We’ve all heard about this, haven’t we? That outer events do not determine our inner experience. That we are never really at the mercy of happenings and situations. Something in us responds to this. We feel some kind of instinctive recognition that this could be true. Until something challenges us and we collapse into our reactions, our stories and our beliefs. Then the notion of unconditional happiness sounds a bit far fetched, like something out of a spiritual fairy tale.

What happens when we make a strong commitment to living this way? When we actually get serious about recognizing this well-being that is unconditional?
How do we encourage this possibility in ourselves and the people in our lives?

I have been wrestling with these questions deeply during the last while. I’ve written about the Dalai Lama as a living example of someone who has found an unshakeable sense of well being, undiminished by everything that has happened to his country.

Does it seem arrogant, to open myself to the possibility that I could live like this too? Is it possible that this unconditional happiness is not just reserved for special people, like the Dalai Lama?

Whenever I really get deeply engaged in this question, all hell seems to break loose in my life.  It’s as if life is nudging me, saying, “Do you really want to know how to be unconditionally happy? Then try this on for size.” In retrospect I can feel the nudges as loving. At the time they seem anything but that.

For quite a while now, I have been dealing with some major difficulties in my life, connected with my family, that won’t go away. It makes perfect sense to my conditioned mind to get very unhappy about these things. And this just perpetuates the whole illusion that I can only be happy when things are going ‘my way.’ I don’t want to live like that anymore. It’s just that simple.

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In my work as a coach and teacher, I’ve been exploring free expression and inquiry for decades.

Free expression is our capacity to express ourselves fully, without holding back. To speak from a space that is unconditioned by our fear of other people’s judgements, and even our own. Free expression is spontaneous, natural and uncontrived. It’s a flow, and it can be bumpy, challenging, and ultimately deeply enlivening and full of joy.

The nature of free inquiry is similar. In order to inquire, to question, to deeply investigate, we need the kind of innocence and freedom a young child has. We need to be able to ask our real questions, the ones that are alive and compelling for us, without caring about how this looks, without needing to be seen as intelligent, or wise, of kind.

What stands in the way of our capacity for free expression and inquiry? Our self-image. The way we want to appear, and the way we don’t want to appear. Our self image is not who we really are. It’s constructed. Our authentic being, the transparency of our true nature, has no image. It is open, and without any need to defend or protect itself.

The self image is defensive, and touchy. It is built on a deep sense of inadequacy, a feeling of not being good enough. Everyone feels like this. Every single egoic being struggles with this, whether they recognize it or not.  Sometimes it is fully conscious. And sometimes all the things we do to compensate for this sense of inadequacy cover up this aching hole, for a while. Maybe for half a lifetime. Until something happens and our sense of being flawed or lacking comes to the surface.

Without being confined to a self image, we are naturally, effortlessly authentic.

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What we want, what we think we need, is so different than what life brings us. There is a great, fertile open invitation in this gap, this place between what I am asking for and what I seem to be receiving.

My daughter once called it ‘the aching chasm.’

We can learn to ask for something else, we can learn to pray from a bolder place inside us, a place of deep trust in life, that doesn’t need anything to be different than it is.

It might take us a long time to get to this place, to rest in this unconditional gratitude. It’s not a familiar place for the mind.

It’s where the grace pours down, its where the smallest things are appreciated.

Where a drop of kindness feels like a whole ocean.

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This is a response to a question from someone in my ‘Living Inquiry, Endless Surrender’ year long course.

What we are exploring in this course comes under the rubric of ‘nondual’ practice or awareness, and it is, in fact, very different from traditional spirituality and therapy.

The main difference is very simple:  the nondual approach is about recognizing and resting in what is already here-unconditioned presence or awareness. So there really is no journey to make, on that level, at all. The journey is more about getting used to what is here, aligning ourselves with a way of being that doesn’t experience anything as missing, or wrong, or needing improvement.

In traditional practices there is a lot of effort and striving-in the nondual approach there is an ongoing discovery of your effortless being.

I think there is a time and place for more traditional approaches. And I think we also get tired of the striving, at a certain point, and are ready for something else.

I wouldn’t say that I ‘turned away’ from my practice in India-I simply outgrew it. It fell away from me, I think. And I was very happy to say goodbye to it.

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One day, when the Buddha was alive on earth, a very accomplished team of acrobats came to see him. The team consisted solely of a grandfather and his granddaughter. They were famous all over the country, and performed daring acrobatic feats to large crowds. The two of them had been debating one crucial point for years, and finally decided to go to the Buddha, and ask him for help.

It was the grandfather who put their question to the Buddha: “The feats we perform together are dangerous, and our safety is crucial,” he told the Buddha.

“However, my granddaughter and I have different ideas about how to maximize our safety.  My feeling is that each one of us should have our first attention on the other one. No matter what happens when we are working together, I have committed to taking care of my grand daughter first, even beyond concerns or fears for my own safety. This really seems to me to be the way that love works, and the best way to care for our safety.

My granddaughter disagrees. Her point of view is this: We need to take care of ourselves first, no matter what is happening. Our first attention should be on our own safety.

We cannot reconcile our two points of view, so we have come to you, to ask for the blessings of your wisdom and clarity.”

The Buddha smiled at both of them. Then he turned to the grandfather and said, “How lucky you are to have a granddaughter with such intelligence. I invite you to really listen to her, for she is clear about this. You have been conditioned to another way of thinking which will not serve you here. Listen to the voice of this young one. Question your ingrained ideas about what love is.

How can you possibly help her if you yourself are in danger? Where will you stand? What kind of help can you offer her, if your foundation is shaking and trembling? 

We would all do well to follow the wisdom of your granddaughter. Taking care of ourselves first is not selfishness, it is basic sanity.”

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In the world of quantum physics, the most they can say about the existence of any object, is that it has a ‘tendency to exist.’ That’s the same view, funnily enough, that shines in the nondual wisdom.

We can’t really say that this whole solid world exists. It certainly appears to have a very solid and separate existence. But things are not what they appear to be. We don’t exist the way we think we do. Our thoughts and feelings don’t exist the way we think they do. Everything just has a ‘tendency to exist.’

This is the impermanence, the endless flow of life, nothing to hold onto.  No solid reality anywhere to point to, to say, “This is the way it is.”

“Studies show now that’s there’s one thing we human beings are just doing all the time. We’re projecting our meaning and interpretation onto everything and everyone. In fact, even so much of what we see is only because we have the neuropathways and receptors to even see that.

There might be whole universes existing around us within the same field that don’t exist. We just don’t have the receptors to make it an image in our sensory system”.  (Dr. Henry Grayson talks to Tami Simon)

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