Notes from "Right Now, Just As It Is"

Coming Home

Sit down in silence and simply be present. Do nothing else.
Resist nothing. Just be. Be still.
Eventually, everything settles. The energy smooths out.
When we stop running away and open to simply being here, the problem dissolves along with the “me” who seemed to have it.

What if we let the labels go and tune into the actual felt experience? What happens if we stop calling things difficulties or problems? We don’t have to substitute positive labels for the negative ones, but what if we have no labels or ideas about these occurrences at all? Just the bare actuality itself.
What if all the words we’ve learned (Consciousness, Awareness, Oneness, God, Radiant Presence) are unnecessary reifications of an ungraspable no-thing-ness? That doesn’t mean they can’t be used, or that that they may not be evocative or descriptive in helpful ways, but can they be held lightly?

Thinking is something the universe is doing in the form of human beings.
Very often, thinking—and believing what thought tells us—is the source of immense human suffering and confusion.
There is no thinker authoring the thoughts. They bubble up automatically. Anyone who takes up meditation discovers this very quickly.
Gradually, over many years, this habitual pattern got weaker and weaker until it dissolved. Not that it never happens now, but it rarely happens, and never obsessively anymore.
Thought was powerless to remove this pattern. … Awareness was the transformative power.
The best teachings help us to discern the difference between the map and the territory in ever more subtle ways. They also recognize that mapping is something the territory is doing
We can’t deny difference and variation, but we can’t find actual separation. That recognition is what nonduality is all about.
Ultimately, we don’t know what this is or how it all works, and yet, here it is, clear and obvious—until we start thinking about it and trying to nail it down with words and concepts. Then suddenly, it seems very paradoxical and confusing.

Added 2024-04-28.