrupted psychologically by any ideas about what is happening. IOW, all experiences are imaginary because it is the mind, like a still camera, that stops the flow of action by clicking the shutter of imagination. Without the idea, "I had an experience," there is only the uninterrupted flow of isness, which is beyond description.

A Zen Master once asked me a koan

...which I had previously been asked by another teacher and had answered correctly. When I heard the question, however, the following thought suddenly appeared in the mind, "Koans are supposed to be answered fresh and in the moment, so how can I answer this question in a fresh way that is now appropriate in this moment? My previous answer was accepted as correct, but if I give the same answer as before, it will now be old and stale. What would a correct answer be now?" This thought so paralyzed and confused me, that I couldn't respond, and the ZM sent me away to meditate. He thought that I had not yet solved the koan. In fact, I was now dealing with a new koan of my own creation that was more difficult than the original koan! After several hours of meditating on this new koan, I saw the answer, and had to stifle the laughter that would have burst forth if I had been alone rather than sitting in a room full of silent meditators.
Even today, when I remember the confusion and paralysis I felt caused by that stupid sequence of thoughts about answering a koan freshly, it still cracks me up.

The mind is just like a tar baby. One touch and you might pull free. Two touches and you're stuck tight. Three touches and a team of horses can't pull you loose.

Ramana Maharshi

...penetrated the illusion of selfhood as a teenager. He recommended self inquiry as a way for others to penetrate the illusion of selfhood.

Nisargadatta penetrated the illusion of selfhood by following his teacher's advice of remaining continually conscious of the sense of "I am." He later recommended the same teaching to others.

The Bible (Psalms 46:10) recommended stillness as a way of penetrating the illusion of selfhood. (Be still and know that I am God).

Papaji also recommended stillness and often said to students, "Stop and be still."

Gangaji, Papaji's student, recommended the same thing.

Zen Master Seung Sahn penetrated the illusion of selfhood at the age of 19 and became a Zen Master at the age of 22. He recommended, "Only go straight; don't know. Only don't know. Just do it" (do whatever you are doing with full attentiveness).

I recommend shifting attention away from thoughts to what can be seen or heard until thoughts cease to obscure the truth, and the illusion of selfhood is penetrated. I also recommend becoming a person of action as a way of breaking the habit of incessant reflection.

Jesus said, "Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you." He also said, "When you make the two one, and when you make the inside as the outside, and the above as the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same......then you will enter the Kingdom."

If you discover the truth of who you are, then you will know how best to serve others. Until you have attained peace within yourself, how can you bring peace to the world?

The teaching of all sages and spiritual masters can be condensed into one word, "Attend!"

What is it about "attend, look, watch, be still, don't know, be present, act without reflection " that you don't understand?

Doing the dishes

I would say that primary immersion in isness translates into practical terms to primary immersion in direct perception and action. This means that the individual psychologically disappears into the activities of ordinary life. The "big picture," which is conceptual, dissolves into doing the dishes or eating dinner with friends without reflection about meaning, selfhood, or anything else of an abstract nature.

Non-duality is always the case despite the illusion of separateness. If there is immersion in isness, there is no need to conceive of separateness, and therefore there is no separateness. There is just this, then just this, then just this--a seamless happening. What you see is what you get.

An intellectual will find such effortless simplicity and matter-of-factness superficial, but the opposite is actually the case. Nothing is deeper than doing the dishes when it's time to do the dishes.

The word "flow"

...is pointing to everyday life lived without abidance in mind. It is not special except when looked at and conceived as a contrast to life dominated by mind. It is not even an experience because there is no one imagining any bounds, much less an observer of bounds. It could be called "isness," or "process," or "happening," but no words are sufficiently applicable because there is nothing separate from what is happening that could be described. It is neither dual nor non-dual. It is beyond imagining of any kind.

Growing from childhood to adulthood is a movement in a particular direction. It is a movement away from non-conceptual awareness and direct physical/sensory interaction with the world toward a mind-mediated and mind-dominated interaction. Sages reverse the direction of this movement by shifting attention back to what can be seen, heard, and sensed through the body. As they do this, mind and its shenanigans are left behind (unattended). Ideation-generated seeking eventually comes to an end, along with the imagined seeker.

All that the sage can say to those who are interested in finding the living truth is "look without knowing until looking continues without a looker."

Mamza's (a user on the forum) posts are a good example of what we might call "the standard model" of the above path. He has recognized the value of being present sans cognitive reflection, and he has noticed that his interest in attending "isness" waxes and wanes unpredictably. Periodically he finds that the body/mind intensely pursues ATA, and at other times interest in ATA evaporates. He accepts this oscillation as the nature of "what is," and doesn't resist it. He may or may not realize that his prior movement toward increasing abidance in mind has reversed, and his path is now gradually but steadily leading away from such abidance. He is not second-guessing what's happening, and (judging from what he has written) is not imagining anything particular that should be happening. The body/mind is simply going with the flow.

It is not special, but it will lead to a way of life that will contrast sharply to life dominated by mind.

Duality and non-duality are both concepts.

If attention is shifted away from concepts to what is seen or heard, and if this is done persistently, one eventually comes to live in a world that cannot be imagined or adequately described. Thought structures lose their importance, or fall away entirely, and not-knowing becomes a way of life. It is like being engaged in a game of tennis so deeply and intensely that only the activity remains. There is no sense of time, space, separation or even self existence. The mind is engaged when it is useful to do so, but it mostly idles in the background without creating problems. Even the mind is not thought about except when writing messages on an internet forum. Is this duality or non-duality? The posited question elicits a smile and then a chuckle, and then the body/mind puts away the laptop and goes to do what has to be done next.

A full cup

...leaves no room for learning anything new.

A camera does not make distinctions

...so there is no I-function or I-thought accompanying what it does. A camera cannot photograph any thing separate from what surrounds it, so a camera only captures a unified field of view or being. This is why I often tell folks that a camera cannot take a picture of a tree, or any thing else. Only a graphics generator can do that by projecting an image against a neutral background.

Because humans imagine what they see as separate things, the conception of a separate observer arises who is doing the seeing. Thus the I-thought acquires increasing dominance with age. However, when we look at the world like the lens of a camera (without imagining), we only see a field of view without distinction. We call this "non-conceptual awareness" to distinguish it from the unconscious name-and-carry habit of imagining what is seen.

We can either see "what is" or we can see what we imagine, but we can't do both at the same time. Attention is either placed upon thoughts or isness. When the mind becomes silent, the subtle shifting back and forth between seeing and imagining becomes obvious.

As we grow from childhood to adulthood, we create a meta-reality in the mind that models the living truth, and we gradually exchange the living truth for the model. The process goes like this:

1. Looking
2. Imagining images (thingness)
3. Imagining symbols (words or sounds) that can represent images
4. Imagining symbols (numbers) that can represent images, ideas, or other symbols.

By learning to see without knowing (imagining) we rediscover the world that we saw when we were young children--a unified world that is alive and numinous beyond any concept of time, space, or selfhood.

Form and contrasting form

...arise simultaneously in imagination as an artificial severance of that which is whole.

From G. Spencer Brown's "Laws of Form;"

"A distinction is drawn by arranging (imagining) a boundary with separate sides so that a point on one side cannot reach the other side without crossing the boundary. For example, in a plane space a circle draws a distinction.

Once a distinction is drawn (imagined), the spaces, state, or contents on each side of the boundary, being distinct, can be indicated.

There can be no distinction without motive, and there can be no motive unless contents are seen to differ in value.

If a content is of value, a name can be taken to indicate this value."

When wholeness is imaginatively severed, the imaginer usually focuses upon one side of the boundary, only, and ignores the other. One definition of "ignore" is "to deliberately disregard." Another definition is "failure to recognize (re-cognize?)."

Ignoring the explanations and descriptions Brown provides regarding the importance of injunctions in math, science, music, and life, and the implications of those comments, suffice it to say that they revolve around the concept of intent. Getting into this subject would lead to a discussion of the intention to imagine, and therefore the intention (conscious or unconscious) to artificially divide what is seen, and that's a subject for another time and place.

I am simply saying that in order to see anything as separate, one must imaginatively cleave wholeness into two artificial states differing in value. Both the states and the values are imagined although there may be useful reasons for engaging in such imaginings.

I am not a mathematician, so I have no interest in rigorously constructing or re-constructing a calculus of forms in the manner of G. Spencer in order to prove anything. It is simply obvious to me that polar opposites (good and bad, for example), as well as the concept of "thingness" contrasted with "the ground of that which is not-thingness," arise simultaneously and are mutually interdependent.

To imagine a tree one must imagine a boundary dividing all that is tree from all that is not-tree (content differing in value). Thus, the concepts of "treeness" and "not-treeness" mutually and dependently arise even though the ground of "not-treeness" is usually ignored when the subject of trees is being discussed.

Oh my goodness. How did I even get into a discussion that might better be addressed by a mathematician? Recognizing my error, I now quietly tiptoe away, leaving the field of discussion to those who probably enjoy these philosophical technicalities far more than I.

All dualities are imaginary

...but most peeps do not realize how they psychologically arise. They do not grasp the "mutually dependent arising of form and void," to paraphrase the words of the Buddha. There is no yinyang magic; to imagine form requires the simultaneous (but usually unrecognized) imagining of emptiness or formlessness as a polar opposite. To imagine anything requires the mind to artificially divide that which is inherently whole into at least two imaginary states. Most people become attached to one half of a polarity and ignore the other.

Does form exist? Well, it does if that's what someone wants to imagine, but when the mind is quiescent, that which is seen can only be pointed to as "alive and unified"--a verb rather than a noun.

Long before I learned about eastern religions

...Zen, non-duality, and ways-of-life rather than thought-centered lives, I experienced a period of extreme angst and existential meaninglessness. Not realizing that I had gradually become an intense intellectual who spent all of my time thinking about the nature of reality, my world had grown quite dark. I spent all of my free time reading existentialist writers who regarded life as "absurd," and because I spent all of my time thinking about things like "the meaning of meaning" (LOL), I grew cynical and vaguely depressed. I got to where I couldn't enjoy any of life's ordinary activities because everything seemed pointless without a frame of understanding. I would go to parties and rather than enjoyably talking with people and having fun, I would be standing psychologically aloof and thinking, "Everyone here is unconscious because they don't realize the absurdity of existence." Ha ha! I was not a happy camper.

Inertia carried me into graduate school, but I became so bored, world-weary, and cynical that I lost all interest in my science experiments and decided to join the military (this was during the Vietnam War years). I stayed in a sucky mood until I got to basic training. As soon as I got there, however, I NO LONGER HAD ANY FREE TIME FOR REFLECTION. The Air Force had every second of my day planned, and I stayed on a dead run learning all of the crazy stuff you have to learn as a new recruit. When I wasn't learning how to make up a bed so tightly that a dropped quarter would bounce off the covers, or how to spit-polish shoes and boots, or learning to march, or spending hours doing intense exercises, and going to classes, etc. I was sleeping in order to recuperate enough to make it through another day.

Here's what's funny (that I didn't appreciate until years later): when I stopped reflecting about the meaning of life, all my existential angst, cynicism, negativity, and sulkiness completely disappeared! I was forced to become a person of action (rather than reflection) by the military basic-training environment. In the process I grew quite happy and optimistic again.

It would be almost thirty years later, after spending a lot of time in silence and searching for the truth, before I finally understood what had happened during that miliary experience. During that time period I had no time to think about myself or reflect about existential issues. Of course, this was an artificial situation imposed on me by outside forces, and it would be many more years before I saw-through my many misconceptions about reality and returned to a life lived in the moment without reflection.

My story points to something important--a non-reflective immersion in life. My story never involved any effort at self-improvement (for several reasons that are not germaine to this discussion). Many years later, as I saw the value in shifting attention from thoughts to what could be seen or heard, I gradually morphed into a person of action rather than reflection. As the mind became quiescent, my long list of existential questions were sequentially penetrated, and I saw that each one had involved a major misconception. What I call "structures of thought" periodically collapsed, and as they did so, greater and greater freedom ensued. When the sense of selfhood finally collapsed, the spiritual search for truth came to an end.

The important point here is that internal silence, attentiveness to "what is," and physical action leads away from abidance in mind to the freedom of pure being. Getting free is like getting lost in an intense dance of isness. The understanding that is thereby attained is what we might call "non-conceptual understanding." It is a direct apprehension of what's going on, and it is like jumping into the river of life and never looking back.

Reading this, many people might grasp the importance of "jumping into the river of life," but fail to see the importance of "never looking back." The wise will understand.

The Buddha

...only searched for six years, and he only sat under the tree for a short period of time. From what he told his disciples he didn't spend much time sulking or feeling miserable. He was a pragmatic thinker who tried one thing after another without success, learned to meditate, quit listening to teachers, sat down under a pipul tree, went into samadhi, and after a day or two looked up at the planet Venus at dawn and suddenly got the whole shebang in one big blast. At that time he reportedly said to himself in amazement, "Wonder of wonders, in all the universe I am the only one."

When I was in high school

...I was a skinny science nerd and very self conscious. I had a friend who looked like a Greek god, was a top athlete, and was very popular with girls. I remember thinking, "I wish that I could be like _________; he must have a great life." Two weeks after thinking this thought, school ended for the summer, and my friend took a job on a bridge-building project as a carpenter's helper. After one day on the project, he stepped on a loose piece of plywood, and fell through the scaffolding 35 feet to the street below. He broke about ten bones and stayed in a body cast for the next 8 months. I was pretty stupid then, but I learned a good lesson. I never again wished that I could be anyone else but me. Later, I learned that my friend, who was so popular with girls because of his good looks, was gay, so what I had thought was a great attribute for having girlfriends turned out to be meaningless in the context that I had imagined.

Even if someone sees through the illusion of selfhood and gets free of the mind it doesn't mean that life is all peaches and cream. Friends die, relatives get sick, all kinds of problems have to be dealt with, and it still rains. Yes, there are good days, but some days suck. I came back to my office last night from two days in another town and discovered that some young boys had ripped a bunch of shingles off the roof and dropped them on one of our cars, scratching the paint and causing other damage. I had chased them off the roof last week, where they were playing, and I guess they decided to get even. Today I'll be calling the police and the insurance company, having the roof repaired, and calling a security company to install a hidden camera, and that's not how I would have preferred to spend my time today. Ha ha! Life's a totally unpredictable trip.

Last week some renters moved out of an apartment I manage, and I discovered that they had kept a large dog there in violation of the lease agreement. The dog had shredded the carpet that had been newly-installed nine months ago. There were multiple holes in the sheetrock, and the apartment was a wreck. The couple didn't pay the last two months of rent, they're getting a divorce, and they have no money, so even I sued them and got a judgment, it wouldn't do any good. That's pretty sucky, but that, too, is life. You deal with whatever comes up, and then you go deal with the next thing that comes up. If you don't waste time thinking that life and reality should be different than it is, then you avoid a lot of unnecessary unhappiness.

Living in the moment and going with the flow doesn't get rid of suckiness, but at least resistance doesn't become an additional burden.

Random things to consider

1. Searching for the truth is unlike searching for anything else. You can use the mind for any other kind of search, but not the search for truth. It usually takes a while to fully realize and/or accept this fact. The only reason people search for the truth is that they THINK that the truth is something separate that can be grasped in some way. It isn’t, and it can’t be.

2. Thinking about the world is not the same as directly interacting with it via the body through direct perception or non-conceptual awareness.

3. You can see through an illusion, but you can never grasp the truth. You can only BE the truth of what you are.

4. You asked why some of us write about this subject. We do it because we have to. We do it because we enjoy it. We do it for no reason at all. We do it because it's our primary job.

5. If you were in control, and you really didn’t want to think about this stuff, then you'd quit thinking about it, but you're obviously not in control, so you have to keep thinking just like some of us have to keep writing about it.

6. Life is not fair. The idea that life should be fair is a good idea to get rid of. Some people are born with deformities or disease. Some children get cancer. Tornadoes kill hundreds, and tsunamis kill thousands. In a car crash one person survives and the other dies. Some people see through the illusion of selfhood and some don’t. This is the nature of reality. If you think it should be otherwise, that thought will make you unhappy.

7. Nobody promises enlightenment to anybody because nobody knows how the search for enlightenment will play out in someone else's life.

8. Nobody made you come to this website, but you came here and you can't stay away. Why? It’s a mystery. You can accept it or resist it. If you resist it, you’ll probably be unhappy.

9. Why does one person have no interest in the truth and another person become totally consumed by the search? This is the nature of reality. Isn’t it obvious?

10. Getting enlightened is neither a lottery nor not a lottery. It is what it is. The search for enlightenment is based upon a misconception, but the misconception is not perceived until after it is seen through.

11. People are strongly conditioned to imagine that they are separate entities, and they spend years reinforcing that idea with their thinking, so it's amazing that anyone ever breaks free of that conditioning and sees through the illusion.

12. From a motivational standpoint people who have confirmatory experiences or a kensho experience may have an advantage over people who do not, but so what? Lots of people reportedly see through the illusion of selfhood without ever having any unusual experiences at all.

13. Many people whose spiritual search has ended try to help other people find what they found. They offer suggestions based on their own experiences and what they think might help. Why wouldn’t they want to help? Why wouldn’t they want to offer suggestions?

At one time I could have used the screen name “questions,” because I was consumed with hundreds of questions. I wanted to understand the nature of reality. I wanted to understand what’s going on. I wanted to know who I am, where I came from, and where I’m going. I wanted to know how life appeared in a lifeless universe. I wanted to know answers to dozens of other similar existential questions.

I never found the answer to a single question until I stopped thinking for a while and began spending time looking at the world non-conceptually. I eventually discovered that all of my questions were misconceptions. As I shifted attention away from thoughts to what could be seen or heard, questions began to collapse. This is what I discovered:

a. What we call “the universe” or “reality” is a unified living whole.
b. There is nothing (no thing) separate from that wholeness.
c. All separateness is an illusion because there are no boundaries anywhere except in the mind.
d. The mind is a useful tool, but it dominates most people’s lives. Becoming free of the mind is freeing.
e. If someone spends all of their time naming, cognizing, thinking, fantasizing, reflecting, judging, etc, it is unlikely that illusions will be seen through.
f. If someone continually reinforces the idea (through repetitive thinking habits) that s/he is a separate entity “in here” looking at a world “out there,” it is unlikely that the illusion of selfhood will collapse.
g. After people see that who they are is “what is,” they are no longer motivated to act from a self-centered perspective. They simply do whatever they know they have to do, and then they do the next thing that they know they have to do. Life becomes very simple. It is as if a huge amount of their past thinking just drops away. They become like little children who are happy without thinking about being happy.
h. People who see through the illusion of selfhood no longer worry about where they were before they were born or where they’ll be after the body dies. They know that they are the entire process of reality, and that reality is alive and infinite.
i. There is no time, space, causality, thingness, qualities, etc. except mind makes it so.
j. THIS is a dynamic mystery that manifests “just like this”—fingers typing on a keyboard, eyes reading words on a computer screen, refrigerator and fluorescent lights humming in the background. Any thoughts about THIS are abstractions. There’s nothing wrong with abstractions as long as they don’t become big psychological investments that keep the truth securely hidden.