In Dante’s words

Everything has already been said. It has all been written down for more than two millennia. The truth has been fully revealed. Nothing truly new can be added. Certainly not by my pen or my voice.

For decades I was a seeker, and something of a warrior. I soon understood that fighting and killing ‘dragons’ was neither necessary nor useful. Instead of the ‘sword’, I preferred the magic wand, the magician’s wand. As a magician, I believed it was necessary to change one’s own ‘eyes’, one’s own worldview, rather than change the ‘ugly and evil’ world.

Only recently—15 or perhaps 20 years ago—did the awareness become clear that the ‘world’ and the ‘magician’ are one and the same. And if the world, perfect just as it is, does not need changing, then neither does the magician.

But without the intention to CHANGE, the magician dissolves, becoming a useless project without meaning.

Increasingly, life is lived innocently, without intention or volition. There is no need to DO anything, not even to discover WHO I AM.

When I am cold, it is unpleasant, and oppressive heat bothers me. At night I sleep and dream, and forget my dreams. All quite normal, then. I feel irritation and excitement, enthusiasm and listlessness. These emotional ‘objects’, too, are seen from the neutral space. Thoughts arise and change, then leave, sometimes replaced by other thoughts. Sometimes there is a pause, longer or shorter… SILENCE… EMPTINESS. Not two. Neither I nor world.

What is sometimes called PRESENCE, or ‘self-remembering’, happens without being brought about, sought or willed by the ‘I’ that believes it is in command and can also choose.

When I speak, I use the words I, me, mine, and so on. Partly out of habit (that is, unconsciously), and often simply for ease of verbal communication.

‘I like it’ and ‘I don’t like it’ have almost entirely lost their meaning—not because some realities resonate harmoniously while others jar, but because the ME that disdains and perhaps rejects has lost its power. Or, as the sorcerer would say, ‘self-importance is dissolving’.

This manifestation of life that my mother called dante has no name and, being a fluid process, no form either. Yet it feels GRACE flowing through its veins with the blood, and is content with the beauty surrounding it.

Its soft ‘heart’ is moved by the expressions of love that are so common and so readily available.

There is no boasting and no self-deprecation, because it is clear that everything happens by itself, in the wild and wonderful play that SEEMS to be taking place.

I am neither a master nor a guru, except to myself. In the moments when the mind settles and becomes silent, the faint voice of BEING makes itself known. This is true for anyone, at any moment. So the practice consists of slowing down the MINDBODY, and slowing it down still further, until it comes to a stop.

In stillness: silence, emptiness, BEING.

These words echo the teachings that have been offered to us since the dawn of time.

Nothing new, then.

Nothing to do

Nothing to seek

Nothing to change. And so

every practice seems useless; every search keeps us at a distance instead of bringing us closer…

Yet, paradoxically, an immense effort, a stroke of genius or a stroke of luck may bring us to the point of disillusionment, and perhaps to SURRENDER.

It is the surrender of the ‘I’ that commands, that believes it can control, decide between good and evil, between right and wrong, and choose.

I do not know what makes this mental construction collapse: perhaps many lifetimes, or painful traumas, or a growing grace that makes the vessel overflow.

And so here I am, whispering:

SURRENDER