It's Hopeless: Talk and Dialog
Selection from new book in-progress

Talk and Dialog from Meeting with Joan in Chicago in 2004

You are already awake. And by you I don't mean you as the imaginary separate individual that thought imagines. I mean this awake being that's here right now -- the boundlessness that includes everything. Here / Now is always complete, always awake. And everything is this boundlessness -- everything, everything! The sunlight, the birds, the leaves, the traffic, the thoughts, the mental movies, the headaches, the episodes of acid indigestion. Everything is God speaking. Everything is the Holy Reality. Whatever words we use are not it, and yet, every word is it. Everything is this. And there's no possibility of being separate from this boundlessness or losing it or not having it yet, or not quite getting it, because there's no one apart from it to get it or to lose it or to find it or to have it. And the thought, “I’m not quite there yet,” is only a thought. And that thought is boundlessness as well, playfully expressing itself as that funny little thought and the melodrama that thought creates, because apparently whatever this is, this boundlessness, or this awake emptiness, or whatever you want to call it, apparently it enjoys melodramas. It loves playing.

We only have to turn on the TV to discover that.  Consciousness enjoys stories of all kinds: melodramas, horror shows, crime dramas, happy love stories, tragic love stories, war stories, comedies, documentaries, adventure stories -- and it also enjoys turning off the TV. It enjoys silence. It enjoys waking up from stories. It enjoys playing hide and seek. It enjoys finding and being found, and then hiding again, and again being found. It enjoys going to sleep; it enjoys waking up. It enjoys the play of birth and death, of appearing and disappearing, expanding and contracting -- the play of evolution and dissolution.

Sometimes there's clear space and sunny weather—that wonderful feeling of joy and aliveness where everything is glowing and sparkling and beautiful--and then other times the experience is one of dullness or flatness or maybe even some kind of agitation or restlessness or upset:  anger, irritation, hurt, grief – cloudy or stormy weather.  And each of these sensations and thoughts and experiences is perfectly it. Even the thought, “This can't be it,” is it.

There's nothing to find. There's only this. There can be a movie about how we’re going somewhere, we’re progressing, or we’re falling back.  It's a movie--it's like watching television. It's fun (or not)--it's a movie. Movie or no movie, there's only this appearing as everything.

There's no you that has to fall away or be gotten rid of or dissolved. There's no you there. There are different patterns of energy that we call Joan or Tom or Dan or Mila or chair or rug or tree or sunshine. But there's no solid thing there, there's no solid self inside these ever-changing patterns, there's no separate, persisting object anywhere. It's all one energy, one being -- emptiness, empty of self, empty of solid form -- thorough-going, seamless flux.

There are preferences—we’d rather eat ice cream than cockroaches, we’d rather see peace on earth than the holocaust (or so we like to believe, anyway). Those preferences are also this same groundlessness appearing as cockroaches, appearing as ice cream, appearing as the holocaust, appearing as preferences.  If the mind is busy saying, “Yes, but… What if?  Yes, but wait… What about…?”—that too is the same emptiness, the same energy -- questioning itself, exploring itself,  discovering itself, unfolding itself, expressing itself, playing hide and seek with itself, tricking itself, enjoying itself.  And the entire appearance that we call “the world” or “the universe” or “me” or “my story” has no substance.  Try to find the thought that you had 5 seconds ago—it's completely gone.  Vanished.  Earlier this morning is completely gone. Vanished.  Everything about it is gone. You might think that the kitchen table where you had your morning coffee is still there in your kitchen, but it is not the same table or the same kitchen or the same you from one instant to the next. It’s all a disappearing subatomic dance. Your whole life up until this second (snaps fingers) is completely gone!  Vanished.  There's just this, undivided, complete, awake.

Everything is happening effortlessly on its own.  The sunlight is happening, the seeing is happening, the hearing is happening, yawning is happening, breathing is happening, movements of the hands are happening, these words are happening.  Everything is happening on its own---thoughts, sensations. And all of it is nothing at all.

Does anyone want to bring anything up or does any mind want to mount an argument?

Participant:  I find a restlessness with no particular content—it doesn’t want anything, but there's is a restlessness that doesn’t want to stay there.

Joan: Stay where?

Participant: Here. With what is.

Joan:  But there's no way to leave here.  The very thought that you have to stay here, or that you could leave here, or that something is not “it”--like the restlessness is somehow not “it” or could lead “you” away from “here”—that is only a thought, a movie, and it too is an expression of the same undivided energy.

What you’re calling “restlessness” is actually some mix of ever-changing neurochemistry, thoughts and sensations that gets labeled “restlessness,” and the label already has a judgmental, pejorative feel to it, and then a thought (posing as “me”) pops up and takes ownership of the restlessness (“This is my restlessness, my problem.”). That thought “takes delivery” as Nisargadatta used to say, it takes this “restlessness” personally.  And that labeling and taking delivery and taking-it-personally also happens by itself, impersonally!  And then there's more thinking -- comparing and contrasting and judging and strategizing: “This restlessness is not enlightened behavior….it feels terrible….I want that other experience I was having before, that blissful feeling of empty space – that was spiritual – and now there's this disturbing restlessness, which is unspiritual, and I have to get rid of this restlessness because it’s taking me away from here, where I’m supposed to be….”  But it's all empty, even this thinking -- it all comes out of nowhere (or everywhere), it’s all completely insubstantial, and there's no “you” to do anything about it. It's truly hopeless, which is bad news only to the mind that wants to do something about it. 

Participant:  When restlessness arises, would you say to address it by just letting it--

Joan:  Just see that the mind right now is looking for a strategy.  Like this restlessness is a problem and we have to find a way to deal with it.

Participant:  It's hopeless!  I am going to write that on the wall in big letters.  It's hopeless.  That’s everything!  If I would just stay with that.

Joan:  But see, there it is again--the thought, “If I would just stay with that I’d be okay.  I’m going to write it on the wall in big letters so then maybe I’ll remember that.”  (laughter) And even this strategizing is it, there is no escape from it.

Another Participant: What does it mean, “It's hopeless?”

Joan:  I mean that there's no one who can do anything about this. There's the thought that I want to get to someplace that I've heard about, or imagined, or been to before, and a strategy for getting there, and the thought that, “If I would just try hard enough, I could do it.” The one who wants to do that is an illusion. It does not exist. It's this phantom me. Hope is all about wanting something other than what is. Hope is about wanting to get to something that's imagined or that's remembered, or hold on to some special experience. Hope is rooted in the idea that what's being pointed to is some thing that could be lost or found, and the notion that some things are spiritual and some things are not. Some things are “it” and some things are “not it.” And there's “me” who could or should be able to do something about it all, all of which is rooted in the idea that that there's “me” separate from “it,” me who has to “get it” somehow and then keep it. But that me is a phantom, a mirage, an image, a bunch of thoughts, isn't it? Don't take my word for it.

Participant:  I always have trouble with seeing that there's just one whole and all of us individually don’t exist. 

Joan:  Well, there are different patterns here. Different colors and shapes. There's no denying that. But what doesn't exist is the solidity, the continuity, the separateness that is created by conceptual thought. You can't see the whole. Seeing can't see itself anymore than the eye can see itself. And nonduality or wholeness doesn’t mean same-ness. It means no separation. There is clearly diversity here -- different patterns and shapes and colors and sensations. And we’ve learned to see and distinguish separate objects, and we’ve learned to identify one of those conceptualized objects as “me.”  And then we think we’re inside that object somehow. But there’s a seeing that is bigger than all the objects – awareness contains all the objects including “me,” doesn’t it?  And in deep sleep, even the first sense of awareness vanishes. That which remains is here now. It cannot be seen or known or possessed. It is everything and nothing. It appears as people and trees and pencil sharpeners and computers and bombs and flowers and cows and dogs and tree toads and chairs and tables and thoughts and words and sensations and subatomic particles and distant galaxies and black holes. This is all there is. Nothing is separate from this. This is everything, and everything is this.

Undeniably, there is diversity in this dream-like appearance, but do the dream objects really exist outside of the dream? That's the illusion. Every object we can name is a mental concept, an idea, an abstraction or reification of something that is actually not divided off and separate from everything else. The boundary lines that apparently divide “me” from “you” are quite fluid and porous and arbitrary and notional if you look closely.

Objects (not just tables and chairs, but thoughts and emotions and “you” and “me” and “my mind” and “your mind”) don’t actually have the continuity, the solidity, the intactness, and the separateness that the conceptualizing mind gives to them. This is obvious when we look closely. Only in thinking about them do they seem to persist as solid, enduring, separate, independent things. But actually, you’re not the same person you were ten years ago, and you’re not the same person you were ten minutes ago, or even ten seconds ago. Your chemistry has changed, your cells have changed, your blood has moved around, your thoughts have changed. And “your mind” is full of thoughts and ideas from “other minds,” and all of us in this room are breathing in and out, exchanging air and chemicals and subatomic particles and thoughts and vibrations of one kind or another. Where are the boundaries? 

Relatively speaking, we can say we exist as separate individuals – that’s how it appears (if you don’t look too closely). And it’s not like that appearance is going to vanish and we’re going to forget our names and see some kind of psychedelic monicolor formless mush instead. But do you ever actually find anything apart from everything else that it is not? Does Joan ever exist or appear separately from everything that is not-Joan?  Isn't she made up of everything else -- air, water, space? Isn’t everything appearing here altogether as one whole indivisible picture, so to speak? If you look closely, where does inside or outside begin and end? Can you actually find this boundary line?  Right now, in your actual direct experience, is my voice inside of you or outside of you?  And every night in deep sleep, this whole world is completely gone. You are completely absent. How real is any of it?

Participant: But I can move my arm and not your arm. I can feel the headache in my head, but not the headache in your head.

Joan: “My arm,” “your arm,” “my head,” and “your head,” are conceptual ideas. The actual experience is of shapes and colors and movements and sensations appearing right here. No distance or separation at all.  Right?  This moving of my arm is something that happens here, but if we hadn’t learned to describe this happening as, “I move my arm,” then would it still seem that some phantom “I” is initiating it?  I can’t move or feel the blood cells in my legs, and yet I’ve still learned to think of them as “my blood cells,” in “my legs.” So why should the fact that I can’t move your arm or feel your headache mean that your arm or your head is any less “me” than my blood cells?  See, it’s all thinking, isn’t it? 

The way we describe things, and think about them, and conceptualize them gets overlaid on top of the actual direct experience. It’s very, very subtle. These conceptual overlays are so familiar, so deeply conditioned, so ubiquitous, that it’s quite difficult to even realize we’re conceptualizing.  And of course, we’re not conceptualizing – conceptualizing is happening.  Again, the language creates confusion. 

So of course, we’re not going to stop seeing what we call “you” and “me,” or stop being able to distinguish one from the other, or start imagining that “I” can move “your” arm. But can it be realized that “you” and “me” are images and abstractions that appear here in this vast undivided wholeness that has no owner and no location? 

Don’t take this on belief, but if it is of interest, investigate it, not with analytical thought, but with awareness. Look deeply. Look carefully. See for yourself. It’s really quite effortless and simple. Simply notice that undivided wholeness is your actual experience right now. I’m not talking about anything mystical. This is obvious, right in front of your nose (so to speak), impossible to miss.  All of us are one whole, appearing right here all at once, seamlessly. Everything is exactly the way it is and could not be otherwise in this moment.

Participant:  (addressing the other participant who was having trouble seeing that everything is One) -- I found that by staying with my doubt something totally shifted for me. You stay with your doubt until you break through.

Joan:  I don't think you have to do anything. There is absolutely nothing you need to change. This is it right now. Experiences come and go. This is perfectly it right now. There is nothing you need to do; there is nothing you need to break through; there is nothing you need to get to or get beyond. You are the perfect expression exactly as you are right now.

Participant who was offering advice:  You're right. Thank you. It's amazing--that subtlety.

Joan:  Everything is beautiful just exactly the way it is. Everything is the perfect expression, the only possible expression, at this moment. Everything is an infinite Self-realization. It could not be otherwise. And all of it is empty. It's a dream-like expression. It has no substance.

Another Participant:  How do you know that? How do we know our perceptions are accurate? How can we know things are as we think them to be?   

Joan:   Nothing is the way we think it is!  And what do we mean by wondering if our perceptions are “accurate”? We assume that there's some separate objective reality “out there” that we’re standing apart from and perceiving either correctly or incorrectly. That’s how we imagine it and think of it.  But in fact, our actual experience is that there is only perceiving. And each of us apparently sees a totally unique world. No two are identical. And yet, like a hologram, every part contains the whole. Your world contains me and my world contains you. So when I point to the fact of pure perceiving, I don’t mean that the content of what is perceived matches some external objective reality, or that any kind of story or interpretation overlaid on top of that pure perception is true – I’m pointing to the undeniable IS-ness of perceiving – we could call it bare being or suchness. That is undeniable, regardless of whether we think it is a dream or a brain creation or material reality or a fantasy – those are all interpretations after the fact and they can each be doubted – but perceiving itself cannot be doubted.

Whatever I say is nonsense, really. All the words can do is try to undermine or demolish anything we think is true, any place where the mind is trying to land or get a grip. The words point to what is beyond words.

Participant:  When things are speedy I get more of a sense that I’ve lost it than when things are quiet.  When things are speeding along and I’m resisting the way it is, that’s when I seem to get into more trouble.

Joan:  So all of that is what is, the speeding along, the so-called resisting the speeding along, the so-called trouble, the quiet that comes after the trouble.  It all appears here now. One fluid whole.

Another participant:  With this approach there's no room for judgment.

Joan:  There is room for judgment, actually.  There's room for everything. (laughter)

Participant:  There seems to be a coming back, though, a remembering.

Joan:  Well, there are different experiences that appear.  Sometimes there's the experience of speeding and resisting and being angry and upset and sometimes there's the experience of spacious, open, empty, quiet.  And then there's the thought that one experience is ‘it’ and the other experience is not ‘it.’ And thought claims that there's ‘me’ who is having these experiences, ‘me’ who has to come back, ‘me’ who has to remember to come back, ‘me’ who is going back and forth between one experience and then the other experience, ‘me’ who hopes to someday be fully stabilized in the better of the two experiences, forever rid of the bad one, finally okay. But it's truly hopeless.  (laughter)  There's no one having any of these experiences. And no experience is permanent. 

Participant:  Sometimes that cuts it; sometimes it doesn’t.

Joan:  What exactly is there to cut? 

Participant:  A resistance.

Joan:  Is there resistance right now?

Participant: A little probably.  Right then there wasn’t but then it started again.  There was a millisecond of no resistance.

Joan:  Well if you work really hard you may be able to expand that millisecond into a longer period of time.  (laughter)  This is it!  This.  Even the mind churning over it is it.

Participant: Is there any way to get there from here?  There isn't, is there?  The only way is here.  That’s the sense I get reading Krishnamurti and others, that there's no way to get there from here.

Joan:  There's no there.  Any there is in the mind.  There's only here.  There's only this.  So any there that you are trying to get to, or any idea of “here” that you’re trying to get to, is hopeless, because it doesn’t exist and the one who would go there doesn’t exist.  There's always only here.  There's always only this.  It's inescapable.  You can't not be this.

Participant: I think I can.  (laughter)

Joan:  It's thinking--see the absurdity of it--that somehow there would be this one little stray piece, Bob Jones, who somehow broke off from the totality.

Another participant: As soon as I see ‘this is it,’ my mind says, “What's next?”  I want to get away from that.

Joan:  That’s part of what the mind does, it asks, “What's next?”  It plans and organizes and wonders, “What's next?”  That’s its job. It’s a survival function. And that movement of thought is the same emptiness, the same wholeness, the same One Being.  If there is an idea that what we are looking for is a place where the thought, “What's next?” would never again arise, that’s a set-up for disappointment and frustration. That’s giving that thought more power and weight than it actually has, as if that thought (“What's next?”) is something alien and terrible that must be banished, something that’s not allowed to be. But if it pops up, then obviously it is allowed to be. It’s here!  And then instantly, it’s over! Gone!  Vanished!  So if there's a thought, “What's next?”, so what?  It's not like the goal is to be sitting down motionlessly in a state of thoughtless emptiness for the rest of your life.

Participant: My mind says that the emptiness movie should always be playing in the background of whatever form is appearing.  Would you care to demolish that?

Joan:  “The emptiness movie should always be playing in the background of whatever form is appearing.” That sounds like a complicated, effortful thing to work on.

Participant: Always to remember emptiness.

Joan:  Emptiness is inescapable. There’s no need to remember it, and any “emptiness” you can remember is only another object. This right here now is emptiness. Emptiness is all there ever is; emptiness is not some special experience or special state that has to be remembered and then played in the background of every other experience. Every experience is emptiness. These words are emptiness. You are emptiness. There is only emptiness.

Participant: I don’t see that right now.  The metaphor I use is like figure and ground, that I am all caught up with something going on and then I remember—

Joan:  But there's no separate “you” apart from “the ground” who is all caught up in “the figure” and has to get back to “the ground.”  Those are all just concepts. It may have been a helpful conceptualization at one moment, a helpful map, but now it’s become a burden. So let’s try a different map. You are the ground. The groundless ground. There's only the ground, appearing as all the figures.  The ground (or the groundlessness) is inescapable.  There's no you as a separate somebody who has to achieve the ground as a special something that needs to be seen or remembered. There’s no you and no ground, and no need to make sure the ground is always playing in the background.  This present moment is the ground.  Even this funny little attempt to “get the ground to play in the background” is itself the ground, doing this funny little dance to amuse or confuse itself. That’s a story, of course. Don’t take it too literally. The point is, emptiness (or the ground) is not a separate something. It’s not a state. It’s not “out there” apart from you.

Participant: What I tend to have to do is keep saying, “Just this, just this, just this, just this.”  It would be good to have a tape recording in the background saying that.

Joan:  That sounds really good.  Maybe you could wear a little implanted headphone.  (laughter)

Participant: It seems like I need that.

Joan:  In order not to fall from grace?

Participant: Yes.  (laughter)   This is probably one of the steps to solving the illusory problem.

Joan:  It is, because there is no where to fall to.  There's no you to fall—

Participant: I do need that. 

Joan:  The thought, “just this” may keep arising.  The “I” that thinks it's doing that is illusory.

Participant: Then what's doing that?

Joan:  What's doing everything? 

Participant: It seems likes it's a process, a short process, but a process.

Joan:  It seems like a process in the memory, when the thinking mind constructs a story about it after the fact.  What's actually happening though, is that there is some sort of sensation going on that we call agitation, and then a thought arises, “Just this.”  And then, as you say, sometimes that thought “works” and what arises next is a spacious calm feeling, and sometimes it “doesn’t work” and then there's still the agitation and then there may be another thought, “Damn, it's not working.  I’ll try again.  JUST THIS!”

And then there's still the agitation, and then at some point the agitation is gone, maybe because there was some kind of waking up, seeing the agitation as just a bunch of thoughts, or maybe because your neurochemistry and hormone balance shifted, or maybe because you suddenly looked out the window and saw a beautiful bird fly past, but somehow, that shift happens, and then there's some kind of experience of calm for a moment, listening to the traffic or the birds without thinking about anything. 

And then maybe the thought, “Oh, this is it!  This is what I have to maintain. This is presence-awareness. This is emptiness. This is the ground. I have to hold onto this. I have to keep the ground behind the figure! But have I really got the ground?  Is this really it? How can I be sure? What is the ground anyway?” And then noticing there's agitation again, and then again the thought pops up, “Just this!” 

And then there's a sort of underlying thought-story that, “I am doing all this. I am the one who keeps slipping into agitation. I am the one who has to keep reminding myself to be aware.  I am the one who has to get the ground behind the figure.  I am the one who has to make the waking up happen.  I am the one who has to manage and control all of this, and I could botch it and ruin my whole life.  And it appears that I am botching it some of the time.  I am the one who is failing, the one who is unenlightened. But I have hope that if I keep trying, it will get better. Someday, I’ll get there. I’ll be permanently established as the ground.”

Participant: You have the movie right.  (laughs)

Joan:  So it's a movie and where is it all coming from?  All the movies, all the thoughts, all the actions, all the trees, the leaves, the sun, the wind-- 

Participant: I want to turn off that movie.

Joan:  Good luck.  (laughter) Groundlessness has no problem with that movie. Only the phantom me in the movie has a problem with the movie. The movie character wants to escape from the movie. It's a scene in the movie. Can you see the joke? There is nothing that needs to be liberated. To see that is liberation. And if it is not seen, then maybe there is agitation and drama. So what? It's nothing but sensations and thoughts, all of it a momentary dream-like appearance, a scene in a movie, and then it's over. Groundlessness is always here, movie or no movie.

Participant: Social interaction can be distracting.  Right away it sets up questions of who I am, who am I trying to impress… 

Joan:  When you say distracting, distracting from what?

Another participant: From the ground.  (laughter)

Participant: That structure builds up, though, and that is illusory.

Joan:  But even the building up of that structure comes out of the same source as everything else, right?--the trees, the earth, the wind. It's all dream-like.

Participant: But I lose awareness of the wind and the trees and become more and more obsessed with this structure of ego and thought and interrelationships.

Joan:  Yes, and in the waking up movie, it’s useful to see that, and that seeing comes out of the same source. And right now, the invitation is to see that there's no you doing any of that, there's simply trees, wind, sounds, thoughts, a story drama running about me and my—

Participant: Right, and that’s okay too, unless there's a lot of contraction.

Joan:  What's wrong with contraction? It's natural! “Okay” and “not okay” are evaluations after the fact. It’s all okay in the sense that it all is what is. But that doesn’t mean there’s no room within the dream for improvement or for learning or for evolutionary development. There’s room for everything! And that too is coming out of the same source. Disease and medicine are complimentary aspects of one whole. And the contraction you speak of may be in the very idea of distraction.  You used the word ‘distraction’ and it's interesting how we think of something as a ‘distraction.’  If you have the idea that you want to be in a state of complete quiet, for example, and all of a sudden they start pile driving out in the street, then the mind says, “This is a distraction and it's upsetting me.”  And it is definitely a different and less pleasant neurological experience, but the sense that it's a distraction comes from this underlying idea that I have a picture of how I want this to be and now it's deviated.  Now there's something getting in the way.  

Participant: And then that idea of it being a distraction becomes more of a distraction than the sound.   Sometimes I feel I will become really upset and I start worrying about that.

Joan:  There are different experiences.  There was calm and then there's upset.  That’s part of being alive; that’s part of organic life.

Participant: But it shouldn’t be this way. 

Joan:  Ohhhhhhhhhhh… (laughter)

Another participant: But how do you know it should be this way?  Because it is? 

Joan:  I am not saying it should be this way, but rather, it is this way.

Participant: Tomorrow I could experience some real fear.  Where do I go with that? 

Joan:  First of all, right now, it’s a total fantasy.  But if that happens then it will be happening now. It will simply be what is appearing now, and you’ll see how it unfolds.

Participant: But who wants that?

Joan:  Nobody.  I would rather feel peace than fear, just as I would rather eat ice cream than cockroaches, but the fact of the matter is that that sometimes I do feel intense unpleasant emotions of one kind of another.

Participant: I could suggest some techniques.

Joan: I am sure he already has a repertoire of things to do. And it's all happening by itself, including using techniques or not using techniques.  There is no one who can control it and there's nothing inherently wrong with it. It may be painful or uncomfortable, it may even lead to the death of this organism  if it gets really bad, but even that is simply what's happening.  And truly, nothing is happening. What you truly are is deathless and unborn, beginningless and endless, infinite and always Now.

Participant: The fear will eventually go away.

Joan:  And you actually have no choice in the matter.  If the impulse arises to apply one of your techniques, then that will happen.  And if the impulse arises to do nothing, then the techniques won’t be used.

But notice how the mind is looking for a strategy, for ways to deal with this thing that might happen tomorrow morning.  But it's hopeless.  It's actually hopeless.  Yes, at some point the fear might actually go away.  When I say it's hopeless I don’t mean to say that this fear is here for the rest of your life.  It might dissolve; it might never come again; or it might plague you for the rest of your life and end up killing you.  But either way, it's hopeless.  It's totally hopeless.  There's nobody apart from it to do anything about it.

And it doesn’t ultimately matter.  And that’s actually very liberating.  To see that there's no hope is actually very liberating. If no hope is about despair as in, “I wish there were hope but, Oh God, there isn't,” that’s despair, but to actually see that there's no hope, that there's no need for hope, that there's only this, that there's no one to control anything, that there's no way you could lose it even if you die, even if you lose sight of the ground, even if you experience fear or agitation, there's no way that you could ever lose it because you are it.  There's nothing else.  It can't be lost, it can't be found—that’s very liberating.  Then if there's fear or anger or speediness or lots of figures, there's just that, and that too is simply the ground figuring, the ground speeding, the ground angering, the ground hearing, the ground thinking, the ground appearing as all of it and there's no one in there suffering from it.

The urge for a solution, the urge for alleviation, the acceptance of suffering if it comes--all of that is arising from the same source that the trees are arising from--and the wind and the sunshine and these bodies and these brains and everything. 

Participant: But it is better to look at it rather than to look away from it, and that is hard because pain is painful.

Joan:  There is no you to control which one of those two happens.  Sometimes looking at it happens and being completely open to it happens, and sometimes looking away and resisting it happens.  There's no you who can choose one or the other.  And it's true if the urge to simply open up to it arises, the suffering may very well dissipate in that looking, as opposed to if the urge to resist arises and instead you rush in and start eating lots of food and drinking scotch or something.  Then chances are you will experience indigestion and a hangover and a lot of other suffering feelings afterwards.  But there is no you who can manufacture one or the other of those experiences and even the resisting, even the hangover and the indigestion and the resisting, is equally this.  It is equally what is, it is just a different pattern of this same energy.  It's less desirable to the mind.  It's the same way that we prefer ice cream over cockroaches.  We prefer peace over agitation.  Although, interestingly enough, we do seem to have some interest in agitation.  Hang around in peace long enough and the mind seems to ask what's next and we rush off to some crime drama or turn on the News and experience a bit of agitation.

Participant: I want to be open to what's here and not escaping from it.

Joan:  Right now, that is what is arising, that thought, “I want to be open to what's here and not escaping from it.” But tonight, a very different impulse and train of thought may arise. I find that sometimes I want to be open and sometimes I want to escape and close down, and I find there is no one at the helm inside of me who can choose what I want or what action will follow from that wanting--whatever has the most energy in any given moment is what wins out in that moment. We could say that every happening, opening and closing, is equally the ground playing itself out in a different dance of energy. So I find that I’m not really that concerned any more with whether I am opening up or whether I am closing down. Yes, there is an interest in opening up that can arise here, and if the closing down is taking forms that feel harmful, there is a concern that may arise and perhaps an interest in exploring the situation and uncovering what’s going on. But all of that comes unbidden.

Brain experiments show that the thought that appears to choose or intend an action occurs a split-second after the action has already been initiated in the body. "I'm going to bring my attention to the present moment" is an after-thought, describing what is already happening, initiated by no one, or we could say, by the whole universe. 

For a long time I was very focused on trying to “be present” and “open up fully” to the bodily sensations of fear and anger, and I was trying very hard to see the thoughts as thoughts and come back to the present moment and all of that. And that movement from thoughts to present moment awareness still happens, but without it being a big deal either way. It happens by itself. Actually, it always did. But it's not seen anymore as this burdensome task that “I” must do to be a spiritual success. That overlay is gone. Opening up happens or it doesn’t. And I notice that actually awareness is present either way. Everything perceivable and conceivable happens in awareness including the thoughts and the so-called distractions. What is prior to awareness is here now, inescapable and impossible to find. It is the groundlessness that has been called Totality or Self or Wholeness or Unicity or emptiness. But it is prior to all the words. It cannot be grasped or imagined or experienced.

Participant: So how do you get there from here?

Joan: It's only in the movie or in the story that there is anyone apart from it who needs to find it, this phantom who seems to be going through some kind of process or shift or awakening or something like that. That's all a dream. There's always only here. There's only this. Groundlessness. That's all there ever is. There can be movies of opening and closing, of looking and not looking…

Participant: But I am saying there is another option besides turning away. 

Joan:  There is no one to choose a different option.  A different option may arise. Either way, it all appears Here and Now. It's all empty. And you can't get there from here because there's no there. It's always here. You can't ever lose the groundlessness or step out of Here and Now, not really, not ever.

So have we gotten anywhere?  Have we improved?  Are we closer to it now than we were before?  Have we slipped further away?  (laughter)   There's simply this, the rummmmmmm of the truck.  That’s it.  That’s the Holy Reality, the Absolute Truth, nothing at all.

----copyright 2009 Joan Tollifson---

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