I had a session recently with a man who is taking a photography course, specifically, a miksang contemplative photography course. He sent me a link to his photos, and it was thrilling to see the connection between the class, and the lookin-simply-seeing work that we are doing together. The photography class is all about learning to see. The sessions are all about the seeing. Continue reading
Author Archives: colettekelso
Mechanics of Mind Revealed~Look-See
Fleeting Flotsam of the Floating World by Matthew Carver
“Hold on to the sense ‘I am’ to the exclusion of everything else. When thus the mind becomes completely silent, it shines with a new light and vibrates with new knowledge. It all comes spontaneously, you need only hold on to the ‘I am’…be silent and watch it expressing itself in action.” ~ Sri Maharaj Nisargadatta
“If you can recognize, even occasionally, the thoughts that go through your mind as simply thoughts, if you can witness your own mental-emotional reactive patterns as they happen, then that dimension is already emerging in you as the awareness in which thoughts and emotions happen — the timeless inner space in which the content of your life unfolds. The stream of thinking has enormous momentum that can easily drag you along with it.” ~ Eckhart Tolle
These are pointers—only until they become lived experience. If they are merely understood, then they are just more thoughts amongst many random thoughts that can “easily drag you along” in conceptual, mind-created activity. No pointer, no matter how eloquent, or how deep the resonance, conveys any kind of knowing, unless and until it is a lived experience.
So if the above quotes are familiar—seem to make sense—but the experience, the knowing of that to which they point, is not forthcoming, is there a way to take the pointer all the way home to the felt, lived experience? Can one stay with the looking, observing, “be silent and watch it” and finally see?
In the Look-Sees, what we’re doing seems to bridge the difference between understanding the pointer conceptually and seeing, or apprehending, the experience. The suggestion here is guided looking. When you simply point to the observing, the capacity to watch, there is a glimpse, and then mind steps in, oftentimes instantly, without noticing that one has gone back into the conceptual. When a facilitator is there, looking right along with you, the thought-train can be stopped, so to speak, and bring you right back to looking.
I used to watch my daughter taking piano lessons when she was younger. The piano teacher would sit on the bench with her, and as my daughter played, her teacher would occasionally touch her back, and she would sit straighter. She would touch her hands, and she’d remember to go lightly on the keys. She would even touch her cheek and the tension in her face would relax (she’d stop trying so hard). So my daughter would get the experience of playing better–and eventually, the better posture, lighter fingers, and relaxed face would become an integral part of the playing. The body, the playing would correct on its own, based on the persistence of these gentle reminders.
This is what guided looking is like—a few consistent, gentle reminders, or light taps, and one becomes the looking, the seeing. Mind can actually be seen for the habitual tendency, the tyranny, it seems to assume. When mind is put at this subtle distance (purely metaphorical, there is no distance), it seems as if there is room for genuine insight, or clear seeing (IN-sight), regardless of where the insight is spoken, whether seemingly from the facilitator or facilitated.
In this way, self-ing, other-ing, world-ing can actually be seen in action—the process, the mechanism of the mind constructing and maintaining a self, and the world and relations that keep it in place. And it can be seen, like a mirage appeals to the thirsty, the fascination, the lure of this self-ing activity. (Maya, the seductress) Once this attraction is seen, the gig is up; the curtain has been pulled back on the wizard, revealing the mechanics behind the smoke and mirrors. There were no armies, no tactics, no strategy required to expose the wizard–he was simply seen, the mechanics behind his power revealed.
The facilitator is not the expert in this equation. Facilitator obsolescence is built in, as the habit of observing thoughts eventually supercedes the habitual identification with thoughts. Thoughts, stories, tend to disperse as they are noticed. The seeing itself takes over, and the illusion of duality is exposed as the ultimate misapprehension. It “…all comes spontaneously.”
We invite you to look, and simply see—to go beyond the pointer to the knowing itself, to where the pointer is lived, and becomes clear. This seeing becomes the teaching (no dogma, or need to take, preach, or defend any position), and the attraction becomes greater to stay to stay in the seeing, rather than to be pulled in by the movie. It is both Self-nourishing and concurrently self-effacing. It all takes care of Itself; the pointing is in the seeing. It’s so appallingly simple. Have a look and see.
“The only way out is to simply observe. This allows us to take note of our physical reactions, our mental attitudes and patterns and our motivations at the exact moment they appear.” ~ Jean Klein
Share this:
The Whole Revealed, Wherever the Eyes Land
Every single thing is revealing a glimpse of the whole. 
From the sublime to the ridiculous; 
from that which is too tiny to be seen to that which is too colossal to look at directly; 
and from the terrible to the precious.
Look, everywhere, with eyes willing to see the gift of this shining apparition.
The Miracle waits upon the eye that sees.
Share this:
Specialness: The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
When you see through the need to be special, no one and no circumstance can hold you hostage. And lo and behold, everyone else appears to be just fine.
But first, you need to look and see, to find, that need. If you’re in conflict with others, it’s there–no matter how humble or self-effacing the facade. Sometimes, those who have a secret not-special identity, and who Ironically tend to be experts at letting others know they’re not special, seem to have the greatest need to be special. It’s just harder to see, harder to find, but running the game (the separation game) nonetheless. Pain is running the game, often disguised as self-assurance, or even arrogance. Spot it; you got it.
People strive to be special simply because they don’t feel special. Those who can’t abide specialness don’t either. Forgive it all.
Specialness is the ultimate gatekeeper, the burly bouncer at heaven’s door. Oneness precludes special. You can’t have both, and there really isn’t both, only the painful illusion of special and not-special. They are the same misapprehension. It hides well, wears many masks. Look for the need to be special, and/or the adverse reaction to seeing it rear its head in others. Specialness is the perennial itch that gnaws, whether you scratch it or pretend it doesn’t exist. It is the pea that keeps the princess/prince in constant discomfort, obscured as it is by so many mattresses.
The need to be special will knock you on your ass, over and over. Or, if you pay it no mind, it will slowly, silently, take down your house like a drywood termite. The false self, this character we play, will always strive to be special, boldly or in stealth, but it will never succeed because it is false; because it is only a character in a short-run play. Because it is not real, even in its most stellar moments.
Postscript: all posts here are written from personal experience. This ain’t book-learnin, nor is it a YouTube-generated epiphany. What I would learn is this: I am neither special or not special, but I have discovered it is a very heavy suitcase to lug around, and when I stop long enough to open it, it is surprisingly empty.
“Specialness is the seal of treachery upon the gift of love.” ~ A Course in Miracles
Share this:
Be Amazed
You are creating a world.
Not the you that you think you were, are, or will be, but the One and Only You; The Creator and The Created.
There is the you that would call this moment-world boring, lovely, or tragic, just as this you seems to have a given name.
But this You who really is, is not only content, but quite amazed, that this world is being created.
And that Amazement is You.
Nameless and faceless You are the space which gives rise to everything that gets named.
You are the emptiness, the capacity that makes room for the world.
Be, and be overwhelmed with the wonder of it all.
Because You are all of it–the boring, the lovely, and the tragic.
When you name its parts–me, you, awful, wonderful–you separate them out, as if you could.
Only pretending, only always.
And so the drama goes. You who is Shakespeare writes the play.
You are the stage and the audience, the laughter and the tears.
You who is the Father/Mother does not play favorites.
Because You, this house of many mansions, holds it all, embraces everything, everyone, every moment-world.
Behold: Nothing is left out.
Share this:
Love Awakens in Dreamtime
After a lifetime of searching, and innocently bestowing this unmitigated outpouring of awkward love onto endless shiny reflections and faint echos–all chimerical illusions, it can finally be seen that there is no separate object of affection. Thus there is a returning. It is not a narcissistic return, not back to myself, but a death to that self, and in that demise, comes a recollection of one’s true nature. Home; the ground of being where we truly belong, where we reside and abide, where we rest.
Love is not something to find, but to remember. And it is Love Itself that recalls, that rouses Itself awake and shakes off the timeless dream of loss and longing. Behold the sun on the horizon, and be reminded that the night is not long, and there was only ever dreamtime.
Share this:
To Err is Humane
Is there an expression of man,
That isn’t allowed within this realm
Of fool and genius, boor or naïf,
the yin-yang movements, expressions of this fleeting moment?
The full spectrum is the banquet
In which our senses are dazzled,
And where we abide, and sit with kith and kin,
Regardless of propensity or style, drunk on love.
To see thine own error as folly
Is to forgive thy neighbor,
Is to see his divinity as imminent in these eyes,
And thus fences become a quaint contrivance.
Do they not but complement
And make whole, like puzzle pieces,
As every piece must fit, as puzzlers know,
To complete the obscured picture that began as pieces?
Celebrate the dropped ball,
The loose cannon, the missing number
In your equations, and you are free
Of distinctions, and the disability of striving for perfection.
In this freedom, all are set free,
And none are left out when out is in,
When error cannot be found in the lilt of birdsong
Or in humanity’s diverse and magnificent plumage.
The poet is imperfectly perfect, and dies,
In verse and verisimilitude,
But poetry is heard only once,
Never wrong–before it fades, and ceases into silence.
Share this:
Relationship: Seeing Innocence
What is Relationship? If you look at it from the “No two people ever met,” perspective (from Byron Katie), it gets stranger and stranger, but perhaps only better and better.
Whether it is relationship with family members, friends, coworkers or lovers, is there an element of defend and protect, or cherish and keep? Both of these interchangeable stances create the intractable difficulties we experience in all our relationships. Is it true that “Hell is other people?” Or, if you take out the judgment, expectation, fear, and all our assumptions about who all these other people are, what’s left?
Share this:
Much Ado About Nothing–The Bard Nails It
Last night in our tele-dialogue (or pentalogue) on At Peace With Not Knowing, we were discussing Steven Harrison’s Advaita-as-the-last-patch idea in the context of letting go of all conceptual frameworks, including non-duality. An understanding of the concepts, and a facility with the language, can be a stopping point—or a safe place to land–because we think we know something; because any concept is useful as a safe place to land or hide. Safety from what, I cannot be certain, except possibly from the perceived discomfort of not knowing, or worse, failing to understand or to “get it.”
Share this:
At Peace With Not Knowing
The topic being discussed on Wednesday’s Look-See is At Peace With Not Knowing. What does that mean? Not knowing and its relationship to peace is similar to a line from Faith Mind (published here yesterday):
“Do not seek for the truth; only cease to cherish opinions.”
Science, philosophy, psychology, physics—all the ideas of yesterday become outmoded like the fabled myth of a flat earth. The string theory of today cannot hold, if we but empirically witness the historical falling away of one so-called truth after another. Conversely, in psychology, the adherence to behaviorism to the denial or a disinterest in genetics is to hold an opinion. To hold to a gold standard, whether as a metallurgist, an economist, or a moralist, is of course nothing more than opinion.
To espouse nonduality, Advaita, Christianity, Buddhism, or atheism is to have a perspective, an opinion—a way of perceiving and expressing that perception. Even to say, “We are all One,” is an opinion. Everything written in these pages is a way of expressing a perspective. It is not true, nor are these words or any of the above perspectives untrue, as long as they remain in the lightly-held realm of opinion, viewpoint, and perspective. There is nothing wrong with any of them as far as points of view go…until they are taken as hard-cold facts, as reality. Even unquestioned “consensus reality” is an opportunity for amusement rather than argument.
So what does this have to do with peace? The argument, the conflict, the separation of families, friends, tribes, and nations is what arises from cherishing opinions. Seeking and presumably finding truth is taking a stand, and then having to defend the very ground you stand on, even if only to yourself.
Matter is…mind is…enlightenment is…the truth is…the way to truth is… none of these things are known. Yet the attempt and the assertion of certainty in these matters keep us from equanimity, a relaxed uncertainty that allows us to see without “the smallest distinction” that heaven and hell are set apart only because we have made such a distinction. If knowing for certain pits us for or against this or that, we thus have something, sometimes everything, to defend and protect.
What if not knowing is the source of The Buddha’s smile? We don’t know. I don’t know. Letting go of the need to know feels like the deepest peace, releases the deepest and longest-held sense of contraction. The fist opens to reveal welcoming palm.
If you wish to join Beth Bellamy and I in this discussion on Wednesday, contact me here. We will not figure anything out; we will not become certain of anything, but we might very well smile, and be at peace by and by.
The Deepest Peace 