Encountering Pure Mystery

Being your true self, being your true nature, is different than experiencing it with thought. Realize that you are the mystery, and that you can’t really look at the mystery because you are only capable of looking from the mystery. There is a very awake, alive, and loving mystery, and that’s what is seeing through your eyes at this moment. That’s what is hearing through your ears at this moment. Instead of trying to figure it all out, which is impossible, I suggest you ask, "What’s ultimately behind this set of eyes?" Turn around to see what is looking. Encounter pure mystery, which is pure spirit, and wake up to what you are.

The mystery always takes care of itself -- as long as we are not addicted to following concepts. This addiction cuts off your access to the mystery. It’s like having a jewel in your pocket but you can’t get your hand into the pocket to pull it out. When you deeply know that you are the mystery experiencing itself, you realize that’s all that is ever happening. Whether you call an experience a me or a you, a good day or a rotten day, beauty or ugliness, compassion or cruelty -- it’s all still the mystery experiencing itself, extending itself into time and form. That’s all that is happening.

If this understanding is held only in your head, you can know it but you are not being it. The head is saying, "Oh, I know, I’m the mystery," and yet your body is acting like it didn’t get the message. It’s saying, "I’m still somebody, and I’ve got all these anxious thoughts and wants and desires." When we are being it knowingly, the whole being receives the message. And when the whole body receives the message, it’s like air going out of a balloon. When all the contradiction, turmoil, and searching for this and that deflates, there is the experience that the body is an extension of the mystery. Then the body can easily be moved by the mystery, by pure spirit.

--Adyashanti, From "Emptiness Dancing"