02/23/2022
Are you being lived? Merely a body-mind avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. A genuine transmission or pointing out of non-dual awareness, for most, will not instantaneously cure this pattern, nor should it. This is not the root of suffering. You do discover, however, with a few brief instructions, an intelligent space in and around you, that already knows the way to easily refine our body and brain’s habits around pleasure and pain.
This space knows the way because it is already entirely pain free, abundantly joyous. This space is also simultaneously the basis of You, who, if a living human, probably dances with some level of fear or desire, but from very early in non-dual learning, you will never need to become reidentified with this dance alone. You are the dance-floor, the DJ, the music, AND the dance.
You continue creating attachments. No longer in it for personal fulfillment (which you no longer need), you connect via an open-hearted intention to awaken other beings perhaps, or simpler still: to share in the joy of being.
True recognition of the whole you might open up useful ways to lean into pain in an emotionally honest way (or a somatic way); learn to allow it to move through you without resistance, and still some remaining ‘s/Self’ may deeply desire to alleviate some of the world’s suffering where possible. Even when letting go of a great deal of the usual clinging to pleasure feels natural, subtle seeking may remain or shift to something like ‘I wish to serve the highest good.’
See that remaining engaged in an honest, dynamic human life isn’t sacrificed at all, even when truly knowing and feeling the end of suffering. All movement is movement-stillness, and has always been. More on this shortly. It’s a paradox, and many of us are conditioned to only notice the movement.
Refining our interactions in life will all come at a different pace for different individuals. We could say that the key difference that is often accessed more immediately is a new mode of ‘knowing’ our pleasure-pain matrix. I don’t mean ordinary intellectual knowledge. Instead you access an already effortless and non-judgement awareness of all patterning: including even the way that your mind’s will arises and unfolds.
Now let’s revisit the still, silent, and intelligent space (or context) that is our discovery here and which can often be overlooked in our modern societies. In addition to maintaining awareness of all those goings-on in your fear-desire flux, you can also allow awareness to include all the non-goings-on. Or non-Being. Or vacuous, objectless space.
This can feel awkward, boring, or pointless at first. Please trust me, this is worth it. You can first be aware of the space in this room, or wherever you are right now… in between the air molecules; the space that permeates every atom of our body and world. Awareness of that very emptiness is also awareness of one’s seemingly “inner world.” You; the feeling: myself; the context for thoughts, feelings, and sensations.
See that the nature of the mind is spacious and is intelligently unified with the field of all potentiality.
The gap between thoughts, and physical space are the seamless background to all patterning, and not separate from it, therefore knowing all patterns from within them, as them.
So while much of your conditioned, human, love-hate, pleasure-pain, fear and desire dance continues on, it is entirely possible to bring this unconditioned, effortlessly loving background more into the foreground of awareness. And evermore allow the whole, limitless Self into the driverseat of our identity.
