Addictions

Understanding the nature of addictions is the key to working with them.
http://www.joantollifson.com/writing9.html


Addiction

Events happen, deeds are done, but there is no individual doer thereof.

--The Buddha

Choice implies consciousness--a high degree of consciousness. Without it, you have no choice.

--Eckhart Tolle

Your suffering is your own activity. It is something that you are doing moment to moment. It is a completely voluntary activity…all you are doing is pinching yourself. When you realize that, you just take your hand away.

--Adi Da

People frequently ask me questions regarding addiction. In a sense, addiction is our basic human problem. It doesn't have to be addiction to alcohol and drugs. I would define addiction as any habitual behavior that feels out of control, compulsive, and destructive. Most people are addicted to painful ways of thinking. Some people have an addictive relationship to normally healthy activities such as eating or sex. As a society, we in the United States are addicted to oil. But whatever the behavior or substance, the basic underlying mechanism is something that probably every human being has experienced in some form.

Addiction seeks pleasure, pain relief, escape from suffering, numbness or excitement. Avoiding pain and seeking pleasure are conditioned survival functions that make perfect sense in a certain practical context. But in human beings, these basic survival instincts can become seriously misdirected in ways that are extremely destructive. The more we seek pleasure and run from pain in compulsive and destructive ways, the more painful it gets. Momentary highs are followed by devastating lows. The solution to this downward spiral is to stop indulging in the addictive substance or activity.

Can we choose to do this? Many people ask me if “no self” and “no choice” means there is nothing anyone can do to end an addictive pattern. People wonder if trying to stop smoking or drinking violates some basic tenet of Advaita or radical nonduality. If everything is perfect as it is, and if there is no self and no free will, then who would want or be able to change anything and why would they want to? This is a misunderstanding of Advaita and nonduality.

Change is the very nature of life and your actions and abilities and desires and insights are part of how totality is functioning. In one sense, it's absolutely true that everything is perfect just as it is, including addiction, and yet, it's equally true that we have a natural desire to wake up from entrancement and suffering.

Conceptually, as a description of reality, we can say that everything that happens is the result of infinite causes and conditions and that there is no independent executive calling the shots -- in this sense, we speak of there being no self and no choice. But the bodymind can learn or be trained in all kinds of ways so that it has more choices, better choices, more control, more refined control, more possibilities, or however you want to put it. A skilled athlete has more choices, more control, more possibilities for how to move her body than someone without that training and practice. A skilled writer has more choices, more control, more possibilities for how to express himself clearly in words than someone who is illiterate. And in the same way, it is possible to learn skills in recovery programs or in therapy or in meditation or wherever that give us more choices, more possibilities, and more ability to respond constructively rather than destructively to certain feelings, urges, discomforts and upsets. We can become aware of how we are pinching ourselves – how we are doing our suffering – and in seeing that, quite naturally, we stop.

Yes, in the larger sense, all of this learning happens out of infinite causes and conditions and could not be otherwise in any moment than exactly how it is. No independent executive is "doing" any of this. But still, it can happen (when it can). So although there is no choice in one sense, you still have to play the game. There is a power right here that acts and you are that.

Whatever life moves us to do to refine and enhance the functioning of the bodymind is wonderful. I'm very grateful that I'm not still drinking myself to death, smoking several packs of cigarettes a day, and flying into uncontrollable rages as I was forty years ago. It certainly seems that psychotherapy, meditation, martial arts training, and various forms of awareness work had something to do with bringing about that transformation. So there is nothing wrong with so-called "self-improvement." The problem comes when we think there is a self to improve, or when we fall into the erroneous presumption that there is an executive at the helm who can accomplish this task on command, or when we assume that there is any single recipe for transformation that always works, because when we believe those ideas, it becomes a set up for guilt, shame, blame, frustration, despair or self-righteousness.

There are many approaches to working with addiction. The best path for another may not be the best path for you, and what looks like failure may be the perfect unfolding. Whether an addiction stops or continues, it cannot be otherwise in any moment than how it is. When you really see that there is no separation anywhere and no independent self, then nothing that happens is taken personally anymore. This is a huge relief, and for this liberating realization, I recommend my own books and also the books on my recommended book list by Darryl Bailey, Leo Hartong, Tony Parsons, Sailor Bob Adamson, Nathan Gill, Wayne Liquorman, Chuck Hillig, Jeff Foster, Gary Crowley and Karl Renz. The most effective way of undoing addiction that I know of is non-judgmental, open awareness of what is happening right now in this moment without seeking a result or trying to change it in any way – simply seeing it clearly. For more on that kind of approach, I would recommend my books, all of which talk extensively about addiction, and also my article on “Meditation and Inquiry,” one of the outpourings on this website, where I talk about how an addictive thought pattern was dissolved through meditation and awareness. Also for more on this kind of approach, I would recommend a number of the other authors on my recommended book list such as Toni Packer, Eckhart Tolle, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Anthony deMello, Gangaji, Joko Beck, Pema Chodron, Cheri Huber, Thich Nhat Hanh, Claude Anshin Thomas, J. Krishnamurti and Mary O'Malley. And I'll say more about that kind of approach later in this article as well. In addition, and in a somewhat different vein, I recommend the excellent chapter on addiction in a book called The Guru Papers, which is also on my recommended book list.

There are many recovery programs available such as AA and other Twelve Step programs, Smart Recovery, and many others that you can find through the internet. Although I do not agree with many of his ideas and opinions, I got some valuable insights from reading Jack Trimpey's book, Rational Recovery. In particular, I found his AVRT (Addictive Voice Recognition Technique) quite useful, and some of his thinking about addiction and his challenges to the recovery movement are provocative and interesting, but his fanatical dogmatism and right-wing views on many issues are totally abhorrent to me. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Steven C. Hayes), other forms of psychotherapy, meditation, yoga, changes in diet, and somatic awareness work such as Feldenkrais can all be helpful in recovery. The support of a recovery group, a therapist, or a true friend can be very important. But there is no one right way, so don't assume anyone else knows what's best for you.

Most in the addiction recovery world believe that total and permanent abstinence is the only real solution to addiction, but in the case of some addictions, such as overeating, complete abstinence from the addictive substance is not an option. I sobered up in 1973 from alcoholic drinking by working with a therapist who believed that permanent abstinence was not always necessary. I was completely alcohol-free for almost a year, then with the permission of my therapist, I tried drinking again in moderation. I got drunk a few times early on in this process, but for most of the next thirty years I rarely ever drank and never in excess. Years went by between one beer and the next, most of my friends were non-drinkers, I rarely had any desire to drink and no desire to drink excessively. This recovery model seemed successful. Then after thirty years, I began drinking again in a way that felt addictive. The amount I was drinking and the frequency of it were very mild compared to the kind of wild drinking I had done thirty years earlier, but I could still feel that it was addictive and, for me, dangerous and unhealthy. For several years, I simply watched it with awareness until a clear decision emerged not to drink at all anymore. This decision came from beyond the mind, not from some exertion of will-power. I now recommend complete and permanent abstinence whenever possible as the safest and most reliable cure for addiction. That may not be the only route or the best route for everyone, but trying to do something in moderation that has previously been addictive can definitely be dangerous, like playing with fire, and it can invite self-deception, denial and setbacks. For one thing, it keeps the desire and the possibility alive. It keeps the door open. It takes self-awareness and honesty not to pull the wool over your own eyes.

However you recover from an addiction, be aware that old habits may recur and that addiction is a powerful force. Even after decades of being free from an addiction, it can return, as I discovered. Anything that goes away can come back, and anything that comes, can go away again. Don't ever assume otherwise. This is true not only for things like drinking and smoking, but it applies to addictive thought patterns and emotions as well, and it is why I often say that there is no permanently enlightened person. The wisest people I know don't define themselves and they remain open to being surprised.

If you're not ready or able yet to stop the addiction completely, or if moderation is your aim and not total abstinence, then I would suggest giving careful, non-judgmental, open attention to the addictive activity whenever it occurs. This is what I did when I found myself drinking again in an addictive way, so let's take drinking as an example. Pay attention to the first impulse for a drink -- what triggers it, how does it happen, what does it feel like, what goes on -- what is this urge itself actually like – what thoughts are showing up, what mental images, how does it feel in the body -- and then the whole process of "deciding" whether to give in and indulge, how does that unfold, what are your thoughts telling you -- and then buying the bottle, opening it up, pouring the drink -- what does each moment in this process feel like in the body – and then the first sip, what is that like – and how do you feel after one drink -- what is pleasurable about it, what isn't – what moves you to have a second drink, what is this urge, do you really want another drink or is something else going on – how do you feel after that second drink -- simply paying attention and observing. You'll learn a lot. There are no "right" or "wrong" answers to these questions, and the answers may be different at different moments. It's all about paying attention, being aware of your thoughts, feeling sensations, discovering what is actually going on every step of the way. When you realize that you are pinching yourself, and when you see how it happens – what the allurement is, how it seduces you, how you do it, how it hurts – naturally, you stop.

The more the light of awareness shines on these habitual mechanisms, and the more clarity there is about how they work, the more choice and the more possibility there is. The urge for a drink may still arise, but it may be possible not to go with it. And when it isn't possible, then you drink. And you notice what that's like. Maybe over time drinking happens less and less, and maybe alcoholic drinking falls away completely at some point. Maybe at some point a clear decision and intention to stop emerges, as it did for me.

And if sobriety doesn't happen and drinking continues, then it could not be otherwise. Whatever happens in each moment is the result of infinite causes and conditions. Everything is the way it is because the whole universe is the way it is. Some bodyminds have more stormy weather than other bodyminds, just as different cities have different weather conditions. We each contain the whole universe, the saint and the sinner. There is no one to blame because everything is the cause and the effect of everything else. But don't think that this description of reality means that there is nothing to do, or that everything won't change in the next moment.

There is often tremendous social pressure to indulge in addictive behaviors. People who are indulging tend to prefer the company of others who are also indulging. It often takes real courage to be the only one in a group who is not indulging in something. One reason I have decided to completely and permanently stop drinking is that I want to be supportive to others who are trying to live without drinking. But that doesn't mean I think everyone should renounce alcohol. There are some spiritual teachers who encourage everyone, addicted or not, to totally renounce alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, television, movies that contain violence, caffeine, sugar, meat, and the list goes on. This kind of renunciation and purity may lead to real clarity and well-being, and it may be truly beneficial, but it can also become a self-righteous form of puritanical control and perfectionism, which is often the flip side of addiction. Different ways of living may be appropriate and beneficial at different times in our lives. There is no single way that is right for everyone all the time. Follow your heart, not the crowd.

It is indeed very liberating to realize that addiction and the freedom from addiction are not personal faults or achievements, and that whatever is showing up could not be otherwise in this moment than exactly how it is. This is the understanding of radical nonduality. But don't mix up the relative and the absolute or confuse descriptions with prescriptions. Although unicity is all there is, and everything is the cause and the effect of everything else, you are not separate from unicity. Don't get stuck in concepts and beliefs about “no self” and “no choice.” As one satsang teacher very wisely put it, don't hang yourself in an Advaitic noose. If you're pinching yourself, by all means stop (if you can). You may think life without the addiction will be unbearable, but my experience is that the truth is exactly the opposite.

----copyright Joan Tollifson 2010----

What is enlightenment? ooops i did it again

reading the following piece of art answers many questions yet at the same time leaves these questions unanswered :) map and territory no longer is important.

hmmm i like the article also cos some parts relates to the title of this blog. absolute being akin to unconditional and relative being akin to conditional. one definitely doesnt get any more delusional than this isnt it? hahaha

oh yeah, today is hari raya haji. here's wishing all muslims a happy and merry hari raya haji. i also better get out of this empty office now :P

taken from http://www.joantollifson.com/writing8.html

Am I Enlightened?

Realization is nothing to be gained anew....Realization consists of getting rid of the false idea that one is not realized.

--Ramana Maharshi

That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete. There is naught beside. Even if you go through all the stages of a Bodhisattva's progress toward Buddhahood, one by one; when at last, in a single flash, you attain to full realization, you will only be realizing the Buddha-Nature which has been with you all the time; and by all the foregoing stages you will have added to it nothing at all.

--Huang Po

Whatever needs change is a thought, an idea, a phantom....Even though you're full of desire to improve or change, really see that there is not now, nor will there ever be, a way out of what you are. You can never become what you already are!

--Karl Renz

Like the worms in the cow dung, the moment the cow dung dries they are finished, however much progress they have made.

--Nisargadatta Maharaj

Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas; those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings.

--Dogen

The discovery of truth is in the discernment of the false. You can know what is not. What is -- you can only be.

--Nisargadatta Maharaj

Enlightenment is not like a sudden realization of something mysterious. Enlightenment is nothing but awakening from illusions and returning to the reality of life.

--Uchiyama

If you believe that there is something lacking, it is not quite so. But if you think there is nothing to do, nothing needed, that is not quite so.

--Zen teacher Elihu Genmyo Smith

Enlightenment is...to see ourselves not as separate, not as lacking, not as in charge, not as weak and helpless.

--Zen teacher Steve Hagen

The surprise within the surprise of every new discovery is that there is ever more to be discovered.

--Brother David Steindl-Rast, Catholic monk

Many people who come to this web site are trying hard to become enlightened or to have some kind of awakening, and many teachers continue to buy into and perpetuate the myth of permanently enlightened people. Many so-called “seekers“ are wondering who is really awake and who isn’t. Sometimes I am asked, “Are you enlightened?”

If I say yes, will that mean I am? If I say no, can you be sure I’m not? Where does this question come from? If I’m enlightened, will you then believe that everything I say is true? If I’m not, will you automatically discount whatever I say? If we believe that someone is enlightened, are we hoping to imitate this person’s lifestyle, replicate this person’s experiences, or maybe get energetically zapped by the enlightened one in some magical way? Where does this question about whether someone is enlightened come from? What are we really looking for?

This word “enlightenment” gets used in so many different ways by different teachers. What does it really mean? What does it mean to you? What do you imagine enlightenment to be? What are you seeking?

Some say enlightenment is the absence of suffering, some say it is the absence of non-functional thinking, some say it is the end of identification with the thinking mind, some say it is the absence of ego or the dissolution of the separate self, some say it is the absence of any sense of agency or of being the author of the thoughts and actions that arise. Some say it is the realization of Oneness, others describe it as the merging of difference and unity. Some compare enlightenment to lucid dreaming in the waking state and say that it is the abiding realization that all of consciousness is a dream state, including the entire movie of waking life and the whole spiritual search. Some insist that enlightenment manifests only as saintly behavior and is characterized by being soft-spoken, generous, kind, vegetarian and pacifist, while others insist you can be enlightened and still be an alcoholic, a meat-eater, a womanizer, a thief, a warrior, or someone prone to angry outbursts. Some say enlightenment happens suddenly and irrevocably at a particular time on a particular day, and that it is a permanent, final shift; others describe it as a gradual unfolding; and some say that it only ever happens Now and that it never happens to somebody. Some say it is an energetic shift, some call it a felt-sense, others say it is about seeing clearly, some describe it as an understanding or an apperception, some say it is an embodied realization or actualization, others insist it is always already the case. Some imagine it to be a state of perpetual bliss, while others say it includes and transcends every state. Some distinguish between “enlightenment,” “awakening,” “liberation,” “kensho,” “satori,” “mukti,” and host of other terms, and others use all these words more or less synonymously and interchangeably. Who has it right? Who is really enlightened?

Are there “enlightened people” whose every moment is entirely free from suffering, or from delusion, or from the sense of self, or from the idea of individual authorship, or from all egoic thoughts and behaviors? Are there “unenlightened people” whose every moment is totally consumed by these delusions and sufferings? Is this very idea of “enlightened people” and “unenlightened people” (or of solid, persisting “people” of any kind) perhaps an example of unenlightened (or deluded) thinking? Who (or what) is it, exactly, that would be enlightened or unenlightened?

I’m not trying to evade the question. But we talk glibly about enlightenment without really knowing what we’re even talking about. We seek it without ever stopping to really examine closely what it is we think we’re seeking.

I would not say that I am enlightened, nor would I say that I am not enlightened. I don’t find any solid, persisting, independent entity here to be one way or the other. Sometimes there is enlightenment here and sometimes there is delusion here. Of course, in some sense, enlightenment is always here, if by enlightenment we simply mean the boundless actuality of Here and Now, that which never comes and never goes. Some teachers, like Ramana Maharshi, speak only as this ever-present Absolute, the One Self or Big Mind, and never as apparent individuals. So as Ramana was dying, he told his followers something like, “I am always here, where could I go?” He wasn't speaking as the apparent individual, who was obviously dying, but rather as the Totality, the One Self. Other teachers, like Nisargadatta Maharaj, shift back and forth between speaking as the person and speaking as the One Self. And some teachers never speak as the One Self in the way that Ramana and Nisargadatta did. Needless to say, all of these different ways of talking and of using the word “I” in different ways, can easily create confusion and misunderstanding. Also, some teachers will say that enlightenment is permanent or that you never come out of enlightenment, and in saying such things, they are pointing to what is always here, the One Self, the ever-present Here and Now. But when people hear these statements, they often misunderstand and assume the teacher is saying that the person is completely and permanently beyond delusion.

Boundlessness (the Absolute Self) is always here, realizing itself in every possible form and every possible experience. All experiences (everything perceivable and conceivable), including all transformations, awakenings, delusions, and differences, are all within the dream-like appearance. Within the dream, it can certainly seem as if being awake comes and goes. And relatively speaking, we can certainly say that Ramana Maharshi was an enlightened sage and that Adolph Hitler was a deluded madman. But enlightenment sees Ramana and Hitler as two sides of a single coin, different but seamless and inseparable. And this coin is itself only a dream object. Enlightenment is not about “me” getting from one side of the imaginary coin to the other side and then staying there forever. Enlightenment is not the permanent absence of everything that is considered spiritually negative (pain, suffering, confusion, doubt, anger, addiction, the sense of individuality, and so forth), but rather, enlightenment is the absence of the one who cares about being enlightened.

Does enlightenment happen suddenly and irrevocably, or does it come and go?

Enlightenment doesn't “happen.“ It is. It is neither gradual nor sudden, and what is realized is both ever-present and ever-fresh. It can appear gradual in the story where it seems (in retrospect) that awakening was a shift that unfolded slowly over time—that which is false was seen through ever-more clearly, ever-more deeply, ever-more subtly, ever-more often, ever-more completely. It seems to be an unfolding process, somewhat akin to a photograph slowly appearing in the developing tray, or like getting gradually wet while walking in a mist, or like a puddle slowly evaporating, or like an ice cube gradually melting until nothing is left. The illusory overlay gets more and more transparent, more easily seen through. The aliveness of the present moment becomes more vivid and more simple: the sounds of rain and traffic, the rise and fall of breathing, the smell of coffee, the gratuitous beauty of a flower, the horror and sorrow of a bombing attack, the awareness beholding it all, the groundlessness of being that is all of it.

It becomes clear that any experience of awakening or enlightenment is a scene in a movie, an event in a dream. No one wakes up. Nothing changes. There is only Now. ”Transformation” is a thought-created story that involves imagination, memory, the concept of time, and above all, the illusory “me“ who is seemingly being transformed. But in fact, the ever-present Now is timeless, and there is no “one” who is evaporating or disappearing or getting clearer or more developed or more focused or more (or less) enlightened – this “one” is always only a mirage – it is an optical illusion produced by thoughts, memory and imagination accompanied by sensations and stories about those sensations – nothing solid, separate and persisting is really ever here to be enlightened or unenlightened or to evaporate or transform. And in that realization, the shifting experiences no longer seem personally owned, and they no longer seem to mean anything about “me” and whether or not “I” am enlightened or deluded. There is always only the emptiness of Here and Now, sometimes realized as such, and sometimes ignored and overlaid with the story of separation and solidity. But even in the story of separation and solidity, the emptiness remains empty. The problem is always imaginary.

So “enlightenment,” as I would use the word, is not an event or a special state or an experience that lasts forever, but rather, the word points to this ever-present, ever-changing, boundless Here and Now that is all-inclusive, and that is endlessly realizing itself in everything, and from which nothing is left out and nothing stands apart. This is not something “I” can possess or lack.

Most of spirituality is a response to suffering, an attempt to wake up from the story of separation. We long for a way out of suffering and imperfection. But ultimately, there is no way out and no need for a way out. The manifestation will always include both light and dark, expansion and contraction. They go together. The capacity for delusion and the capacity for waking up are both aspects of Totality, like the two sides of a single coin. In struggling to escape from suffering and delusion, we confirm the imaginary problem and the apparent reality of the one who appears to have this problem. The very idea that there are “enlightened people” who are totally beyond all of this only fuels the imaginary treadmill of dissatisfaction and seeking.

In the dream-like movie of waking life, there is the appearance of separate people, but it is only an appearance, momentary shapes of emptiness. Consciousness is thinking or imagining that it is a fragment in a world of separate pieces. This imagination—all the characters and events that seem to be happening---are all shapes that boundlessness (the Single Reality) is momentarily assuming. It’s like a dream – it has no substance. Nothing real is ever being created or destroyed. Human behavior is impersonal and beyond control, like the weather – and as with the weather, nothing is really unnatural or bad even if we don’t like it.

Enlightenment is the openness that includes contraction, the wholeness that includes division, the oneness that includes multiplicity, the absolute that includes the relative. It is that which is always already the case. Whatever can be attained can also be lost again and is always only a dream event.

Enlightenment is not about denying relative reality. In the absolute sense, there are no mistakes and everything is perfect just as it is. But relatively speaking, if I back my car into a post, this is clearly a mistake, and hopefully, I can learn to correct it in the future. In the absolute sense, there is no chooser and no choice, no cause and no effect. But relatively speaking, if my tooth hurts, I can apparently decide to go to the dentist, and this will be much more likely to fix my tooth than going to the auto mechanic. When we confuse the relative and the absolute, we get very mixed up. We end up thinking there is no reason to go to the dentist since everything is an illusion, or that we are supposed to sit on the sofa forever “doing nothing.”

There’s an old Zen story that many people know. It goes something like this: Before I took up Zen, there were mountains and valleys. After I began the practice of Zen, there were no mountains and no valleys. With enlightenment, there are mountains and valleys. And of course, in reality, this isn’t a linear journey with such clearly delineated stages, and there is no one taking this journey, so don’t take this story too literally.

The first “stage” is ordinary consciousness – the world as we think it is, “out there” and full of separate things, one of these “things” being “me” who is “in here” looking out, “me” on my way to enlightenment.

The second “stage” of no mountains and valleys is the discovery that there is no actual boundary between “in here” and “out there,” that everything is one inseparable whole, that there is no “me.” From here, it is seen that Hitler and Ramana are aspects of One Being, one seamless whole, like the two sides of one coin. This is the realization of what is the same in every different experience. This is the Absolute, the realization that All is One.

But in the beautiful words of the Hsin-hsin Ming:

When such dualities cease to exist

Oneness itself cannot exist.

To this ultimate state

no law or description applies.

With true enlightenment, there are mountains and valleys again. There are infinite experiences, including the experience of being “me,” and they all make no difference for the emptiness that is everything and nothing. There is no one left who needs to cling to the absolute or avoid and deny the relative world of ordinary life. Hitler and Ramana are aspects of one inseparable whole and we can discern a huge difference between them. There is only the timeless, ever-present Now and there is history, evolution, and planning for the future. I am boundless awareness and I am Joan. Both sides of the coin are true. Zen masters have called this "leaping clear of the many and the One" or “the merging of difference and unity.” The Absolute is not a rejection of the relative world. The Absolute includes the relative but isn’t bound by it.

In enlightenment, there is no need to assert that mountains and valleys are One. It is clearly seen that they are “not one, not two.” There is simply Reality, as it is, without the need to grasp it with a concept. There is no longer a need to make sure that “I” am continually identified as “Awareness” and not as the character in the story. There is no “I” to be identified as either one. There is the freedom to be no-thing and everything. And this freedom is not a permanent state that a particular “person” is always “in” for all time. That very idea is delusion.

Many teachers are in love with the story that they are enlightened, and they love to tell the story again and again. Enlightenment is portrayed as some magical line in the sand that a person crosses, after which they no longer have any questions or delusions or messy emotions or any more sense of being “me.” Yes, in the dream-like movie of waking life, some characters do report sudden and dramatic transformations, and some characters are exceptionally clear and free of delusion, but true enlightenment points to the boundlessness that has no owner, and this can never be lost or gained. There's nothing wrong with respecting, revering and deeply appreciating a teacher who has great clarity, but if they are truly clear in this moment, they will not be telling you their enlightenment story or encouraging you to idolize or idealize them, but rather, they will be pulling every rug you try to stand on out from under you. Putting people up on pedestals is a way of seeking comfort, security and false certainty. Awakening has no beginning and no ending. There is no finish line. It is always Now.

Even after the rope is clearly seen to be a rope and not a snake, it can—in another moment—be mistaken again for a snake, and when that happens, the body responds automatically with fear, contraction and recoil. The snake is never real, but it can momentarily seem real, just as the “I” is never real but can momentarily seem real. Does there come a time when this mistake has been so fully exposed that it can never again occur in any way, ever? For whom does this question and this concern arise? Is there someone who makes this mistake and who longs to stop being a fool? We don’t know what the next moment may bring. In any given moment, the mirage of separation may occur. But what can perhaps fall away is the need for this never to happen again.

For who is this “me” who must reach a state where the rope would never again be mistaken for a snake, where “I” would never again forget that there is “only boundlessness” and instead imagine that “I” am a separate somebody? If the boundlessness is momentarily forgotten and overlaid with a sense of “me” as a separate somebody, who cares? Can it be seen that there is no owner of this experience, that it is boundlessness itself appearing as this mirage of separation and encapsulation? Or does another story begin running, a story about the first story, taking delivery of it, as Nisargadatta used to say, thinking that, “I’ve lost the boundlessness and I have to get it back,” or, “I want to be done with this delusion forever.” Who is it whose self-image would be damaged if the story or the entrancement were to show up again? Who imagines that “I” could ever be perfect while “the rest of the world” is still deluded? Enlightenment is a great story, but in truly waking up, the dream characters and their dramas dissolve completely, or more accurately, it is clear that they never existed in the first place!

But that doesn't mean all dreaming ceases. Dreaming is what consciousness does. And in the dream, the drama often seems real. Every imaginable feeling can arise in the dream. Who needs it to be any different?

There are certainly many characters in the movie of waking life who experience or manifest less stormy weather than the Joan character -- less anger, less depression, less compulsive behavior, less upset. Many characters seem more generous, more balanced and stable, less reactive, and better able to deal with stress than Joan is. Of course, the opposite is also true. Many characters have more anger, more depression, more confusion, more greed, and less equanimity than Joan does. Such differences have little to do with enlightenment and everything to do with neurochemistry, brain function, hormone levels, early childhood and lifelong conditioning. Some bodyminds have stormier weather just as some cities have stormier weather. It’s not personal. And what I’ve noticed is that I can’t really find this “Joan Tollifson” character. All I find is a bunch of ever-changing mental images (some positive, some negative) appearing and disappearing in the mirror of awareness. When I look for where the actuality of this bodymind called “Joan Tollifson” begins and ends, I find no beginning and no ending. When I try to grasp or pin down this “person,” I find only continuous change. So what exactly is this supposed entity who would be enlightened or unenlightened?

There no longer seems to be a story here that “I” am going back and forth between “getting it” and then “losing it,” not because different experiences don’t continue to happen, because they do, but simply because the sense of personal ownership seems to have diminished or fallen away and there no longer seems to be any particular “it” that must be gained or lost. It’s very clear that the One Reality is right Here, right Now, and that all experiences, by their very nature, come and go. I’m no longer chasing any particular experience, or trying to “stop thinking” and “be aware” all the time. I’m not looking for something to save me in the way I once was (the right teacher, the perfect place to live, final enlightenment, the ultimate answer to how the universe works, the final disappearance of anything), but there can certainly still be many moments of unease when the bodymind begins scrambling for something. Shunryu Suzuki once described the Zen life as “one continuous mistake,” and I can definitely relate to that. And while some people seem to have the idea that awakening means detachment, I find that I often have passionate opinions about political issues. I love books and movies and people and trees and clouds and cities and “the whole catastrophe,” as Zorba called it. Yes, it's a dream-like appearance without substance and it's the Holy Reality.

I have no way of knowing how "my" experience compares to "anyone else’s" experience – but all experiences are fleeting. To say, “I am enlightened and it happened on May 2nd at two o’clock in the afternoon,” sounds to my ear like a good story. To say that “I am not enlightened yet, but maybe someday I will be,” sounds like a different story. Both stories refer to a “somebody” that I have been unable to actually find, a “somebody” that is the bottomline myth or idea (the snake in the rope).

One teacher points to this realization in one way, another in a different way. They sound different and even contradictory, but they may be saying the same thing. Or, maybe they aren’t saying the same thing. There’s a great deal of nonsense, pretense and self-delusion in the spiritual world as in any other world.

One of the things I love about Toni Packer, who was my main teacher for many years, is that you can ask her a question and she will sometimes spend the next day or two living with that question, really looking and listening and exploring it -- rather than just dispensing "the answer" that she already "knows." She has a remarkable willingness to look anew. Toni once said that her talks are "something to be considered, questioned, wondered about, taken further." That kind of genuinely open spirit is rare amongst those who give talks and write books. We humans seem to have a deep craving for authority - wanting to have an authority who can tell us how it is, and wanting to be an authority who has the answers. But when all the answers drop away, the jewel is revealed. Being enlightened is not about being perfect and special and having all the answers. It is about not needing to be perfect or special or all-knowing. It is the open space of not-knowing, always ready to see something new.

Ultimately, the only reality is Here Now. As Ramana Maharshi expressed it so beautifully: “Experience takes place only in the present, and beyond and apart from experience nothing exists.”

Here and Now, there is no enlightenment, no delusion, no person to be found. There is only boundless being. That is your actual experience right now before you think about it. There is no end to this boundlessness, and no end to this unfolding Self-realization.

Rather than trying to figure out if we are enlightened or if someone else is enlightened, rather than idealizing people or turning them into infallible authorities, and rather than trying to duplicate anyone else's supposed enlightenment experience, I would suggest investigating what it is we are looking for, and whether it is actually absent here and now, and who or what would find it or possess it or lack it.

----copyright Joan Tollifson 2009----

Body/ No-Body

AEN posting in http://www.sgforums.com/forums/1728/topics/382949 taken  from http://www.joantollifson.com/waking.html

By Joan Tollifson

http://www.joantollifson.com/waking.html

Body / No-Body

You have never questioned your belief that you are the body….it attracts attention and fascinates so completely that rarely does one perceive one’s real nature. It is like seeing the surface of the ocean and completely forgetting the immensity beneath. The world is but the surface of the mind and the mind is infinite. What we call thoughts are just ripples in the mind. When the mind is quiet…it dissolves and only reality remains.

--Nisargadatta Maharaj

The food body you are not. The waking state you are not. The deep sleep state you are not. You know the waking state. Since you know the waking state you are not the waking state. You know the deep sleep state; therefore, you are not the deep sleep state.

--Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is only a stream of sensations, perceptions, memories and ideations. The body is an abstraction, created by our tendency to seek unity in diversity.

--Nisargadatta Maharaj

The ‘secret’ of life that we are all looking for is simply this: to rest in the bodily experience of the present moment.

--Joko Beck

One teacher says that the secret of life is nothing more or less than present moment sensory experiencing, and another teacher insists that we are not the body and even suggests that nothing perceivable or conceivable is real. Is awakening about being fully embodied and awake to present moment sensory experiencing or is it altogether beyond the body and the senses and even beyond consciousness itself? If we only hear these different pointers ideologically, they seem to be totally contradicting one another. But if we really hear them, perhaps they are pointing to exactly the same realization.

Toni Packer, a teacher I was with for many years, often invites awareness of presently arising sensory experiencing: bird cheeps, the sound of wind, the sensation of our body meeting the chair, breathing, the beating of the heart. In her book The Silent Question, Toni writes:

It isn’t the content of the listening (such as birdcalls) that matters, but rather it’s the quality. Likewise in seeing, it is not what is seen that is of importance but the amazing fact that in the wholeness of seeing, the seer may disappear altogether! In complete seeing and hearing the ‘me’ is no longer the driving center, creating a dualistic world. Instead of the experience of ‘me’ and the flower or me and the birdsong, there is just the wholeness of what is heard and seen (touched and tasted) – too marvelous to describe in words: it is the ending of separation!

This wholeness (the ending of separation) isn’t something to get an idea about or think about, and it isn’t the content of any particular experience, such as the birdsong, but rather, it is the nondual seamlessness of the listener and the sound, for in reality, they are divided only by conceptual thought and language. The actual experience is simply undivided hearing. The aliveness, the beauty, the love, the joy is in the awareness, the listening presence, the wholeness of being.

The body turns out to be a wonderful field for meditative exploration. By tuning into the body with awareness, by exploring it as pure sensation, we discover that there is no “body” (except as a mental concept, an abstraction of thought), and we discover that the whole universe is our body. The boundaries are not really there.

This realization isn’t something mystical and exotic. It is rather something so simple, so immediate, so obvious, so ever-present that we tend to overlook it because our attention is absorbed instead in the ubiquitous abstraction created by conceptual thought that is overlaid on top of the bare actuality of being.

The actual experience here and now is nothing but ever-changing sensations. “The body” is an idea, an abstraction, a concept, a mental image, a thought-form. We can conceptualize a boundary-line between what we think of (and mentally picture) as “my body” and “the chair,” but when we look for this “body” with awareness, we find only ever-changing sensations and no clear delineation between “body” and “chair.” If we look with awareness for the place where “inside of us” turns into “outside of us,” we cannot find it. It, too, was only an idea! We know from modern physics that at the subatomic level, there is no solidity or substance and no boundaries. And this is our actual present moment experience right now, but we tend to ignore our actual experience in favor of the conceptual overlay that is so deeply conditioned and easily mistaken for reality. We mistake the map for the territory, the conceptual abstraction for actuality itself. We know from ecology that everything depends on everything else and that you cannot remove any part without altering the whole, but we easily overlook this in favor of our conceptual picture. We imagine a world of separate parts -- including “me”-- parts that can all be pulled apart and rearranged. Thus we imagine, “I could be somewhere else right now, and that would be better.”

In this abstract and imaginary world created by conceptual thought and story-telling, there seems to be separation and solidity. Bringing awareness to the present moment, to sensory experiencing, to the actuality of the body, erases the self completely, meaning that it erases the imaginary boundaries and leaves only everything, and this everything is seamless and all-inclusive.

The real body (no body at all) is not a cadaver or an anatomy book picture. It is alive and fluid and moving. Experientially, it is nothing but ever-changing sensations. And in fact, it's an ever-moving process of blood circulating, cells dividing, nerves firing, heart beating, lungs expanding and contracting, food being taken in and broken down, disbursed or eliminated. The body is in constant exchange with the environment, the skin is porous and breathing, flaking off, regenerating, the breath is coming in and going out. Your body now is not the same body you had ten years ago, or ten days ago, or even back when you started reading this page less than a minute ago. It is ceaseless change.

We can’t ignore the relative world in which we seem to be separate individuals in a world of other individuals, but we can learn to discern ever more subtly the difference between the anatomy book and the living body, between the map and the territory, between the thought of “me” and the actuality of present-moment experiencing. We can discover for ourselves that the actuality of the present moment is ungraspable and impossible to capture with thought, and that the deeper we go into the actuality of the body here and now in direct experiencing, the more we find no-thing (no body) at all. And yet, this nothing (or nobody) is not some nihilistic void, but rather, a vibrantly alive overflowing presence. And in the light of this presence, everything is sacred – the ordinary is the extraordinary.

This aliveness does not hold still. A friend of mine who was a surgical nurse described the shock of interns making their first cut in a living body. They’ve studied the anatomy book, they’ve dissected the cadavers, but now they’re cutting into a living organism and suddenly everything is slippery and pulsating and moving, blood is gushing out, everything is moving. This is real life. Nothing holds still. It’s a mess. And yet right in the heart of this messy impermanence, this utterly thorough-going flux, is true stillness, order and intelligence.

“Show me the Holy Reality,” a monk once asked the Master.

“It just moved!” the Master replied.

Just as we have these seemingly contradictory teachings about the body, we also find some teachers telling us that the world is an illusion while others say that enlightenment is all about being a bodhisattva who cares deeply for the world. Again, it can seem that these are contradictory and irreconcilable teachings, but as with the apparently opposite pointers about the body, if we look more deeply, we may find that these seemingly divergent teachings about the world also point us to the very same realization, the very same reality. Ramana Maharshi expressed it beautifully when he said:

The world is illusory;

God alone is real;

God is the world.

“The world” we conceptualize, like “the body” we conceptualize, is an abstraction, an idea, a map. And the stories we tell ourselves and each other about this world are all in the end fictional. But when we discover God (boundlessness, seamlessness, emptiness, the aliveness or suchness of Here and Now), we discover the reality of the world.

When we truly see that all of our choices, decisions, preferences, intentions, interests, inclinations, thoughts and actions come from emptiness, that every action arises from the Totality and not from “me,” the phantom operator, and that this is true of everyone else as well, then we are instantly free of guilt and blame, vengeance and retribution. This is true compassion. It doesn’t mean we approve of genocide, or that we allow child molesters to run free, but we see that those who commit such atrocities could not have done otherwise in that moment. We have compassion for them. We see that every action arises out of an infinite web of nature and nurture---genetics, hormones, neurology and conditioning. Hitler could not have “chosen” to be Ramana Maharshi anymore than Ramana could have “chosen” to be Hitler. What we call “Hitler” or “Ramana” or “me” or “you” is not really a solid thing with some kind of independent will, but rather, a boundless process that is inseparable from everything else in the entire universe. We are not encapsulated inside a body as we had imagined, and as it turns out, seeing this doesn’t in any way deny the actuality of the body either. If anything, we become infinitely more sensitive to the reality of both the body and the world. We see that it is the whole universe breathing, thinking, singing, dancing, sensing, awaring, body-ing, world-ing, being.

“You are not your body” points to the realization that “you” and “your body,” as you think of them, are nothing but ideas. It doesn’t point to denying or ignoring the body, or to some kind of mystical disappearance into thin air. Likewise, saying that “the world is a dream” points to the realization that “the world” as we think of it (a solid objective reality “out there” apart from us) is a dream-like illusion, a conceptualization, a kind of mirage. It doesn’t mean there is no world in any sense.

If we zoom far enough out, this planet is nothing but a tiny dot of light, and finally, if we go out far enough, it disappears completely. If we zoom in close enough, at the subatomic level, we find mostly empty space and nothing solid. Either way, zoomed in or zoomed out, the world as we know it with all our personal and global dramas is no longer here.

Sensory experiencing, the body, the world, and the entire movie of waking life are sometimes seen as a kind of veil that hides or obscures Ultimate Reality, and then there is an attempt to detach and transcend, to see that nothing perceivable or conceivable can be what I am. But ultimately, this detachment collapses into unconditional love. It is seen that sensory experiencing, the body, the world, the characters and the entire movie of waking life are all the perfect manifestation and expression of Ultimate Reality, that everything is one seamless whole from which nothing stands apart, and from which no detachment is ever possible. There is always only the Single Reality, the no-thing-ness appearing as everything.

Both zooming out and zooming in can be powerful ways of waking up. Advaita teachings often emphasize zooming out. They direct you to what is beyond everything perceivable and conceivable, encouraging you to discover that what you truly are is prior to the world and the body. You are the screen that is present before and after the movie, that is equally present in every scene of the movie, and that is never disturbed by the movie. You are boundless awareness. And in the most radical of nondual teachings, awareness itself is seen as the first appearance, and you are that which is prior to awareness, that which is both awareness and the content of awareness. Many other teachings, such as Zen, tend to begin by frustrating all your attempts to zoom out. You come to the Zen Master to find Ultimate Reality and enlightenment, and to your great consternation, all the Master ever does is give meticulous instructions for cleaning the toilet and sweeping the floor! Finally, you realize that Ultimate Reality is not someplace else. I have found all of these approaches potentially eye-opening. They can all reveal that what you are seeking has never been absent and can never be lost.

It is wonderfully liberating to see that nothing in the movie of waking life really matters. And at the same time, I've found that one of the very best and most reliable ways of discovering insubstantiality, boundlessness and the absence of separation firsthand, is to give close and careful attention here and now to the bare sensory actuality of the present moment. By giving careful attention to the form of this moment, we discover formlessness or emptiness. We discover that nothing holds still. And yet, we find that there is a great stillness beholding everything and at the very heart of everything.

The danger I see in trying to transcend the body or deny the world from an ideological place, rather than through direct experience, is that we can end up cultivating a kind of dissociated detachment. We keep trying to imagine or picture “formless nothingness” or “the screen” (as if this were some thing). The mind creates a subtle new object that doesn’t really exist, and then it takes effort to keep this imaginary creation always in mind, to keep remembering that I am formless nothingness and not the person, the screen and not the movie. We fall into an inner conflict, attracted by the movie and at the same time trying to turn away and detach from it. This is why I’ve often found it more reliable to go directly into the apparent forms, such as the body, and see what is revealed.

Instead of trying to ignore the world of form (the body and the world), go into it deeply with awareness, and discover for yourself how fluid and ephemeral and empty of self it all actually is. Discover the boundlessness of every moment, the boundlessness of presence. Discover that true happiness, beauty, joy, and freedom is not in any particular form, but rather in the awareness or presence at the heart of everything. Happiness is then no longer dependent upon getting the perfect lover, or the perfect location, or the perfect scenery, or the perfect job. It is about recognizing true perfection here and now. And in this realization of fluidity and wholeness, our grip on all our most cherished beliefs and ideas relaxes, along with our need to defend “me” and “my” side. We may still have strong opinions, but we become more open to questioning them, more able to see and consider other points of view, less caught up in “being right” and “winning” and “getting even.” More and more, we can enjoy the actual messiness of life as it is. Our ideals for how everything “should” be are like the anatomy book or the cadaver -- dead. However hard we try, the living body will never be “perfect” like that, and actually, that’s wonderful!

This alive and wondrous and utterly ungraspable IS-ness is true freedom. It is not the freedom to do what you want, but rather, the freedom to be what you are. What are you? Nobody at all, everything and nothing, and at the same time, a particular snowflake unlike any other. The whole universe is showing up as you, as this moment, just as it is.

The exploration and freedom and aliveness that is being pointed to here is all about the utter simplicity of being. Hearing the traffic sounds or the wind or the birds, feeling the breathing, seeing colors and shapes, sensations of cool air or heat, thoughts bubbling up and vanishing into thin air -- just this, nothing more and nothing less. In this simple beingness, there is no “you” and no “body” and no “world” and no “problem to solve” until thinking begins labeling the sensations and telling a story. And that story is only another momentary shape that emptiness is taking, just like the bird songs and the traffic roar. This present moment is alive with color and smell and taste and touch and sound – it simply isn’t anything you can grasp.

“Boundlessness” is a word that points to the very essence or nature of Here and Now, the groundless ground, the water in every wave. You cannot find what is being pointed to because nothing is outside of it. Anything you can find or define -- any sense of awareness or boundlessness, or any notion of Here and Now -- is another appearance. The boundlessness that is being and beholding everything is nothing you can see or grasp or experience or possess or pin down. You can only be this emptiness. And in fact, you cannot not be it. And whatever appears is always only this, for there is nothing else.

-- copyright Joan Tollifson 2009 --