• What if the deepest thing we’ve ever thought was no more important than the most seemingly insignificant?
• What if the birth of a baby, bright-eyed and beautiful, was exactly the same as the last gasp of a body besieged by tumours, dying in staggering pain?
• What if the halo above the crown chakra of a realised being was no more or less special than the flies buzzing over the cowshit in a Mumbai street?
• What if the smile of our perfect lover was no better than the glinting knife point coming towards us during a violent attack?

If we go out on the search for the Great Spirit, we may come to realise things like this. If all is Shiva, as an aghori in Varanasi once told me, then that means the places which terrify us are Shiva, but can we see it? Can we really see it? And can we live it?

When the search for Spirit collapses it’s seen than this one all-encompassing presence is always already complete, and that no possible facet of human experience could ever exist outside of it. No one concept, including the notion of the individual we thought we were, can exist outside of the Great Spirit because that would make it two and it is not two, it is One.

Avoidance

If we don’t see Great Spirit right now in it’s entirety then we are avoiding it. Something, some contraction or primal resistance, is locked on its own projection thus obscuring the totality. We’re trying to change this moment, subvert it, bend it to our will, and the form of that resistance is the separate self. That resistance is this ephemeral figure we call ourselves, whose world is a projection of its own fear….

Can the seperate self have any more existence than a thought?

I’m hungry is a thought.
I’m jealous is a thought.
I’m miserable is a thought.
I’m alive is a thought.

Each thought, like the  snakes of Medusa, sprouts to reveal two more when it is cut. Each thought begs for attention. Each thought begs for the energy which will help it grow and survive. Why does Ego seemingly try so hard to maintain it’s cover: what a mystery?

Without thought, this Spirit is One, an unbroken wholeness of experience. In fact, this is always the case although thought offers the illusion that it is otherwise.

Why Can’t I find this?

You can’t find this because it’s where you’re looking from. The Ultimate Reality is not something seen but rather the Ever-Present Seer. Life moves past but you don’t move.If you’re in agony it’s the same, if you’re in bliss it’s the same. Whole lifetimes pass, mountain ranges form out of molten lava and, aeons later, crumble into the sea, and it has not changed. It simply IS.

‘If you understand this, then rest in that which understands and that is exactly Spirit. If you do not understand this, then rest in that which does not understand and that is exactly Spirit’ (Ken Wilber)