When all things have run their course, when every avenue has been exhausted, somehow you will end up back here. Not with me, but here with you, where it all began. Welcome back!
It may have been a long time, or it may not. It doesn’t really make much of a difference, because this is where time has no dominion.
I have to take some space here to elaborate on my part in all this, because it shouldn’t be overstated. My role in this is very limited. I am not an academic, priest, holy man or a teacher, I wouldn’t presume to teach you anything that you do not already know at a deep level. If anything, my role here is that of a facilitator. I’m just doing what I am inclined by my nature to do. I reach out to you, but strictly speaking I don’t help you, because any help you receive is that which you have chosen to do for yourself.
This is to serve as a reminder appearing within the dream inviting you to return home and disengage from that which causes you unnecessary suffering. This disengagement on your part will naturally allow a bringing forth of that which is authentic within you. I try to make this process simple and direct, because in this endeavour we are not looking to add more layers of complexity, nor are we primarily seeking to alleviate the symptoms of dysfunction. Instead, we are going to the absolute core of all error, which could be provisionally worded as your felt sense of being a separate someone.
Another way of putting this is, you think what is happening is finally, ultimately real, and as a result, stemming from a confusion about who you truly are. In other words, you don’t know who you are, even though you may have many revolving thoughts and intimate beliefs about who you are, or who you think you should be. The litmus test is, if there is any confusion about who you are, any suffering, any enduring question, then know that this denotes the influence of separation.
Again, I can’t claim responsibility for any of the work, I am just on standby with a supportive hand on the shoulder. Your input alone is decisive wherever you happen to turn up, and in whatever form this moment happens to take. You do all of the important work, and this really is the only way you will ever benefit from it.
I do not have endorsement by the authority of any person, tradition, or institution to do this. I would argue that this is for the best, because it is important that propositions be weighed according to their own merit, not upon any assumed authority of the speaker.
If there was one thing that I would pass on as any benefit to the human condition at this time, it would be the one vital experiment that would call all else into question. This is the invitation for you yourself to undertake the vital experiment, to stand at the very beginning of what is true and has always been true, not separate from who you are for a single moment. If silence is going to be broken, it may as well be for that. It is something you need to see directly for yourself in order to understand the nature of who and what you are.
A belief, however sophisticated or fervent, is never going to be enough to produce freedom. If there is any confusion, any question as to who and what you are, then you haven’t come to the discovery yet. Any way you think things ought to be, any conditions or expectations you place upon the outer world derive from archaic dissociation with your true identity.
There is a small part of you that wants to make sure its notion of ‘waking up’ will fit the profiles of its wants and needs. What will I get out of it? What will it look like? Ego is a foolish project in this regard, because every person has that which awakening fosters already. We are already familiar with it from our earliest inception. We should perhaps instead look at what has never changed, that which has never been different.
All difference arises from that which is never different – strange paradox, but if we observe this for ourselves, the truth in it is revealed. The fruit of awakening isn’t on the other side of some process or behavioural program. We don’t go over there to get it. That is the other business – delusion, separation.
That is what we move for, that is what we leave home to try to grasp onto.
There is a deep yearning for truth, for home. This is a real desire, perhaps even deeper than what we consider within the usual spectrum of human desires. You could call it a soul desire. It is a mystery at this level as to why it comes forward strongly in some individuals and less in others. It is not a ‘bad’ desire in the sense that it does not invest in more cycles of suffering. It makes itself known, either fiercely or quietly, and it isn’t really addressed until you start to acknowledge the woods for the trees, which can be quite a drawn-out process of stepping back, again and again.
This enterprise is all about stepping back. If you are honest and inquisitive about your wants, needs and desires, you will start to find the same kinds of energies as other people involved in this process tend to. Don’t believe this, look for yourself and see whether it is true in your experience.
Most people will not read through something like this unless there is a pre-existing familiarity. There is a part of you, actually much smaller than you might think, that is terribly afraid, fearful, and only asks for things to get better, for the suffering to be relieved. There is another part that gravitates so strongly toward the value of truth and wisdom for its own sake that it wants nothing else. It won’t settle for any less. It doesn’t care in the least about the egoic energy and its small wants.
This may even strike us as quite an anomaly, given that the human lives we occupy are otherwise so richly bound with that which falls within the providence of the biological, such as succeeding, staying safe, finding a mate and so forth. That small part of you under strict cultural and genetic instructions to get more and do better than others is exceptionally narrow, and really doesn’t have any power when it comes to truth. In a sense, when you bring this conditioning into awareness, you are beginning to put down the playthings not only of the small self, but really those of the entire species.
There is the part of you that knows its way back to truth, like a homing pigeon. It is interested in an entirely different game to the small self. Your simply being in this world evokes an open-ended story. There is a tiny but disproportionately represented energy within you that wants to get rid of just enough dysfunction to avoid waking, and keep separation. It is like a mote of dust trying to block out the sun. If you keep it close enough to your eye, it can – that doesn’t mean it is as big as you think it is.
Now, be warned: you cannot get rid of what you do not want, and reserve the right to pick and choose from other illusions. It is an all or nothing deal. How do you set one part of a building ablaze? The other component, utterly vast in comparison but skilfully clouded by the insistent needs of the other energy movement, seeks waking up – truth – unreservedly, because it knows this is home, this is unity. It is the part of us that is finally, truly real, but it doesn’t play games. It is like the fire of the Sun. When it comes through into your life, it will bring with it a conflagration of things that the personal identity has no control to pick and choose.
So what is required of you if you seek resolution to this open question of your being?
I have extremely good news.
You do not need to undertake effort, except insofar as discipline is effort. You need awareness, you need to commit to observing clearly. There are no two ways about it – a platform of awareness is required, and this consists in devoted self-observation.
The next part of the good news is that discipline will usually come to you in a measure proportionate to the dissatisfaction you have experienced by way of falsehood hitherto. This is fed by an egoic pipeline of frustration with the cycles of feeling at the behest of painful dysfunction and thwarted ego projects. In other words, if the illusion continues to entice you back into its fold, out of the wholeness of awareness and back into the fear-driven sleep-state of separation, then it is only because there is enough of an investment there to call you back to it.
It is often said that the proof of a desire lies in the habit of response. You must ultimately decide what is most important in your life, waking up or going back to sleep within the illusion, and if you are like most of us, you will most likely have to re-commit to this repeatedly.
You might be surprised at how much truth seeking and spirituality is just another level of distraction within the illusion. Reality runs astonishingly deep, and beyond a certain point there are no longer words or images that will serve us. Eventually, you may come to prefer inner silence above all else. The rule is, if self-recognition isn’t realised at the deepest level of being, then it isn’t relevant to the experience of unity. A belief in unity will not serve you any more than any other belief. If transformation is what you want, then you must come to it experientially, or not at all.
The third part of the good news is this is an eternally open invitation – it is always available for consideration in this moment, and it is unconditionally extended to everyone.
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Simon P Murphy is a Nelson-based esotericist and philosopher, and author of His Master’s Wretched Organ, a brilliant collection of weird fiction stories.
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