The Knowing of All Rivers
El Conocer de Todos los Ríos
A meditation exploring who you really are by gently setting aside what you are not, opening into the quiet knowing that welcomes everything.
The Knowing of All Rivers
I'm only really interested in one thing here.
And that could be said in very many different ways,
and that's why it sounds like we talk about many things.
We can talk about anything here,
but I'm only really here talking about one thing.
What's the thing?
You could say it's a thing that can't be named,
or the thing with infinite names.
You could say: who are you?
What are you? Who am I? What am I?
You could also say: what is this?
So it's really questions.
What is the nature of this?
What is real?
You could also say: what are you not?
What you are not
So what are we not?
You can't really say what you are,
but you can say what you're not.
Meditation is a tool.
Observing thoughts is a tool for realizing,
for seeing what you're not.
So if you look at thoughts,
you can disidentify with thoughts.
And you disidentify because you were initially identified,
which means you thought you were your thoughts.
The reason why this is valuable or important is because
the root of suffering is this confusion,
this misunderstanding about what we are or what we're not.
So even when we're talking about our life situation, some challenges,
we can discuss and work through around relationships and work and all of this.
At the core of it, what I will be pointing to,
or trying to walk back towards,
is a clearing of the illusions,
the misunderstanding,
the misinterpretation.
We can do it directly by contemplating the question "who am I?"
or we can do it more indirectly,
but sometimes more powerfully in some situations, more practical,
by looking at the issues and the suffering that comes up in life situations.
Who are you?
And so the question: who are you?
There is one answer that can be said in one word.
And that answer, the one that is closest, is: this.
So the question: who are you?
The answer is this.
More normally, we experience, we interpret:
I am this body. I am not that other body.
I am only a human being.
I am not the ocean.
You can't convince yourself that you are also the ocean
through thought,
through belief and thinking.
"I am the tree" will not work.
Undoing the misinterpretation
By seeing what you're not,
by uncovering the misinterpretation, the confusion,
the beliefs that force ourselves into a body,
into being only this body.
That happens through thought, through beliefs.
By challenging this, by undoing this,
something can free up,
and you can recognize in your experience you are everything.
Not through thought,
but through pure knowing.
Natural,
ordinary,
undeniable knowing.
Sounds and sensations
The sound you're hearing,
the sound of this voice, the sound in your environment,
is created in the moment.
It appears and it fades, all emerging
from the emptiness of self.
The pulsating, tingling of sensations in the body,
appearing,
created into the moment,
emerging from self.
Empty self.
An emptiness that resists nothing, that knows.
The welcoming
At the core of this emptiness
is a receptivity,
a welcoming.
Welcoming to everything that is happening.
All that is.
There's nothing you need to do to welcome.
You can recognize it's happening.
It's the nature of experience.
All that appears:
sensations,
pleasures, pains,
contractions, resistances,
sounds, images, thoughts, emotions.
All that appears is already, absolutely, completely, fully welcome
in the instant it is known, the instant it is experienced.
That is the welcoming.
So close, so intimate,
so vulnerable,
so heartful.
And it is everywhere,
everything.
And so: who am I? What am I?
This.
And the knowing and the seeing, your welcoming.
All the senses are rivers
There's no pain, no fear,
no thought,
no God that can obstruct this.
All the senses are rivers:
sound,
sight, sensation,
thoughts.
This is the knowing of all rivers.
The sense of time, space:
rivers.
I am the knowing of all rivers.
Welcoming,
blessing,
loving,
receiving,
allowing.
Allowing to come,
allowing to go.
Nothing to believe
Don't take my words for truth.
Just something to point with,
something to suggest,
something to discover in your experience.