To Know, To Share, To Be

Here I am. What am I? I am everything and nothing; for within nothing there is everything, and within everything there is nothing. This is the nature of all things.

Within everything there is no contrast, there is no subject. Within nothing there is no contrast, there is no subject. The two have the same characteristics because within each there is no relativity. The two are the same concept. If everything were blue there would be no color, do you see it? For there to be color you would need two things to compare. Only relationships exist, one thing only exists in relation to something else.

To know something is to possess the knowledge, which is to be the very thing that is known. To share something is to give a part of oneself to another, and one cannot give what one does not possess. Nor can one give what one does not know that they possess; to not know is to not be. To share one must know, and to know one must be. To share is to give of ourselves; to learn is to accept from another. In this manner everything is relationship; everything is union.

One cannot see the ocean apart from oneself; one cannot see a mountain apart from oneself. There can only be you and the mountain: the experience of you-mountain. To see the mountain is to know one part of it, one interpretation of it, which is to be it. The mountain is not a thing without you to look at it. It is a relationship between two things. Neither can be known independently of the other. You cannot see the mountain without your eyes; it is impossible to separate you from it, there is only you and it.

This is why you cannot find yourself. This is why a blade cannot cut itself. This is why fire cannot burn itself. You cannot taste your own tongue. Yet people try, and in failing to find themselves they think themselves lost. They were never lost; the thing that is looking is the thing that they are looking for. They are trying to catch a net with the net itself.

In this manner there is no Self that can be known by its own Self, and hence there is no Self that one is, and no Self that can be shared. One can only share what one is, and one is what they are, which is what they know. Yet one can never know themselves because they can never catch themselves with themselves in order to know what they are.

Are they then lost? No, because they were not anything to begin with. You are not a thing. There is no thing. How could the nature of Self be a thing, from where would it originate? One cannot lose what one never had.

We are what we know. We learn what we want to learn. We look for what we want to be. We are what we want to be. One is not any thing; one is what one wishes one were. It does not even need to be achieved. You are already that, you just don’t know it, which is to not be it. Yet you are it already, because you are not any thing. You only need to learn something to know it, to become it. You become it by learning it, yet you were already it because you are everything and nothing. To believe you are something is to be that thing, and you achieve a belief by making an act of working towards something. Yet the act of working towards something is only a symbol of your changing belief of yourself.

In this manner you are already what you want to be. You are already exactly and completely what you wish you were. Any insecurity you have is only due to your distrust of yourself, and yet you do not have a perceivable Self to distrust. So what is it that you do not trust? What is it that you do not believe in when you are not a thing that can be believed in or not?

Effectively what you have is a resistance. You resist being what you already are, which is what you want to be, because you fear that you are not what you want to be. In trying to be what you wish you were, you are manipulating your own behavior away from being what you are, which is the thing that you want. Your fear of not being what you want to be is the very thing keeping you from being what you want to be — which you are already and would be if you were not fearful of not having the thing that you already have.

The solution then is to not try to be anything. To be oneself, which is to not be anything. In not trying to be anything you can only be the thing that you already are. Yet you are not any thing, what you are is simply what you want to be, and so you will become what you want to be only by not trying to be anything. This is the secret that is just too obvious to see: that any effort exerted takes you only further away from what you want.

Surely it is obvious that one can only be happy being what they are, and if one had to achieve being what they are then they would not be it? If you had to achieve being you then you would not be you, or you do not believe it. A dog does not try to be a dog, it is a dog already, and it would not try unless it did not believe it was a dog, and if it were to try then that would not make it any more of a dog. Neither would the dog see any progress in trying because it was already what it wanted to be, and so no trying can make it more of a dog; no progress can be made in trying to become what you already are. Hence happiness must be achieved by not trying to be anything. The trying is the problem.

And what are you? You are not a thing. You cannot experience anything except union, except relationship. You cannot separate the subject from the experience. You can know only you-mountain. You can know only you-sea. You can know only you-person. You are experience. In this manner, can you say that you are not the mountain, that you are not the sea? You cannot find you anyway, so how can you say that you are not these things? Perhaps you are everything, and nothing. What exactly do you think you can achieve if you are already everything but you do not believe it?

But if we must be non-resistant to be happy, what is resistance? What is not resistance? If the floor did not resist you then you would fall right through it. If this computer monitor did not resist light then you would not be reading this article. Reality itself is resistance. Experience itself is resistance. A ‘thing’ is resistance. Without resistance there could be no experience, and yet happiness is non-resistance. In this manner, reality itself is unhappiness, for non-resistance is happiness and reality is resistance.

Could one then argue that what you want is to not exist? But if you are nothing then you already do not exist. You are not a thing. You can never find yourself because the thing you are looking for is the thing doing the looking. Perhaps then you already have what you want. You already do not exist. In this case, what are you doing here?

To answer “what are you doing here?” you would have to know what you are and you would have to know what here is. You know neither of these things. Perhaps then you are not here and there is no here to be.

But are you not somewhere? And is that somewhere not here? Answer this: can you be not here? How can there be a here if you can never be not here? Are you not always here? And in being always here, can there be anywhere else except here? And if there is nowhere except here, then isn’t the word ‘here’ itself devoid of meaning? As you walk around this Earth are you not always ‘here’: are you not always in the center of the universe? What moves: you or everything else? I stand on the beach and I am in the center. I stand in my house and I am in the center. I am always here; I am always in the center of the universe. What changes? For sure, it is not me. But then, am I not the sea, am I not the mountains? So it is me that changes, or everything else?

Are you confused? Perhaps it is because you are still looking for your Self. But you are not a thing. Or to put it another way: you are everything except this concept of Self that you are looking for, which does not exist. You already have yourself, it is all you have. Like a fish looking for water, you are unable to ever find it because it is all you know. To know something is to be that thing. Yet if you are everything except your Self, which does not exist, then is this not the same as to be nothing at all? Perhaps this is why you can’t find your Self. But then why are you looking? You cannot lose yourself, you live within a constant stream of the experience of your Self. It is the only thing you know.

You know only your Self, because you are everything, which is to be nothing, which is why you can’t find yourself.

So why collect things? Why look for things? Why try to obtain things and achieve things? You are already everything, and the reason you are already everything is because everything is what you have. Look around you. You’ve never been able to find yourself but here is everything: that is you. Your friends and family, the people you pass on the street, the trees, the mountains and the sea… this is you. This is you because it is all you have and all you have is your Self, yet there is no Self. You have everything and nothing because you are everything and nothing.

How to apply this on a personal level?

Forget yourself. You are not a thing. You are everything except what you think you are, that thing does not exist. There is nothing to resist, you are the resistance. There is nothing to fight against, you would be fighting only yourself. There is nothing to struggle against, you would be only wrapping yourself up. You do not have a reputation. You are not good or bad. You do not have characteristics; you are whatever you need to be and whatever you want to be. You cannot own anything because you already have everything. You do not need to control anything because everything and everyone already does what you want. What you want is precisely what happens. If you ever want to know what it is that you want, just look at what is happening and see for yourself.

But is life not hard? Did you really want life to be easy? What would you do? Who said hard = bad?

You are not confused, you understand all of this perfectly well. You’re just playing at being confused because you want to be unhappy. You do not need to try to understand anything. Stop trying, stop looking, stop struggling, stop thinking… and there you are.

All the good things happen of their own accord. When you stop looking, you will find yourself.