On through…
Intro:
Originally a shorter version for someone who has no ideas at all about non-duality, not familiar with the term, yet her inner instincts, deeper calling, or may I say soul, is clearly reorienting her sense of self, over and over, towards what non-duality is all about. Not intellectually, but instead honestly, genuinely, heart-fully.
I also see from some of the ways she is carrying forward that other similar callings continue to reach her where it matters. Again not as conceptual/intellectual frameworks, but as a direct, alive and felt experience in her heart of hearts.
One of the advantages perhaps of not being too overly conditioned by what are increasingly becoming more and more conservatively influenced and institutionalized mainstream educational systems and media outlets.
It is so curious how a lot of self-identified spiritual and non-dual people do not really understand the distinctions pointed to below. They still attempt to capture the possibilities of spiritual clarity, non-dual awareness and freedom with intellect, puzzle-solving addictions, repetition, obedience to “authoritative” dictates, and even memorization, as if this spiritual non-journey is a two dimensional activity similar to a jigsaw or crossword puzzle, a spelling bee, a mathematical problem, a science or engineering conundrum, a martial art, a trip to another “place,” or even maybe some of the more popular board and video games.
All and similar attempts to understand what are primarily metaphysical ways and terrains, which are totally imperceivable, unimaginable and unattainable via such efforts, have been shaped and determined for the most part by collective and constant social and economic pressures, conditioning starting from before birth, materialist educational systems, and corporate owned media.
The following essay is of course also intended to be grasped by the mind, but its true invitation is for the actual “believer” in, or may we say the awareness behind and prior to “mind,” to actually become willing to “fall” through all these words.
As if what’s here next is a sort of meaningful, multi-featured, articulated and thoroughly metaphorical “cloud” that is not separate from the believer, a cloud they are being called to “understand” by NOT grasping, and instead by letting in some possibilities of a reflection of the very same awareness they also are, all the while as they allow themselves to keep falling on through. With no-knowing what might be discovered.
On through…
——
Beloved One,
Actually we are never in control. We do have an ability to influence things though, by the way we orient ourselves, respond to our circumstances, engage other people, perceive other critters, and relate to what I’ll call the larger world around us both human and natural.
What some indigenous North American peoples call “All Our Relations.” AND THEN, most importantly, also noticing what it is that we are actually believing about whatever appears to be happening.
The way sailboats and old sailing ships both connected with and at the same time adjusted their sails to the winds. Before mankind began to invent means to separate our human endeavors and activities even from our planet’s most fundamental winds, or we could say the breath of Earth. The collective and extremely extended results of which we are now presently seeing all around us, in spades. But that is a different conversation.
Here the wind, or planet breath, and our relationship to or orientation with it, is a metaphor for a core part of what is being pointed towards throughout the rest of this essay.
In essence, we call to ourselves what we believe. Individually AND collectively. This with the understanding that most of our beliefs, and most especially by the time we become adults, have become unconscious conditioning. In other words held onto conditions, habits and/or contracted, distorted, disoriented and disturbed energies in our bodies, most often experienced as emotions, feelings, sensations. And even physiological circumstances for a lot of us. Some of that energy moves around even moment to moment, and some of it, in myriad contracted ways, hovers deep, waiting to be stirred up by each of our lives’ always shifting and changing circumstances.
When a particular circumstance triggers one of those contracted emotions, sensations, or energies, our experience will also conjure up old, relative (related), and so very often unconscious/half-conscious ideas and mental constructs, now dressing themselves as current circumstances and appearances, along with perhaps some more recent memories, to explain, defend, and/or isolate (distance) ourselves from this current experience, or what seems to be happening. In other words to give us some reasons and internal imagery for what we are now believing as a result of our very own thoughts and feelings, about our experience. With all these inner as well as outer projections often supported and reinforced by a great deal of fear and angst.
Yet NONE of what we are conjuring up, in any circumstances, is really about the current moment. No matter how similar or “familiar” some of it may seem. NOR is any of it true, as in real. All of this conjuring is sourced from what is merely a storied “past” that we are continuing to hold “in place” through unconscious/half-conscious mental constructs and felt beliefs, mostly in the form of memories, energies, contractions and disturbances within our minds and bodies, or body-minds.
These “beliefs” that we hold in our body-minds are the only things that can or will, ever, whether it be for a moment, awhile, or a lifetime, seem as if they are “chaining” or “imprisoning” our souls. ‘Soul’ being a term of convenience here, so don’t hang up on it.
Becoming free of the past begins with understanding that there is a distinction between what we are typically conjuring up, daily, hourly, moment to moment even, and what our present circumstances actually are. Which means also beginning to recognize when and as we are conjuring, and then wanting to learn how to really question what it is we are right now believing that is making all this conjuring possible.
If I am standing on the edge of a highway, wanting to cross, and my mind-body conditioning conjures up some frightening feelings and associated beliefs, because there are occasional cars whizzing by, perhaps because I once got hit by a car on a highway (I did actually when I was a kid), I may never cross. OR if my body conditioning conjures up a feeling of an empty highway and some associated beliefs when there ARE cars whizzing by, I may get clobbered. All of that conjuring is old conditioning, which we are believing simply because our feelings, etc., through long practice, have us convinced THEY, these feelings, and all the old half buried memories and ideas they are associated with and/or trigger, are what is real.
But what is actually real is the highway as it presently is. When we are no longer caught in our conditioning about highways we SEE the highway, and simply cross when it is empty.
It is all these feelings, conditioning and beliefs that are ours to challenge and question, if we really want to be free. We may even decide that some of our beliefs are helpful, and choose, because we are now conscious of them, to keep consciously supporting, aka nourishing, them.
But we probably will discover (if we carry forward in some of the ways pointed to here) that most beliefs arising from our early lives are no longer helpful, and even that many of them are actually causing us a lot of serious problems as we go about our present lives. At some point when we were younger some of them could even have been helpful. And so we can appreciate them for that, all the while as we also begin to learn how to let them go.
Do understand, “letting go” is just and only this very act of seeing. More and more “purely” one might say. Or in other words, more and more without anything else involved. This willingness to just see, clearly, without any judgements or preconceptions in the way. First awareness of ourself, that we ARE this awareness aware of itself, and then this seeing of all the belief that keeps arising right here in the midst of what we are. Simple awareness, also holding within herself this central, obvious life-affirming question, is it helpful? Without any otherwise active involvements or judgements. This will, by itself, eventually and naturally burn all hubris and beliefs in separation away. Sort of in the very same way sunlight just naturally burns away the fog.
In this case it is the light of awareness that burns away illusion. Naturally, no effort involved, with our every effort merely delaying the inevitable.
Along the way we will begin to discover that old conditioning, aka all these beliefs that have now gone deep into our bodies as energies, feelings, emotions, sensations and contractions, are no longer even the littlest bit helpful, once they are brought (recognized) into consciousness and we begin to really hold them within that one simple question.
Not fight them, not judge them, not hate them. Simply become aware of them, and the question, now become wordless even, deeper and deeper, always deeper, until beliefs are either seen as helpful, or they simply, slowly and naturally begin to dissolve away, on their own.
If this is kept up, at some point, though not as soon as we might wish, old conditioning comes up less and less. And then eventually rarely. And we begin to realize that we are actually becoming free.
After that even when old conditioning does come up we are just naturally, in these new ways we have become comfortable with, quick to recognize and question, one whole movement, rather than merely and reactively thinking, feeling, speaking or acting. It is quick now partly because we have become familiar with and accepting of ourselves, in all our unique and maybe even still strange ways.
Does this belief help, or not, we act consciously, or not, and it’s over and gone. One whole interconnected movement within what is always and forever this same ever shifting changing evolving timeless moment, or infinite extension of eternity, source, self.
There is a whole other level of conditioning of course that keeps our heart beating, causes us to jump out of the way when a vehicle is speeding towards us, or when we pull quickly away from a hot object, and that also oversees and integrates all of our various bodily systems. This is of course the innate and natural conditioning we are all born into form through as well as with, and that we do not for the most part ever need or want to question. Nor could we even, for most of it.
Though some of that conditioning can also be engaged by our intentions, if we wish. Like breathing for example. Some people can begin a kind of practice with their breath, and may even discover, if they are persistent enough, that there are some deeper physiological and energetic levels of conditioning that we can also engage. Some highly practiced Yogis and similar in the East are able to intentionally slow their hearts and metabolisms way down, for instance.
And yet none of that is necessary for what we are truly here in form for. And those sorts of body practices can also tend to lead many into a deeper trap of the body, actually. Just like overly practiced and educated “non-dual” minds can also tend to lead a lot of people into what is an ever deeper trap of the mind.
🙏🌻
~ John Fridinger
Talent, OR
Spring, 2023
First published on Substack, 9 June 2023: The End of Belief. New writing comes first to johnfridinger.net, where you can subscribe.
