Nonduality - Calling off the search (Mode Switch)

We try to ‘wake up’ whilst life is here, already awake, as wakefulness itself.

We try to ‘be love’ when all that is here is life’s expression of its love of itself.

'More masculine', 'more feminine' - meanwhile, here at the ranch, shiva shakti bursts forth in full view like a thousand nuclear bombs of perpetual blossoming.

It looks and feels exactly like this.

We try to ‘transcend’ when this one single perception that we are experiencing right now is already transcendence in dynamic and spontaneous flux.

We try ‘to heal’ as a separate entity, when what we are by our very nature is the wholeness of the absolute one reality.

We try to ‘go deep’, whilst we look from infinity.

Try, try, try, and try - we try to create what is already effortlessly so, and so perpetuate the experience of it not being That.

This is why exhaustion is a gift.

If you have your mobile phone held in your hand right now, you’re not going to go looking for it when you need it are you? Or try to acquire another one. To do so knowing that you have it in your hand – well, you would need to create quite a pretense of it being lost or absent in order to convince yourself that you need to go about here or there searching for it, or paying for a new one.

Now, the interesting twist here is that, this is what seeking is, and it’s totally innocent.

How many times have you genuinely been looking for your phone only to discover that it is in your hand? Or your glasses on the top of your head? Your cigarette behind your ear? Your bag on your back?

We all do it.

This is because something becomes so familiar, so blended with our perceptual experience of ourself, that we no longer sense it to be apart (a part). The thing loses its thingness, it’s separateness, (because it was never there in the first place), and now we can’t find it. We no longer perceive it as 'a thing'.

Looking for True Nature is the same, and the fact that it was never a thing in the first place is the whole show. Neither was the thing you thought you were missing. Its because you thought it was a thing apart from ‘other things’ that the experience of something being missing was created in the first place.

So, what’s the resolution?

Let’s take the phone example. You have your phone in your hand - all in perfect working order - perfectly placed, perfectly available for the job in hand. But you are utterly convinced that it’s not there and so you search high and low for it. This apparently goes on for an incredibly long time, and you become more and more convinced - because you have been searching for so long - that it is lost. That it is well and truly missing. You forget that you were even looking for your phone - you're just left with the feeling 'something is missing'. You start looking for whatever it is in everything, for everything.

First perplexed, now utterly down trodden, you give up and decide to go and console yourself by making a cup of tea. You lift the kettle to fill it with one hand and go to turn on the tap with…the phone!!!

You found it once you stopped looking. Not because life is trying to have some cruel joke with you – but simply because it was never gone in the first place. It was the belief that it was gone that created the experience of it being lost and going looking for it.

Seeking for our self (The Self – God, Brahman...) is the same. It’s literally everywhere as everything – all blended in one infinite smoosh of love, shining forth as this exact perceptual experience that YOU are experiencing right now as YOURSELF (God, Brahman...).

The challenge though is that we don’t recognise that we are seeking for our self. We believe we are seeking the riches, the romantic relationship, the fame, the knowledge, the recognition, to be more this or more that, or maybe ‘just’ that little cottage and butterfly garden will sort everything out (this is me !).

Perplexed?

If we bring ourselves a little closer to it, through reflection in feeling, we will recognise that we believe the riches will create freedom and safety, the fame will create worth, the knowledge will create wisdom, the recognition will create sovereignty, and the little cottage will bring peace, beauty, and lasting fulfilment – and it is innocent. Western society is built on it. Wealth is equated to health and freedom, ‘cultivation’ and ‘creation’ is our middle name. We are convinced by the coaching industry to ‘charge what we are worth’ and if we’re not willing to charge big bucks for our time then we must be utterly bereft of any sense of self-worth. If we’re not 'saving the world with our gifts' then what is the purpose or meaning to life, to our self?

How will we be recognised?

What about our legacy?

The thought of leaving this world having not achieved (insert your current named pursuit here) is utterly spine chilling.

That's the program.

Does this sound a little unnervingly familiar?

Can you feel the sense of your internal economy collapsing?

If so...this is beautiful. Really beautiful. Because now, from perplexed to utterly down trodden, you might just be on your way to popping the kettle on and consoling yourself with...

..the entire cosmos of your being!!

You are already wisdom, worth, safety, love, sovereignty, peace, and fulfilment. It’s simply what you are as a natural expression of the fact that all there is here is yourself.

You’re literally seeing yourself, feeling yourself, touching yourself, tasting yourself...everywhere!

This isn't philosophy. This is self evident. You can check this out directly and obviously in your own experience right now. And for the deepest love of yourself and your freedom - don't look for fireworks!!

It's this!

To ‘do’ or ‘become’ what is already life’s nature is an impossibility – there is no thing, no person, no process, that is apart from life itself in its wholeness. The is the predicament of seeking. The challenge of all personal and scientific pursuit when looking into the nature of self and reality.

In our questions of What am I? What is this? – we begin by coming from a sense of being something which doesn’t exist in reality (a someone that is lost or doesn't know the truth) and so we perpetuate our misperceptions and misunderstandings that are fundamentally birthed from the belief in separateness – the phone is believed to be missing whilst it is in fact right here, so familiar in total fusion as what is that it is overlooked.

Whatever effort or apparent discovery that arises out of the assumption of separateness as this is confirming itself on its own terms, and its own terms only. This is the nature of reality in its interpretive mode of functioning through the powers of perception and conceptualisation in dynamic flux.

It’s not a mistake and is not apart from life – but not recognising this creates an experience of limitation, seeking, and suffering. This is funny when it is seen, but when it’s not seen, when you’re in it, this is deeply painful. So painful that we deny it and keep seeking. Facing it is the biggest thing in life to face - with the greatest rewards in life to receive. Rewards that are totally inconceivable.

It is what ‘hell’ is referring to. The Self seeking itself.

‘Heaven’ or ‘salvation’ is the self being itself.

It’s giving up the search and putting the kettle on.

The tea will drink itself…and you are That!

This is nonduality.

“Don’t underestimate the power of presence. It is the power. It is the event. It is the comprehensive miracle. Literally a miracle that is right here right now always, and noticing that, realising that it is that, realising that you are that – that you are this. You are THIS. You’re not some little bystander over here trying to get some piece of the action. You’re it! You’re the main show…and in feeling this, you come to see the truth of it”.

                                                                                 PETER BROWN