just be it It’s about the work involved in establishing a dedicated practice to feelings of a bigger belonging through practices aimed at increasing feelings of compassion, gratitude and forgiveness

Subjectify Everything

Published on 23/10/11
by randy

The source of our restlessness can be found in our difficulty facing uncertainty.  We are drawn to create an object of desire.  This attachment creates anxiety about the inevitable felt loss we face as the Law of Impermanence works on us.  Yet, when All is subject, we are humbled in the experience of the Divine and its mystery/simplicity.  This is the purpose of meditation, to silence the thinking mind as we cultivate the feeling of the Divine.  It’s deepening our faith in the undivided Mind, what Ken Wilbur called “the One without a second”.

Wilbur has written, “For the sages of every time and place have unanimously maintained that the Absolute is actually ineffable, unspeakable, utterly beyond words, symbols and logic.  And not because it is too mysterious or too sublime or too complex for words, but rather because it is too simple, too obvious, too close to be caught in the net of symbols and signs.  Because there is nothing outside It, there is no way to define or classify it.” p. 226 The Simple Feeling of Being. He goes on to make the distinction that this is not pantheism stating the Absolute is in everything.  It goes further to the Buddhist commentary on, “Form is emptiness and emptiness is form”.  Wilbur writes, “…the entire Absolute is completely and wholly present at every point of space and time, for the simple reason that you can’t have a different infinite at each point”  p. 228 The Simple Feeling of Being. I once heard a nun describe it like a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.  This realization breaks our logical notions of time and space.  Our journey is to wake from the trance of the subject/object illusion.  Our meditation helps cultivate this awareness of the Absolute.  In the stillness, outside the illusion of Two, we deepen the ‘feeling’ of what Thich Nhat Hanh has called “inter-Being”.  We discover that we can “always touch the Ultimate”; it’s always here in this arising moment.

As we step from our tendency to objectify we discover a tenderness that causes less harm.  We become more mindful of the impact of our thoughts, words, emotions and actions.  As we soften our reasoning mind and our attachments to ‘being right’, we deepen in our compassion and understanding for one another.  Cultivating the ‘feeling’ of the ‘not two’, we can step into the shoes of those we’re in contact with, even our perceived enemies.  While we aim to reduce the suffering in the world, we can hopefully minimize the harm caused through our illusion of subject vs. object.  As we subjectify everything, we are confidently humbled in faith to the omnipresence of the Divine.  The illusion of security through the material and pleasure through consumption diminishes.  Abiding in the present moment with deep sense of ‘being home’ strengthens.  At this point we touch the creative, expressing what we feel in wonder to the mystery of not knowing who we are.  At this point of awareness there is no division, all is Subject.  At this point we touch possibility.

The Circle Has No Sides

That's it. What Next?

Please leave your comment so we know what you think about this article. Trackback URL: Subjectify Everything.