Tony Parsons

The Open Secret communication can only point to the simple wonder of being, and attempt to illuminate the futility of seeking for it. It does not accept or reject the teachings of spiritual path or process but it will expose, without compromise, the singular and fundamental misconception that drives the belief that there is something called a seeker that needs to find something else called enlightenment.

The Open Secret does not compromise with the needs and expectations of the seeker. Neither does it attempt to attract or please with promises of an easy and pleasant experience of liberation. Who could promise that and who would experience it?

Because the idea of individual free will and choice is seen as an illusory dream, there is no agenda or intention to help or change individuality. As far as the apparent individual is concerned, there is nothing for sale here.

The sense of being a separate individual feels very real and affects every part of that apparent experience. It is a state of contracted energy which becomes embodied and which brings with it a feeling of disquiet and longing. There can be a held sense of feeling unworthy and of having lost something indescribable. It is as though the “me” resides within the boundaries of the body and sees everything outside as something else with which it has to negotiate. Out of these experiences is generated a compulsion to continuously seek comfort or release. This is the dream of individuality which seems real until it doesn’t.

The “me” searches for peace and fulfilment, the “me” searches for self-improvement or purity, presence or detachment. The “me” seeks clarity or any formula which will give the “me” what it thinks it wants or needs. But the “me” not getting what it wants is not the dilemma. The dilemma is “me”.

No amount of effort, process, clarity or belief can ever bring anything other than more “me” searching for that which the “me” cannot have or know.

The suggestion that separation is only a thought or an understanding that comes or goes in presence is an initially attractive idea for the seeker who dreams of an easy answer which isn’t personally challenging and will bring permanent happiness. Thoughts of separation are only individual stories about an already held state of feeling restricted and apart. If separation was only a thought or a belief, it could be seen through or changed to its opposite, and then “BINGO” there would be liberation . . . you would think!

Such idealistic communications often go hand in hand with a relentless reiteration of the idea that separation is “fine” because there is only ever oneness. This is like telling a blind person that blindness is “fine” because all there is is seeing. Of course there is only oneness. But what apparently arises in oneness is a deep sense of separation which doesn’t feel “fine”.

These conceptual notions speak only of symptoms and do not recognise the source of the apparent dilemma that can fill every part of feeling separate.

In essence what is sought is love. But it is the love that is absolute, all-embracing and eternal. It is this overwhelming love that many have glimpsed, and which I attempted to describe in The Open Secret when I seemed to be walking across a park and then was no more anyone. It wasn’t experienced because there was suddenly no experiencer. It was a glimpse that no-one glimpsed. I then returned as “a someone” and tried again and again to re-discover that unconditional love which I could not know.

It is that love which is alluded to in literature, music and art. The most fascinating love stories are about unrequited love, because they point to that absolute love which the individual cannot possess. The powerful fascination of falling in love comes out of a primal sense that in that love you could be lost. It is that overwhelming love which is in all of our longing and is the fullness in the emptiness, the everything in the nothing. It is unconditional love which also appears as its opposite. Wonderfully, it is also that very love which constantly sings to us through our senses and in every part of the aliveness that is happening.

Liberation is a word used to describe an apparent release from the illusion of feeling imprisoned and apart from love, or wholeness. That shift is essentially an energetic release out of contraction into boundlessness.

Whenever and wherever there is a deep and uncompromising sharing together of the very real paradox of being, a palpable resonance can emerge. Out of that openness there can be a release of that contraction into boundlessness and what arises is the wonder of simply being.

Already Being

What is sought remains hidden from the seeker by already being everything.

It is so obvious and simple that the grasping of it obscures it. Never found, never knowable, being is the consummate absence that is beyond measure.

Looking for being is believing it is lost. Has anything been lost, or is it simply that the looking keeps it away? Does the beloved always dance constantly just beyond our serious focus?

The very intention to seek for a mythical treasure within life inevitably obscures the reality that life is already the treasure.

By seeking the myth it dreams it can attain, the seeker effectively avoids that which it most fears … its absence.

Liberation is like a fuse that suddenly blows, and all the little lights go out and there is only light.

This is not a message about you or me or anyone getting anything. This is about the realisation that there’s nothing to get … that what has been sought has never been lost.

This isn’t about seeking or not seeking; it’s beyond the concepts of Advaita and non-dualism and beyond the idea of reaching states of awareness or mindfulness. There’s no goal. There’s nothing on offer. This is totally beyond knowing.

This is really a description – a sharing together of a description of something that is beyond attainment, something that can’t be lost and also can’t be grasped or gained.

All the time there’s separation there’s a sense of loss, there’s a sense of a feeling that there’s something that isn’t whole. And so the seeker attempts to fill that void, fill it with something – whatever. And some look to something called “enlightenment” because it is felt that enlightenment might be the thing that will fill this sense of loss; it could be the answer to some secret that we don’t quite get.

And it sounds, when we read about enlightenment, as though somebody else has found the secret. But nobody’s found the secret.

There’s no such thing as an enlightened person. It’s a complete misconception. But the difficulty is that being seekers, the energy of seeking pushes us into being attracted to the idea that somebody else has found something that we can find, because we grow up believing that effort brings results. So, if effort brings results, and we’ve heard of something called enlightenment or liberation, we can make the effort and then we can become liberated or enlightened … like this guy up the road we’ve heard about, or that woman that’s giving satsangs. They have got something that I want. If I go there I will learn how to get it.

In the dream there’s still an idea that enlightenment or liberation is something that’s attainable. And so there are teachings that reinforce the idea that you are an individual that has choice, so now you, as an individual, can choose to self-enquire or to meditate, or whatever else, and eventually you could become enlightened.

You can go all over the world and find teachings offering something to get. It is rare, however, to find an uncompromising communication that offers nothing at all to the seeker.

This aliveness is nothing being everything. It’s just life happening. It’s not happening to anyone. There’s a whole set of experiences happening here and they’re happening in emptiness … they’re happening in free fall. They’re just what’s happening. All there is is life. All there is is beingness. There isn’t anyone that ever has or does not have it. There’s nobody that has life and somebody else doesn’t have life. There just is life being life.

This message is so simple it totally confounds the mind. This message is too simple. Already your mind’s saying, “Yes, but come on … what about the levels of enlightenment and what about my emotional blocks, and what about my chakras, they’re not all fully open? What about my stillness – I’m not really still yet, and what about my ego? Somebody told me I still have an ego … it’s a bit reduced but it’s still there.”

But all of that, all of those ideas are adopted lessons about how it should be. The ego is what’s happening. The ego is just being ego. Thinking is just being thinking. There is only being. There is just being. There’s nothing else. There’s nobody that’s running that. There’s no destiny, there’s no God, there’s no plan, there’s no script, there’s nowhere to go because there is only timeless being. Being is totally whole just being. And it is alive and fleshy and sexy and juicy and immediately this; it’s not some concept about ‘there’s no-one here’. It’s not some concept about ‘there’s nowhere to go’. It is the aliveness that’s in that body right now. There is pure beingness, pure aliveness. That’s it. End of story.

Really it is simply that. So there is no-one, there is no choice. There is no choice at any level. Oneness didn’t choose to become two. There is just oneness. All there is, is oneness being alive with nobody doing it. Is anybody doing breathing? Is anybody doing blood circulation? Is anybody really doing anything? No. There is just apparent doing. Apparent life in freefall.

There is no answer to life because life is its own answer. It’s happening already. It’s this. You never lost it. That’s the amazing thing about liberation. When liberation apparently happens people say, “It’s amazing because the thing I was looking for has never left me. It’s the one thing that never comes and never goes – the one constant that can’t be known or held onto.” And the one constant is being.

Seeing and Not Seeing

A simple, direct, but fundamental shift in perception reveals that all there is is liberation. But oneness does not become apparent through something gained, rather through something lost. Many will come across this rare and radical message and quickly shuffle back to that which they think they can know and do. But there are those with whom this communication will resonate . . . and there will be a sudden seeing and falling away of all seeking, even for that which they have called enlightenment.

All there is is this. Oneness is being this . . . whatever is apparently happening . . . reading these words, breathing, blood coursing through the body, sounds being heard, thoughts coming and going and feelings in the body the sense of sitting on a seat maybe. Here is oneness being aliveness as this.

No effort is needed for that aliveness to be. Nobody is doing aliveness. Is anybody doing sitting on a chair? Thinking is oneness thinking "I don't get where this is going", or "this is too simple". All is simply aliveness, oneness, being. It cannot be taught or achieved. Who is apart from being to achieve being? Who can lose or gain this when this is all there is? Resisting oneness is oneness resisting. Seeking oneness is oneness seeking itself.

Aliveness is oneness apparently happening. Aliveness is being alive. There is only being and the nature of that being is emptiness and fullness, nothing and everything, movement and repose.

In that wholeness arises the idea "I am a separate individual". This seems to be the beginning of a dream called "me being someone in a world with which I have to negotiate".

Here in this separation is the root of all fear and feeling of disquiet coming out of a sense of loss. Again it is the appearance of oneness, and in that appearance we embark on a journey in which we meet parents, teachers, maybe priests, bosses and lovers, and learn how to get what we think we want seemingly through personal choice and effort. The pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain generate transient experiences of gratification and disappointment. The whole manifestation that we call life is simply the drama of oneness looking for itself, for all desire is the longing for oneness.

For some the idea of enlightenment seems to offer the promise offulfilment. However, the separate individual can only dream individuality. That is its function.

Inevitably in the search for enlightenment, the dream seeker is attracted to a dream teaching that promotes and reinforces the idea of individual choice and effort, which, through discipline and sacrifice, can lead to the promised ultimate experience of enlightenment. But this teaching reinforces the illusion that there is such a thing as an individual who has free will and the choice to become.

What is inseparable from the dream of individuality is the idea of ownership. "What is happening is happening to me. I have a life called me and I can, or even should, do something with my life in the time allotted; I have to succeed; I am an individual and personal endeavour can bring me what I need." This misconception promotes the continuation of the dream of personal enlightenment.

The idea that presumes the possibility that dualistic practices can lead the apparent seeker to the nondualistic perception is similar to the idea that with sufficient effort and determination you can teach a blind man to see. To quote "Doctrines, processes and progressive paths which seek enlightenment only exacerbate the problem they address by reinforcing the idea that the apparent self can find something it presumes it has lost. It is that very effort, that investment in selfidentity that continuously recreates the illusion of separation from oneness. This is the veil which we believe exists. It is the dream of individuality." (The Open Secret)

Out of all the many awakenings that have been described to me, it is continuously confirmed that one of the first realisations that arises is the seeing that noone awakens. And yet we see that the majority of teachings, both traditional and contemporary, are constantly speaking to an apparent separate seeker (subject) and recommending that in order to attain enlightenment (object) they should choose to meditate, selfenquire, purify, cultivate understanding, still the mind and the ego, surrender, be honest, seek earnestly, give up seeking, do therapy, do nothing, be here now, and so on . . . the ideas are as endless and as complicated as the mind from where they are generated.

These recommendations arise from the belief that the "enlightenment" of the "teacher" has been attained or earned through the application of choice, effort, acceptance or surrender, and that other seekers can be taught to do the same.

Of course there can be nothing right or wrong with earnest seeking, meditation, selfenquiry, understanding and so on. They are simply what they appear to be. But who is it that is going to choose to make the effort? Where is the effort going to take the apparent chooser to? where is there to go if there is only oneness? If there is no separate individual there is no volition, and so how can an illusion dispel itself?

There is no person that becomes enlightened. No one awakens. Awakening is the absence of the illusion of individuality. Already there is only awakeness, oneness, timeless being, radical aliveness. When the dream seeker is no more it is seen (by no one) that there is nothing to seek and no one to become liberated.

Here is oneness, the realisation of wholeness that cannot be attained or owned. This is the awakening in which the awareness of what is arises together with the dreaming of that which cannot be known. There can be a dance between dreaming and being, and in that dance there can be a return to the fascination of personal ownership.

However, the realisation that the dream seeker is also oneness is liberation, the uncaused, impersonal, silent stillness which is the celebration of unconditional love. This is all there is.

There is no me or you, no seeker, no enlightenment, no disciple and no guru. There is no better or worse, no path or purpose, and nothing that has to be achieved.

All appearance is source. All that apparently manifests in the hypnotic dream of separation the world, the life story, the search for home, is one appearing as two the nothing appearing as everything, the absolute appearing as the particular.

There is no separate intelligence weaving a destiny and no choice functioning at any level. Nothing is happening but this, as it is, invites the apparent seeker to rediscover that which is . . . the abiding, uncaused, unchanging, impersonal silence from which unconditional love overflows and celebrates. It is the wonderful mystery.

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Source: http://www.theopensecret.com/