7. The Fact Of Our Existence.

Mount Kangchendzonga.

Almost all the actions, reactions and thoughts that govern our day to day lives arise from a feeling       that we exist.  This is so obvious and it probably seems absurd even to mention it and yet its the very obviousness of this fact that leads us to overlook it.  To simply take it for granted and in so doing to  miss something of the utmost importance to each and every one of us.

If all of our troubles stem from the mistaken belief that we exist as individual, separate characters in the little human drama called life, then the resolution of these same troubles also lies within this same sense of existing.

We feel ourselves to be so and so or such and such,  and we play out the life of this or that character believing unquestioningly in its reality.  How can we peel back the layers of conditioned thinking that constantly clamor for our attention?  How can we shift the focus of our attention away from the little self?  All of our time and energy are consumed by the preoccupations, hopes and fears of this 'self', the true source of which, we know almost nothing about...

That we exist is a feeling that all of us are utterly familiar with.  So familiar, that we never give it a single moments consideration, let alone the serious attention that it deserves. When we read a news paper we see only the script and the pictures on the page, we don't notice the paper upon which it is written. And yet if the paper were not there, no story could be told.

As life becomes busier, with ever more distractions, more things to grab our attention and pull it away from its own natural state, there is a desperately urgent need to reconsider our priorities.  Everything we need is already right here with us.  There is no necessity to create anything anew, there is nothing to learn, nothing that needs to be done.

What we truly are, is the simplest and most natural thing we can ever BE.


We just need to be prepared to stop, look and listen... not at the outer world and its outer sights and sounds, but at THAT  within which, all of those sights and sounds are arising.