My Spiritual Condition
by Joseph T. McMahon
(A note to a teacher updating him on my spiritual condition in April of 2020)
I wanted to give you an update on my current spiritual condition. As I begin to type this I realize if I had to tell you what my experience is I would probably have nothing to say. But whatever I am or whatever this is, is not limited even by that idea.
I have come to a place where I not only see thoughts but I see the entire mind. It has gotten to the point where I see that nothing is really happening in the way that we normally speak of as things happening. Stillness and silence are ways of communicating that the sense of personhood has become transparent in favor of what I will now describe.
I neither am nor am not. There is no ‘me’ as such. I am existence without a ‘me’. There is neither one, nor two, nor none, nor any other idea. It is beyond words. Ineffable. Being beyond words is not a handicap or a loss, it is a soft bliss of not knowing. Pure not knowing, without a ‘me’. There is nothing to know in that which is full and whose fullness dissolves all arising of questions. There is no loss. And there is no gain. No opposites apply to where I have come to. Existence alone is. There is no one to say I am that existence. One might say that existence says I am existence. And not even that.
I am unlocalized. I am neither infinite nor finite, nor any measurement of any kind. I am unbound and free as to shape and size. Ineffable. There are neither ‘places’ nor a ‘me’ to be any place.
I am neither in a body nor not in a body. The skin of this body no longer contains any sense of an entity. I must ‘think’ myself into the body otherwise there are no ideas about being in a body or not being in a body.
There is neither time nor not time. It doesn’t arise to be thought of. If I had to speak words, I would say there is no time. Timeless, eternal, etc, all point to ideas. One could say timeless if that meant without any idea of time.
As the sage Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj says, “I am neither conceivable nor perceivable”. This is my experience.
Things neither appear in me nor do not appear in me. There is no ‘me’ for anything to appear in, and there is neither an outside nor inside for anything to appear inside of or outside of. Ineffable.
There is a still-point of pristine thought-free being where there is no sense of self but a sense of unbounded freedom which sees all but is untouched by any of it. Unspeakably intimate yet untainted and untouched by anything. It defies explanation or description. Being everything, everywhere, yet no things or places are registered. No me to explain or describe. No residue of experience. No history or trail of experience. Dream-like. Always ‘here’. No other places and no other times. Just always here, for no one. It’s like here - is here. Wherever this body is or goes is ‘here’. No place. Full, but nowhere. Neither somewhere nor nowhere.
Just peace. Just the soft bliss of just being. It has the tone of just repeatedly pinging itself over and over again, deepening its knowing of itself, undulating, becoming richer and deeper on its own level.
All the ideas of Oneness, I am That, I Am, etc, have become transparent because something happened to the ‘me’. It is still moving in conditioned ways but it has thinned out to such a degree that I have no real orientation at all except conceptually. It is just as difficult to say I am not so and so, as it is to say I am so and so. I have no ideas about these things. They arise and play out spontaneously. I don’t feel connected to what plays out, good or bad. All extremes seem to have come to the center.
I have disappeared yet see from another place. This place includes all places because there are no places as such. So it sees from no place. How can I describe what a human mind cannot grasp? The remnants of the conceptual mind is in disarray, disoriented, still seeking and still trying to be included. All of this is seen. There is no desire to do anything about those movements except to continue to stay as - or return to (as the case may be) thought-free being.
The mental and emotional terrors that have arisen over the last several years are movements of the conditioned mental construct which is in the process of ever deepening dismantling and deconstruction. It is in the continuous process of thinning out and becoming more and more transparent. My response to these terrors have been informed by an intelligence that has always been compassionate to this movement.
There seems to be a knowing and understanding that this undoing doesn’t have to be ‘violent’. Sages over the ages have spoken of ‘killing or destroying the ego’ and also as ‘allowing the ego to sink into the heart like a salt-doll dissolves when placed into the sea’. For some reason the latter has been what has informed how those arising are dealt with. I don’t feel I know anything about that movement unless I conceptualize it as I have done here. In truth, I have no idea what that movement is, and this that is, is always choosing peace, and so, the latter seems to be chosen. I have no ideas or beliefs that meeting it with compassion is meaningful or not because in the stillness of being all that is ever known is That One itself on its own level.
Trying to ‘do’ something about any apparent happenings seems as futile as going to a mirage in the desert for a drink of water. Yet action arises spontaneously and it is sort of disappointing when things arise that do not align with this peaceful equanimity I have been describing. What I have come to see is that this inert body has its own journey and it seems to be futile to try to interfere with it other than the dissolving effect turning inwards seems to have.
There is no residue from actions of the body/mind. There are no stories created around seemingly negative actions as there was prior to this shift. It is only more obvious and apparent now that this is so. It is sort of known in retrospect.
And although I speak of qualities like peace, and the soft-bliss of just being, thought-free being can be experienced as without any qualities whatsoever which creates an angst in the mind which again is dissolved by remaining or turning inwards. In this sense, Peace is known to be eternal if one wishes to use the concept of time. The deeper truth is that there is no past, present or future for peace – there is just Peace in all times and places, despite there being no times and places as such. Ineffable.
This is a summary of my current spiritual condition... [END]
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So, Michael, how does one write without sounding like a madman? This has been my dilemma – writing to explain that there is nothing to write about and that writing is futile. Ha! What a dilemma!
I have been slowly picking away at the collection of Silence quotes. I have a much larger goal which I have been feeling into, to see if I should wait to incorporate it into this collection of quotes. I feel that this bigger project needs to be its own thing and I want to just put this collection of quotes out as a ‘starter’ to some detailed and original writing.
I have put my spiritual deepening and unfolding on hold (so it seems – but that which ‘is’ never sleeps and keeps deepening and unfolding in its own way and on its own level) since I moved to Florida 4 years ago. This body turned 60 last week and I am intuiting that it wants to immortalize or as you put it, leave a legacy of sorts of this abstract existence. That which actually ‘is’ has no such ideas. It’s funny how the mind wants to immortalize its own non-existence. Gotta give it an ‘A+’ for perseverance. It will one day be sticking its hand out of its grave clutching a finished (or unfinished) manuscript titled ‘My Life’ in its boney, clenched fist.
My direct experience is so out of norms that most times of the times when I write I am met with accusations of spiritual bypassing. I venture to say that something incredibly rare has happened to me but since my experience is from a different orientation, it is difficult to communicate and when I do, it seems out of sorts or not possible because I am not experiencing from the same place the reader is – if that makes sense. So, the whole idea of writing gets polluted with the idea that no one will understand and it is a waste of time. Of course, that is mind talking because nothing else talks. I see these thoughts and the lamenting about these things, and that seeing points back to silence and there is no movement to ‘do’ anything. Seeing thought simultaneously reminds me that there is no thought. Something like that. Thoughts are cancelled out by their own arisings. Desires to write are followed by a recognition of the futileness of communicating in a made-up, temporary world-view and that thought-free being is the real dominant experience. The world only rises with the thoughts of it. Thoughts are words, and words are blah, blah, sounds and well you know the rest of it.
Nevertheless, something wants to write or communicate. Maybe I’m just killing ‘time’.