Hi Folks,
A couple of things…
First, I will be doing a concert in North San Juan, CA, Sunday June 22nd (4-6pm). Tickets can be purchased here.
Second, my dear friend Dena Evans and I will be starting up another Zoom group, “Exploring the Nature of Reality” using Peter Brown’s wonderful book, Liberation Beyond Imagination as our launching pad. The group will run for 8 weeks, April 8th to May 27th. Meetings will take place again on Tuesdays, 10 to 11:30 am Pacific time.
The meetings are open to anyone, regardless of whether they took part in our previous groups exploring the book. If you have to miss any of the sessions, they will be recorded and made available to everyone participating. If you’d like to take part in the group (there’s no charge, donations are welcome), email me at: john@johnastin.com.
NOTHING IS SEPARATE
Many meditation practices focus on cultivating a stance of being the witness or observer of thought. As a way of finding greater freedom and less entanglement with the flow of thinking, such practices can no doubt be helpful. That said, I’d like to invite you into another, quite different approach to finding freedom from thinking and that is rather than trying to position yourself as the aware observer of thought, just see thinking as an ultimately inseparable expression of you. In this approach, we’re no longer viewing thought (or any other experience) as happening to us but instead as an aspect of us, an aspect of life itself.
So, as you sit here reading these words, just tune into the sense of your own existence, the simple feeling of being. Of course, this is what we’re always feeling but just notice this, the feeling of being, the feeling of existence itself.
Now, as you feel this sense of being, even if you may be thinking of it as somehow localized in some sense, separate or cut-off from what is presumably not being, feel the way that being is absolutely wide-open, unbounded. See how it has no end point, no finality or edge to it. Notice how the feeling of being is already here, already arising effortlessly. It’s really the feeling, not just of what you might think of as “your” life but the feeling of life itself, this reality that’s appearing inexplicably, miraculously.
And now, notice how this sense of being is inclusive of everything. Feel how in being, there are no walls, no defenses, no bracing against anything but just this wide-open expanse, a continuum without border or boundary. Feel yourself as this expanse, and now sense the way in which the expanse of being is inseparable from everything that’s appearing—sensations, emotions, memories, thoughts, hopes, dreams, fears. See how all that appears is an expression of being, an expression of you. Feel the ceaseless dynamism of being, springing forth as each moment, taking shape as the entire multiverse that we call experience.
This vast, boundless ocean of being that is you—your mind, your body, your personality, your quirks, your likes, your dislikes, your inclinations—all of it the flow of this inexplicable, miraculous being, being everything.
And this is true, not because we're sitting here noticing and appreciating this being, although that's delightful to do. It is the case whether it's being noticed or not for a moment we might describe as not noticing being is of course, pure being, being that particular momentary expression! There really is no not noticing. There's only the noticing of what is. In fact, we could say this is the only thing ever happening, the noticing of what is.
Of course, from one perspective phenomena seem to be happening to us. We think we are the subjects of experience. “I'm having these thoughts, these feelings,” and so on. But from the perspective I'm describing and inviting you to explore here, thoughts (and everything else) are not occurring to anyone but are simply expressions of life, expressions of being, expressions of you.
Feel the deep rest of this, the felt sense that there is only this one life and all the many and diverse forms and flavors it can take. There is just reality being everything, this single existence appearing as each momentary perception. It’s restful to see that there is not one thing, struggling or negotiating or pushing against or trying to make sense of another thing. There's just one “thing,” the vast expanse of being, being everything.
Even if this singular reality is appearing as a kind of localized sense of being an individual, see that this is just one of the countless ways it can show up. And as you feel that, just relax and notice, the wide-openness, the absolute expansiveness of being that is simultaneously present. Whether we sense being as this wide-open, uncontracted expanse, or more localized and contracted, it's the same being, isn’t it?
Feel that, the way in which being remains itself, regardless of how it may be appearing.
☺️❤️
Peace is what I get after reading the article. Thank you.