Opposing what Is from Steven Kaufman's blog

Nothing can actually disturb you.

 

Only you can disturb yourself.

 

And how do you disturb yourself?

 

By opposing what Is.

 

 

Experiences arise within your Awareness

 

Like reflections that appear on a calm pool of water.

 

Let them be and the water remains calm.

 

Try to push them away or cling to them

 

and the water becomes disturbed.

 

 

Your Consciousness is the water of Is-ness within which the reflections of experience arise.

 

When you do not swat at or cling to the reflections you create one type of experience.

 

When you swat at or cling to the reflections you create the opposite type of experience.

 

 

Thus the experiences that arise are not unrelated to your attitude of allowing or opposition toward the experiences that have already arisen.

 

 

When your attitude toward the experiences that have already arisen and which are arising is one of allowing, the water remains calm and the reflections that arise tend to have the quality of wantedness.

 

When your attitude toward the experiences that have already arisen and which are arising is one of opposition, the water becomes disturbed and the reflections that arise tend to have the quality of unwantedness.

 

 

When one becomes involved in a relation of opposition to what Is, through opposition to the reflections that arise on the surface of What Is, thereby disturbing the surface of what Is and imparting upon the reflections that rest there the quality of unwantedness, it then seems that the unwantedness that one then feels has as its source the reflection that one is opposing.

 

This is an illusion.

 

The unwantedness that one feels while involved in a relation of opposition to what Is, through opposition to the reflections that arise on the surface of what Is, has as its only source one's opposition to what Is. 

 

 

The difficulty lies in the fact that, while opposing what Is and disturbing the waters, what Is becomes hidden or obscured, leaving one aware of only the reflection that one is either pushing against or clinging to as well as the feeling of unwantedness created by one's involvement in the relation of opposition to the now hidden what Is, thereby creating the appearance that the feeling of unwantedness is being caused by the reflection that one is either pushing against or clinging to, making it then seem even more necessary and imperative to push against or cling to more fervently the reflection, thereby increasing one's relation of opposition to the now hidden what Is, thereby increasing the feeling of unwantedness that appears to be caused by the reflection,  making it then seem even more necessary and imperative to push against or cling to more fervently the reflection, and on and on it goes.

 

 

What Is cannot reappear as what Is until one ceases to oppose It.

 

What Is is always there, it just cannot be Known as That until one ceases to oppose it.

 

And because what Is is identical to what you Are, you cannot Know what you Are until you cease to oppose what is ultimately Yourself.

 

 

Why does opposing what Is cause it to become hidden from one who opposes It?

 

Because the relation of opposition to what Is requires that one's attention lie not in the direction of what Is, but that it rather lie in the direction  of what-is-not, which is to say, upon the reflection one is either pushing against or clinging to.  

 

That is all.

 

 

When one is looking south, what lies to the north becomes hidden.

What lies to the north does not cease to exist when one looks south, nor does what Is cease to be what Is when one looks toward what-is-not.

 

 

It is easy to turn back and look north from a position of looking south, so that what lies north can again easily be known.

 

It is not easy to turn back and look upon what Is from a position  of looking as what-is-not, so that what Is cannot again easily be known.

 

 

Why is it easy to look north again having once looked south, but not easy to look again at what Is after having looked in opposition at what-is-not?

 

Imagine that if when one looked south all knowledge that there was such a thing as north vanished.

 

That is why.

 

 

When one looks south one still knows that there is also a north, and so one knows there is another direction to turn toward.

 

However, when one looks in opposition at what-is-not one forgets or no longer knows that there is also what Is, and so there then seems to be no other direction to turn.

 

 

Why when one looks south does one still know that there is a north, but when one looks in opposition at what-is-not one no longer knows that there is also what Is?

 

Imagine that if when one looked south and seeing what was there that one thought that they were already looking north.

 

That is why.

 

 

When one's attention is on what-is-not through opposition to what Is, what-is-not appears to be what is, and so the Real what Is must appear as something else, and so appears as what is not.

 

That is how what Is vanishes while still in plain sight.

 

That is why our Consciousness, which is always there, and without which there could be no apprehension of any experience, no apprehension of any reflection, seems to be something less than the reflections that arise within it, and so seems to be something not worthy of our attention.

 

 

Almost all attempts to free one's self from the cage of what-is-not only serve to involve one in some other more subtle form of self-opposition, and so only create a more subtle cage, that one may at times mistake for freedom, owing to its greater subtlety.

 

This is because action taken from within the unwantedness of the cage of what-is-not usually involves trying to get to what is wanted, or what is thought to be wanted, by either trying to get rid of the unwanted or by clinging to the wanted, both of which actions continue to involve one in the relation of Self-opposition or opposition to what Is that simultaneously continues to make what-is-not seem to be what is while continuing to hide what Is from view.

 

 

This is why perhaps the most direct and sure path to Realization, i.e., to realizing one's true Nature as that which is pointed toward by the word Consciousness, is just ceasing to oppose what is, or what seems to be what is, which is to say, ceasing to oppose the reflections that seem to be what is.

 

As Eckhart Tolle says, become friendly with the present moment, however it appears.

 

Because even from within the illusion and delusion, if one ceases to oppose what only seems to be what is, then one is nonetheless, in that moment, ceasing to oppose what actually is what Is, thereby interrupting, for at least that moment, the self-perpetuating cycle of reflexive and conditioned opposition to what Is that keeps the nature of what Is as what Is hidden from us and so keeps our nature as That hidden as well. 

 

Breaking that cycle of conditioned opposition to what Is allows what Is to reappear as what Is, (which reappearance Tolle refers to as allowing Space or Spaciousness to arise around the experience) and also allows the reflections to appear as only reflections, thereby making it easier to identify with the now apparent Is-ness of one's Consciousness rather than with the now apparent reflections that are now seen to only arise within that Consciousness.