Nicely said. You could say the past is responsible for the ego, but it might be more apt to say, the ego is created from what has come before. I think this is clear, and easy to see.

No person can heal when ripping open the scars, but not for the reasons we may think. They begin with the belief that there are scars to be ripped open. But there is not even that much separation. They ARE the very scars, as well as the activity of ripping them open.

This is very difficult for people. They so badly want to believe their pain, their sorrows, and their suffering are apart from them, as if it is something outside attacking them. But what is really happening?

There is the idea of an identity separate from everything else. It becomes the center that sees; the point of false light, creating its own illusory shadows. Its greatest strength is that it can hurt itself. And through that pain, it seems more real; a being that is separate due to its limited experience.

But it does not have to be this way.

Thanks so much for your wonderful comment. It is nice to have you here.

Forget the darkness, forget the searching, forget the blame, and forget the guilt. For that matter, forget what you have read. To see this, you’ll need your energy, and the wastage of energy required to hold a static position takes too much from the only moment you’ll ever have. Even to approach this will require all of your attention.

Many people talk or write about this, but if there is a path, it will be one of your own exploration; a path devoid of all interference, apart from your own activity. In this place, there is every possibility, and it is not limited by what you accept or believe to be true.

It will arrive when it arrives, and I suppose it is your job to get out of the way and let it happen.

Just do not assume there is a “something” to surrender to. Or if there is even one capable of surrender.

If there is surrender, it will happen despite everything you’ve done to make it happen. But please don’t believe me.

Go into the darkest cave for yourself. You may find, in the deepest recesses, there is far more light than you ever thought possible.

It is such a pitiful attempt, this action of the mind. The need to protect what has come before, and the fear that goes along with losing it.

That mind, or thoughts, or whatever you might call it, can never know what it has lost (and I question if anything at all can ever be lost). Never once can there be the knowledge of what is not, and if there is a knowing of the not, it is not the not.

You might say, What is not, is what is.

But one can never “know,” either.

One can only pity this mind. All the activity it undertakes in order to find something it can never know.

Yes. And so much conditioning is there, we don’t even see it. We assume it to be right. But if we observe what arises, then consider where it may have come from, we may discover it was just someone’s else’s concept. Not even our own. An illusion we picked up along the way.

Do we surrender to the darkness, or do we continue the search? Is this analogy appropriate?

To Davidya: “Can we simply be with the question? That may be the doorway.”
—> the questions can be doors that open to spaces we don’t really know, no?

Yet if one approach the question with the momentum of ready-hand-me-down answers, the space might not become available at all; and the spaces these questions might lead us to would just be the space we “want” to see rather than what is actually there…

To Takuin:

The Beat
to forget
is to look afresh,
without yesterday’s images,
without yesteryear’s scars

this is not easy
for the mind considers the past
as a sacred, safe, absolute ground
that one should worship, adore,
venerate, and behold

forgetting is blasphemous
to the mind

and the heart is the mind’s
irreverent rebel for the heart forgets
remembrance is not its language
for every beat is new

as the heart beats
it forgets
as it forgets
it frees

…then love is there

A subtle thing, yes. but a very key point for someone so used to being the doer.