That’s the damned question, now ain’t it?

The person does not experience; the person is experienced.  - Greg Goode

I found this on a folded up piece of copy paper that had been under my laptop for a few weeks.  Also on this slip of paper were the notes I took on the details of the death of a good friend’s mother a few weeks ago.  The quote above and his mothers’ death are not related in any way other than the copy paper that just happened to be under my hand when both came up and I thought worthy of jotting down.  The mind is like that sometimes, isn’t it?  Don’t you recall the most amazingly boring things sometimes?  ”What in the hell did I keep that around in there for?”

Since my mind is not chock full of questions and musings about nonduality these days, it isn’t hard for me to reach out for inspiration for another post.  The quote?  That’s all it took.  Let’s see what happens…

“The person does not experience…”  Let’s just take that part for now and see where it goes.  I suppose “person” is equivalent to “an individual”.  So, an individual does not experience.  Hmm…  OK, how’s that sit in my gut?  Uh… honestly, it’s taking a lot of thought to wrestle that down for a 3 count.  Let’s just say, “I don’t experience.”  That’s easier to grasp.  I don’t experience.  So what that means to me is either I can’t experience, or there is no I to experience.  Alright, I suppose I could just leave it as there is no I to experience because it encapsulates “I can’t experience” because if there is no I, then I can’t experience.  We’ll go with that… There is no I to experience.

Long pauses arise (to speak as an Advaita Clown would).  ”There is no I to experience” isn’t sitting well.  Screaming inside is this voice, “You’re nutso, Mike!  What kind of crazy talk is this, and why are you trying to make this nonsense understandable?”  The fact is that there is an I that is definitely experiencing.  Said another way, experiencing is happening (Clown-speak).  The obvious follow-on question… to whom?  Me!  Maybe my name isn’t Mike after all, but a name doesn’t change the fact that what’s happening is registering to a me somewhere.  There is this experience and I am having this experience.  Even if I admit that I am all and omnipresent, there still is this sense of me… I.  And it is this I in which, or to which, the experiences are present.  So I experience.  There is never not an I here.  Maybe it’s not isolated and as individualized as I’ve thought it to be for 40 years, but for this argument it doesn’t matter.  I am.  There is no experience without me, therefore “there is no I to experience” is false.

Maybe I’ve over-analyzed this.  Whoa!  OK, you Clowns are gonna pounce on me, I know it.  Let me back up and use Greg’s words verbatim again.

The person does not experience; the person is experienced

Maybe the key word here is “person”, and maybe that means a unique, individual, separate I.  Maybe my mistake is to assume, or equivocate “person” with “I”, and that’s why this is so hard for me to swallow.  ”…the person is experienced.”  Well, yeah.  If “person” is a bag of bones and guts and muscles and sensations, then yeah… yeah, that is all experienced.  It’s experienced by this “I” again, this “I” that’s always here… me.

So it’s not quite a doctoral thesis, but I’ve broken down Greg’s quote and I’ve ended up agreeing with him.  ”The person does not experience” does not mean “I can’t experience”.  It means that there is no person to experience.  It isn’t the person that is doing the experiencing.  That person is a part of the experience.  You can safely say, “I experience”, then pull the entirety of experience under that blanket with you.  Undeniably, there is experience.  In that sense there must be an I that is experiencing, otherwise you can’t say that there is experience at all.  It has to be experienced.  Who, or what is it that this experience is seen (experienced) by?  That’s the damned question, now ain’t it?

Wow wee!  I just read over this.  Good luck!  I’ve got a headache now after trying to weave through the words left behind by my mental exercise.  I’m not gonna edit it either because that’s the way my mind works, and you guys just got a taste of it… RAW!

Crests & Troughs

Alright, so here I go again, another lull in the “seeker” ride.  I can’t say for sure if it’s due to the incident on the highway, or maybe it’s just the next trough in the “seeking” oscillations, but I’m very, very calm and relaxed, and could give a crap about nonduality, or advaita, right now.  I’m still listening to Paul on that fantastic iPod of mine, but I don’t have any questions, and I certainly don’t have any eagerness about trying to get it.  The whole advaita movement, neo, or traditional, is just a bunch of junk.  I’m saying that in the nicest possible sense of the word “junk”, by the way.  All the sutras and vedas and whatever other deeply revered religious texts of the world that were written by man are a bunch of junk.  All words… just words. No meaning other than what we give them.  Hell, even the words in this post… junk!  The only way to the truth is by a very personal, lonely inward journey.  Reading keeps it at bay.  Going to talks?  Same.  (Look who’s talking, would ya?)  Talks, blogs, books, videos, podcasts… just pushing it out farther and farther away… making me look somewhere else… all the damned time!  So what, we organize it, have meetings about it, eventually formalizing it, turning it into an organized religion.  Then money gets involved and it spirals away and confuses and isolates the masses.

I have really had a large disgust (and distrust) for religion of any form for many, many years, but now it’s more of a shaking of the head and going, “Tsk, tsk, tsk”, whenever I run into it.  I used to want to debate folks about their religion, especially Christianity – I guess because that’s the religion I escaped from.  I see them all as drugs now.  We can feel very little and insignificant, and we need to have a hope for a better place, a better life, a need to be saved from eternal damnation.  That’s the ultimate in wool being pulled over our eyes.  Not only have we deluded ourselves into believing that we are these body-mind thingys, but we believe that we are in big trouble and in dire need of salvation too, and that there is only one man-God who can provide that salvation.

It’s all true from a very generic perspective.  In reality, though, there’s nothing that needs be done at all.  No savior; nothing to be saved from.  Our minds do enough damage on their own.  Compounding the trouble with flawed, ancient dogma is beyond bizarre behavior.  I used to feel sorry for these super-religious folks.  I would go out of my way to get them to THINK about what they were saying, what they were believing.  I can’t change them any more than man-God can save them.  But look at what I’ve been doing myself.  I’ve been chasing a man-God idea.  I’ve been on a quest to save myself.  From what?  Now I don’t know.  I’ve been digging a tunnel through the advaitic system, looking for small nuggets to prove that all my pick-axing was not in vain.  I’ve asked tons of questions of folks whom I’d believed to have reached what it was I was looking for, and was, without exception, disappointed with the results.  Frustration piled up upon frustration, and the goal seemed to be getting farther and farther away to the point of not being able to see.  Clouded with the fog of a million questions and the constant annoyance at already knowing the answers to each and every one, I’ve spun around in place begging for guidance, only to be spun again.

I don’t KNOW anything now.  I don’t have questions now.  No, I haven’t “realized”.  I know that I don’t know anything, and I think… I THINK I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t know anything… at all!  I’m almost good with that.  I still don’t know what my true self is, but God, doesn’t that sound like a silly thing?  ”I want to know my true nature.”  How absurd!  Who wants to know?  Find out, Mike.  Why can’t you stop and just see?

Damn, That Mind Is Quick!

If you’ve been reading this mess of mine for any amount of time, you might know that I’ve latched on to Paul Hedderman for the time being.  I’ve said it before, but he’s very blunt about all this nonduality junk and is really confident about what he’s saying.  He’s also very repetitive, which could annoy some folks who want to hear a nice, long story with a bunch of twists and turns.  For me, though, the repetitiveness is good.  How many times do you think it would take me to hear the same message over and over again before it finally sinks in?  As it turns out, a lot more than I ever would’ve suspected.

It might blow your mind to know how much I’ve read, and how many talks I’ve listened to, or how many YouTube videos I’ve watched.  It really is amazing how much knowledge I’ve accumulated on the subject of Advaita, or nonduality.  I suppose that’s what a “seeker” is supposed to do.  Apparently, that’s what I was supposed to have done because that’s what happened.  No sense beating myself up about not being able to have it all sink in, though.  It hasn’t happened, that’s all.  Nothing good or bad about that, right?

So I’m driving home yesterday afternoon with Paul yappin’ in my ears (podcasts from iTunes) when he said something I’d heard him say a bunch of times.  Hell, I can’t even remember what it was he said… ain’t that some crap!  It might make this story a tad more interesting if I could friggin’ remember what it was he said.  Oh well.  Whatever it was, I had to push the pause button.  You know how you hear something and something tells you that that was important?  Something like that happened, and I had to take it in a second, so I stopped the tape, so to speak.  Driving down the highway, all of a sudden I felt enormous!  This “Mike” thingy here felt like a toy, like a toilet paper roll that something else was looking through.  I didn’t feel like I even needed this body, but it was cool that it was still there driving the car.  Wow, how HUGE I was!  And how insignificant “Mike” was.  Really cool.

Then, oh, and this really pisses me off, guess what?  Mike took over and my mind went into overdrive trying to figure it out.  The thinking started very quickly after that initial feeling.  It was anticipating an explosion or something, trying to imagine what was going to happen next, followed by a thought that it’s probably gonna screw it up.  ”Stop fuggin’ thinking, damn it!  SHUT UUUUUPPPP!”  Shit!  It was gone.  What the hell?  I just can’t leave well enough alone.

Oh boy, did that piss me off!  How impatient my mind is, and how incredibly quick it is to rush in and take control.  It’s like it was saying, “Oh hell no, this is mine.  Stand back!  I got this.”  It would be funny if it didn’t piss me off so much.  But now I’m sittin’ here thinking, “Who is pissed off?”, and, “Does it matter?  You think you got close, but did you?  Who had this experience?”  Well, shit on it then.  Who, or what is in control here, and what is it that’s going on?

All I have now is the memory of what happened, and a vague sense of what that felt like.  I’ve heard it said that who we are is seeing through this body, and that’s as apt a description of what happened as I can muster.  The body was an empty tube, or something, that was just there.  Didn’t matter at all.  But it was fleeting, and incredibly, the mind has made it insignificant.  I’m told I can’t shut the mind up, that I just have to cease the identification with it.  Somebody please tell me how to do that.

Yes, I Think Too Much

Thoughts seem to be the hook that’s so convincing in keeping me anchored to this belief in “me”.  But maybe that’s not true.  (You’ve just jumped in my vehicle, and to continue reading means you’ll be riding with me along some introspective reflection.  Hold on.)

Thoughts happen.  As much as I want to believe that I can control them, I don’t really think that’s possible anymore.  So, if that’s right, and thoughts are just there, uncaused, then I must be being duped into believing that there is this “me” by latching on to them.  Boiled down, then… what I’ve just said was that “I believe I am me” –  a “me” that somehow belongs to, and in, this body; more specifically, in the brain, which is controlling the body, which is life-support for the brain.  And I believe I am this because of all the sensory inputs, and the thinking that gives those inputs meaning, is very expertly presented as a seemingly cohesive, temporally strung-out chain of events.  The story is magnificently crafted, and beautifully orchestrated, with a masterful, seamless presentation of what is sensed as reality.  Very believable, all of it!

So there’s this complex organism with a commanding nerve center that is capable of deceiving the consciousness that provides it it’s life and energy into believing it is this singular existence in an apparent infinite universe.  Is consciousness really deceived?  Is consciousness, if indeed it is the uncaused base of the Universe, and what I allegedly really am, able to be deceived by such a minuscule creation such as this mind-body thingy?  Why would it believe the lie?

What is IT that believes that IT is this mind-body thingy?

St. Francis of Assisi said something (apparently) that I keep hearing a lot lately.

What we are looking for is what is looking.

I had to pause for quite a while before clicking the keys again after deeply pondering that quote.  Introspective as I am, I asked myself, “What am I looking for?”  Why do I even have this desire to look at all?  Maybe because, as I am identified as this mind-body thingy, I don’t want to believe that this thing I inhabit is all there is to it.  When the life support system dies, the brain dies, and the thoughts go.  When that happens, what next?  No thought, no identification with a body (no body to identify with).  But what is it that identifies with the body in the first place?  Is thought the cause of the misidentification, or merely a very slick con artists that can manipulate the conscious into a sick belief?  Just what in the hell is going on?

Is thought conscious?  It wouldn’t seem like it, but if it can manipulate the conscious into misidentification, then wouldn’t consciousness give thought that power?  Doesn’t thought exist because of consciousness?  Isn’t consciousness the root cause?  Consciousness, or awareness maybe, is what I’m told is all there is.  So then all these mind-body thingys that are fooling consciousness must be consciousness too, right?  Consciousness, creating the universe and experiencing itself through an infinitesimal vessel as a human being, implants in that human being the (sometimes maddeningly strong) desire to seek “reality”.  What?  Does that make sense?

And here I sit, allegedly pretending to be one of these mind-body thingys, unbenknownst to itself that it is actually the entire universe incognito, questioning what is happening and wondering who I really am?  What a load of fun!

Yes!  I think too much!

The Hammer Hit Me Again!

(A continuation of a reply to a comment by Randall Friend from yesterday’s post)

Everything that runs through this tired, worn out mind is a concept. For it to even be recognized at all it must be a concept. The only way I can think of pure seeing, without thought, is to imagine an invalid sitting in front of a window in a wheelchair with his mouth hung open and drool pooling on his chest. Basically, brain-dead. So to answer your questions honestly: I don’t know. I never knew, and I don’t think I will ever know what mind or thought is, or where they are. Simply, mind is in the brain, and the brain is inside the head. Yes that’s simple, AND I necessarily have to use conceptual baggage to have that answer spill from this pathetic noggin of mine.

I can’t type a response without this conceptual baggage. Without using concepts I can’t answer. There is no answer, and there is no question. Without concepts, there is nothing. Or nothing to think about anyway. All I can really and truthfully say is I don’t know. I can’t know.

Giving the names is automatic. I don’t seem to be able to control it. It’s a learned behavior, it seems. Like I’ve adopted a way of thinking or reacting by watching others and learning how to do it. It’s not a natural thing at all. Funny how I’m just now seeing that. (See, I’m just throwing up from my brain right now… thoughts to keyboard, no filter). Hmmm… none of this is natural.

How I think, the language I’m using, the facial expressions, how I know where the keys are on the keyboard… all learned behavior. I don’t have anything thats original, nor spontaneous. Wow! What the hell is that? This whole life has been about “what” and “how”. Identify the thing, and know what to do with it. Huh. Jeeze, this is all very, very deeply programmed. None of this is me!

The “me” I’ve believed was me all along has been in a life-long class, learning how to do and be. Programming me the whole time. If that’s true, and all I’ve done up til now is just learn how to do all this and how to properly respond to stimuli, then… what the hell is going on? Do I actually have original thoughts? …………….no?……uh, when did I learn how to think? I can look back and see instances where I’ve been thoroughly trained in how to think. It’s all in English, too!

Damn!

What if I had never learned a language? Would I think then? How would that “sound” inside my head?

Damn it!

Who downloaded all this SHIT in me? This was done all on purpose to screw me up, wasn’t it?

Holy crap! It’s a damned farce!

So, is there a “ME” at all? There’s definitely a human here with an astoundingly programmed psyche. Can it be that it’s just automatically doing all that it has spent 40 years learning what and how to do? What am I then? Thoughts? I don’t make them, they happen, and in FRIGGIN’ ENGLISH!!!! How is that possible? Oh, damn you, Randall. What the hell is going on, and what is this all about?

!!!

The Mind As Me

Mind, or not mind.  What I really am is now narrowed down to those two choices for me.  The thinking and reading and listening and watching I’ve done up to now has finally sunk in to the point where I am totally convinced that it’s got to be one or the other.

Anything I can think about, any concept of this “me” who I really am, by necessity, must be purely a mind function.  All the wondering, all the frustration at not “getting it”, the up-and-down drama of seeking my identity is all undeniably located in the space between my ears.  I can imagine pure existence, existence without thought, and maybe every once in a while that happens unnoticeably, but when it’s only imagined, imagining pure existence is just that… imagining, which happens where?  Right.  The mind!  The mind gets quiet occasionally, and there’s a noticing of gaps in the apparent linear stream of consciousness that can’t be explained.  But do these occurrences of gapped consciousness mean that the real me was in direct contact with reality?  Without thought?  Hell, I don’t know.

The mind is doing all this processing jazz.  Taking inputs and concocting meaning out of them and presenting them.  To whom?  Me, yeah?  Can it be that the mind is presenting all this to itself?  The mind has so many different functions.  Why couldn’t there be a “me” section where all of this information is congealed?  The “screen” that all of this is presented on, the “screen of awareness”; can’t that screen be another part of the mind?  What about what “sees” what is being presented?  Why can’t that be a portion of the mind?  Can that be the most basic, or perhaps most highly evolved portion of the brain?

I’ve said before how seeing a corpse reminds me of a missing animator.  Can it be that that animator is just the mind, the brain itself?  Nothing in this body moves or functions without the mind.  Yet the mind is dependent on the functions it controls.  No heart, not blood.  No blood, no oxygen to fuel the brain.  No brain, no pumping of the heart.  The mind, it seems, has created this vast network of cells and tissues to sustain it’s growth and ensure it’s survival.  The mind, the brain, is the human being.  The mind thinks, it creates, it lives.  Why can’t THAT be all there is to this?  Is it true that we are not our minds?  If so, how do you know?  And if you know, doesn’t that necessarily implicate a mind to know?

This could get much deeper, but I don’t think it should at the moment.  Somebody please… please show me how I’m wrong.  (That’s not a dare, nor a trap for a major philosophical debate.  I think you all know by now that I want to make what the Advaita Clowns say make sense to me.  I want to understand.)

Atrox Sententia

OoooooooKay…  Let’s try this again.

Remember back in school, usually in math class, there was always this guy (or girl) who would slow the entire class down because he just didn’t get it?  Remember what it felt like to have to listen to this complete idiot babble on about some really stupid excuse why he was such a dolt?  You ever been that guy?  Well, that’s me.  I’m that guy disrupting the class with my endless list of stupid questions.  Only this time the class is in nonduality.

I know, holy jeeze, I know!  I am the most thick-headed son-of-a-bitch you’ve probably ever met.  A veritable nondual cretin, me.  All those times I said I knew what the Advaita Clowns were gonna say if I asked a question.  All the rhetoric and jargon I’ve learned, nay memorized.  All the blogging I’ve done about it.  It’s still a complete mystery.  The more I learn about it, the more it eludes me.  Pathetic, I know.

The biggest obstacle, it seems, is the body-mind thingy (now a Mike-coined phrase).  Paul Heddermann, who you all know I am going through a phase with (right?), said:

Consciousness is witnessing your head’s take on this place.

I really understand that.  That should be the end of that, ne?  Nooooooooo…  As easy as it is for me to “understand” that, I can’t accept it.  From that statement I’m led to believe that what I am is consciousness.  Well that’s a very ghost-like thing to me.  I can see that thoughts happen and they are “seen”.  And I can admit that I have to be the one who “sees” these thoughts, even though I cannot touch or point to who, or what, it is that’s doing the “seeing”.  But there still is this thing that’s thinking the thoughts.  Where do they come from?  Do they, as many of the Clowns say, just appear out of nowhere, uncaused?  They just pop into and out of existence on there own?  Then why is it so easy to get hooked into them, and who’s getting hooked?  Plus, if all is ME, then why isn’t the body-mind ALSO who I am?  Am I some omnipresent nothing that is just a watcher?  Why is it that all that I know and see of this existence is felt, seen, smelled,  tasted, and heard through this body-mind organism called Mike?  Why can’t I feel, see, smell, taste and hear through other body-mind organisms if what I am is this omnipresent nothing?  Why limit itself to just one of 6-7 billion body-mind organisms that just happen to also be doing the same damned things?

How am I NOT Mike Ayers?

There was a funeral on Monday.  I knew the woman well.  I’m good friends with her son.  She died suddenly… praying.  I stood my distance from her at the viewing.  For reasons I’ve never actually tried to understand, dead bodies hold little interest to me.  Not that they’re grotesque, but that they aren’t real.  That kind of freaks me out a little.  The body is lying there, the same flesh and bones, same exact amount of molecules and atoms that were there when it was moving around, talking, and giving great big hugs to everyone.  But it’s not real anymore.  The animator is missing.  What is that?  What is it that makes a body move the way it does, makes it think and feel, and then disappears, leaving the body limp and the mind dead?  That is who we really are.  But what is that?  Why did it leave the body so suddenly and where did it go?  I wondered while staring at her… where are you now?  Do you now realize the truth?  Can’t you just give me a clue about it, maybe just a little shared insight?  The preachers said she was talking to God one minute, and standing face-to-face with Him the next.  I just wonder… what really happened?

A Thought Experiment (or Something Happened On the Way To My Mind)

Well hello again.  It’s been a while, which is unusual for me.  Eleven days between posts is abnormal considering how much I think and how much I love to write about what I think.  I am vain in that regard, don’t ya think?  Oh, I don’t think that much about myself, not like I’m conceited or anything like that, but thinking and writing are two of my favorite things.  Funny, though, ’cause I wasn’t anxious about not having written in so long.  Whatever… here I is again.

Reading and watching and listening to and about nonduality is like being shot at with a shotgun.  There’s so much coming at me, from all kinds of different sources.  It’s difficult to grasp, which I understand is not the point so don’t go gettin’ on me from the get go.  So much to take in, and hardly any of it makes a lick of damned sense.  Again, not the point – it shouldn’t make sense, which is obvious, one, because it doesn’t, and two, because… well, just because, that’s all.

I get lessons from nonduality that seem to come in waves.  The topics are bunched together in clusters that come at me all at once, like that shotgun metaphor I mentioned.  Lately, it’s been in the form of “things” not having any separate existence other than what I give them.  You know, the whole tree falling in the woods bit.  All of a sudden there’s a lot of material coming at me from all different directions exactly about this point.  Rupert Spira, Greg Goode, Randall Friend, and Paul Heddermann all have been blanketing me with this for a few days now.  There has been so much slapping me in the face about it that I’m forced to deal with it.  I’ve resolved myself to finding the truth in it, and it’s very, very difficult for me.  For those of you who are unenlightened (I know, nobody’s enlightened or not), try to imagine that your car doesn’t exist when you’re not there to witness it.  Rupert gave it a go here on StillnessSpeaks.com.  There are a lot of points I am forced to agree with, but at the end I can’t help saying, “Yeah, but…  The damned car is still there!”  To prove it, all I have to do is go to the garage and have a look!  Maybe you can give Rupert’s explanation a read and let me know what you think.  He’s very good at getting you to admit some basic facts that make you question what you think you know.

Somehow, thought seems to be the central figure in all of this.  I had another lesson of sorts from a real-life situation just this weekend.  I won’t go into the details because it’s… well, it’s just personal.  Without giving it away (hopefully), there was this situation, this “event” that occurred, and this event didn’t bother me, as most events that occur around me don’t.  The reason?  Well, mostly because I’ve come to accept that things are the way they are, and that to argue with that is purely ludicrous.  Things happen, and I can react to them or just watch them without slappin’ handcuffs on them and going for wild rides.  It used to be a conscious decision for me to not react.  Anymore it’s just second nature.  It really takes a lot to piqué me to the point of being upset.  Upset is usually the MO when you hook into a really meaty thing that’s happened right?  Angry, sad, nervous, anxious… stuff like that.  Well this thing happened and I didn’t give it much thought.  It really made someone else very upset though.  Then it was pointed out to me how this event should make me feel.  Explained in great detail.  Guess what?  My mind kicked in and all sorts of thoughts about this event flooded in.

“It shouldn’t have happened”, “I shouldn’t be treated like this”, “If I don’t do something about this, it will happen again”, “If I don’t address this, it will get worse”.

I now had to address it, so I did.  It was emotional for me, tears and everything.  Then other thoughts arose, which made it even worse.  Thoughts about my dead brother, and thoughts about my dear friend who just lost his mother suddenly last Thursday morning.  It turned into a very gut-wrenching episode.  Somewhere along the way I realized what had just happened.  Thought! The event had happened and I hadn’t latched on to it.  My original reaction to it was not much more than “I’m a bit disappointed that it happened this way, but what is there to do about something that’s already happened?”  I received a very strong argument about why this should upset me a great deal more than it did, and I agreed.  I opened the flood gates and the mind obliged me.

Bob Adamson has a book, What’s Wrong with Right Now?, the subtitle is “Unless You Think About It”.  Ha!  There ya go!  That’s it.  What was “wrong” with that event that happened?  Nothing!  I gave it the meaning that it had with thought.  The event happened, that’s it!  Nothing else.  Nothing wrong, or right, with the event in and of itself.  It wasn’t until I thought about it, about how it should’ve been different, or it should be different in the future, that it became this bad thing that happened.  Not only that, but all kinds of other thoughts came in to help with the mood and fueled the emotions that ensued.  Thoughts about stuff that weren’t even related in the least.  How amazing!  I was in awe of what had happened.  Truly amazing!  What a wonderful lesson.  I’m still all giddy-like about having been able to watch it happen and reflect on it while it was going on.  Makes me think… isn’t that funny, makes me think… ha!  How powerful the mind is, and how easily we are at latching on and believing what it says.

Just got a call that our oldest son (2 3/4 yrs) has taken to monochromatic artistic endeavors.  How proud I am of his artistic expression, and it’s abstract at that!  I can’t wait to see it in person, as all I’ve seen is what Kelly’s sent me via  cell phone pictures.  Nothing that can be framed, unfortunately.  You know those very thick black magic markers?  Our entire kitchen and dinette floor has been wonderfully decorated.  Ahhhh…. the joys of parenthood.  Can’t wait to get home and see it for myself!  A true test for this thought realization I’ve been talking about.

Pointless, No Point

Consciousness is witnessing your head’s take on this place.  We’ve missed, or forgotten, that sense of being conscious and we’ve been living from our own head’s take on this place.  And the head’s take on this place is totally based on the consciousness that’s illuminating this place for your head to have a freakin’ take on it.

You know how you hear some things over and over again, and it’s the same old boring yadda-yadda?  I’ve been reading and listening and watching junk on Advaita now for what, two years or so?  At first, it was so unbelievably out there that I almost didn’t keep reading.  I read Tony Parsons’ book, The Open Secret, several years ago, like the mid to late 90s, so I had a vague introduction to it all.  I’d also read Eckart Tolle’s first book, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, but ended up putting it down when he started getting into menstrual cycles and crap like that.  Seemed a bit weird at that point.  Anyway, my point is that even though I’d had an introductory course, if you will, into nonduality as far back as the ’90s, it wasn’t until I read Gilbert’s book Everything Is Clear and Obvious that I started thinking that maybe there was something here I should check out.  That led to Sailor Bob, then Nisargadatta Maharaj (I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta), then Ramana Maharshi (Talks With Ramana Maharshi: On Realizing Abiding Peace and Happiness), and the blogs, and videos, and MP3’s.

Everyone and everything is telling me I’m not who I have been believing myself to be all this time.  Who am I then?  I think this whole nonduality/advaita phase of my life has opened up a whole new realm of possibilities that I never would have guessed.  Constantly searching the net for another teacher, always wanting to find a slightly different take on it, I’ve found many helpful teachers along the way.  It’s sort of like trying on clothes, I guess.  I have had an uneasy feeling watching or following teachers who dress the part, with flowy light weight, Indian garb on, sitting on a small stage above the students with a flower arrangement, a glass of water, and a small picture of his/her guru sitting next to them.  Then they kind of grew on me.  Mooji and Adyashanti would be more specifically who I’m referring to.  They’re OK now.  Don’t understand the garb and all that, but whatever works, huh?

The straight shooters are the ones I tend to have gravitated to lately.  I went through a U.G. phase late last year.  Funny ’cause I’d stumbled upon him back in the late ’90s as well, but his message wasn’t at all what I was wanting to hear at the time.  Now I think he’s great!  Tells it like he sees it.  Another guy I’ve gravitated to lately is Paul Heddermann, and he ain’t sellin’ nothin’, but he sure likes to talk.  Reminds me of the ShamWow Vinnie guy .  That opening quote is from something I had to rewind and listen to again on one of the talks I’m listening to.  He’s constantly spinning around, throwing this mess at you from different angles.  And he’s jazzed about it, too.  Very cool.  I seem to settle on the irreverent and politically incorrect.  Maybe that says something about me, huh?  I don’t care, whatever.  Different strokes, right?  He’s great!

And every once in a while there’ll be a new commenter here, like yesterday, who comes along and drops some shit on me and it makes me go, “hmmmm…”  Then there are those commenters who have been pounding away at me the whole time (Suzanne, for instance).  You can’t imagine my gratitude for sticking with me like a spiritual guide or something.  Very much appreciated, and don’t give up on me!

OK, well it looks like this post had no point to it.  Pointless.  Like my search.  Like the purpose of all of this around us.  No point, yet here it is.

Looking for the Tooth Fairy

It’s all in the head… all in MY head, quite literally.  I’ve been living, and continue to live as an interpretation IN my head!  It’s all an interpretation.  No direct contact at all with reality, and I don’t see how that will ever change.  I can see that there’s this something, don’t know what, that’s having the experiences that are presented to it, and that somehow that’s who, or what, I am.  I can’t be the body because the body wouldn’t be able to know itself.  I can’t be the thoughts because thought can’t know itself.  Something somehow knows the thoughts.  Saying “knows” implies that there are thoughts.  How can you say anything at all about this without thought?  And thought’s not it!

Is it enough to say, however reluctantly it may be, that I am not this “Mike” guy?  Is it enough to throw away all that I’ve believed myself to be and be completely open to another possibility?  I don’t want to read anymore books, listen to anymore podcasts, or watch anymore videos.  I only want direct knowledge of who I am.  I no longer want the filter, the interpreter.  I want to meet ME!  (Oh God, I realize how pathetic this sounds, so go easy on me, would ya?)

Nobody can help!  It’s either all a huge, very cleverly conceived LIE, or I’m in here somewhere.  I don’t want to go on some huge crusade looking for the Tooth Fairy.  If I believed strongly enough, I could spend my entire life looking.  There is not Tooth Fairy, right?  There is no ME, then?  Is that the point?  What the hell am I looking for then?  And who is I that is looking?  Shit, I’ve gotta stop.