Emptiness speaks to Emptiness - (revised note)
“The lamp of the body is the eye:
if therefore your eye be single, your whole body shall be full of light”. N.T. - Mathew 6.22
The light by which you see and know - is non-conceptual awareness.
Here below is a revised note written when I started this blog:
Emptiness speaks to Emptiness.
As long as you believe that there is a solid 'someone' who is going to become enlightened in some future time, then a subtle shroud of ignorance clouds the mind.
'When' this someone is seen as a transparency, a pattern appearing within this direct seeing (that I am), then it is known in an unmediated way as an appearance in the knowing presence that I am and so 'it' is known directly and immediately that I am not this appearance-this pattern of belief commonly called 'me'.
'Then', which can only ever be 'this immediacy' of now, this habitual belief pattern has already lost its hold in the mind. - Even so, it is just belief and has no real hold at all.
It re-appears due to its long-standing 'pattern of recurrence' yet its roots have been cut or loosened and with continued effortless seeing, it will be seen through and it will appear to evaporate, taking with it the afflictive identification of that habitual belief in being a limited personality.
Paradoxically for the mind, there is 'no one' making any effort to bring about this freedom. – SEEING is already happening.
It truly is here already. - Pure Seeing is from beyond the instrument of seeing, a clear space of freedom itself and is not limited by the minds interpretations, which are only content of mind, acquired mind – memory or translations of whatever has appeared in that seeing.
In looking into things carefully, one can see clearly that all of our repeating referencing to a self-center are just a series of appearances in the clear and empty nature of mind.
Whatever happens - seeing is still happening.
The question of who sees and who does not see is an invalid question.
This is a profound and simple fact and its cutting profundity is missed by just about everyone. – There is no one actually there in the pure cognition – This will never be palatable information for the mind of habitual notions.
The essential nature of seeing is not easily expressed in words.
In reading these words, seeing is happening. – What the mind makes from it is not the seeing – these Samskara, these impressions are already mind content.
We imagine that we need to get behind the impressions – get to the understanding – but ‘who’ is that? – You are already beyond the mind content, that is why it is seen and known.
Seeing is direct always. - If someone threw a ball at you, you would duck or catch it without having to think about it.
The point I am making is that 'Seeing is happening'.
The more words I use to ‘get that over’ the less likely the message works – no harm done.
The minds interpretations where the psychology (me) appears to get caught - thinking that these conceptual identifications are actually what I am and that those concepts are doing the seeing and knowing. - Its just not so!
It is extremely subtle for many of us yet so obvious it is not suspected at all.
Those who argue against such obviousness have an invested interest in a particular system of belief and it is this belief that forms the grounds for their argument.
All of it is simply content of mind! - Content of mind is not what you are.
Freedom is freedom is freedom.
It appears as a continual natural release from the past events and memories, even from a moment ago. – Seeing is immediate.
What psychological 'stand' can be taken in the face of the empty nature of unmediated direct pure cognition?
This simple profundity remains incontestable due to its simplicity – its empty nature.
In the pure space of seeing, of direct knowing, this emptiness is full of presence.
Habitual grasping attitudes and states of mind all come and go in this space of knowing that you are.
The belief in being a 'someone' also appears and disappears. - This can be seen clearly by paying a little more attention to what is happening. - The habit is to stay stuck in an attitude, within the bounds of the old habitual views and those stale states of mind. – What we unwittingly sacrifice, by not being mindfully present to what is happening, is we sacrifice the freshness of ‘this moment’ of livingness, in exchange for yesterdays impressions, memories or views – Samskaras – and that is the dead past!
DO you see that? - Now?
When can you see anything except now?
'Who' is it that can't see this obviousness?
Cast aside the old mindset and just see – know – it is subtle and it is not the seer or the seen – it is simply SEEING.
It cannot be denied – even in the blind or visually impaired, seeing is happening but not in the sense that we ‘link’ it with.
(I doubt many will agree on that – but I do not give that fact any credence)
The point is: Seeing IS happening!
A mind pattern has no ability to see or know anything at all.
The pure functions are apparently borrowed by mind patterns, which are simply beliefs in some 'entity' that is believed to be able to 'see and know'.
It is simply not so.
An open view, which clearly sees this, is already transcendent to the content of mind.
Do you really believe that you leave this moment of direct cognition?
Where do you go when you leave this moment of actuality?
Direct cognition is all there is and ever is!
This profundity confounds the intellect.
The seeker who has invested so much in the process of liberation without results still resists the clear evidence of the obvious.
Why? Simply because it can't SEE or KNOW anything! It is just a PATTERN.
Does the pattern on your kitchen tablecloth have a choice?
Can it 'do' anything? - Beyond all patterns, this actuality of knowing right now is an open view. It is already presently here (for you) and cannot be negated. - It only seemingly is cluttered by these passing visitors in the mind. - They come, they go.
Show me one that has stayed.
Are you one of these transient visitors? - or are you present and aware of all that comes and goes? There is no choice.
You cannot stop seeing or knowing. When the dream stops you remain.
There is awareness. - It is not 'something', which you can claim to be yours.
Where would the 'you' be without it? Openness remains no matter what appears or disappears. - You will not find teachers of what I am pointing out. - It cannot be taught.
IT IS the actuality (for all concerned). - All is empty. - Where are the traces of the past?
They are present in this actuality yet they are nothing but patterns of energy appearing in the knowing presence that you are.
Show me one that it not in your direct cognition!
You are free right now and 'seeing-knowing' are spontaneously happening.
Where will you go from here?
Emptiness speaks to emptiness.
Email received in response to the above note:
Dear Gilbert, I was just blown away by your recent website column on Emptiness.
Beautiful in its directness, clarity and simplicity. - You really speak to and from my Heart.
It thrilled me because I write about and am devoted to this same absolute openness, emptiness, vacancy, nothingness. - Not personal, not changeable, but absolute and constant - one essence appearing as 'many'.
At some point it dawned that 'openness' was (and is) not a personal quality, at all really.
It was (IS) an already universal condition of existence.
You don't need to try to be open. - Openness is already a fact of existence - without the openness of space, where would the universe appear?
Boundless space. - What a relief to see there is no need to try to be open - it is already the situation. - Then you wrote about the presence which occupies the openness.
Also changeless, indivisible, absolute. - This is the aliveness, the imperishable well-being we are. - Another aspect of This that we are that I seem to come to when I get right down to writing or speaking about the essence of it is Wholeness or Completeness.
Here I am sometimes struck speechless. - Everything is held within this Wholeness that You Are/I Am. - The imperishable changeless energy in motion. Where is any destruction or creation here? It is eternal substance in motion within our changeless Wholeness - - In this Wholeness I don't see any foundation for anything other than the (immediate) express-ing of this Wholeness.
- Love, Bill
if therefore your eye be single, your whole body shall be full of light”. N.T. - Mathew 6.22
The light by which you see and know - is non-conceptual awareness.
Here below is a revised note written when I started this blog:
Emptiness speaks to Emptiness.
As long as you believe that there is a solid 'someone' who is going to become enlightened in some future time, then a subtle shroud of ignorance clouds the mind.
'When' this someone is seen as a transparency, a pattern appearing within this direct seeing (that I am), then it is known in an unmediated way as an appearance in the knowing presence that I am and so 'it' is known directly and immediately that I am not this appearance-this pattern of belief commonly called 'me'.
'Then', which can only ever be 'this immediacy' of now, this habitual belief pattern has already lost its hold in the mind. - Even so, it is just belief and has no real hold at all.
It re-appears due to its long-standing 'pattern of recurrence' yet its roots have been cut or loosened and with continued effortless seeing, it will be seen through and it will appear to evaporate, taking with it the afflictive identification of that habitual belief in being a limited personality.
Paradoxically for the mind, there is 'no one' making any effort to bring about this freedom. – SEEING is already happening.
It truly is here already. - Pure Seeing is from beyond the instrument of seeing, a clear space of freedom itself and is not limited by the minds interpretations, which are only content of mind, acquired mind – memory or translations of whatever has appeared in that seeing.
In looking into things carefully, one can see clearly that all of our repeating referencing to a self-center are just a series of appearances in the clear and empty nature of mind.
Whatever happens - seeing is still happening.
The question of who sees and who does not see is an invalid question.
This is a profound and simple fact and its cutting profundity is missed by just about everyone. – There is no one actually there in the pure cognition – This will never be palatable information for the mind of habitual notions.
The essential nature of seeing is not easily expressed in words.
In reading these words, seeing is happening. – What the mind makes from it is not the seeing – these Samskara, these impressions are already mind content.
We imagine that we need to get behind the impressions – get to the understanding – but ‘who’ is that? – You are already beyond the mind content, that is why it is seen and known.
Seeing is direct always. - If someone threw a ball at you, you would duck or catch it without having to think about it.
The point I am making is that 'Seeing is happening'.
The more words I use to ‘get that over’ the less likely the message works – no harm done.
The minds interpretations where the psychology (me) appears to get caught - thinking that these conceptual identifications are actually what I am and that those concepts are doing the seeing and knowing. - Its just not so!
It is extremely subtle for many of us yet so obvious it is not suspected at all.
Those who argue against such obviousness have an invested interest in a particular system of belief and it is this belief that forms the grounds for their argument.
All of it is simply content of mind! - Content of mind is not what you are.
Freedom is freedom is freedom.
It appears as a continual natural release from the past events and memories, even from a moment ago. – Seeing is immediate.
What psychological 'stand' can be taken in the face of the empty nature of unmediated direct pure cognition?
This simple profundity remains incontestable due to its simplicity – its empty nature.
In the pure space of seeing, of direct knowing, this emptiness is full of presence.
Habitual grasping attitudes and states of mind all come and go in this space of knowing that you are.
The belief in being a 'someone' also appears and disappears. - This can be seen clearly by paying a little more attention to what is happening. - The habit is to stay stuck in an attitude, within the bounds of the old habitual views and those stale states of mind. – What we unwittingly sacrifice, by not being mindfully present to what is happening, is we sacrifice the freshness of ‘this moment’ of livingness, in exchange for yesterdays impressions, memories or views – Samskaras – and that is the dead past!
DO you see that? - Now?
When can you see anything except now?
'Who' is it that can't see this obviousness?
Cast aside the old mindset and just see – know – it is subtle and it is not the seer or the seen – it is simply SEEING.
It cannot be denied – even in the blind or visually impaired, seeing is happening but not in the sense that we ‘link’ it with.
(I doubt many will agree on that – but I do not give that fact any credence)
The point is: Seeing IS happening!
A mind pattern has no ability to see or know anything at all.
The pure functions are apparently borrowed by mind patterns, which are simply beliefs in some 'entity' that is believed to be able to 'see and know'.
It is simply not so.
An open view, which clearly sees this, is already transcendent to the content of mind.
Do you really believe that you leave this moment of direct cognition?
Where do you go when you leave this moment of actuality?
Direct cognition is all there is and ever is!
This profundity confounds the intellect.
The seeker who has invested so much in the process of liberation without results still resists the clear evidence of the obvious.
Why? Simply because it can't SEE or KNOW anything! It is just a PATTERN.
Does the pattern on your kitchen tablecloth have a choice?
Can it 'do' anything? - Beyond all patterns, this actuality of knowing right now is an open view. It is already presently here (for you) and cannot be negated. - It only seemingly is cluttered by these passing visitors in the mind. - They come, they go.
Show me one that has stayed.
Are you one of these transient visitors? - or are you present and aware of all that comes and goes? There is no choice.
You cannot stop seeing or knowing. When the dream stops you remain.
There is awareness. - It is not 'something', which you can claim to be yours.
Where would the 'you' be without it? Openness remains no matter what appears or disappears. - You will not find teachers of what I am pointing out. - It cannot be taught.
IT IS the actuality (for all concerned). - All is empty. - Where are the traces of the past?
They are present in this actuality yet they are nothing but patterns of energy appearing in the knowing presence that you are.
Show me one that it not in your direct cognition!
You are free right now and 'seeing-knowing' are spontaneously happening.
Where will you go from here?
Emptiness speaks to emptiness.
Email received in response to the above note:
Dear Gilbert, I was just blown away by your recent website column on Emptiness.
Beautiful in its directness, clarity and simplicity. - You really speak to and from my Heart.
It thrilled me because I write about and am devoted to this same absolute openness, emptiness, vacancy, nothingness. - Not personal, not changeable, but absolute and constant - one essence appearing as 'many'.
At some point it dawned that 'openness' was (and is) not a personal quality, at all really.
It was (IS) an already universal condition of existence.
You don't need to try to be open. - Openness is already a fact of existence - without the openness of space, where would the universe appear?
Boundless space. - What a relief to see there is no need to try to be open - it is already the situation. - Then you wrote about the presence which occupies the openness.
Also changeless, indivisible, absolute. - This is the aliveness, the imperishable well-being we are. - Another aspect of This that we are that I seem to come to when I get right down to writing or speaking about the essence of it is Wholeness or Completeness.
Here I am sometimes struck speechless. - Everything is held within this Wholeness that You Are/I Am. - The imperishable changeless energy in motion. Where is any destruction or creation here? It is eternal substance in motion within our changeless Wholeness - - In this Wholeness I don't see any foundation for anything other than the (immediate) express-ing of this Wholeness.
- Love, Bill
posted by Gilbert Schultz at Sunday, April 22, 2007
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