Reality, Forever Being Itself

Upcoming Events

Hi Folks,

A couple of upcoming events…

I will be doing a concert in North San Juan, California, Sunday June 22nd (4-6pm). Tickets can be purchased here.

I’ll be coming to London in July and offering a two-day retreat, July 5th and 6th. It will be held at the Philadelphia Association (4 Marty’s Yard, 17 Hampstead High St, London NW3 1QW), 10 am to 4 pm both days. Cost is $100 for the two days ($50 for one day - no one will be turned away for lack of funds). If interested in registering or for more info, you can email me at: john@johnastin.com.

REALITY, FOREVER BEING ITSELF

Every sound, every little tremor in the body, every feeling, every sensation, every thought, all of it is completely welcomed and allowed, not because we’re doing something to get better at welcoming or accepting or being open to what is but because the undivided wholeness of life has already welcomed everything.

Actually, to say life already welcomes everything is itself, somewhat misleading. It's not as if the waves rise up and then the ocean goes, “I welcome you all, my waves.” The waves are its expression. All that we think of as ourselves, all that is experienced—it’s not that these things are accepted by life. They are life, this presence of reality that miraculously springs forth as each momentary perception.

Feel the impossibility of being cast out of this singular reality, the fact that no experience or circumstance can ever remove you from this that is appearing as everything. There’s nothing more to find because there is nothing but the totality. It’s as if every moment is proclaiming, “Here I am. I am the absolute reality appearing as this, appearing as that, appearing as everything.”

From this perspective, there's not some other moment to find. There are not certain types of appearances that are closer to the totality than other types, any more than certain waves are somehow more the sea than other waves. Every momentary wave of life is already welcomed, without condition. There is zero resistance in this totality that is everything. What we might call some sort of human bracing or struggling or resistance is yet another one of the totality’s countless expressions.

The absolute reality doesn't depend upon doing x, y, or z, in order get ourselves to see it. Such activities and practices are simply one of the ways the totality of life can move. From this vantage, practices are not a means toward some end (discovering the singular nature of reality) but an expression of that end.

There are not two realities, not two lives. There is one life, one presence, one ground of being, being thought, being sensation, being circumstance, being everything and doing so effortlessly.

There’s truly nothing to do to create this that is appearing as everything, because here it is already! Before we even make it to the meditation cushion or the Zoom meeting or the retreat to engage in our inquiry or practice, reality is already being everything, isn’t it?

Of course, seeing that this totality is everything, that nothing ever escapes its reach, relieves us of the mistaken belief that this boundless absolute reality could ever be absent and that we could ever be separated from it. Seeing that the totality is everything and appreciating the profoundness of that relieves us of the search for it because we see that it's never been absent but always here as each moment that appears.

The totality appears as all the seeming patterns, the unfathomably rich intricacy and multiplicity, all the distinctive ways it can seem to take shape and form. And yet, it never actually collapses into something finite or separate but remains the unresolvable infinity it has always been.

We may talk about the wave as having a finite, autonomous existence that arises and moves and then eventually flows back into the sea. But the sea is just simply being the sea. It never collapses into something small and finite and formed. Not actually. Reality always remains the vast expanse that it is. This moment never collapses into all the things we may imagine it has collapsed into. All the identity and confusion? It’s never actually collapsed into such things. It remains its vast, boundless, indescribable nature.

The depth of this has no final bottom to it, no final identity. This is what the depth of reality is. It's just down, down, down the infinite rabbit hole of the unknown, appearing as all these seemingly fixed forms, but never actually becoming any of them, always without identity, free of every identity, free of every seeming restriction and limitation and finiteness, remaining, unbounded and infinite.

Exactly the way the moment seems to be, exactly the way this is being perceived, exactly this seeming flavor of the moment—this is the presentation of the absolute. The moment need not be one iota different than it is in order to be the absolute reality for it never leaves or loses itself in any of its presentations, but is always and forever being itself, like the ocean, dancing as each and every one of its seeming waves.