Radically CondensedInstructions

for Being Just as You Are

J Jennifer Matthews

Copyright © J Jennifer Matthews, 2010

All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 4

Preface 5

Introduction 6

Radically Condensed Instructions 7

The Conspiracy of the Ordinary 10

The Dream 16

The Rainbow 17

The Sun 21

The Comet 27

The Mystery 31

Summary and Conclusion 33

Acknowledgments

For your dedicated support, I would liketo thank the faculty of the EpiscopalDivinity School and the philosophyfaculties of the University of Louvainand Bard College.

For your constant support and lovingencouragement, heartfelt thanks to myparents, Don and Katrina, my sister,Anne, and my partner, Mark.

This book is dedicated to my daughter,Alexandra.

Preface

I believe everyone deserves to have thebook they are considering readingsummed-up in five sentences. For all Iknow, five sentences are all you havetime for. You may, for example,presently be in an office chair that isrolling off a cliff.

Even if you are not in such unfortunatecircumstances, you should never berequired to read more than fivesentences. You don’t know me and Ihave done nothing to earn your patience.

In five sentences, then:

This book is grounded in philosophical

thinking known as

'Non-Dualism' or 'Non-Duality.'

It may be helpful to you.

However, you don't really need it.

You have already read dozens of bookswhich are capable of reorienting youtoward the mystery and poignancy ofpresent-moment experience.

It is easy to see this mystery, but trickyto stay with it.

Staying with it requires carefulexamination of the assumptions that pullus away.

Alright, alright. One of the sentences ranon a bit.

Hey, where are you going?

Introduction

There is clarity: luminous, still andsilent clarity. It is with you and in you. Itis you. It always exists. No it never takesa break; no it never goes out for just onecigarette. It is the wholeness you cannever fall out of. Not in your drunkest,sorriest, most hysterical moments, noteven then can you fall out of this clearand sacred perfection. You know that.

You also know there is an ultimate andpowerful truth which calls us to itself. Itis everywhere. And no “where” -nowhere you can point to and say, “thereit is!” At the same time, there is nothingelse. Oh, except you.

And then there’s you. In your heart ofhearts you just don’t get it, do you? Yousay, “I get it, I get it. I know I need todissolve this heavy ego, this heavyproblem. I know I have to let go. Of myconcepts and my stuckness. I know I justneed to “be here now.” Oh and let go ofthis heavy self-centered trip of my self-enclosed existence. And all my othertrips. And I know, I know. I knowthere’s no way to “do” it, this letting go.Because that would be another projectfor my heavy, self-enclosed, self-deluded self. But just tell me, justquickly, what do I do?”

Radically Condensed Instructions

It’s not your fault. Attempts to explainthe clarity, stillness, and openness at theheart of existence often amount to whatthe philosophers call ‘Ignotum perIgnotius:’ an explanation that is evenmore obscure than the thing it is trying toexplain. This clarity, this openness, isnot an easy subject to write or readabout. Some folks have writteneloquently, nonetheless, about the primeimportance of recognizing this clarity inthe here-and-now. (Ram Dass, ThichNhat Hanh, and Eckhart Tolle, to givejust three examples.)

Others have pointed out intelligently thatwe never really leave the clarity of the

here-and-now. That our apparent exitsinto worry and regret only seem to takeus out of the present moment. We cannever remove ourselves from the presentmoment, however, no matter what wedo. This is because the present moment,or (we could say) the present encounter,is the only encounter there is. (PeterDziuban, Greg Goode, and Ken Wilber,to give just three examples.)

I would like to demystify the differencebetween these points, and remove someof our sense of conundrum, with thefollowing idea: our return to the mysteryand intimacy of the present momentdoesn’t have to be thought of as a goal,and certainly not a distant one. It is more

like a lifestyle choice. We don’t, I hope,celebrate Valentine’s Day in the beliefthat we will eventually “get it.” And wecertainly don’t celebrate Valentine’sDay in the hope that we will never haveto celebrate Valentine’s Day again!

When it comes to returning to the presentmoment, however, our techniques oftenhave this built-in redundancy. We returnto the mystery and intimacy of thepresent moment, often in the hope thatwe will “awaken.” I am offering the ideathat when we are alive to the mysteryand intimacy of the present moment, weare already awake. I am also in supportof the latter argument, the “we can neverleave the present moment” argument.

Being awake to the mystery of thepresent moment does not have a differentontological status than being asleep to it.This is just a way of saying that by beingawake to the present moment, we are notadding anything to our existence. Therei s a felt difference, though, isn’t there?Doesn’t “being awake” feel differentfrom “being asleep?” Where does thisfelt difference come from, and what doesit mean?

When it comes to our spiritual lives, weare not just going for a change in feeling.We are going for a profound shift in ourattitude and understanding. And yet thisprofound shift in understanding canactively prevent us from bothering

ourselves, distracting ourselves, and inall other ways removing ourselves fromfelt contact with present-momentexperience.

Let me give two Boston Zen koans asexamples. (A Boston Zen koan, by theway, is just a koan that I, a Bostonian,made up.)

A Zen student says to her teacher:

“I am unclear about the nature ofreality.” Her teacher, an elderlyJapanese gentleman, falls over his chair.

Student: “Are you OK ?”

Teacher: “Of course!”

Student: “What on earth happened?”

Teacher: “I resolved your lack of clarityabout the nature of reality.”

The next day, as they are eating dinner:

Student: “Please pass the salt.”

Teacher: “I see you are clear now aboutthe nature of reality!”

In the first koan, the teacher tries toshow that his student is troubling herselfwith thoughts about the nature of reality.When he falls over his chair, she isgalvanized in the here-and-now by herconcern for him and her desire to help.Her concerns about the ‘nature of

reality’ are abstract and unnecessary bycontrast. So abstract, in fact, that herteacher can resolve the whole pickle justby bringing her attention back to thepresent moment.

In the second koan, the student behavesin a sane and functional manner. In doingso, she demonstrates she has a perfectlyfine understanding of the nature ofreality. At least when she is notbothering herself with abstract conceptsabout the nature of the reality! How dothese examples clarify the relationshipbetween the constant and inalterablepresence of Awareness, and our feelingof being awake?

When we are not in meditation,

contemplation, or Satsang – when“ordinary life” resumes with itsproblems – we are tempted to think wehave lost contact with Awareness. Wethink the sequence of events goes likethis: we lose a serene and mysticalfeeling, then we are disturbed by ourloss. The actual sequence of events,however, is that we s tar t to botherourselves, then we appear to lose thestate of open awareness which is ourvery nature and the only experience thereis. We “lose” it because we no longerallow it to register.

A feeling of peaceful and poignantopenness associates with an accurateand clear understanding of the nature of

things. The fact that we feel disturbed orbothered is actually the litmus test forthis feeling, because it demonstrates thepresence of a pre-existing, peacefulpoignancy. If we did not have thispeaceful and open state as our default,compared to what would we feeltroubled or distressed?

Our essential openness is like a buoywhich appears to sink under the surfaceof our conscious experience only whenwe are actively pushing it down. Pleasedo not take even this image too literally.The fact is, our openness never reallygoes away, not even apparently. Thisconcept is a little hard to grasp, isn’t it?I don’t know about you, but this is where

my understanding sort-of collapses. Thisis it - the cosmic “huh?”

Let’s take a look at what is going onhere. Why do we feel distracted fromour primary and continual existence asAwareness? What exactly is going on?Life is the most incredible mystery. Yetthere is a collusion out there that life issomething ordinary, and that weunderstand it. At least some of it. Well,at the very least, we think there is a clear“us” to understand it, and a clear “it” tobe understood.

The Conspiracy of the Ordinary

The collusion that life is somethingordinary, what I like to call “theconspiracy of the ordinary,” causes us anenormous amount of unnecessarydistraction. What is this conspiracy, andwhat can we do about it? I am going tointroduce the following ideas. I’venumbered them so you know I meanbusiness:

1) We feel numb and separate from ourlives as if we are living behind a pane ofglass. We feel restless and blah. We cancall this feeling “dissatisfaction.”

2) We fail to appreciate the mystery oflife. Because of this, we find ourselves

wanting things to be different. We pursueexternal and internal goals in an effort tomake things different. But this does notwork. Our failure to appreciate the

mystery inherent in our currentsituations, and our consequent attemptsto transcend or improve them, causes ourdissatisfaction.

3) There is good news. We can stoptrying to get something out of life. It ispossible to stop our obsession withtranscending and improving our currentsituations.

4) We can be awake and intimately intouch with the mystery of the presentmoment. This is a lifestyle choice, not a

goal. When something appears to take usout of present-moment experience, wecan question it rather than follow it withcredulity. We don’t have to let ithoodwink us with the promise that wewill be in touch with the mystery ofpresent-moment experience when we'vereceived what we want in the future, inanother city or at another job.

5) We can understand philosophicallythat present-moment experience is allthere is. This understanding is supremelyimportant. We need to have a theoreticalgrasp of how it can be that what is righthere and right now is really all there is.Otherwise we will be easilyhoodwinked and will pin our hopes on

distant external goals such as jobs,partners, and accomplishments, or ondistant internal goals such asenlightenment. This understandingshould also be viewed as a kind ofladder. We do not have to studyphilosophical ideas endlessly andbecome absorbed in their intricacies. Assoon as we have used this ladder toreach the mystery of the present moment,we can kick it away.

Let’s take a look at these ideas.

Idea 1 – We feel numb and separatefrom our lives as if we are living behinda pane of glass.

Some have called these feelings ofdissatisfaction the “reactive emotions.” Iwill define “reactive emotions” asnatural reactions to a distorted anduntrue picture of life. We think we areindependent, self-subsisting entities wholook out on an external world, fromwhich we are separated by ametaphysical gap, which I havecompared to a pane of glass. We thinkwe also look in on, and act upon, an

internal world. This picture of things isartificial and artificially limiting. Wewill discuss it further later on. For nowit's enough to say that the reactiveemotions are artificial limits,circumscribing an artificial bubble ofself.

When we talk about the reactiveemotions, we are recognizing the subtledifference between attempting toabandon present-moment experience,and living in appreciation of the mysteryat the heart of experience. The self, orthe activity of ‘selving,’ is characterizedby a search for something we think ismissing. ‘Selving’ is a misunderstandingwhich causes us to problematize our

experience. As soon as we postulate anindependent and self-enclosed self, westart to bother ourselves.

Idea 2 – We fail to appreciate themystery of life.

Allow me to speak for myself. I havebeen possessed by a kind of madness.This madness takes shape as a definitetendency to fixate on a person or way oflife as my salvation. I abandon theordinary; the day-to-day. I go for thehighest, the most intense experiences,which allow me the most special andrarefied of self-images. I reject what isright in front of me, and situatepassionate dedication into the recedingfuture.

Oh alienating desire, that poison of themind, which makes my my friends’ facesforeign; the blue sky dull, food tasteless,and my passions mere shades, howeverfervently I pursue them! When I am inthis particular, er, frame of mind, I keeptrying to get to the part of the storywhere the heartache stops, as GordonLightfoot would say. And when I finallymanage to stop this, or, to use myfavorite phrase, when I finally “startstopping,” here is the mystery. Righthere.

These crows cawing outside mywindow, have they always been here?And what about this rain, making softriplets in the puddles on the walk?

Idea 3 - We c a n stop trying to getsomething out of life.

Striving for perfection, the compulsionto manufacture a perfect situation, is ahabit with us. We are addicted toimproving ourselves and our lives’situations. But we cannot experience ourtrue openness by improving ourselves. Itis a bit like taking better and better careof our bodies; eating nothing but brownrice and vegetables and runningmarathons and so on, and doing all thisin the hope that one day we will be ableto fly.

If this is our attitude, we will assumethat flying is superior to walking,although flying is not natural to the

human body. We might even decide wewon’t really feel alive until we can fly.If we live like this, we will fail to noticeand enjoy our actual, superb health.

‘If you say the Kingdom of God is in thesky, then the birds got in ahead of you.’ –Jesus of Nazareth, The Gospel ofThomas.

The fact is, we can't improve andimprove, and finally get to ourselves. Itwon’t work and it’s not necessary. Weare already ourselves. A word ofwarning before we move on: there aresome people who would capitalize onyour compulsion for perfection. Thesefolks will help you experience your truenature as open awareness, then yank it

away by telling you you’ve got to readthe next book, attend the next workshop,or advance to the next level. Don’t buyit. By situating freedom in some futureevent that they will control, theseteachers are stealing your wallet andhelping you look for it.

Idea 4 – We can be awake andintimately in touch with the mystery ofpresent- moment experience.

Appreciation of the mystery of life is notanother state that we have to attain. It ismerely the knowledge and acceptancethat there is really nowhere else we haveto go, nothing else we have to do. Now,there are feeling-states which I associatewith this freedom and this appreciation

of the mystery of life. They are a kind-ofpervasive, loving poignancy, and agentle sense of curiosity or surprise. Butthese are not states of a person, as Iwould define a person.

Isn’t the idea of personhood based on asense of will and control? Isn’t the selfin charge of something? Doesn’t it havea sphere of influence? Isn’t the self whatit takes itself to be, in opposition to whatit does not take itself to be?

Doesn’t the self push away its objects ofdesire by considering them to be objects,even as it seems to draw them near bydesiring them?

By contrast, these poignant feelings

come, not from a subject, but from anunbounded openness, which wants onlywhat is happening now. This unboundedopenness does not look for satisfactionin the next person, emotion, or thought. Itseems to accept every situation as is.

Some have called this openness“renunciation.” This is not the “I giveup” of a discouraged self, however. Thisis the dissolution of the self-enclosedself – and the realization that there neverwas any self-enclosed self to begin with.

Idea 5 – We can understandphilosophically that present-momentexperience is the only 'thing' there is.

Q: What gives the “illumined ones”

peace of mind?

A: Nothing does. The very search forany subjective state fuels discontent. The“illumined ones” experience peace andjoy because they have been willing toabandon an innately disturbing illusion.

The ‘illumined ones’ experience afeeling of peaceful, open awarenessbecause they have given something up inexchange for it. They have given up theoccasional pleasure they receive frompromoting a brittle and rather high-maintenance sense of self. Theyexperience peace because they havebeen willing to discard an innatelydisturbing illusion: the illusion that thereis a self which needs to be ‘realized’ or

‘fulfilled.’ This illusion results in ourcommon compulsion to change ourcurrent situations.

Because we identify with our desires,we situate our freedom in our ability topursue and fulfill desires. But then weare stuck with our desires. Consider thecase of someone who has beenimprisoned. At the end of her sentence, aguard opens the prison door and she is atliberty to pursue her desires. But she isnot necessarily free with regard to herdesires. She has l i ber t y to pursuedesires, but she may not have thefreedom to choose whether she willpursue her desires or not.

If we want to appreciate the mystery of

life, it is essential to evade thecompulsion of our desires byunderstanding that there does not need tobe anything else in our current situations.There is no greater feeling, state, orcondition that we have to achieve. Thereis no lesser or more limited feeling,state, or condition that we have to beliberated from. This is it. And thispoignancy is always here. We can giveourselves permission to experience it; tobe right here with it. To be available toit. To be available to the mystery of lifeis to be free.

***

Get it? No? OK, let’s investigate thisimportant idea a little more closely.

When we long for things, it happens thatwe become very good at longing. Sowhy won’t we keep right on longingafter we get what we want? When ourdesired conditions are finally met, theycan’t take away our habit of longing, sothey come too late. When we have tomake an appointment with life, we arealways late for our appointment.

Alienating desire can obscure our feltcontact with the mystery of life. Takegetting a new, ‘perfect’ partner. Aren’twe giddy with joy? The reason we aregiddy with joy is because joy is ourgenuine nature. We just abandoned it fora little while because we were busybothering ourselves with fantasies. We

can experience profound joy if we giveourselves permission to. Instead we lookoutside ourselves for a perfect situation.And it is the act of looking that takes usaway from our happiness.

Think of the driven person. When shegets what she wants, she is alreadyoverreaching it to have it forever. Wheneven having it forever won’t do, sheabandons the very person, position, oraccomplishment she once so ferventlysought, and she is no longer present evento them. She is not available.

We want to get away from our self-created feelings of dissatisfaction byfollowing the track of these feelings andtrying to get things to turn out the way we

imagine they should. It is possible toexperience the mystery of ourdissatisfaction itself - to be intimate withit - and to refuse to abandon it. We arenot very good at this. Instead we followthis feeling like a Pied Piper. We allowit to hoodwink us with the illusorypromise that if we give it what it wants,it will go away.

Take the example of anger. Anger is anenergizing reaction. As such, anger mayhave safeguarded the survival of ourspecies, no small achievement! Butanger doesn’t do the one thing it seemsto promise. Satisfying our angryimpulses does not lead to the dissipationof these impulses. In fact, if we give vent

to anger frequently, we may get fixatedon anger. We may get addicted to angryoutbursts, and to the experience of angeritself. Anger is a comparatively simpleexample. Our spiritual impulses aremuch more complex.

When we create the desire for innerimprovement and psychological states ofpeace, we sometimes notice, (if we arelucky), that we are causing our owndissatisfaction. We usually then create apsychology to eliminate it. We try tohave more compassion and acceptancefor ourselves and others. Well, whatcould possibly be wrong with this?Nothing, except that when problemspersist, our standard solutions to these

problems are often part of the problemsthemselves.

Acceptance, compassion, and thevarious antidotes to our self-botheringand dissatisfaction definitely diminish it.But this is a lengthy process requiringenormous dedication. Like the problemof simple substances in physics – eachparticle of dissatisfaction turns out to beanother compound. Dissatisfaction canbe broken down into ever smallerparticles. And infinitesimaldissatisfaction turns out to be as vexing aproblem as infinite dissatisfaction was.We find that we end up scrubbing ourhands all day like Lady Macbeth, tryingto shed smaller and smaller particles of

anger, jealousy and regret.

The fact is, we don’t experience themystery of life by ‘working through’ ourperturbation. We just experience it. Wesimply decide to experience life, withoutjudgment or expectation. A moment’slapse is a moment’s lapse. The reasonour occasional, alienating thoughts andfeelings bother us is because we thinkwe should be bothered by them.

Chances are we have adopted a rathergrandiose identity as someone who “haspeace” all the time. Do you see the ironyhere? When we try to overcome reactiveemotions, there is always theinfinitesimal remainder we can never berid of. We are then like a rocket

attempting to break the speed of light,which can never burn enough fuel topush the weight of its fuel to light speed.

Wakefulness or enlightenment can bereasonably defined as appreciating themystery of life in the present moment,while knowing it is the only 'thing' thereis. Wakefulness’ opposite – thedissatisfaction brought about by reactiveemotions and alienating desire – can bereasonably defined as the futile attemptto ‘get something out of life.’

We can not get anything out of life.There is no outside where we could takethis thing to. There is no little pocketsituated outside of life, which wouldsteal life’s provisions and squirrel them

away. The life of this moment has nooutside.

So far, so good. We have taken a look atour sense of distraction from our awake,open clarity. Now let's take a look at thisopen clarity itself. What is therelationship between our originalawake, open clarity, and the feeling orexperience of “waking up?

The Dream

The other night, I dreamt a tick wasburrowing himself into my thigh. Igrabbed hold of him with my fingers. Iwas able to pull him out by his legsbefore he could burrow into my skin. Itook a pair of tweezers out of mymedicine cabinet and carefully andthoroughly removed all the stray tickparts. Then I cleaned the little woundsite out with soap. When I woke up mythigh was perfectly fine, with no trace oftick insertion. Not because I’d pulled thetick out so carefully, but because he hadnever existed in the first place.

Notice how ‘fixing’ fixed things in thisexample, but waking up revealed the

original absence of any problem. Itwould be easy to assume that these twothings are related somehow; “fixing” and“waking up.” I am not sure that they are.

Q: How does a magician pull a rabbitout of a hat?

A: He put the rabbit in the hat in the firstplace.

How do we pull the illusion that there issome abiding and intractable “problem”with our lives, out of our lives? I wouldnot be the first to suggest we do this byrealizing that our sense of problem hangson our sense of being a self who “has” aproblem.

Our sense of being a self-enclosed selfis the fundamental illusion, the magictrick which allows the story of our livesto unfold. But we are not this little self-enclosed, self-involved nugget of self.Our true self, our true ‘I,’ is openawareness; an open, loving field ofexperience.

Do you know those sliding tile puzzlesthey give to kids in restaurants? Wherethey have to get the numbered tiles toline up in a sequence? Our true ‘I’ is likethe empty space in the sliding tile puzzlewhich allows the tiles to move. As asquare-shaped opening, this empty spaceis roughly the dimensions of the othertiles. It looks like a tile made of space.

But space is not a thing. There is no suchthing as a rectangle-shaped bit of space.There is simply a gap between tiles,which allows them some mobility.

Our true ‘I’ is an open, empty ‘field’which allows experience to manifestfreely. When we no longer believe thereis a self that must transcend itself and itscircumstances, we have achieved theonly real freedom there is – freedomfrom our illusory sense of bondage andconfinement to the adventures of a self.

Let’s look at an ordinary example. Doyou want to move out of yourdilapidated apartment? I sure do! Butlet’s imagine ourselves at 95. How wewould give anything to see this

dilapidated apartment once more; totenderly and reverently walk through itsstrange, gray halls.

This is the tenderness with which wecan appreciate life now. It is the radicalopposite of ‘fixing’ an apparent self andits problems. In poignant moments,including these moments of nostalgia, wefeel life’s fleeting and mysterious nature.We feel that this self barely hangstogether, and is already almost gone.

This tender quality is not an experienceof self-love per se. It is an experience oflove in a profound, felt realization thatthe self is made of nothing other thanpresent-moment experience, and is aprecarious, dissolving thing. It is a “mist

that hangs in the morning,” as thePsalmist says. When we realize our trueself is nothing other than present-momentexperience, we are free to lovewhatever is happening, regardless ofwhether we like it!

If our partner rejects us, of course wewill grieve his or her absence and donothing for weeks but watch Buffy theVampire Slayer in our ratty bathrobe.But we can grieve with the profoundunderstanding that this moment ofgrieving is life here and now. This is it.This moment is what’s happening now.Must we give in to the hoodwinkingdesire that tells us to abandon thismoment because it is not what we

wanted?

The Rainbow

We have discussed the kinds ofdistractions which seem to take us awayfrom present experience. We havediscussed how waking up, or gettingclear, involves the dissolution of falseassumptions which support ourdissatisfaction, and does not involvefixing an apparent self and her problems.

So, what are these false assumptions?And what is the actual mechanism of ourdissatisfaction? How does it get the jobdone? How does it get us to experiencethe mystery of life only in the briefest offlashes, like fingers of light breakingthrough the clouds in a Flemish painting,illuminating a mere inch of the landscape

here and there?

The mechanism of dissatisfaction is nota real entity. It is an apparition like arainbow. A rainbow is a beam of lightwhich has been refracted through waterdroplets in the air and reflected in theretina of the eye. The illusion of therainbow is that it ends just a few yardsaway, where we can go and stand in itsmulticolored light.

The “real” rainbow exists literally in theeye of the beholder. The band of therainbow does not stretch across anactual horizon, but is found literally inour own eye. We can photographrainbows because light reflects in acamera lens in a similar manner. Like

the shadows in Plato’s cave, therainbow is on the inside. Yet we chaseit.

There is a pervasive feeling ofpoignancy. It is like the cosmic hum; theradiation left over after the Big Bang. Itis always present. It is the feeling ofexistence. We recognize ourselves asopen awareness when we stand in themystery of this feeling. This is our truenature, our open heart. We are searchingfor this total openness. We’re runningfrom it, too.

We are seeking the very thing we'rerunning from; running from the very thingwe’re seeking. Anger, jealousy, regret,anxiety and obsessive desire, the so-

called “reactive” emotions, attempt todefend us against this primarypoignancy. Our usual modus operandi isto project this poignancy onto anotherperson or situation. We imagine we havea solid identity with clear likes anddislikes. We become a person who hasclearly defined situations and people shewants and pursues, and situations andpeople she dislikes and despises.

We then experience a predictable senseof excitement when we get close tosomething we want, and a predictablefeeling of disdain when we feel asituation we want nothing to do withcoming on. Caught in fantasies whichsupport our preferred identities, we also

shut off a good portion of our actualexperience. A good portion of our lives,(let’s say 90%, just to be dramatic),don’t register at all. And then we feelcut-off from life as if we are livingbehind a pane of glass.

This very attitude causes thedissatisfaction we feel. Andunfortunately, we seek happiness in thevery heart of our dissatisfaction. Welook for happiness in the heart oflonging, and we just get more interestinglonging. When we get the job we want,we find ourselves wanting to wantsomething else again. To be able to feelthis poignancy and not turn away from it;this would be the felt aspect of

Wakefulness. To know true intimacy andnot try to hide in the illusory redoubt ofthe self would be Wakefulness. To notgo and find the little reeds and straws ofadditional excitement and status to buildthe nest of the self-enclosed self wouldbe Wakefulness.

Wakefulness is the Alpha and theOmega. It is what we are running from. Itis also what we are seeking. We areescaping from the very thing we’retrying to get to. We are aspiring to thevery thing we’re trying to escape!

We try to run from the poignancy at theheart of existence into plans, project,fantasies, worries, regrets, and imagesof serenity and peace. Or we try to

perfect it, ‘tweak’ it somehow. But it isalready perfect, in that it transcends anyconcept we would have of it. If we musthave a project, we can appreciate themystery of existence without trying toresolve it into a specific feeling orunderstanding we will then articulate,control and repeat.

For example, we try to abandon ourlives by aspiring to experience theirmystery fully in the future, or in somedistant and exotic locale. We lead treksto the Himalayas because we are certainwe can find a little extra mystery there. Itdoesn’t matter what we do, so long aswe keep the rainbow’s end just out ofreach.

When I was 23 I had one of those life-defining infatuations. Somehow I knew ifI received an impassioned letter from theobject of my crush, I would wait a goodthree days before responding. And thosethree days would be some of the mostexciting of my life. (Notice the word“excitement” has ex as its prefix, 'to beoutside of a state or condition.') In acertain sense, there really is nothingmore exciting than entertaining a fantasy.

Fantasy is exciting. It is also insular. Itconsists of the impossible project oftrying to take a break from the intimacyof reality. The major purpose of ourfantasies is usually to delay or evenprevent real intimacy! This is why I

sometimes refer to this kind of fantasy as‘alienating desire.’ Alienating desire isany desire which drains reality from life.In fact, is it really desire? Do we reallywant our desires to “come true?” Or is itjust desire for desire; the desire toremain in desire, and separate from theobject of our desire?

If I were to hold on to a fantasyindefinitely, it would become more andmore empty, repetitive, and stagnant. Butdespite its obvious shortcomings, I couldhold on to it. These reflections bring usto an understanding of what poignancyis, and why experience is suffused withthis sublime yet bittersweet feeling.Living experience is poignant because it

is composed of ‘can’t hold on.’

As the Buddha stated in his sutra on thethree marks of existence, livingexperience is precarious, deeplyunsatisfying when viewed from theperspective of our projects and desires,and without essence, offering nothing tohold on to. We may think we are boundby our lives' experiences. But as soon aswe touch them, they dissolve. We thinkwe have to search for freedom. Reallythere is nothing else.

The Sun

‘I do not see the sun, but I see an eye thatsees the sun.’ – Arthur Schopenhauer

We experience dissatisfaction when welive our lives to further our ambitions,entertain fantasies, or at least avoidunpleasantness. Why can’t we live ourlives to reach the noble goal of self-transcendence? This is an importantquestion, and I think it will help toinvestigate it thoroughly. Ourinvestigation will concern our belief in aradically self-enclosed self: the beliefthat causes our troubles.

Is there a self? What is its nature? Whydoes it need to transcend itself? In what

direction, exactly, should it transcenditself? It is hard to point to the selfbecause it seems to be everywhere welook. As Schopenhauer put it soeloquently in the above quotation,everywhere I look I see my own seeing,my own perception. I don’t even see myown partner, but I see my ownperception of my partner. We might aswell say that ‘others exist only insofar asI perceive them.’ But we would be alittle duped by the structure of languagehere.

It is true that I cannot reach anotherperson with any means but my ownperception. If I were to reach a personnamed Ichabod Jones, I would have to

see him, touch him, hear him, or, buthopefully not, smell him. I could alsotalk with other people about him. Butthis also involves my own hearing andseeing. I simply cannot get in touch withhim in any location that would existbeyond or outside of my experience.

Experience is the only place where theself and others appear. “Experience” isanother word for the way in which thingsappear. They appear in certain ways thatare regulated by our senses of sight,hearing, smell, etc. Because weexperience nothing outside of our ownexperience, experience is a prettytotalizing concept, isn’t it? Do we reallyneed to call it anything? It’s like when

you ask someone, “How’s life?” andthey say, “Compared to what?” It’s likea fish trying to describe water, isn’t it?

A couple hundred years ago, Westernphilosophers became interested in thefact that we know the world only bymeans of our own experience. Some saidwe experience by means of certaininviolable categories of experience, byspace and time for example. This isnotably the view of Immanuel Kant. Ourexperience of space and time, he argued,does not arise from the side of theworld. It arises from the way our mindsconstitute experience. These categoriesare constitutive of the possibility ofexperience itself. We experience the

world by means of space and time.

These ideas were profoundly influential,and have been called the CopernicanTurn in philosophy. Indicating that thisshift in philosophy was just as radical asthe literal turn to a heliocentric solarsystem in physics. Just as the sun doesnot revolve around the earth, but theother way ‘round, so our perception isnot governed by the objects weperceive. Rather, objects are perceivedaccording to our perception.

Do we perceive just according to ourperception, or do we just perceive ourown perception? What does reality looklike when we’re not looking? Someclaim there is an unknowable reality

outside of our experience of reality.Others assert, (notably thephenomenologist Edmund Husserl), thatour perception of things, and things asthey would be anyway, apart from ourperception, are one and the same. Sincewe cannot, in any case, get out of ourexperience, what is the usefulness, theyask, of positing a distinction betweenwhat we perceive, and things as theywould be apart from our perception?

These observations lead to an additionalquestion: if what I perceive is just myown perception, does it follow that Iperceive myself when I look at things? Idon't think it does follow. In fact, thequestion I just asked describes a

philosophical position that is sometimescalled “mentalism.” “Mentalism” is thelogical opposite of materialism, andmaintains many of materialism'sunquestioned assumptions.

In the materialistic view, our perceptionmirrors an external world of solidobjects out there. In the mentalisticview, the external world is thought to bea gossamer projection of the perceiver'smind. In the materialistic view, theworld pre-exists, at least theoretically,our perception of it. In the mentalisticview, a mind pre-exists, at leasttheoretically, our perception of a world.In the first view, we look out at theworld to learn about the world. In the

second, we look out at an apparentexternal world to learn about ourselves.

When we understand that an individualexperiences only according to thecapacities of her experiencing mind, wecould assume that this individual’sworld of experience is her mind. Andthen we could ask interesting questionsabout whether this individual can controlher world as she controls her mind.

We can’t really control our mindsthough, can we? Can we control ourmoods? What about our thoughts? Ouractions? When a hand reaches out to thatearthenware coffee mug with the cobaltring, is that a clear act of will? Or doesit, in some sense, just happen? And if a

thought arises, “I should really lay offthe coffee,” and the hand stops in mid-course, are we absolutely certain thatthis thought caused the interruption ofthe hand’s habitual course?

In addition to believing that they shouldeventually be able to control all eventsthat take place in their worlds, thosewho take a mentalistic view may also betempted to believe such statements as, “Imust be a really evil person, if such evilthings are happening in the world!” I donot believe that this concern isnecessary. Mentalism's insight that theworld is not different from the mind is aradical and interesting one. Good andevil are properties of independent

selves, however. I do not find itnecessary to posit such selves, whowould then be implicated in the moraldrift of their projected universes.

To avoid such extreme and disturbingpositions, I think it is best to dissolve theconcepts of ‘world’ and ‘mind’ and havedone with them. We can question theseconcepts at a very basic level. If I takeseriously the idea that I experience theworld only according to my ownperceptual capacities, then who is to saythat this perception is located in my‘eyes,’ which are themselves onlyperceived insofar as I perceive them, forexample by looking in the mirror?

‘Consciousness,’ ‘perception’ (these

terms are themselves rather weirdreifications, or weird nounings, of theexperience ‘to be conscious of,’ ‘toperceive’) do not necessarily exist in thehead, do they? Perception is the veryfabric of experience! How could it existin a head? 1

Conscious experience is total. We can'tget out of it. But just when we startfeeling oppressed by experience’stotality, and start positing an outside,(and such positing is usually based on amisunderstanding of language andlanguage’s tendency to divide things intoopposites), we notice that experiencedoes not hang together very well.Experience is not a thing the way rocks

are things.

I sometimes describe ‘experience’ as anall-containing fabric. But that’s just ametaphor. Experience is nothing otherthan here and now, what’s happening.What’s happening? The happening of'what's happening' has no extension. Itdoes not point outside of itself.

Our memories of past events are actuallyoccurring as present experience. Ourperfectly rational anticipations of futureevents are also taking place as presentexperience. Just when we start to feeloppressed by the fact that presentlyarising experience is the only 'thing'there is, what was once here is alreadygone. And what is here now is

completely unrelated to anything thatwent on here before. Or maybe it isrelated. But we can’t prove it.

If you saw two people playing catch in adream, could you really say that oneperson caught the ball because the otherone threw it? In waking life we say thesethings all the time. And they are true asfar as they go. But they are assumptions.All we really perceive is presentexperience. And we cannot prove theexistence of any container which makesexperience hang together.

As we discussed before, just becausethoughts arise, it does not follow thatthey take place in a “mind,” andcertainly not in a head. Just because

events arise, it does not follow that theytake place in a “world.” I think we candispense with these conventionalcontainers when they become unwieldy.Instead, can we just take a look at whatis given?

If we just notice the fact that we onlyperceive by means of our ownperception – that in this sense and thissense only we never escape our ownexperience – intriguing questions arise.Sooner or later, someone will questionthe dividing line between the self andher experience, and other people and herexperience of them.

When we develop theories and conceptsabout the nature of reality, these

concepts usually presuppose theexistence of these dividing lines, evenwhere they re-draw them. Can we softenthese lines? Can we soften the differencebetween the self and her experience?Can we notice that we do not actuallysee these lines anywhere in our looking?Interesting things happen when we justlook at experience, without attachingboundaries and concepts.

We could say that experience is “beyondconcepts,” but even that is to define it.To draw another line. It's not in France,so it must be in Belgium. Experiencecannot be described. Not from a vantagepoint outside of it! Just becauseexperience cannot be described, that

doesn't mean we can trap it in ourcricket box called “indescribable” andmake it sing for us all night. We allexperience plenty of things that areindescribable, but that doesn't put themon a par with experience itself any morethan my mother calling me “impossible”makes me a square circle.

We could call experience “beyonddescription,” as long as we understandthat this phrase is not being used to referto an abstract, temporarily unexploredterritory of description. “Experience” isthat which cannot be described ordefined because there is simply no placeoutside of it from which we could do thedescribing.

We often pretend there is such a place,don’t we? We think that the ‘self’ is sucha vantage. We think we can describeexperience from the vantage of a ‘self.’Or we pretend that this vantage issomehow situated in another person. Wepretend that a hole opens up inexperience whenever somebody walksby, through which we can glimpseanother dimension, as if through thepinpoint aperture in a shoebox diorama.

There are a couple of ways we can putthe match to these illusions. We canexplore how the creation of a self, or‘selving’ is actually accomplished,through introspection and through self-description; that is, by observing how

we actually describe ourselves. Thisapproach has its dangers, however.When we use it, we tend to say, “See?There is such a thing as a self! I candescribe it in great detail!”

Fortunately, we can also note that thefeeling of self is not always present. Wecan notice – deeply observe – instanceswhen the feeling of self is absent, andthere is just consciousness, experience,or ‘this.’ In a moment, we will take alook at some of these instances. Fornow, let’s just notice that we artificially,if at times usefully, divide experienceinto self and not-self. It isn't alwaysclear where we should put that line, isit? Is my body my self? What about the

air I breathe?

Often we get very interested in studyingourselves, without pausing to notice thatwe have arbitrarily defined one part ofexperience as our self, and not another.To give a simple example, a sunny dayusually puts us in a good mood, at leastin New England. And I’ve heardScandinavians practically go manic! Isthere any reason to separate our goodmood from the sunlight itself? Is thereany absolute reason to say that our goodmood is somehow the property of a self,and the sunlight is somehow other? Canwe not imagine a language in which‘sunlight’ refers to being in a goodmood, and not metaphorically?

I believe there is no great reason tomaintain the concept of self beyond itsobvious usefulness as a designator. The‘self’ as a metaphysical concept, or aconcept that would set itself up to be agreat, absolute truth, is much too high-maintenance. It simply cannot be made toexist beyond our everyday attempts atself-definition and self-description.

Let’s review where we have beenbefore we take a look at experienceswhere the illusion of boundary linesbetween the experiencer, her experienceand the objects of her experience isentirely absent.

We have given up the idea thatexperience is different from reality as it

would be anyway, apart from ourexperience of it. Though some would sayperception is like seeing in a mirror,dimly – even they have to admit it is nota mirror we can ever get outside of. Solet’s allow that to be as it is. Ourexperience of reality is all the reality weare going to get. There is no real lifewhich is elsewhere.

We have also discovered thatexperience does not belong to anindividual who experiences. That wouldbe again to posit an outside, somethingapart from experience. An outlet. Aninner outlet (a self, mind, head, brain,unconscious, soul) which exists over andagainst an outer outlet (someone else’s

mind, the world, the future, the past,‘reality,’ the outside).

‘Selving’ is at best not terriblynecessary. And at worst we create amonster, as selving can become a futileattempt to abandon experience! Webegin to prefer positing a self and herconditions, and “fixing” the one or theother, over actual experience, whichdoes not consist of selves and theirconditions, and which is the only ‘thing’there is.

When we are ‘selving,’ we areabandoning what we actually see, hear,and feel (which is always dissolving,always falling apart) in favor ofconcepts, which hold together nicely, but

which are mere conventions. When wejust look at experience; when weobserve it closely, we do not discoverany selves. In fact, when we observeexperience carefully and non-selectively, it does slowly dawn on usthat no one is home.

The Comet

Let’s take a look at some actualexperiences. They are experienceswhich I have selected, somewhat atrandom, because the usual, presumedline between me as subject, myexperiences, and their supposed objectsis nowhere to be found. Of course, as wehave already discussed, it never isanywhere to be found. But we don’tusually pause long enough to notice this.

Sometimes the only way to articulatethese experiences is to put them inlanguage that sounds sacred or mystical.So we might categorize them as sacredexperiences. They are certainlyinstructive experiences! But they are not,

for this reason, anything special.

Remember how Foghorn Leghorn says,“Listen to me when I’m talking to you,boy!” In that spirit, let me remind youthat all experiences are experiences ofawakening. Every experience points tothe truth if you look at it closely enough.

When I was little, 6 or 7, I used to turnour wicker laundry hamper upside-down, and stand on it so I could look atmyself in the bathroom mirror. I wouldstare at the little face in the mirror until Iexperienced a feeling of alienation. Iknew the little face staring at me fromthe mirror was not me. But it was notnot-me. I knew I was not localized inthis face, or limited by this face. That’s

why staring at myself felt so creepy. Iknew that I was, and was not, this face.And I just could not reduce myself to onealternative or the other.

I was a teenager, maybe 11 or 12. I waslying on my back looking up into thebranches of my grandmother’s weepingwillow. Yellow-green leaves sparkledagainst the topaz sky. I found myselfthinking: “in order to really see howperfect this is, I must have been hereforever!” This thought seemed to expressa sense of familiarity, of intimacy, in myperception of the beauty of the tree. Itwas as if the tree’s beauty and myperception of it were not entirelyseparate creatures, but were intimately

intertwined and were in some wayrecognizing each other.

When I was 19, I had a conversationwith my philosophy professor abouthuman nature. This happened in thealready-dark of an early evening inwinter. My professor introduced the ideathat people are basically good and weare all doing the best we can. This is afairly common notion in progressivephilosophical circles, but not one I hadheard before. Until then, I'd assumed theworld is divided between good and not-so-good types. I hadn't considered that,though limited in some ways, we allshare the same basic good intentions. Ithad simply never occurred to me that

others’ insides are similar to, perhapsthe same, as mine. That others’ feeling ofthemselves might be exactly the same asmine. Might be mine.

I walked out of his office, feeling anexpansive and warm feeling in the centerof my chest. I looked back at the buildingI had just left, appreciating ourconversation. When I did, I saw shiningwhite and indigo lights over thisacademic building, Aspinwall, inappearance like a comet whose tailspiraled across the horizon. Given thesense of lightness and joy I felt from myprevious insights, I surmised it was myown mind, my own consciousness I wasseeing. It had that “feel.” Besides,

nobody else was stopping to look at thecomet!

At the time I wasn’t the least bit worriedthat I was having a minor hallucination.What 19-year-old worries aboutanything? But I did recognize theenormous implications of seeing my ownconsciousness spread across the eveningsky. “If the comet is just my ownconsciousness,” I wondered, “whatabout Aspinwall? Why isn’t it the casethat Aspinwall is just my ownconsciousness, too? This would bepretty unlikely. But it’s not impossible,is it? Does anything absolutely preventit? What about my friends? What about,ack, my own body, my own self?”

For a few days after this experience, Isearched desperately for something that Iknew to exist distinctly and absolutelyoutside of my conscious experience. Allday long I had conversations with myselfthat went like this:

“Those actors on TV, they’re not myconsciousness, are they?

Well, who is seeing them? Where dothey exist, but in my consciousness?

How about Pluto? Does it exist out therein space?

Of course it does. Where else would itbe?

But does it truly exist outside of myexperience of it? Outside of my hearingabout it in elementary school, forexample? If I actually went and saw it,what would that prove?”

And to give my favorite example:

one crystalline fall day not long ago, Ilooked intently at my writing desk. Now,I don’t want you to think I’m a lunatic,but I would be remiss not to tell you thatmy writing desk was saying “hi” to me.It was greeting me. It was not jumping upand down; writing desks do notgenerally jump up and down. But it wasclearly saying its own kind of “hello.”Nowadays I would probably use theterm self-luminosity. My writing desk

was shining in its own self-luminosity.But “saying hi” works just as well.

When we start to lose our hard-and-fastsense of self, we may feel that we arelosing touch with objective reality. Butwe need not worry. There is no suchthing as objective reality! There is onlyexperience. And the whole point ofexperience is to be intimate with us. It isus. Saying ‘hi’ to us is all it does.Experience is nothing other than acontinual acknowledgment. My writingdesk’s very existence is a kind ofgreeting. Hello!

I am not saying for an instant that theworld is a kind of strange, privatedream. I am not saying that the world is

a dream, and certainly not a private one.I am saying that whatever you think theworld’s status is, the fact is, that the‘self’ who would be dreaming, (orreally seeing things as they are), is anartificial program we are running, whichtakes up an inordinate amount of energy.In fact it’s a real pain in the neck.

When we question our belief that we“have” a self, the concept of privateexperience is challenged as well.Consider the case of artificialawakening. Artificial awakening occurswhen we feel like we just woke up, andwe go about our ordinary activities likemaking coffee and brushing our teeth.

We notice there is something wrong with

our surroundings. Details are wrong.Should this painting be on that wall? Asense of uncanniness pervades ourexperience. A sense of “wrongness” issoaked into the very walls and furniture.Then we wake up in our bed, and realizewe dreamt the whole thing.

Or consider the movie The Matrix. InThe Matrix, human beings are not livingout our lives as free individuals. Insteadwe are confined to pods, being fedsensory experiences that somemischievous computers haveprogrammed to make us think we arefree, so they won’t have a rebellion ontheir hands. In this movie, the characterNeo senses there is something wrong

with his reality, by experiencing thesame sense of pervasive uncanninessthat people who experience artificialawakening report.

In both of these examples, there seems tobe a hidden component to experience;something experience isn’t telling us.This hidden component would of coursebe that the experience is not “real,” andthe things we do inside it do notultimately matter. These interpretationsassume, however, that there are humanbrains somewhere, asleep in the firstcase, and in electrical pods in thesecond, which produce subjectivity. Theunexamined assumption here is that weare real; our subjectivity is real. We

really exist, just somewhere else. We donot co-occur or co-arise withexperience.

We get very preoccupied with levels ofreality, and try desperately to discoverwhat is “really real.” And yet even inour deepest philosophical musings, weoften forget to question the very idea of aself who experiences reality. Ourstandard theory of dreaming, (or of beingimprisoned in a matrix where computerslive on our electrical energy and bodyheat), is that we think we areexperiencing an external reality, when“really” our reality is entirely internal,entirely private. No other real personcould verify that we actually experience

what we think we experience. This isbecause no other real person is in therewith us.

If we found any clues pointing to thehidden duplicity of our experience, wewould do everything possible to sniff itout. While deeply questioning the realityof our experience, however, we leavethe strange concept that there is a selfwho exists elsewhere, in a conditionutterly divorced from her experience,completely unquestioned.

The Mystery

We think there is something ourexperience isn’t telling us. Butexperience is called ‘the given’ becauseeverything is given. We think we aregoing to follow our experience, like atrail of breadcrumbs, to a self or anotherwho is at least partially hidden, by thepast or the future, or by our ignorance ofreality. But nothing is hidden.

What do we believe is hidden? We thinkthe past, or aspects of it, are hidden. Butthe past is nothing other than presentmemory. We think the future is hidden.But the future is nothing other thanpresent anticipation, however realistic itseems. We think the unconscious content

of our minds, “the unconscious,” ishidden. But when we come into contactwith what we think is “unconscious,”through dreams, for example, we areconscious of it.

We think other people’s minds arehidden. We think the truth is hidden. Wethink enlightenment is hidden. We thinkthis of anything presumed far away andneeding to be sought. Of anythingpresumed lost and needing to be found.Of anything presumed veiled andneeding to be revealed.

We think the self is hidden. This is whywe have so many questions about what itis. We think of it as a kind of fortress orredoubt. And from this primary,

presumed redoubt, comes our belief inall other essentially hidden and esotericthings.

The ‘self’ is a concept which operatesalmost continually in our lives. The‘self’ concept boils down to the beliefthat there is a subject who existssomewhat apart from, somewhatdistanced from, her experience.Therefore there is something missingfrom experience; there is a hiddencomponent to experience.

There is no hidden component toexperience. There is no mysteryanywhere to be uncovered. It is all themystery. And it is right here, alreadyuncovered. Its existence co-arises with,

and is the same as, its manifestation. Its‘hereness.’

From our unquestioned belief in ahidden self, flows our belief that there isa hidden meaning to this self’s existence.Or a self-transcending state ofenlightenment that this self should reach.This idea is false, and highly disturbing.It drains the life out of life.

We can understand, however, that thereis no self-enclosed self who exists inseparation from her experience of life.This understanding has been compared,rather smartly I think, with waking up.

When we wake up from a dream, weunderstand that all aspects of the dream

were nothing other than our ownexperience. The dream self and thedream were one and the same. It was allexperience. We may study it as closelyas we like. We may look at it literallywith a microscope. If you were to lookat an apple slice under a microscope in adream, you would see apple cells(unless it were a very whimsicaldream!) But when you wake up you willnot look for these apple slices underyour pillow. You will know they werenothing other than your experience.

We could have the biggest problemgoing, and I mean the biggest neuroticobsession imaginable, and still it is allnothing but present experience. This

understanding is completely liberating,once we get used to it.

There are no solid and abiding subjectsand objects of experience, which aredivided from each other as if by a paneof glass. Experience is nothing other thanunbounded, undivided, awake and awareConsciousness.

Let’s go back to our previous question:“What is the relationship betweenfeeling awake to the mystery of present-moment experience and feelingdissatisfied and numb?” Feeling numb toexperience is caused by the falseperception that you are caught in thewrong experience, as if in apredicament. This perception is caused

in turn by the false belief that you are aself who pursues experience. You donot need to pursue experience. You areexperience.

The idea that we are selves who pursueis a very ill-advised kind of fantasy. Thenotion that we are selves pursuingexperience sucks the sense of wonderout of life. The whole idea of being a‘self’ is already a kind-of philosophicalself-protection. It is the false idea of anabiding redoubt or enclosure inexperience, which will remainfundamentally untouched and unaffected.

We adopt this notion of self because wethink it will make us invulnerable.Instead it puts us profoundly at risk. Our

image of this self-enclosed self is notjust a blank. We project all of ourpreferred identities onto it. When thesepreferred identities do not manifest inthis present instant, we believe we mustchase them down, as if our very livesdepend on this chase. But they don't.Only our fragile and ultimately illusoryidentities depend on our strange andheated pursuits.

The fact is, we do not need to befrantically absorbed in fantasies ofexperiences which will supposedlyhappen a little later on and over there.Everything we are and everything weneed is here. And it happens all the time.

Summary and Conclusion

Open, perfect clarity subtends allexperience. It is experience. Experiencehappens as an experiencing Awareness.Since experience does not happenanywhere else besides this Awareness,we know there is nothing else going onbesides Awareness. Awareness isaware of itself!

I sometimes call experience‘Awareness’ with a capital ‘A,’ so youknow I mean business. We could alsocall it Consciousness, Being, Presenceor Self. I mildly prefer ‘Awareness’because it does not connote an object orprocess. But we don’t really have to callit anything. We just need some term,

some designator, to draw attention towhat is always present. We know we donot and can not exist apart fromAwareness. We know that even in ourworst and most neurotic moments, wenever leave the openness of the here-and-now, which is the only 'thing' thereis. And yet we also understand it is bestfor us to simply ‘be here, now.’

How do we live with this apparentparadox, this apparent conundrum? Ibelieve that a profound understanding ofAwareness is therapeutic in and of itself.It’s true: even in our most obsessive,neurotic fantasies and fixations, wenever leave present-moment experience,the only 'thing' there is. However, when

we understand and accept that thispresent, awake experience is the only'thing' that truly exists, we losemotivation to pursue our grandioseidentities and disturbing obsessions.

It doesn’t always happen all at once. Ourobsessions might go on for a little while,like a bicycle whose rider has jumpedoff. But they simply cannot be sustainedwhen the false sense of self whichsustains them has been thoroughlyrepudiated and put out to hay.

Our real experience is one of openawareness. We feel bothered indistinction to our true reality, becausewe actively bother ourselves. The factthat we feel bothered from time to time

doesn’t mean anything, at least notmetaphysically. Experience is infinite:we can have any experience we want aslong as we are willing to put up with theconsequences. Awareness is certainlynot bothered because a self has beenposited which chooses to bother itself.

We are absolutely, totally, and perfectlyone with our nature as Awareness theinstant we desist from botheringourselves. That’s enlightenment. Thereis really nothing we must do or become.We are enlightened anyway, but notalways in a way we touch into.

Meditating, relaxing and spending timewith a teacher can stop us temporarilyfrom bothering ourselves, but our

customary thinking will bring it rightback. At these times, we feel we have“lost” contact with ourselves as openawareness or present experience. Forthis reason, it is helpful to understandtheoretically how the present moment,our present encounter with life, is theonly life there is. Distraction and self-bothering tempt us with untrue picturesof reality. In these untrue pictures, thesubject-object duality is brought backand upheld in a subtle and unquestionedway.

Learning to stop ourselves frombothering ourselves is no different fromlearning to stop any other negative habit.A person who suffers from alcoholism,

for example, may be able to stopdrinking for a few hours. To persist insobriety, however, she will need anadequate understanding of her disorder.She will need an effective philosophy.

An effective relapse preventionphilosophy reduces the rate of relapseby reducing the overwhelming time-dimension of addiction. Instead ofworrying about staying sober for the restof their lives, alcohol-dependent peopleare wisely encouraged to stop drinkingfor one day, or one hour. They are toldnot to worry about the next hour or day.

This philosophy directly counteracts thehoodwinking nature of the desire foralcohol, which tells the sufferer she

should drink now, because she is notable to stop drinking for a month, year,or lifetime now, and the drink will helpher prepare for sobriety in the future.Her new perspective encourages her tobe sober just for today. She may drink asmuch as she likes tomorrow. Buttomorrow never comes.

Our global change in perspective worksin a similar manner. Instead ofconcerning ourselves with the fact thatwe feel dissatisfied, not peaceful, andnot particularly self-realized, our newperspective encourages us to return tothe mystery of the present moment now.

Supported by our new perspective, weremember that our hope of future

enlightenment is just another distortionin the fun-house mirror of our incorrectbelief in the self and its futureendeavors. We recall that the presentmoment is all there is, and that realityhappens here alone. There is no externalbasis, therefore, from which we canevaluate our present experience.

When we feel reassured that our presentemotional state does not matter quite likewe thought it did, (because we havestopped using it to uphold a brittle self-image or identity), we are able to relax,and we are more in touch with thepresent moment. We no longer worryourselves terribly about what we need todo to get to a state of self-realization.

And from the perspective of Awareness,of course nothing really changed!

We believe that we need to wake up. Butthis belief is just a changing experiencewithin experience itself. It is in structureno different from the belief that we needto trek to the Himalayas, or fit into a size6, preferably before trekking to theHimalayas! This belief can be aneffective stepping stone, if it gets us toquestion our false and often torturousassumptions, possibly even in theHimalayas.

But in its darker, less innocent aspects,the belief that we need to wake up canbe something of a wolf in sheep’sclothing. When we entertain it, we keep

trying to pinch ourselves and wake upfrom present-moment experience, ratherthan appreciating the mystery of present-moment experience. The present momentis perfect in that it is a perfect mystery.Experience is beautifully, sacredly, andnon-conceptually perfect, in this presentmoment, now.

J Jennifer Matthews studiedphilosophy, theology and ethics at theUniversity of Louvain, Belgium and theEpiscopal Divinity School ofCambridge, MA.

She works as a counselor andmeditation instructor at the CASPAREmergency Center in Cambridge.