There is only THIS

As you walk the
Spiritual path
It widens
Not narrows
Until one day
It broadens
To a point
Where
There is no
Path left at all.

– Wayne Liquorman

There is no path left because there is nothing that is not THIS. Everything is included. Everything is the path, and everything is the destination. THIS is all there is. You are THIS, I am THIS, everything is THIS. THIS cannot be lost or found.

By “THIS,” I mean this very moment, right here, right now, exactly as it is. This one bottomless moment. This awaring presence, this intelligence-energy, this unconditional love, this Consciousness, this present experiencing, this aliveness, this being that is at once no-thing and everything. In religious language, THIS is God’s Being. The One and Only Being.

THIS is always changing shape, yet immovably always right here. Whatever we call THIS, whatever we think THIS is or isn’t, however we explain it, THIS simply IS. Ultimately THIS is unexplainable, ungraspable and unpindownable, while also being totally obvious and unavoidable.

THIS includes ALL our human activities: mindfulness meditation, genocide, yoga, war, religious rituals, New Age fantasies, rational thinking, positive thinking, rape, murder, twelve step programs, drunkenness, psychedelics, IV drugs, inventing AIs, writing Substacks, factory farming, organic farming, industrialization, moon rockets, trips to Mars, deep sea diving, selling real estate, driving cars, daydreaming, thinking, planning, sleeping—the whole kit and caboodle.

Nothing is outside of THIS in the same way that nothing that appears in a dream is outside of, or other than, the dreaming consciousness. And like a dream, none of what appears in waking life has the substantiality or the independent existence that we think it does. THIS is indivisible, seamless, boundless, all-inclusive. It has no inside or outside, no beginning or end, no center or periphery.

Words seem to divide THIS up into separate understandable parts, but experientially, it is undivided while also being infinitely varied—at once ever-changing and ever-present. Check THIS out and see for yourself that this is so.

THIS aware presence being and beholding everything is most intimate, closer than close, and yet also unbound, limitless, all inclusive. It is the I (eye) that cannot see itself because it cannot stand outside of itself.

THIS has space for everything to be just as it is. That space is unconditional love, the absence of separation. And nothing that appears remains the same for even an instant. The vastness refreshes instantly, and whatever shape it momentarily takes, this awake aware presence is the common denominator in every different experience.

THIS is the infinity of Here, the eternity of Now, the timeless, placeless Being from which we never depart. We are this here-now-awaring-vastness, this undivided presence.

Can you feel this wide open aware presence that we all most fundamentally are? Totally free. Unconditioned. Imagining and dreaming the whole universe.

Instead of thinking about THIS, trying to figure it out, doubting it or trying to believe it, I suggest trying it on, feeling it, sensing it, experiencing it, being it, being what we already always are and cannot not be, allowing THIS to endlessly reveal itself to itself.

THIS indivisible wholeness or unicity shows up as the infinitely varied, one-of-a-kind particularity of everything that appears: the light rippling on the leaves, the single sparkling dewdrop wobbling and shining on the very tip of a green leaf in the morning, the steaming cup of hot tea, the loud roar of an engine, the delicate song of a bird, the gentle breeze caressing the skin, the powerful earthquake wiping out an entire village, the bombs falling on children, the rescue workers sorting through the wreckage, the doctors performing surgeries, the smell of coffee, the warm evening air, the AIs doing what they do, the vast aware space being and beholding it all. God’s Being. The One Being. The One Mind. The One Reality. Ungraspable, unpindownable, and yet totally obvious and unavoidable as just this, right here, right now.

In this instant, nothing needs to be or could be other than exactly how it is. And how it is, is no way at all. Realizing this is freedom.

Enlightenment is when Iowa is empty of Iowa and you can be in Iowa with all the problems of Iowa without wanting to be any place else.

— Zen teacher Reb Anderson

Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking Up from the Story of My Life

Awake in the Heartland: The Ecstasy of What Is

Painting the Sidewalk with Water: Talks and Dialogues about Nonduality

Nothing to Grasp

Death: The End of Self-Improvement

People often ask me which book I’d recommend first, and I can’t say. They’re all quite different. Nothing to Grasp is a concise articulation of my essential message. I like it a lot. Death: The End of Self-Improvement, my most recent book, in addition to being about nonduality, is also about aging, dying, and going through cancer. My first book, Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking Up from the Story of My Life (published in 1996), is a spiritual memoir that begins with my birth, gives a bit of my early life story including coming out as a lesbian, sobering up from alcohol addiction, being in the radical left, and then focuses mainly on my work with Toni Packer, but also includes working with my first Zen teachers, Mel Weitsman and Charlotte Joko Beck, and later discovering Advaita through Nisargadatta, Jean Klein and Gangaji. Painting the Sidewalk with Water is mainly a collection of talks and dialogs transcribed mostly from my public meetings in Chicago in the early 2000s when I was heavily steeped in radical nonduality. Both Awake in the Heartland (first published in 2003) and Death: The End of Self-Improvement (published in 2019) combine personal stories with expository and poetic prose about nonduality.

All my books explore questions of identity, free will, addiction, suffering, transformation, awareness and the nature of experience. They all point to the simplicity and immediacy of right here, right now, just as it is, and they all invite a kind of meditative exploration that is direct, non-methodical, awareness-based and not result-oriented. I write from my own direct experience and insight, but my perspective has been informed by my engagement with Buddhism, Advaita, Christianity, Sufism, radical nonduality and Toni Packer’s nontraditional “work of this moment.”

Note: All the photographs and drawings that appear in my Substacks, unless otherwise credited, are mine.

Love to all…