August 18, 2014
HOMEward Bound
Here’s the dude Joe Kenny – currently chilling in a wooden
beach house in Japan with a bottle of fine wine – with HOMEward Bound. As
always, enjoy . . .
Dear Reader,
So, we have Rene
Descartes to thank for the notion – apparently accepted wholesale among the
population of planet earth – that an I must exist to be the thinker of
thoughts. “I think, therefore I am.” Tosh!
Clearly, old Rene
decided where he wanted to end up – defending and maintaining his ego-centric
view of the world – and then described at great length how he arrived there.
Little did he know, his famous adage does not resonate with the actuality of
the “awakened” state.
One who considers
herself to be an individual is reinforced in that belief by adopting the
assumption that nothing but the individual could possibly be the thinker of
thoughts. According to this reasoning, it must follow that the individual is
doing the thinking; generating thoughts and making observations and decisions
mentally. The one who makes this assumption and accepts this conclusion as
valid is what I call the assumed
individual.
So, dear
non-seekers, your most fundamental
notions of who you are condemn you to the basic error of identifying yourself
with the assumed individual. Based on this apparently reasonable but fatally
flawed conclusion about yourself, your every perception and experience is
personalized as “your” thoughts; your perception; your experience; your fame
and fortune; your this and your that.
As such, the
individual is the epicentre of her own cosmos and the mistaken identification
with the assumed individual deepens constantly and ever distracts you from
suspecting the reality of what you are. Accustomed to this world view, it
appears to be madness to question its validity. After all, you might say, is it
not self-evident?
To which one might
answer: yes, it certainly seems to be so. Doesn’t everyone accept this? Surely,
it is a given in every human’s life?
Well, not quite
everyone. Those who have apperceived the holographic nature of the assumed
individual, those who have come to rest in their identification with the
Absolute, know the ego-centric view of the world to be false. These abide in
their non-individuality and know themselves to be none other than ALL THAT IS.
In other words, those who have found themselves at HOME know with extreme
clarity that the assumed individual is a fiction.
Many know from
experience that it can be frustrating to reach a mental understanding of the
falsity of the assumed individual, only to find that the fictional individual
can never awake because what it really is has never been asleep. So, what’s all
this talk about awakening? This is merely word play. Words intended to point to
the reality – let us not speak of “truth” – can be misinterpreted when taken
more literally than was intended. Therefore, be like a child attending a
pantomime; suspend your disbelief and just go along with the notion for a
while. Your worries and your life will be waiting for you when you return.
Yes, of course
there is – or seems to be – a human living in the world. We may say that person
is real enough, relatively speaking, as we know too well its suffering the pains
and enjoyments of life as we know it. However, it is the one that you think you
are that is no more real than a pool of water in a mirage. No amount of
thinking will enable you to see this and no amount of effort will enable the
assumed individual to see that it is not in actuality the water in the mirage
that it has always believed itself to be.
Some non-seekers –
such as once I supposed myself to be – feel helpless and cheated to be led to
the threshold of the pathless path only to find that there is nothing they can
do to travel the path to the destination on the far side of the gateless gate:
HOME. They are told repeatedly that any striving, any action and any practices
would merely reinforce the falisty of the assumed individual which would be
futile, at best, if not counter-productive. In short, there is now way to get
themselves HOME.
But is this
necessarily the case? It most emphatically is not the case! Take heart.
You may have read
on this blog and in the potent mini-books of Graham Ellis, that there is
something that anyone can do to reveal that the assumed individual is not who
and what they really are. That is: to deepen one’s awareness of being to the
point where one’s apparent point of perception slips back, as it were, to a
state in which there is a silent knowing of beingness and of what it is in
reality.
There is a seeing
that the assumed individual is observed and hence one cannot be that. Thoughts are
merely observed and hence one can neither be the thoughts nor the mind. It is
only when the habit of claiming thoughts as “your” thoughts is discarded that
one opens to experiencing that one is not the thinker; one is not in reality
the originator of thoughts. Thoughts merely arise.
The apperception
of the Reality seems to be facilitated by stepping back through this shift of
awareness from involvement in everything that is happening inside yourself to a
state of beingness which is devoid of
personality. At some point, the awareness seems to step behind the mind (agh,
words!) and in an instant there is only knowing.
As this state is
not experienced by or with the mind, it cannot be reached by thoughts and
cannot be comprehended in relative terms. Equally, as this state exposes the
assumed individual as merely the water in the mirage, this knowing cannot be
known by the assumed individual in its ego-centric centre of perception. For
this reason, you are told in various texts that the you that you think you are
can never be “enlightened”. The dreamer cannot be awake whilst lost in a dream,
so to speak.
The old cliche may
serve our understanding once more: when the light appears the darkness is
dispelled. Darkness is merely the absence of light just as the assumed
individual is merely the absence of the certain knowing that one is not the
fictitious person one had always assumed oneself to be. There is no water on
the road ahead; it is merely the appearance of water where there is none. The illusion
of the mirage stands exposed for what it is; the notion that one was the
assumed individual fractures and falls away.
If, metaphorically
speaking, what you are in reality is like a lamp that shines with extraordinary
clarity and brightness, then one’s accustomed – ego-centric – perspective of
perception is misled by the darkness prevailing as a result of the concealment
of the lamp by an impenetrable covering.
The lamp, as it
were, is not something to attain. It is what you have always been in reality.
Metaphorically speaking, all that needs to happen is for the impenetrable
covering of the lamp to be chipped away until it becomes more transparent and
fractures. Openness to the concept that one is not the thinker and therefore
not the assumed individual seems to set in motion a mechanism that brings about
the catastrophic failure of the lamp covering. This is not “your” doing, though
“you” may facilitate the process by switching your awareness in the manner
described above (and elsewhere on this website).
Thoughts arise and
you may allow them to pass by without taking delivery of them. The more often
you do this, the easier it seems to get. Knowing this, switch your awareness
away from the thoughts to your fundamental beingness and abide in the space
between thoughts. It is not easy at first as it is an exercise to which you are
not accustomed. Persevere until you get the hang of it and don’t beat yourself
up if you are distracted time and time again. At some point, you may find that
it is obvious that you are not the assumed individual; thus begins the process
of dis-identification.
Experiencing
dis-identification with the assumed individual may be an unsettling process.
Suddenly, the familiar context of being who you think you are is displaced – as
if you have stepped into a vacuum. You might feel like an astronaut cut loose
from the space ship whilst on a space walk; tumbling through space. Your
habitual frame of reference disappears and in the word-free silence that ensues
your awareness may come to rest on breaths not thoughts; not memories; not
hopes or fears. None of that head noise!
Do not be
troubled; when this happens you are HOMEward bound. Settle into the peace and
enjoy the ride. Bon voyage!
