Dreaming at the Feet of Hades

Of all the dualities that are empty, the most empty is the duality of the separation of objects of awareness, and awareness of those objects.

You are simultaneously experiencing both awareness, and objects of awareness. One doesn’t occur without the other. So even that sense of “otherness” between awareness and objects of awareness is really and empty duality.

You’re not awareness looking at objects of awareness. You simply are.

There is no word to put there after “are”. Because awareness and objects of awareness are simply two terms or concepts, two sides of the same “coin” that cannot be identified or named.

So there is no turning inward. There is no turning towards awareness, because there is nowhere to go. There no orientation with which to turn your awareness back on itself from. This is why when you try to examine awareness, you find nothingness. Because everything is that awareness. There is no separate point of view that turns inward to experience this. It already is. Everything is you. Everything that you experience, as we call it, just is. And that everything is the same as the awareness that you experience those “everything” things through. They are the exact same thing. And because there is no orientation of you within that One thing, there is no you. There just is.

Now I hear the ego speak up, and yes, technically there is an ego that you call you. And there is, because there is a need for awareness to experience the illusion of different perspectives on itself/into itself in order for the whole cosmological play of reality to arise and exist. But, that cyclical dual nature of reality is empty, as we know. There is really just One perfect harmony. There is nothing happening. There is just One. So by seeing through the emptiness of the perceived self-ness of awareness, and the emptiness of objects of awareness, there is no difference between the two. They are the exact same thing. They are One unnamable thing, the closest word and concept we have to describe it is the perfect harmony.

So there is nowhere to be, and there is nothing to meditate on. This is sort of a double entendre, because there is nothing to meditate on, and because everything is nothingness, there is therefore everything to meditate on. I’m not saying there is no reason to meditate, rather, I am pointing out that everything is meditation. Everything is that One true self, the perfect harmony. So every experience is that One true self, the perfect harmony. And so, every moment of experience is meditation on the One true self, the perfect harmony. Every single moment is a meditation, because this beingness of experience is itself the duality of form and emptiness, the dual nature of reality itself. Everything that there is to be perceived has behind it an empty nature of duality. For something to be defined as a thing separate from another, duality must be it’s nature. So even the idea of there being nothing to meditate on, and there being everything to meditate on, is in itself, an empty duality, which is truly just the One perfect harmony. You already are the perfect harmony. There is no meditating to do, and all of experience is meditation. There is no effort involved. Permanent meditation is simply being.

And so, there is nothing wrong with sitting there and just breathing. That is perfectly pleasant. And that too, is an experience, which is ultimately a meditation upon the One true self, the perfect harmony. So it’s still fine to meditate in the traditional way! It’s pretty nice to just sit there and do nothing for a bit! But it’s also to say that you are always meditating. We call sitting and watching the breath meditation because that is a very effective way to cultivate knowledge of the self. But true meditation never begun, and never ends.

There is no state of awareness to achieve because there are no states of awareness. There is simply One state, the perfect harmony. And that One perfect harmony is all perceived states. That’s it. All these seemingly different experiences and people and places are just that One perfect harmony. That one unnamable thing is everything, and everything is it.

And so, there is no enlightenment, and there is no non-enlightenment. There is no remembering, and there is no forgetting. There is no process of remembering who and what you truly are because it just is. It’s just you. It’s just being. The process of discovering being is not changing your awareness, because there is no awareness to change. There is no state to shift to or from, because there are no state of awareness, there is only the One perfect harmony. It’s already there. What we are doing is identifying the deepest parts of ourselves that are of an empty dual nature, and we are not casting them off because they are parts of ourselves. We are cultivating, for a lack of better words, an awareness of what awareness is, separate from everything else, so that we can recognize that that duality of separateness is actually empty. There is no separation between awareness and objects of awareness. The illusion is a creation necessary to form the ego, and we sometimes get caught up in that illusion that creates the play of life.

All other dualities are very easy to point out and deconstruct into emptiness, but the duality of experience itself is incredibly difficult to describe and name, because in it’s truest form, it is an indescribable experience. No one can actually deconstruct it for you or explain it to you, it needs to be experienced. So you, as a student, are given the examples of all of the other dualities that have been deconstructed into emptiness, to use those learnings and experiences as a blueprint for how to deconstruct the beingness of self. There are actually no words to describe that ultimately personal duality of being. The closes words we have are form and emptiness, awareness and objects of awareness, the goddess and the god. But these too are imperfect, because the true invisible duality of being is unnamable and unspeakable. And like every other duality, that invisible unspeakable unnamable duality is empty.

So no matter what tantra you follow, you will always have to recognize this emptiness of beingness for yourself. And the joke here, is that there is no self to recognize this. But that’s the point, that process cannot be explained or put into words that can be repeatedly conveyed, because for every different perspective of awareness riding an ego, the experience of the emptiness of that being is also different due to the experienced phenomena being different. There is no explaining to be done, and that’s what makes it so difficult.

So I repeat, there is no remembering and forgetting, there is no practicing remembering. There just is.

On justification for claiming that there are no states of awareness: A state is a slice of experience that you cut out and hold in memory and examine. By the time you are examining it, it is already in the past. A state is a measured thing. In quantum mechanics even, in order to measure a state, an interaction must occur, and once that has been measured, that state now exists in the past. So because all compounded phenomena is empty, and composed of nothingness in different perceived “states”, one can ultimately recognize that there are no states. Impermanence is the One true state. All matter is empty, emptiness is form, and form is emptiness. Therefore, any state of awareness that you perceive is also empty and does not truly exist. This is just the formless in so called “different states”. Just as matter takes different illusory and impermanent states, so too does non-matter, such as memory and experience. They are empty and perceived in their states in the illusory past, but in the now, they are always the One perfect harmony.