Still Suffering? Find It.

Q: It's clear as a bell that what I am in the Absolute sense is non-conceptual presence-awareness. But there is still this business of LIFE being fired point blank every moment!

A: I have to ask: at whom? There has to be some story being told that says that something about this “life” matters, and the content of it matters. Without that story, it doesn’t matter what hand life deals.

Q: In my actual direct living-experiencing, there is (sometimes) a gap between what is and what the ego asserts “should be.”

A: If you are clear, as you say, that you are presence-awareness, what is this ego you’re talking about? It is a fiction within awareness, an object noticed by awareness, but nothing that appears in awareness is real. Objects in awareness, like egos, appear to the mind, but only to the mind. The ego is not real. There isn’t one. So it doesn’t matter what it asserts.

Q: It’s a no kidding GAP and the gap IS the suffering. It occurs to me that this suffering, the gap, IS the ego. Yet this “gap,” the “ego,” and the concomitant suffering, as well as the circumstances that “create” the gap, the suffering, and the person suffering, are all aspects of the One Totality (and [---] agrees with me on this) …

A: This is not correct. This one misinterpretation is allowing you to still believe there’s a little control there somewhere. There is not. You’ll continue to misinterpret this one thing until you’re clear that there is no control. You can’t fix a damn thing. It’s always just what’s already right here.

You don’t seem to be differentiating between “What Is” and unreal things that appear in the mind. The mind does not create reality with its false notions. The gap, the ego, and suffering only exist in the mind.

The mind divides, and so sees “reality” as all divided up into opposites, right and wrong, gain and loss, etc. So it’s not that things don’t exist per se, it’s that they are seen totally incorrectly by the mind. If the mind were capable (of course it’s not) of not dividing, not judging, it would not be a problem. It would never see a separate person, a story, suffering, etc. But the mind is built to divide. It’s not a matter of what is actually here and what is not here, it’s a matter of perception only. What the mind sees is false. The mind tells you there is a river. There is only Oneness there. Nothing is happening. No flowing to the sea, nothing. Just Oneness, Onenessing.

“…aspects of the One Totality” is kind of a fudgey phrase that could allow for some misunderstanding. Ask [---] directly, “Is suffering real?” I don’t imagine he will say that it is. It appears as real, to the mind, but everything the mind sees is false. And you are not that mind, so all that falseness is happening “to no one.” Anyone who tells you that suffering is real is full of baloney. I don’t care who it is.

Q: …including this typing and whatever response it evokes. Yet it seems to be indicated to ask ME, what is the cause of all this? Is there one? And the inquiry into the “cause” of all of this, all that IS, is also a function of Totality and no personal author exists, it all IS. It’s happening!

A: No, it appears to be happening. There’s a big difference. Nothing is happening.

Q: Now: I find no “cause. No “authoring entity,” not even a really huge one called God. Have I got it right thus far?

A: Right in that there is no authoring entity. There is no controller in the universe at all. No control in the universe. So certainly you don’t have any!

Q: I realize also that all this is a story. But most seekers I have met are not able to get that. At least not fully, especially early on. The suffering is too real and the story is not seen as a story. That also still happens to “me.” So: They are not able to see with the clarity you express that, in your words, “There is no body. There is no life story. There is no world! There is only the sleight-of-hand performed by mind. That is what you are seeing. You are seeing ‘that which the mind does’; there is nothing real about it.”

Sounds exactly the same as Ramana’s “final truth.” Which also is most often not helpful, and even Ramana often prescribed inquiry and acknowledged that there is suffering.

A: Of course there is suffering, but it’s only imagined. That’s the whole point of the inquiry, to see that suffering is imaginary.

Q: More to the point, the Buddha, who pointed out, “Life is suffering. Enlightenment is Peace. AND THESE ARE NOT TWO!” 

A: I think this is saying that it is inherent in the human being to suffer. It is inherent for the brain we got dealt to perceive all of Totality in a way that is false. You see? I’m not saying that thoughts don’t come up and present challenges and make us want to fix it all – I’m saying that all of that is a matter of perception, and what is really going on is that there is nothing to fix.

Q: That is, akin to Zen, an embracing of the WHOLE of what IS, including all that appears! ... and does not dismiss the body, mind, story as unreal.

A: Not unreal, just perceived incorrectly. A huge difference, and I think the crux of your roadblock here. Nothing is unreal. That’s why it says “These are not two.” Nothing unreal exists. Only the real exists. The ego is not real and does not exist. You literally do not exist.

Q: Mountains ARE mountains and rivers ARE rivers.

A: The mind sees them as separate, and the body and “you” as separate as well. Awareness – totality – sees only itself. It’s all Self, which is You.

Q: I believe it is a subtle trap to deny ANY aspect of the whole, and that can trip up the sincere committed seeker again and again as this aloof detachment is murdered by shit happening!

A: Well, you’re the one who’s still suffering, so maybe you’re in the trap, not me. In my experience, no suffering is possible. No “shit happens” to me (Oneness). No shit happens to you, either; you just think it does, because you think you are a person and not Oneness.

It’s not aloof detachment to deny reality to the mind’s musings. The mind arose as part of nature, and it divides. That doesn’t mean anything it sees as divided is actually divided. You are taking the way the mind defines things, and saying that makes it so! Thought does not make it so! If a crazy person comes along and starts telling you that the moon is cheese and cows drive cars, does that make it so, because the crazy person thinks so? The mind is that crazy person. It sees things that are not there. It sees divisions and labels and value that are not there.

Don’t believe me. Look in your own experience right now. Your own experience will not lie to you. All there is right now is this awareness. There is seeing, there is hearing. Where is the ego? Where is it right now? You have to make a story for ego to come into existence. Is it part of the Totality? Is something that has to be manufactured by the dividing, misperceiving mind part of Totality? Answer that for yourself. Do you think it is? Maybe you do think it is. I do not.

Q: I mentioned to [---] that I had been pointing out to a friend that even my temper tantrums, my occasional bouts of suffering, and the egoic wanting things to be different were ALL a part of this Absolute Beingness, arising as ALL that is. [---] essentially agreed, and that confirmed and underscored for me that NOTHING is excluded ... nothing!!

A: So okay, let’s try to go with that. Suffering is not excluded from Oneness, according to you. But you say it happens to “no one”, or is taken on board by no one? Well, then what “someone” did it get created by? It was invented, thought of, by “someone.” And it is that same “someone” that thinks it is suffering. Try to find the origin of suffering and see that there isn’t one! If it has no origin, can it be? This is what we mean by ripping up the cause of suffering at the root. It does not exist.

There is what is real. It excludes nothing from itself. Nothing that is is not this. It is all One, all This, all What Is. You look and see an ego. You look and see a river. Those things are not real as other than One, and so you are seeing them incorrectly. Oneness sees them correctly, and that’s what you really are.

Q: I am NOT “having a go at you" (I realize here it could seem that way.) I genuinely want to be real and get down with all this so I can not only reduce the occasional suffering here but point out what is real and not real in a way that meets seekers where they are and not from some lofty plane of “higher consciousness” or detachment. That’s why I am still looking at the two different ways the Hsin Hsin Ming is translated: I am swinging back to a preference for the later translation, “The Great Way is not difficult for those not ATTACHED to preferences.” [As opposed to “The Great Way is not difficult for those with no preferences.”]

A: My take on this is that there are no such thing as preferences. There has to be a story for there to be preferences. Nothing in the story is real. This does not mean there are not outbursts, or fight-or-flight, or whatever else. Those things are like sneezing, or belching. They happen in a body, and they do not arise because of preferences. They come and go like clouds. But, if there is a big long temper tantrum with story and name-calling and what if this, what if that, etc., then you’re not dealing with causeless weather passing through, you’re dealing with a story that is now manufacturing a bunch of imaginary ramifications. We talked about Nisargadatta before – his outbursts didn’t come from a preference to have it be another way, they just erupted and passed. But one could certainly make a bunch of story and turn it into more than a passing cloud.

You mentioned occasional suffering and egoic wanting above. These cannot exist without their story. Right now, there is no story. So these things cannot exist, as the present awareness that you are. Story doesn’t exist in the right now. No person, no story, no suffering. Are those things here right now? So answer your own question – are these things part of what is? If they are, can you find them right now?