The World is My Mirror (6 page)

I found some interest and respite while reading about psychology. It was mainly self-help books, but a few others, too, that were more honest about the crazy world we live in. I studied with the Open University at age 30 concentrating on psychology, and after 4 years of hard work I finished with an Upper Second. I was working full time and had just started a family, so it was a good result. Summer schools and class activities were hellish; feelings and memories of being useless returned as soon as I smelt the interior of a place of learning. Once again, I didn’t want to say that I didn’t understand and this left me to struggle on my own behind closed doors. I received some very good marks and comments, but I never believed them fully. I thought the tutor just felt sorry for me or, God forbid, she liked me. 85
^%
or 95
^%
wasn’t perfect and the room for improvement section seemed to be written in red with a rainbow of highlighter pens bordering it, making sure I could notice these comments above anything else.

When the course finished I wanted to be a clinical psychologist and help people with issues and problems. I thought I could pass on my new-found knowledge and help them. A few voluntary posts and a bit more study and it fizzled out, leaving me feeling a loser once again. I got really down and depressed and sought therapy for myself. It was scary listening to my own voice in the presence of a stranger discussing some things I wouldn’t even admit to myself, but it felt good for a while and life was better.

Trying to fix a ghost does not last long though; they have a habit of evading capture. I decided to get fit and see if exercise could lift me. I read that a good workout would release happy chemicals in my brain and make me feel good, so I enrolled at a gym. Even though I felt self-conscious among all the fit, good-looking people, I managed to make a few friends and chat fairly freely.

I had a personal trainer for a while and started to enjoy life at the gym. It turned out this guy had got a few issues himself regarding drink, and last minute cancellations became more and more frequent. One day, after arriving to find my trainer absent without leave again, another trainer, Lynn, offered to train me instead. I accepted, and this is where, believe it or not, my spiritual search began.

We got on well and she seemed interested in some of my ideas about psychology and people. There was something about her: I could not put it into words at the time and cannot now. Out of the blue she dropped a book in my lap. One look at the cover and I saw the words ‘spiritual’ and ‘enlightenment’. I wasn’t particularly impressed as it wasn’t a subject I would normally choose. I didn’t want to seem rude so I took it and sat down that very lunchtime, opened it and looked inside. Whilst turning the pages and chomping on my sandwich, something clicked. Here was someone talking about time and presence and suffering. There were words on the page I hadn’t come across before. I turned the pages at great pace, eager to hear more. Something was going on. I had read some pretty interesting stuff whilst studying and in the books I normally bought, but this was different. This was activating an unexplored area. A light went on.

I Googled the author and read a bit more. As with all Google searches, it brought up loads of other relevant stuff. I found myself entering the world of the spiritual seeker. I clicked on and found Tony Parsons, Mooji, Adyashanti, Nisargadatta, Ramana Maharshi, ancient Chinese sages and texts from the past. I found interpretations of Jesus’ words pointing to Wholeness rather than a guy with a white beard sat on a throne in a cloudy place. I was hooked. I had been stirred up like one of those Christmas snow storms in a paperweight. This was 2008. I was aged 40.

I was trying hard to really get it but any clarity didn’t seem to stick. I thought I got it, but I also felt I was fooling myself as well. I can honestly say, there were times I wished I had never started this crazy stuff. Some days were worse than before: holding my head in my hands staring at my computer screen was not a pleasant posture. But this had a life of its own. I could not stop if I wanted to.

One day, on a chilly November afternoon, I was waiting for my wife outside a supermarket. I didn’t want to go in. I was in one of those moods when people seem threatening. As I stood in the doorway alcove, I found myself staring and scanning people coming out of the shop with their bags full of food and stuff. It felt like the scanning had a life of its own. Time stood still and it was like I knew what I was seeing, but at the same time I didn’t. This felt weird. I looked away in a strange state. Then, coming towards me and indicating to pull in, was the biggest, reddest, loudest bus I would ever see in my life. It felt like it was parking itself in my chest area and activating every sense I had got at full volume. Then it ended and I was in shock. My wife appeared and I said nothing.

I tried to recreate this event over the next few years. It had felt good.
Is that what non-separation is like?
I thought. This I could enjoy. I didn’t go to meetings of non-dual or spiritual teachers, I just continued exploring this on the internet and watching YouTube videos. I emailed a few guys whom I thought I resonated with. I did try and speak to people close to me, but they didn’t really get it and I simply shut up and kept quiet.

One Saturday, I got up like any other. I had no plans to do anything and so just went on the internet to see if I had missed anything obvious in all those words, methods and teachings. I clicked on Tony Parsons’ site and saw he had a meeting planned that day in London. I live about 90 miles away, but found myself driving to the station, catching the train, and two hours later sat in the Hampstead Friends’ Meeting House, listening to this man speak about… well, nothing. I had no questions because I kind of had a feeling what the answer might be. I just listened, spoke to no one and left three hours later. I didn’t know what was exactly being pointed to. But I was certain about one thing: I would never return to a meeting about this. If I was going to see what all the fuss was about, it was a journey I would take without a travelling buddy.

Then, one day, I just
saw
. I saw that the idea of anything separate‌—‌separate people, places and objects out there in a separate world‌—‌is untrue. This was absolutely known without any doubt. After that there was just a total absence of time, purpose, and silly stories. The world gave up its secrets. There is no separate person here having a life. There is just life. Life, with its amazing array of expressions, swirling and turning in a timeless zone that has always been the case. All appearances are the One, appearing as many in a dance that never ceases, continually displaying itself, disguising itself, playing with itself. Objects are no longer objects; people are no longer people. Nothing can be pinned down and known. Nothing conforms to the crazy notions that plagued the individual person you thought you once were. Drinking a coffee and feeling the sensation and smelling the aroma are just totally stunning. Watching a duck paddle away on the water is spellbinding stuff. And as the watching’s going on, nothing’s really happening, nothing’s leaving its mark anywhere. All trails are being refreshed with new ones, constantly, unceasingly.

Normal everyday functioning is not affected. Watching television, cooking the dinner, taking the kids to parties and teeth cleaning continue. It is just that, well, that is all that’s happening, no more and no less. The drama goes on and everything continues to appear‌—‌except that somewhere it is known there are no things out there and separate; they are right here in the place you never left‌—‌Wholeness. The character that apparently masquerades as a personal entity gets released from its prison and on release it melts into everything like a drop of rain landing on the surface of the ocean. The character remains full of life, energy and freedom that enables it to say and speak whatever pops into its head with very little filtering and checking beforehand. There is a sense of aliveness that no person could ever imagine. Life is full-on. Life is a scream.

Do you like games? I do. I remember playing Monopoly as a kid with my brother in the summer holidays. Hours we would spend as property tycoons down in the smoke, buying places we would never afford in real life. We used to bend the rules as well, borrowing money off the bank with a zero interest rate and no limit on the advance. I am sure my brother’s stash grew a bit when I went to the loo. He said I imagined it.

Games can cause adrenaline to rise and tempers to fray. Whilst we are immersed in them they take on a reality of their own and reactions to our opponents can imitate the feelings one gets by being exposed to stressors out there in the real world, such as someone pinching your parking space after you have been good and waited your turn.

Is this so-called life any different? I would say not. We just never know when to put the board away. The play becomes so real because we give it power. Life becomes a task, something to achieve. Games have one up on the real world: there is usually a clear goal and so we know what we want to achieve and what it will look like when we get there. The trouble with seeking is that we are searching for… we cannot really say what. It is something to do with contentment or happiness, or oneness with everything. Staying in the now is a good one, and perhaps shutting that noisy mind down for good would be a goal for seeking.

But we do not change the rules of Monopoly so much that it becomes pointless. Yes, we can conjure up one or two variations to speed things up a bit, but we would get bored with it if the challenges disappeared. We do want life to change, though. We want it to look a certain way and for people to behave in a way we feel is somehow more conducive to an egalitarian or utopian idea that we have read about in a book somewhere.

This is swimming against the current. All it will do is make you tired, because no matter how hard you swim upstream you will never reach home. You will end up grappling for the river bank to rest and have another go when you have got your strength back. What we cannot see is that we could stay on the bank in the deck chair and saunter back home when our legs feel like it, or let the current carry us along with it. Either way there does not seem to be much resistance: the legs move us from A to B and the stream will take us along with it for the ride. If we can sit back and enjoy the thrill of the current, we might explore places we would never have the guts to visit ourselves. The same caravan holiday every year might start to appear a bit bland if the stream chooses our destination for us.

I do not wish to overdo the metaphors, but seeing that life just happens regardless of what we think about it brings a strange feeling of relief as the knots of anxiety loosen and drop away.

If you have not had a lucid dream or have had one and didn’t know what to call it, I’ll try and describe it here. A lucid dream is when there is a kind of knowing that you are dreaming. It is like having your foot in both camps‌—‌the waking world and the dream world. I remember a dream where I found myself under a sink fiddling with the plumbing. As I got up from the crouching position to find a wrench, I noticed that I was in a room with freshly plastered walls and no doorway. I looked around for a while thinking: ‘… what the f*** is going on here.’ It then dawned on me I was having a dream. For a while the sense of power is immense. It is like feeling invincible because you know that, whatever happens, not a damn thing is going to affect or hurt you in any way. Unfortunately, it seems you cannot stay in two worlds at the same time for long. After it gets rumbled it simply fades away to waking up, and leaves a residue and sense of wonderment and unease. It is rather puzzling for a while, but soon gets erased by the everyday task of making life work again‌—‌kids, work and shopping, that kind of thing.

If we remain open for a while, though, this experience can show us something. The dream world appeared real. There was an experience that was, at least at first, very mundane, worldly; until there is an inconsistency, everything seemed pretty normal. When the appearance, in this case the dream, is seen to be not what it appears to be, it is only a stone’s throw away to revealing the same about the so-called real world in which we apparently wake up. Look and see the appearances; they are flashing around in the same way they were in the dream. People are walking by and we can still fiddle with the plumbing under the sink if we want to. But we can see that appearances are showing up as experiencing, just like the dream.

Experiencing is still experiencing whether we can walk out of a kitchen doorway after changing the tap washer or ponder how we found ourselves in a place with four walls and no door. It is the same. Whatever shows up, it is all experiencing. Nobody is experiencing; there is just experiencing, but a belief in personhood prevents this kind of seeing, prevents this ‘pure’ experiencing. Thinking of ourselves as being someone will only allow for ignorance‌—‌nothing else. Ignorance seems to be a world of time and space, of becoming something in the future. But here is the thing: ignorance is no other than Wholeness appearing to be ignorant. There is only Wholeness so what else could it be?

Wholeness seems to love its games and plays with itself endlessly. You could say it is like a grand case of cosmic masturbation! But like playing with yourself, you cannot sustain it forever. You get worn out and need a break. You need to come back to reality and mingle a bit. Reality is noticing that appearances, whatever they are and making no distinction, are made out of knowing or being. It does not have to look a certain way or feel a certain way. Whatever shows up, there you are. Not you, Joe Bloggs the person living in space and time who will die one day and be gripped with remorse about deeds both done and not done at the point and after death. No, all there is, ever has been and ever will be is timeless, being‌/‌Wholeness, appearing as whatever is showing up. The drama appears as worlds, galaxies and everything. It appears as hopes, fears, fun and depression too.