As I was driving down the road this afternoon, my mind created an imaginary scenario in my head, where I was back in a meeting with Jeff Foster – a recreation of a meeting that occurred a couple of years ago.
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.