The Ocean and the Drop
El océano y la gota
An invitation to notice how the sense of being a separate self is created, and to feel into the boundless awareness you already are.
The Ocean and the Drop
Water as metaphor
Water is an image that is used a lot in this work as a metaphor:
the ocean and the drop, the rivers flowing.
So the image that we are a drop wanting to reach the ocean is confusing,
because we already are the ocean.
We just believe ourselves to be a drop.
And so although this is a metaphor,
it gets to be as literally true as possible.
There is nothing to attain.
Nowhere to get to.
Everything you need and long for is here.
It already is.
Feeling into what resists
Because you contemplate that, feel into it,
it will highlight the feeling, the sense that it's not true.
If you contemplate "everything I long for is already here,"
you'll have a sense that something is saying, in some form, "no, it's not."
And this "no," in whatever form it takes,
will be coming from a center.
Something called "I," that sense of a subject.
That sense of a subject resisting, wanting.
Make room for that.
Bring it into the light.
Seeing the subject
What you are is not a subject.
Thought appears, we call it "my thought."
A sensation appears, we call it "me, my sensation."
A sound appears and we call it "I hear the sound."
What if this reflecting is no more than another thought
creating a mirage of a subject?
See if you can notice how this is happening.
It's so constant and persistent, so fundamental,
that we overlook it as a thing happening.
We know it as just reality and how things are, the nature of being.
What if there is no center?
What if experiencing, consciousness, awareness
doesn't have a localized central subject?
What if you as subject is everywhere?
What if you are taking the shape of a sound,
the shape and form and taste of a sensation,
the shape and form of a thought.
What if you are not something?
What if you are already every drop in the ocean, right now, always?
An absolute intimacy with everything.
Everything arising is our being.
The pull to remain a drop
Our mind is going to fight this.
A part of us is going to pull hard
to preserve the sense of being a drop,
but it's like a mirage.
There was no drop in the first place.
If something tingles or resonates as true,
listen to that, trust that.
If it brings up fear, resistance, a sense of contraction,
it's the same thing.
There would not be fear if there was no truth in this.
Trust what resonates.
Stoke the fire of this longing for truth.
Every resonating glimpse is the water of life.
Drink every drop.
Beyond all distinctions
Heaven and hell exist only in a dream.
This dream is only real if you believe it.
Spiritual and non-spiritual, the worldly:
that distinction only exists in a dream.
The present moment does not exist.
There is nothing other than the present moment.
So how can it be a thing if it is everything?
It cannot end, it cannot begin.
Here and now is like a thorn,
and the sense that past and future are real, both are thorns.
Nowhere to go.
Nothing to do.
The perceiver and the perceived
Does a sound need a perceiver in order to be?
Or are the sounding and the hearing the same thing?
Does a feeling need a feeler in order to be?
Or are the feeling and the feeler the same thing?
Is the sense of a subject, a feeler, just a thought, an afterthought?
Noticing how claiming works
Notice how you have sensations.
The contact of your body with your chair, your couch.
That sensation has been present throughout the whole meditation
without you calling it "I have this sensation," "my sensation."
Only when you focus your attention, your mind on it,
comes the afterthought of a subject claiming it as "my sensation."
Same with every sound.
Every thought.
Notice how they appear, how they are,
before they are claimed to be perceived by a subject.
Notice the mind moving around, highlighting, and claiming.
"I perceive this, I perceive that, I think this."
"This which I perceive is inside of I, this which I perceive is outside of I."
Making them up.
What are you?
But even this activity,
this imagination of "I" and past and future and subjects and objects,
that is also appearing.
If you notice it, then what are you?
Because you can't be that.
What if what you are is all of it, everywhere?
The experience itself, boundless.
Empty and full, vibrant, infinitely creative,
and yet always still.
Always being, without beginning or end.
Feel into, not these words,
but what they point to in your most intimate, true experience.
The reality of you.