Practice - Presence

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General notes on Practice - The Way

One’s 10,000 favorite radio stations/frequencies, thought forms, desires and fears, mesmerize one’s Presence.

Presence in the moment is held and obscured in a-tension.

Suspend 10,000 tensions and in a moment, you Awaken.

Meditation is the practice of Presence, for those as yet held in tension, it is Presence while practicing non-participation in the noise of one’s tensions. It is sitting with the gross physical, gross subtle and subtle bodies, with no requirement to be alert or in reactiveness to safeguard position. The bodies slowly become exercised in Stillness/Non-Inertia.

The entire summation of Practice in The Way can be said to be a practice in Non-Inertia.

Stillness is Non-Inertia. It has nothing to do with a cessation of energy or movement.

It is the spontaneous state of Presence in the Now. A state that is not perturbed by "in-motion-ness" nor "at-rest-ness".

It is a state not caught up in willfulness and the inertia of ones positions, and the momentums of ten thousand grasping.

Copyright David Doyle 1/2023

Devotion

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For some time, "Devotion" escaped me, it was seen as the worship of otherness, an odd weakness of spirit investing in some-thing or someone else's answers.

Devotion and Worship may be something you have enjoyed since childhood or are naturally attracted to, but it can also be something you secretly despise. For some, devotion is a sign of giving-up on ones personal autonomy and giving-in to mass hysteria and lazy follower-ship. It can be hard to understand Devotion, if the lens you are looking through sees devotion as supplication to someone or some God. For many, Devotion is seen as adherence to, allegiance to and loyalty to, a person and the teachings of that person (or God) For some it is much simpler - it is a recognition that the person or god they have come to know, has a great presence or a radiation that they treasure and wish to acknowledge. Whether because of in-person contact or through written words or transmissions of various sorts.

But Devotion may also simply dawn, in reference to no god or person, it may dawn as one sheds the ebbing rude coarseness that stood solid on so many willful grounds of insanity and ignorance. Simply, Devotion IN Light

In the beautiful stillness, the boundless Presence, the magnificence and majesty:

Devotion is camaraderie with the highest light. It is attending a dance with Angels.

IN Nothingness, great transcendence radiates within, one cannot but Be in devotion. It is not a choice or a failing or a failing, it is the twilight of all holding, the touch of one finger to the hand of Divine Essence in Living Light.

Love unbounded, unbinding.

I pondered why many great teachers are known to show Devotion to many outside of their circles and lineage. Some are given a picture of someone they are told is a great prophet or saint or God, and from then on they accept the image and the story, or so it appears. You see them accepting a picture and years later bowing to it, even though it might be a picture of a teacher that teaches things contrary to the very teachings they hold dear.

It can appear that they are easily taken-in, or that they are a bit simple minded. It can be written away in the view that they are big hearted and simply encompass all who stand out in religious life.

But there is something far higher: with no regard for the actual person, supposed saint or god, and even whether they even existed, one can have Devotion IN the archetype that these people or images have presented. The Highest of the High, the Unimaginable, that which IS and Will Be.

In abiding wakefulness, grace is ever present, gratitude pours forth to nothing, it is Light. Yet, this Light is ever-expanding, as all horizons fall away, again and again. The Light ever increasing.

One may know nothing of an image or a man or a god, but the Light that is the All and Everything is that man, that image, that god.

And in those coveted pictures that might be given, their archetype is that of the Highest Light in the concepts of Man, and in the Highest Light beyond Man.

I am the Light, and I am embodied as Man.

Devotion to the sublime archetypes of that which is ever bright, serves as a shepherd to me, for I know nothing.

Copyright David Doyle 2/2023

Stillness

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It is interesting to look at the concept of "stillness of the mind" and perhaps better stated "Stillness in Presence" or "Stillness in Awareness"

One can abide IN Stillness and be in-motion or non-motion, it does not refer to the cessation of energetic movement or vitality, it is not a shutting down:

When abiding in stillness or simply Presence, one does not have the momentums of various inertia. Action and non-action is spontaneous and un-ridden by willfulness and positioning.

Action and non-action become one and the same in the sense that when we talk about inertia. The general term "Inertia" is often defined as the tendency of an object at rest to remain at rest and the tendency of an object in motion to remain in motion.

In the case of Abiding In Stillness, one is outside of inertia, their is no tendency or inertia in either quiet or active awareness, it is stillness in either case as it has no inertia.

The incredible lightness of being is well seen in this: Awareness 'at-rest' is completely non-attached to the "at-rest-ness", and Awareness "in motion" is completely non-attached to "in-motion-ness", so it is IN Stillness in either case. Neither is experienced as a momentum.

As an example:

One sitting in meditation is not bothered if the door bell rings, as it has not disturbed "a doing", the door bell has simply rung and one can get up and answer it or ignore it.

If, on the other hand, one is sitting in the concept of meditation, and in that concept, they are concentrating on the stopping of thoughts and the stopping of various momentums, then a doorbell ringing may indeed provoke a reaction of intrusion into the "doing" of their meditation. One may in one second be peaceful, and have the feeling of their concept of stillness, and the next second be perturbed at the disturbance at the door as felt as an interruption of a doing.

In Stillness one may be playing in a sport or creating something with abandon, and yet, when something moves them to respond or divert their attention, it is no problem: they are not caught up in the action as a personalized and willfully guarded momentum. There is still the full ability to discern the importance of the diversion, and consider if a response and a degree of engagement is important or not.

In this Stillness, the degree of spontaneity and lightness is high, and the physicality is unencumbered from the compression and holding of personal momentums.

In abiding awareness (the Awakened State), Stillness is a pervading attribute. It is often something that denotes the clear shift that has taken place in Awakening. It is also something that can be troublesome, in that it can be difficult for many to settle into, with a life in Present / The Now

After Awakening, at some point, residual aspects of the prior "I" filter back into awareness and they have momentums toward prior habituations. A great many "Doings" have died and are gone in Awakening, but at some point "Doing" with momentum and willfulness may overcome the acclimation to Stillness in Abiding Presence.

This is a leading cause of failing to abide in an Awakened Presence and moving back into Samsara. It is why so many have "an Awakening Experience" rather than Abiding in Presence of Self.

The momentums often only allow for very short term experiences of Presence in the Now before the pull is too great and the clarity and lightness become thickened with the veil once again.

And this is a where the arguments for Practice gain momentum!

Some will argue that Awakening is a Happening and it can happen to anyone at anytime, regardless of whether they practice or not. The argument often goes that Awakening is an accident of circumstances, and that practice is irrelevant.

To this was a wise mans response: "That may be true, but it seems that those who practice are more "accident prone" to Awakening"

Practice, is the art of simply Being with Ones Self.

For a person that is practiced in this, Stillness is less apt to be lost back to momentums of trance and position - one has in some ways become accustomed to the state of Unencumbered Divine Essence. All of ones bodies have become somewhat acclimated to Stillness, and more practiced in a sort of Free Fall / Weightless-ness in Light.

The Un-Grasped Present Now

Copyright David Doyle 2/2023