There really is no obstacle to inquiry because there is no one making it happen. So however it is happening for the apparent you right now is exactly the way it’s supposed to be happening because that’s how it’s happening. There is no one in control of that.

So even though we can say on the relative level things like, yes, you have to fall in love with this and want this more and more and … Who? I mean, it’s lovely if that happens. But really, there’s no control over that either. But the very fact that we are here and that we are interested in this means that all these obstacles are mind stuff.

I want to really talk about this sense that something may be blocking me. I’m not doing something correctly, or I am creating obstacles, or there are obstacles in my life that I’m not overcoming, and so I’m not doing the inquiry that I want to be doing or not enough of it, or not frequently enough, or not deeply enough, or doubting it too much, or comparing too many different versions, or all of these things we may be doing and feeling bad about.

What I’m talking about is the awareness inquiries where it’s about this recognition of who I am, who I truly am. And they come in different versions, different flavors, but they’re all pointing to trying to get these glimpses or recognitions of what is the source, the ground of everything.

And we cannot help thinking of that as something I do. And one of the most difficult things to see, and it obviously doesn’t matter if you see it or not, but you are not doing the inquiry.

And so the idea of obstacles comes from the idea of a someone who needs to do certain things to achieve a glimpse or a state or a recognition or an abiding. But really that is not what is going on.

And the reason I want to stress this so much is because it can sometimes release a bit of that tension of trying so hard to see something. This goes back to there is no doer. If there is no doer, if we’ve seen that very clearly, that there is no one making anything happen, then how can we be the one to make inquiry happen? How can that in any way be our responsibility?

So at a certain level, it’s all good and well to speak of there has to be an intense desire for freedom, there has to be an attraction to doing this, and we have to come to this over and over again. Yes. Maybe. Maybe it’s already happening.

— excerpts from Monday’s open meeting.

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As the body speaks, there can be the belief that there is an individual making the speaking happen. Or, that belief can be absent.

Without the belief that this human is run by a separate personal self, it’s quite obvious that words emerge out of nowhere and the impulses to speak or not speak just arise.

Thoughts arise and dissolve without control. The thoughts “I am going to say this” and “I am the one saying this” are thoughts.

Without the imagined doer, it’s obvious that all of it comes out of nowhere. The intention to record something appears, ideas about what to say and how to say it appear, writing and revising the words happens, opening the recording app happens, the mouth moves, words emerge, editing happens, the publishing button is clicked.

Speaking is a spontaneous movement without owner, without anyone making any aspect of it happen.

If a thought about a speaker making speaking happen pops up, that’s more thought. It has no power and doesn’t control anything either. The thought that there is someone controlling the speaking doesn’t make it so, no matter how often it appears.

Not being the one in control of speaking is complete intimacy with it. There’s no one at any distance from it. It’s speaking without a someone who succeeds or fails at the speaking. It is free.

It’s exactly the same for the listening by an apparent listener. Listening to these words happens and no one caused that listening to happen, just as no one can stop it from happening.

All of life is like this. It is enough to notice that it is like this.

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Don’t I need an ego to interact in this world and live a good life?

From the perspective of the “me” of course I do! As a self in a world populated with others, developing and nurturing a healthy ego is fundamental.

But if I recognize my essential nature, then ego is seen to be a conditioned psychological expression of a particular bodymind. It’s neither essential nor non-essential. It is part of this incredible appearance we call reality.

Then ego or self is seen to be a patterning, continually changing and updating, narrating itself to itself, thereby creating the convincing illusion that it’s real.

But in fact, it’s mentally inferred. Like a rainbow, which isn't an actual object floating in the sky but a pattern my perception constructs.

No one owns the pattern. All that self-referential thinking never creates an actual person: an individual supposedly inside the body, supposedly in control of much of it.

To the conditioned thoughts that narrate themselves into an individual, any talk of no-self produces more thoughts framing that as an existential attack. What do you mean I don’t need an ego? Of course I do!

The more what I am beyond that self-identification is noticed, the more difficult it becomes to maintain the narrow identification as a someone. And this is just noticing what has always been the case, not achieving anything new.

What we call ego doesn’t disappear but is no longer clung to as the exclusive identity. It no longer needs to be developed, nor gotten rid of.

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So who’s right? The more Buddhist-influenced “all is emptiness and there’s no one here” or the more Advaita-influenced “all is Awareness and you are that”?

Which path is correct? A traditional, progressive path, or the rebellious, reject everything there-is-no-path?

What practice will get you there? Meditation, retreats, surrender, selfless service, chanting, bodywork, inquiry, or no practice at all?

Which teacher is legit? The one with the high-priced retreat, the one offering everything for free, or the one saying they’re not a teacher?

I’ve found these things to be utter distractions and besides the point.

We’re so convinced we need to find the right teaching or path, the perfect practice, and we’re scared to death of being duped or deluded. With all the options now available, we have no idea how to assess them, so we look to appearances, words, money, and other irrelevant things instead.

But all the while, what you’re looking for is already the case, it’s “your original face” as they say. All the time you’re debating approaches and considering options, you already have all you need and know all you need to know.

It may take years of tasting the different chocolates in the box before you realize that, and so be it. But maybe this message right now, can trigger something.

Ultimately only one thing matters, and it doesn’t matter what form or flavor it comes in: finding out for yourself, without needing anyone’s confirmation, wordlessly, and beyond all doubt, who or what you really are.

If you want help with that — and I think most of us need some help at some point — go for something that resonates, yes, but also puts all its focus on you seeing for yourself.

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What I talk about on here is the most democratic, non-hierarchical, and free-for-all knowing imaginable. Which is why we can’t imagine it.

Human identity is the product of cultural conditioning. From within that conditioning, we can’t even conceive of something as one hundred percent equally accessible to all.

Surely there are differences between us. Surely some are farther along. Surely we understand different things and have different amounts of experience. Surely that one knows more than this one.

See how strongly you assume these things. It all seems quite true from within the belief in billions of separate selves occupying those billions of bodies.

But the catch is that it is precisely this identification as an individual that makes us see it that way.

What if you’re not limited to an individual? What if you’re not inside that body? What if there is no personal mind?

What if all of it, all appearances, arise in YOU? Consider it for a moment.

Then how could one appearance have more access than another?

That’s why no amount of work at the level of the supposed individual identity does any good at all towards this. It may produce an improved individual, maybe not, who knows.

But the only thing that can “do any good”, is a noticing of what YOU really are, as directly as possible, beyond that identification with a personal self.

That “doing” is inquiry: a simple noticing that undoes (spontaneously and all by itself) the constricting and painful identification as an individual.

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Is there anything other than peace here?

That question immediately prompts conditioned thinking, which hears the word “peace” and opens a metaphorical drawer of ideas about what peace means and should look like in your life.

But put all of that aside for a moment. It’s okay, you’re allowed to ignore thought.

And look again: Without thinking, is there anything but peace here?

In that second before thought rushes in, peace is known. It is already there, noticed or not.

Peace is another word trying to describe the true nature of what is, and the essence of what you are too because you are not separate from what is.

So have another look: Isn’t this peace … until the next thought rushes in?

You’re probably sure that what you just recognized can’t be it. Because what you’re looking for is not so easily available. If it were, everyone would have realized it, right?

In the pursuit of awakening, or the big e-word, we’ve learned to believe that there’s no easy anything. It must all be earned and you have not earned it. Not even close. If you think you can just look and have this you’re hopelessly deluded.

So, you simply don’t believe what anyone can notice if they have a look instead of believing what they were told:

There is only peace. There is nothing but peace. YOU are that peace.

What if it’s not true that it must be earned? What if that belief is exactly what’s stopping the noticing of it? What if you just occasionally have a little look and find out if this is not already the peace you are seeking?

You might be surprised.

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Even your seeking: it just happens. It is also entirely without manager or controller.

The thoughts “I must get this understanding” or “I must awaken” appear spontaneously.

What we’re convinced is “my search” is nothing more than a set of recurring thoughts about an apparent someone seeking something. Nothing changes, whether those thoughts are there or not.

Desire to get something appears. A video plays. A sentence read seems to open something up. The urge to meditate returns, then disappears once more.

Who is making any of it happen? Life is apparently moving in the form of seeking, whether there are thoughts of approval or not.

You are already the openness all of it moves within and as — not a small, separate someone trying to make something happen or stop it from happening.

We are being lived, and our search for awakening too is being lived. It begins, intensifies, rests, and then resumes — all without a doer.

It’s not my search, it’s just the movement of seeking. This moment apparently includes the impulse to search.

There can be total freedom right in the middle of that search: See that seeking is also happening without a seeker. Both seeker and seeking are movements of life.

Life itself is already completely awake, moving as an imaginary separate someone, seeking an awakening.

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The freedom sold to us in Western culture is individual: liberty, free choice, the power to shape and improve our lives, to live according to our values.

This is a life-long performance requiring constant effort. Step up and take responsibility because it’s up to you. Know and defend your freedom against constant threats — including your own shadow, temptations, and weaknesses.

If we have the will and the guts, happiness is the promised result. See any epic Hollywood movie for examples.

But there’s another kind of freedom: not for a person, but from the personal.

It’s the simple recognition that the apparent individual who must win and defend their freedom is not real. It’s a made up story added onto the self-less nature of life.

Our culture promises a better self with more options, while this other freedom points to no one to need those options.

It sounds like a huge loss no one in their “right mind” would want. And of course they wouldn’t — this isn’t available to the individual mind.

The cultural promise of happiness through freedom constantly blocks us from noticing that this moment, as it is, is already free: free from a self that needs it to be different. It already offers the happiness and joy we seek through personal struggle.

We don’t have to fight for it or defend it. No one controls it.It’s already there before the thought arises that it isn’t.

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By needing something from this moment, I block the noticing of what it already offers.

The gift of this moment is here, I’m sitting in it, like a cat in its favorite box. But I can’t see that as long as I believe my ideas about what this moment supposedly owes me.

And boy, do I have ideas! It should give me awakening, or at least feeling less unhappy all the time. It should give me what some spiritual text says is possible. It should fix me and my life. Actually, I don’t know but I’ll recognize it when I see it!

My ideas about what the moment should be giving me block the noticing of what it already is.

When the one wanting something from life is seen to be just another added idea, all these needs and expectations about what life owes that illusory me can collapse.

Without beliefs about what it should be, or belief in a someone who can own it, the gift of existence is obvious, even while ideas of needing something different can continue.

So what is the gift? An ease that doesn’t require a special state. Freedom from needing anything to be different. Peace that doesn’t require circumstances. Not needing any of this to “do” anything for a me that is not.

The fact that there is anything to experience at all is already the gift.

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It feels like I need to make myself do this inquiry so that I can get to a point where it’s no longer flat and boring and it says something to me — something is revealed. That’s not really how it is. This is happening by itself.

So the fact that you’re here again, you’re asking this question, means that there is the intention, and the micro moments of recognition are already happening.

But to our personal experience it feels like, nothing is happening, I don’t know what this is. It’s boring. I don’t see a difference. My life is not suddenly full of rainbows. No.

So the more we can be aware and speak in these meetings about all these things we expect, and the fact that it feels like all these things — that it’s not — that’s the only help we have.

So, completely different attempt: In a more religious context, there can be very poetic and mystical descriptions of this experience of pure being. It’s like it’s fullness, love, grace, bliss, depending on which context you’re from. In Christianity, the presence of God, deep peace.

All of that makes it even “worse” because now we’re expecting whatever associations we have with those things as well. And that’s why I try … There you’re on your own. The more we discuss that, the more complicated it gets.

And that’s why I’m always very annoying, I think, in the sense of that it stops at, “What is aware?” And then it is looking, and the looking does it, and the more descriptions I give, the further away we get from it.

Even peace is too much, even being is too much. All these words have connotations and bring expectations with them. And that’s why in inquiry you are your own teacher, you are on your own.

You have to find out what it is, beyond that flat, boring, empty “I don’t understand it.” You, only you.

— excerpt from the Monday open meeting, details to join on katoudheusden.com

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