There is something so close to us, so continuously present, that we almost never notice it. It is not a thought, not a feeling, not a sensation. It is the simple fact of being. This piece is an invitation to pause and notice it for yourself.
Notice the simple fact of being. Before you experience any thought, feeling, sensation or perception, you have the experience of simply being.
Being is your primary experience.
Being is the one aspect of yourself which remains continuously present throughout all changing experience.
The fact of simply being is ever-present; experience always changes.
Your being is present before a thought arises, while the thought is there, and after it has gone. When the thought vanishes, your being remains. It is what you experience in deep sleep when all other experience has disappeared. It is what you experience for a brief moment when a desire is fulfilled, or at a moment of great distress, shock, grief or sorrow. These experiences temporarily bring the activity of the mind to an end.
In that ending of the mind’s activity, your true nature of simply being shines by itself, as does the blue sky when the clouds part.
The parting of the clouds does not cause the blue sky to shine; it reveals what was already there. So it is with being. Its presence is not caused by any activity of the mind or its cessation. Your being, and its innate peace, are always present and always available, although it is often obscured by the clouds of thoughts and feelings.
Your being is the most ordinary, intimate and familiar of experiences. Being is shared equally among all. It is your natural condition, irrespective of the content of your experience. Whatever your experience, your true nature of simply being shines in its natural condition: whole, unblemished, at peace.
Your being could be likened to the screen behind the movie. The fact of being lies just behind your thoughts, feelings and activities.
Just as a screen is one with the drama in a movie and yet independent of it, so the fact of simply being is intimately one with all your experience, yet at the same time free of it. Your thoughts may be agitated, but your being is never agitated. Your feelings may be sorrowful, but there is no sorrow in your being itself. Your being is inherently free of agitation and sorrow. Its nature is imperturbable peace and causeless joy, always present and always available.
You might reasonably ask: if your true nature is always present, and if its nature is imperturbable peace and causeless joy, why do you not feel these all the time? The answer is simply this: you have allowed your being to become entangled in the content of experience. ‘I feel sad’, becomes ‘I am sad’. In that small movement, your whole world changes. Your innate peace is obscured, and a self made of feeling takes its place. You allow your being to assume the quality of your feelings. You have lost yourself in your experience, and with it, the peace that is your nature.
All that is necessary is to take one small step back from the content of your experience, to the being that lies just behind it. In doing so, you recover the peace that is your very nature.
Your being is the place of peace in you; it is your refuge, your home.
Next week, we’ll explore the four steps from being lost in experience to resting as infinite being itself – and discover how, at each step, there is less to do, until doing gives way entirely to simply being.
