The Nondual Diary: Always the Winner

I EXERCISE A LOT, EXCEPT WHEN I DON'T, which can also be a lot.  The “a lot” that’s happening right now, I notice, is the “I don’t” part.  I regularly eat smart and healthy, except when I don’t, which also happens regularly.  The “regularly” that’s going on just now, I notice, is the “I don’t”.

Of course I don’t actually control my eating or my exercise.  I can’t.  I like to think I do, but I don’t.  All can ever do is report on what’s happened after it’s happened.  Now, I always have an overall interior intent going on, mind you, to either be healthier, thinner and stronger long-term, or just squattier and more comfortable short-term, but I notice that even my interior intent appears to be fueled from the so-call outside.  But all of that is beside the point.

I was just down at Wal-mart, which is not a polite thing to say, I recognize that.  Live with it.  I bought some underwear to slip on underneath my yoga pants.  It’s my deep wish that they’ll somehow magically act as a girdle so that my teacher, ever-pretty Pam, can’t see how I’ve withered in the last five years.  I haven’t been to yoga for five years, because of elements that I can get massive agreement on were beyond even my pretend control.  Nonetheless, even under adverse circumstances, I still walked and used dumbbells, and did push-ups and crunches until I didn’t.  The “didn’t part” snuck in here about eighteen months ago, I think.  Might be two years.

While I was down at Walmart I bought a Snickers bar.  That is one hell of a fine snack, let me tell you.  However, having a Snickers bar from Wal-mart before an afternoon of gentle yoga is tantamount so showing up at an Adyashanti intensive toting a planet-killing, cellophane-wrapped, white-bread, animal-cruelty, Hero sandwich, which I also once did. 

We do the best we can, all of us, even me.

That’s actually what this post is about.  It’s about the “You’re still good for me, pal,” judgment that I regularly enjoy when I gaze into my bathroom mirror after having stood on the scales until they've bled tears.  In the absence of good eating or exercise habits; in the absence of having enough sense to observe Green-PETA-Protocol at an Adyashanti intensive, I have something better than all of those things.  I have spin.

When I am exercising regularly, I take on the common exerciser’s sense of self.  I’m better than you.  I’m better than you, because I am taking care of the Sacred Vehicle.  I am doing my part to keep health care costs down, and I am virtually greening the planet all by myself.  I feel young and clever and strong and to hell with all you lazy, unconscious pigs.

When I am eating properly, as they say, I REALLY get full of myself.  I’m WAY better than you then.  I have self discipline!  I’m smart and I’m sensitive and I can prove it to you with my waistline.  I’m taking care of the Sacred Vehicle.  I am doing my part to keep health care costs down.  I feel young and clever and strong.  And you guys who aren’t living just like I’m living?  Lazy, unconscious pigs, the lot of you.

When I’m NOT eating and exercising regularly, however, I do not become a lazy, unconscious pig.  Oh, no, not me.  Miraculously, I simply become TOO DAMN BUSY.  Poor Fred.  I’m sacrificing so much, what with this blog and all, just for the sake of helping awakening unfold in others, that even though my precious wishes—my desires and intentions to be a good eater and a good exerciser—are painfully sacrificed in order to help you.  If only you had read and meditated and inquired like I did for all those years and years all by myself when people thought you were crazy as hell if you did that. 

You lazy, unconscious pigs.

I really don’t think my own thoughts.  They arise in my head and they do what they do.  Truly, on all absolute levels, and most relative levels, I am entirely powerless.  For someone else to reach that conclusion would be horrific.  What am I to do NOW??  For another, the same conclusion would be freeing.  Without control, what’s there to do, other than what’s right in front of you? 

 

But even with half an ego tied behind my back, I still have my hand on the wheel in regard to the single most important mental mechanism.  I still have spin.  I’m still King Baby regardless of the facts!   Amazing!  Wonderful!  And you?  Come on.  Deep down, you know, don't you?

“Okay, but what about MY LIFE?” (Part II of II)

WHEN I FIRST STARTED GETTING SOBER, back in the spring of 2000, I made the conscious decision to devote my life to the pursuit of a deeper spirituality and material consequences be damned.  Now, it can be noticed that I was single and beholding to no one on the planet but myself.  It can also be said that I was already so low that I had nowhere to go but up.  And it can further be stated that my failures were so profound that they couldn’t be missed or mistaken, even by a damn fool like me.

All of that is true.  But if we are going to note those facts, then we need to also note that I had been in a virtually identical situation many times before in my life.  In every single one of them, when the evidence of my personal failure was just as clear, and the wounds just as deep or deeper, I had always opted to throw in with the first vehicle that appeared to be headed toward a tunnel that had Material Life Reclamation Lane chiseled above it.  Driving full-speed-ahead in that lane would work, sometimes very well, and then, inevitably my situation would deteriorate, then crash and burn into ash and pain again.

Materialism absolutely worked for me until it absolutely didn’t, and the didn’t parts became so frequent and so painful that I eventually even I had to open myself up to change.  Sadly enough, I had been in no hurry to do it.  I have been homeless NINE times in my life.  An idiot rat with a learning disability could have figured out how to run my life better faster than I did.

The amazing news here is that I found out that how to run my life was to let it go.  The salient points of my situation in 2000 certainly direct our attention to the extreme nature of my situation, but that is all smoke and mirrors.  They do nothing to preclude the value of my overriding intent.  That is what mattered.  Many a spiritual teacher has spent many an hour talking about the value of intent.  It is your most powerful force toward the cultivation of conscious enlightenment, and waking up is the most powerful force in “getting your life in order”.

For me, back in 2000, even though I’d been chasing it for years, I didn’t care much about enlightenment.  All I really cared about right then was stopping the bleeding.  My life was a train wreck.  I was broke, divorced, humiliated, and ruined.  My mind was a ball of crazy, howling, circular pain.  I wanted out, and I was too scared to put a bullet in my mouth.  Let me say that I do know what the barrel of a gun tastes like.  I did go there.  But that was the one bitter trigger I left unpulled.

In my case, as I embraced a completely new way of life based on honesty, humility and service, I stayed dirt poor for the first 3 ½ years of my sobriety.  Overall I was fine with that.  I wished it was different, but I had the best girlfriend in town (now my wife, Betsy), I was becoming respected in the somewhat underground recovery community, and I noticed I had adjustable weather.  This was core gratitude. When it was hot, I could turn down the air conditioner.  When it was cold, I could fire up the heat.  I’d never once had such luxury as a no-account hobo, and I spent more time than you might imagine as a no-account hobo. 

Now I was a sober no-account; that’s progress.  I helped a lot of people while I was poor as a rat.  I’d not done much of that when I was flying high.  I did a lot of volunteer service work while I was poor as a rat.  I’d not done any of that when I was flying high.  This wasn’t just cosmetic change, this was fundamental change.  I wasn’t doing it; I was being done.

I hit some major nightmares along the way, which I have alluded to in this diary before.  I spent some time in jail.  I was arrested while I was sober and being a good guy for stuff I’d done when I wasn’t sober and wasn’t being a good guy.  Seemed crazy, but who was I to say God was getting it wrong?  Who, at core, was first at fault?  Me.  Such is karma.  Now I can say that I’m glad to have had the opportunity to examine and straighten out so much unconscious living, either directly or by proxy, through conscious eyes.

So a lot of the time I didn’t get what I wanted, but throughout all the days of poverty and terror and woe, my overall commitment to a spiritual orientation never blinked. Life stripped me raw, it really did.  And somehow, I don’t really know where it came from, I kept on surrendering.  “This, too,” Byron Katie would say.  We have to surrender to “this, too”, always, always "this, too".  And I did.

I understand that viewed from an Absolute position, I did nothing.  It just happened.  There is no direct relationship between my surrendering and this current seeing I live in.  Such is paradox.  But Life is large and mysterious and I have to think that there is some indirect relationship.  This current seeing would not be happening had not a pathway of surrender been walked, or such is my story.  I can’t really know what’s true.  That’s my best guess.  It's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Let me cut to the chase here.  What I have seen is that as I truly, truly, truly devoted my life to service and spirituality is that Life has opened up to allow me to spend more time in service and spirituality and less time in self-maintenance.  I still work hard upon occasion.  But I used to work hard all the time.  I still work long upon occasion.  But I used to work long every day.  I now work less hard and less long and earn more than I used to.  I counsel old friends in my living room.  I answer emails.  I write, tweak and maintain Awakening Clarity, which takes more time than you can imagine.   I spend more time with my pets, I feed squirrels and birds (and rats!) and tend a garden.  I'm doing just a little better than "getting by", but I'm very happy in this simple life.

I spend the great bulk of most of my days in solitude and silence.  The Tao can push me with the slightest breeze now; it doesn’t have to slap me on the head with a two by four.  I’m not doing any of this.  This is what’s going on.  It’s all happening spontaneously, and generally there’s no “me” to get in the way of the Way.  It is unfathomably wonderful.  It’s not fireworks; I’ve been there and done that, and that has nothing to do with awakened living.

Awakened living is often small, often subtle.  But it's always gorgeous.  The smallest things take our breath away.  I say “our”, because my wife Betsy is right there with me, though she works in an office and keeps a different schedule.  I’m a night owl and she’s an early bird, but we have enough common hours for a constant miracle to unfold around us.

So, what about your life?  How do you get your life in order?  Let it go.  Let it go!  Let Tao do what Tao does.  Then you get to do nothing.  It is a glorious nothing.

The Nondual Diary: Giving Up On Social Networking

(I’ll post Part II of “Okay, but what about MY LIFE?” tomorrow, August 30.)

I'D NEVER BELONGED TO ANY TYPE of digital social networking.  I’d never missed it, never yearned for it.  This past month, however, I fell into joining both Twitter and Linked-in.  I didn’t think it would do me any harm to learn a little about digital networking, and I thought it might serve to promote Awakening Clarity.  There’s that ugly “promoting Awakening Clarity” popping back up again.  Ego has a hard time giving up on any venture that might shine it up, but I’m catching this stuff pretty quickly, so I’m happy about that.

Anyway, I did indeed learn something about networking.  I learned it’s not for me.  I just closed both accounts.

I’m not going to go into a rant about why flesh and blood humans shouldn’t be caught up in emails and text messages.  Clearly we should be, because we are.  It’s all part of What Is and it’s just fine.  For you.  What I discovered was that this flesh and blood human shouldn’t be caught up in emails and text messages, because they were blowing the hell out of my beautiful, quiet solitude that I worked so many years to cultivate and allow.  Along those same lines, I deactivated the email Push feature of my iPhone.  If I want an email, I’ll ask my phone for it, but I don’t want my physical life interrupted by digital demands.  That's my head crowding my body, and that's unacceptable. If I’m sitting at my PC, then I’m fair game.  If I’m not, I’m not.

I also learned something about Awakening Clarity.  I’m willing to spend some time writing it.  It’s not “my time” anyway; I’m very clear on that.  But I’m no longer willing to actively promote it.  If IT wants you to read what we can loosely refer to as Fred’s words, then IT is just going to have to lead you to them.  It’s not my job to hail a cab for you, or to teach you to read so that you bump into them.  So, here you go, take it or leave it, find it or forget it, whatever happens happens.  I already know that IT is in agreement with that, because that’s what’s already happened.  It doesn’t get any clearer than that.

Twitter taught me more about the spiritual marketplace in 30 days than general Internet access had in fifteen years.  Frankly, it’s pretty nauseating.  There are more scams and hams out there than I could have imagined.  I don’t want to be a part of it, I really don’t.  I don’t think anyone needs to read anything I’ve written unless they do.  I am a lot more interested in living quietly than I am in standing in the fast lane loudly promoting how and why YOU should live quietly.  I don’t actually have an opinion about how you should live your life.  I’m content for God to run you through you.  If She needs to run you through me, She’s going to have to be mighty damn clear about it, or She’s going to find a very balky mule here.

FredDavis7, social networker, is over and OUT.

"Okay, but what about MY LIFE?" (Part I of II)

IF THIS POSTING HITS CLOSE TO HOME, it may not be entirely comfortable.  But if that’s the case, then it may be particularly valuable.  It is the product of my own experience.  I’ve directly fielded the title question several times and several times indirectly, so it makes sense to address it publicly.



The first thing to ask is, “Who is it that says your life is not already in order?”  The personal opinion that says your life is not currently in order is actually the thing that’s out of whack.  Life is just fine, just as it is.  There’s nothing personal about it; it’s beyond all that. It is as it is.  It’s when we make the false claim that it’s our life that the problems begin.  If I take this apparently separate life, Fred’s so-called life, as genuinely separate, then I’m simply going to suffer.  “My life” will never, ever “be in order”, even when I reach the goal that I set up previously as a finite measurement of when I’d be able to state, “My life is now in order.  I won.”

In other words, once I get what I currently deem as the right partner, the right job, house, car, child, season, weather, wardrobe, vacation, review, whatever it is I think I want, I’m still going to be living in a world of lack, because that’s what duality is all about.  Duality, charming as it can fleetingly be, is inherently unsatisfactory.  We want what we want until we get it.  Then we want that other thing over there.  That other thing is, surely, positively, the fix.  Until it’s not.

Contrarily, Nonduality is not at all about getting what we want.  Sorry, but it’s just not.  Nonduality is about wanting what we get.  When we recognize that there is just One Life, just One Thing Going On, and see that this so-called “my life” is simply an infinitesimally minor, rapidly rising and falling event within that Much Larger Happening, and that that happening is currently expressing itself as What Is, then I’m on the way to peace of heart.  Peace is not about getting hold of “what isn’t”.  It just isn’t.  Peace is about allowing What Is to get hold of us.

The most common analogy for these apparently separate human lives is of waves and ocean.  The wave certainly has a distinct shape for a while within relativity, a certain movement, but it’s always ocean, always water, and never actually possesses a separate beingness. It’s not enough to accept this intellectually the way one accepts arithmetic.  I have to live it.  In truth, I have to let It live me.

Longing is the core of mystery.

Longing itself brings the cure.

The only rule is, Suffer the pain.

Your desire must be disciplined,

and what you want to happen

In time, sacrificed.

             

--Rumi

             

It’s always fair to say, “My life feels out of order.”  That’s a statement of a subjective notion, not of an objective fact.  It leaves room for doubt, meaning it leaves room for me to doubt my own imaginary story-lines and opinions concerning the pure, cold facts of Life.  These make believe stories and opinions are what cause my suffering.  I create an entirely imaginary mental world, within which I am inevitably the shining center, and when the rest of the world fails to fall into line with my central position and my imaginary mental projections, as will inevitably happen, I get my feelings hurt; I get disappointed and frustrated; I get scared and angry, and I suffer, suffer, suffer.  It’s just this simple and clear.  It is brutally clear.  There’s not the slightest bit of wiggle room and there lies the rub.

Let me tell you how this “get my life in order” thing has worked for me.  I’ve noticed that it’s worked the same way for a number of others as well.  Mind you, I’m not making any blanket statements.  Check it out for yourself.  Pronouncements that decry and deny the possibility of contradiction upon pain of said contradiction being labeled “unenlightened”, are themselves being presented from duality, not Wholeness.  Wholeness just isn’t that simple, folks.  Don’t take my word for that or anything else.  Look closely for yourself and see what you see.  Accept what you see, not what I see.  Beyond me, who really cares about what I see?  It’s what you see that counts for you.

Truly authentic spirituality, as I understand it, is a whole lot more about inclusiveness than it is exclusiveness.  Exclusiveness is always a narrow, defensive position.  Wholeness does not find it necessary to defend positions and it’s never narrow: it’s happy to allow, accept and experience all possibilities.  It is delighted to express and entertain completely confusing paradoxes.  What fun!  If someone is throwing a spiritual rock at another spiritual person or position, then at least begin by looking with more suspicion upon the thrower than you do the target.  Examine your writers, teachers and Internet gurus closely, including this one.  It’s fine to adopt someone else’s bright ideas provisionally, but in the end, accept nothing that you yourself cannot confirm.  The Buddha said the same.

My life, as it were, was really ugly for a long time, like about thirty-five years.  I had my ups and downs, but by and large my downs were more impressive than my ups, and certainly a lot more common.  For almost twenty of those years I considered myself to be on a devoted spiritual path and still my life stayed ugly.  In fact, before it was over, it got ugly to the point of destitution and near-death.  Do you know why?  My life was ugly as hell for a long time, because my life was a perfect reflection of my true spiritual position.

I was trying to walk a spiritual path while living a lifestyle that was foreign to spiritual values, while simultaneously insisting upon absolute control of “my life”.  I ran both of them, spiritual and secular, sacred and profane, right into the ground.  (Move on past the obvious paradox of how could “I” run anything into the ground if there’s no “I” there to do it.  It’s a very decent question, but it won’t be helpful to you for us to address it at this stage.  One truth at a time is the rule here.)

We’ll explore more of the actual example of “my life” in our next posting.

 To be continued...

"What IS enlightenment, anyway?"

I HAD AN EMAIL EXCHANGE with my dear friend Tammy out in Portland yesterday, and then a phone call from another kindred soul, Charlie, who also lives in Portland.  Questions and comments that arose in those visits have led me to directly address the raison d’être of both Awakening Clarity and Nonduality itself: Self-realization.

Amazingly enough, what we are going to openly discuss here is probably the best kept open secret in the history of man.  It is now, chiefly because of the Internet—which is itself an integral part of Evolution—easily available knowledge, but it is not easily converted knowledge.  To discover it is not to actually acquire it, so to speak.  If I mucked around long enough in a diamond mine in South Africa, I could surely discover a fine gem.  But since they probably wouldn’t let me leave with it, it would not be correct to say that I had acquired it simply because I found it.  Reach exceeds grasp in each example, but in the case of enlightenment, it exceeds it by about a million miles.

To make matters yet more strange and difficult, the nature of realization is such that even if I actually sneaked a diamond away from the mine, I might look in my pocket a mile down the road only to find that it had disappeared.  That is not to say it wouldn’t still be in my pocket; it just means that I would be unable to see, experience or utilize it.  Note that language here is rough and the topic is extremely subtle.  I don’t have enough time or patience to maintain Nondual Correctness.

Pointer number one is that enlightenment is essentially verbness.  It’s happening, or it’s not, and it’s happening right here, right now, or it’s not happening at all.  Enlightenment is like eating: projection and memory may prove to be fascinating entertainment, but they are no substitute for the real thing.

Realization has always been an open secret, because there are excellent signposts pointing toward it, and trails leading to it all over the world and have been for millennia.  The problem is that these signposts and trails only become clear as signposts and trails in hindsight.  Unless we are actually abiding within awakening, we will inevitably mistake the path for the destination.  Given enough time and enough agreement, we’ll make a religion out of it.  If we are not given as much time, and/or not as much agreement, then it will be labeled a cult.  The difference is chiefly measured in size, not in relative proximity to truth.  There is no such thing as proximity to truth.

The gap between impossible-to-comprehend and obvious-to-see can only be crossed through an intuitive leap which cannot be forcibly initiated by the subject.  We must, for lack of a better word, call upon the phenomenon of grace.  Enlightenment cannot be figured out.  It cannot be taught or bought.  Historically speaking, it is only “fallen into” in the very rarest of cases.  Having an awake teacher can help immeasurably, but absolutely nothing guarantees its transmission.  So it appears we are really up against it, and from this spring the many myths.

The good news is that what has been learned over millennia by wiser people than myself, living in jungles and deserts and mountain caves, is that grace can, in essence, be cultivated.  To be struck by lightning is generally thought to be simply monumental bad luck.  But tote a long metal pole around a golf course in the middle of a thunder storm, and one could be said to be courting it, even cultivating it.  Nothing insures it, but your odds of being struck go way up. 

The same can be said of being struck sane. Pointer number two is:  We can invite Self-realization to strike the first time through our initial willingness and invite it to continue striking, always in the Now, through our ongoing expression of willingness.  I hate it for you, but I'm talking about spiritual practices here.  They aren't necessary unless they are, but IF they are, then they ARE. 

Until they're not.

Here is pointer number three, right off the bat: Approach realization as if it is real.  Doubt is fine, even healthy, but cynicism is poisonous.

Pointer number four is: Be willing to admit to yourself that you’re not “realized” if you’re not currently realizing.  You’ll never in a million years find what you think you already have. If you have to wonder, or you have to ask, then it's not happening.

Now, at last, putting the universe in a nutshell, here is what is being realized when It is realizing:

There is just One.  This is the central truth.  It’s the ramifications of this apparently simple, central, living truth that are staggering to both intellect and ego.

If there is just One, guess what there isn’t?  Two.  There is only Not-two.  So there’s not an independent you.  There’s no Fred, no Tammy, no Charlie.  There is certainly Fredness, Tammyness, and Charlieness: there are certainly memories and patterns and opinions and all that, but they are unmistakably seen to be running by themselves.  There is not actually anyone home.  It’s all just happening.  Everything is rising and falling spontaneously with the all-accepting spaciousness that is You.

In the absence of a “me”, of a “center”, of a “reference point”, then everything is seen to be just as it is.  It’s not good, it's not bad; it's not big or little; it's not fast or slow.  It just is. It can be said to be perfect, because there’s no not-perfect, but even this “perfect” description is a layering on.  There is only What Is, beyond judgment, beyond description, simply beyond.  And yet it’s right here.

The word “persona” comes from the Greek word for mask.  God is wearing a whole bunch of masks and the “you” you-think-you-are is one of them.  As I once heard Adyashanti tell a questioner, “Don’t misunderstand me.  I’m not saying you don’t have free will.  I’m saying you don’t exist.”  He means there is no such thing as an individual.  There’s no separation in the universe, no division whatsoever.  There is no center, and no circumference; no beginning and no end.  There’s just One Thing.  We can call it God, or we can call it Lucy: It doesn’t care.  But YOU ARE IT, and I can say the same, as can the daffodil and the locust.  There is just One True Story: I Am.  (There is still a little storyness built in there, but that’s for another day.)

One has to be willing to relinquish “me-ness” in order to embrace This Reality.  That’s why this teaching has never been large, and regardless of the availability of these teachings today, it’s why this teaching will NEVER be large.  Who the hell wants to do THAT?  No one, until they cannot do otherwise.  This "otherwise" is why this teaching will always be passionate, regardless of size. Truth builds a fire within the dream-character that all the dream oceans in all the dream worlds cannot drown out.

So let’s tell the truth: few are willing to make the required apparent sacrifice for more than a moment.  That's fine.  Have a party.  Go talk about that moment, and how great it was, and how you can’t wait until you have another one.  Listen to the stories about THEIR special moments.  No problem.  Build a better, more special dream-character and have a more spectacular dream life.  There's no reason you shouldn't.  But please, let's not call it spirituality.  Let's call a spade a spade, as Chogyam Trungpa did many years ago.  That's spiritual materialism.

I am well aware that we have opened Paradox’s Box with this post.  All that can wait.  I’ve brought a glimpse of Light to the page without overdoing it and I’m out of here.  Not that I was ever here, of course.

The Nondual Diary: Reality on Rye

Reality on Rye

I met my friend Larry for lunch at a deli today.  We’d never met in person, but Larry is a regular follower of Awakening Clarity.  He consistently leaves comments and sends me personal emails.  We’ve gone back and forth quite a bit.  He happens to live in a town near to mine.

From the very beginning it was evident to me that Larry was a really earnest seeker. Regular readers will know that many consider earnestness to be the most important quality a spiritual aspirant can have.  I mean by that someone who is aspiring for Self Realization.  Anyway, Larry asked me to lunch and I accepted.

Larry recognized my picture from the website and came out to greet me when I arrived.  It’s a busy college deli, but he had come early and found a great table tucked away in the back.  I love that forethought and that care.  This is a man who is preparing the ground ahead of time for a meeting of importance.  He is not taking anything for granted; he’s attentive.  He is opening the window and pulling back the drapes just in case the sun decides to shine.  It did.

My friend is somewhere near my age—I’m in my late 50’s—and he’s quite a normal guy, which was great.  We could just talk as two ordinary men of earnestness about important questions.  We could talk about the most important questions.  I had already told Larry via email that I was not much of a small talker.

The sun began to noticeably shine (it is always already shining) about forty-five minutes into our time together, which was a total of two hours.  It began to shine in response to questions I asked.  I asked Larry about his current experience, right then and there. I asked him to test things, to question things, to offer his experience of things as they were right there, at our table, as we were sitting there.  There was no hypothetical talk, no theory, no bullshit.  We had already spoken of the paths of monks and mystics, which is all quite interesting, but in the end, who really cares?  How about us?  Those tales are just stories, no matter how interesting they are.  They are someone else’s drama.  I suggested we take a look at Larry’s path: professional, late-life father, husband, householder, seeker, and most importantly, Larry-the-believer-in-specific-things.

He’d sent me an email a few days before that had already tipped me on why he had not seen his Original Face, though he certainly wanted to and had been trying to, and absolutely planned to.   He just had a few conditions that God needed to meet first.

Understanding all of that as background, I had come ready to deal with those specific beliefs.  I knew that in the absence of those beliefs, the sun would noticeably, automatically be seen to be shining.  I would see Myself consciously sitting across the table from Fredness.  What I mean by that is that I saw Myself sitting across from me as soon as we sat down.  What Larry saw was Fred.  I was seeing Truth.  Larry was seeing illusion.  There is only One.  All I had to do was move my friend from standing as Larryness over to standing as Awareness.  Not later, right then. Once that stand has been taken, there’s never any unseeing it.  Never.  We can think we unsee it, we can believe we unsee it, but we don’t, we can’t.  The snake has been seen to be a rope, as the old saying goes.

We can only be Awakeness right now.  We can only be Awakeness right here.  There’s no other time, no other place.  We can’t wait until we’ve quieted our minds, or put our children through college, or until the next book comes in the mail from Amazon, because surely this damn book, the one I thought last week would “get me there”, is NOT going to “get me there,” but maybe the next one will!  If not, I’ve got TWO MORE on my Amazon Wishlist that I KNOW will!!

That will never happen.  Never.  I am not leaving any room to squirm here.  NEVER.  Awakening is NOW or NEVER.

And then, for Larry, there came The Shift.  Gently.  No fireworks.  The rainbow that had been hiding Divinity from Itself simply disappeared.  My teacher gave me this rainbow metaphor, which I passed along to Larry.  Many people use clouds in front of the sun to teach with, and that’s fine, that’s beautiful, I use that metaphor as well.  But the rainbow is a little more subtle, a little truer.  This is because a rainbow is not actually an obstruction; a rainbow doesn’t actually exist!  If we see a rainbow and we follow it to its end, we find only open air.  It’s an illusion.  It’s all part of the One Thing.

The Dream is just such an illusion, just like a rainbow.  And every excuse we have for not being awake right now is a dream excuse.  We are always already awake, but we are claiming obstruction from a rainbow we ourselves have invented!  For an hour I talked openly to Myself through the Fred mask and the Larry mask.  I-as-we laughed at the absurdity of it, at the wonderful trickery of Me, of maya, of samsara, of illusion.  There was tearing up over there at the incredible relief.  There was laughter over here at the foolishness I clung to over there, and then mutual laughter when it was seen through and dropped.

The good news is that with each new True Seeing our capacity to accept seeing expands.  There is no lazy awakeness, which is what people really want.  We have to be attentive: new beliefs and opinions are constantly springing up.  We have to be willing to trade in our rightness for complete lostness.  Over and over and over.  There may be a shorter path for some, but there hasn’t been for me. 

I don’t know if Larry is living in truth tonight or not.  But I can tell you that he knows it.  So do you.  We don’t have to invent anything new.  We just have to drop something old.  We just have to drop something old and then remember something much, much older.

The Nondual Diary: When Suffering Comes Calling

I noticed this morning that I was beginning to believe that my internal descriptions about life (otherwise known as ungrounded opinions) were actually representations of life.  I noticed because my dearest friend, suffering, came to visit.  This may sound unpleasant, and it is at first, but whenever suffering drops by, it’s also the opportunity to discover the truth--if I’m willing to trade in comfort to do so.  I’m usually willing.  I was today.

Suffering was there in my bedroom the instant I opened my eyes.  My alarm clock, which I'd suspected to be broken, but had been unwilling to replace because I'd held the opinion that it shouldn’t be broken, proved itself to undeniably be broken.  I had held an opinion: shouldn’t.  Reality had held a fact: is.  Guess who’s going to win that argument?

The digital bell was showing up on the display, meaning that I, by God, had done my part.  I’d properly set the thing, yet no alarm signal had ever sounded.  I held the traitorous machine in my hand and eyed it with loathing.  It was a total maverick.  It had, in fact, gone rogue.  Although I had continued to subscribe to the freshly defunct myth that “My alarm clock should ring at the time I set it,” the alarm clock itself had opted out of that story.  The clock wasn’t supposed to ring and so it didn’t.  I chose to interpret this impersonal event as, God dropped the ball.  I had done my part, but the universe hadn't done its proper job, so something wrong happened.

The facts are simpler than that.  I did do my part.  The universe did its part, too.  In reality, the alarm wasn’t supposed to ring and so it didn’t.  Everything is just fine. What I chose to do with those raw facts was my completely my business.  I could leave them the hell alone, go buy another clock, and notice that I was supposed to get up at 9:30 instead of 7:00, or I could make up a contrary storyline and suffer.  God didn’t care which way I wanted to go.  I chose to be insane until my dear friend, suffering, forced me into line with sanity.

I noticed that I was holding onto an opinion: “I got up later than I was supposed to.”  I noticed that reality was holding a fact: “Fred got up at 9:30.”  There’s no suffering in that fact.  There’s no problem with that fact.  Truly, it is what it is.  So, in the face of the truth that hanging onto my storyline would require suffering, I dropped my comfort, which was, “I am right in my storyline and when the world contradicts that storyline, IT is wrong.”

The world is never wrong.  The world is what it is.  I can hold opinions that run counter to that.  But I have to suffer if I do.

Forget the idea that the alarm clock shouldn’t be broken; I completely dropped the notion that the alarm clock was broken.  It was doing exactly what it was supposed to be doing, which in this fresh new Now was not ringing.  I could now absolutely count on it not ringing.  Unless, of course, it rang.

I dropped the idea that I should have gotten up at 7:00 a.m.  I didn’t. What value was there in hanging onto the lie that I should have?  I noticed that thought made me feel stressful.  I noticed it reintroduced me to my friend, suffering.  I realized I had been insane.  I had thought I was supposed to get up 7:00 a.m. , but that wasn’t true.  I was supposed to get up at 9:30.  Great!  I had gotten up right on time!

By the way, lest you think that surrender equates with a lack of action, let me tell you that my alarm clock gets to not-ring if it wants to not-ring, but it’ll have to live in the freedom of not-ringing within the confines of the green plastic dumpster at the side of my house. The idea of “7:00 a.m.” is a collective myth; I know that.  The notion that “alarm clocks should ring when they’re set” is another collective myth; I know that, too.  Neither one is true unless they are.  But I’m absolutely going to buy a new alarm clock today and tomorrow morning I’ll find out if it is supposed to ring at 7:00 a.m. or not.  Either way, there’s no problem at all.

The Nondual Diary: Mountains and Valleys

Diary Day 2

Once or twice a year I get to surrender to pain in my abdomen.  It’s quite a treat.  I think it’s something akin to a ghost that’s left over from my heavy drinking days.  It used to haunt me more often and more viciously, but over the years it’s been a less and less frequent visitor.  When it shows up, however, it’s still a mean visit.



I haven’t had a drink in over 11 years, but that kind of karma can linger for a very long time.  Last night it woke me up at 1:00 a.m. with a less-than-gentle reminder of what it used to be like for me on a regular basis.  I took a variety of medications, but I couldn’t kick it.  So I ended up staying up all night working on Awakening Clarity.  I went to bed just prior to my wife, Betsy, leaving for work.  I was so grateful to have a warm, soft bed, fresh, wife-brewed tea, and a concerned kiss.  I can remember when I didn’t have it so good, pain or no pain.  I slept blissfully until The Right Annoying Sir Henry Hackett, our eight-pound feline fire alarm, decided it was time for me to get up and feed him.

When illness strikes it’s never fun, whether it hits us or someone we care about.  There is typically immediate resistance by the mind at what’s happening to whichever body we’re currently concerned about.  There’s the sudden, sure notion that this “shouldn’t be”.  Still, if it’s already happening, then it is only reasonable for us to recognize that it is. The mind loves to try and change the past.  It believes that if it resists long enough and hard enough the story will change to suit its whims.  Try it yourself and see if it works.  When I tried it, and I did indeed try it for 54 years, it never once worked.

To layer “shouldn’t be” on top of something that’s already taking place is the recipe for personal suffering.  Shouldn’t be is always a personal, positional judgment.  It’s never the truth.  How do we know?  The pain already is.  I defy you to find anything beyond an opinion that anything that is should not actually be.  There is no evidence whatsoever to support any notion of “what isn’t”.  Followers of “what isn’t” are insane and they suffer for their trouble.  Contrary to that position, there is there is a huge body of evidence to support What Is.  We call it Reality.

I can’t recall suffering for even a moment last night.  Maybe I did, but if I did, then it was so fleeting that it happened, as Ramesh would say, “vertically”.  In other words, there may have been a flash of resistance, but it was seen through so quickly that it never had a chance to play out “horizontally”, within time.

I’ve had a lot of help in the last few years at seeing through the idea of personal pain.  I experience recurrent sciatica.  Pain from sciatica is not much worse than a fresh stab wound.  But it’s not much better either.  I had a world class case of shingles in the bad old days and that hurt more than sciatica, but having shingles as badly as I did was about like being in childbirth for two or three months.  My mind won’t even let me get close to recalling that much pain.  But I do remember a lot of screaming.

The mind loves to say, “I can’t take any more.”  This is only true if it doesn’t have to take any more.  If more is there to be taken, the mind will take it.  It may not like it, but it will take it.  Here’s how I know.  Some years back I was in early recovery from alcoholism.  I had managed to put a few years of gentile poverty between me and a drink.  That was hard, very hard.  That kind of life challenge is enough to make or break most people.  I figured it was enough for me, too.  I was wrong.

The day after I picked up a medallion marking four years of sobriety I got arrested for some of that long-arm karma I was talking about.  I had just about gotten back on my feet from alcoholism; not quite, but close.  Along came a legal case that kept me in high heat for years.  Some scars from it will last until this body is vacated.  I got to spend six months’ worth of weekends in jail.  With sciatica, without pain medication.  Out on the county roads, picking up trash.

I remember being so grateful because I got to leave jail every Monday.  I’d call Betsy every Monday as happy and excited as I could be.  I understood what Byron Katie understands: the best thing about the past it that it’s over. Why would I want to bitch and moan about something that was finished?  It was Monday, and Mondays were GREAT days!  I could eat good food and take some pain meds!  Oh boy!

Recovery from alcoholism, poverty, sciatica and jail all taught me that the mind could take whatever was put on it until it couldn’t.  It taught me to surrender.  In 2006, while all of this was going on, I just gave up.  I didn’t want to play that story any more.  It was too awful, too ugly, too much.   And that’s exactly the moment I woke up from The Dream.  Seen in hindsight, the very worst things that ever happened to me turned out to be the very best.  I haven’t been married to a position since.

The Nondual Diary: A New Beginning (Day 1)

I'm a whole day early with the new post, and the new Awakening Clarity.  That in itself is a fine Sign.

This new approach to Awakening Clarity is chiefly in reaction to this website.  I sat down several days ago and did Byron Katie’s The Work on it, on how I saw the blog itself, and how I saw myself in its mirror.  I wanted to deconstruct and strip away any beliefs or opinions that might be arising from it.  I have to confess that I found quite a few cropping up. 

Ego is not a yesterday thing for me, and I’m not sure that it ever is for anyone.  I think response time is the largest change I’ve seen in myself.  It’s a continuous challenge to remain willing to surrender to truth rather than enhance, enlarge, or decorate it all to hell and back.  But I spot the sticky thoughts much quicker now.  Once again, I’ll turn to the blog itself to illustrate my point.

The day I started Awakening Clarity, which was about a month ago, I had no idea that I was sitting down at the computer to start a blog.  I’m an online bookseller, and I probably thought I was sitting down to do some business; I actually don’t remember.  But I do know that I didn’t have any thought of a blog in mind.  One thing led to another; I can’t even recall the sequence.  I sat down one night to do something else and stood up about six hours later with a new blog.

Now, the funny thing is how quickly I developed beliefs about this new venture.  I wanted it to be attractive and smart.  On one level that’s simply what humans do: the best we can with what we have.  It’s a natural, evolutionary drive toward efficiency.  That’s true enough, but it’s not entirely true.  On another level I’m putting this thing out into the world as a representative of my precious Fredness, of my egoic self, and regardless of how attractive and smart I might or might not be, I want you, the reader, probably a total stranger who will forever remain a total stranger, to nonetheless think highly of me!

We have dipped into the ridiculous.

That’s not a wonderful thing to dig up and then admit about myself, but this is why I do The Work.  I really do want to know, as soon as possible, whenever I’m slipping into delusion, which is pretty damn regularly.  If I am willing to know the worst about myself, I can probably continue to consistently see the Best.  In line with that, if I come here and tell on myself, that stimulates further diminishment of ego, which gives it less of a payoff to behave in such a way.  

To continue the whipping: Right after noticing that I wanted quite a special blog, the next thing I discovered was that I had quietly and unconsciously decided that a lot of people should read it!  Why?  Because my ego wants that kind of approval and attention, that’s why.  There’s no other valid reason.  I went with the servant-to-God thing first, because that allows me to present such grand, if false, intentions, and sets me to receive yet more accolade for such admirable humility.  That it would be undeserved accolade doesn't ruffle my ego one bit.  It'll take what it can get.

Anyway, I tried on, “I just want to be effective for God," but it just didn't hold water, not for long.

I noticed that in my meek role as God’s humble servant I immediately became concerned with the Almighty's Yahoo and Google rankings. Within a week I was looking at a better, more beautiful web host that I had absolutely no idea how to make work.  The precious Blogger STAT page lay perpetually open under one of my Foxfire tabs.  How many people had checked out God’s Very Own Blog yesterday?  From where?  How many are reading it RIGHT NOW?  And most importantly of all, WHAT DO THEY THINK OF THE GUY DOING IT?  The guy who's doing it for God, I mean, of course.

Let’s be candid.  Let’s at least try to tell the truth here.  If Being can do a whole damn universe, don’t you think It could probably do a decent spiritual blog?  And if it was going to do one, wouldn’t it maybe pick Richard Gere or Annette Bening  or maybe OPRAH or Eckhart Tolle to write it, so that somebody would actually give a damn about it?  This is a little backwater beat that may serve to humble me if I steer it right, but it won't even do that if I allow it to inflate me.  And I'm very, very good at allowing stuff to inflate me.  In the absence of fact, even my imagination will suffice.

To cut myself just a little slack, maybe there’s a bit of something okay here.  I’m not sticking up a convenience store; I’m not selling heroin to children.  Perhaps there is some altruistic motivation, who knows?  But let’s not get carried away.  It’s mostly about ego.  It just is.  I hate it, but it just is.  And that’s why the new Awakening Clarity is going to focus on ferreting out stupid egoic movements and obvious apparent faults of character.  I'm setting up to take this ego down.

I started to put a comma after down, and type in "friends".  See how badly ego wants a following?  Even an anonymous following?  For God's sake...

Well, I’m glad to have you along for the ride, if you're there, even if there’s just one of you.  Thanks.

See you later,

Fred

Pick a World and Live In It, Part VI, Conclusion

Housekeeping Notes:

First, let me welcome Austria as the newest country to visit Awakening Clarity.  Namaste.

Second, I want to announce that beginning tomorrow we will open both a new series, and a new type of series.   We will do it until we don’t, and it will be called The Nondual Diary.  I hope and think it will be worth our while, whether you’re a long-time veteran or something of a newcomer.  I do not expect it to be as “technical” as this series ended up being.  I certainly hope it is not.  It’s my wish that the direction become simpler and shorter.  Starting tomorrow we’ll see what actually comes to pass.

And lastly, today’s installment will conclude our Pick a World series. Thank goodness! I do think it’s an important topic, because to go back to my opening statements, which stated that in my experience,  mixing up the apparent two worlds of the relative and the Absolute it is the single most common, confusing, and ultimately penalizing aspect  of the apparent paradox of Nonduality.  But I now understand why it is so rarely addressed head-on.  It’s very, very messy.  Perhaps it'll be a little less messy for those of you who have stuck this thing out.

I don’t know whether or not I’ve successful been a successful transmitter of pratipAdya-pratipAdaka sambandha (essentially the transmission of special knowledge through words alone), but I know that I am worn out from the attempt.  Let us finish it.

Pick a World and Live In It

Part VI: Conclusion

Much of what I have said in this article is what all the mystics of all time have also said.  There is little if anything left to say in Nonduality from the standpoint of genuine originality; I can and do hope there is some originality in this current presentation of ancient discoveries.  The mystics tell us is that “we” and “me” are misnomers.  There is only an “I”, a singular, Absolutely absent, relatively present No-thing expressing itself as What Is; that which is showing up right now.

It shows up as a multitude of image-appearances within an illusory world of cause and effect, time and space, life and death; beginning, middle, and end, with all sorts of karmic repercussions, lifetimes, the whole nine yards.  What is totally obvious, yet nearly always overlooked is that the exact same personal-feeling-conscious “I” who is reading this sentence is always and already that very same undivided cosmic I Am which presents Itself as both Dream and Dreamer.  As Ramesh Balsekar said, “The seeker is the sought.” Whether we are speaking of the unmanifested, or the manifested aspect of this No-thing, those aspects forever remain distinct, but inseparable. 

In short, no matter what it may feel like to so-called individuals such as the typist and the reader, there is in fact just One and this One is an ever-present “verbness” that is currently both Being and being experienced by Itself via the illusion of “other”.

Sometimes the pointers have been clear through the ages and sometimes they have been veiled, but if they are coming from truth, as many, many are, then regardless of the culture or the time period, they will always point toward this same conclusion.   Local conditioning tends to color the presentation of the truth, but not the transmission of the core truth itself.   Whether seen in South America or New South Wales, whether it was first thing this morning or five thousand years ago, the truth is the truth and that is that.

Manifestation, in association with the myths of an individual me complete with free will and destiny, in combination with its story of birth, drama and death, is referred to here to as the Dream, or the relative world.   The Unmanifested, within which that Dream appears on and in is referred to here as Reality, or the Absolute world.  The two are in fact one, but they don’t seem like one.  Again I will borrow from Ramesh, who coined a phrase (or at least I got it from Ramesh) to describe this paradox.  What we are in fact is Unity.  What we experience is diversity.  So Ramesh labeled it Unicity.  I cannot improve on that word.

We are at long last there.  I have written thousands of words to establish enough intellectual trust, so to speak, and to insure enough intuitive understanding to offer the following statement:

What works within the context of the Dream, within the apparent world of diversity, works only within that theoretical framework.  Insofar as practical mechanics go, the Dream has nothing whatsoever to do with Reality and vice-versa.  The Dream is generally logical, sequential, and caused.  To enter Reality we have to intuitively embrace paradox, thereby leaving logic, sequence and cause at the door.

There can be no cross-pollination, so to speak.  The problems that arise from attempted “cross-pollination” typically stem from our attempt to manipulate or justify personal outcomes within the Dream.  We do so via some logical viewpoint achieved either through intellectual study and projection of some supposed Nondual logic.  This can even come about from referencing supposed Nondual truth acquired previously via true seeing, but which is now being referenced through the debilitating hazard of memory.

Both the typical entranceway and the trapdoor of Nonduality hinge on the fact that there is indeed a sort of apparent logic to it.  The basic tenets can, in fact, be held by the mind and be understood.  But the mind can never hold more than a few loose threads of such a panoramic tapestry.  It can’t possibly hold Truth Itself, but only a story about the Truth Itself.  The human brain can only behold Reality; it cannot contain it.

Attempts to manipulate personal outcomes within the Dream are by their very nature always going to be positional and self-serving, which is diametrically opposed to the concept of Wholeness from which the strategies spring.  Nor can a personal philosophy be pulled from Wholeness and wired into the Dream.

Examples will serve us better than discussion.

It is seen from the Absolute view that everything is just fine exactly as it is.  All is well.  This view, however, does not migrate from that seeing into us being a socially unconscious, inactive, unhelpful slug in the Dream, simply because that Absolute position is currently being wrongly recalled by an entirely relative, socially unconscious, inactive, unhelpful slug.  That would, in fact, amount to a karma-inducing, Dream-state decision although from the Absolute view the notion of decision is seen as fallacious.  From the Absolute view, which is itself something of a misnomer, everything is seen to be happening utterly spontaneously.

The decision to “not practice” in order to “achieve” enlightenment is in fact a practice.  The goal of “meditating oneself into enlightenment” is seen as ridiculous, but so is not meditating in order that the goal might be secretly achieved through some devious, sleight-of-hand surrender game.  These positions are at heart erroneous and simply do not transfer.

The notion that I am going to “let loose the reins of my life and let Life run itself” is not going to work if you’re crossing a busy street, unless your secret objective is to wind up on a hospital or the graveyard. Go re-read the Bhagavad Gita: effort counts. That’s how the game is played and there is no way to short cut it without also short-circuiting it.  The observed practical mechanics seen from one so-called state are simply inapplicable to its apparent opposite.

Let me illustrate all of this with a helpful story that I'm stealing from Dennis Waite, who borrowed it from someone else. 

Many years ago there was a meeting of holy men in India, representatives of the Cat School and the Monkey School.  The Cat School mystics said that enlightenment was a matter of grace, because all one had to do was “go limp” like a kitten, and God would pick you up in his mouth like a mother cat and deliver you into your goal.  Without that grace, one would go on dreaming forever.  The Monkey school mystics said that enlightenment was due to hard work, because just like a baby monkey, you had to hang onto your mother as tightly as possible if you wanted to be safely carried home.  Hard work was the way home.

I don’t know what conclusion the old mystics came to, but I can tell you the conclusion I have reached.  Like everything else of significance that I have discovered in spirituality, it is not an either-or answer.  It’s both-and.  We have to have grace in order to wake up.  Hard work seems to be a an easier target for grace than laziness. Either way, once we have been struck by grace, we then we have to work continually to remain in the condition it put us in.  

 The notion of a true “lazy man’s way to present enlightenment” is absurd.  There may be no one here and no one to do it, but without consistently stripping down our beliefs and opinions anyway, sleepy-time is right around the corner.

One again, there is simply no short cut.  Ramana Maharshi always advised his followers who already had an established practice to continue it.  He knew that if they pretended to be in a place where they no longer needed training wheels it was just a matter of time before they crashed their bikes onto the driveway.  We need what we need until we don’t.  “Don’t” just happens; we are not the arbiter of it.

While I’ve never met him personally, I nonetheless have little doubt that the Dalai Lama is consciously awake.  So he has to know that all is already hunky-dory.  I notice that he has worked tirelessly for his people anyway.  Mother Teresa was either consciously awake or certifiably insane; take your pick.  I choose to think she was awake.  I notice that even though she had to know that everything was fine, she spent all of her time and energy and attention in the steady relief of the suffering of others.

I think Adyashanti could finagle a fine personal retreat and never speak or work again in his life if he so chose.  He's got to have more connections than a PC motherboard.  Yet he chooses to speak to no-account madmen like myself.  Why on earth would he bother?  I suggest it is because he knows there is just One.  There is no need to short-cut One and no way to short-cut One.  There is no center, no diameter, no circumference.  There is no beginning and no end.  Adyashanti is doing what he does because even though he “knows better”, he constantly chooses to know nothing and thus he allows doing to happen of its own accord. Thus he and we are made happier, more peaceful, and more consciously Whole because of it, paradox or not.

I'm in.

Thank you for your patience with this article.