You Are THAT - Full
Stop!
Q: I've been reading these “end of seeking” websites with much
interest. [Recently] I decided not to go back to my Buddhist group - a group I'd been attending classes, retreats and the
like, with - for over 10 years.
C: One thing you might look into is, WHO is this “one who decided”
that? Who claims the action or decision not to take an action as “my” actions? That’s a question that I
asked once I met John Wheeler; I had been heavy into a “spiritual group” with a traditional Indian “Guru”
at the top, off and on, for about 30 years! That just dropped as these Nondual pointers began to sink in.
Q: I think what appeals to me most in the teachings is the fact that you already
are THAT which you seek.
C: Right, and THAT is a FULL STOP!
Q: I want quick relief from the psychological suffering.
C: Ooops ... you didn't STOP! You just traded FACT for "concept", for memory
and imagination. ALL suffering is a product of imagining that you are a separate little defective "person". That needs to
be challenged. Ponder what Sri Nisargadatta said on this suffering sense of being a “me” for whom the conviction
(false) is, “there is something wrong with me”:
“Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you but your
own imagination, you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas and live by truth alone”. ('I Am That',
Ch. 29.)
TRUTH equals FACT. The FACT is You Are THAT - The ONE. There is no twoness in Nonduality:
Concepts are false, Being is REAL. YOU ARE. THAT.
Q: My question is when it says that the only thing you cannot negate
is the essence of your own being, that appears to be a paradox to the knowing that there is no one. If "I" don't exist
is there a natural essence that is ever present that cannot be negated and if so in what sense? That's like saying something
actually is there.
C: Very good question! The final unresolvanle paradox is stated this way as my concept
(and it is only a concept that points to a deeper insight) – There is NO person in the machine, the bodymind apparatus
is a puppet without a puppetmaster – AND - so long as “you” are still taking your self to be a separate
entity with will and control, then what is needed is for that assumed “me” to investigate itself and see what
is actually here. Note that this paradox is NOT conceievd here as "this OR that" but rather This AND That. The pointer is
all this is NOT TWO (the translation of the Sanskrit word Advaita).
This paradox is not a dilemma that the mind can solve; nor can the mind find
a third alternative which would just be more thoughts about a thing that actually has no reality, no substance, no independent
power; yet when the seeing deep into what never changes EVER and what the nature of this “I” that wants and seeks
an end to its suffering actually IS, that paradox can dissolve. And when "it" does, so do "you".
As Sri Nisargadatta says, in ‘I Am That’ – “Refuse
all thoughts except one: the thought 'I am'. The mind will rebel in the beginning, but with patience and perseverance it will
yield and keep quiet. Once you are quiet, things will begin to happen spontaneously and quite naturally without any interference
on your part”.
As I wrote in “Paradise Found (Chapter
35) – “What IS The "I" Really? The I is an imaginary character you have assumed is the real you only in innocence.
It's like you believe in Santa Claus. The tooth fairy. The "I" - me. You must give up all childish beliefs. These “entities”
including the so-called “me-entity”, the core misunderstanding which arrived at around age two, are ALL fictional.
That primordial illusion that all the rest depend on, this “I” idea, was the first to come and is nearly always
the last to go. The fictional "me", is always the last illusion to be disillusioned
of”!
Or at least so it seems.
Ponder the pointers below from my friend
John Greven and write back if you like!
Love, Charlie
The Source, The One, God
A Humble Mind’s Interpretation
Words
can never capture that which is beyond all things, but here we go anyway.
The One knows itself as the only reality. This is unquestionable.
The peace, that is the One, is beyond anything that the mind can comprehend.
It is absolute. It is a peace born from timeless existence and sole presence that is truly at home with itself. It is a peace
that just one taste of would satisfy a human mind for a lifetime. It is a peace so profound that nothing can disrupt it -
just as nothing can touch space, nothing can touch this all-prevailing peace. It is vibrant stillness and screaming silence.
The source knows itself as timeless- without beginning and without end. This
knowing is absolute. There is absolute certainty in the existence of the One. No question can arise in the One, as all is
clearly known. Not a knowing of things, as the human mind collects, (although that is present moment to moment), but a knowing
of the single reality, that I Am. The Love and Peace of the One are the same –seemingly different yet in perfect harmony
and balance. Nothing moves, while everything is vibrant and seemingly alive.
As seeming individuals, we use a word called love. When speaking of the Love
that is the One, the human conditional love is something different. The Love of the One, like the Peace, is absolute and unassailable.
It is a Love that is complete and present in a source that is timeless. The mind would draw the analogy to a Love and Peace
that have evolved into perfection over a timeless existence. Yet, the word perfection is too limiting.
The One knows itself as all pervading yet without location or space to fill.
The One knows itself as absolute power – absolute presence, yet nothing to effect.
The One – as the attempt above describes, is what you are. The One
does not exist without what you are and you are not without the One. One presence. One Consciousness. One awareness. There
are no individuals within the One.
_______________________________________________________________________