September 11, 2024

September 11, 2024

So whoever shows up is the right person, is the right us. We, the group. We spent the first conversations focusing very much on thoughts and thinking, I don’t know why. That’s just where we started. But it seems to be a good place to start because thinking is something we all have access to and have lots of thoughts about. So we created a lot of thought about thinking. 

I’d like to use the Venn diagram as a a helicopter view on what we’re doing here and to see if it works for for what we’re discussing in terms of joy, because the center of the Venn diagram could be joy.

So I’m just going to go through them with what comes up spontaneously and let’s see where we go with that. As always on the mental level, we’ve been there talking about thoughts. We know nothing. We know nothing because We simply know what occurs in the moment. Thoughts appear. That’s it. But what do we really know? We know nothing because there is no one to know.

On the spiritual level, we could say we should be no one, or we are no one, but not because we’re being super selfless or trying to be humble, but because there is no one there. If we’ve realized that there is no person, if there is no separate self, that becomes obvious.

And now the interesting one, that’s very much related to what we’re doing here. On the social level, it could mean we are always continually giving everything because we’re not holding on to anything. Flow, we’re flowing with life. And that giving is also the receiving because there’s no difference. The flowing, the giving is the receiving, and in this group, in the way we converse and dialogue, that’s what we’re doing all the time. There’s the giving and the receiving of, let’s call it content. 

I’d really invite you to see if we can just talk about this as ourselves, okay, as One. So this is speaking as a different form of you. And as always, we’ll take it from there and see what comes up. It’s all good. Confusion. Total clarity. Anger.

This made it very clear that everything is always being constantly given. In other words, not being held onto. Like things arise and they immediately depart, right? And so that could be conveyed as a giving. Of whatever appears to arise. I think that’s more clear to me now.

And just as an aside the joy in the middle is referring to the joy of not needing to be a person, right? To be a separate self, to be a someone. And we could look at this joy on these four different aspects of being. The physical the mental, the spiritual, and the social. It could be a structure for us. It doesn’t have to be.

About the spiritual part, be no one. When we define ourselves, that comes from the ego mind, not from the whole mind, not from the wholeness. Nevertheless, just one question. We are spirits, right? So we are something in a way on the spiritual level.

What comes up is that be no one refers to being a person. Don’t be a person. There’s no need to be a person. So it refers to us in our physical bodies and doesn’t exclude the spiritual beings in here as well. We are, we exist, we are beings but we don’t have to be a personality. 

Because being a personality comes from the ego mind, right? Not from the wholeness. 

So these are words and concepts and it’s very difficult. Very difficult because as soon as we talk and give concepts, we’re splitting things up and is it spiritual? Is it ego? Is it, I don’t know. But yes, I think on one level at least that was the idea behind it. There’s no need, the joy is from not needing to be a personality. To have a psychology. Having one doesn’t mean there isn’t one. It means not owning it not identifying with it, which is not the same as there is no one. Does that make sense?

I’m finding what’s happening is the word in the middle is the most triggering. If what I’m sensing is we’re approaching all of this via negativa, it says give all, essentially we’re holding on to nothing. And in the end, the middle should be the mystery of whatever happened. At least that’s the way I’m registering it rather than there’s already this a priori knowledge of what I think joy is. And it’s hard to, let go of that. 

So joy triggers a certain image for you?

I would say happiness would be the closest thing I can think of, but they’re all words. I don’t know how to. Distill it more than that. I would say it feels like relief.

I have a bit of an issue with the diagram. The reason I enjoy this a lot because I think there is value out of this process and out of the recognition, which is tangible, which is applicable, which is not woo. The give all seems the most tangible. When we say we have nothing or we say we know nothing or be no one, I think those kind of drift farther away. So who’s doing the conversation? On the social side it’s very easy to activate it, I give everything and I receive everything. It feels like something you can leverage. When I say on the material side, I have nothing or I have everything, what does that translate to? It’s hard for me to project it onto something directly. And know nothing / know everything, similarly. Something does know and something doesn’t know. There is a disconnect in that relationship. And on the be no one I think the negative and the paradoxical aspect seem to be missing. And when we say spiritual there is always levels of spirituality associated with it or being a saint or being a guru or being that element or this element. And in some way I want to negate those in my head. Be no one but as well remove all of those layers because I’m not saying be a more superior someone, there is no such thing anyway. But there is the presence holding all of that spirituality and containing within and outside. 

Maybe as an idea for the material part, what came to my mind was that you do have things, right? So you do have this sweater and you have glasses, but they don’t own you. So maybe that’s the understanding here.

They don’t own you, but I was searching for something that for certain people under certain levels of trauma. It is part of you like it or not. It doesn’t own you but sometimes it does define you and that’s okay that it defines you. It becomes an extension of who you are. In a good way, not necessarily in a negative. The notion that we own nothing, sometimes owning something and having a connection to it is no less a connection on its own.

Some things that are coming to me are the have nothing, know nothing. Then there’s something that’s supposed to do something for that. If I have nothing, then there’s an I that has to have nothing. But I understand what you’re saying, to have a conversation about this, it maybe activates the personality. I guess I could say that’s what happened for me. So I’m wondering if there is a different way to word it that it sounds more like a way of relating to life, but I don’t have words for it. So that have nothing doesn’t sound like there’s something to do. 

There’s no desire here to make this a fixed diagram that we’re going to use. It’s just really here to start the conversation or the dialogue that we’re having now in whichever way it goes. Don’t see this as we’re going to have to get the wording right, okay?

Yeah, I hear you. For me, it does bring up wanting to think about it that way, but I hear you that we don’t need an answer. I don’t need to think of an answer. And if I want to be thinking about it for my own purposes, got it.

What came up for me was changing the word nothing for no thing. That’s what struck me. And material for me would be see no thing. Mental would be know no thing, and spiritual would be no thing, and social would be express no thing. Whatever no thing is, that’s what we’re expressing with it. I also suggest that social could mean animals as well. So it could be all living beings, yeah, why not? Why limit social to humans? 

Be no one in this way does not mean doing nothing. I will take it as a role playing, in the social contact context. Because we are beings, so living beings having a body mind. So if we take it as a role playing, be no one is your understanding, but for the social context, you will be playing roles in the office, you will be a boss or subordinate and at home, you will be a father or son, you will be playing so many roles. So those roles will keep playing on, but inside you will know that all these are roles, titles, not the real you. The real you is no one. Being no one is a great release, but then the body moves on. You will eat, you will move, you will go out, you will be doing all these things, which you are, which are obviously there. Inside, you will be knowing that these are just role playing, nothing more to that, nothing serious about that. But of course, the role is there, you have to play the role well, even on a stage also, you play the role well, you feel good. But the actor knows inside that, okay, it is a role, I have to play it, but nothing serious about it.

Take it that way, be no one is your inner understanding, but on the social level. You will be playing roles as they come up, as they come before you, you will be playing this, but then the role playing will be much easier, much relieved because you won’t be attaching to any particular role that I am a boss, so I have to behave this way, that way.

And so giving all is also giving all in your role. You play the role well when you know that it is a role only. Don’t get attached to it. That is a big relief inside when you know that yes, there is a role. I have to play the role. But nothing to get attached to it. Inside you are no one. You don’t own anything. But that is not in the negative sense actually. It is just a role playing.

So initially I was taking this as instructions or a map for how to be rather than a diagram of the flowering that happens post self-inquiry and understanding who you are, not what you are to be doing.

Yes, that’s how it was meant when it emerged. Doing these things makes no sense. No, it’s actually impossible. 

Yes, it’s an attempt to describe what the joy consists of in those four areas. There is joy because there is no ownership of anything, there’s no attachment to things or the physical, and there’s no attachment to the mental or to the thinking even though it can be used. And there is no one because there’s no attachment to the personality. And there’s continual giving of everything because there’s no attachment to keeping things to ourselves.

I think that middle word, the joy word is going to be different for everybody. That part made me recoil a bit. Because of that middle, whatever appears is going to be different for each POV.

It was actually empty at first. There was nothing in the middle.

I’d love to dig more deeply into the center of the diagram around the joy and what that means, because I think we can elicit particular associations, images, memories, and things like that. From my own experiences, joy points to something that’s far more nuanced and variable than what we normally associate as joy. And so I think it would be great to dig into that more. And I think we did that in the first session, a little bit where you asked people to describe like what one word what it means to me but I would love to dig into that more deeply in the room.

The feeling that was coming up right now is freedom. Because when I consider the different aspects of the diagram as we’ve been discussing it, it elicits for me that sense of freedom that arises when it’s recognized that there really is no one here, that everything that is just happening spontaneously.

And so when that is seen that there is no self, and that things are already free, and that things are already given and spontaneously arising, and that there is no thing, then for me, that sense is that, oh, there’s just this freedom here and the joy arises in the lightness of recognizing, Oh. There’s nothing that needs to be taken too darn seriously. Like I don’t have to go out and try to find purpose or meaning or manufacture that in my life.

So for me, I was trying to figure out what joy was, when there is no one to own anything, what is it that we are talking about? What is joy referred to? Is that a phenomenal experience, or is that the expression of what this is, which is a mystery? And I liked emptiness, which is also a fullness. But it’s not very personal, but it’s just the mystery of what this is. Unless we are looking at it from the whole, the Venn diagram, we are looking at it from a very personal angle.

So it’s either a description of what this is, which is a mystery, or is this, the Venn diagram, does it refer to how this body mind complex is viewing this mystery? If I am, and that’s a body mind complex, if I’m trying to make sense of it, it’s absolutely right, no nothing, absolutely, that’s so true. I can come up with a lot of descriptors, but those are just descriptors. They don’t refer to anything real, and the other items, material, have nothing, I would say there’s no ownership, there’s absolutely no ownership, in that we could say through in the consensus reality, we could say that, oh, there is ownership, because, we’ve come up with a system that says, all right, yeah, so I have a phone how do I say that I have a phone? I’ll be holding a phone, but there is nothing that says that I own the phone. I don’t know what spiritual is, so I can’t speak to that. But social, again, there’s no sense of ownership. The joy at the center I, What do we mean by that? Is it joy for the individual or is it just a joy that is already the case, which is a mystery?

I did see the diagram on LinkedIn when it didn’t have the word joy in it and actually struggled with it. And I was trying to go into the four different elements and trying to understand them all actually as separate things. And then when I saw it now with the joy in the center of it, all of a sudden made a lot of sense to me. I could actually zoom out. Instead of trying to make sense of the individual elements of it. And for me, it immediately gave a understanding or a sense of that joy is already available, being awakened through the different elements, and that it will change over time. So it is a mystery. For me, it was also linked to freedom when we started the community, but for me, now it’s moved to maybe the word that comes up now is Oneness. So yeah, it is a mystery. 

It feels like as soon as the word comes up and we try to grab onto it, it instantly becomes a problem. 

That’s why it worked for me to completely just zoom out.

The word problem is a very problematic word.

Joy has a certain degree of inability in a way that is even though we can recognize it’s attained, there is always a gap. And there’s a gap that we cannot necessarily express or that’s missing that we seek or even know it’s present, but not fully anyway. And I have that struggle as well. When we will say there is no owner or there is no ownership, but there is always a sense of ownership perspective. Even if we say there is no owner, to me there is always a sense of ownership which will appear and will be present simultaneously with it, not necessarily outside of it. And those kind of paradoxically coexist more often than not.

Let’s delete all of the words. 

Actually, before we do that, something just happened. So joy would work for a moment, but then you start to attach this feeling that you’re having to joy when that vacillates all of a sudden you are no longer feeling like. At the beginning of this conversation when I was in the car and I didn’t want to talk it made me think of not being special, not having any kind of specialness, not having any need to be special or in any way, above or below or anything, just simply no specialness whatsoever. And I think that’s Not needing to be a someone.

That very much expresses for me the unbelievable joy, joy is the underlying, the absolute form of happiness. So it’s not contingent on any experience. It’s just there in the background. But that’s just the way it shows up in this brain thing here. The unbelievable joy of not needing to be anything at all, not needing to have anything, not needing to know anything not that there is no knowing or that there is no having, but it’s just not necessary. The joy is not contingent upon anything.

Yeah, and that’s why I would like to keep the joy in there, because it feels that you always search for joy and you feel like you’re going to only be happy or successful when you’re joyful. But what’s so beautifully, Illustrated in this Venn diagram is that you don’t have to search for joy. There is nothing to search. So for me, that just brought everything together.

But doesn’t the previous search for joy cause a problem with that? You have a vision of what joy is already? Isn’t that a problem?

Who’s searching?

One way to understand this joy is to see a child, a kid, he’s a nobody and he himself also know, does not know, doesn’t matter. But he’s all, when we see a child, a baby, we always see that he’s joyful. That gives us a clue what joy is without being anybody children they don’t own anything. They’re not knowledgeable. They don’t they know, they have not learned many things as we have, but still they are always joyful. I think that is the joy, which is there as a consequence of being no one. So the child, when it grows up, becomes a someone. I’m just illustrating the joy as such, what is it? It is a joy when you see a child that is the joy. That is the example of joy. Although when he grows up, we make him do so many things. So he loses that joy. But it is there already, and we don’t need to search it. It is already there expressing itself until we put so many things into it to be something to, learn something, so many things, then that joy, which was already there available gets lost. So till that point, I am saying look at a child, but of course we only make him lose that joy. 

Yeah. And it’s not really lost. Because it’s still right there in the center. Yes. It’s only covered or layered with our, words, language, ambitions, so many things, which we superimpose on the joy, which was already there in the kid. Of course it is always available. We only need to de-layer it, the joy is this. This is the joy. 

The joy of not being understood or us having different interpretations of what joy means, is joy. Joy as such is there, very much there without there being anybody to own it or to learn it. 

So does this discussion, this, what we’re doing here, feel like joy to you?

Yes. That is why I will come here. If I don’t feel joy, I won’t come, I won’t come.

Just a question here, when you say the joy is already available, then what, what blocks it? What makes it block? What doesn’t, what makes it not come out or flow in a natural way?

So before we go to what blocks it, I’m very curious to know if it’s here. 

Obviously, yes. 

I could see that it’s maybe getting filtered in some way. It’s trying to come, but yeah, there is a little bit of a discomfort as well. 

Feels like a trap. Because if I go out and say it is or is not joyful, which is judging that I’m breaking some rules.

Interesting. It just is. 

And then, like you said a while ago, putting a word on it, then all of a sudden it’s not, it’s something else, the word. 

Okay, is the concept formerly known as joy present? 

Always. 

That’s good.

Is it ever not present?

I think somewhere we have the conditioning, we have, the definition that if we do this then we get the joy. Frin an unconditioned to a conditioned space.

But let’s just check. We, right now, here. So far we’re saying there is joy.

I don’t know how to answer that. What do we mean by joy? Again I’m stuck with that question. I could say there’s a sense of ease and freedom and connection. Would that be considered joy? And the reason why I say that is there’s no agenda whatsoever, and it’s flowing freely.

So in that sense, there is that sense of expansiveness. There’s no sense of contraction. It just flows freely in this connection. Will that be considered joy? So again, for me, when I look at the Venn diagram, I’m not sure whether it is seen from a a subjective perspective, or is that a description of how things are, irrespective of what any person feels.

So let’s forget about the Venn diagram. And let’s forget about the word joy. 

Then there is just this, which is just, I don’t know, again a mystery. There’s nothing negative here, it’s just very freeing to speak about things, so there’s just, I could say, for lack of a better word, yeah sure, there’s joy.

But this could also be, there could also be all kinds of other things. 

The minute we need to have something, we need it to be a different way. I think that’s when the joy, like the minute, if we’re annoyed or if we’re like waiting or if you want, we want something to be different than what it is. That is where the joy stops. As long as we’re cool with whatever is going on and it’s all just arising and it’s all good and we’re just listening and stuff, then I think the joy is there. But the minute we want something to change, we need it to be in a different way or want something to be different…

Oh. And is the joy then gone? Seriously? 

No, I think the joy, there’s a degree to it. If we’re in the free flow of things, alright, then the joy is naturally there. But the moment that flow is blocked, because maybe we are judging, we are maybe in some reference point and we start thinking that whether things are happening as per the reference point, then probably the joy gets subdued.

But it’s always there. 

The joy is directly proportional to presence. If you are present, you are going to experience joy. 

Oh? I’ve never experienced that correlation. 

I would wager that irrespective of what happens, joy is there. As in why can’t emotions arise? About, okay, why can’t there be anticipation? Why can’t there be an expectation of joy? Things want to be a certain way, but that doesn’t mean that takes away the joy. It’s just that it’s realized for what it is, just an expectation. As long as there’s no owning of that, then that’s alright. It’s still joy. Because we are having this exchange, we all have different viewpoints and that’s an expression of joy.But there’s no expectation that this is the right expression. All expressions are equally valid. And that I believe is joyous, if that’s what we mean by joy here. 

It brings up for me a question, is joy an experience? I think one thing that it seems we’ve been grappling with is joy an experience or not? Because I think some of us are speaking from the sense of sometimes joy isn’t here or it’s covered up in some way. Which would suggest to me that joy is an experience, maybe a feeling or a lightness or whatnot. But then there’s also that notion that joy is not an experience, that joy is everything that shows up no matter what it is. And that joy is another name for something that’s totally inexpressible, like this, or like God, or like being, or whatnot. And I think part of today, the group has been grappling with, what do we mean by joy?And it seems like by joy we mean everything, no matter what it is. It could be hate. It could be disgust. It could be my dog barking.

I’ll give one more example of unconditional joy. This I call joy of being. We exist. Is this itself not a wonderful thing, a mystery? Sheer presence, sheer existence is a joy, which is not dependent upon anything outside. Just existence itself is joy. Joy of being, existing. This itself is a big mystery and it is joyful. And another example I would like to give is of joy that we see a movie, Or a stage show in which there are all sorts of emotions displayed. And we say that we enjoyed the movie very much, which was having so many contradictory emotions also displayed, but still we say we enjoy. That is just one example that joy is not dependent upon outside the happenings. Joy of being. We exist. This itself is a big mystery. If you sit silent, see the sky, don’t you feel joy? There is no reason of it, but still you feel happy. When you see a small bird singing or a tree. Anything, I would say Joy of being just being itself is a big blessing or you see a dream and the morning you say, I had a wonderful dream, any kind of dream, but still you say, I enjoyed the movie. I enjoyed this drama, which was having all opposite emotions displayed, but still that shows that the joy of being is not dependent upon any outside stimulus.

My feeling is we are romanticizing it too much in a way. Sometimes I want to say there is no joy in some way. Like the real feeling is discomfort or the real expression is misaligned and thinking or a different opinion. You hurt sometimes on receiving really bad news and digging deep where it it’s not joyful in any sense of the happiness aspect of it. But nonetheless, that’s it. That’s joy, too, in its kind of rawness, but in some way the representation of it is not necessarily those dimensions. So I worry sometimes when we describe joy, we romanticize its beauty, its elevation, its kind of smoothness. That’s not necessarily the case either in a lot of ways.

At least sometimes it’s really something very hard to accept or something very hard to even understand or not understand at all. And still a certain joy lingers that’s not ecstatic, but it’s still, I don’t know, for me, at least there is something there which goes beyond just the the beauty and the nature. There are those elements, or there is the negative aspects of them, and they are harsh and they are cruel. They’re not nice. They’re not, and we not experience them in any other way whether fully or not fully. And there is still the expression like they, later on, we probably can realize the full aspect of what they really mean.

To wrap up the unwrappable:

When you realize the truth of this, there is bliss. Bliss for me has this romanticizing feel to it. Oh, you will be in bliss, and flowers will sprout, and rainbows will shine, and everybody will speak in words of honey. That should not be in the middle of this diagram because it just sounds too out there.

The other extreme is saying that this is happiness. Because happiness to me has this component with no unhappiness. Blut life is also very often unhappiness and pain. And it’s also raw and harsh and painful and negative and still it’s joyful. So for me, joy has this nice quality in the middle of neither pointing to the la la land of bliss or to happiness with the problem of unhappiness as well. That doesn’t go away. So I like the middle path of the word joy.

Your homework if you choose to accept it is to come up with something better than the word joy mystery freedom. No, I’m joking. You don’t have to come up with anything. But I think this dialogue about trying to explain even to ourselves what it is that we mean, that joy is not joyful. Joy is not happiness. What we mean by joy, at least what I mean by joy is not the joyfulness of it.

But we’re trying to express something that has no opposite which is impossible. So we’re again using dualistic words to express non dual and doomed to fail. But hopefully we’re experiencing joy in the process. Please feel free, because there are also some people new to this and for everyone, to put things in on the drive. It helps the discussion in a asynchronous way. So if something comes up for you, write it down and we’ll see what comes up next week. I have the feeling that we might dive right into the middle of the diagram again. And see where it takes us next week.