Happy Now-Year

To paraphrase a good friend, Leo Hartong:

Have a great NOW in the dream of living Reality we label 2012!

Whenever you are, it is NOW, isn't it?

Wherever you are that wherever is always known naturally as HERE, isn't it?

Look at the ONE FACT no one can deny: I AM! As the great recently departed Sage Ramesh Balsekar  put it so elegantly: "True understanding is of the same nature as the simple knowledge I AM ... that I AM alive, that I exist, and that I do not need anyone else's confirmation to prove that I am alive and present."

The non-dual spiritual teaching of "Kashmir Shaivism" proposes, "Nothing exists that is not Shiva". Let us take that deeper: NOTHING (No Thing!) Exists. And THAT is Not Shiva. "Shiva" is a word invented to point to Everything i.e. God i.e Totality. The Nothing that is Eternity is neither Shiva nor not Shiva. Hmmmm??

Remembering another quite different expression, that of Benjamin Franklin, a man of tremendous appetites and great wisdom: "The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end there (HERE!) it is."

The Eternal, Self-Evident and Self-knowing Truth cannot be put into words. It is too big! Only in the Eternal Silence that IS may the truth be naturally known. That said (pun intended), to BE is impossible to attain and impossible to escape. Can we "get to" Here from Here?!?

So when the Sage Ramana Maharshi noted, "Be as you are", he was not offering an instruction, he was stating a FACT. You ... ARE. Being. Just That and nothing else ... or as

'Sailor' Bob Adamson likes to say, "One essence appearing as everything". As Bob always loves to say, "Full Stop!"

However: When your "identity" is stuck into the content of the Empty Sky of Freedom that you are, there will be suffering. That's the deal!

The livingness-aliveness of the Real You ... IN (and AS) THAT, i.e. the ever-fresh always-open HERE-NESS, NOWNESS, there is NO suffering.Yet when the "identity" (I AM) is the Sky, there may well be pain and pleasure (that is also the deal!) The freedom You ARE is not "freedom for 'me'" but rather freedom FROM any 'me'.

Got it? Cool! May all your poker pots be monsters and all your pockets contain Aces in the Happiest Ever Now, 2012.

With greatest Respect and Love to you all,

Happy New Year!!

What Never Changes?

This question, when answered beyond all doubt, leaves the seeker ... well. BEREFT. Bereft of any and all concepts, bereft of "identity" or and so called real and solid "beingness", bereft of nothing, everything, etc ad nauseous! Bereft thou shall BE in nowhereness, where (where?) nothing Happened never did never will... Absoluteness, bereft of any and all of the usual "nondual spiritual 'pat answers'", i.e. when the question is answered with nothing by nothibg for no one, there is That which has never changed never has never will. full stop.

You are not That and You are That. Or, as succinctly phrased by John Greven, a man who exists only in an appearance of an ocean wave-ing (and saying "hello waves"):

"From nothing comes something and to nothing the something returns. But having never left, there is no returning, for something into nothing. In the end nothing happened in something and something never happened in nothing".

Never Changing, therefore unknowable by "you and me", yet ... That IS.

Questions? Comments? Arguments? OK, write nondualityexpressions@gmail.com. Sincere questions are most welcome. But don't bother with agreeing. Look into it and have fun.

PS: "The final truth, as Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj and all the sages before them have clearly stated, is that there is neither creation nor destruction, neither birth nor death, neither destiny nor free will, neither any path nor any achievement. All there is is Consciousness." ~Ramesh Balsekar

(Maybe not even that?!)