Exploring non-duality: FINDING THE SACRED.
“When you hear the word ‘religion’, all kinds of images come to mind, all kinds of symbols. The Christian, Hindu and Muslim have their own symbols, dogmas and beliefs. All the people who call themselves religious have a certain approach, an idiosyncratic approach or a traditional approach, so they can never think clearly about the matter. They are first Hindus or Muslims or Christians, and then they begin to seek. So to find out if there is or if there is not something which is beyond thought, which is not measurable by the mind, the mind must first be free.”
J Krishnamurti
~ Belief only seems to bring the kind of security we seek – a felt sense of belonging that’s apparently confirmed by one’s particular, culturally conditioned need to believe; to cling to a form that’s consoling; a ritualized structure that’s supported by supposed ‘other’s’ who seem to smile, nod and agree; who appear to know; who are variously steeped in ritualized and comforting forms of institutional knowing. Forms which – in clear, candid moments, often accompanied by suffering and despair – open one up to directly seeing the fact that all belief binds, and that freedom of the mind lies in freedom from belief, from already knowing and from needing to know. Then only, one may be graced to, as the song goes, stop externally “looking for something I can believe in” and turn their search to the inner.
In deep and deepening inner-knowing – in the dawning awareness that there is no ‘person’, no chooser and no choice – there’s a passing beyond all belief, to a non-personal, non-conceptual, recognition of the reality of simply being the empty fullness of that which one is; that peace beyond mind’s understanding without a knower who knows. In fine, one draws ultimate peace and delight in a certain knowing that one is, without knowing what one is. There’s a knowing that whatever one wholly is, is sacred.. and unknown; and that wholly includes what seems to be happening, coming and going in changeless awareness, here and now. In that knowing lies peace, love, beauty and joy…and sacred wonder! 🙂
~ Inner and outer are sacred and One. A cabbage reveals the sacred..to the sacred; to itself. 🙂
