Joan Tollifson - The Simplicity of What Is

 

Ultimate Reality is right here in plain view. It is never hidden, it requires no belief, and it is utterly beyond all doubt. It is showing up as breakfast dishes, laundry, sunlight on leaves, the barking of a dog, sound of traffic or rain, the humming of the computer, the taste of tea, the shapes of these words, and the awareness being and beholding it all. And only when we describe all of this in words does it seem as if "awareness" is one thing and "the taste of tea" is something else. The non-conceptual actuality of this breathing-hearing-seeing-awaring-being is undivided, without center or periphery. No inside, no outside. No subject, no object. Simply this, just as it is…

Thought seemingly divides this immediacy up. It imposes a grid on top of the seamlessness of reality and conceptually sorts it into little squares. Then it imagines that Square A causes Square B, or that Square B is the result of Square A, or that Square A has free will to choose between Square B and Square C, or that Square A comes before Square B in time and space. This is all imagination, a way of conceptualizing. The squares aren't really separate; the boundaries don't actually exist; they're only conceptual, as are the imagined relationships between the squares, including time and space. The squares are actually not related at all because they're not two. And this thinking process that imposes conceptual grids on wholeness is itself an aspect of the same wholeness, as is the awareness that sees through the imaginary grids. Everything is included in the Absolute. We could say that the Absolute includes the relative (the world of apparent grids), but isn't bound by it. Awakening doesn't mean ignoring, discounting or denying relative reality, but awakening sees through it. It recognizes the emptiness of everything. But in relative reality, the show goes on, and you (as an apparent character) play your part, apparently making choices and taking actions.

--from “The Simplicity of What Is” on the “Outpourings” page of my website: 

www.joantollifson.com