JAMES
WAITE is a spiritual writer and teacher who lives in Berkeley,
California. He has previously written for Awakening Clarity, and is the
author of two books, Fading in the Light, and Real, Whole, Here and Happy!
His beautiful essay here invites us to join him in living an authentic
life. Doing so is our foremost calling, a calling that is a joy to
answer.
- Reach James at nondualityliving@gmail.com.
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AUTHENTIC LIVING: FIDELITY TO REALITY
I
clipped a New Yorker cartoon the other day and still glance at it now
and then with delight. There’s a picture of a wide-eyed, grinning man
dressed up in a superman outfit with high boots and a cape; on his
mighty chest is a large capital “I”. The banner above our guy says:
“Introducing IDIOTMAN!”
The caption below quips: “At the end of the day…It is what it is!”
Ah,
what sweet irony! I can relate to the many times I’ve subtly pointed
out the obvious with friends and felt like Idiotman! It seems in our
culture that only an idiot would look at things the way they really are!
FIDELITY TO REALITY
The
subtle humor of this is not only how it nails the typical ways we’re
thoroughly conditioned from childhood to think and feel, but also the
constant contradictions we face in the aware living of a life in
fidelity to reality. From an aware perspective, we see the obvious
absurdity of our conceptions about life and the real living of it. For to live what we are, is to know clearly what we are not. And that “reality” is not anything like we apparently sane adults imagine it to be…
IT IS WHAT IT IS!
In
this context, four elements – space, peace, beauty and relationship –
seem to form the core of what we could call a dwelling in “authentic
living”. And we could roll these four into one ultimate expression –
Love! In fact, that’s all life is ever really about! It is only within
this love – this residing in neither form nor formlessness, neither
matter nor spirit - but both and more - that we find the sacred relationship of self-to-Self. It’s this subtle yet direct
knowing of the indescribable truth of our being - this loving awareness
which is our common heritage - which we’re going to explore here.
SPACE TO BE
Within
this inner spaciousness, the every-day rising and falling of the minds
conflicted ideas about what should or should not be occurring, are seen
simply (and at times, painfully) for what they are – mental activity
that may or may not be relevant to the moment. And of course, if there’s
to be any authentic life, it must be lived in fidelity to this moment. For it is here – and only here – in the spacious non-experience of our being, that life is actually lived.
THIS IS A MEDITATION
The nature of meditation and being
is to serve the moment in whatever form or action this moment serves
up. It asks of us a complete “co-operation with the inevitable” in a
constantly renewed surrendering to what is happening here and now.
VAPORWARE OF OUR MIND
Within
the vast spaciousness of our being we find our physical and
psychological self-conscious nature. It’s an almost entirely sensual and
mental activity (the six senses) that provides a sense of an
identifiable, personal self that appears and disappears, rises
and falls. That mind-made “me” we think we are that finds its vague
self-sense in bits and pieces of interpreted, stored and fragmented
memories. That “me” that invents its very own future with conditioned
thoughts – all merely mental activity believed to be true. Mind-stuff. Vaporware.
THE WEATHER TODAY
This sense of self and other is our interior “weather” –
it presents a moving feast of data to awareness. Within this universal
awareness (which we ultimately are, and which itself has no qualities)
consciousness produces its own qualities with its heart-felt and
mind-labeled sense of what’s going on – that personal interpretation
through thoughts and feelings that we call our “reality”.
From this conscious, personal perspective, some moments are seen as clear and serene; others are viewed as cloudy and choppy. (Just
now, weather-wise, there’s a little chop on the water…mind is rattling
on about some old, deeply conditioned sense of injustice related to the
current political scene. None of these ideas are ultimately believed to
be real here; yet some of these same ideas - particularly about politics
- are surprisingly sticky! Sticky-because-emotional, right? They’re
personally very attractive to “James”, to ego. They appeal to our
personal need to think we know; to the endless delusions the mind
imagines in order to paper over the simplicity and serenity of our
underlying, natural well-being…on and on mind rambles… ”I’m tired”…”
finish this”…”he said that!”… “they better not win!”...yadda, yadda...)
THE ACTION OF COMPASSION
The main thing is that all of this interior verbal and emotional activity comes and goes, rises and falls, within awareness. But here’s the rub – for while there’s an impersonal disengagement, there’s also a very intimate and almost
personal engagement. It’s a subtle discernment of, and compassion for,
the various imagined and real aches and pains, fears and concerns, that
the body-mind produces. This involves a deep willingness – a constant
letting go – into the breathtaking immensity and fragility of this human
and divine condition in which we also find our Self. A resting in the
ground of this often bittersweet human experience of compassionate
living that Zen calls “the Great Heartbreak”.
PEACE IN UNCERTAINTY
Authentic
living is a dance that's engaged in now lightly, now reluctantly, now
elegantly, now clumsily –but we always find our feet are set firmly on
the floor of a certain peace. And the nature of this certainty – this peace –
is found in our resting in uncertainty. In truth. In truth we abandon
any sense of knowing; we abide not in fiction but in fact: we never know
what will happen! OMG! It’s like riding a horse called “Life” – we
loosen the reins, give it its head, and let Life find its own way to go
where it wants to go. All the while, there’s a peaceful and gentle
watching without attempting to control where Life is taking us. And so
it goes every day, and every moment of every day –boots, saddle, to
horse and away!
THE WATCHFUL EYE OF BEING
In
other words, aware living is like being a mirror-smooth reflecting
pool, over which pass gaggles of thoughts, giggles of gladness, groans
of sadness, and all the winds and whimsies of the day. In fact, we could
say that life and living is all about these relationships to this
passing of phenomena over the watchful eye of being.
REAL RELATIONSHIP HAS NO BOUNDARIES
In
natural well-being, we remain active and engaged – that is, alertly
aware – of all our passing states, feelings and sensations, but are not
bound by them. They’re simply seen and noted. This detached engagement
can only come from a place of recognition that is not founded in belief;
a place that knows we are not our mind or our body. Of course, this
recognition must be more than a mental understanding; it must come from a
sudden or gradual realization – a true awakening to our real nature
beyond any conceptualization or feeling about it.
THE SUDDENNESS OF REALITY
All
this remains theoretical and perhaps aspirational for us unless we are
graced with a profound glimpse of our timeless nature. It is here, in
this suddenness of reality, that we discover not our life, but
life itself. And what we find is we have always been graced with this
inherent contentment. That’s when our gratitude goes off the charts! We
marvel that we misplaced our identity for so long, and how innocently we
mistook words for reality, map for territory.
AN ENDLESS DISCOVERING
Authentic living invites us to balance like a surfer poised on the wave-edge of now.
We’re simultaneously moved by and moving with, the flow. There’s a
watching of the “old world of the mind" as Aldous Huxley once called it,
all the while being aware of the infinite freshness of new appearances
passing in this dynamic, living now. Indeed we live this equipoise – this recognition that all phenomena in consciousness are appearances that come and go, and that which sees this is what we are – pure awareness. We are this,
this life-force, this spirit seeing the whole of itself. Or put another
way, what we are and this is, is God, Buddha, Love, Infinity, and
another current favorite word these days –Idiotman!
It's
a kind of freedom that is truly all-encompassing and all forgiving; we
are free to fumble, to miss a step in this dance of appearances. To not
be bound to any idea or ideal of perfection. Or Enlightenment. Or Self and Other.
GRACE IN SUFFERING
Of course, it’s that sense of being a separate me and you,
that starts the conflict that produces our suffering. And it is this
suffering that alerts us to the various ways we resist reality as it
presents itself in the moment. So we come to truly value not only our
sublime and limitless nature of self but also our limited and
conditioned human capacity to do “dumb” things and suffer for them. And
we come to embrace our suffering with compassion – not only for others,
but also, for our self. And to recognize the value of this friction in
the flow, as an early warning device that will reliably tell us bodily
when we're becoming too attached to personal desires and beliefs
(especially “Spiritual” beliefs) that in reality, do not exist. In fact,
we can pretty much trust our body to tell us when we’re resisting what is. (Here
comes a daily, dawning observation: my body, it seems, is directly
connected to reality! An unrelenting reality that constantly challenges
the conditioned ego/mind to let go of its imaginings…to ease off on the
resistance; to ”let come what comes and let go what goes”)
A SURRENDERED LEANING
We come to understand not so much the meaning of the word “trust” as the real, active and engaged nature of trusting. It’s an effortless trusting that involves an act of willingness; a surrendered leaning into whatever dynamic presents itself in this streaming nowness.
We remain here.
We remain in the awareness of our natural well-Being; in the spacious
beauty of a profoundly peaceful relationship of self; in the recognition
of Oneness right here in the middle of this divine and human paradox.
We rest in a certain knowing that… it is what it is – love.
____________________________________________________
“Every heart to love will come, but like a refugee”
Leonard Cohen
IT'S A GOOD THING THAT THOUGHT HAS ALMOST NOTHING TO DO WITH REALITY. Not that thought isn't a part of reality – a running commentary based on our conditioned memory – it's just that thought is not nearly the whole of it. In living an authentic life, we move – we lean –into the way life is moving in any given moment. That is, we lean into love. We lean into life. For it is only in living a life freed from our belief in ideas about it,
freed from the freighting of our programmed memory and its coloring of
our present experience, that we come into direct contact with the vital
and alive nature of authentic living.
The center of our being
The
wellspring of authentic living must come from real peace; from a
contented place. This place, this moment, is free of all our stored
beliefs – the psychological memory of “me”. It is free of all wanting anything to be other than exactly what it is here and now.
There is a seeing and a releasing of all wanting, of all desiring. This
comes with the profound recognition that ego – the mind’s portrait of
being a Jack or a Jane – is simply and clearly seen as a kind of conjurers trick – a creation of imagination.
Living in the center of the world
In
the middle of the constant bump and grind of a “personal” life
generated by our conflicted mind-world, we rest in the sweet spot of
this eternal moment. We get to let go of what is, after all, just
another story of “me” and “you”. And we let all things happen according
to their nature. We go about our life and our day alertly compassionate.
That is, we live passively engaged with all the senses (including the
mind which serves well as a sixth sense) in an intimacy with whatever
this moment presents. We dwell in a love that is open and opening. A
love filled with, as Nisargadatta Maharaj said, “the great sadness of
compassion". This compassion (which comes from the Latin “to suffer
with") does not deny or distort with panaceas of hoping and coping; it
deals directly, lovingly, with the underlying causes of our apparent
suffering. This engagement is simultaneously not personal and yet deeply
intimate.
An intimacy with all things
The relationship of the moment is entered into wholly and without conditions. We step into what is – into life living itself, free from the belief
in personal ideas and ideals which produce our conflicted experience of
it. We’re no longer blinded by our precious conception of self and its
preservation; we see globally that there is, in reality, no me and no other.
It's a simple perception that, in truth, there is “nothing wrong" with
any manifestation of spirit – with the innate perfection of this moment.
Of course, this perfection includes apparent imperfection – that’s just the mind's idea that something could be or should be other than it is. In fact, perfection is just an idea – a still-born concept about reality.
The teaching of the moment
In aware living, we discover not only what it means to be fully human but also what it means to be.
To be requires us to be free from the ego mind, free from choice, free
from any sense of a self that is choosing. We are then open to this
thoughtless moment. As Jean Klein points out, we “live in the perceived,
not in the conceived. Only the perception is right. The conception is
memory."
Living in perception – free of perfection – subtly combines time and space as we humans experience it, with the timeless and spaceless divine nature of our being. We relinquish all doing and simply go along for the ride. This living involves a certain uncertainty; we live without knowing, without a plan, without an effort to shape any outcome. And we trust.
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Trusting life
It's
useful to remember that life has always been right in whatever it
produces. And that all our apparent misfortune has brought us to the
recognition of our natural good fortune. That, with or without trust,
life has given us exactly what we needed. When we deeply perceive that
whatever life presents in the moment is reality, we begin to live heaven
on earth. We rest in accepting, in a being that has no investment in
becoming. All action or non-action flows from this source of who we are
and what this is. It is the action of truth. The action of trust. We
recognize the conditioned nature of all our seeking, of all our craving,
of all our contracting around cultural, social and psychological
descriptions of how life should be. And we expand way, way beyond
our limited sense of self. We embrace not a fantasy depiction of
reality, but reality itself. It is this recognition that brings us
unending joy.
Peace in our time
The nature of joy and delight is expansive. We are in turn embraced and embracing. We are loved and loving. We are
love. And the nature of this love is infinite life. That is to say, we
live in the midst of uncertainty, of confusion, of chaos, with a certain
knowing. And while this knowing cannot ever be described or
measured or even intellectually or sensually known, it remains
nonetheless, recognized as our natural well-being. And our personal
life dries up – we become a hallow reed –an instrument played by life
–by spirit, God, Buddha, Nature, Love. And we dance that dance whatever
it may be. We embrace the only happiness there ever is, and we allow life as it happens.
The grace of suffering
Of
course, we’re occasionally persuaded by deeply held opinions (beliefs)
in the mind, to step into the ring fighting! That too, is how life
teaches us to be a spectator! In a way, this transformation of suffering
is what gives life its living edge. Indeed, living in fidelity
with reality usually happens only through the grace of suffering! This
force or energy is a built-in reminder; it presents its conflicted
nature to our awareness in the moment, we “suffer” it, and
simultaneously, abandon it. This action is not a reaction; it comes
from an abiding, full-spectrum awareness of the generally harmonious
nature of spirit, including its powerfully disharmonious aspects. And we
live with a constant awareness of the winds of our mind making waves on
the surface of our being.
Taking a ring-side seat
We abandon our need to “understand" anything beyond this moment. And we discover how freeing it is to not have an opinion – to not need
an opinion. We step out of the ring, out of the fight. We experience a
gentle ambient peace as we come to see and return to our contented
nature. And we realize that we have always been only here, only now,
only love. The chattering “mental-me" gradually dies from this perceived
disinterest in, and irrelevance of, this labeled languaging of reality.
It’s a kind of “dying before you die” and its gravestone bears the
eulogy: “Quote. Close quote.” We rest infinitely in the wordless silence of being.
The wonder of it all!
Authentic
living, or Natural Well-Being, involves a subtle and sensitive dwelling
in the stillness of this streaming moment – a trusting in our deepest
resonate knowing – love! And constant wonder! Everything whispers about
itself, tells us and shows us itself, and in this real relationship we find our self in everything. We find sufficiency in a gentle shuffle, an urgent word, a pressed hand… a delight in being as we explore the aliveness of life as it happens.
And simple astonishment! We find our self pausing and gazing at the
smallest bits of creation: crumpled pieces of paper in the gutter
present all the majesty of a starry night sky. Each step we take is a
moving meditation on the miraculous as we constantly touch experience
with awareness.
Spirit touches, and is touched, by its Self.
LINKS
James Waite's website: http://nondualityliving.com/
Fading in the Light on Amazon, print or e-book: http://amzn.to/O69YtY
James on Non-Duality America: http://bit.ly/QbxY2p
On non-duality magazine: http://bit.ly/JBB36k
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