Samples of Inquiry

‍ ‍The deepest beauty in life, is perception, is to see, is to perceive.

Everything is an appearance within awareness.

Mugai Nyodai (13th c., Japan — Zen)

“The moon’s the same old moon,

the flowers exactly as they were,

yet I’ve become the thingness

of all the things I see.”

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            Every day ask yourself these questions: 

What am I learning? 

What is there to be grateful for? 

Is there any thought here left to be transformed? 

Where are thoughts taking me, are they being directed towards the past, or the future? 

What takes me away from the now? 

What is alive in me right now? 

How do I feel? 

Where could I soften rather than control? 

Am I acting out of fear or love? 

How can I love better today? 

How can I be a better human? 

What reality am I creating for myself? 

Am I truly here? 

Can I let this moment be enough? 

How am I seeing others? 

Where am I placing my attention? 

Is my perception balanced, or is it becoming biased through experience? 

Where can I be more aware? 

Am I able to make someone smile today? 

A KETTLE {.}

Imagine a kettle. Now imagine yourself to be a kettle. Your mind-body is the main part of the kettle, in order to work, it needs to be a good container, not cracked, able to hold water and withstand electrical impulse. But the kettle is not useful until it is plugged into the socket. Just as, before you are plugged into reality, you are half-dead, maybe not completely dead, but half dead. The body is tired, heavy, frozen, until the switch is turned on and the water is heated by energy and allowed to flow, it will remain stagnant and cold. Your nervous system is the chord that plugs you into the source. In the kettle’s case, the source of electricity, in the human case it is the nervous system plugging itself into the energetic force field of reality. 

                                                           Knowing the source directly, this is what the writer means when speaking of the Absolute. 

A kettle is nice, but you are not just the kettle, you are the electricity that enters it. 

Treat everything as if it is your lover ~ 

Treat everything as if it is your lover. Treat everything and everyone as if it is your lover. Because it is. Treat the cup the same as your lover, treat the rock the same as your lover, treat the pillow the same as your lover, treat all things as your lover. How do you treat a lover? You pay attention. You listen, you are soft, you are coming to know yourself again. You handle them with care, because you know that what is alive can also be wounded. Be slow, walking through life, as if everything has been touched by the great heart. Treat everything as if it is the first and last. Treat the very moment as if it is the only moment. Treat all things as a gift, because they are. Treat life as a gift. Treat the breath as a gift. Treat even pain as a gift. Because it is. Treat the open wound as if it is the greatest gift. Because from the open wound first flows a river of blood, only to turn into a ripe cascade of silver. Treat all things as if life is singing into your ears, a secret that you deeply desire to know. Open yourself to receive the gift of life. Only by opening yourself do you know love, only by becoming naked do you know love, only by being intimate with life, do you know love. Let life touch you deeply, let yourself be touched. You can only love, when you are unshielded, when you have allowed the boundaries of yourself down enough, only then can you know love. You cannot know love in the mind, you can only know it in the deepest fibres of your own being. Know life enough, and you know love, know love enough and you know life. Sip your cup in the morning as if you are in love again for the first time. Walk in the field, as if you are holding hands with a lover, eat food as if you are in love with it. Smother your cheeks with kisses. In every moment, your lover is there, because it is. your lover and your best friend is yourself, is the gap in which all takes place. See if you can rest. See what already exists. 

                   Who are you?

People inherently do not know who they are beyond what they have been told about who they are, and so they cannot truly live in the boundless nature of their own existence. They think they know who they are because they follow a convention that leads to some safe identity or because they have discovered a role for themselves that makes them feel useful. Like ‘mother’, a mother is a role. Or father, a father is a role, or teacher, or guru, or accountant, or lawyer, whatever it may be. Whether it is a religion, a dance club, a yoga class, a book club, a law firm, whether you call yourself shiva or shakti, whatever name you give yourself you are limiting yourself. That is why the writer appears as ‘nameless’. There is no name that can be given to space. The writer is interested in going beneath all surfaces. In going beyond naming. 

In order to go beyond, bias, caused by mental division. One has to see clearly the nature of mind. The nature of mind, is to hold, to cling, to pre-occupy itself with the past or with the future. The nature of mind is to preoccupy itself with its own existence. Mind is a beautiful tool, filled with wonder and possibility, the mind itself is not a problem, it is the aspect that ties us into some existence, without it you cease to exist at all, it is the form trying to make sense of existence, even though it never can, it will always try. The mind itself is not the problem, it is when consciousness or spacious presence is confined to its limited and frequent oscillation. Awareness is not here to serve mind, mind is here to serve awareness. When mind serves awareness it becomes a tool for creation, for love, for insight, for meaning. When awareness serves mind, life becomes confusion, attachment, and endless seeking for more. The idea is not to destroy the mind, but to bring it back into balance with being. Then thought becomes clear, transparent, instead of compulsive, and incoherent. 

Thought is a seed, the mind is a garden, you are the gardener. A thought repeated unconsciously becomes atmosphere. A conscious thought becomes direction. Most people do not suffer from thought itself, but from unconscious loyalty to unchosen thoughts. It is the perspective of the writer, that most suffering arises not because of thought, but when we cannot see thought clearly. Seeing things clearly dissolves the need for fear. Because in seeing things clearly we are able to recognise that we are not those very same things arising. So we cannot be held accountable for the mind’s mischief. Seeing things clearly means understanding the nature of reality, and so time, that is that all things change, all things are continuously moving. Even the most perceptive levels of human consciousness are limited. Existence itself is vaster. Thoughts travel; moving through memory, fear, desire, imagination, identity. It can create a cage for consciousness that simply wants to be able to roam, explore and experience. When attention attends to the present, opportunities arise beyond the majority of people’s comprehension of what is possible. The quality of your mind, shapes how reality is experienced, a fearful mind will see threat everywhere, a grateful mind begins to see guidance, a loving mind softens separation, an intentional mind stops drifting. Freedom is available now, in every moment. 

Recognise what binds you, by simply noticing, that everything that takes you away from now, is not you. 

Every thought carries a frequency.

                                                                    We are like music. In every moment you have a choice. 

                                                                                                                                                        In every moment is the opportunity to rise, or to fall. 

Or to simply observe the movement. 

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  {Reality as a mirror} 

The world is not as you think it to be, the world is a direct reflection of your own perception. Whatever your mind tells you about reality, that is the way you will perceive the world. You will interpret through that small narrow window. Reality is the blue sky, not the square window. To see reality more clearly, one has to go beyond the mind. When you look out at reality, what do you see in people? Do you truly see them, or do you just see a projection of them based on previous conditioning? or perceived truths that your mind convinces you to be true? Do you see people as they are or do you manipulate them into being something you expect them to be to serve your own needs? Do you see the inherent beauty of life, or do you find yourself constantly finding faults in others? Be honest with yourself. Rarely is it that people are able to see people as they are, most of the time we are looking at people through our own fears, longings, interpretations, insecurities. If from your own eye, you begin to experience reality as god, you are god. if what you see it beauty, you are beauty. If what you see is darkness, it is your darkness, if what you see in all people is something lacking, it could be your lack, if what you see is selfishness, this could be a disowned part of yourself. All aspects of the outside, are parts of yourself, the more you separate the outside into this and that, dark or light, selfish versus non-selfish, the more you divide yourself. Everything you see is, in some capacity a part of you being reflected back.  

{Balancing perception}

To balance perception you can ask yourself, what part of that person am I not able to recognise as a part of myself? It does not matter whether it is a psychopath, or someone that has hurt you, even better this way. To recognise yourself similarly to the psychopath, is to understand the inherent sameness in all things. Or it is at least to recognise the reasoning behind the movement. To see from the source, is to recognise that all things have a place and are possible of existing based on certain conditions. 

To make this easier, simpler, all perceived aspects of badness, or darkness, are inherently coming from a place of light, and of love. People that cause pain, and create suffering, are usually the ones suffering, and suffering only arises from a lack of love, and the inability to see something clearly enough. Suffering arises from attachment to that which you are not. So recognising this very simple fact, very quickly eliminates its pull. 

The mirror is not asking you to justify harm, it is asking you to dissolve the illusion of separation. Every trait you witness externally exists somewhere within the architecture of human consciousness. Rage, manipulation, tenderness, greed, devotion, cruelty, love ~ 

   These are not foreign substances distributed to separate species of people, they are potentials moving through the same field of collective experience. To recognise yourself in another is not to say, ‘I would do the same’. It is to say ‘I am not outside the fabric from which this emerged’. You might inflect ‘though I do not have that experience, I can understand how that experience may arise’. 

The mirror is not always to say that is me, it often might show us a reflection of a wound still seeking resolution. 

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                                                                                                       {the nature of presence}. 

 A CUP 

       To be present is to walk in the world as if you are a child again, as if you are seeing everything for the first time, presence means this. Without knowing the name of a cup, how do you know it is a cup? You only know it is a cup because you have been told that it is a cup. Who told you it was a cup? You know it by association, you know that something relatively hollow that carries liquid, is something you are able to drink from, and so you know it now to be a cup. What if you were to look at a cup for the first time again? What actually is a cup before you have decided it is a cup? To see things clearly from perception and beyond conditioning, beyond the mind, one has to see beyond the name, beyond the condition, beyond how something relates to us or our preconceived notions and ideas about it. We have to see Beyond our own association. Since these are just roles. We have to see Beyond me, Beyond I. To be present, is to perceive directly things taking place without trying to own the image as a story, without trying to interpret its meaning. There is not any inherent meaning to life, life is just life, the human imagination creates meaning. This is something that can be enjoyed, but all experience is a consequence of the mind, even enlightenment is in the mind until it isn’t, enlightenment can be seen as the epitome of human experience , but then you reach a new point, beyond experience itself. This is awakening beyond awakening this is the life that takes place after the ending of the first life. Enlightenment is just a word, that human beings have assigned meaning to, as a pinnacle, or a place to attain. When you take life directly as it is, there is nothing to be improved upon. 

The fabric of consciousness, is the same in all things. It is the wet mud in which a lotus blooms, it is the field draped in yellow wheat, it is the womb in which a foetus grows, it is in the open ragged palm of a homeless man. And like a child, the flower grows, simply, beautifully, delicately. But in the world, it is easily distorted by the separations of form and choices made by the human condition. 

What you eat, is a good example. Food is medicine, what you put in creates a chemical reaction. Food that blocks the chi, blocks the energy, will create stagnation, stagnation causes and is caused by emotional blockages, irritations, fatigue etc. The self that naturally arises, beyond the mind-body paradigm, rests most profoundly within awareness and so in witnessing. When one comes to understand this nature, one becomes less bothered by how it appears to be seen, since anything that can be seen, is not owned by the witness. While things might still be felt, a greater understanding is present. Freedom does not mean no harm. It does not mean invincibility, it means a different ongoing relationship, to pain, to body, to life.

One begins to see, however, in what ways consciousness itself is being supported, whether it is thriving or being distorted. Distortions of consciousness can come from energies such as jealousy, anger, desire, or more poignantly from the suppression of these energies. Each carries an energy, but each if accepted and allowed to move is a passing energy. If this energy has been told by the mind not to express, this becomes a whole other situation, the energy becomes trapped and starts to build a fortress of its own. This is what becomes shadow. An unaccepted, disowned part of the self. 

The solution therefore, is not to reject, these expressions, but to recognise, the movements and energies that do not facilitate the evolution of consciousness and the elevation of life. Distortions of consciousness include memory, and imagination. 

A natural disinterest arises towards certain things, when one rests in the presence of their own awareness. Disinterest, is an antidote to psychological mergence and human distraction. From the outside people may feel a distance, or even a selfishness, but this is because the witness no longer plays the games that the human mind needs to survive. Disinterest, is the place in which praise does not inflate, criticism does not collapse, and projection no longer demands defence. 

Most reactions are sustained by unconscious investment. We remain emotionally entangled, because part of us still seeks approval, agreement, understanding, control or validation. The ego feeds on significance. Positive or negative. To be misunderstood can feel painful because identity still wishes to be confirmed externally. Disinterest dissolves this dependency. It does not mean you stop caring, it means you stop attaching your worth to the movement of other people’s minds.

‍ ‍ {knowing yourself as nothing}

     It is not you breathing it is life breathing you. 

The only truly real continuity, is the breath, is life itself. There is bliss, ecstasy, there is sadness, depression, love, fear. There are all the minds, and higher states of consciousness. Freedom does not come by disassociating from experience, or by removing fear totally, it comes from accepting the vulnerability of one’s own humanity, and allowing that insecurity to be the greatest power. Freedom is found by including all things. Allowing fear to exist. Allowing joy to exist, allowing yourself to simply exist. You fall into a trap by rejecting the natural movements of the body, which are inherently bound by time, and you quickly liberate yourself by realising you are none of it. Only the space in which it all takes place. The witness that is simply being and observing things as they pass. Accepting things as they naturally are. In this, freedom is always attainable. It is not a state, it is a relationship. It has endless dimensions. There are highs, there are lows, there are many peaks, there is the infinite, the absolute, there are many more peaks, many more highs. There is just existence. There is just life. When the highs fade, when consciousness contracts, when the mind bends again, or is contorted, what remains? The continuity is life. There is an inherent magic and physiological equal that arises, when you accept fully everything the way it is now. Really something disproportionately magical occurs, when you let go of holding onto something you thought was meant to last. When you allow everything to be, as it is right now, suddenly all other problems dissipate. All other difficulties dissolve. Even if you find yourself distracted, instead of creating a problem with distraction, another option, is simply to recognise that you are distracted and to laugh. And to enjoy the meanderings of being a human. There are many that want to perfect their own consciousness. but what is it that is trying to perfect. How much ease we get from simple recognition, bringing awareness to what actually is existing rather than trying to change it. Rather than trying to change what is here, simply seeing it. Seeing that none of it is you. And in that being already free of it completely.