110. 'You' cannot know ‘Reality’.

You cannot know reality because firstly there isn't one, other than what we experience now, however we experience it to be. Even that is unreal, because it can be altered with drugs or other means. Secondly it has to split reality into a knower and the known, as if each can be, without the other, which cannot be. So the apparent reality that we experience, believing it to be absolute reality is limited reality as we experience it. Mostly we live reality mentally and stress ourselves out. So reality is limited to the mental only. Or else, this body, never bothers about reality or unreality and loves life as it comes, as if, it were the eventuality without escape. Like in animals..

There is this reality as we are forcefully taught- about events, situations, objects and ourselves. It also includes reality of religion, time and space. Its a collective thinking that ‘this is real’ and that is real. However it doesn’t take time to understand that all such realities are just a understanding of what we are taught in order to experience them, because all knowledge are thought forms and we experience thought forms for what we sense, which is the knowledge of them. The world is a sphere and all are just popping out of it or hanging out of it. We are separate entities and real and are above other species, which are also some sort of entities and real in life, etc etc. This is more accumulation of learning to memory or knowledge.

Some suggest that there is reality beyond what we know and we would be able to gain insight about such absolute reality, which apparently supersedes relative reality or learnt reality through knowledge or through thinking or through mind. They also suggest that it the space where there is 'peace' on a permanent basis.So they offer hopes about becoming someone that can know absolute reality. So they may urge the 'other' to get hooked about this teaching, as if they can attain such a state of peace by following some prescriptions of the teacher.This is simply more seeking for pleasure in the same manner that mind seeks out any other pleasure, be it in relationship, material wealth or habits.

The mind or the reasoning dynamic of psyche, is a pleasure seeking, pain resisting tool, and through knowledge, passed on from generations, is able to grasp, what is pleasurable and painful, as communicated down the centuries. It gathers meanings as told by others, makes some sense of such learning and stores as memory to be used in the future. So all that we can know is only  through our 'knowledge' of them. Trying to see things without knowledge or experience things without knowledge, is basically absurd to explain, because the feeling inside is a stimuli to sensation outside, as a solitary movement. Its like asking an Alzheimer patient, to explain his feeling for what is going on. You will never know. Or like asking a dog for its experience. You will never know. You and me, in that state may not experience anything similar. You will never know at all. Its the unknown zone. Experience is there, but it doesn't have a description. Nothing registers to memory, unless stored as 'known' with some form of knowledge of the past, in order that, it can be recollected from memory when the situation calls for it.
Seeking for 'reality' or unknown is simply seeking for 'more' than there is, because, we seem to know the unknown, since, we can only search for the known. So it puts the result into the future Seeking is a pain by itself. It just means that there is scope for fulfillment of some more than, what already is and which is not enough. Or, it gives a sense of insufficiency. Seeking for more is to mean that ‘I’ have less. This dynamic, keeps a sense of seeker alive and that’s about the essence or role-play of the dynamics of the mind. A mind cannot know creation in any other manner than it is designed for. It should convert the seeing into a subject object format, so as to give reality to subject and also to object, and this it can do, only with the help of memory, which is also in subject object format. The very tool that is used to ‘imagine’ the reality of the world as we know it, cannot be used to seek another reality that is beyond its style of functioning, called imagination in subject object format. In fact the present world itself is an imagination of mind because life plays out the mind to perceive in subject – object format, using imaginary skills, as if they could exist so, in separation.

Time is a imagined reality, space is an imagined reality and therefore all life that happening that is happening to us in separation is also a imagined reality. It does not mean that there can be an imagined reality that is beyond imagination. Nor can there be an unimagined reality. It simply means that reality is always in the realm of imagination or conceptualisation and there cannot be anything else beyond what the thought interprets in a way that it can be known in separation.  Even if there was, it would not be an experience, unless projected through memory or knowledge. So what is known is always in the realm of thought and also all experiences are body reactions associated with thoughts, to make them an experience as if reality could exist in separation.  So the experiencing of a thought, makes the thought about what is sensed, as if a reality of what the thought suggested it to be. So when the sensation of seeing a rope is judged as a snake by thought, it feels real.  The feel of fear there give a stamp of reality of snake to the rope, as a snake.  The idea of what is, as a memorised knowledge or an assumed meaning to form,  accompanied by its feel in the body as a reaction, gives the stamp of reality to forms as separate objects. These are only psychically created by life through learning to ‘feel’ through knowledge. There ends the logic of reality.

In the realisation that forms are just forms and meanings to forms is mind generated assertions  to forms, to make feel them as real, there is knowing of its unreality. Should there be an absence of the dynamics of the mind, the world of objects would have no ground or stamp of reality.  This allows seeking to fall away, as all reality is then known to be a mind game. When the game of this dynamic ends, what is seen there is an absence of an urge to know anything more than for normal survival of the body. So the reality of –is there life after death, is just brushed aside as a topic that is not knowable and so of no interest. In fact all of life that is happening around us, would be in the category of the unknowable and even the reality of the ‘know-er’ as independent from what is happening would be seen through as unknowable. Life is then simpler since there is no projection of what is –into the future- that would otherwise generate anxiety or fear, to keep seeking as a function of living in separation.

Knowing somehow that reality of things is a mental image and that any other form of reality is a myth, allows the mind to relax and accept the reality as forced on us, just to co-ordinate with others and live normally, simply because all is unknowable. At the same time, since reality itself is unknowable and there is no other reality to achieve, the game of achieving, or becoming is abandoned. The mind adapts to playing out assumed reality in the background for the play of 'what is happening' to continue in the realm of unknown. This allows stillness and silence as always the ‘natural state’ of mind,  in which all that is happening seems to arise and fall as images. It is also known that ‘what is happening, as a manifestation in this ‘moment’ is created and ends only to be seen as another new  moment of creation. There is less judgement and peace around what is happening, since they seem to happen uncaused for, moment to moment.

There is no urge to ‘know’ reality from then on, as ‘all of creation’ is just a manifesting as ‘unknown’. and the know-er is only an effect of the dynamics of trying to know. Knowing life as a know-er would have to split the know-er and the known as two different realities, which somehow would be known to be unreal to the knowing.

So nothing is real and the so called unreal is simply not definable as unreal must mean something other than real that is not there. Its too complex. However when seeking stops and real and unreal is simply not a topic to the mind, life simply goes on automatically or spontaneously and becomes very light living. The do not know state is simply a state of wonder. There is no urge to know content and so all content is just one context and is un-knowable. It cant be sought. Its a falling away of the need to 'know' and so falling away of the know-er with the urge to know. So there is no known.
Finally, in the words of the spiritual Masters, Brahma is real. The world is unreal. Brahma is the world. It just means, when the world is seen in separation or other than as an expression of Brahma, such knowing in separation is unreal. God is all and all is God.

109. Living Life in fulfilment

We put in a lot of effort in living our life to the best of our abilities. We have our own milestones of how we should live our lives. A robber wants to make a robbery, A normal man wants to be good, as defined by society etc. We live according to some notion of how life must be lived. It is not a spontaneous living. It is a conditioned living, as we learn to live it.

Can we know what should be the only way to live? In fact there cant be just one way to live. Or else all would have been butchers or all would be teachers. We may presume that life knows what is living 'as' us and so it is continuously living itself as people, thereby having a variety of lives being led. There is no a wrong way or a right way. Since it is unfolding in some way, that's it. It fools around unfolds in a way, so that I am always right and normally all others could be wrong. There is a justification in thought as to why and how we lead our lives, the way we lead, either taking credit for how we live, or blaming our parents or circumstances or others, on how we could have lived better. The justifications creates an opinion, as if there could be a choice that was not.

Circumstances decide how our life is lived, more than what we can design it to be. You are born in a particular family, at a particular place with a particular intelligence and particular acquaintance. From then on life becomes a sequence of events, as if negotiating the immediate world around us. There is a pressure that the world pushes us to be deal with, in a way, that is always forcing us to seek pleasure and avoid pain. However this could effect pain to others, at the cost of pleasure to us. It would be like killing a chicken for a tasty meal. The thought structure that gets formed to condition our thinking process, to evolve a basis of living a life, however right or wrong it would be. We then fill in explanations to make the wrong a right. Humans are genius in the field of excuses called explanations .

Very few could be less bothered about the the way unfolding of life happens around them, as if, their role is already being lived by life itself, effortlessly, as if in the flow of life or being at peace with ‘What is’. There is no intention there to change the world. There is no fear or anxiety about what should be versus What is. He may be useless to the society generally, or useful as a teacher or preacher, but he is in awe, about life playing itself out as creation, including playing out as many people.

The truth of what we are, is that, we are not individual entities  at the core of ourselves, even though it feels otherwise. Life lives itself out as if, each of us is an individual entity. We may feel like entities, because life is living itself in a subject –object format, to make feel one of the objects of seeing -as if a subject, verses the rest -as if the objects of that subject. This version of the play of life creates a real feel of entities. However, there ends the reality of being an individual entity.  Its not as simple as we see it to be. It is simpler than that. We believe that such an entity, has freewill and choice and has to negotiate the world, in order to live happily. This sense of doership to the body, is what causes the pain when things do not go as per one’s liking. It never does, because, all love permanent happiness, that cannot be reality. If unhappiness would never be there, happiness would have no value or place. So happiness and otherwise are passing experiences in consciousness, that arise and we could only react to something that already took place, as if , it is not as per one’s liking. If only we learn to accept the past as it is and be curious about the future, as if that also would pass in a manner to be known only as it happens, there would be less anticipation and less heart burns. To come to that understanding, it is necessary that one understands his own reality, in the unfolding of life, that this ‘creation’ offers as a world of objects. We are not individual entities that we think we are.

We are. That we know. Since we always know, all experiences that are experienced, we are the knowing of it all. That is all that can be said to be of us, in reality. The aliveness that knows itself is what we are. Aliveness lives itself out as this creation, seeming of separation in space and events in time and the knowing as it’s faculty is what we are. We appear to contribute, to the unfolding of life, changing the world, as required by us. But this gesture is life, playing itself out as ‘us’. In knowing this reality and living this reality, peace could prevail, even when events does not show up as seemingly ‘happy’.

Learn to analyse what we are at the core of ourselves. It’s just a body that is living itself through experiencing the expression of the world, including itself as a part of the world, contributing to the experience of oneself and others. The body is an expression of life, expressing itself, as if, a sensing body for the rest of its expressions. Thought adds to justify all experiences as if to be opined by an individual, thereby creating a sense of separation from the rest of the world. This is a very light play of life. How else could Life recognise itself and its expressions. When we see the ultimate dance of life, we will fall in love with the whole dance, even though it may have its happy moments and its sad moments as if for an individual ‘me’ .

Life is a dance and ‘you’ are IT as the experiencing of  IT. Just allow the experience to flow itself, contributing once in a while to the experience as it happens.

108. Awakened Living - A note by Adyashanti

What it's like to live an awakened life into a large nutshell.

"While the world is trying to solve its problems and everyone around you is engaged in the same, you’re not. While everybody around you is trying to figure it out, trying to arrive, trying to “get there,” trying to be worthy, you’re not. While everyone thinks that awakening is a grand, noble, halo-enshrouded thing, for you it’s not. While everybody is running from this life right now, in this moment, to try to get there, you’re not. Where everybody has an argument with somebody else, mostly everybody else, starting with themselves, you don’t. Where everybody is so sure that happiness will come when something is different than it is now, you know that it won’t. When everybody else is looking to achieve the perfect state and hold on to it, you’re not.
When everybody around you has a whole host of ideas and beliefs about a whole variety of things, you don’t. Everyone on the path is getting there; you haven’t gotten anywhere. Everyone is climbing the mountain; you’re selling hiking boots and picks at the foot in the hope that if they climb it and come back down, they may be too exhausted to do it again.
When everybody else is looking to the next book, to the next teacher, to the next guru to be told what’s real, to be given the secret key to an awakened life, you’re not. You don’t have a key because there’s not a lock to put it in.
When you’re living what you are in an awakened way, being simply what you’ve always been, you’re actually very simple. You basically sit around wondering what all the fuss is about.
When everyone is sitting around saying, “I hope that happens to me,” you remember when you did that. You remember that you didn’t find a solution to that. You remember that the whole idea that there was a problem created all of that.
When you’re being what you are, when you’re living the awakened life, there’s nobody to forgive, because there’s no resentment held, no matter what.
The truth of your being doesn’t crave happiness; it could actually care less. It doesn’t crave love, not because you are so full of love, but because it just doesn’t crave love. It’s very simple. It doesn’t seek to be known, regarded highly, or understood. When you’re living what you are in an awakened way, there’s no ideal for you anymore. You’ve stepped off the entire cycle of suffering, of becoming; you’re not interested.
It’s a curious life you find yourself in. You find yourself… where you are. Not where I am, where you are. Where you really are. Where we really are. It’s a curious place to be (especially in the beginning) not to be driven by anything—pleasure or displeasure, helping or hurting, loving or hating. The only thing that will move you (and I don’t mean to be too poetic about this) is the same thing that moves a leaf hanging from a tree. It’s simply because the breeze blows that way. So you always know what to do: The breeze blows that way, and that’s the way you go. You don’t ask questions anymore. You don’t evaluate why the breeze is blowing that way because you know that you don’t know why. And you know you can’t know why. There’s never been a leaf anywhere that knows why the wind blows that way on that day at that moment. That breeze changes the orientation of your life, moment to moment to moment, simply because that’s the way life’s moving. And when you’re living in your awakened self you have no argument with the way it’s moving because it is the same as you are.
And you know that the breeze was always there, from the very beginning, and that it wasn’t reserved for special people. If you didn’t notice it at some point in your life, you know it was because you weren’t listening, or because you thought you had to figure something out before you could listen, or because you thought there had to be some conclusion before you could just listen so deeply, so without agenda, so without hope of a better future that you would feel the movement.
Many of you know what I’m speaking of.
Truth never explains why it’s moving that way at that moment. And if you ask, it won’t give any information. It would be like a leaf asking the wind, “Why are you moving that way right now?” The question doesn’t make any sense to the wind.
But your argument with the way the truth would move—whatever that way is—is no longer there for you. You’re no longer arguing with it. You’re no longer trying to figure it out. Mother Mary didn’t figure it out. Buddha didn’t figure it out. Ramana didn’t figure it out. None of them figured it out. They just became That. Simple. Ordinary—in the same way a leaf is ordinary.
When you’re living in your awakened being and living in an awakened way, power on any level is not an issue for you. It’s not interesting. The power to control another human being is not interesting. Intellectual power is not interesting. The power to control yourself is not interesting. The power that people want to give you is not interesting to you—not because it shouldn’t be; it’s just not. What would you want to do with it? You see that there’s nothing you want to do with it.
You realize, in the truth of your being, that you are the totality itself, but you have no interest whatsoever in doing anything with that knowledge, with using that knowledge.
Finally, you realize that you really don’t want to change anybody, not because you shouldn’t want to change them, because you just don’t. You might not want to be around everyone, but still you don’t want to change them.
None of this is an ideal—it’s the end of ideals. None of this is holiness; it’s the end of holiness. It’s the beginning of wholeness. None of this is something to achieve, because it’s not achievable. It’s simply what is in the truth of your being. It’s just what is. You can’t attain what’s naturally so. And nobody anywhere can ever tell you when or why, or to what degree you’ll let go of untruth; you will let go when you let go, usually when nothing else works.
When you’re living in the awakened way, in the awakened being that you are, you’re alone, and you’re finally comfortable with it. You’re alone, but you’re not lonely at all, because the only one who was ever supposed to meet you where you are—the only one who ever could meet you where you are one hundred percent—was you. Nobody else could ever fully meet you where you are—maybe ninety percent, maybe ninety-five. Nobody can meet you fully but you. When you finally do, then you don’t need anybody else to do it for you. Then you’re alone, more alone than you could ever imagine. And strangely—very strangely—you are more connected, more intimate, more at one with everything. More. And you would have never thought that those two could in any way be together: total aloneness and total oneness. You would have never guessed that that’s the way it would end up. But it does, and it always has.
And finally, when you’re just living in the awakened way that you really are, you’ll never form an image again of what it’s like. Even as it’s happening, you won’t form an image because you’ll know they’re all images, dust. The way it was yesterday won’t be the way it is today."