Boundless Freedom

"The most fascinating love stories are about unrequited love, because they point to that absolute love which the individual cannot possess. The powerful fascination of falling in love comes out of a primal sense that in that love you could be lost. It is that overwhelming love which is in all of our longing and is the fullness in the emptiness, the everything in the nothing. It is unconditional love which also appears as its opposite. Wonderfully, it is also that very love which constantly sings to us through our senses and in every part of the aliveness that is happening...

The me may, for instance, go to a priest or a therapist or a teacher of enlightenment in order to find what it thinks it needs...

However, in the seeking activity there can be experiences along the way that encourage the me to search further and try harder. Personal therapy can bring a transient sense of personal balance in the story. Practices like meditation can bring a state of peace or silence. Self enquiry can bring an apparently progressive experience of understanding and strengthened awareness. But for awareness to function it needs something apart for it to be aware of. Awareness simply feeds separation, and a state of detachment can arise and be mistaken for enlightenment. All of these states come and go within the story of me.

The basis of all teaching of becoming enlightened is the idea that a change of belief or experience can lead to a personal knowing of oneness, self realisation or of discovering your own true nature. The whole investment in a progressive path goes on feeding the story of me attaining something. Even the suggestion of personal surrender or acceptance can be initially attractive and bring a satisfying state . . . for a while. There are many so-called non-dual 'teachings' which feed the story of me becoming liberated.

However, the oneness that is longed for is boundless and free. It cannot be grasped or even approached. Nor is there anything that would need to be done or changed or made better than that which is already everything....

When there is an openness to the possibility of that which is beyond self-seeking, then it seems that the contracted energy can evaporate into the boundless freedom which it already is. And still this is only another story which attempts to point to and describe a total paradox . . . the apparent end of something that was never real . . . the story of me.

All there is, is boundless freedom."

~ Tony Parsons  ;)