The World is My Mirror Read Online Free PDF Page A

always a search ‘out there’, in the world, at the feet of a guru or in the words of a sacred text .
     
    There is a belief that effort brings results for the person, for the individual, for me. So looking seems reasonable and logical. We use methods that we think are tried and tested to reach our goal. What is not seen is that what we are looking for is what is looking. The belief that we are imperfect beings who need purification is so strong that we will not hear any message which says we are already all there is. It seems too simple. There has to be more to it than that. It looks much more satisfying, more fruitful, to meditate and chant, to live a pure life and follow the paths trodden by others who will show us the way. Just recognising timeless ever-present is-ness and vibrant energy sounds far too easy.
     
    But life has always been showing us what there is by appearing as a world. It is impossible to see ourselves when there is personal identification and certainty in the way. The thought that we know what we are and what the world is has the power to box us into a corner; it gives us knowledge as a weapon to comfort ourselves and beat the living daylights out of those who will not readily except our version of reality. The quest to get others to see the world the way we do would be a suitable definition for ‘power’ here, above and beyond the idea of forcing another’s body to act in one way rather than another.
     
    When certainty gives way to not knowing, something feels different. It is not easy to put into words, but there is no longer a sense of an independently existing outside world, or even a feeling of just being awareness. The recognition that the appearance of anything is none other than emptiness appearing as form, or nothing being everything, is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
     
    There is no need to chase a particular experience, even if you are trying to regain the blissful time in that last retreat where you dissolved into the cushion and felt all light and airy. No, there is no need.
     
    This is in walking, talking, eating and singing. In fact, whatever shows up, there you are. You are the space that holds, the space that shapes and the space that remains when all the furniture’s gone to the second-hand shop.
     
    There is nothing to destroy and nothing to save. The dream carries on with its trials and tribulations. Get involved if you like and play your game. Anxiety may come and anxiety may go. Of course anxiety is not your anxiety; it never was. In the same way the person you once identified with as solid and real is seen as just life ‘personing’, life pretending to be something rather than everything. There is nothing wrong with games; they can be very exciting, something to get the blood rushing and the heart pumping. But there is no need to play all the time. Have a day off now and again and be yourself.
     
    Deep sleep’s a great thing: knowing, knowing itself knowingly without object or event. Not a bad way to be. It’s even better when you know you are this Now anyway and always have been. Deep sleep does not come and go. It is just got the habit of shaping itself into dreams and other things. It is clever really, changing and staying the same simultaneously. Not one for the logicians among us, granted. But there is such a real obviousness to this that defies all attempts to grasp it and understand it. The thing is you have tried to understand all your life and all it’s got you is reading this book, and probably others, hoping for a way out. There is no way out of an imaginary prison or an imaginary maze, though. If this was graspable it would fall through your fingers like soft, dry sand. Grasping is letting go.
     
     
     

Life Anew
     
    There may come a time when all the reading, internet frenzy and meetings in clarity cease to grab your attention. Their draw seems to be waning. The interest has gone and you do not know why. It seems to disappear in the same