The Truth, or Reality, or Awareness, whatever concepts you want to use, is intangible—and also the totality of tangibility—thus not abstract or intellectual; it is an experience, and felt as Joy. The totality of the invisible is concrete, as concrete as what is looking out your eyes, which is the seeing itself which cannot be seen, nor be separated.

If it cannot be separated, it is not different from what is seen.

Finding Your Own Gateway

Your gateway to the unknown, the unseen… where is it found? It can seem to take time – the “intuitional work”, as Wei Wu Wei put it, can take years.

In any case, here, the “gateway” to the unseen, to the Unknown, to the real – one of them – has been the following contemplation:

Seeing that there can be no separate will, no localize thing or entity that is not subject to cause and effect, nature and nurture – where would a will be, a "free will" as they say?  The spontaneous Source certainly cannot be there in a localized object such as a brain, body, person, all subject to the laws of nature and nurture at any moment in time and space.

And if we look towards the Totality – how could it have a will, or a want? In relation to what? Or, how could it have a desire, or a fear? For example, you see how absurd it is to say the universe wants something, or God wants something. This is pure projection.

Another way to look at this is: Nature does what it does, and this includes inner nature, which was never separate or a thing to begin with. Has anyone ever found a thing? Ask a good physicist, and they will admit no solid object has ever been found; and further, we simply don't know what matter is (nor energy nor light for that matter, no pun intended). How can we ever know, finally, what is behind appearances – the "thing in itself"? All we have is the movement of appearances, and how they seem to function, the patterns.

Of course, there are movements – movements in nature, moments in mind and body, all happening by themselves. And even there, are they only apparent. For indeed, they appear in something that is not moving: the awareness itself that is watching or observing, which cannot be grasped. It is still, is it not, in order to "see" movement?

This is not to suggest that the observer the awareness, is somehow separate, and that the goal is to cultivate detachment. You may do that, and it may even be useful or nice for a time, but can you hold detachment? No, it is impossible. Why? Because it is  state, it is two things: the detach-ee and that from which they are detached. There are two things.

The fact is, there is no one to be detached in the first place. Detachment is another passing experience. It can't be lived. The fact is you are already being lived.

So what's really missing?

 

A Dialogue With A Friend (who also is enjoying All Else is Bondage: Non-Volitional Living, by Wei Wu Wei, the inspiration for the title of this piece)

 

Q: Something is "missing" here nowadays.

There is some resistance and a disconnect from being with the body, getting carried away in distractions.
Reading and listening to Jean [Klein] somehow makes this obvious... Because there is an immediate quality of presence that is restored...
But somehow isn't maintained.

A: The question is, how to look at the body without focusing on it, thus making it real, creating a contraction, enhancing conditioning, etc...

Since it's not real, in the sense of not really being separate from anything else, or any non-thing.

A: That's brilliant! Thank you.

Q: I would say for me it's been a result of anticipating some unknowns in major life changes.

A: I believe this is what is behind a metaphor I heard from a teacher, of welcoming a guest in the door, showing them to the room, saying goodbye when they leave in the morning. But they don’t move in, set up house and pay rent.

It's the same here. Watching these mental reactions felt in the perceived body as feelings come up as a result of work changes, for example, which implies financial changes, which imply work changes, which imply life changes, etc. etc. – to the mind. So not making too much meaning out of the feelings, meaning more thoughts, more mind...

Which plays out as a living more from what you could call clarity or transparency or intuition, instead of reactions, unconscious mechanisms.

Or rationality and reason where appropriate.

Common sense.

Not seeing things as a big deal.

I wonder: I have seen those with a lot of yoga and background in the world of modern spiritual offerings, who come to retreats or satsangs where non-duality is offered, and such attendees talk about “sitting with“ something like a problem or reaction. But there’s already an assumption there of an identification with body or person. And it makes me wonder if it’s why the same folks seem stuck in relationships with problematic situations-people…

Bottom line is it’s about Freedom...

For them it's about the tangible;

Wei Wu Wei points beyond the tangible.

Q: Oh this was so helpful to read.

Yes!

Great observation. It perpetuates a problem and assumes 'sitting with' it will solve it eventually.

So it is still an agenda-based, method type thing.

A: Yes.

Exactly.

A want, a need...

Behind it.

Q: Yes.

That becomes a hindrance to freedom.

Usually problems are almost habitually addressed at the level of symptoms.

And that tends to be the specific branch of a greater plant that bothers me because I live close to it;

But the root of it isn't even considered.

A: Yeah, only if “followed”, seen as real. In other words, there aren’t any real hindrances to Freedom, oddly enough!

Q: Because we are free to see it as real !

A: Yes, true!

Q: Kind of ridiculous haha.

A: The tragi-comedy of life, as seen at the worldly “level”. The stuff of art & literature…

But there’s also Joy in Freedom felt.

The Last Word

(The last word is never the last word of course. Even so-called "sages" that stop talking, eventually talk again, or at least communicate in one fashion or another...).

When I say "beyond the tangible", there can be an implication heard, or interpreted, of two things, of a new duality: the tangible and the intangible. But of course there were never two things, except conceptually.

Once again, we merely have useful tools that help undo what's in the way. In the way of what? In the way of what can't be spoken, because it's non-conceptual.

How does one do allowing, welcoming; how does one do non-doing; how does one do relaxing? What is this "non-volitional" living that Wei Wu Wei talks about, and treasured? What is spontaneity, really? What is True Nature? What is Reality? What is Awareness? What is beyond time and space? What is This? These are all the same question, because they all appear in the same Answer.