For one instant, abandon all labels, concepts, answers, explanations, all efforts to improve or achieve a result of any kind. What remains?

Sensations, sounds of traffic, smell of exhaust, smell of rain, hum of a vacuum cleaner, cheeping of a bird, breathing, seeing, hearing, awaring. Not the words, but the actuality. Just this, as it is.

Thought divides it up into seer and seen, self and other, mind and body, form and emptiness, relative and absolute, spiritual and unspiritual, enlightenment and delusion. By the way that it labels, divides and describes, conceptual thought creates a mirage world (like a dream or a movie) that seems completely believable and real.

In this movie world, it appears that there is 'me,' an independent entity with a mind of its own, encapsulated inside a body, separate from the world around it. It seems that this phantom 'me' is in control of 'my life,' a series of events with a past and future unfolding in time and space. This 'me' appears to be on its own in a frightening, alien universe that is 'not me.' Something always seems to be missing. The phantom 'me' seeks happiness, flees from death, chases after bigger and better experiences, compares itself to others, and tries desperately to 'get it,' whether 'it' is a new car, a better job, or enlightenment.

But is this 'me' real, or is it a mental image and a story with no actual substance? Is there really a central agent at the helm steering the ship, or do 'your' thoughts and actions appear here in the same way that the brain, the breath, the wind, the clouds, the trees, and the galaxies appear here? Is clarity or confusion personal, or is there simply weather, appearing and disappearing, sometimes clear and sometimes cloudy?

Is awakening a future event, or does that word point to the utter simplicity of here and now? Are you the character in the story of your life or the awareness in which the story appears?

You know that you (as presence-awareness) are here, that something is happening. The bare actuality of being is undeniable and impossible to doubt, needing no proof or belief. This presence (or emptiness) is always here -- wondrously diverse but always appearing altogether at once -- never arising, never ceasing, and never staying the same. This is the jewel.