A question has been asked in regard to my spiritual biography, or timeline, as part of an upcoming interview with Jerry Katz. All that I have been able to come up with is a kind of curiosity. Where does the impulse to seek, or anything else for that matter (to love, to work hard, to play, to learn to fly), come from? I don’t know where this came from, or where it started, was the best answer I could think of, but it seemed certain that a better response was hoped for, and that I should be able to come up with such. Read more
Who’s to say that this life isn’t concurrently an entering into selfhood, and an ongoing impulse to naturally return to this true one-thing-we-know-we-really-are? Two inclinations happening at the same time. There are stops and starts–“I am this separate person.” Yet in the next step, “What was I thinking?” and then a brief a reprieve from the role, the falsity of it all. It seems that this becoming and unbecoming, pretending and clear seeing, has always been going on. There are constant rents in the fabric of reality, constant and obvious red flags, telling us that things are not as they appear. Read more
Rowing, In and Out of Confluence
That self is still unfindable, and Scott Kiloby’s Unfindable Inquiries can help to see that all our deficient selves are but one missing person. There are 21, and counting, excellent facilitators that can help you look to see if you can actually find, whatever seems stuck, problematic, needed, or believed in your day-to-day experience.
I am resigning from Living Inquiries, effective July 1st, and will no longer, or very rarely, be offering the Unfindable Inquiries as part of the sessions we all have been engaging in. I will continue to offer what I have been offering for quite sometime now, whatever you want to call it or name it. There was some veering off script, and many wonderful experiences had, but having veered off, there’s no pull to wander back. It has been a great trip, to be here with so many, other Facs and Scott Kiloby included, but someone seems to have left the island.
It bears repeating: There are many competent Living Inquiries Facilitators that are willing to look in this way. Take full advantage, fearlessly. I’ll still be continuing with sessions, just looking–in whatever way comes up. Feel free to contact me, and see what is new at The Deepest Peace. We have nothing to lose, because there is nothing or no one to defend, protect, or to promote.
Truman Burbank: Somebody help me, I’m being spontaneous!
Young Truman: I want to be an explorer, like the Great Magellan.
Teacher: [indicating a map of the world] Oh, you’re too late! There’s nothing left to explore!
Teacher, Illusion; Where’s the Gold?
Perhaps the greatest gift any teacher can give is the gift of disillusionment.
If you’re looking to a teacher to show you what’s up, what’s real, you’re looking in the exact opposite direction of where any true teaching points to. What is true is not out there, ever, no matter how golden the words, how fine the robes, how magnificent the smiling eyes.
So when the teacher disappoints, shows his humanity, all that is being done is that those seemingly powerful, adored hands unfold to show you “This is life; it’s contradictions, it’s failure to provide the answers. This, what you see out here, is a failed promise. Always.”
And so you go back to the silence that quite naturally falls in the midst of utter disappointment. You give up. Good fortune is here in this moment of despair. Having nowhere to turn, no words of consolation, what’s left can be the way to go, or simply the way.
This state of misunderstanding is the gift. Outer authority is impeached because of its transparency. This Zen-like coup d’état creates the ideal circumstances for the new, the heretofore unseen, to be seen with unfiltered clarity. The lens is washed clean of refracted imperfections. Unclouded eyes reveal the brightest vision.
When the world loses its allure, what is just behind its provocative veil emerges. All teachers will spin you out onto the dance floor, disappear into the crowd, and leave with another. You’re on your own. Who are you now?
There is nowhere left to look but into this idea of a “you.” Is there a you if it’s no longer existing in relation to a teacher, a teaching, a lover or a friend? Loose the ties that bind and see what is left. No one is needed to describe this discovery. It neither requires nor lends itself to description. Words cannot express this. It blows the mind wide open, and renders it quaint, but thoroughly irrelevant.
Every disillusionment affords the opportunity for what the word implies–disengage from the illusion. Let there be a continual letting go of false expectations, based on a flawed premise: Me here; world out there. Feed me, world. And so you starve. That which is empty cannot fill the hungry belly. Phony is as phony does; and it takes one to know one.
There’s nowhere to go, no one to ask how to get there. It’s already here, in the seeing. It is the light with which you see that creates the gold in them thar hills.
See Through the Illusion of Separation: If Not Now; When?
As long as one believes there is a process, there will be the experience of being in process. As long as one believes there is a teacher who imparts some-thing to a student, there is the experience of duality, of two-ness. As long as one believes that there is either abiding realization, or “got it; lost it,” there will be the experience of “not there yet.” As such, to the extent that there is a belief in time, in others, or in a state to be reached, these things will happen, apparently.
Why not see, now, that there is nowhere to get to, no one out there to take you there, and no experience that is not a manifestation of what is, of simply this? What are the concepts, the beliefs, that keep you from seeing that you are what you seek right now? The good news is, until these are discarded, whatever comfort is provided in the experience of practice and process, in the love one feels for the teacher, and in the exhilaration of insight and realization, these experiences will be there for the sake of temporal enjoyment. The better news is also that at any given moment, one can put away “childish things.” The need for comfort, the love for an other, and the thrill of spiritual experiences can be seen as a form of bondage rather than freedom.
The most powerful form of inquiry is when there is the experience of no facilitator, no one being facilitated, and nothing to “get.” There is simply the experience of clearly seeing through these dualistic and temporal conceptions, seeing the absurdity and unnecessary suffering created at the root of all beliefs and concepts: living from the apparent illusion of separation.
If the conceptual reality demands or indicates the need for more of some-thing from someone, that someone will be there to provide that something. It is the way of a benevolent, giving, loving universe (if that is your belief). Help is provided as long as help is perceived to be needed. Ask for help and you shall receive. Then lay down all notions of insufficiency. Be done with seeking/suffering. You have nothing to lose but your most cherished opinions, and literally everything to gain.
unfindableself 