Remembering - March 7, 2026
When awakening is actually remembering.
Awakening is nothing new; it is only a letting-go of temporary habits. What you remember in awakening might be that you have awakened like this countless times before across unimaginable time, a broad memory of that ‘final approach’ when letting go really took hold and in seconds you noticed once again the reality of what you are.
But there is a more specific memory for many people: remembering a specific time in your life when you had awakened and noticed the exact same reality. These memories of other times are difficult to willfully recall because they have no good handles with which to call them up — no words, no images, no associations; and at the same time, they permeate the memory almost absolutely, like the cosmic background noise but too simple and too obvious to care about.
Sometimes, people recall the moment they took their first breath when they were delivered from the womb. I remember it quite clearly. It was an explosive realization that I was none of the things that had ever happened to me and also nothing that ever would happen to me.
Instead, I was only the place where all these things happened all around and in me. I was the continuity of everything and not really the content! It was hard to recall that, but later events in my life during my 20s gave me a model awareness of a possibility for which I could look. And there it was, the simplest of all memories all throughout me!
Since then, I have also been able to recall many times when I let go just spontaneously but failed to notice the significance of the view. “How silly,” I thought to myself while recalling those many moments of clarity when I just ignored or dismissed it on account of ‘more pressing business.’ But such realizations were easy to dismiss when I realized this has always been there waiting patiently for me to return, and will always be there.
Believing - Mar 9, 2026
Beliefs can be either-or, or they can be a matter of degree. Most beliefs are in the form of statements about something, while intuition and insight are often beyond words.
List the things you completely believe or believe in.
List the things you strongly believe.
List the things you believe but cannot explain.
List the things you believe but cannot describe.
List the things you believe but cannot even name.
What does belief have to do with truth and context?
What does belief have to do with relativity?
Cui bono - Mar 10, 2026
Why do schools today teach children about ‘Freedoms’ rather than about ‘Freedom’ as though it is suddenly become a collection of things that can be managed individually?
Seems to me that the meaning of the word, “Consciousness,” is a modern tower of Babel, meant to keep people from learning more about the subject. The self-appointed controllers of us all do not wish us to become more ‘conscious’ of our situation.
I noted not long ago that my 1979 dictionary lists as a definition for “Reality”, that it refers to what is permanent and unchangeable. That definition seems to have disappeared since then.
Who benefits from the rest of us having no word for what might be permanent and unchangeable about ourselves? Freedom, Reality, and Consciousness are related to one another. Cui Bono?
Story - Mar 18, 2026
It is like reaching out with your two hands and taking hold of a piece of empty nothing, a thing with no place, time or ideas in it. Taking hold of that and pulling it apart into two, these two are created out of each other. Pure, absolute relativity.
Each is made entirely out of not being the other. Now look at the flower. It is made entirely out of not being any other thing that is ever possible in any way at all. In this way, the whole universe is enfolded into it. Pure, absolute relativity.
Everything is made of everything else that it is not, and each is made of all of them. In this way, you are the empty nothing. You are the one with no place, time or ideas of your own. You are where the universe unfolds. All these things are made of you.
* Written in reply to the wonderful story,
What was pressed into you? by Sylvie Muir.
Perspective - Mar 17, 2026
Can you imagine that every life ever lived is worth living, from the best to the worst as we judge life these days?
It seems to me that in order to understand life, we must get to that point where we not only see all lives as worth living, but we also see each life and the whole of life as unimaginably beautiful, even if only in retrospect. And with that vision we must be willing to live and love every life ever lived and ever possible to live.
Granted, it may take a certain change in perspective to get there. But maybe such a perspective is not only possible but inevitable for us all.
What remains - Mar 20, 2026
“Surrender is what remains when interference ends.”
And reality is what remains when illusion ends.
And light is what remains when darkness ends.
Image
Reality And Being was completed in November 2024 and published in April 2025. In May 2025 I published the story-puzzles separately on Substack. In the past weeks I have been adding images to the individually published stories:
Ancient Chinese Puzzle [2]
Reality is hiding in plain sight; just look at it.
Being Dreams Forgetting [3]
Practice makes perfect.
Seeing a Tree [5]
How is it even possible? What is perception? What is seeing?
The Flowering of a Wonderful Law [6]
The self is nowhere to be found in any world.
The Seer and the Seen [8]
Exploring the universe of all possible experience.
We Always Do the Best We Can [9]
The wordless, thoughtless memory of limitless being.
The Magician’s Trick [10]
Allow the universe to unfold as it truly will.
The Five Paths [11]
Why are there any paths at all? How far away is reality?
Questions Children Ask [12]
You must read this twice in order to get the point!
Skill? - March 22, 2026
There was a study many years ago comparing the problem-solving skills of human and chimpanzee children. (From memory:…)
100 on each side. Each was given a Chinese puzzle of opaque drawers and sliding panels and such, in which there was a treat to be found. Both sides were shown how to solve it. From that, all 200 could solve it again for another treat.
Then a new puzzle was given, identical in appearance except this time the drawers and panels were all transparent and the treat was in a different drawer that could simply be opened directly for the treat. All 100 Chimps picked the puzzle up, examined it, and then opened the correct drawer and ate the treat. All 100 human children tried the same elaborate solution they had previously learned, and I think only 2 humans actually got to the treat after considerable frustration.
The scientific conclusion was that this proved humans were more intelligent than Chimpanzees, because humans as a collective are more skilled at mimicking than Chimpanzees are. (Note “skilled” rather than “persistent.”)
I think this illuminating study might still be on YouTube somewhere.
Thank you to those who subscribe, follow, or just drop by to read now and then.
🙏🙏
Thank you, Sylvie Muir, for restacking.
https://substack.com/@slyviemuir