“Your experience of the present creates your experience of the future.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

We are here and it is now.  This is the truth and all else is illusion.  Now is the only experience we ever really have.  If we are wakeful and fully alive in the here and now of life… we experience blissful consciousness… because life as conscious energy is innately joyous.

“Beauty is the index of a greater truth than wisdom.”
Sir Oliver Holmes

Has it not been said that ‘what is’ simply is… and then there are the stories we tell about it.  It could also be said that simple ‘isness’ is beauty.  The essence of true reality… its ‘isness’… is a comprehensive oneness that defies illusory separation.

“Great doubts… deep wisdom; small doubts… little wisdom.”
~Chinese Proverb

It has been said that the precursor to awakening is doubt.  It is that point in the evolution of individuated consciousness where we begin to question our experience of life.  It is when we have enough self-awareness to see through the illusions of the mind and begin to dismantle its limiting database.

“All questioning is a way of avoiding the real answer
which is already known.” ~Zen Saying

All great masters have elucidated the difference between concept and experience.  Concept is the domain of the mind and experience is trans-mental.  The truth… we are told… is forever beyond the mind… beyond concept… within trans-mental holistic experience.  Concept may point us toward the experience… but experience begins where concept ends.

“Those who think they ‘know’ from the beginning will never in fact
come to know anything.”  ~Thomas Merton

If your knowledge is an object in relation to you as a subject… then you are mired in the illusion of separation which is a virtual reality created by the ego-driven mind.  Such knowledge then is illusion… and illusion is not truth.

“The greatest of knowledge is to know that knowledge cannot be known.”
 Chuang Tzu

The distinction that Chuang Tzu is making is that of knowledge or concept versus experience. To have conceptual knowledge of something is never the same as having the experience of it.  In this understanding… concept limits experience because it colors it in one way or another.  The greatest knowledge question then is… what remains when the concept is relinquished?  What remains is essence.

“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”
Francis Bacon

We live in a relative reality and all experience is relative.  There are always two polarities to our experience… and we cannot have one without the other.  One polarity can dominate… yet not eliminate… the other.  Such is but natural law.

“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”
~Earl Weaver

There have been many great sages that have recognized this eternal truth.  Socrates is foremost among them when he says… all I know is that I know nothing.  In the eastern wisdom traditions… it is stated that knowledge is bondage.  Why is this so?

Knowledge is thought-based and thought is but one polarity of our relative reality.  If thought dominates thoughtlessness… we experience relative imbalance and limitation within our life experience.  If thought is noise and thoughtlessness is silence… the two must be balanced to deliver a truthful holistic experience of reality.  It is only when we learn these important mechanics of consciousness… that we begin to taste holistic freedom and life fulfillment.

This week… let us endeavor to cultivate more silence within our relative experience.  Meditation is an excellent technique for so doing.  Yet also let us increase our wakefulness throughout our 24 hour day to insure the balance of noise and silence.  In this way… we will experience a more truthful and fulfilling life.

“There are no facts… only interpretations.”
Frederick Neitzsche

What is… simply is… and then there are the stories we tell about it. Remove the mind from the equation of living and there is simply the experience of Isness.  Has it not been aptly said… who would you be without your stories?

“We are no longer happy as soon as we wish to be happier.”
Walter Savage Landor

Happiness is the truthful nature of reality.  It is intrinsic to life.  To truthfully separate bliss from consciousness is impossible.  It is like trying to take the wetness out of water.  Happiness then is our very nature… and the nature of all and everything. 

“Spirit is smothered by ignorance but as ignorance is destroyed spirit shines forth like the sun when released from clouds.”
~Shankara

Spirit is unified essence or Source.  It is the ground of being… the substratum or true reality.  It is also referred to as one blissful consciousness.  Such is the essential Isness of life… the ‘what is’ of life happening… within the eternal now of its happening.

“Walker… there is no road; the road is made by walking.”
Antonio Machado

We are here and it is now.  Consciousness creates itself newly in each nano-second of its happening.  In truth… there is no past and neither is there any future.  There is only presence within the eternal now of one blissful consciousness.

“Though this hut is small… it includes the entire universe.”
 ~Shih Tou—Zen Tradition

There is only one.  It is called by many names.  I prefer to call it the conscious energy of life… or consciousness.  It is a self-delighting energy… or what is termed… blissful consciousness.  It is you… it is me… it is the essence of all and everything.

“He who learns to give way is the master of strength.”
 Lao Tzu

Lao Tzu always speaks from a trans-egoic and holistic perspective.  If everything is but the happening of consciousness… resistance is illusion.  In truth… how can consciousness resist itself?  Consciousness rather flows with itself… as all and everything.  In this understanding… he who gives way is the master of strength.

“Truth does not need any explanation.”
~Steve Hagen

What is… simply is… forever beyond all our stories about it.  What is… is life… or consciousness… the eternal substratum and ground of being.  It requires no explanation.