Is This Not Obvious?

If you cannot find truth where you are ...
Where else do you expect to find it?
Dogen

Realization requires a knowing that sits above and before our mind. Often, it's our very own cleverness that keeps us out of the profundity of This, this just-as-it-isness. We are in fact already seeing from truth, as truth ... because it's what we really are ... but we've allowed and continue to allow clever thinking to obscure what is always already here. Our thinking about not yet arrived, not yet ready, not yet good enough ... awake enough ... aware enough, this thinking is the very barrier that keeps us from the direct perception of what already is. It is a matter of simplifying things ... making room in our heads to allow for what is present to be "seen" beyond our heads.

Someone once said that "Success is a refined study of the obvious."
This could also be said about realization, because the obvious is so immediate, so already-always-here and exactly why it's so easily missed or overlooked. Our minds are always seeking one step away from this direct knowing ... pre-thought ... pre-feeling.

We mustn't get too clever as we can too easily box ourselves in.

This moment is clear, here and immediate.

The mind can't grasp it, but that doesn't make it any less clear or immediate. This is it ... not our mind's perception of the moment as that's already a construct and already in the past, but the direct knowing of the One who sees and knows, already aware of what is, with or without the mind's participation. All that the mind is doing is translating what is already seen and known. "Seen the moment you look, free the moment it's seen," said Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche.

I love Ken Wilber's description of this direct perception ... this One Taste. He writes:
"It's not quite right to describe One Taste as a "consciousness" or an "awareness", that's a little too heady, too cognitive. It's more like a Feeling of Being: it is the simple, present feeling of existence.

"But it's quite different from all other feelings or experiences, because this simple Feeling of Being does not come and go. It is not in time at all, though time flows through it, as one of the many textures of its own sensation. The simple Feeling of Being is not an experience - it is a vast Openess in which all experiences come and go, an infinite spaciousness in which all perceptions move, a great Spirit in which the forms of its own play arise, remain a bit, and pass ... The simple Feeling of Being, which is the simple feeling of existence, is the simple feeling of One Taste.

"Is this not obvious?" Wilber challengingly asks. "Aren't you already aware of existing? Don't you already feel the simple Feeling of Being? Don't you already possess this immediate gateway to ultimate Spirit, which is nothing other than the simple Feeling of Being? You have this simple feeling now, don't you? And you have it now, don't you? And now, yes?

"And don't you already realize that this Feeling is Spirit itself? Godhead Itself? Emptiness itself? Spirit does not pop into existence: it is the only thing that is constant in your experience - and that is the simple Feeling of Being itself, a subtle, constant, background awareness that, if you look very closely, very carefully, you will realize you have had since the Big Bang and before - not because you existed way back when, but because you truly exist prior to time, in this timeless moment, whose feeling is the simple Feeling of Being: now, and now, and always and forever now.

"You feel the simple Feeling of Being? Who is not already enlightened?"

Wilber uses intelligence to express what is beyond mind intelligence ... beyond language ... yet here it is ... so blaringly obvious ... this simple Feeling of Being.

Taste this. It's clear, pure, direct and obvious ... let the words open a doorway into Eternal Vastness. Words can do this because even words are part of the One Taste ... taste it, savour it, enjoy it ... It is This.