Fred Davis, The Looking Glass: Language as Mirror 2013.03.13: Jerry
Katz, Nonduality Salon: Rich Murray 2012.03.16
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2013/03/fred-davis-looking-glass-language-as.html
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8:10 AM PST March 16, 2013 (9 hours ago)
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#4867 Friday, March 15, 2013 -- Editor: Jerry Katz <umb...@ns.sympatico.ca>,
http://awakeningclarity.blogspot.ca/2013/03/the-looking-glass-language-as-mirror.html
Awakening Clarity
Recognizing and Living as Our True Nature
Thursday, March 14, 2013
The Looking Glass: Language as Mirror
Fred Davis
Notice that you are already awake.
Right now, this moment, the only reason you can read these words is
that you're awake. You're already awake. You're as awake as it gets.
You're already fully awake.
Given that you're already fully awake, how then could you wake up
further? Since you're already awake, does that idea even make sense?
You can't wake up more from where you are right now. And you can't
wake up again.
If you want to read a book through that body, or watch a video, or
send it to a retreat for further clarity or to get some context that
has the potential to open to the door to further clarity, that's
great. But before you do, notice that you don't need to read another
book, watch a video, or go to a retreat in order to wake up, because
you're already awake.
If you want to do meditation, drum, dance, chant, or what have you,
for the sake of grounding yourself in that present human experience
you're having, or calming that unit's mind, so that you can better
hear yourself talk to yourself, and better watch yourself dance for
yourself, terrific. Have at it. But, be absolutely aware that you
can't practice yourself into awakening. You can't achieve what you
already are.
You're just not who you think you are; that's the only issue here.
You're undergoing a case of mistaken identity, and all you need today
is a little light reflected from this mirror, this mirror of clear
language that is also you. There is only you, but you tend to get a
bit cloudy sometimes, and forget that. It comes with the territory
when your spaciousness contracts around human beings, and it's no big
deal. It's fine. When you're ready to be clear, you find a bright
mirror, so here you are, back in front of the vanity mirror.
Vanity, vanity, all is vanity! This is all you, every bit of it --
you dancing for you, you preening for you, just you showing off for
yourself, to yourself and loving it.
You think you're the human being reading these words.
You're not. Well, you actually are that human also, but you're not
that person exclusively. You're the awareness that's reading these
words through that human being. The human is not reading the words;
you are. The human is a reading tool for you, just as reading glasses
are a tool for the human. Reading glasses never mistake themselves for
being the reader; humans almost always do.
You think you need to wake up. You don't. All that has to occur is
for you to recognize yourself as what you are. "Awaken" makes it
sound like something really new and different needs to happen. It
doesn't. Recognition, on the other hand, is simply about noticing
what already is. See how much lighter the idea of recognition is,
versus the idea of waking up? Why make it hard on yourself, when
you're clearly longing to see/be your true nature again.
Be easy on yourself. How much effort does it take for that human to
recognize itself in a mirror? None. The same is true for you. You
just have to be willing to look in the mirror and see the reflection
instead of the projection.
Stop seeking outwardly for just a few minutes. After all, you have
all the time in the world! Reverse your attention. Take your plain
old attention, what feels like your personal attention, and turn it
around. Look back, instead of out. Notice how easy it is to move your
attention wherever you want to move it. Notice how whatever attention
finds, tends to expand. See how easy it is for you to pull globalized
awareness, meaning the background, unfocused awareness that is always
running, and reform it into localized awareness. Notice how once
you've seen what you wanted to see, the apparent localization drops of
its own accord, once again leaving boundless globalized awareness in
its stead. It just happens; you don't have to do a thing. All of
this is working for you. It's always here, always running, and
certainly always awake.
You have always been awake, always will be, can't not be awake.
Awakeness is not a trait of yours, it's what you actually are.
Back to the attention exercise. What do you see when you turn back
and look for yourself? What do you find? Can you actually find
yourself? Check. Really look.
Do you find anything?
Anyone? No, you can't find yourself, because there's nothing
objective there to see. There's a sense of something being there, but
there's nothing locatable, because there's nothing objective. But
certainly there is something there, and it's certainly alive. You can
feel that, can't you? Isn't there a stirring, perhaps behind your
eyes, or in your chest, or both. You can feel it, if you let
yourself. Let yourself.
The we-who-are-you have a word, a sort of name for that undefinable,
living presence you discover, when you look back and try to find
yourself and can't. We can't call it something, but neither is it
nothing, hence we have arrived at no-thing.
This no-thing, this pure subjectivity, this keen awareness that's
looking out through the eyes of that human you're wearing, is what you
are. You have been on an endless search for something unfindable. It
ends when you end it, and not before.
In Nonduality they say, "The eye can't see itself." They mean that
you are that invisible eye. You can't see yourself, when you look
back, because you're the thing doing the looking. Let that hit you.
Let that settle in. Feel it. Right there, that bit of a line, is
enlightenment in a nutshell. What you've been looking with, is what
you've been looking for.
You can't see yourself, you can't really find yourself, but you can
sense yourself. You can know yourself. Right now! In fact, you
can't know anything else! And you'll never know yourself later.
There is no later. So notice yourself -- know yourself right now!
Pay attention to attention!
Notice that I didn't have to say, "Wake yourself up and look for
yourself." You are always already awake, and you are always already
here. Ever since you started this so-called spiritual journey, you've
been looking for "some other level" of awakeness. Listen to me
closely. There is no other level of awakeness. This everyday
awakeness that you've experienced every day of your life is the very
same awareness all the saints and sages have talked about since time
immemorial. There is only the single awareness, only Not-two! You
are that very awareness. You've been looking for "some other kind" of
awareness. Hear me. There is no other kind of awareness.
It feels like that human body contains consciousness, that it is the
holder of the most precious thing -- your awareness.
It doesn't. It can't! A human can't hold you! You permeate all
humans, ever single one of them, inside and out. You've hitherto
thought that there actually is something called "your consciousness".
There isn't.
You are "your consciousness," and you are simultaneously everyone's
"personal consciousness". I say this lightly, because there is no
personal consciousness. Consciousness is not something you have, it's
what you are. Nothing can take that from you. When that human body
dies, you just change channels. Your focused attention goes
elsewhere. You dial up another dream.
Let's look at the notion that awareness, or consciousness, is
something you have. It's quite a convincing story.
Shut your eyes for a minute. If you're interested in having that
long-sought-after spiritual awakening that particular humans been
going on and on about for damn near forever, then don't just read
this, do it. Read this all the way through, then close those eyes,
relax that body, and go through the exercise.
Notice that without benefit of sight, you can still tell that you're alive.
You still know you are, sight or no sight. Imagine you're in utter
silence. Wouldn't you still know you were alive in the absence of
sound? Wouldn't you still be able to sense the aliveness within the
body? Of course. You would know. So, without benefit of either
sight or hearing, you can still tell that you're alive. The knowledge
that you are, is not dependent on certain conditions or tools. You
can't not know that you are.
In fact, if I took that unit you're wearing and dropped it into a
sensory deprivation chamber, you would still know that you're alive.
That knowing is not dependent on sensations, perceptions, thoughts,
memories, or any other information. It's not dependent on anything.
In fact, everything is dependent on it! That knowing is the only
thing for which there is no opposite.
That knowing is the One True No-thing.
But that knowing is really knowingness, is it not? You are not a
static knowing. You are not some kind of grand noun. You are beyond
noun-ness. You are beyond verbness too, but verb-ness, in a display
that is constantly shifting, morphing, changing from one extreme to
the other and back again, evolving and devolving, forward and back, is
always arising to you, to that-which-does-not-move-but-is-not-static.
You arise to yourself. We-who-are-you vaguely call that verbness "the
world," which expands or contracts to suit your purposes. It might be
a thought, or a room, or it might be a whole universe. Either way,
whatever arises, is not other than you.
You are what you know, and what you know, you are.
The seeker is the sought.
Notice that knowingness. Become conscious of it, hold it within
attention -- be the attention -- so that you can come to recognize it
clearly. Feel it. In the absence of that knowingness, there is no
world. In the presence of that knowingness, the world arises, fully
formed. Notice that it doesn't need to wake up, in fact cannot wake
up, because it's always already awake. See that it's the knowingness
that's come to know itself. We call this knowingness-knowing-itself
conscious awareness, versus unconscious awareness, which is still
awake and alive and aware, but not consciously. Either way, it's you.
One way you're cloudy, one way you're clear, but there's just one
thing going on, and that one thing is you.
If you are already home, how would you ever find it by looking for it?
You'd always be looking away from it. You find home when you notice
it's where you already are. We don't find it by going; we find it by
stopping. Any directions on how to get home are by definition
directions leading away from home. But they are great for tiring you
out! And it's all good fun, until it's not.
Take a quick inventory.
What have you been using all these years in your search for
enlightenment? Awareness. What has been reading the books?
Awareness. What has been watching the videos, and listening to the
teachers? Awareness. If you meditate, what is it that watches your
breath, or your thoughts, or counts, or tries to let go of doing all
that? Awareness. What is it that prays? Awareness. What is it that
asks, "Who am I?" Awareness.
Awareness has been in a millennia-long search for awareness. It's
been looking for some other awareness. Hear me: there is no other
awareness.
Oneness cannot find otherness, no matter how long or hard it looks,
because there is no otherness for oneness to find. The definition of
oneness could be said to be no-other-to-find. If you're searching for
some other, and there IS no other, how long can you look? If all is
oneness, where do you imagine you're standing, while you're looking
for the oneness? In the oneness!
Always! Forever!
So long as you insist on looking forward, so long as you are seeking
something outside yourself, you'll never find yourself, never hook up
with yourself, never ever "awaken"! So stop.
Why keep looking for the unfindable? You've been hot on the trail of
a phantom. STOP!
Once you sense what you are, once you take that giant leap to the
utterly obvious and recognize what you are -- that which is looking --
there may or may not be a sharp sense of realization.
It doesn't matter. What matters is the simple recognition, because
either way you display yourself to yourself you're going to need to
come back to that sensing over and over again. Any bells and whistles
are just bells and whistles. They're just pleasant distractions.
If the ramifications are not immediately obvious, they will fill in as
your understanding increases. You see what you need to see when you
need to see it, not before. Work with what you have, and more will
come. That's how it works.
You may tell yourself, "It can't be that simple." It is. Your
recognition starts with seeing the seer -- or rather, not seeing the
seer! No seer, no seen, only seeing. Only an object can see, only an
object can be seen, and you, of course, are not an object. All
objects appear within you, arise to you. You are what is primary.
There may be lots of other real stuff, a whole world full of it, but
you are the One True No-thing.
This seeing is so amazing, that you may want to claim it. But who
will it be, that wants to claim it? That unit cannot hold such seeing
in its head, cannot store it up for later recall. Only you can behold
you -- and then only right now.
Realization is all about right now, this moment. Are you consciously
awake to this current arising? Yesterday's seeing is yesterday's
dust. Other than being a gnawing reminder, it has no present value
whatsoever. Freedom is now or never, here or nowhere.
This simple recognition of your true nature is not the end of your
apparent journey, but it can be the end of all this compulsive seeking
you've been doing -- if you let it.
It can be the most important step you never take. Just STOP.
Look at what's looking.
Pay attention to attention.
You can overcome this simple seeing you've, if you want to. This is
why everyone wants a big spiritual experience. They think if they
have a flashy experience, they will not then overcome it with
incessant thinking, but people do it all the time anyway. They think
that just because they got a big, lazy peek at things, that they can
stay awake and lazy at the same time. They can't. They sit on their
haunches, and they get cloudier and cloudier. And that's fine, too.
But it certainly can't be labeled skillful.
You don't ever go to sleep, but you can most certainly delude
yourself, and appear to go to sleep. It's what you do.
You are always awake, but you are not always consciously awake. In
fact, you are rarely consciously awake. And because you've been
unconsciously awake for thousands of years in that package -- meaning
the DNA and softer conditioning associated with the body you thought
you were when you first started reading this -- you'll fall right back
into unconsciousness, if you don't consistently and actively nourish
it with conscious light.
You have to be willing to shine truth, even when you don't feel like
yourself, even when you don't want to, on things, you'd rather leave
in the dark. You must hold nothing back. Willingness is your bridge
into being the shining on an ongoing basis. You give yourself to the
light fully, or you don't give yourself at all.
Don't bother trying to figure any of this out, or you'll end up right
back on the same hamster wheel from which you just hopped off. You
don't have to figure anything out. Let the mind live in uncertainty.
Let the body do what it does. You do what you do: just watch, just be
alert. You are not the watcher, you are the watching, you are the
alertness.
But when you're watching as conscious awareness, instead of
unconscious awareness, then what you see will change. Look at any
human life and you'll see lots and lots of hopeless, blind patterns,
compulsive energy patterns that are just running themselves, with no
one at the wheel, and no good end in sight. You'll see a long trail
of unskillful living, a long trail of suffering. If you're willing to
really look at the patterns, they will start to change.
These patterns are very specific, so each one has to be shined on by
the light of your conscious awareness, in order for it to be remedied;
in order for there to be clearing. Awareness colonizes the body one
bit, one seeing at a time.
Don't try to fix that unit.
You can't anyway; that body is operating on its own. You are not its
minder. It's doing what it does until it does something else. Let it
-- it will do so, regardless. It won't do something else, until it
sees that what it's already doing isn't helpful, isn't skillful, isn't
beneficial to the well being of the unit and the world. But once it
does see that, once it truly and thoroughly sees it, then that
penetrated pattern will thin, recede, drop away of its own accord.
There will be clearing. It may happen quickly, or it may happen
slowly, but once an unskillful pattern has been fully penetrated, it's
days are numbered.
This process of bringing light to all of your dark corners is what we
call embodiment. Slowly, sometimes excruciatingly slowly, you will
begin to "live up to your seeing," so to speak. There's no rush.
When you're done with that body, you have seven billion more to turn
to.
Your willingness to be consciously awake to this present arising -- is
critical. Will you stand as awareness, and see things as they are, or
stand as a hypothetical center of consciousness, and see things as you
want them to be? In every moment you ally yourself either with
experience, or thinking. You have a history of voting for thinking.
It'll take some work to shift that default position. It'll take a lot
of willingness.
This willingness must extend all the way down. Even when you revert
to feeling like you are that human character again, you have to be
willing take that character's thinking into inquiry. You have to be
willing to remain forever open to doubt, to embrace uncertainty.
Sureness will be a thing of the past, but living in the mysterious
unfolding of yourself is so much more satisfying.
Ask yourself again and again, "Is what I'm thinking really true, or is
it a belief, an opinion, a position?"
Again and again, as you touch truth through actual experience -- as
you find truth through continuous inquiry--that touch will bring a
longer, stronger, more profound experience of what you always already
are -- that which knows that you are.
Eventually the inquiry becomes less formal, and more spontaneous. You
won't have to take your thoughts about arisings through formal
inquiry. Life becomes constant inquiry. Delusion arises, it's
questioned, penetrated, and it drops. Pop, pop, pop. Like everything
else, it just happens effortlessly.
We-who-are-you call this effortless living abiding. We call it
abiding enlightenment, because you are then consciously living in the
awakeness that you know yourself to be, and operating within the world
as that awakeness.
Did this nudge you out of cloudiness, and back toward clarity? If it
did, be willing to read it again. If it worked at all for you the
first time, it'll permeate deeper as you reread it. Repetition is the
mother of clarity.
© 2013 Fred Davis
All rights reserved.
Thank you to Jerry Katz for sending this out in his fine newsletter,
Nondual Highlights.
See his appearance here as a Guest Teacher.
http://awakeningclarity.blogspot.com/2012/04/sparks-before-explosion-special-guest.html
Thursday, April 5, 2012
The Sparks Before the Explosion:
Special Guest Teaching by Jerry Katz
Posted by Fred Davis at 12:06 AM
within the fellowship of service,
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BS MIT 1964 history and physics,
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rmfor...@gmail.com
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