Posted 29 January 2019 by Sal
A Holiday is an Atom Bomb
I feel discomfort, tension, resistance in my body when a holiday occurs.
The purpose of a holiday is to know something—to know who you are, open, aware, free.
Let’s be on holiday together.
HOLIDAY
Relax the focus of attention and just for a moment,
don’t attend to any particular object.
Allow attention to be open.
Focusing on something is natural,
but here we’re just allowing attention to be open and all-inclusive.
Resistance is perfectly natural.
Our whole life we’ve only known ourselves as an object,
the body, the mind, and its stories.
That’s a very limited, contracted experience.
Until we find out something different,
we have no idea that’s not only who we are.
A holiday is knowing who you are essentially,
which is the knowing of this body-mind organism,
just like you are the knowing of everything in your experience.
You know the objects surrounding you,
as well as the sensations in the body and the thoughts.
Instead of just believing that you are only this body-mind organism,
this contracted, limited self, expand your vision of who you are.
Have a “shift of knowing.”
Recognize that who you are essentially is the knowing of all that.
We have a lifetime habit of believing we are the body-mind organism and all the attention goes to self/ego. We are great worshippers of self/ego. We don’t worship truth, we worship self/ego. There’s no fault because that’s what we’ve been taught by culture, society, and religion. So, your whole life you’ve been worshipping self/ego, and all of your attention is going to “me, me, me.” When you take attention off “me, me, me” and leave it alone, you realize its insignificance. Nevertheless, it’s very natural for the force of habit to resist. It’s not YOU resisting. You have no resistance. You are already free.
This is the message I want to impart. You’re not going to attain freedom in the future. You’re going to come to know that you’re already free, now. So, if you’re already free, then you have no resistance, you have nothing. You have no history and you have no future. You’re the one who KNOWS all of this. You’re no-thing. You’re KNOWING. So, you have no resistance.
That’s the first thing to clear up. Who you are in truth, essentially, is already free. Your question presumes that you’re the body-mind organism because you say, “I have tension, discomfort, resistance.” So, that is saying, “I’m the body-mind organism, that’s who I am—I, the body, have discomfort.” I’m not saying you’re not the body. As the wave is the ocean, you are also the body-mind organism, but you’re not only that. I say, take your attention off of that discomfort, and in the midst of any discomfort or tension, have a holiday and again, know yourself as this knowing, which is all-inclusive.
Recognize yourself as this knowing. Then, whenever anything appears like tension, resistance, etc., it’s all an experience of the body-mind organism. Have a holiday for a moment and come to know who you are. Who you are essentially is knowing and it’s natural for us to recognize ourselves as free.
Then it should be over, right? Well, it doesn’t work that way. It never has worked that way for anyone. Having a shift of knowing, which is coming to know who you are essentially, is the beginning of the work. It’s not the end. You aren’t going to meditate for another 40 years, recognize who you are, and then it’ll be over. No, you recognize NOW who you are. Then, be devoted to this truth.
In living this truth, of course, this body-mind organism is going to experience whatever it’s going to experience. Sometimes it will be pleasant, sometimes it will be unpleasant. Sometimes a holiday will happen and you’ll be very much at peace, sometimes a holiday will happen (especially in the beginning) and the mind (habits) will rebel, and say, “NO, I have resistance, I have discomfort, I have tension.” When the latter situation arises, the habit is to give up the recognition of the holiday and go back into the belief that you’re the body-mind organism.
Freedom is not something you attain. Freedom is something you recognize and then live. It’s the staunch refusal to be anything other than who you are, free. The intention for you or anyone who wants freedom has to be very strong. You have to staunchly refuse bondage. Culture and society tell you that everything that appears in this body-mind organism is very important, especially the thoughts appearing in the mind, and you have to pay attention to it and if you don’t, you’re being irresponsible.
Well I say, you have to have the intention to be free. The intention for freedom has to be stronger than the pull towards believing in the robotic slavery of attending to every thought and sensation that appears in this body-mind organism. This slavery only appears because that’s what we’ve been trained to do.
So what to do if there’s tension? Get real. Ignore the tension, thoughts and any sensations. Turn your attention to freedom again, and again, and again... If you live this way, you’ll see that habit will shift.
Knowing there’s no self/ego is fine, but that’s the beginning! Once you recognize your essential nature, once you know yourself as free, and once you recognize there’s no self/ego, that’s when you start living freedom. You have to really have the intention to live it. As you live freedom more and more, things start to resolve on their own, slowly over time—tension in the body, contractions, beliefs, seeking, so-called negative habits, afflictive states, etc. It happens by itself because you want freedom. Your intention is now firmly rooted in freedom.
When you know yourself as free, you’ll want it. There’s the old classic teaching that your intention for freedom has to be as much as a drowning man wants air. If your intention for freedom is that strong, it’s over.
The more holidays appear and you recognize freedom, the more your intention for freedom blossoms by itself. I don’t suggest trying to cultivate intention as there’s no doer. If you start cultivating intention, you’re right back in ego believing there’s a self there doing something. Just know the truth and the truth shall set you free.
Don’t think of this work as a magic bullet, a one-time fix, where you get a hit of freedom and that’s the end. It’s just not the way it works. Recognize who you are, essential freedom, knowing, no thing, nothing special, very ordinary consciousness. Recognize that and become doubtless in that knowing. That happens by continually recognizing it and staunchly refusing to live anything other than freedom.
I can have that experience, but the identification hasn’t shifted yet.
Have a holiday, now.
HOLIDAY
Here and now, you know.
These words have to go. Throw the words out.
Here and now, I Am.
I know that I am.
This knowing is self-effulgent, it knows itself.
It’s very simple, very ordinary, nothing special.
I know I am.
Of course, how can I deny it?
What identification are you talking about? There is no identification. If you say the identification is strong, then you’re giving power to something that’s not even true. If you admit the mind is strong, the mind is tricky, the vasanas (tendencies/habits) are strong, you’re giving up! Don’t give any validity whatsoever to any of that stuff. Get real and be free. Giving in to the thought, “Identification is strong, my habits are strong,” you lose. Why? Because you’re free, now! LOOK!
What I notice is my experience narrows to specific emotional experience. I label that as resistance.
That’s just a habit. Recognize that when you came out of the womb, you didn’t have that habit. That habit was learned over the years and it came from culture, society, family, religion, spiritual books—all of that stuff was put into your mind. It’s not even yours. Then, we’re taught through ignorance that it’s the most important thing in the world, and we have to pay a lot of attention to it. It’s not even yours and it has nothing to do with you. You are now as you were when you came out of the womb, FREE. Nothing has changed.
If you say a lot has changed, then you mean the body-mind organism has changed. Yes, of course, it has, but YOU? If you follow the inquiries in my book, Liberation Is, you’ll realize that you’ve always been the same, nothing has changed. And if you’re the same your whole life, and the changing things have only come from external sources, then why bother with them? It’s not you, they’re not yours. You had nothing to do with any of it. You don’t have an original thought in your head, no one ever has.
A holiday isn’t just about having a little break and feeling peace. That’s not what a holiday is at all. A holiday is about knowing who you are.
A holiday is an atom bomb that’s going to blow your whole world apart. You’re going to realize you have no past and no future. You’re going to realize the entire story of you is a myth, it doesn’t exist at all and never did. It’s the end of your world.
But it has to be lived. Have a holiday, now.
HOLIDAY
Where is your past story?
Where is any of it?
Where is all that cultural conditioning?
Look.
The past is not somewhere back there,
it’s non-existent.
There is no past.
There is no “my” story,
there is none, it doesn’t exist.
It’s only a pathological belief.
That’s it, nothing.
It’s a mirage.
You see, that’s what a holiday is. It’s blowing your head off, forever. Almost everyone thinks that a holiday is about feeling good for a moment. It’s such a petty little idea of what a holiday is. And so, in the midst of a holiday, there can be tension in the body, but who cares? That’s not the point of a holiday, that’s not what we’re doing.
We’re coming to KNOW that I am only this, here and now, nothing other than this, NOW, no-thing. This is who I am, I’m not anything other than this. Everything else is a lie.
Transcribed from an Open Meeting, by Marcy Gold
