Radical Honesty…

The effects of this self-enquiry are cumulative

and we find it naturally brings up within us a radical and ruthless honesty as we start getting “real” with ourselves.

Nowhere is honesty more needed than in the spiritual endeavour. I recently had the pleasure of working with a young man who upon arrival asked what the best way was to obtain the maximum amount of benefit from coming to talks. I replied ‘honesty’, but more importantly ‘honesty with oneself’.

I have seen time and time again people coming to meetings and professing that they are sincere seekers and are looking to wake up from the dream. Upon closer examination you will always see an underlying issue. Whether it is a financial issue, relationship, family, or any number of issues. This is the real heart of the matter and to use Rumi’s parlance: ‘The wound’.

However, rather than seeing that this is the beginning of the path, many try to obscure it or avoid it by saying that they are in fact seeking. This is spiritual bypassing - that not wanting to deal with the immediate and most pressing issue. This contracted energy that, unless dealt with will be totally unmoved by any number of meetings, watching videos or reading books. It is not until the issue is acknowledged that progress can be made.

Why then do we try to avoid the blatantly obvious? A simple answer could be fear. Why are we so fearful to face that which scares us? When we are fully aware, as the popular saying states, “Everything you desire is on the other side of fear” or even “Feel the fear and do it anyway.”

And yet for all of this many of us will never allow ourselves to truly meet that which scares us. We will instead opt for a dull numbing pain and discomfort in our lives instead of putting our stories down.

Why is this so? I can only imagine that the story has had such time and energy invested into it that we are loathe to put it down. It has provided us with security, status, and a sense of worth. Why then would we want to upset the status quo and let it go. Instead, we see our fear as a small price to pay to keep things the way they are. Yes, we are fully aware that the current situation is not ideal, but what is the alternative? Can we loosen the stories grip on our lives and see it isn’t real and as such can be put down?

This is where self-enquiry and contemplation comes into its own. By questioning whether what we believe is real we can start a process of change. Baby steps inwards which can, over a period let us see that that which holds us back is not in fact real. By allowing our natural way of being to dictate the pace, we can find that insight, understanding and clarity can come to us as and how we deepen in our understanding of who we are.

The effects of this self-enquiry are cumulative, and we find it naturally brings up within us a radical and ruthless honesty as we start getting “real” with ourselves. This momentum allows us to continue the inward journey and drop more and more of what we are not. Glimpsing our natural state, we see the illusory nature of the story and the minds attempt to keep us in a dualistic state. We are able then to let the story go or put it aside. Seeing that it is just here to help us navigate through this illusory existence called life. Like any good story that we read, we can engage with it as much or as little as we choose. And that furthermore the story appears in this play of consciousness and is not everything but merely an aspect of our reality.

Slowly but surely its impact on who we truly are is minimised and we accept our natural way of being; a way of acceptance and radical honesty.

Being Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable

Enquiry by its very nature means to step out of our comfort zone. To look beyond or prior to the status quo.

As such, sometimes it can be extremely uncomfortable and at this point we are presented with a choice. Forge ahead or retreat. Conditioned responses are such that many of us choose to retreat right at the moment where just allowing ourselves to feel truly uncomfortable would mean the feeling would simply disappear or transform into another feeling. What keeps many of us from really feeling is that we do not like to feel uncomfortable for any length of time such is our conditioning and coupled with an inability to sit with anything for any length of time, due to a twenty-four seven culture which tells us to keep moving. Makes being present with our feelings nigh on impossible.

It was uncomfortable and yet sitting with it and being fully present to it,

she witnessed it transform and stated she felt, “Everything was love”.

An attendee of talks recently narrated a story to me in which confronted by an overwhelming sense of fear instead of retreating as her conditioned responses would have dictated, she chose Instead chose to sit fully with the fear. It was uncomfortable and yet sitting with it and being fully present to it, she witnessed it transform and stated she felt, “Everything was love”.

In that meeting, emotion fully and eliminating the barrier, the duality that exists between the experience and the experiencer ends separation. The search is no more. What then is experienced is being experienced by no one and yet words such as, everything was love, or it is all one, can arise. Seemingly as a witness and a reminder and yet no trace of a witness or reminder remains. If at all there ever was one. In this singularity the purpose of why everything exists make perfect sense and an acceptance occurs. In which comfortable or uncomfortable thoughts, feelings and emotions are simply accepted as life happening as is.

The emotional charge we experience dissipates and the play of life is seen as simply that. A play. The ebb and flow of life continues. Emotions come and go and yet there is an equanimity. A oneness with all things. How could there not be. For how could you be separate from the very thing you seek?

The Silence

I have seen my work change radically over the space of a couple of years and as life has taken me on this journey, I have seen myself move from speaking about meeting emotions fully to Non-Doership.

I feel another change occurring now as I find myself moving away from Non-Doership, feeling that I have adequately covered the subject and falling more into silence. So how then to communicate that which has no words? It is an interesting conundrum and yet from that silence words appear. And I feel as if more will appear. But not from a place of Non doership but something so much more profound.

The silence.

Everything appears calm and still and yet activity is still occurring.

The waves are still rising and falling and the whole play of the ocean being the ocean is happening and yet there is no reference point to it.

I recently completed a series of livestreams in which this idea of silence kept appearing. I was in Devon in the United Kingdom at the time and if I were to visually represent my understanding of this silence. It would appear as a moon lighting the night sky with its reflection across the water.

Everything appears calm and still and yet activity is still occurring.

The waves are still rising and falling and the whole play of the ocean being the ocean is happening and yet there is no reference point to it.

Similarly, the exact same thing is happening in our lives. Despite appearance there is this same calm which underpins all things. It is in this place that we truly are. Glimpses of this place are generally known as awakenings, accepting this place is Realisation.

It is our natural way of being and as such requires no journeying to, no practise, no methodology, no pointer. It simply is. It is known and yet not known, choosing as it does to embrace both sides of the coin. Any attempt to codify or turn it into some structured teaching always collapse and yet this attempt to teach although failing still provides us with a glimpse, a roadmap.

This constant unknowing, this singularity

in which the idea of another cannot exist, holds every idea about it and no idea about it.

Ultimately though even glimpses and pointers must be let go of. Indeed, the one trying must be let go of. This exposes the so-called story as an illusion, as unreal and a natural letting go and a natural recognition occurs. In this recognition the ideas that have formed about what this is are put down and life is seen as is. This constant unknowing, this singularity in which the idea of another cannot exist, holds every idea about it and no idea about it. It is random and non-consequential and yet intelligent and purposeful. It appears in a myriad of forms all pointing back to itself and yet it is not separate from any pointer of it. It is immediate and yet even time or words cannot capture its true essence. They are merely a mirror reflecting that which is no longer needed when the singularity is accepted. If indeed even an acceptance is needed. It is simply this and even that is a complication.

And yet sometimes this singularity wishes to be known and starts this journey back to itself. It is the lover looking for the beloved not realising it is the very beloved it is looking for. A divine play, a silent mystery. A question constantly answering itself with no one asking the question and no one answering the question.

Simply put. It is this…

The Impersonal Personal

We are afraid of our greatness and yet our greatness is who we are.

We shrink back from the possibility of us as we truly are and choose instead to live lives of quiet servitude. In many cases our conditioning impairs us from realising our true selves.

Who are you to be great, to be magnificent, to shine in all your glory? Who are you not too?

You are created in Gods image and as such this greatness resides in you.

But let me before I continue clarify what I mean by this greatness. It is not the traditional idea of greatness, of heroic deeds or attainment. It is that resting in what we truly are. A singularity a vast expanse. In this expanse an idea of you appears.

Things happen, tasks are achieved and this idea of you appears to be very real and yet as real as it appears, it is known by who or what, we do not know that I am not this story. That I am prior to story, to subject, to object and apparent form. That my natural state has never known the temporal and yet witnesses it and experiences it as this vast expanse and as individuality. All manner of experience, ideas and form appear in this expanse and yet it is free of it.

Such is this greatness that all apparent opposites and paradoxes are calmed and resolved in it. It is effortless, existing as it does. One without another. It is the centre and basis of all that is and yet it itself cannot be encapsulated. It cannot be understood, adequately explained and any explanation attempted collapses at its very attempt at explaining. It cannot be known and yet offers invitations at every instant to know itself. It is that silence that has no one to witness it.

It is your infinite greatness. It is you.

If

If we can put down the limited idea of us,

those binds we have so expertly used to tie ourselves down. To be anything than what we truly are.

If we are fully present, if we are fully aware, if we are fully here. If we can silence the noise, the machinations of the mind, the constant chatter, the need to know, the need for explanation.

If we can favour simplicity over complication, acceptance over resistance. If we could just sit, just be here, however uncomfortable that may feel. If we can sit in our pain, our misery, our tragedy. If we can be honest, radically honest. If we can put down all that defines us, those stories, those ideas that we believe ourselves to be.

If we can put down the limited idea of us, those binds we have so expertly used to tie ourselves down. To be anything than what we truly are.

No longer a drop

But an ocean entire.

If we can accept that terrifying idea that we are not this story. That this pain is not real. That we can be happy. That the holy land exists in us. That the kingdom of heaven is within us. That the destination is in fact us. That we are the answer to the question. That every scripture, every prophet, every saint, every sage came to us, to remind us of who we are, and if this in turn can ignite the question:

Who am I?

And if at every instant

The question can answer itself

Then we can be home

We can be free

To realise

I am home

I have always been home

I am always here

A reality with no one to witness it

No longer two

Just one

No longer a drop

But an ocean entire.