Stop doing what takes “you” away from That!

 Look through the illusion!

To keep attention on your being is not to do anything.

It is to stop doing what takes you away from it.

The sense “I am” is not a practice.

It is your original knowing before thought divides the moment.

Remain with that.

Not the words “I am”—but the silent clarity they point to.

Not a mantra. Not an idea. Not a position.

Just the felt, immediate knowing that you are.

Before body. Before mind. Before identity.

This is not concentration.

It is relaxation into what is already effortlessly present.

(Emily Snow, The I Am That Needs No Effort)

I have a love-hate relationship with non-duality. Love because every word is true. The direct method is so easy—we are a manifestor of the “Field of Infinite Possibilities” as long as we manage to leave our conditioned mind outside of it. It’s an energy that flows through us. No thought comes to the surface as we allow life as is free reign.

The drawback of the direct method is that it leads to projection. When you approach the present moment with the attitude “I am That,” you have already polluted the free energy flow. Emily Snow offers a solution though, stop doing what takes “you” away from it! We can feel, sense and see when the conditioned mind takes charge of a situation. Be mindful!

“Be still and know that I am God” is the guiding principle of life and when conditioned mind throws a wrench into the works of life as is practice there is always Viktor Frankl’s practice to fall back on: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

A conditioned mind is helpless investigating its nature, but in the presence of “I Am,” the conditioned mind surrenders to an overwhelming energy circuit. We are able to see, sense and feel when the conditioned mind is active. Our power lies in the “neti, neti” approach. Not this and not that. Take a pause. Look through the illusion and reconnect with what always is. 

Open up to the “Field of Infinite Possibilities”

 J. Krishnamurti once concluded that “Truth is a pathless land,” implying that any attempt to consciously approach the “Field of Infinite Possibilities” will be in vain. The reason for that hopeless reaching is simple enough, the entity reaching for Truth is the interference!

Spirituality is paradoxical at times. Another spiritual truism is the insight that “what you are looking for is looking for you!” We are walking magnets and all we have to do is to polish it and the limitless attraction of the “Field of Infinite Possibilities” will do the work for us.

Spiritual living is the feat to connect with the “Field of Infinite Possibilities” before the body, the mind and the event is. It’s a natural state that is our birthright, and if the conditioning kicks in just as the clouds cover the sun, we can spot them, get to their roots, and watch them pass.

The “Field of Infinite Possibilities” is intelligent beyond comprehension. Every interference that appears in our life has its destruction already built in. Viewed from the perspective of the “pathless land” it was the interference that brought us here. We are That! Realize this fact and the quest is over!

The Screen

 I had a dream in which I was crossing the street. A car stopped and tried circumventing another car that was parallel parking. I figured I had plenty of time to cross the road, but the incoming car accelerated with incredible speed after it had passed the parking car, heading straight towards me. That’s when it happened. Something inside me pulled the emergency brakes. I froze. It wasn’t me. The car accelerated way too fast for me to do anything consciously.

You may say, so what, you were dreaming of an instinctive reaction, but that’s not how I perceived it. At that moment, I saw that we are being lived by a different  energy. We are merely screens on which the movie life is being played. Let the movie plot unfold as it may. We are before body, mind and the unfolding event. 

You probably have heard the story of the farmer who first lost a horse; then it came back with wild horses; then the son broke a leg trying to tame a wild horse; then all young men were summoned for war but his son was spared because of an accident. Other folks would have oscillated between “good” and “bad” outcomes but not this farmer. When his neighbors celebrated or lamented with him all he could say, “Is that so?” 

If you live your life with a stoic mindset to get to that stage of inner equanimity you do not accomplish anything because the experiencing “I” is still around. You are just telling yourself a convenient story that you are more spiritual than others and numb your feelings in the attempt to be a cut above life’s happenings or protect yourself from suffering. Stoic living just adds another layer of distortion on top of the distortion our perceived self-identity brings. 

What can be done to return to the screen that cannot be defiled by anything life has to offer? Who wants to return? Be still for a moment. Does the screen appear?

A lot more free

 I’m a little bit hurt but a lot more free.

I ain’t saying that you never took a toll on me.

For what it’s worth, I can finally see

that I am a little bit hurt but a lot more free.

(Max McNown, A lot more free)

I let those who feel that they can create Heaven on earth speak for themselves. I am certainly rooting for you! My personal observation has been that besides enjoying the pleasures of the blue planet that we are privileged to experience, earth is a playground that encourages and allows us to break free from the “me-energy”.

I am 60 now and have much deeper insights about myself than when I was 50 or 40. As just one example, when you are 20, you run head over heels to the wonderful woman you meet. These days you are walking. Not because you can’t run anymore but because you know what it takes to make a relationship work. The good comes with the bad in every aspect of our life.

Maybe we can free ourselves from some professional compulsions or material desires, but we always will feel the good, the bad and the ugly that life confronts us with. The Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller said in one episode, “Being a parent is watching your heart walk outside of your body forever.” That’s true. If you are a parent, you will never be completely free.

The psychologist E. Graham Howe said in “The Druid of Harley Street” that for everyone of us when we die there is a standing ovation up there in the Heavens. That’s a nice conjecture. Everyone who lives tastes the pleasures of the blue planet while doing their thing to break a little bit more free from the compulsions that come with it. 

Heart-centered living

 A man drove on the highway when a message appeared on the radio, “attention, attention, on the A 9 a driver is headed in the wrong direction. Please reduce your speed and watch out for incoming traffic!” The man looked up and screamed in frustration, “what do you mean one, there are dozens, dozens of them!”

How do we know what we see and feel is what is real and not a figment of our conditioned mind? A friend said the other day that she is beyond politics and I said to her, “You don’t have an equanimous mind, you are indifferent. That’s different!” Who gave me the authority to say that? Was I perhaps headed in the wrong direction?

I cannot tell you how enlightened folks perceive the world but I can tell you a thing or two about mind games. I experience them daily. The mind needs control and is happy to override feelings in order to get it. Our mind’s notion of enlightenment is that we will never experience suffering again. What a lovely concept that is!

A measure of spiritual advancement is our ability to face what is with an open heart. We experience the trigger life confronts us with, take the full force of the impact, and let it run through our system without putting up any resistance. After the initial hit there are some ripple effects, but the amplitude of the hit is fading. Our conditioned mind doesn’t jump on it!

I have experienced a change over the last year. I discovered the feat of heart-centered living. It is as if there is an entirely different energy system emanating from the heart region. We can literally feel how the system jumps from mind to heart-centered living. The heart doesn’t protect us from pain but it burns conditioned reaction functions like a furnace.

We feel life’s ups and downs—the good, bad and ugly—perhaps stronger than anyone but our conditioned reaction functions are unable to build on the initial hit to the system. Conditioning burns in the presence of universal love and we stay with life as it is, and not as we want it to be or fear it to be. Give heart-centered living a shot. Life is different when the heart rules.

The drift of a conditioned mind

 When the spiritual philosopher J. Krishnamurti stayed in India, a monk insisted that he needed to see him. He had walked for many days and wanted to ask him how he could become enlightened. 

Krishnaji smiled and he said, “You are trying to find an answer, aren’t you, sir? You are trying to find a solution.” He said, “I would rather change this process and merely look at what you are trying to do with yourself. Look at what thought is trying to do to itself. “ So he said that thought is trying to persuade itself and pressurize itself to stop its operations, because it wants to get something out of it, and this is something which thought can’t do.

The monk went into a deep state of meditation, and after a while his eyes opened and with tears in his eyes, he said that he got it. He thanked J. Krishnamurti profusely and wanted to leave but the sage invited him to stay a little longer and talk with him. After a while the monk asked, “What do I do if this blissful state leaves again?” 

Krishnaji said, “This is just the question that I knew you were going to ask me.” He said, “But who is it that asks the question? The mind that is silent is asking this question, or the mind that was not able to get silent and worrying over it that is asking the question?”

Again, the monk fell into a state of deep contemplation and once again tears were streaming down his face after some time. “I got it now,” the monk said smilingly, “this is the last time you will hear from me” and left.

I love the monk’s break-through experience. It shows that thinking is more than an aberration interrupting our inner peace. The conditioned mind has a drift that purposefully takes us away from the inner stillness that aligns with being. In the monk’s case it was the quest for enlightenment that was the interference but once the game was recognized, inner stillness and being became the default state. Maybe we have to look through this game more than once just as the monk had to, but that’s ok, at least we get our arms around the drift of a conditioned mind.

#jkrishnamurti #spirituality #silence #being

Catching the drift

 “When I am married to her, I shall be happy.” “When we have kids, we will be happy.” “When I get this promotion, etc.” These are some belief sets we are consciously aware off. There are others we don’t even know about.

Spiritual seekers may no longer imagine their happiness come with material things but they too have belief systems. “I shall be enlightened one day. That’s when the suffering will come to an end.” We are striving towards something.

Thoughts, feelings and actions may always be a bit uncomfortable from time to time. That’s not the problem. The problem—as much as the opportunity—is to spot this belief set and look through it. We can be mindful of our “drift.”

Stillness and love is not something to work for. It’s what we have when we spot the “mental drift” telling us stories that just ain’t so. Spot the rising thought-feeling-event energy and stay with it until you find its root cause.

Self-imposed interferences come and go, but who is looking for love and peace when the obstacle to our inner peace appears? It’s the same institution that caused the interruption and that’s why we can never break free.

Who is enjoying this moment right now? Who is scheming to get something? Who is fearing that we don’t get what we want? “The drift” can be spotted in our thoughts, feelings, actions and how the environment interacts with us. 

Catch the drift here and now and look through it and the quest is over.