Loans that Change Lives
15 minute televison broadcast about KIVA
15 minute televison broadcast about KIVA John Astin is the author of This Is Always Enough and Too Intimate for Words, two collections of poetic and prose reflections on the non-dual nature of reality. Along with his writing, John is also a singer, songwriter and recording artist who since 1987 has produced six CDs of original spiritual/contemplative music including his most recent release, Already Shining. In addition to his music, writing, and teaching work, John holds a PhD in psychology and is an internationally known researcher in the field of mind-body medicine, where his research focuses on the applications of meditation and contemplative practices in psychology and health care. For more information about his work, please visit: Integrative Arts.
The truth is that when it comes to spiritual seeking, we really have the whole thing backwards. We seek love and peace, we seek more experiences of oneness. But the very things we seek, we actually can’t escape from. We seek God, but the Truth is that we can’t get away from God. We seek oneness, but there is only oneness! We seek Truth, but everything we see already is the Truth for nothing is outside of That which is everything.
“Well,” you might ask, “why doesn’t it feel like I am experiencing the Truth? Why doesn’t it feel like I am in touch with Presence right now?” The answer is quite simple. The reason it doesn’t feel like you’re “there” is that you have some idea in your head that “Truth” or “Enlightenment” should look a particular way. The only reason there is rejection of this moment as somehow other than what we are seeking is that we think It is supposed to look or feel a particular way. But the paradox is that to search for peace or happiness is to guarantee these things will not be found, because to search for anything is to basically reject what is here. Otherwise, why would we be seeking something else? And to resist what is here is to suffer. To say that the peace or happiness we long for is to be found is some other time or place, is to reject what is present now. And of course, struggling to get away from now in order to get some “better,” more peaceful or happy future, creates the very feelings of discontent and unhappiness we’re trying to get away from in the first place! You see, in the end, we suffer for one reason. We divide the Oneness up. We say “this feeling or state is It, but this other one is not,” rejecting the One, in order to try to get back to It.
So, what’s the answer? Well, you can engage in various disciplines or practices to try and make the mind less judging, more accepting of the moment. Or, you could simply stop and see that what is Seeing right now, the Mystery that is Aware of this moment, has already accepted the moment, as it is. Awareness has already allowed the moment to be. And the Truth is that we are powerless to do anything about it. We can’t create this radical acceptance and we are helpless to make it go away. For the very nature of Awareness is to accept, without conditions, what is. And how do we know Awareness accepted this moment? Because the moment is here! Now the mind may be resisting what is, but Awareness has already made room for it. Our only job is to see that there has never been a “me” apart from this Awareness. In the end, acceptance is not something we do. It is what we are.
Music Pick of the Month: "Remembrance" by John Astin. This magnificently crafted cd features "Love, Serve and Remember" which has become John's signature piece. It also includes "There is Light" and "The Dance of the One" and two instrumentals.
Moving In and Out? by John Astin
For years, I struggled to keep contact with awareness, remain in a state of mindfulness or presence (call it what you will). The experience would go something like this - whether in a meditation or simply daily life, I would experience I kind of oscillation between being in touch with that which witnesses the movement of mind - let’s call it mindfulness or awareness - and then at some point seconds or minutes later, being caught in whatever was moving or appearing (i.e., thought, feeling, memory, fantasy). Then, of course, I would try, sometimes struggle, to re-connect with the witnessing awareness, re-connect with that which watches the mind but is not caught in it.
The sense, whenever I was successful at re-contacting the witnessing presence was one of coming home again. Conversely, whenever there was the experience of re-immersion in some mental story, daydream or fantasy, the feeling was one of being lost, a powerful, often painful sense of having lost touch with something, which would in turn lead to some effort to recapture the sense of being home, some strategy to reestablish contact with mindfulness/awareness. Sound at all familiar? It is one version of the old spiritual seeker’s dance, the dance of “finding it, then losing it, then trying to find it again”… It is pure suffering though that was not realized for a long, long time…
Then one day, the question arose: “There is this sense of having returned home. But, what is it that is experiencing this sense? What is it that is actually coming back, coming back to presence? It feels like there is something there that is moving back and forth, something that is going in and out, moving from presence or awareness to mind or thought and then (hopefully!) back again to presence and the feeling of ‘home.’ But what is this that is apparently moving?”
Ever since I could remember, in all the years of seeking to find this presence and then once found not lose it (or at least get back to it once it had been lost), there was the belief and sense that it was of course, “I” who was moving back and forth. The assumption (and corresponding feeling) was that it was “I” who was the one who was coming home, just as it was “I” who was the one getting lost in thought, immersed in the story of mind. “I” was the one oscillating between feelings of freedom and bondage, remembrance and forgetfulness, awareness and mind…
And then in the immediate wake of that question, it was seen so clearly. There was no one, no “I” who was moving back and forth, no “I” who was coming home (or leaving home). There was either just the sense of being home, the sense of something coming back to itself, awakeness or presence returning to know itself, again. Or, there was simply a different sense, a movement of involvement in whatever was appearing - a thought, a feeling, a sensation, an image, a perception. And if there was the sense of having lost something in that involvement, well then there was just the sense of being lost, the sense of being involved or immersed. But there was no one there, no person, no “I” who had moved into that experience of “being lost” or immersed. There was simply Being, being lost, Being, being involved, Being, being home. In short, there was simply what is, simply Life moving as being awake and resting as the witnessing presence and then Life moving as involvement in the activity of mind. And all the while I thought there was someone there, someone at the center of all the apparent movement back and forth, there simply was no such one, nothing at the center of it all, nothing…
And so it is seen that “coming home to presence” or “being lost and seemingly away from home, away from presence,” are not really different. For when there is no effort to move away from “being immersed,” no story that being immersed is a problem that “I” must overcome, a prison that “I” must escape from, there is simply Being, simply experience happening. In other words, when there is no effort to escape, when it is seen that there is no one to escape, there really is no bondage. There is only awakeness, naturally present and no effort to return to it.
All there is, is what is. If there is the sense of being home, resting in presence, then that is what is. If there is the sense of being involved in or even lost in the movement of mind, then that is what is. Something (really nothing) is present with it all, a Mystery that is tasting both freedom and bondage but is neither and both. You are that Mystery, a Mystery that is never moving in or out of anything but It Self…
This Is Always Enough by John Astin
This Is Always Enough is an invitation, an invitation to abandon, even for one instant, all teachers and teachings, to let go of all spiritual injunctions and practices and simply meet what appears in each moment with no guidance, no maps, no reference points to tell us what is true or how we must live. In this book, John invites the reader to ask, “"What is this moment, this life like when I cease to locate myself in or identify with any conceptual framework, philosophy or religion – not Buddha’s, not Jesus’, not anyone’s? What is it like to live with no fixed conclusions or ideas, to cease to refer to any notion in the mind about who I am or how this moment is to be lived?”"
This Is Always Enough is an invitation, an invitation to abandon, even for one instant, all teachers and teachings, to let go of all spiritual injunctions and practices and simply meet what appears in each moment with no guidance, no maps, no reference points to tell us what is true or how we must live. In this book, John invites the reader to ask, “"What is this moment, this life like when I cease to locate myself in or identify with any conceptual framework, philosophy or religion – not Buddha’s, not Jesus’, not anyone’s? What is it like to live with no fixed conclusions or ideas, to cease to refer to any notion in the mind about who I am or how this moment is to be lived?”"
