The Genius That Isn’t by Julee Bergstrom

I watched a satsang with Mooji the other day. He began by introducing everyone to Awareness. He had them check their shoes and minds at an imaginary door and enter the room. He told them to leave all ideas and thoughts outside. They could collect them any time thereafter. No doubt, they would be waiting, clamoring to return.

This is the journey: to realize, understand and value our sense of Awareness; to intuitively see that Awareness is a supremely huge nothing that is everything.

Every one of us is aware of Awareness. We look through it, we hear via it, we sense with it. There is no action or thought or feeling that happens anywhere except through it and by it. We know it never changes. We know it has no borders or boundaries. We even know it is us. This is a clue!

We cannot see it. It is the invisible screen on which the full array of life plays out. But it is the background, the foundation, of every thing, every sense, every thought. The spiritual journey is the movement of identification from our thought-created self and world to this greater vessel of Awareness.

The struggle is in going through the machinations of working this out. The logic of it is accessible and clear, profound and creative. Our direct experience shows us that there are no objects, there is no space, there is no self or other. There is nothing but the perception of these phenomena. Any solid identity of such cannot be found. There is only sensation; there is only experience.

The mind will see this clearly, and then lapse back into its old paradigm of separation and time and events. And then we will prod it out of this again…and again. Eventually we see that while the mind is helpful in opening us to the absolute perspective, it cannot be the place of rest. Its natural tendency is to curl back into itself, wandering from idea to idea, never finding peace.

The solution is the one step backward. Appreciate where mind has taken you. It has transported you across the river. Step away from it onto the shore. Rest there. Don’t get back into the boat. It has served its purpose. Yet how reluctant we still can be to leave the boat!

No one can take this struggle from you as long as you feel you need it. Perhaps, like me, this won’t happen until you have thought a million, nay, a trillion thoughts, and have been clever and amazing and profound and brilliant. But eventually, you will give up those genius thoughts and rest in the simple Awareness that you are.

If this has been your path, there is no need to feel that this was wasted time or effort. Those trillion thoughts have served you well. To finally see that there is no solution there, no matter which way you turn the mind, is to fully grasp the profound value of Awareness. When you finally put down those genius thoughts and settle comfortably into Awareness, allowing it to percolate throughout your dreamscape, you begin to see the source of everything—and mysteriously find yourself humming for no particular reason.

Julee Bergstrom is enrolled in The Living Method Continuing Student Program. She lives in the UK.