Open Vast Undivided Presence

As I sometimes do, I’ve borrowed a few parts in what follows from a previous article, with changes and the addition of new material. Even though some of the words are the same, I hope it will land freshly, right now:

There is an openness here, a vast spaciousness, a stillness, a presence — can you feel it?

Open, spacious, warm, radiant, vibrant, loving, all-inclusive, full of everything and yet utterly free and empty—formless, shapeless, limitless—dancing as infinitely varied appearances.

This open aware presence is our most fundamental nature, the ground of being, the ground of love, the groundlessness at the core of everything, the immediacy of here and now, the emptiness and fullness of everything.

Open, clear, boundless, ungraspable and yet most intimate, closer than close.

I’m not pointing to abstract ideas or philosophies to think or reason about. I’m pointing to something experiential, alive, right here, right now.

This openness beholds everything from wholeness rather than partiality. In this open aware presence or unconditional love, there is compassion for everything being just as it is. There is no inside, no outside, no separation, no division, no other.

When suffering comes, when there is uncertainty, darkness, confusion or despair, what shifts things in my experience is when I finally just stop—stop all the mind spinning, sit down in silence, and simply be here, fully present, allowing it all to be exactly as it is, not trying to fix it, not resisting it, not trying to think my way to happiness—but simply being present to the whole happening. Being still. Being quiet. Being. Just simply being. Letting everything be as it is. Being this open aware presence. Just this. Simplicity itself.

I can’t “do” this stopping or make it happen on command. But there is a remembrance that comes through grace, a remembrance that this is what works and a capacity, at least sometimes, to stop and be still and open to this. And that capacity grows.

And in that stopping, there is the ever-fresh discovery that there is space here for everything, that everything is included, that everything is the Holy Reality, even the darkness.

One of the people who has touched me most deeply is my friend the mystic John Butler. John says, “If something seems complicated, beware. Truth is very, very simple.”

This video I’m sharing is about 17 minutes long, and it is John’s introduction to a solstice weekend retreat he recently gave on the theme “Towards simplicity.” After the talk, Nitya Mukta sings a beautiful kirtan chant as the solstice sun rises. Altogether, I found it exceptionally beautiful.

John is always speaking from and pointing to this stillness, this spaciousness, this open alive presence that can also be called God or unconditional love or Consciousness or many other words. But what matters isn’t the labels we give it, but the felt-sense, the direct and immediate experiencing and being of it.

And of course, in dissolving into this presence, there is no “me” dissolving into “it.” There is simply this all-inclusive wholeness with no inside, no outside, no separation, no division, no other. Just THIS, as John likes to say:

Love to all…