movement of life

~ Hugh ~ 2 Comments

this is the transcript from a video I made today…

this reality has an element of knowing to it.

we may not know what life is,
and far be it for any person to say they do –
but, nevertheless, there is this knowing element of experience:
experience is known.

what is it that knows life?

sometimes it’s called consciousness.
but consciousness just means ‘whatever’s conscious’; which means ‘whatever knows’.
so, consciousness isn’t really a word that tells us a lot,
other than the fact that there is the presence of something that’s conscious.

but we could say that Life is, reality is;
that’s true, because there is Being,
there is Life, there is Reality,
if only in the fact that we are aware of it…

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there’s this movement:
the movement of Life held within the infinite silence of its own Being,
you could say that poetically.

really, it’s a mystery.
there’s lots we don’t know.
I mean, what do we really know?

consciousness consciousness consciousness
that’s very effective at deconstructing beliefs that obstruct Peace,
but what do we really know?

we know that we are aware, for sure.
we know that awareness is real.
experientially there is one reality (and logically too),
but apart from that, look there’s just…

this moment, this expanse of the texture of life,
this is all just kind of painting a picture because we don’t know,
I mean, look –
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so what’s the balance between knowing and not-knowing?

we can’t deny that we know consciousness, to do so would be madness.
but we can know that we don’t know anything else, in a matter of speaking.

all we can know is our consciousness, and even that…isn’t for the mind,
it’s: consciousness knows consciousness,
the rest is –
dynamic, it’s incredible, it’s a wonderful mystery that there is anything.

look, there’s something!

~

but the Peace
the Peace that we seek
is in the heart of what we really are.

you can ‘unveil’ that through questioning your beliefs earnestly and uncompromisingly.

and then the rest,
there is no rest –
there’s just…
life continues to…
to do what life does.

but there is an end to suffering.

you could say that the most natural experience is that of Love.
it’s always natural because it’s about taking off the armour instead of putting on something.

resisting less, avoiding less,
Being.

a story of recovery and reality

~ Hugh ~ 4 Comments

The non-dual understanding can be the dawning of a new kind of health. It is a health that might not look the way we expect, or think, nor might it look the way our society projects that it should. It is, first and foremost, the health of true happiness – that is, a happiness that is not dependent upon the state of the body or of the mind. This health is a release from the habitual patterns that block our natural and harmonious relationship with our environment, freeing us from attachment to the ups and downs of the objective realm.

Any perspective on the past is relative – what we can say about it is never absolutely true nor entirely accurate. Stories are for the individual, and our experiences are always subject to the uniqueness of our body/minds. Nonetheless, a story can help us reframe our experiences, and it is in a simple effort to find a new relationship to the past that I write a little bit about my own here:

“It hit me like the flu – I can remember the exact moment I realized something was off. I was at a patio party in Montreal, I was 19, and all of a sudden, I was struck by some kind of psychic lightning bolt, and everything went dark. It’s hard to describe that…at the same time, I was dealing with the emotional intensity and the demands of an acting degree, and that shadow that I had been hit with at some point exploded into something of a whirlwind of aggressive energy. Soon, I believed I had to run barefoot to the airport to fly to South Africa and be reborn as a lion. I was put on some meds and I soon started to function better, and somehow I even managed to finish the degree. That was the first of several trials of that same kind over the next handful of years. I was being doggedly followed by a spectre of some kind, until, finally, I befriended the one who needed to be heard.”

That was my story – at least, part of it. Perhaps it doesn’t need to be a big deal anymore. Some people seem to find the resolution of their story in the world, or in their art, or in something else, somehow – to each their own. For me, it seems, ‘recovery’ was really in the dispelling of spiritual ignorance – and absolution was always going to be in the real knowing and being of infinite consciousness.

~

There is a primary element of experience, one that is independent from all illness and all health and all the rest. The spiritual possibility, as suggested by sages of all eras, is that what we are all really looking for – Happiness – belongs to another order, another dimension of reality than all the phenomena we perceive. That dimension is always present, for it is the dimension of the real Self. It is consciousness, and it is the guiding force of our lives…and we are in good hands…

sensation and consciousness

~ Hugh ~ Leave a comment

the reality of the body is consciousness.

whether we think of the body as the current, present-moment sensation,
or as the physical, biological body we have inherited as our vehicle through this realm of form, its reality is always consciousness – for consciousness is the one reality of all appearances, regardless of whatever ways we consider or subdivide the relative.

reclaiming the body as an expression of universal consciousness involves merging the two seemingly disparate realms of sensation and consciousness.

consciousness is the presence that perceives experience,
always unaffected by the appearances it displays within itself,
and is not a sensation nor is it limited by any sensation.

sensation is just the body-of-the-moment stripped of any psychological storyline,
it’s an ever-changing, raw, evolving expression of the mysterious intelligence of form.

the bridge between these two worlds (sensation and consciousness) is ultimately poetic and free from logic, but we could say this merging involves both:
knowing ourselves as the infinite presence and
unknowing our preconceptions about our expressive limits.

it is an offering of sensation to the altar of experience,
with the grace that allows and unfolds sensation moment-to-moment as the guide.

as the body becomes more integrated into the experience,
the sensory body becomes more and more consciousness-like.

it feels spacious, transparent, luminous, and free;
and in its natural expanse it is felt as undifferentiated from the consciousness that perceives it.

in the experience of the limitless sensory body,
yoga turns back into meditation,
and the body no longer obstructs or distracts from the experience of pure consciousness.
non-duality is known in both immanence and transcendence.

it’s not that sensation stops;
it continues to express deeper layers – and that journey never has to end.

if there is interest, the accent can always be placed on the body-sensation, the yoga of the moment. you can live through this yoga, and it remains an expression of non-duality, having understood the infinite reality of consciousness.

experiencing consciousness

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the thought of consciousness has no essential impact on the experience of consciousness,
but it may help dispel the seeming illusion of other-than-consciousness.

an expansive feeling-state, no matter how ecstatic, always leaves the experience of consciousness completely untouched,
although it may help reveal the divine realm of embodiment, and it may collapse old residues of bodily contraction.

a beautiful sense perception is an object perceived, and cannot ultimately tell us anything about the perceiving reality,
but it can serve as a bridge to experiencing, once again, the presence of our innate beauty as free awareness.

no object can affect the experience of consciousness;
and we are always, always experiencing consciousness…

the experience of consciousness
is consciousness knowing itself in its independence,
it is pure being divested of the assumptions of separation,
it is our true nature, happiness.

that which perceives experience is consciousness;
that which perceives experience is perceiving consciousness,
because there is only consciousness…
and its constituent elements are made only of itself.

we cannot not have the experience of consciousness,
it’s just that in ignorance we sometimes believe that there is something other-than-consciousness in experience.

am I conscious?
what evidence do I have to support the belief that consciousness is limited and separate?
could it be that the consciousness that perceives my experience is not personal but universal?

these questions all point to the same experience:
that of our self knowing itself, consciousness knowing consciousness.

it is already, always, eternally the case, consciousness always only ever knows itself,
however we have to free consciousness from the superimposed beliefs in the mind
that it is limited, finite, body-bound, mind-dependent, unreal, was born, will die, etc. etc.

and all those words simply imply: separate.

the non-dual spiritual journey is to reveal to, as, and for consciousness our pure, infinite, indivisible freedom.

the body is a friend

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once-hidden bodily residues of ignorance left their indentured traces on the landscape of body-feeling; always fated to be filled again into natural plenitude with the smooth clay of consciousness, maker and remover of all samskaras.

as first we feel the sensations present as our body, we may primarily experience a habitual psychological pattern laid down since childhood: a ‘mental’ body consistent with a particular body-image thought. gradually, as the body is encouraged to tell its story (not the mental-historical storyline but the body’s natural, sensory ‘tale of itself’), and always with consciousness as guide and container, the personal psychology tied in with body-sensation and image is liberated from the thinking mind. soon we simply feel sensation without the interference of a mental story; this can be a particularly abrupt and palpable shift once we have noticed the infinity of our consciousness.

in other words, when consciousness has been recognized as infinite, universal and free, the body has an infinite container with which to liberate itself into expansion; and after the primary non-dual recognition, it is only a matter of time before the body regains its natural status as light and transparent, vibratory, tranquil and joyous.

the important element of any body-approach, if the goal is liberation from bodily-suffering is to, and only as much as is possible in any moment, resist the urge to apply a mental agenda to a feeling. the body has its reasons, and always unfolds in time; but rarely in the neat and tidy way that the mind might like. what’s essential is that in a moment of availability and enthusiasm, we allow ourselves to really feel, as if for the first time. the unconscious zones of the body, hidden from habit, will reveal themselves as time goes on.

the body is a friend.

the regaining of our natural, open, happy body is an important step on the spiritual path – but the realms of energy, sensation, and psychosomatic creativity continue to diffuse into ever-deeper, wider rings. the mysteries of the inner world continue to infuse a life informed, if the interest is there, in harmony, celebration and love.

body of consciousness

~ Hugh ~ 4 Comments

to give yourself, progressively,
more and more and as best you can
to the felt Presence of the moment
is the yoga of non-duality.

the Emotion of the moment continuously outgrows itself in cascading waves, ever-changing, deepening in its felt expression of tranquility. freedom of feeling emanates outwards from the initiation into the non-dual understanding, from a genuine glimpse of imperturbability. this dance of the awakening body is rooted in the ground of Being, in the knowing that universal consciousness is our always-ever-present Self.

this very sensation, Now, is a doorway into the unknowable.

Pure Being is our constant non-state, it is what we undeniably are; and yet as infinite presence we have gifted ourselves this object-par-excellence, the body, which, in our quiet contemplation, guides us through life, functionality, happiness. each body, each seeming-being is a unique expression of the Presence we are. in fact, to call the body an object is perhaps diminutive, although doing so serves a worthwhile purpose when considering the primacy of the subjective consciousness…

…the body is: energy, motion, movement, sensation, it is Life, it is the poetry of Being – it is all that is non-static in and as consciousness itself. it is a living, growing, dancing expression of Being – not some dead heap to cast aside or ignore. if we demean the body in the name of some fascist spiritual ideal, we can be sure that our intellectualization leaves our life, relationships and activities dry, numb and inert – and we will be continually visited by our absconded feelings: the body will ‘haunt’ us, so to speak, until at some point we embrace the human instrument and live our understanding through and through its journeying in this world.

there may be resistance to simple feeling – perhaps at least partially since in our culture we are taught to live mostly in our heads, in thinking. nevertheless, feeling is the place where the rubber hits the road, where our spiritual understanding is put to the test. throughout daily living, in feeling the body as it is, we find for ourselves a constant mirror wherein we can notice where we’re really at. a lived spirituality is not found through hiding behind abstruse concepts and a personal storyline of ‘awakening’ or ‘realization’; it is in clear seeing, in the deep honesty of noticing our functioning and not retreating into fantasy, it is in the midst of life.

the word reality belongs to the universal consciousness that perceives life;
and life is the true body of consciousness.

changelessness

~ Hugh ~ Leave a comment

happiness is the experience of consciousness knowing itself, loving itself, being itself, perceiving itself. it is our ever-present nature, but may seem hidden by layers of belief in the mind; and so, a more immediately recognizable word for what we are is consciousness, because while we can seemingly deny that we are happy, it requires much more mental gymnastics to deny that we are conscious.

we know we are conscious, completely.

there are many realms of mind. layers of mentation tend to unveil themselves over time, progressively, the mind sinking deeper into its source and widening in its expanse. mind is motion, ever-changing and developing.

what we are is
changelessness;
formlessness,
shapelessness,
desirelessness itself.

we are not the products of consciousness,
we are That, and we are aware of its expressions.