Our consciousness doesn’t choose or do a goddamned thing. All that important stuff is left to our great, unknowable unconscious. Our consciousness takes credit but shouldn’t, when it should be taking responsibility but doesn’t.

Putting wings on a caterpillar does not make it a butterfly…

Shiv Sengupta

Shiv is a lone but wise voice in the so-called spiritual industry. I always enjoy the way he punctures what Ordinary Mind Zendo’s Barry Magid calls our ‘curative fantasies’.

He reminds us, above all, of the full breadth and depth of our humanity – everything included, nothing left out.

I’m suspicious of claims of ‘our true nature’ good or bad, but particularly when it is stated as fact that fundamentally ‘we are love.’

Unless you’re in the depths of delusion or simply not being honest with yourself, this is just a delightful (curative) fantasy.

Everything is always it and it is always different.

Whenever I hear the phrases like ‘original mind’, ‘ground of being’ and other such terms, they seem to imply a final foundational condition that simply doesn’t ring true for me.

Even in complete, pristine, calm silence and stillness we remain the nexus of the ever-changing flow of phenomena of what we are.

I prefer something like ‘flux of being’ because, for me, there is nowhere to land, no ground, no resting place, no fundamental basis, no beginning or end – only ever shifting sands, the perpetual free fall through ever changing experience.

Be knowingly silent as often as you can and you will no longer be a prey to the desire to be this or that. You will discover in the everyday events of life the deep meaning behind the fulfilment of the whole, for the ego is totally absent.

— Jean Klein

Imagine a tree thinking it was separate from the rest of the universe. The ensuing confusion would be absurdly funny. Sound familiar? Trees are trees and humans are humans. It is our nature to think absurd things. It is also our nature to laugh. We would do well to laugh more at the predicament we create for ourselves.

The whole social structure—which is to be competitive, aggressive, comparing oneself with another, accepting an ideology, a belief, and so on—is based on conflict, not only within oneself but also outwardly…

Poetic Outlaws

The bold emphasis above is mine. Reading the original article this phrase leapt out at me.

I find it difficult to articulate just how profound and transformative the shift from inner and outer conflict to inner and outer wholeness can be.

I’m no expert in these matters but, as a lay reader, I have long sensed a commonality between spiritual non-duality and Jung’s individuation.

I have a meditative/ contemplative practice and also had periods of psychotherapy. In spite of coming from different directions, for me at least, they converge on the same point – the recognition of and freedom from one’s own mind.

As my therapist once said as I was trying in vain for something to say to him: ‘If there’s no problem, there’s no problem.’

When the duality of subject and object dissolves conflict of any kind is impossible. As has been articulated for thousands of years in myriad different ways – whatever this is, is impossible to say, but it isn’t two.

Exhausted at the end of another twelve hour shift. Exhausted but still somehow feeling very alive, energised, fulfilled and rewarded. It’s at moments like this I feel particularly grateful to be so lucky to have work that I love that provides me with so much more than any amount of money could.