Category Archives: Being

Within You Without You

Posted by colettekelso in awareness, Being, Expression, Non-duality, perception and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“We were talking—about the space between us all
And the people—who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion
Never glimpse the truth—then it’s far too late—when they pass away.” George Harrison

“As within, so without, as above, so below, as the universe, so the soul” Hermes Trismegistus

It’s all mind, all the time, creating perception; engendering feeling and action. When I close my eyes, there is seeing–right here. When I dream, there is seeing–right here. Ask the question, “Is there anything outside?” How it gets projected “out there,” I don’t know.

I remember having the amazing realization that love cannot be found because there is no separate place from which to look; nowhere it is not. No within/without; no above/below; no subject/object.

What am I looking at?

And maybe I’m just totally FoS. 🙂 My apologies for the lofty language. It’s just apparently so. Or not.

Prism or Prison

Posted by colettekelso in awareness, Being, Expression, love, now, presence, Uncategorized and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Where does your attention go? Out there to see the occasional happy rainbow of experience, surrounded by the possibility of grey and darkness?

Turn around and let the Source, or presence, turn the lens into a prism, coloring everything in experience. To let the light in, you have to pay attention to it. Light glows brightly when you attend to it.

A diagram is helpful, but it’s not enough. Like an inhabitant of Plato’s Cave, turn towards the light rather than reacting to shadows on the wall. Is your perception true? Is it a world imprisoned by and through a glass darkly; a world of shadows? Or is it shot through a prism, a colorful refraction of the light within; darkness dispelled? You cannot serve two masters. Pay attention to the light, the Source of illumination. Check it out, over and over, like a lover.

The Lens

Posted by colettekelso in Being, Expression, Non-duality, Suffering and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pay attention to the lens (yellow line) through which you perceive/limit life. It makes the difference between what you think is happening and who you think you are. You are the white blank zone creating a world of colors and feelings. The light is within. Suffering is inevitable on the experience side. Decide accordingly.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference“. The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost

Miracles

Posted by colettekelso in Being, love, Non-duality, Suffering and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Lately, there’s been a kind of crisis going on here. Doesn’t matter what it is, but suffice it to say when something seems seriously wrong there is an extreme narrowing of vision. A miracle is a shift in perception, an opening of that constricted capacity to see. As defined by A Course in Miracles:

“A miracle inverts perception which was upside down before, and thus it ends strange distortions that were manifest. Now is perception open to truth.” ~ A Course in Miracles

And in the midst of that crisis, at least 3 miracles happened, and they had nothing to do with the crisis itself, but with a whole new way of seeing and being. One of those miracles was from the most worldly source–the Grammy Awards show. Seeing Luke Combs and Tracy Chapman perform “Fast Car” destroyed so many boundaries, and crossed so many divides, that I know I was not the only one who got choked up watching the two of them sing that song. “Fast Car” drove straight across often seriously polarized lanes of gender, race, age, sexual orientation, and generations–and since it was the Grammys, one has to mention–and otherwise fractionalized genres.

“We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

That was a miracle that cut through so many strange distortions.

Another miracle was a dinner invitation I received from a neighbor. I didn’t really want to go–crisis, you know, gotta stay tense and focused. My neighbor is a Catholic missionary, a consecrated woman, as she refers to her station in life, who works with the homeless in Denver. For her sake and mine, I won’t go into details, but this one, this miracle of sight, blasted away any pretense of division between secular and sacred, and of anything I thought I knew to be true. I have said and understood that no opinion is true, but in the peeling away of those presumptions, those blindspots, removing the log in my own eye–the thing that is true is just there beyond words, beyond what anyone thinks or says. It is always here, only obscured by that which I believe and think I see. Literally, “I was blind but now I see.”

No, Christ did not become my savior. Jesus, Buddha, and Krishna dissolve and become indistinguishable in this light. The crisis is still not resolved in the form it appeared in or as. But that which is far greater, or greatest, can be glimpsed regardless of circumstance. And in the midst of crisis (etymology the same as cross, crucifixion, crux, etc.)

I’m wishing everyone the gift of miracles today, the gift of sight. You are that. All of this is that. Miraculous.

Begin again

Posted by colettekelso in Being, Uncategorized and tagged with , , , , , ,
AI-generated image by author

After some time away, it seems auspicious to return again to participate in the universal dialogue upon which the title of this blog is based. One thing I know for sure after all these years is that this peace we’re talking about has nothing to do with any conceptual framework, spiritual or otherwise. In fact, the frame is most often a serious distraction from what it is meant to display.

In my experience, the teachings in many ways are the obscuration of what we are seeking, a cul-de-sac of sorts. Conversely, the errors in the teaching–as in what is seen when Toto pulls the curtain aside to reveal the smoke and mirrors of the powerful illusion–become the pointer to what is true.

In a kind of coincidence that in many ways defines what I’m talking about and what is always available, I was driving around thinking about what I was writing here, and a song came on, “Old Shoes” by Sean Rowe. I had not turned the music on, or iTunes, nor had I connected it to my car for some time, the song just started up about 5 minutes into the drive, seemingly out of nowhere. The line “I intend to find you on my own,” is key to where I’ve been, and to understanding the last 3 lines:

In this moment we’re alive
In this moment we can die free
How can I make you, make you understand?

by Sean Rowe, sung by Sean Rowe and Markéta Irglová

Please visit the Sessions page if you want to continue the discussion. Thank you to all who have shown up over the years.

Why Not?

Posted by colettekelso in awareness, Being, Expression, Non-duality, now and tagged with , , , , , ,
Imagination, Displate by Dorian Legret

Why can it not it all be viewed, perceived, as the One Creative capacity interacting with Itself, appearing as others and/or things? Why not start there…now?

If Source, God, the Tao is the singular creative capacity behind all that appears, is it not simple to see expressions of such in a different light? As inseparable from, and reflections of, that infinite creative capacity.

“You,” as a lens are the backpacker in the illustration, creating/observing the infinite possiblities. And what is creating/observing you?

Your objection to this perspective would be…what?

When a Stranger Calls

Posted by colettekelso in awareness, Being, Non-duality, Suffering and tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

v1

Having witnessed and experienced the brain fog that generally settles back in, both after nondual realization, and seemingly mind-blowing psychedelic trips, yours and mine, the question arises:

What is the nature of the elasticity of mind, the snap-back from the clarity and expansiveness of inseparability, to the inevitable sense of danger and imprisonment of the separate self?

It seems it’s not enough to see, for a shining, clear moment, to know the truth of the inseparability of existence, and the obvious lie of separation and the separate self story. Clarity becomes clouded and troubled, as if the fog of the everyday is real, and the clarity is the illusion. Why and/or how is that?

Mesmerization. The definition of mesmerize is to hypnotize. Hypno=sleep; tize=state. Or to enthrall–to hold in mental bondage. So, mental bondage, or asleep instead of awake. In the case of psychedelics, when the Default Mode Network (DMN) is inhibited, the result is often metanoia, or the “spiritual experience,” the dissolution of limits and boundaries. Having experienced this expansion, why contract back to the default mode of little me, little mind?

The easiest answer is to say, “It is what it is, man,” rather than to make personal, or conceptual, the quirk of mental tyranny. This was the thought that was behind the giving-up-on pointing to the silence behind the mind, rather than fighting the trend. This snap-back tendency seemed just the way of the mind and identity. Wouldn’t the human form that is clucking and pecking like a chicken have some awareness of the confusion of identity? Maybe the hypnotized subject doesn’t have the capacity to snap out of the trance?

The hypnotist creates the illusion of chickenhood in the same way that the mind, the voice to which we listen and unquestionably attend for further instructions, creates the illusion of a separate self trapped in a body, apart from other bodies and minds. Can the false voice be detected before the confusion of identity takes hold again?

The hypnotist/mental narrative simply begins to speak, and we drift off to sleep in a false identity/story. There is an ongoing, repetitive, sonorous, mesmerizing voice in our heads muttering all the time, telling us we are something we are not. If it were truly “my” or “your” voice and thoughts, wouldn’t we choose more liberating and sane thoughts, and less self-deprecating, limiting thoughts?

Why go on listening, believing, conforming to this false narrative, when a cursory investigation, even opening one eye to peek at the source of that voice reveals an unreliable narrator that has taken up residence in our heads, and wants to f**k with us where and as we live.

“We’ve traced the call…it’s coming from inside the house!” is the chilling line from the horror movie, When a Stranger Calls. This is the movie being lived…except that it is a masterwork of fiction. Be entertained, rather than enthralled. You can put down the phone and check to see what’s going on. The impugning voice can no longer hold you hostage–with a little bit of looking around, in the light of day.

To A Friend

Posted by colettekelso in awareness, Being, Expression, love, Non-duality, now, presence, Uncategorized and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Grasshopper-Brown-Insects-Day-Free-Image-Sitting-W-2582

Shhh…now, Grasshopper. Be still for a moment.

If you let go of that question, that complaint, that frustration, that need, that anger, that belief/assumption—-its all mental, right? Let it all go by. And make no demands upon the bodily reactions to those mental instigations, just acknowledge how the body is playing its part in the scene building. If there is this pause, this intervention, two things can/will happen. Continue reading →

Undddduck Yourself

Posted by colettekelso in awareness, Being, Non-duality, Suffering, Uncategorized and tagged with , , , , , , , ,

unducklogo1

G-rated version

This post begins and ends in silence. What emerges in between is a little noise about a problem and seeking a solution for this problem.

Or, seeking a way out of the repetition of apparent problems and solutions, that is called a life. Silence all around. Continue reading →

The Triune Self – A Beautiful Read

Posted by colettekelso in Being, Expression, Non-duality, Suffering and tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Doesn’t matter if you’re done, faking it, or you’ve given up–this book,  The Triune Self, Confessions of a Ruthless Seer, by Mike Singer, is worth a read. Worth reinvesting any time you’d be spending doing anything else. It is a joy and a thump-to-the-chest kind of read.

Perhaps you might, out of habit, respond–“There’s nobody out there,” or “I already get that,” or some such equivocation like, “Another spiritual book? Really?” Yes, really. Something about these words truly pierces to the heart of the matter, and I mean that almost literally. There’s something about Mike…

Such a totally and unflinchingly honest and earnest reflection. It might bring joy, or it might scare the ever-livin’ spiritual pants off of you. Perhaps a more suitable subtitle would be, “The Reluctant Sage,” though my guess is Mr. Snider might quibble with the “sage” handle.

Here are a few quotes, though I hesitate to parse it out ineptly, when the whole speaks for itself:

On life:

“I find the whole of it is benevolent imagination any way you cut it, no matter how crooked it appears.”

On effort, non-effort, pointing:

“It means nothing to those who have their most essential nature pointed out to them if they haven’t struggled for its recognition.”

On self:

“He seems to be more interested in his objectified universe than he is in the mysterious wonder that registers it.”

On the spiritual marketplace:

“All the theatrical drama that enshrouds this obvious and simple Truth we all are, pissed me off when I finally came to See.”

 The Kindle version is available here.  I cannot remember the last time I bought a book, or even how I landed on this listing, but for whatever reason, I downloaded the sample and when it ended, I just wanted to keep reading. And though I don’t seem to have much spare change these days, if there was an audio version, I’d probably buy that as well, just to hear Mr. Snyder sing it. It’s what we’re here for.