"All There Is, Is This", The Remix

In continuing the inquiry from my Part I of this dramatic mini series, I realized that I'd missed something RIDICULOUSLY obvious.  Gobsmacked (to put it mildly), I wondered whether this new discovery was the flip side of the enlightenment coin, so-to-speak. 

The entire idea of approaching these queries as a child really took on new meaning this time. The resulting realization felt like a thunderbolt delivered from the right hand of Zeus.  It became pretty plain that seeing "This is all there is" is so utterly real ,true, and startlingly irrefutable, that any child could easily have picked up on it if asked for an honest report.

The impact is so dramatic that it's going to take me a while to unpack this one.  Probably years.

You see, This is ALL there is, means Everything Out There.  Right?  Which is fine, but then I realized that I couldn't find a damned thing IN HERE.  Nothing.  No matter how hard I tried.  And if I couldn't find anything In Here, then why am I even calling it, Inside?  Inside what?   Let me break this thing down....

The only thing missing, anywhere I look, is me. 

I am absolutely nowhere in All that Is.  How do I know this?  Because it's the senses that detect anything we deem "real" or "existent".  If our senses can't do it, science has instruments to measure it.

Senses detect: Wind.  Heat.  Cold. Vibration.
Instruments detect:  Electromagnetic waves.  Atoms.  Tiny vibrations. 

There is no sense that can detect a self.

There is no scientific device that can detect a self.

No one, and no instrument has ever seen, heard, felt, tasted, or smelled a self.



Hmph.  How'd you like me now?







Questions for Investigation:

 

When looking out at All There Is, can You find a You?  Where is it?

Tools for Ongoing Inquiry:

Keep checking.  If a You is ever found along with All There Is, let me know.  Leave a comment right here and we'll look at it.

 

 

 

Ingen looks at All There Is and asks "Could this be IT?"

What if enlightenment looks just like this?  That's the question I've asked myself ever since hearing the phrase, "This is all there is" and seeing that it is just one of the ways used to explain what enlightenment looks like, in a nutshell.

Not helpful.  

So let's look at this often repeated statement to see whether we can approach it as we have done with all inquiries so far, which is to see it in its simplest and most obvious terms.  Why?  Because I don't believe that all of the folks who point to truth realization by saying this are trying to drown us in the mysteries of waking up.  I do believe that there are lots of them who are trying to be really very helpful, and attempting to state it as plainly as possible. 

Here we go:

"This is all there is.  All there is, is this."

My first thought:   What the hell am I supposed to do with that statement?  There's not a lot I can read into to make some grand vision of waking up, so I'd better roll up my sleeves and look closely.

This.

Well, 'this' has to be about Right Now and Right Here, and so we're back to that whole Being in the Now business.  THIS is everything being experienced, only now. 

"is all there is."  Ok, so that bit seems to say that what is experienced right now is the Universe... the whole Shebang, in no less than its entirety.  Full Stop.  There is nothing else, because this is all.  

Is that possible?

I can see that the benefit to this being the truth of reality is that it pretty much eliminates a whole lot of complications.  There's no time.  There's no history and no baggage that comes with it.  But then again there's no future.   No big news here.  We've covered that in previous posts.

But wait... there's nothing other than this, meaning that right now, my husband is here as this, but not the rest of my family... my job... my coworkers... traffic... tourists jam packed at the restaurants and sidewalk cafes downtown.

Really?

No tourists?  Bonus!

Anyway.   Back to inquiry..... If I look at the truth of reality, all of those things are experienced only within thought right now which means that while the things themselves cannot be this, the thoughts about them have to be!   From this perspective, all of that 'stuff' is just an idea with no real location or time.  There's a freedom in that because there's no need to even worry about any of it, at least not right now.  And not in the next now either.

For some reason it feels a bit claustrophobic to see this.  Because apparently, there's no escaping this This!  Except for the supposed next moment in which this experience is wholly different, thankfully.  It might look like "work tomorrow" or "going to sleep tonight".  But whatever happens, it will still be This, and it will be all there ACTUALLY, REALLY is, all I can know for sure, and all I can stake my life on.  The rest of it could all have vanished completely and it wouldn't affect This particular experience one iota.

huh.
I'm going to sit with this one a while.  I mean, what if this experience could then be rested in?