Choose Again

competitive pain

The experience of hardship, for most of us, builds a very strong and defensive sense of self. It's right up there with righteous indignation in the way it constructs a "me" that feels different from and possibly superior to "you."

So I think it's worthwhile to look at our attitudes towards suffering and ferret out the ways in which we cherish pain and use it as a weapon to keep the world at bay.

When I first moved to Minnesota, I lived for a period of months with my then-boyfriend's parents. They were first-generation immigrants and had friends who were also from various parts of Europe, some of whom had lived through World War II as teenagers or young adults.

One in particular had been imprisoned in a concentration camp. I remember how formidable a person she was—not especially warm or friendly, and always prone to bringing up the trials she had endured at our age when one of us "kids" complained about anything that might be going on in our own lives. At that time in this community there was a scare about the drinking water possibly containing asbestos. For a couple of years we hauled water in plastic gallon jugs from the one location that offered a filtered tap. The water, after sitting around in the jugs for a few days, always had a sour, plastic taste. I think I must have said something about that when this person piped up about having to drink her own urine during the war.

The message was, of course, "I win the suffering contest." A little bit of psychic warfare with shame as the ammunition.

This is an extreme example, but we all do this. The self that cherishes its suffering (which is always in the imagined past and not occurring in this present moment) is a violent psychic entity. And yet we have a hidden belief in the nobility of suffering, which occurs simultaneously with a belief that pain is indicative of some kind of failure.

If I am suffering, then I am a victim. If I am a victim, then someone else is to blame for my pain. If someone else is to blame, then I am innocent. If I am innocent, then God will not strike me down, he'll go after you! OR, if I am suffering, I am a failure, and therefore must be guilty and am being punished. God will pick you instead of me, and I am abandoned.

Such is the splendiferous logic of the dream-character. It will use any methods available to it to deepen the dream, to make it more complex, more subterranean, more externalized. At one and the same time it wants to see itself as a victim and as a savior. And it wields the sense of self it gains from suffering as a way to maintain the reality of the dream.

We all, if we are identified with our bodies, experience pain and loss. These are inevitable parts of the game. For some of us the worst losses occur early on in life; for others they occur closer to the end. For some of us, viewed from the outside, there is comparatively little pain in a lifetime, and for yet others there is monumental pain.

So just for a second, go silent. Bring yourself back to the present moment. Notice your breath. Roll your eyes. Just rest in this silent thought-free presence in which there is no suffering.

"Dream softly of your sinless brother, who unites with you in holy innocence. And from this dream the Lord of Heaven will Himself awaken His beloved Son. Dream of your brother's kindnesses instead of dwelling in your dreams on his mistakes. Select his thoughtfulness to dream about instead of counting up the hurts he gave. Forgive him his illusions, and give thanks to him for all the helpfulness he gave. And do not brush aside his many gifts because he is not perfect in your dreams. He represents his Father, Whom you see as offering both life and death to you. Brother, He gives but life."  T-VI.15, 16

unnecessary self-torment

We torment ourselves in many ways. One of them is by using the ordinary, thinking mind to try and understand things that it, by its very nature, is not equipped to understand.

We have such absolute faith in the mind and its ability to parse out any situation that it never occurs to us that there may be situations in which its use is utterly inappropriate. Our enthrallment with thinking and our belief in thought is a completely overwhelming addiction.

As we begin to realize that we are not our thoughts and begin to question the veracity of our thoughts, the mental situation goes from something like a black swarm of insects to an open field with a few very large slow animals grazing in it and the occasional bird, flitting through the sky.

It's those large, slow animals that need addressing. A couple of posts ago I referred to them as furniture of the mind—beliefs so ingrown and overgrown and ever-present that it never occurs to us to question them. It becomes necessary to look at the inner mental environment with new eyes in order to even be able to see these beliefs as being somehow out of place.

I find that one really good way to detect a false belief is to test its pain quotient. Once you've got the belief in your sites and have isolated it from the background noise of the mind, it helps to ask: Does this belief/thought/idea make me feel that I am insufficient (pain), broken (pain), in need of fixing (pain), in order to gain a future in which I will be whole (more pain)?

Some common cultural beliefs that have these characteristics could be, for example:
I need to be in a relationship.
I need to find my soulmate.
I need to have children.
I need to be a success in my field.
I need to have enough money to retire on....
and so on.

These thoughts all have one characteristic in common, and that is that they involve a searching for the permanent (wholeness) in the impermanent (appearances) in an imaginary future, because now is not good enough. If your heart yearns for something round and shiny, a soap bubble is not going to give you lasting satisfaction.

Equally insidious and entrapping types of beliefs are grazers in the fields of the spiritual search. These thought-creatures are semi-transparent and difficult to pin down, but worth the effort.

One of them is the idea that God can be experienced or defined by the mind as we know it.
Another is the idea that time exists in the way we think it does.
The idea that we understand causality, or that causality the way we think about it (one perceivable event causing another perceivable event) is actually true.
The concept of guilt.
The idea of reincarnation in light of the non-existence of time and personality.
The idea of awakening/enlightenment/heaven as something that must be earned.
The idea that now is somehow not quite good enough.

And the big mastodon grazing in the center of the field, the one we never really want to look at, the idea that I, the dream figure, actually have a real, separate existence (apart from clusters of thoughts and memories) that must be defended. And then, the idea that it matters whether or not I think I do, to anyone but myself.

From A Course in Miracles, Chapter 24: All that is ever cherished as a hidden belief, to be defended though unrecognized, is faith in specialness. 

This is such good news. What does it matter if you can grasp a soap-bubble if you are the air?

life as reality tv

I like to watch the reality TV show, Survivor. For those of you who are not living in the US, it's a show in which 18 strangers win the right to be flown into a remote wilderness setting, usually somewhere in or near Africa, Asia or South America, to compete against each other for a prize of a million dollars. For 39 days they are given little or no food, and are forced to build shelters, make fire, forage and hunt, all the while competing in strenuous physical competitions as tribes and individuals in order to eliminate each other and win advantages. It's also a game of strategy in which alliances are formed and broken, and unless the tribe, or later in the game, the individual, wins the weekly challenge and therefore immunity, there's a vote each week in which one person is ejected from the game by their companions.

Some seasons the show takes place in a remote tropical paradise, where there is plenty of fresh water, an ocean in which to swim, and fish or coconuts to eat. Other times it takes place in a desert or less hospitable environment so dehydration, starvation and sickness become factors.

Eventually, only two people are left to compete for the million dollars, and the winner is decided by a jury of the last handful of people voted off the island. By this time almost everyone has lied and schemed and double-crossed their way through the game, but as they cast their votes, they most often are viciously resentful of the others for having done what they themselves did, "even though it's a game." The lack of perspective is astounding. There are very few people who are able to remember and behave as though it's just a game and maintain some sense of integrity under this staged situation of voluntary duress.

Once in a while there will be a contestant who, in the middle of things, just can't take it any more and quits the game. Another rare individual is the one who maintains a sense of equanimity throughout the ordeal and is liked by everyone. The third rare type is the one who thoroughly enjoys the challenge—these people sometimes go on to careers as professional reality-TV contestants.

It's important to remember to not take things too seriously. The dream will play itself out on its own, you will awaken without fail, and there's a lot to be said for just pulling the camera back and getting a larger view, taking a deep breath, and not getting too worked up about anything in particular, "spiritual" or otherwise.

hypnosis

We are enthralled with the thinking mind, and unaware of our enthrallment. We believe that thoughts are messengers of reality. We experience them as content, when in fact, they are form—part of the appearance of things, arising and disappearing like the mist thrown up by breaking waves.

Just notice how you believe the thoughts that are appearing in your mind, without ever really investigating whether or not they may be true. Look at the thoughts that are so old they are like furniture covered with cobwebs, so much a part of your internal environment that you've ceased to notice they exist.

These are beliefs—thoughts that have settled in for the long haul, and slowly feed their existence with the energy of your identification. Look at your beliefs—especially the ones that have a harmonic of pain associated with them—the ones that make you feel like you'll never make it, never have it, never achieve it, need to improve, need to get something, need to try harder.

Really look at them and consider that they might not be true—might not even be real. Feel the discomfort associated with thoughts that have an opposite, and ask yourself if anything you truly want would have an opposite. Notice the dilemma, the feeling of entrapment. Just notice it.

identity is not lost

Identity is not lost. And it most certainly is not made special. But it loses its self-referential fears and obsessions. The person is a construct of thought that occurs as an effect of the movement of attention out of the present moment.

When the mind is quiet it does not formulate the person. Identity is still there, but it isn't protecting itself, worrying about itself, thinking about itself, trying to achieve anything. It's at peace.

In this sense, self is still there. Self is there, but not so limited. Not fearful. Not defending. Not special. It does not carry around an image of itself in relation to events, comparing whether or not what happens measures up to the image, and suffering because of it. It does not feel superior to other people, or inferior to them. What compares comes to an end.

When you say, "I can't do this" it's like sitting down in the dirt and realizing that maybe you don't really have to dig your way through a mountain with a teaspoon. One grows tired of comparing the river of events to an image in the mind. Tired of the tyranny and the suffering. One stops.

This is the atonement.

desiring experience vs. witnessing

There are different types of effort. One type of effort is a lot like, for example, going on a diet and getting in shape. This approach is a cumulative, future-oriented type of effort in which the emphasis is not on what you are experiencing in the here and now, but rather on some future day in which your goal will have been attained. Basically it means being willing to sacrifice the perceived quality of the present moment for one imagined in the future. Going to school to get a degree. Working in a cubicle to get to retirement. Doing penance in order to get into heaven. Meditating in order to achieve enlightenment.

This type of effort is very familiar to all of us and it's an integral aspect of life in this mutual mass dream. It's what we learn to do, and the ability to do it well, long, and hard, is valued in the extreme. It could be defined as "working for a better tomorrow" or "changing the things we can" and it is based on a sense of dissatisfaction with the way things are right now.

The spiritual path, however, is immune to this type of effort. Yet we put our feet on the path for the very same reason—the desire for things to be different from the way they are. We try, for longer or shorter periods of time to apply this same methodology: keeping our eye on the prize, working hard, being earnest and sincere in our desire for the goal of enlightenment or awakening. We want the future day in which our suffering will cease and we will be loved and at peace, immersed in joy and light. Is this not our birthright?

Eventually all the spiritual window-shopping, all the workshops and asanas and prayers and mantras and visualizations and affirmations lead us back to that same basic sensation with which we are so familiar: this is not good enough. I want something other than this. There must be something other than this.

It is at this point that a new kind of effort is needed. It is a type of effort so completely unrelated to our usual understanding of the word that we should probably have a different word for it. It is the opposite of the other kind of effort and yet it includes the other kind of effort.

We gather up the carpet of the path that is unfurled before us in time and burn it. We walk away from the self and its desire for enlightenment. The spiritual path is literally now or never. Not some imaginary now, but this now, right here, sitting at the computer.

The you who needs a different future will never experience a different future. The need for a different future is your flavor, color, genus and species. This "you" cannot exist unless there is a need for a different future, a new experience, an accumulation of thoughts, feelings, things, moments. It will never experience satisfaction. There will never be a time when the chasing after something more, something different, ends.

The new effort? Notice this. Feel the futility of it. That's it.

Stand back and be the witness. Watch the river of thought, feeling and sensation in front of you, rushing along, while you stand on the bank. Feel the ghostly dream-you who wants to jump into the river and be delivered to some better spot, some other experience. Just notice it.

Notice that it is never not now. Notice that you are never anywhere else. Wherever you are, it is now. You bring time and space with you wherever you go. And wherever you go, the river of experience is flowing, moving, changing before you—through you, around you—always the same river.

And yet there is a you who is watching, who is witnessing, not changing, not craving anything else. A you who is never not there and is always right here. Closer than your heart.

there is nothing wrong with the dream: the paradox

The concept of forgiveness as presented in A Course in Miracles is like a luminous key to unlocking the perceptual errors that are causing our suffering, our seeming separation, and our perpetual state of anxiety.

The way forgiveness is presented in ACIM is different from the ordinary meaning. In the usual meaning, "I" am forgiving "you" for something you did. This definition of the word accomplishes nothing. It establishes the grievance as real, and the guilt as belonging to the other, and strengthens the sense of a separate self.

In A Course in Miracles, forgiveness is defined as noticing that nothing ever actually happened—noticing that no harm was done to who I really am. Perhaps my body was changed in some way, but the body is a temporary appearance and is always changing. The body is the envelope, but I am the letter. The body is the bubble of surf, but I am the ocean, and so on. I cannot be harmed any more than the sky can be painted by throwing paint at it.

Forgiveness, in these new terms, is a radical releasing of complaint. It is a complete and total refusal to differ with any appearance of what "is." This does not mean that you don't jump out of the way of a car, or feel hunger and thirst. But it means that you notice the continual resistance to appearances as they are, and you no longer invest the complaints with attention.

There is, in the thought stream that we call our minds, an unending litany of resistance to things as they are. Nowhere is this as painfully counterproductive as it is in the spiritual search. All the hype about enlightenment and awakening, and the multi-cultural industry that has been built up around it, is a very subtle and yet ingenious trap.

If you consider yourself a spiritual seeker, the biggest favor you could do yourself would be to see this trap as it is.

As you resist your present state—as you say, "I am not enlightened" or "I want to awaken" you are actually saying, "I do not want this, do not want this as it appears right now." Your resistance to this ordinary-seeming appearance of inner and outer life—to what is right here, right now, is what is creating the sense of a cut-off, broken self that needs mending. Resistance IS separation.

There is only one door, and that's this you, right here, right now. It's not any other time. It's not in the future. Resisting who and what and where you are, as you are, is like strapping a jet pack on your back and saying "hurl me into delusion, please." The mechanism for the creation of ego and its suffering sense of separation, is (in ACIM terms) the attack thought. The attack thought is any thought that says, "things should be different."

As Pema Chodron says, we continually grab the wrong end of the stick. We do exactly the one thing guaranteed NOT to yield results. We invest in dissatisfaction. Until you begin to struggle to be free from what you see as a problem, the problem does not exist. It is the struggle itself that is the problem—it is the struggle itself that creates the illusion of the struggling, incomplete self.

So the spiritual search as it is usually presented—the ingenious trap—is a struggle to stop the struggling. Eventually it should burn itself out and reveal that, in truth, it is the struggle to awaken that deepens the dream. The desire to awaken from the dream is more dreaming. The dream character cannot awaken!

As you refuse to indulge in the desire to fix things, enough attention is released that you can notice the silent, witnessing essence of you which is now and has always been awake. All appearances come and go within this pervasive and underlying foundational light that is common to us all and the same in us all. Selfhood is completely shared, completely safe and whole, and is nothing "special," but this cannot be seen through the vehicle of desire to see it. The desire to see it belongs to the dream character. Desire implies that something is better than what is, right now. Only the dream character has complaints. Can you see the paradox?

the medium is not the message

In order for two wacky-looking beings like us humans, who believe we are each trapped within a body, to communicate, it becomes necessary to make sounds with our throats and mouths, and then designate each sound as a symbol of something within the mutual physical and mental environment.

Spoken language is based upon the belief/experience that the self/mind is trapped within the body and not accessible otherwise. It is a function of that belief.

We then turn around and use the learned spoken language, created because of the belief that we are isolated beings trapped within our bodies, or that we ARE our bodies—to talk to ourselves.

This is a very weird situation, when you look at it. Verbal language is purely a function of having a throat and a mouth and a belief in separation.

If you notice closely, all verbal thought—the very tools of the trade—the bricks with which you are trying to build your castle, the wood with which you are building your ladder to heaven, the material itself is all the same stuff. The material itself is the belief in separation. It creates a sensation of brokenness that then tries to find ways to fix itself.

The antidote is the poison.

Unfortunately we're stuck with this situation. So as we communicate here, it becomes necessary to always notice the poisonous qualities of the antidote. We have to be able to extract the message from the medium, because in this case, they are at cross purposes.

Our purpose is to stop suffering. There is no suffering outside of thought. There is pain, but it is fleeting; there is pleasure, and it is fleeting. But there is no suffering unless thought arises and we believe it.

the mind runs around, trying to accumulate evidence

The truth is so simple that it's impossible for the mind to grasp it. I mean that. There's simply no way. So what evolves is a plethora of what, in advaita circles, are called "pointers."

Pointers are short writings meant to halt the incessant searching-seeking behavior of mind and get it to stop a sec and look at what is actually happening. They can point to what you are not, which is easiest, or try to point to what you are, which is trickier.

The mind quickly becomes addicted to pointers, because it's panicky about what's happening. Panicky about the decrease in worry, about the decline of fear, about the fact that it's getting to be harder to provoke a suffering response.

Most of all, it's panicky about the fact that when it tries to reassure itself about what it now understands, nothing happens! There's no way to do it! Truth is not of the mind. It is not something that can be achieved, seen and then possessed forever. Truth is what you are. The mind-body is not what you are, and yet is within what you are. Truth, what you are, is not an object. The second we say "I," objectification happens—separation happens. And that's fine. It's the way of it.

My son read me a poem the other day. It was a dialogue between a man and a moth. The man was asking the moth about its behavior. The whole 'flying repeatedly into a burning hot incandescent lightbulb' thing.

This is like the behavior of mind. When it reaches the limits of what can be described in word-thought, it becomes obsessive and panicky. It just keeps trying, over and over.

Nothing can be grasped. Nothing can be pinned down. What you have, what you are, is this very moment—this awareness—this.

When lesson 10 in the ACIM Workbook says, "My thoughts do not mean anything," it is not speaking metaphorically.

i do not want what i do not have

If you sit with it a bit, you can feel the inherent self-compromise, the subtle pain involved in wanting what you believe you do not have. Whenever the mind leaves the quiet present awareness and veers ever so slightly away from this moment-point, it encounters what is not real.

Or let's put it this way: it encounters what is impermanent. It encounters what can be threatened.

When the attention wanders to what is impermanent and believes it, or identifies with it, if you really pay attention, you'll notice that there is pain involved. There is always pain involved in hitching your wagon to the impermanent. Everything outside of the present moment, and the quiet mind, is a problem painted in time and space.

If you look even closer you'll notice that even consciousness blinks on and off. When you go to sleep at night you dream for a while, and then you blink off and enter an area in which there is no consciousness. From that dark and quiet well with which we are all familiar, and yet not conscious of, consciousness arises again into dreaming and then into the arena of our waking dreaming.

We trust this situation. We even long for it, and yet we fear the loss of consciousness and seek more consciousness.

Nothing about consciousness has any permanence. Yet we look within consciousness for answers. We ask for answers where answers cannot be. All consciousness can do is gesticulate and point. It cannot illuminate. It is ultimately unsatisfactory.

The whole ball of wax is just a big tangled mess. There's nothing you can do with it but drop it.

This is the meaning of forgiveness. Forgive all appearances. Let it all go. Take your hand off the hot stove. It will always burn you. What you are, as you are, right here and now, is good enough. Outside of this, there is not and never will be "good enough." Just this here, as you are. You can stand down. This is love.

the inescapable impasse

"The ego is afraid of the obvious, since obviousness is the essential characteristic of reality." ACIM T. 9.VII.2:7

Is it possible to be that which you perceive? You are sitting at your computer. You are aware of it, of the screen, of the words written there. You are aware of your body, the room it's in. You hear sounds. You are aware of your thoughts, or perhaps just that you have thoughts. Maybe there is some emotion in the background—some elation or anxiety or dullness of heart. You are aware of all of this.

Are you any of it? Is it possible for the perceiver to BE the perceived? As far as I can tell, the answer is no. You can perceive your body, so how can you be it? You can perceive your thoughts, so how can you be them? You are observing—how can you be that which is observed?

The mind we have—our ordinary thinking mind—let's call it the ego—can only perceive. Everything it perceives appears to be separate from it. In truth, it is the characteristic of this ego of ours to create separation. Separation IS perception. Perception always implies "two."

You cannot have perception without separation or separation without perception. Through the lens of the ego, perception is all there is.

"Nothing so blinding as perception of form." T.22.III.6:7

Thought is form. Everything that can be thought is form. Everything that can be perceived is form. All objective experience is form—no matter how lofty.

So what's left? What's left is you, with an empty toolbox, no wheels, no words, no way.

How liberating is it to understand that we are not chained to the cogs of perception—the great incessant clanging industry of separation?

"You are nothing that you are conscious of. You must realize yourself as the immovable behind and beyond the movable, the silent witness of all that happens." —Nisargadatta Maharaj

"Knowing is not open to interpretation. You may try to "interpret" meaning, but this is always open to error because it refers to the perception of meaning. Such incongruities are the result of attempts to regard yourself as separated and unseparated at the same time. It is impossible to make so fundamental a confusion without increasing your overall confusion still further. Your mind may have become very ingenious, but as always happens when method and content are separated, it is utilized in a futile attempt to escape from an inescapable impasse. Ingenuity is totally divorced from knowledge, because knowledge does not require ingenuity. Ingenious thinking is not the truth that shall set you free, but you are free of the need to engage in it when you are willing to let it go." T.3.V.5

Get to the inescapable impasse and just say, "I don't know." Just stop. Watch the mind scramble and panic, but just watch. Don't try to think up some new explanation. Say, "This is beyond me," and mean it. Notice that even in this stopping, you are the Witness. Release your addiction to experience.

tripping out

I've started to notice that the act of falling asleep and beginning to dream is very similar to the act of believing my own thoughts.

Language is a little inadequate here, so I'll try to be more specific and will use whatever tools are available to me, so here goes.

I don't know how many of you ever smoked pot when you were younger, or do so today, perhaps, but when I was a teenager back in the late 60s, we would sit in a circle and pass a joint around, and then, listening to music or perhaps watching a fire we'd just hang there, mostly not speaking. Sounds almost wholesome, eh?

At any rate, what I noticed back then was that a thought would arise and wham! I was gone on some tangent or other as though I'd been completely swept away into another "reality." After awhile the thought-dream would deposit me back to the room with my friends and I'd feel a sense of embarrassment over the fact that I'd been gone—that, try as I might, I seemed to have no control over the process. We used to call that "tripping."

My point is that we are all tripping all the time. A thought arises and before we know it, we're involved in some kind of imaginary argument with someone, or fantasizing about getting something we want, while our body is steering a couple tons of metal at high speeds down a road.

It seems as though the tendency to dream, to trip, is built in to the ordinary mind. It is what the mind IS. Maybe you've even had sleeping dreams in which you go to sleep and dream — dreams within dreams — I have. And all thoughts and dreams, if you identify with them, believe them, take you away from right here, right now.

So thoughts and dreams are made of the same "stuff." They arise and subside continually to different degrees. They morph endlessly. Occasionally the morphing quality is slow enough that the dream appears to stand still and feel solid. This we call "reality."

But if you pay attention you'll notice that there is to all thoughts, feelings, experiences and dreams, an element of fear. Simply put, you are afraid you won't get what you want, and when you get what you want you are afraid it won't last (which it won't). Alternatively, you're afraid you will get what you don't want, and when you get what you don't want, you're afraid it'll stick around. That element of fear is never absent. It may just be a microgram of fear, but it's there.

From ACIM, Chapter 29:

The choice is not between which dreams to keep, but only if you want to live in dreams or to awaken from them.... You cannot dream some dreams and wake from some, for you are either sleeping or awake. And dreaming goes with only one of these. The dreams you think you like would hold you back as much as those in which the fear is seen. For every dream is but a dream of fear, no matter what the form it seems to take. The fear is seen within, without, or both. Or it can be disguised in pleasant form. But never is it absent from the dream, for fear is the material of dreams, from which they are all made.

From Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj:

"Just realise you are dreaming a dream you call the world and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another."

So what's the solution? In ACIM terms the solution is forgiveness. Release your grievances, release your preferences (attack thoughts). When you release the dream from blame, you realize that you yourself are blameless. When you understand that you have done nothing wrong, you feel worthy of peace, your fear of the present moment (your fear of God) subsides, and the gift of your native oneness and awareness can float to the foreground of your attention. It is no longer blocked by the wall of guilt.

There are many approaches to noticing the dream-nature of all objective experiences. The key is to stop looking for ways out. Let it be. Let it rest. There is nothing that needs to be done about the dream-nature of mind. Bring your attention back from the thought, the feeling, the experience, the pain, the elation—bring it back to this moment, right here, right now. Go silent. Stop talking to yourself. Right here and now is who you are. This is who you are. This awareness—this beingness. This encompassing sense of being that is untouched by words, concepts, experiences, thoughts or feelings. They are all a passing show within the spacious present Awakeness that you essentially are. Nothing but this. Very simple.

The dream itself is the thing that lets us know we are asleep. In the most simple terms, if you sense fear, you are asleep—tripping and dreaming. No matter HOW "spiritual" the thought.

Awakeness is not apart from the dream. It is an aspect that is always present, right here and now, no matter how trippy things get—whether or not we are aware of it. You do not need to be constantly experiencing it in order for it to be there (can you feel the fear in that assumption?).

Who you are is that light of awakeness—"that-which-is-not-the-dream." The stillpoint. The one beyond thoughts and words, bodies and planets, within whose being this all occurs. Look on it all with kindness—there is nothing to fear.

the journey to no journey

Energy is high in the United States today. It's wakeful, sparkling. A bit like some kind of cinematic victory scene in which the oppressed masses gather outside, cheering the liberating hero. The heart and eyes fill and spill over. There's never any reason to resist emotion. Emotion arises and subsides within awareness. Attention rides it like a wave.

This is the vivid drama of human life, and the wave of emotion on this day is especially thrilling. Ride it and it will set you down on the shores of another beach to be picked up by another wave of a different flavor.

This is an especially good opportunity to watch what the mind does in times of high excitement and perceived victory (or defeat). Watch how the mind, which cannot find meaning within itself, strives to draw conclusions about the meaning of events.

What the mind considers to be 'meaning' is a thinkable concept that holds still for a period of time, against which it can measure itself. Because there is nothing solid, nothing still within it, it draws conclusions using the bricks and mortar of its own being—thought—to build false structures of imaginary meaning. If a concept is standing still, the self feels as though it exists when it compares itself with the concept. It feels separate from the concept but allied with it, or pitted against it.

Notice how these conclusions, these structured concepts, actually feel. There is a subtle pain to them. There is a subtle pain to the concept of "a new era," or "an age of awakening." You can feel the immobility of the concept like a dam in a river. There is something stuck, stationery, within the flow of the present. And the mind, which created the concept to begin with, begins to resent it and rebel against it. This is the swing of the pendulum.

All conclusions have opposites. They do not exist without their opposites. The opposite may be temporarily invisible but it shadows the conclusion and is always felt as a threat.

Bring your attention back here. Bring your attention back to this, here, now. This present moment. There is no meaning outside of this, that you are. This gracious, spacious, mysterious present awareness. Come to the edge where the road ends at a precipice—where the words stop and there is only silence, and realize that you have never left home. Just stop there and let your conclusions fall away.

enlightenment

Enlightenment is an especially cruel concept when looked at by the thought-based self. It implies, when viewed from that perspective, that there is something you are not—that there is something you can achieve—some way that you can fix your poor pathetic, incomplete self which will result in an end to suffering.

It implies the idea of a future in which you will be free. A future in which you will have crossed the finish line, made it to heaven, and will have earned the right to rest in the arms of the Divine—however you conceive the Divine to be.

Enlightenment is a thought created by thought itself—part and parcel of the illusion. Enlightenment is a thought which belongs to the dream. All dream-thoughts have an element of cruelty. They all require a future (which doesn't actually exist—future is itself an imaginary concept) in which to achieve something that cannot be achieved. It cannot be done. Nothing can be done in the future. There is only this, here, and now.

Here and now, you Are. Pull your attention from the dream character and its dramas of enlightenment and stop trying to rescue yourself. This is all there is. Put down the burden of achievement and completion. Stop trying to fix yourself. None of these thoughts of deficit are true. Thought just feels that way. Thought divides. Then it thinks about itself and gives names to an imaginary undivided state: enlightenment.

For once, be the love that you are, and stop trying to make everything different from what it is. Stop insisting that this is not good enough. Just stop. See that you have grievances against ordinary life as it is, here and now—grievances against the "this-ness" of it. See that you believe that it is not enough.

Then see that the thing that has the grievances is thought itself—thinking itself cannot help but have grievances. Thought divides. It is a razor blade constantly cutting itself. Thought is "not enough" and thought feels like "not enough." And when you live from thought you believe you have a problem of insufficiency. Recognize the predicament, and then go silent.

From the ACIM workbook, Lesson 80: Let me recognize my problems have been solved.

the mystery, continued

The water is wide and you have no boat.

*    *    *

This is good news.

It is good news to see that the struggle is futile. Good news to understand that heaven, enlightenment, oneness, salvation, atonement—however you phrase the goal to yourself—is not a "doing."

You can't do it. It can't be done. Nor can you get rid of your ego or reduce yourself to nothing.

All you can do is to notice. To pay attention. Notice how painful it is to identify with the mind and body. Notice how it hurts to follow a thought. Notice how tired you are of being in the amusement park of life with its endless hopes and disappointments.

Notice how deeply you desire to stop seeking, stop struggling and trying to improve, to get it, to make it. Feel how painful it is to desire an experience you believe you do not have.

Imagine how good it would feel to stop. Notice the resistance you experience when you think, "But that would leave me here! Here and in pain. Here and incomplete and unenlightened!"

See that these are thoughts. Thoughts are not a "you."

See how much you resist the here and now. This—this ordinary life. See how you resist the present moment. How much you don't want to believe that this is all there is. How desperate is your need for a future that is "different?"

Just notice the process.

the mystery

Within your mind, as it is, your ordinary mind, there is incessant motion. Always something. Body sensations, sensory experiences, word-based thoughts, feeling clusters, picture-memories, imagined pictures of some future thing like a meal or a conversation or a shopping trip, rehashing of interactions, self-tormenting thoughts, self-aggrandizing thoughts, spiritual ideas, spiritual experiences, sleepiness, semi-dream states, dream states.... and so on.

They all seemingly appear out of nowhere, like the rotating light show on a child's wall at night, and after reaching their zenith, they set behind the horizon of consciousness.

As you follow the birth of mind-stuff, you notice that when the thought or feeling reaches its zenith you have one of three reactions—you either want the experience to last, or you want it to go away, or you really don't care. Whichever reaction, it goes away eventually. So to the mind-motion show you can add clinging-to-the-pleasant, resisting-the-unpleasant, and I-don't-care.

All of it—all of this moving show within the ordinary mind—arises for its brief zenith moment in consciousness and fades away.

And yet we could not notice that fact—the fact of this motion, were there not something in the mind—in this ordinary mind—that is standing still. That light of awareness—unmoving, unthought, here now, does not change. It cannot be threatened by pain, or shifting economic circumstances, or emotional turmoil.

It is not part of the moving mind, so it does not think. Thinking, no matter how lofty, is still part of the moving mind. Experience, no matter how spiritual, is still part of the moving mind—it appears, it reaches a peak, and it fades.

And yet the stillness is within you—you this moving, shifting apparition of sensation—at all times. But the moving mind cannot know it. The illusory separate self cannot be acquainted with it. In that sense, the situation is utterly hopeless. Try as you might, you cannot know this unmoving mind by wanting to. Everything the moving mind touches becomes part of it, more of the same, but this.

The water is wide and you have no boat.