A Few Simple Instructions.

I’m a very practical person. I don’t like talking endlessly about non-duality and awareness – what else can one say about them? But if there is something that might be of some practical help to somebody, I do want to talk about it. I want to make it available and understandable in a practical way.

That’s not always easy to do, because we have built much resistance to seeing the most obvious truths that are the basis of our freedom. If I can help you to identify this resistance, then it won’t be just talking – it will be practical. But you have to do this, not just read it. That’s the practical part. Instructions will follow this brief introduction.

The whole idea of the spiritual search – the quest for enlightenment – is based on a false premise. The false premise is that we can, in fact, gain – or benefit in some way – from receiving a special insight or knowledge that we think others have gotten. Maybe we think it will come from a vision, or a blissful experience that becomes a permanent state, or a dropping away of something, or an emotional “getting” at a deep physical level in the body. But one way or the other, we think we will gain something. We’ll be happier, or something like that.

This is the false premise. The truth is: You can’t gain anything. Don’t take my word for it – look for validation of this in the literature. Do the sages say, “Go and find the special something, and when you gain it, you will be whole”? No, of course not. They say, “You are already whole.”

And the key is this false premise: I am not whole yet, and I need to gain something to get whole. But the sages tell you flat out: You can’t gain anything – you are already the whole of it!

But “I am already whole” is almost impossible to grasp directly – we have to sneak up on it from behind. We do this by identifying what we are not – by looking at our false ideas of separateness and lack. When you uncover the lie behind the idea “I lack something, and I can gain something,” you'll know that you were already what you were looking for, and the search is over. Luckily, this is very easy to check out in your own experience.

Here’s how you do it. First, ask yourself what you want. Write it down. This may not be easy, because our desires are actually very vague and slippery – we feel very strongly about them, but we’ve never really stopped to delineate and define them. Pretty silly, isn’t it? You’ll find out how vague they are when you try to write them down.

For every item you desire – say, to stop the constant mental chatter, or to stop fearing everything all the time – ask another question of each one: What will be gained? What will I have when I have accomplished this thing?

This will bring up the next layer of what you want – what you think you’ll get if you have these other things. For instance, if the mental chatter stops, I’ll have inner peace. So the next layer down is a desire for inner peace. Good! Ask the second question again: What will I have then? What will I have when I get inner peace?

If you keep going with this – very quickly, right now, just blow through all the layers – you’ll come to a dead end. You’ll get to a place where you realize the wanting just perpetuates itself. There isn’t anything finally gained. If you have inner peace, so what? Can you say why you want that? Finally the futility of wanting is experienced directly; the tail-chasing is abruptly interrupted by biting down, and the whole operation falls to the floor in a thud.

But, you ask, won’t inner peace be better? Certainly it will, right? I’ll be happy, right? But...then what? What happens when I’m happy? Well....I don’t know. Maybe....there’s nothing to want. Not even happiness.

If you would like to see examples of others in the process of doing this questioning, read the Dialogues I have posted on my Writings page. But doing it yourself, and biting down on your own tail, is important. Challenge your own misconceptions, don’t just read about someone else doing it. Find out for yourself that “I’m going to gain from this” is all that’s keeping you from seeing the total perfection that is right in front of your nose. You can do this right now, in one sitting.

What do I want, and what do I think I’ll have when I get it? If I get this thing I’m wanting, then what? What will I have then? And then what? And then what? See if there is really anything there, at the end of this chain of wanting. The desires are lying to you. Find out! See for yourself! This wanting is all that is falsifying your view of yourself as you are: already whole, satisfied in every way, at the deepest levels imaginable.

Don’t be put off by the apparent contradiction that there is something to be gained from doing this. There isn’t. You’ll stop searching, that’s all. It doesn’t matter one way or the other.

Everything – everything! – is already fine the way it is. Total freedom, spontaneously occurring, without need for anything to be different. See for yourself.

In 2005, tired of seeking, Annette began looking into the false assumptions that fuel the spiritual search and keep it going indefinitely. With the help of Bob Adamson, John Wheeler, and Stephen Wingate, she dismantled every illusion that there is something to seek. Annette lives in Mill Valley, California, and has been sharing clear pointers with others since 2005. Her website is www.whatneverchanges.com.