SPIRITUAL PRACTICE.



Thoughts are not the right tool for grasping Reality's essence or BEING in us. We ARE Reality. We experience Reality as our own BEING. We cannot "think" Reality, it is just impossible.

So, the first step is to learn how to stop thinking. This allows us to dis-cover BEING, or Reality in us, directly, and not camouflaged with our thoughts. Now, the only spot where we meet with Reality is the Present Instant.

The Present Instant's tip is so constantly renewed that it is too short for thoughts to be generated and they stop altogether. This tip is in fact so short that its duration reaches ZERO, or INFINITY's doorway. There, we experience Reality's INFINITE essence as who we ARE .. and we witness it all around us, expressing itself through everything and everyone. Therefore, remaining at the tip of the Present Instant is necessary and sufficient as a full spiritual practice.

The rest is the different techniques, as many as they are, through the different religions and cultures, that aim at getting there. The problem arises when the technique becomes more important than the goal itself. Indeed, when you become addicted to the technique this means it functions like a drug and in a way or another identification with thoughts (which never wants to disappear) is involved in the process.

Identification with thoughts, which is what disconnects us from Reality, is an intelligent entity, based upon memories, that lives on in symbiosis with us. Identification with thoughts is a master in disguise and is able to mimic an experience with thoughts and words.

Sometimes it is as difficult to leave a good spiritual teacher as it is to leave a good therapist. There are needs for being understood, respected, protected, guided and loved, that were never fully satisfied in our infancy and they may be triggered by the spiritual teacher and surface in us. The butterfly doesn't want to leave the protecting cocoon of the chrysalis and apprehends flying on its own but that's the goal of the whole process. My Zen master used to say: "when you got the fish you can put your fishing rod on the ground and go your way".

The Bhagavad Gîta (chapter 2, verse 47) enjoins us not to be concerned with the fruit of our action, but to just give attention to the action itself. This is a way to say that we should remain at the tip of the Present Instant where the magic of INFINITY is met and experienced as our very self.

To be identified with our thoughts, and therefore running on the virtual stream of Time, carried away by our hopes and pushed by our fears, is an exhausting job. When the compulsive striving away from the Present Instant ceases, when we eventually face what "IS" and embrace it, while we're totally naked, the PEACE of BEING flows in everything we do and JOY follows.

Can we be this observing no-thing that allows everything, including our Real self, to be free of us ? Can we be the watcher discovering each new transformation of the unfolding Present Instant as a pure enchantment ? Can we be here and now, just abandoning the different agendas that drive us and too often torture us ? Can we unslave ourselves from our thoughts' tyrany, keeping our conscious space free and welcoming like the new born child does ? All the worries in the world cannot protect us against what will happen next anyway. But when we are back to BEING in us it is like being in the eye of a Hurricane. No matter what unfolds next, there the PEACE of INFINITY reigns..

Patrick Ali Pahlavi

"Stop thinking, and end your problems.
What difference between yes and no ?
What difference between success and failure ?
Must you value what others value ?
Avoid what others avoid ?
How ridiculous" !

Lao Tzu / Tao Te Ching, chapter 20.




Patrick Ali
@amiableSingh

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