The core theme is that our perceived reality, characterized by separation, location ("here" and "there"), and the illusion of control, is a limited perspective. True existence lies in recognizing the interconnectedness and non-local nature of consciousness, where "here" is everywhere and the present moment is the ultimate reality.
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A race car driver Mario Andredi once
said, "If you think you're in control,
you're not going fast enough." Spiritual
philosophers keep saying that control is
the illusion of the mind. Trying to
freeze frame a reality that's constantly in
in
motion. I've got some news for you. As
always, it's one bad one and one good
one. The bad news is you're falling
through the air. Nothing to hang on to,
no parachute. The good news is there's
no ground. You've been circling this
insight your whole life. The thing is,
we're all so conditioned to think in
terms of here versus there. We exist in
a constant dance between one point and
another. We compare one moment to the
next, always with the idea that we're
progressing from something to something
else. But that's all surface level. How
about you stop living in the suburbs of
your own self? All this movement, all
these places are just projections. The
real center, the real here, isn't
something you find after climbing the
next spiritual mountain or crossing the
next psychological river. It's the still
point inside you. The awareness that's
been there all along. It's easy to think
of the center as a point on a compass or
a dot in the middle of a circle, but
that's limiting. When we think about
here as the center, we're not talking
about a fixed measurable spot in space.
The center isn't something you can find
by traveling or pinpointing it on a map.
So, let's go deeper. In the infinite
circle of existence, where do you think
the center is? Is it where you are now?
Of course, but also it's everywhere. In
fact, the center of infinity has no
boundaries. It is everywhere at every
point, always now. In trauma, for
instance, people dissociate. They lose
the center. The body is here, but the
self is somewhere else. Memory
fragments. Identity gets scattered
across events. And part of healing is
reentering, returning to a here that
feels real, embodied, and grounded. On
the other hand, mystics often report the
exact opposite. Not a fragmentation, but
a total expansion. The self dissolves
and everything becomes here. They say
things like, "I was the tree. I was the
sky. I was nothing. And yet, I was all
of it.
What does that
mean? It means the localization of self
loosened. The sense of being a separate
dot on the map and awareness returned to
its unbounded
field. Both trauma and transcendence
break the illusion of a fixed
here. One disintegrates it painfully.
The other dissolves it
ecstatically. I am here is the statement
of someone who has realized there's
nowhere to go. This is it. The point
you're trying to reach, whether it's the
perfect meditation, the next
achievement, the higher state of
consciousness is already here and always has
has
been. And what is this here? We all
point to this tiny little word that we
say when someone asks us where we are.
We say, "I am here." But if we examine
it closely, it doesn't refer to a street
address or GPS
coordinates. Here is wherever you are,
and you aren't fixed. Your body moves
through space, but here follows like a
shadow. That means here isn't a place at
all. It's a function of your being. It's
this simultaneous existence that makes
being here and there so tricky. You're
always both. First, let's start with
non-locality. A concept that comes
straight from quantum physics, but
applies to consciousness, too.
Non-locality suggests that objects are
not confined to a specific
location. This means that you can in a
way be everywhere without actually
moving. The very fabric of the universe
is interconnected at a quantum level and
every point is a part of the whole.
Buddhist teachers have come up with many
ways to describe reality, but it's just one
one
reality. Sometimes all the different
Buddhist concepts and terms can seem
daunting, as if liberation is achieved
once you master a long list of complex
philosophical teachings. However, all
the teachings are essentially pointing
at the same thing. Although different
teachings emphasize different aspects of
reality, it's like trying to describe a
sunset. You might measure the light
intensity and color changes for the last
half hour before the sun
sets. You might write a poem about it,
paint a picture of it, or photograph
it. Any of these portrayals of the
sunset will end up emphasizing some
particular aspect of it.
Because by their very nature such
expressions can never capture or convey
the entire reality of the event. The
descriptions of the sunset are different
but also overlap in terms of subject
intent. In seeing reality clearly, we
end up perceiving two aspects of
reality, the absolute and relative.
very difficult to talk about these two
aspects using language and concepts
because we immediately become dualistic
about it. The absolute transcends
dualism. Let me give it a try. It's like
a finger and it is independent and free.
It's a thing unto itself, right? The
fact that it is separate from other
fingers is part of what defines it, part
of what makes it
functional. At the same time, the finger
is part of the
hand. Those things can be true
simultaneously and they reflect a
different reality of the
finger. In the same way, everything we
perceive has relative aspects as time,
space, posation,
individuality, good and bad. But there's
another way to perceive
reality. Reality has another aspect in
which we recognize that all of these
things, good and bad, the boundaries we
draw between individuals, in a way,
these are all just ideas. When we let go
of those ideas, we just see everything
as one in its essential
being. Here's an exercise that you can
try for 1 hour. Try seeing reality in
two different way. Reality has two
natures. The particular versus the
whole. The particular. Of course, it's
true that reality has individuals and
individuals interact. This is the way
that we usually experience reality. At
the same time, reality is a seamless
whole, if you will. It's just as it is.
When experienced that way, the
particulars can be true, but they don't
ruin the wholeness. Everything is
included. If you were caught up in a
drama and you were concerned about your
well-being and who was doing what and
what was going to happen next, it could
be full of angst or excitement. But if
you somehow realized that all of this
was part of a movie or novel and this
novel or this movie as a point as an
artistic arc and when you stood back you
could see it was just all part of the
story. When we're watching a movie for
instance we don't think oh no how could
that happen to that person. The
happening is just all just part of the
story. It's a very difficult concept to
get across. But in any case, what we
usually call the absolute aspect of
reality, the essential, the wholeness,
the things as it is, how we perceive
things directly when we're not
interpreting them through our mental map
or our self-interest. We just see things
in this whole
way or you are that. It's a simple but
profound statement, but let's not
romanticize it. This is more than an
inspirational quote to slap on a wall.
It's an observation of how reality
works. When we say you are that, it's
not just a reminder of your spiritual
essence. It's a key to understanding the
world as it truly is. A continuous dance
between the observer and the observed.
An endless loop where the two are inseparable.
inseparable.
You are not simply experiencing the
universe. You are the experience itself.
When the universe bends, it's your
perception that bends with it. You don't
need to travel to a mystical place to
find the center of existence. You
already are that center.
There's a fascinating account from a
woman named
Pemma, a well-known Buddhist teacher who
recounts the experience of having a
mindbending realization about being here
and there. She was on a retreat
meditating deeply on the nature of her
mind when she suddenly felt like she was
both here in the room and there in every
room, in every place, at every moment.
For her, it was as though her sense of
self had dissolved into everything around
around
her. Here and there weren't separate
anymore. They were one. The more you
explore this, the more you realize that
you're not moving through space and
time. You are space and time. Here and
there are constructs to help you
navigate the illusion of separation. But
really, the deeper you go, the more you
realize that there is no separation at
all. You are not located in space the
way a pin is stuck in a map. That's the
first lie. We've been taught to imagine
ourselves as coordinates, one body in
one room, in one city, in one country,
floating on one planet, in a vast
universe. But what if that model is
backward? What if you're not in the
universe? What if the universe is in
you? This is by no means an abstract
mysticism. In non-ucuklitian geometry,
when space is boundless and curved,
there is no absolute edge or fixed
center. Every point, yes, every single
point can be regarded as the center.
That includes where you're sitting right
now. So, in terms of cosmic geometry,
you are not on the periphery. You are
not lost in the outskirts. you are at the
the [Music]
[Music]
axis. But that's just the warm-up.
Because once you grasp that physical
space is centerless and thus center
full, you have to confront a deeper
reality. That you are not just at the
center of space, but at the center of
awareness, not your awareness. Awareness
period. You are not in awareness like a
fish and water. You are the ocean itself.
itself.
looking back at itself with borrowed
eyes. The more you try to pin down
consciousness, the more it slips through your
your
fingers. Like trying to measure the
color of wind. In an ancient Zen story,
the master said to his students, "The
sound of one hand clapping is the sound
of being
everywhere." Now, at first this sounds
nonsensical. How can one hand clap? But
the true meaning here is that the act of
clapping isn't just confined to the
sound that comes from two hands
meeting. The sound exists in all places.
The one hand clapping represents the
singularity of the moment. But when it
claps, it reverberates across time and
space. It's not just here in this
moment. It's there across the entire
universe. Think about it this way. You
know how we've all heard that space is
curved by
gravity? Well, consciousness according
to non-local theories is also curved by
experience. This means here and there
are simply different bends in the same
cosmic fabric. And there's no fixed
boundary between them. You're not just
here, you're spread out through the
entire web of existence.
There is a theoretical idea that our
entire universe would be a hologram, a
projection of data encoded on a
two-dimensional surface. In simpler
terms, our reality is like a 3D
projection from a 2D plane. So
everything we experience, all the space
and time is just an illusion. We
perceive the universe as here and there.
But in reality, it's all encoded on the
cosmic surface like the pixels on a
screen. Now, if reality is a hologram,
then the boundaries between here and
there are just tricks of
perception. You're here in your body,
but in a very real sense, you're everywhere.
everywhere.
The boundary between the center of your
experience and the edges of your
awareness is a false one. You're
projecting your sense of being here from
a greater, more expansive reality. Think
of time and space as substances like
clay. When we say we are here, it's as
though we're saying we're in a
particular moment of this flowing,
shifting substance. But the here that
you're in is not permanent. It's
continuously being shaped. The idea of
there is just the next shape that hasn't
yet been formed. In other words, here
and there are not fixed, but are a part
of a larger ongoing cosmic process of [Music]
[Music]
becoming. Suchness is the reality behind
your commentary. It's what a moment is
before your mind translates it into
something useful, dangerous, desirable,
or boring.
Suchness is the texture of this exact
moment before you touched it with a
label. It's the unedited version of
reality, the raw footage before your
mind adds
commentary. It's the dissess of the
thing before the brain jumps in
screaming that's a tree or that's
awkward. Suchness is the radical act of
letting things be as they are. The more
you try to escape the moment, the more
you decorate your present. It is the
felt presence of a moment before
interpretation. It's the quiet immediacy
of being that asks for nothing and
explains even less. Before the machinery
of thought begins carving the world into
objects, roles and outcomes, there is
only this, not this thing, but this, as
in the totality that resists being
broken down. This is terrifying to the
ego which survives by naming and
comparing. To rest in suchness is to
surrender control. It's to stop trying
to bend the moment to your preference
and let it crash into you exactly as it is.
is.
It's intimacy, the deepest kind of it.
The reason we don't live in suchness is
because we're addicted to stories. We
don't want the raw present. We want
meaning, narrative, plot. But suchness
isn't here to entertain or explain. It's
here to be. And if you stop resisting
it, you might notice it's enough. It is
not mystical, yet it is mysterious.
We shall not cease from
exploration. The end of all our
exploring will be to arrive where we
started and know the place for the first
time. So it just means that spiritual
philosophy is really homesickness, an
urge to be at home everywhere. We shape
our tools and thereafter our tools shape
us. And so does our thoughts shape us.
The thoughts of here and there bring the
vision of the dual
world. The difference between a system
and the mess is just how long you stare at
at
it. Dual world might look like the
ultimate order to our mind. But truth is
the invention of a
liar. Suchness is not true or false. It
is what remains when all the stories
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