The Topsy-Turvy Nature of the Absolute by Adam Volny

There is an identity, but no entity. There is a personality, but no person.

The nondual teacher Rupert Spira once explained that the nature of objects is that they can be set apart from one another. We can distinguish the smell of coffee from the warm rays of the sun touching our skin. We know the sound of a flowing creek from the sight of a friend’s smile. States of mind are also objects: We know the difference between a feeling of sadness and a doubtful thought, between energized enthusiasm and quiet contemplation.

Objects, either subtle or gross, thus seem to be the totality of our experience. They are that which we attempt to embrace, evade, maintain or change. As spiritual seekers, we may focus more on thoughts and feelings rather than external circumstances, but nevertheless, we are still instinctively searching for an object—the awakening “object.” We search for the clarity object and the freedom object. But there are no objects. There is only the perception of objectivity.

We look for something we can acquire, hold and maintain—something we can set apart from everything else. But there is no such thing. What we are looking for lies just below the search. Right here, right now, in your present experience, here it is—as it always was and as you know it. Are you willing to stop denying that knowledge for just one moment? Pause. Just notice it. That’s all that is necessary. It is not hidden or obscured. It is before, below and beyond the acquisition and becoming. It is in the gaps between thoughts and words. And it pervades all these things, through and through.

When we stop chasing surrender and when we stop chasing the stopping of the chase, what more is needed? It’s this simple. When you don’t need anything, what do you need?

This arising is empty of content. That is because there is no context. Content is always relative to its context. The context, your sense of “I am,” is a dream, and therefore the content—all that happens to this “me”—is also a part of the dream.

The sense of being, the “I am,” is a reflection of your true self, and the content of your life hovers like a mist over this reflection. You remain untouched. The image in the mirror doesn’t affect the mirror. The mist might further obscure both the reflection and the mirror, but it never changes the truth of the mirror. You are neither the knower nor the known. You are their source. They are both empty objects that arise within You.

You are beyond self-identification and non-self-identification. The dreaming is falsely identified with the sense of I am. But you are not even that. You are the source of it, the mother’s womb that makes it possible, the reality that pervades and precedes it. Without You, not even nothing is. You have no opposite. Recognize now that You have written these words. You have written them for Yourself. Notice that it can’t be otherwise, that there is no alternative to this scenario.

It is when You lose the interest in becoming that the magic happens. All else is maintenance. The only thing that needs maintenance is the illusion. The appearance must constantly reinforce itself; otherwise, it would simply dissipate. What is it that stays the same? What is it in your experience that doesn’t change? What is it that lies below the doubt that you can find Yourself?

You don’t need to add more of the clarity object. It won’t satisfy you—nor will the satisfaction seeking object. It is when you let these be that something happens. You are not an object. Nor are you the subject. You are that which gives them both the appearance of reality.

You are the only reality manifesting through these beautiful, helpless and flawed mechanisms, sometimes gasping for breath in the turbulence of life, at other times at the tops of their worlds tasting the sweetness of fortune. And even though nothing is, these lives might still be worth living and loving fully, without reservation. Trust that there is enough space within you to embrace every expression. Claim Yourself. Claim Yourself fully.

Adam Volny is enrolled in The Living Method Continuing Student Program. He lives in the Czech Republic.