Just One Look Forum Archives

John, I understand your continuing attempt to divorce your message from any religious, philosophical, psychological, etc. teaching but in doing so I feel you may have gone a little too far and have lost some of your original message by saying that all of these studies have nothing to do with your message. As you insist in doing this, looking only at yourself and ignoring any spiritual concept, it almost sounds like you are telling me NOT to look at the me that gives me the most hope. The me that has no connection to that person (personality) that was formed at the moment of birth and that was tagged with this name which I have slowly come to believe is me. I hope that because of your distaste with anything spiritual that you are not saying to look at that 60 year old construct and to IGNORE the seeing behind it. It’s that feel of something that may have been there just observing all the time that interests me. How could that not be me? Fred changes from day to day like my moods. Is that not proof that Fred is just a fancy machine? It’s what gives life to the machine that is of interest to me because I can feel it when I am not lost in negative emotional states of being.

Isn't that what the looking is all about? To get a feel about WHAT is looking. Then to realize it is not a what but the action itself. What we really and only are IS the looking. Isn't this your original message?

Or are you telling me to look at Fred (me)? No need to tell me that. I've been looking at that dumb fuck for 60 years and know him inside and out. I am more interested at who is looking at him of which I have had a presence of doing before I came upon your message.

So John which is it you are saying to look for? Can you please give me a reply?

Still here,

Fred

What I want you to do requires no looking 'for' anything. All I want you to do is to look at you. Just you, the uninteresting, ever-present, unmoving 'me-ness' of you. You are the cause of nothing -- not hope, not fear, not hopelessness, nor fearlessness. You are just you, in which fear, hope, fearlessness, hopelessness, and all other experience comes, plays, and departs. That which you call "Fred" is that universe of experience and reaction, and it consists of endless rising and falling, endless change, and endless objects of experience. Since the "Fred" is not a singular thing at all, it cannot be what I ask you to look at. You, on the hand, are singular, undivided, and indivisible.

It is precisely the strong inclination we have to seek after some experience as the goal of our seeking that captures all spiritual utterance, no matter how authentic, interprets it in the context of the project of defense and acquisition that we have made of our lives, and drives us to try to manifest something that will satisfy our yearning for deliverance tangibly and immediately. This is what keeps us forever spinning in the winds of life, and in the spiritual teachings themselves, since they do, for the most part, represent the honest and authentic attempt to speak to us from outside of the fear context, have the power to go home, and resonate so deeply with reality that we begin to hear anything that comes from that reality as a version of the false trail that we have already made of the teachings.

I actually have nothing against any teaching or belief of any kind. But when approaching this work, I think it would be a good idea to put down the books for a while, and decline the temptation to see this ans a version of that. It would be closer to the truth to see this to be what all that is speaking of in the first place, finally seen now in its pure and naked form in a way that all can find contentment with life as a human being.

In the end, what the looking is all about is to look at, not seek, yourself, to have the direct experience of you. When you do that, all else will take care of itself. Be patient.

I read this post and talked about it at the Worldwide Meeting on September 10, 2011.

You can listen to the entire recording in our podcast. Please let me know if more is needed.

In love,

John