Keeping That Cute Little Monkey On Your Back

I've been in a deep crisis about my job lately and that's because I know it doesn't align with my desire or plan to have fulfilling Life Purpose.  How ridiculously typical for a spiritual seeker of my less-than-tender age!

There's no time in the linear trajectory I like to think of as the 'history of my life' that I wasn't looking for the next or better thing.  It's been a real source of dissatisfaction, if I'm honest. More than that, it's been a source of pain, and you might even say Suffering.

Oh, you too?

Only after beginning to work with this particular inquiry did I discover that the suffering is completely false.  Firstly, because I don't recall learning about a predetermined or neatly paved path which I have been commanded to follow.  What's more, there are zero accounts of Maps to the Universe having been handed out by the OB-Gyn who tended to my birth.  And if he was in the business of handing out life maps upon arrival, it's long since been lost.  There's no absolutely no GPS for This, and therefore, it's impossible to get lost.

So where did this idea of Sempre Further, Stronger, Faster, Better come from?  Why the dissatisfaction with my current state of affairs?

The Neverending Universe of Inquiry

While the urgent energy of spiritual seeking can end at some point, it's my experience so far that inquiry can't.  It's an ever expanding universe of wonder and awe.  Well, when inquiry isn't leading up to a headache, that is.  And if it's giving me a headache, that's probably a good sign that I'm working it like a logical math problem instead of a simple check of reality. 

This brings me to an excellent blog comment on my last post.  I see it as an invitation to an Inquiry Challenge Round. 


"This is a textbook case of realizing the difference between actual experience and thought overlay."I'd think that thought overlay is part of actual experience, and that the realising is just another overlay.

"Where this hold true for me, it must also hold true for him."......Must? 

- Neony


How and where to start!

I think of inquiry as an art form.  Or maybe it's an eternal musical composition.  Either way, it's always a good idea for me to not call a session "closed" or "done".  Instead, I let it just keep opening doors and before writing out the results of an inquiry here, I've more than likely spent a full week in contemplation even when I've done these countless times before.  Finding a breaking point at which to write is always much more challenging than I expect.

Neony's right.  When I look, I see that thought overlay is indeed part of actual experience, and realizing IS just another overlay.  Everything is experience.  There is no escaping it, even if I think about falling asleep at night and experiencing nothing, that's not true.  I can't possibly know whether I've actually missed anything at all.  

My recommendation to you, dear reader, is to take none of these inquiries as complete, closed, or finished.  Challenge each one and see whether you can take it further. 

Because you can.  Always.

Friends, Lovers, and Other Strangers?

The question is....Exactly what is it that I see when looking at another?

In the midst of trying to give this inquiry my full attention I find myself giving several distracted glances in my husband's direction.  I note the rounded shoulders of his seated form as he reads from his laptop.  Then I remember that he hates that laptop.  Or maybe it's just a healthy disdain for Windows 8.

Anyway!

Besides the visual cues of shape and color, I'm pretty proud of my spiritual acuity in easily noticing that there is absolutely nothing there that says "husband".  That notion, I understand, comes in a series of thoughts which claim to tell a story about that particular shape and form.  This is a textbook case of realizing the difference between actual experience and thought overlay.

I get 10 bonus points for this round of inquiry and move onto the next space on the board.
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Next, I start looking at the question of how and where these particular thoughts came to be. 

Ingen and Her Guru's Promise

I've been avoiding writing out this inquiry but having been playing around with it for a few weeks.  That's because I've always harbored a bit of disdain for gurus as a whole and realized that the reason for the judgment, as in most stereotyping, was due to laziness.  My preconceived notions needed to be torn down in order to take a good look.

So I took a sledgehammer to them.

Though I haven't had any experience with gurus outside of YouTube videos, I've got a mental image that teachers like Mooji or Gangaji, (or any ji) can easily fill.  Anyone with robes or long and flowing clothing, beads, a slow blink, and a bouquet of flowers nearby or hung round the neck qualify as the stereotypical guru.  There are those who skirt the edges.  Adya and Rupert Spira come to mind, but with those guys, I think it's really just the flowers that throw me.

Putting all of that aside, I realized that there's a really very good purpose for the "guru look".  Sure, it's part of a sort of uniform, but it's also a signal.  They provide visual and auditory cues which tell me to SLOW DOWN.  That's all there is to it.   They cues are employed to assist in carefully listening to the questions, and the pauses are there to allow me to consider and inquire.  In other words, STOP.

We've come to the part where I let you know the outcome of this inquiry.  

Love, Algebra, and Unconditions

"Unconditional love" is a phrase I've read in nearly every spiritual book .  It's an appealing enough set of words that flows very nicely and makes a fine new age mantra.   If you're into that sort of thing.

Me?  I find New and Age to be at odds with itself.  But I've got to start this inquiry somewhere, so why not approach it from a more practical perspective.  Like a dictionary.

unconditional

[uhn-kuh n-dish-uh-nl] /ˌʌn kənˈdɪʃ ə nl/

 

adjective

1. not limited by conditions; absolute :

an unconditional promise.

 

2. Mathematics, absolute (def 12).

It seems, after pondering the above for quite a while, that "unconditional love" is a completely redundant phrase.  Because "without conditions" would mean that anything and everything is accepted, as it is.  Not a single condition can apply.  Not even the Acceptance because that, itself, implies a condition of welcoming.

In thinking this through, I've never experienced anything without conditions.  Or, maybe it's more accurate to say that the "I" has never experienced without conditions because the job of the Me seems to be to judge and classify everything in its path.  Relentlessly.  So, what is the only thing that doesn't judge?  Well... that would seem to be what I'd call LOVE. 

By my own definition, Love itself, then, is unconditional.  The two words first define each other and then ultimately cancel themselves out.  When looking at this closely, the canceling out leaves me still and silent.  The only thing remaining is THAT which IS.  And absolutely nothing more can possibly be said because to do so would be to spin back into conditions. 

It's suddenly grown really very quiet around here.

"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?