The natural state is so simple, you miss it

Jac O'Keeffe
Jac O’Keeffe

Let everything go… without effort, just an easeful dropping. And now, let the one who is doing the dropping – let that one dissolve. There’s so much you can do; you can surrender, you can do this, the ‘I’ can manage the ‘I’, you can work on attachment, work on this and that, and then you can be observant, and then you can step back from that and place attention where the next thought is coming from, or do self inquiry, and who’s the one who’s doing all that anyway? Who’s the one who’s doing all that? And how does one get rid of that one? Who gets rid of that one?

So let it dissolve. Just let it dissolve… into that which has no state, into that which is outside of all of it, into that which isn’t looking for “What’s next… something will [feel] better than this,” into that which knows nothing about that dialogue… And somehow, something is perfectly fine… until another thought pops up, “Oh, I want more.” It’s just another thought being listened to.

Let it be that no thought will do it for you. See through that one. See through it; that there’s no thought that’s going to do it for you; there’s no technique that’s going to do it for you. There’s nothing that’s going to do it for you. That’s just how the world works, with that outside ‘hit’.

The external things that are there to achieve, or that will make it better, sure they can’t ultimately do it for you. They can’t. It’s just the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. That’s fine, if you want to stay on the roundabout; that happens too. So what about seeing through that, seeing through the repetitious loop of what’s next and what’s next and what’s next, and that these are just thoughts – they’re just thoughts. So if there’s a distance from those thoughts, what then? The one who has a distance from those thoughts is a thought, too. Where’re you going to go now?

Dissolve anyway. Surrender anyway. In a way, it’s kind of jumping off a cliff with no parachute, and it’s all black down there, – no visibility, it’s a bit like that. And it’s fine. It’s just that in this territory, at the end game of what I’m talking about, there’s nothing for the ‘I’ to hold onto, and it will use anything, but there’s nothing for it to hold onto. And let that be fine; let that be fine. But for some people, fear kicks in there, because that’s the really potent one. And that can keep you doing a dance for a while.

Fear is pretty powerful. It’s just another thought. It’s equally useless. So beyond all of it, beyond all of it, your attention is naturally at home, instead of going out to come back, going out to come back, going into a thought only to say, “Oh, that’s a thought; I’ll observe and come back again.” Hold on, it didn’t go out at all; it didn’t go out at all. That’s the natural state; that’s what we call ‘being awake’. It’s so simple, you miss it, you see… so simple. It’s got no fireworks, and it’s got no…if it’s not exciting, it’s not sexy, you know?

So it’s easier to keep seeking, then, to keep looking for the next hit, because at least there’s some bit of juice in that. So we just keep searching, … keep trying to improve myself, and keep reading and buying new books and going to new speakers and bladdy, bladdy, bla. So do you want out, or don’t you? Do you just want to do the improving yourself and fixing yourself, or actually… can you see through that?

Jac O’Keeffe