When you wake up to yourself fully, you recognize in an instant that everything is you, and it always has been, as you are everything. So what is it that keeps us from realizing this in any moment?
Many of you have had some glimpse of this truth, some shattering of the illusion of separation. Then following this earth-shattering glimpse, this moment of pure grace, what is it that comes back into play and reconstitutes the illusion? Why is the illusion of separate entities believed or followed ever again?
This is, of course, a mechanism of the mind/body, and there is nothing wrong with it. The body needs enormous protection to survive and so it is wired for protection. The body needs to be fed. It needs to be sheltered. It needs to run, hide, or fight when it’s threatened. These are all natural instincts of the body, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of them. But in order for these mechanisms to be effective, the mind/body first has to be able to judge what constitutes a threat, and then, very quickly, what is the appropriate response.
We are all familiar with the fight-or-flight response, but protection gets much more subtle than that. In our evolvement as human beings, we have learned to be very subtle in the ways of protection, and our subtlety is in lying.
Did you know that you’re a liar? The human animal is a tremendous liar. Since we are wired for protection, we are well-trained in lying. Throughout history, our ancestors have changed their names, moved to different places, or attempted to hide their race so as not to be harmed or killed. A huge amount of lying has been necessary for protection, but then the lies get more and more subtle, and eventually you begin to believe the lies. The cocoon of self-delusion gets woven very tight and has to be maintained. Yet you find it can’t be maintained consciously all the time, because there are so many other things to tend to, such as getting enlightened, or getting happier and more successful.
Consequently, all our attempts at protection or attainment begin running just under consciousness. We have flashes of awakening, and we wonder why it doesn’t hold, why it doesn’t last. We have all kinds of fantasies of what true awakening will be—that we will no longer see separation, we will no longer feel negative emotions, we will perhaps just experience a kind of sweet energy flow. These are all just more lies.
Since our lying has been very useful for survival, and since we have become so accustomed to lying for protection, often the biggest lie, that we are separate from each other, can never really be examined because of all the lies in between. Lies upon lies upon lies. As spiritual seekers, we just want to leap into the belief that we are “one with all,” right? I mean, isn’t it instinctive to not get into the messy stuff?
Many of you have had these experiences of oneness, and they are beautiful. If the experience lasts, then that’s wonderful. There is no problem. If it doesn’t last, if you’re not someone like Ramana who could wake up and be true to that for the rest of his life; if you are someone who has had glimpses and yet somehow, knowingly or unknowingly, you have betrayed, trivialized, abandoned, or seemingly lost those glimpses, then it’s possible that you can now examine the structure of the mechanisms behind that. Not in an analytical way, because it is very easy to lie analytically. The mind is brilliant at lying. But if you can make this examination in the spirit of real human curiosity, which can be just as strong as the human tendency to lie, then there is a possibility you can begin to expose the lies.
This examination must begin openly, nonjudgmentally, in the spirit of truly innocent curiosity. As the lying begins to be exposed, you can ask to see what’s under that lie, and then a little deeper into what’s under that. This is not a mental, analytical, or abstract inquiry, but an inquiry regarding your own life and how it has woven itself from conception into a separate bundle that yearns to be united with itself as totality. The totality has not gone away with the lies. It is here, now. It has just been overlooked by the sensed need to maintain the lies.
Our ancestors did whatever they had to do to survive, and they did some horrible things, but now you are being offered an opportunity to begin telling the truth, to actually meet the karma, with the intention of really waking up to the truth. Ask yourself the questions What am I lying about? Where do I lie? Why do I lie?
Right now, as you read this, close your eyes and ask yourself this question: What do I lie about? In the spirit of innocent, nonjudgmental curiosity, let the answers rise up into your consciousness, with no need to edit the answers with justification or defense. Ask yourself this question repeatedly, letting the answers flow freely: What do I lie about? What do I lie about?...
Let all that is revealed wash over you. Allow yourself to feel in your body the energy required to maintain the lie, to cover the lie, and then to cover the covering. Experience the weight of the lies. It is possible to experience it without judging it. Simply experience it as it is. Through directly experiencing the energy of the lies, without any story attached, there is the possibility of redemption and the possibility of really beginning to tell the truth.
Maybe now you’re seeing even more deeply how easy it is to fabricate lies. Usually it’s quite hard to tell the truth. Yet, if you can no longer deny that what you want is the truth, then you are sick of the lies. They don’t work. Maybe on some level you thought they were serving you, but when it comes to realizing the truth of the matter, you must stop lying. If you are willing to inquire deeper and deeper, you will get to both the relative truths and the absolute truth, because truth is here. All it takes is for our conscious attention to be turned in that direction rather than turned in the usual direction of protecting, hiding, denying, and then lying about denying.
So now, in the same spirit of open and innocent inquiry, you can ask yourself this question: What is the truth? Just as with the last question, ask yourself repeatedly, openly, letting the answers float freely up into conscious awareness: What is the truth? What is the truth?...
Notice if the truths you are telling are mutable or changeable. Are they true one moment and not true the next moment? Are they halfway true, wholly true, or not true at all? Is the truth something that you decide is the truth? How do you know if that’s the truth? What is it based on? Where does it come from? What is it motivated by? Can it stand alone with nothing to support it, nothing under it, nothing above it? If it can, then that’s the truth. If it needs a story, characters, a past, or a future, it is a partial truth, a mutable truth, a changeable truth.
Notice the difference in the energy when you’re telling the truth, even if it’s just a temporary, relative truth. Is there more space? Is there more possibility to actually examine what is even more fully true?
What is the deepest truth of who you are?? Is there ever a time, in good times or bad, when this is absent? Is there ever a time when you have not been this?
The truth really wants to be spoken, doesn’t it?
Yes, it does. So please, speak it.
I’ve spent so much time avoiding meeting what’s actually here.
We spend entire lifetimes.
There can be an intention to fully meet the truth, and then at the last moment, just a slight little movement away.
What is it that moves away from the truth, even slightly? What is required for that movement?
Some kind of fear.
Not only is fear required, but fear plus a thought, and then a thought following that thought. You can begin to see that there is actually quite a bit of effort involved in moving away from truth.
Yes, it’s very draining. And now I see how much energy is actually available through telling the truth. The truth is nourishing; it gives me strength.
Yes, the strength of fearlessness. Fear may be present, but fearlessness is the willingness to tell the deeper and deeper truth, regardless of what is present. It often starts with a relative truth, and telling the relative truths can be very important. They are just not the whole truth. You don’t want to dismiss the relative truths, and you don’t want to settle for them.
It seems to me I’ve been making a mistake. When I’m in the deepest truth, I keep thinking that it will give me all the answers. But it doesn’t, necessarily, and I can get very frustrated by this.
Well, I can see two mistakes you’re making right away. “When I’m in the truth” is already a mistake because there is not a “you” and “a truth.” Truth is not a place that you can “go to” and “get in.”
So you’re saying that truth is not a place?
That’s right. Truth is not a place. I’m also pointing out that you are not a “thing” that can be separate from truth.
So, if truth is not a place and you are not a thing, what does that leave you with?
Not much! (laughing)
It leaves nothing at all! Correct? That’s the truth. Yet the moment you make “nothing at all” a thing, it is separate from you, and that’s not “nothing at all.” Then once again there is a “thing” and there is a “you.” This is just how the mind works. “No-thing at all” is not the mind’s idea of nothing. It is alive. It is awake. It is vibrant. It is consciousness. And consciousness is truth. Consciousness is not a place. It is not a thing. You can’t “find” consciousness and say, “Okay, here is consciousness. I’ll put consciousness in this place, and then I’ll know where consciousness is if ever I need it again.” And this is what the mind attempts to do.
Yes, that’s exactly what I do! (laughing)
That’s right; it’s a good laugh. All that is required is the recognition that this is what you are doing, and then you can stop doing it. You don’t have to know what nothing at all is, what truth is, or even what consciousness is. Just notice that your mind is creating objects out of what cannot be objectified, and you are identifying yourself as another object in relationship to these objects. There’s nothing wrong with this creating power of mind. It’s just not the final truth. For a human child, it may be a very necessary stage of development, but it is also one we get attached to because of the pleasure of creating.
Finally, you realize that the ultimate truth is one you have no power over. It doesn’t actually give you what you demand it to give you. Then there can be some recognition— Wow, I really don’t know anything about truth—and this is wonderful. Then there is actually a possibility for the freshness and the innocence of real inquiry, real curiosity, because you are not approaching it from what you want it to give you, or where it will be at all times, or how you want it to be all the time. Then you are no longer entertained by thoughts of truth as a thing, thoughts of you as a thing, and thoughts about the two of you getting together as two things becoming one.
No wonder I can’t get any answers there!
Yes, no wonder! So now, are you simply willing to not have the answer and to rest in the spaciousness of not knowing? You don’t have the answer and you don’t know where to go for the answer. At least that is telling a relative truth in the moment. That is the beginning, and in that, there is an innocence, an opening, a possibility of seeing.
I am not talking about realizing, “I don’t have the answer,” and then going into a stupor. I am not talking about, “I don’t have the answer, so I’ll make up an answer, which is what I’ve learned to do as a liar and an imitator.” It is just simply opening to receive the answer. It is not knowing that you don’t know and then thinking you know what it is you don’t know. That’s already way too crowded, way too complicated. Everything has to be emptied. I am speaking about knowing that you don’t know and being willing to not know.
What are you experiencing now?
It’s exciting! It’s so much less work than trying to get an answer when I can’t find an answer, and there isn’t any answer, and I don’t know any answer.
Exactly. The mind simply opens to see. Don’t make the prayer “Tell me; help me,” and then start timing the answer.
This is what you’ve been doing, right?
Yes! (laughing)
Well, that’s obviously been a mistake, and you can stop it right now. That’s a big bundle of unnecessary suffering. There isn’t anything wrong with that. It’s just unnecessary. When you’re involved in that, you don’t even notice when the truth shows up, because you are too busy being furious that it didn’t show up five minutes ago or wasn’t the truth you were expecting. It’s like waiting for the phone to ring and then you don’t hear the doorbell.
You now have the choice to stop all of that, to give it a break, to give yourself a break. Be willing to not know. Then have the freedom of not knowing, the innocence of not knowing, and in that, the possibility of discovering the truth for yourself, not secondhand, not what you learned, not what you hope, and not what you decide the right answer is.
The mind can be a vehicle or a conduit for the revelation of truth, but it can’t “get” the truth. There is great freedom in the recognition that truth is unknown and unknowable. A life lived in not knowing is an adventure. It is exciting, alive, authentic. Anything that we think we know, in the sense of having captured the truth in knowledge, is subject to change. We can fight that, or we can relax about it and have a good laugh. It’s about time for a good laugh!
Yes it is! (laughing)
This is so beautiful. You started by saying how frustrated you felt. That was the relative truth. But could you have expected that the relative truth would take you on this kind of adventure? Who could expect this?
I’m so grateful.
I feel grateful, too. If you will innocently look into your life, you will see that you can even be grateful for the worst of it. Truly. Just the very fact of living is so much to be grateful for, however long it lasts, in whatever state.
Now, in this lifetime, there is the possibility of actually being yourself. You can stop trying to be something you think you should be, something you think you are, or someplace you think you should be getting to.
What a lucky life in which you find yourself! Unimaginable luck. A life where gratitude is present is already a true life. Whenever there is gratitude, there is no story of “poor me, when will I ever get it, how do I keep it, or what should I do next for more of it.” You are simply grateful to be, and you can send that gratitude throughout time, past and future, to all being everywhere. Then the gratitude and the blessing can grow endlessly, regardless of circumstances, whether good or bad. What a lucky lifetime! What a blessed life. Thank you.