I AM
I AM the light that wakes up the morning
sky
And the dark that closes it down at night
I AM the kite that flies on a windy day
And also the wind that causes the play
I AM the boy that’s running with all his might,
Holding the cord that’s guiding the flight
I AM all that lives and moves and breathes
People animals oceans trees
I AM every human that’s ever been known
And beyond the body, flesh and bone
I AM every thought that shocks or surprises
And every emotion that arises
I AM love and anger, joy and fear,
Passion and peace, or a fallen tear.
I AM beyond description or spoken word
And beyond seeing and cannot be heard
I AM totally invisible yet everything seen
Neither past or future but have always BEEN
by Mandi Solk
Non-Duality is the seeing through the
dream of apparent separateness.There are no separate individuals or objects.
The belief that we are all separate from each other is the cause of all
suffering.
As Tony Parsons puts it: ''All there is, is nothing being Everything.''
Therefore there are no such thing as ‘enlightened teachers/gurus’
because ‘liberation’ doesn’t ‘happen’ to
a person. Liberation is already the case. How can anyone teach you to
‘BE?’
As I started to write this, the page stayed blank for ages because the very idea of having had a past, a ‘history’, no longer ‘computes’ . It is meaningless, because the idea of a past is a totally mind-made construct. However, for any interest it may serve, the following, is the story of this character, ‘Mandi’s’, ‘past’ that the mind has constructed, but please understand that what appeared to happen to 'me', is not a formula that can be used, and also that every word that talks about a 'past' or 'when 'I' was younger, IS JUST A PRESENT THOUGHT RIGHT NOW. THERE IS NO TIME AND THEREFORE NO PAST, NO FUTURE AND NO ME - THEREFORE : NO 'JOURNEY'. It's all a meaningless story, but just for fun, here it is anyway!
"From a very 'young ag'e there was a pre-occupation with the question: ‘Has this world been specially made just for me? Am I dreaming ‘it’ or is ‘it’ dreaming me?’
This was followed 'years later' by much searching and the usual round of various schools of meditation: TM; Dhama; Rama; Karma; Larma etc. then I persevered by studying Zen and Buddhism and then ‘Zen Buddhism’; Japanese Buddhism, other forms of Buddhism, including, for a while, studying to be a Buddhist teacher, then on to Taoist teachings.
'Next', I came to Christian Science which
was very interesting, as it seemed to touch on the non-dualistic perspective.
God wasn’t seen as some great being in the sky, instead, Mrs. Baker-Eddy,
founder of Christian Science, had written 7 synonyms to describe God.
These were: Love; Life; Truth; Mind; Principle; Soul; Spirit.
I also liked the Christian Science ‘Statement of Being’, which
states:
‘There is no Life, Truth, intelligence nor substance in matter.
All is infinite Mind and it’s infinite manifestation for God is
All in All. Spirit is immortal Truth: matter is mortal error. Spirit is
the real and eternal, matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God
and man is his image and likeness. Therefore man is not material he is
Spiritual”
Through Christian Science, I diligently studied for '20 years' to see
that there weren’t any separate individuals only the dream of separateness
caused by our ‘mortal mind’. However, although I gained absolute
clarity and intellectual understanding through all this study, it was
this very clarity that got in the way of my ever seeing ‘This’.
The seeing was obscured because it is takes an expanded ‘seeing’
well beyond the confines of the mind, to see that there is no one here
that can understand anything in the first place. This is a place where
the mind can’t go and has to simply give up.
Also, like all religions, Christian Science
demanded a great deal of strongly committed study; beliefs in certain
ideals, (which I didn’t agree with,) also, the giving up of pleasurable
substances (like tobacco and alcohol) etc. Although I didn’t drink
or (eventually!) smoke, I didn’t like organizations and religions
that enforced opinionated rules. What’s more, it seemed to me that
a lot of Christian Scientists continually felt guilty if they weren’t
‘getting it’ clearly enough! (However, I have enormous respect
for Christian Science as they are 'spot on' about many things concerning
Non-Duality.)
So , I decided to leave the Christian Science religion, and continue my
search for enlightenment, (still believing there was an ‘I’
who could get enlightened!)
'Then' I joined the ‘Be in the Now road-show’ and found that
I could ‘be in the NOW’ for at least 3 mins at a time if I
really put my ‘mind’ to it!
Finally, I came to read some 'Non-Duality' books. I read them hungrily, one after another in a week and when I got half way through one of them’, I woke up one morning – except there was no ‘I experienced’ and no-one was there. There was just a ‘Being-ness’ that was seen from everywhere simultaneously and not coming from the body on the bed, but the body on the bed was part of ‘it’ too. There was no location for a ‘me’ to exist – this was being no-thing and everything at the same time. This continued throughout the morning and actually I found it quite frightening – like I was going mad. As I bumped into people whom I knew when I walked round my town, they were all expecting me to be ‘in’ – ‘at home’ or at least located somewhere behind my eyes, but I just found it impossible to act like a person located in a body. But this may've 'ocurred' or not anyway, without reading the books, as it has in many other cases.
All this rather reminded me of a time, many years ago when I had a near-fatal motor-bike accident. Apparently, I had been thrown from my motor –bike by a car pulling out across my path, and my body plummeted right through the back to the front windscreen of the car. Both the bike and the car were ‘write-offs’ and I ended up seemingly dead on my back on the road, with a shocked crowd gathered around me gawping in horror.
Yet, my experience was very different
indeed.
I experienced a floating upwards, and a growing realization that the objects
around me (including people) were not solid at all and that absolutely
NOTHING I’d ever worried or felt guilty about all my life, MATTERED!
Whether it was ,people, bills, lovers, jobs, houses, war, cruelty, love
and hate, poverty or riches, none of it mattered, etc. Then I just kept
laughing – it was such an enormous relief and so incredibly FUNNY!
It was wonderful, but soon enough, ‘thump’ and I opened my
eyes and was on the ground looking up at the shocked people, and I just
couldn’t stop smiling. I had no pain and I’d suffered no damage
of any kind- not even a bruise or delayed shock. No one could believe
it. In a way, there had been a death that day, but only of the apparent
SELF – not of the body.
But this realisation or ‘seeing’ soon faded, just like the ‘waking up in the morning’ experience, described previously, and then there was a hankering after it for a while, followed by many more glimpses, such as turning over in bed and finding I was transparent – there was no substance to ‘me’. Or playing my piano and seeing that it was being played by no-one – there wasn’t an ‘I’ playing it, etc.
However, after these initial ‘glimpses ’, there was a gradual falling away of any interest in seeking after enlightenment and a seeing that all there is, IS awakeness – everywhere! And after, the seeking fell away, there was a continuing expansion of ‘aliveness’ taking place, until I saw that the perception of a ‘me’ at my centre, just wasn’t there any more, and I hadn’t even noticed. There was no further interest in reading non-duality books– just a simple enjoyment of whatever is going on at the time, whether it’s washing my hair, driving my car, watching TV, walking the dog, whatever! Just an easiness with whatever’s happening at the time and a real relief at seeing that there is no ‘I’ to make choices. Things simply arising and then disappearing again, like soap bubbles – just like an apparent ‘me’ writing this : it arose that this would get written, yet without any sense of a person choosing to do it, yet it effortlessly occurred anyway.
Although it appears that there was some
sort of journey to a final destination here, this was not the case at
all. It was simply that for me, when I read some books on 'Non-Duality'
there felt a resonance, a relief , a sense of
‘coming home’. But all of this is only illustrating ‘my’
perspective, because there is no past and there is no future, this is
just a construct of the mind,therefore there can be no method
and no journey. All of that really
is an illusion, a dream. There are plenty of people who have never walked
a ‘Spiritual Path’ yet who have simply ‘woken’
up’ or had glimpses.
I still love to see and hear good communicators of 'Non-Duality' talk, therefore, I decided to invite speakers to come up to Yorkshire to come and give Talks for people in the North, and so ‘Non-Duality-North’ was born.
So please visit:
If you have any questions that you would like to discuss with me about Non-Duality, please email me on:
and I will be very happy to answer – if I can! I am also happy to visit groups anywhere, if you arrange it. In this case, please ring me on: 01422 844801 Thank you.Please visit my freinds:
