(Extracted from ” Real, Whole, Here and Happy” by James Waite, also on this site.)
“Here, read this,” said Ed, thrusting a book into Dave’s hand, “Then we can talk, if you still want to. See ya!”
Dave had expected something more, as you might well imagine. But what he got was more than enough. He fixed a coffee, sat in that same old place in his room by the window, and scanned the thin volume before him.
The book was titled: The Real Happiness Revolution and subtitled, “How Happiness Begins when your Stories End.”
Dave opened it, whole worlds’ met, and life would never be the same!
“In our search for real happiness, it seems we all travel in diminishing circles to eventually return to where we started…here. This. Now. Those years and years of mining for diamonds, of trading in synthetic silks, have taught us their lesson of great price. We know, deep within, not only that all that sparkles is not gold, but all that gold which we held in our hands turned to dust and flowed through our fingers. Like all the goals we decided to achieve. Our reach and our grasp were indeed exceeded to exhaustion. Perhaps now it’s time for a new approach! One that will take us out of Time. And out of our mind!
To start, we must stop. Stop. Disengage from the mind’s reaching. Disconnect from the mind’s weak grasp. Put down our mind like a book of fiction, and really look around here. See what is, right here in the room. Not what the mind labels things, like “chair,” “window,” “cat”… but what, in fact, all this is! Is the “cat” in the “chair” looking out the “window” seeing “clouds” shaped like “fish”? Or is it simply seeing, without labels? And what sees? Perhaps we’ll glimpse a new reality.
First of all, the “new reality” is not ours. It is not of our making. It’s nothing to do with what we “think” about it. It’s not the Official Reality created, maintained and sustained by an agreement of mind(s) that we’ll call “conventional.” It’s not a reality based on data exclusively from the five senses. Or the sixth sense, the mind. These senses only determine conventional “reality.” Nothing wrong with that, as far as it goes!
Conventional reality is limited by one thing: Mind, the central processor of our senses. And all minds, bright or dull, individually and collectively, cannot ever grasp reality. Reality is inconceivable by that which we rely on for interpreting our “world”, to wit, our mind. While the senses give us feedback according to the five limited sensors of the human apparatus, the mind similarly compares and contrasts the data. Its binary interpretation sorts everything into two piles, identifying through memory, a “world” that is “good OR bad,” “true OR false,” “right OR wrong.” What do you think, yes or no?
Our mind runs on and on, sifting and sorting with a blunt digging device. “OR” is like a shovel that not only puts us in a deep hole, but also buries us while yet alive! So, how do we stop digging?
Our mind asks for answers from its own realm, naturally. But the answers are not within its realm. Even knowing that, it continues to search, now turning to the senses, especially sight, to confirm. Failing that, mind resorts to Feelings.
Feelings are sensations stored in memory, so we’re back to mind. It’s the loop the ancient mystics called the circle of Samsara. Again and again. Until some of us are driven out of our mind! And in to reality.
A reality that is Concept Free. Free of traditional material and God based thinking. Free of myths and legends that tell us nothing about the non-realm in which we apparently live and die. And which Non-realm cannot begin to be imagined by mind. Free of words in books like this which are not real, but merely re-present that which is real.
Free to USE the mind as a tool, as a function exactly like any of our senses, not to interpret and produce the whole of creation, not to be our Master, but to be a good and useful servant. For a mind used knowing its limitations can provide useful info. Like relativity and scale. For instance, the mind can marvel at info like this: “An atom is 99.9999% empty space. The distance between an electron and the nucleus of an atom is, proportionally, greater than the distance between the earth and the sun.” Wooow! Can you imagine that!
Yes, but no, not really.
REALITY NUMBS THE MIND.
The actual staggers the mind. Almost numbs it. For a moment. But then, back it comes, full of more info stuff to “help” us feel we know what’s going on. Stuff that never stops producing 24/7/365! The very “stuff” of comfort, of knowledge.
Ah, but what can the mind’s fictional and fractional viewscape tell us about Reality? Being? This that is? Mind stares straight ahead; then, finding an abyss, turns now right, now left, in search of answers it does not actually possess, but which it must presume to have. Finding no thing, it rushes on to its last resort: the Future. If not now, well, certainly…probably… certainly, we’ll have answers to all this stuff…in the future!
Mind does not know there is no future. “Yes, yes, of course,” it says, “I know that!” But it doesn’t. Because it can’t. The inconceivable is just that…inconceivable. And mind is nothing but a conceiver of concepts. In fact, it’s one big Concept. And concepts don’t exist. They’re vaporware!
But there’s something else, a kind of Knowing that we do have. One that is not the mind’s knowing. One that “feels” more like it’s from the heart…but…not really. And we vaguely suspect that that way lies, if not madness or redemption, then, perhaps…dare we suggest…Happiness!
This Knowing we’re talking about is…to use the mind’s limited terminology, a deep religious feeling. But let’s bypass the conditioning we’ve received about all things religious, or related in feeling. In fact, let’s have a complete and radical mind/body/heart bypass!
What remains is a way of perceiving we’ll call Resonant Knowing.
RESONANT KNOWING
It’s the very ground and source of what we are:
We know it when we sit still and really listen.
We know it when we walk quiet in the woods.
We know it when we look and truly see.
We know it when we read this and hear this.
And we know we always have known It,
This, that we are.
THIS, THAT WE ARE.
Resonant Knowing is just another word – another concept – that hints at reality, that re-presents it. Like other similar concepts (the Tao, Holy Spirit, The Self, Oneness, Awareness, Pure Consciousness, Brahma, Shiva, Allah, God…) it identifies a feeling that is not a feeling. A specific something that evades comprehension but nevertheless we know exists. It’s the proverbial “things unseen”. And the putting on of eye glasses (like labeling the unseen with volumes of articulate words) to more closely inspect it, does not bring it into focus. It blurs even as it creates distinctions. It’s only when we take the glasses off, and set the traditional tools for “seeing” aside, that we see that which we all know and love. In fact, it is Love.
Our knowing resonates, or “re-sounds“ in us. It is a characteristic vibration in sympathy with another vibration, so to speak. Actually, there’s no “other” so the resonance is from Self to Self. From the one Self to the one Self.
It is only in this Self, this Oneness, this that we are, that we find Happiness after searching high and low. And that “high” which we find is not that Nirvana brand of Happiness we were conditioned to expect, with its soaring and noble ideals and grand states, superb as they are! Nor is this happiness itself connected to our ideas of lowly and humble sacrifice or the elimination of external “things,” to achieve that Zen simple life.
Happiness is not high, or low, not spectacular, nor subtle: it has NO mind defining attributes because it’s real.
HAPPINESS IS REAL NATURAL!