The silence – the sweet, sweet silence – took me to a place I don’t think I’d ever gone before; to a place where conscious living from the ground of being shone a light on conditioning that had remained in the shadows for many years.

I say the beginning of a transformation; in reality it feels like the quickening of one that’s been going on my whole life, and one that really started to take over a few years ago when I acknowledged deeply my resolve to be free, no matter what.

In this meeting, I asked Jeff “I know what I am NOT, but i can’t see how that naturally leads to seeing ‘what I am’ as being everything, as oneness”.

As I wondered this, a baby rabbit popped out from the side of the road and took a couple of bouncy steps, before popping back into the bushes. At the same time, these hands appeared to turn the steering wheel, and a bird appeared to fly across the sky, heavenly widescreen with candy floss clouds against the richest blue sky, magnificent hills silhouetting grandeur onto the scene.

And what saw this bounty of nature saw this body-mind-unit as part of that scene, not separate in any way, and what saw through this body-mind was not the body-mind itself, but that which experienced the body-mind, and that which experienced the rabbit, and the bird, and the sky, and the clouds, and the hills and everything that was.

And this unit floated on and over the point of tears with the unspeakable, incomprehensible beauty of it all, in the knowing that there was, is, not only no separation between this body-mind and the rest of the world but that what I am IS this body-mind, and the rest of the world. The body-mind didn’t stop for the rest of the world to continue, but it was seen as one complete whole.

The oneness is known to be unshakeable truth.

I’ve been asking, often, in different ways, recently, how this could be so. It has been seen for a while that I am not this body, not this mind, not these memories, hopes, ideas, conditions. But I could not see how this could naturally lead to the conclusion that what I am is EVERYTHING.

Nisargadatta Maharaj is said to have spoken:

Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between the two my life flows.

Up until today, wisdom told me that I am nothing. Today, love told me that I am everything. And tears welled in my eyes at the awe and splendour of the whole of creation that I am. Silent, magnificent, unspeakable beauty.

When I had previously wondered “How can I be everything”, I thought of the awareness of and experiencing of this unit only, while the mind tried to comprehend how it could be everything. What a wonderful trap. When this concept falls away and reveals everything to be what I am, the ‘I’ that everything  revealed to be is not the local awareness of local experience, but experiencing of all of creation which does not begin nor end at the body.

I recognise the inaccuracies and contradictions here, and wince each time I write ‘I’, but there’s no choice but to surrender to the limitations of language and let this thing describe itself as it can, as there’s a pull to do so for some reason.

“The whole of creation” is seen to be a concept – I don’t know what the whole of creation is or even means, all I know is this experience now, and I know that what I am does not experience the outside or inside world, but that what I am is the experiencing of all – there’s no outside or inside, as there are no boundaries between anything, it’s all one. It’s ALL ONE! How fucking beautiful.

This feeling of just completely being in Love gushes forth, just being, falling, being, being in love with all, as all, and the idea of ‘all’ crumbles away too, as even ‘all’ suggests many things that are separate. It’s all happening. There’s nothing but happening. Everything is happening, and I am the knowing and experiencing of the happening. All of the happening. Not just this body, but everything. EVERYTHING!

Wow.

Just WOW.

This happening continues without any input or intervention from what I am, and certainly without intervention from what I thought I was previously, and what I now know I am not (exclusively).

How does that even work?

Where previously it was seen that these hands type without ‘me’ doing anything; that ‘I’ can simply observe the words as they’re typed, without even knowing what’s going to come next, it is now seen that this same non-doing continues out to the bird outside tweeting, the cars rushing past the window, my daughter singing, and the sensation of this arm leaning on the table – what I am is all of these things; It’s the SAME THING – experiencing all of these things, with no difference between the non-doing of the car driving past and the fingers tapping on the keyboard of the laptop – it’s all just happening. Both without, and AS me.

And it is all what I am.

Beautiful. As my gorgeous wife just observed to me in a phone call, “it all just takes care of itself, doesn’t it?”

It really does seem to do just that.

From Stillness

Landscape photographs birth bird flight

Gnarly trees leaning from the invisible wind

Until the wind drops

The bird stops

and becomes the photograph once more.

But if I look closer,

Really look and feel into what’s real

There’s a sense of stillness

in the bird’s flight too.

There’s no movement

Just presence

and it’s clear that the two

are the same.

Reaching, longing

to get ‘that’ back again.

It’s easier nowadays

To ‘notice’

Not ‘look for’

But still, ‘looking for’ happens.

Until it doesn’t.

And when it doesn’t,

I see that states and thoughts

and words and happenings pass.

Arise, and go.

Movement

No movement

Marks on and out of stillness.

But this stillness;

Eternal, ever-here, ever now

Does not arise

Or fall, or change.

And this

Is what I am.

Everything’s still percolating,  permeating. The mind keeps trying to ‘own’ the experience that is now memory, imaginary. I still don’t entirely know what the experience was – was it ‘Awakening’? I’ll know at some point in the future, but there is certainly a change. Mainly in perception.

There’s what can only be described as an oscillation between ‘sitting in being’, and ‘being Paul’. All of this is of course ‘beingness’. Even when the beingness is forgotten, and the Paulness is identified with, it’s still beingness that is ‘being Paul’. What’s different now is that it is much, much easier to catch/recognise the identification when it happens, and as a result, the identification seems to be happening less. I know now for real – not just because of a concept that I read in a book – that the character that I call Paul is simply a construct, purely imaginary. As a result, the constructs that form the identification, the movement-away-from-what-is that seems to define Paul in some way, are much clearer, more obvious – Paul doesn’t seem to be as able to get away with stuff at the moment.

I’m not ‘awake’. This Paul character can’t possibly be awake – Paul is being lived by Awakeness. When attention is given to this awakeness, it’s deep – an almost touchable thick silence which holds everything that arises. From here, sitting in being, objects are noticed, thoughts, sounds, movement – yet they are noticed as arising in what I am. If the mind tries to get a grip on how this might be possible, it falls over, turns it into objects which don’t seem to be able to grasp the fullness of what’s being experienced. I don’t know how this can be arising as and within ‘me’ (big me), I really feel the metaphor of the goldfish not being able to see the water it’s swimming in – it feels like the same thing.

There’s a hint at how much more there is to surrender to, to allow into knowingness, but this desperate impatience to ‘see’ seems to be gone. Blessed relief. Now it’s replaced by a wonder, full of curiosity, and a real willingness to really inquire into what is. Into what THIS is.

Up until now, I can see that I’ve been attempting Self Inquiry with the mind, which was the thing that could not ever ‘get’ what it was looking for, or looking with. Inquiring from Being seems to happen spontaneously and naturally. Awareness freely experiencing life as Paul.

Good morning Fred,

Wow! OK , where to start. I wanted to check in with you and firstly say a massive ‘THANK YOU’. Your energy last night was incredible – you just didn’t give up! The clarity began to deepen pretty early on, but halfway through, the mind started saying ‘it’s not going to happen’, but beingness just kept surrendering to now, and dropping the ‘I know’ to give in to the ‘knowingness’, and finally without Paul noticing really, this subtle shift, no, not a shift, no movement – maybe a ‘reveal’ happened, and this awakening was seen to be what has always been, can never not be, that there is nothing but this awakening-ness.

Paul was silent for the hour or so after our call, and the LSD-like beingness, maybe clarity, dropped away a little after a while, but instead of where previously the mind thought ‘aha, you’ve lost it’, it was known that it’s impossible to lose what you are, that the very fact that a recognition of ‘having it’ or ‘losing it’ can be happening at all is because of this beingness, this knowingness of the experience of now. And so now, simply as the attention is brought back to the beingness, so returns the Presence and Clarity, and a living from the silence and stillness from which experience arises.

And Paul wonders what all the fuss was about. Why was he searching for what he already was, and how did he not see it before?

And then I see that I did see it before, but simply didn’t recognise it – in inquiry, watching Paul do the washing up, that was beingness, simply being, and then I see that even when Paul doesn’t realise it, and isn’t ‘practising’, he is still beingness, watching, listening, being – but not a *thing* watching, listening, being, but the watching, listening, being, *itself*. I’m not that which watches, I am the watching. I’m not that which hears, I am the hearing. I am the aliveness in everything, I am not only the listening, but the thing being listened to. All of this is within this beingness which I can not ever not be.

Beautiful, simple, sooooo obvious. And yet so clearly just the tiniest of non-shifts – this isn’t a change – awakening isn’t a change at all. DOH! And it becomes clear what the embodiment is – this ‘waking down‘ – that the habits of believing that Paul is in charge continue to pop up and this is seen, and seen through, repeatedly. And this is continuous, a never-ending process of seeing-through (putting aside the fact that time is an imaginary construct, as there is only now) – Awakening begins the process – although that isn’t quite right either. Awakening is the process and the processor. hahaha!

It is seen that this needs to sink in and digest, and more understanding needs to happen. I’m very aware that what I’ve written has been written and read a thousand times before, but it comes from not a place of remembering now, but from a place of being. Of aliveness. Of knowingness. There’s a meaning in these words that was never seen or understood before. Wow.

Most importantly, you did a fantastic job, what you do is as brilliant as Jeannie and I had suspected, and I will forever be grateful for last night, and what you continue to do. I’ll start reading your book tonight

Thanks Fred, you’re the man.

Much love,

Paul xx

This violent fear
Of showing you my truth
No longer holds me, dear.

I was you once.
Breath crystal fresh
Diamond sparks from granite
And I was gone
And I knew I had never been here.

Once, once you teased
As tired fruitless years
Threatened permanent erosion of hope
Then all was silence
And silence revealed simple, marvelous everything.

Time illusory
At once that and this inseparable
All completely as it should be, must be.
The universe conspired to align for this moment.
And this moment. And this. This.

You cursed me once
As garrison returned with tiny needles
Pinpricks of ‘have’
Bruises of ‘keep’
Hope, doubt, worry

I cried for you once.
Demons disguised
Beliefs, lies
Riptide, grasping
Slipping, reaching, reaching…

I lost you once.
Cloud mind.
Don’t leave me.
A tear.
Despair.
I.

I saw you once.

Now, beloved,
Years of searching, sitting, thinking, wishing
Must end this moonless night,
I have no more left
But my exhausted, disillusioned self.

Take it, beloved,
Take all I’ve learnt,
Seen, heard, discovered, imagined
Written on tainted parchment with dried hands,
Building false idols of copper thought before an altar of green delusion.

Beat me, beloved,
Cascades of razor blows fall down on my fragile image
That which I call mine can not be what I am
It must go, I offer it all
No pain too great, no loss enough

Destroy me, beloved,
Hold me in the scorching fires of your love
Cover my chapped mouth lest I scream
But I beg you hold me there
For I know that I am, but I am not that which is scorched

Cradle me, beloved,
While my tears sting wounds,
Blessed relief
Ending tales of struggle
Ending tales of pain, tales of joy

Release me, beloved,
Let this precious moment
Fly free of all desire for more than this
Blessed this, relinquish all else to now
As we laugh the laugh of those who have nothing to fear, and nothing to lose.