Breathing…
the heart beating…
sounds in the room…
sensations in the body…..
thoughts arising and dissolving into nothingness…
Already, there is only Oneness.
And this is it.
Just life, but nobody living it. Just this, playing itself out spontaneously, of its own accord, in its own time.
And there is no “you” separate from “this”. That’s the illusion. That’s the dream. That’s the suffering.
Only nothing – no-thing – arising as everything. Only the absolute paradox of it all. And yet, in life without a centre, there are still faces, places, feelings, ups and downs. Although now the ups are equal to the downs, pain is equal to pleasure, the most excruciating suffering is equal to the greatest joy. Because with the collapse of the individual self comes the ending of all opposites, all opposition, all duality, which is to say that everything now exists in perfect balance (as it always has done). And yet, there is nobody to know that balance, nobody who could name it, nobody who could speak of it, even if they wanted to.
This is grace, and it will never be captured in words.
How to use dualistic concepts to describe that which is beyond duality? And anyway, isn’t “beyond duality” just another concept, perhaps the biggest concept of them all?
And of course, the mind will struggle with these dream questions. But the mind has missed the point entirely. The mind is so lost in the dream that it could never hope to see this.
What is being said here has nothing to do with words. Once we get lost in words and concepts and meanings we’re so totally, completely, utterly lost. Because this message is about what is presently happening – present sights, sounds and smells. It’s about the utterly obvious present appearance of life, an appearance which appears to nobody, an appearance which dances and swirls and pretends to be solid but actually has no solidity at all, an appearance which cannot be grasped in any way (and the attempt to grasp it would only lead to suffering anyway…)
It’s an appearance which cannot be escaped, cannot be denied, cannot be transcended, because the person who would try and do any of these things in the first place does not even exist. The person is an apparition, a ghost, a mirage, a thought. And what power does thought have?
And so this is the end of choice, the end of control, and a plunge into something far more explosive.
This is the absolute freedom which cannot be reached through any sort of effort or non-effort.
This is the end of duality because it is the wide open space, the vastness in which duality appears to arise in the first place.
This is totally extraordinary, and yet it is nothing special.
This is the miracle of all miracles, and yet it is as simple as breathing.
This is death, and yet it is also the source of all life.
This is not something a mind could ever hope to grasp. This is not a concept to be understood, not a new belief to be believed.
This is breathing, this is the heart beating, this is an entire world arising out of nothing and falling back into nothing, ceaselessly, playfully, like waves in the ocean, like icy breath on a winter’s day, like the memory of a loved one, long since departed.
This is not a state to be reached; it is not something that some people have and others don’t.
This is just a description of the utterly obvious.
And it’s so simple a newborn baby could see it: life already has no centre.