Let Everything Be as It Is

In order to find out for ourselves what an absolute relationship to life is all about, we have to be willing to let everything be as it is. If we really want to get to the crux of the matter, if we want to get to the very core of what it means to be alive, to know what it means to be, then all we have to do is let everything be as it is. In this way, through simply letting everything be as it is, slowly we will sink, naturally and effortlessly, to the very core of who and what we are. It will all happen by itself if we simply allow everything to be as it is. Allowing everything to be as it is means letting go of everything. If you let go of everything, naturally you will sink to the bottom, to the very center, to the very core of who and what you really are. What I'm trying to point to is the ground of being itself, to where we end up when there is no motion, no doing, no action, no movement. When there is no notion of any sense of a self as being separate, when there is no notion of another, no notion of the world, when there is no time, there is only that—and what it is we really don't know. Nobody really knows what it is. I don't know what it is. But we don't have to know what it is in the sense of being able to describe it as an object. All we have to do is to be able to recognize it for what it is—where everything came from and where everything goes back to, the very ground of being, the very ground of everything, the ground of who and what each and every one of us is. It's through the discovery of this ground of being, this ultimate source of who we are, that an absolute relationship to life, which is Liberation, is found. Letting everything be as it is means that one is assuming no position in relationship to anything that occurs. This is often difficult to understand—what it truly means to assume no relationship to our experience. If we want to realize a perspective that is absolute, a perspective that is always new and without limits, we have to be willing to allow everything to be as it is. To discover what it means to take no position for a moment, for a few moments, for a few hours, or for a few days is a very good thing and it's very important, because obviously if one doesn't experience it at all, one won't have any idea what it's all about. But if this experience is truly to become the foundation of Liberation, it cannot merely be a momentary episode, but must eventually become the very place where we rest always, no matter what. If we genuinely seek Liberation, the place where we always are and the place we never move from is that place where everything is as it is and where we are cer- tainly therefore allowing everything to be as it is. But in the end we are not even allowing because there is just resting. There is only resting, and there is nothing more than that. When at rest, when any of us are truly at rest, deeply at rest, there is no effort at all being made to allow anything to be as it is—because we are simply resting, deeply, deeply at rest, and so there is no effort. There is no struggle of any kind to maintain, sustain or control anything whatsoever. When deeply at rest, we have let go of everything, we have let everything be as it is. Because of that and only because of that do we experience peace. Once again, allowing everything to be as it is means to assume no relationship to our experience. This is to neither accept nor reject anything that occurs. Now when allowing everything to be as it is, when assuming no relationship to our experience, it means that we are ceasing to make distinctions—even if the mind seems to continue to mechanically make distinctions, make choices and make preferences, we no longer are. So if we are truly allowing everything to be as it is, if we are assuming no relationship to our experience, it means that we are no longer making distinctions, even if distinctions are being made by the mind. When we go very deeply into letting everything be as it is, we dare ourselves to go beyond the familiar, beyond this or that, to where everything becomes equal to us, where there is no positive or negative, where one thing is not any better than another. The value of everything then becomes utterly the same. Because we are allowing everything to be as it is and because we are not making distinctions anymore, the whole world of opposites, of differences, begins to fall away from us. The only thing that we are aware of is rest. Rest and more rest. If we go very deeply into it, that's what happens. It is not that we have ceased to respond to the fact of difference merely because of a conscious choice, but now we find that we are so deeply absorbed in the stillness of being itself that we can no longer see any differences. Indeed, even making the effort to discriminate becomes impossible. At this depth there is no sense of differentiation, no distinc- tions of any kind being made—even between absolute opposites like positive or negative. It's too still for that. Only a true seeker is going to have the kind of courage that is necessary to really do this—to let every- thing be as it is—in just the way that we have been speaking about. Why? Because in letting everything be as it is there is no consolation. Usually we attempt to acquire more and more information with the idea that this will lead us to some kind of salvation. We are always in search of that special something that we are going to add to who and what we already are, in the hope that this new addition will change everything. In allowing everything to be as it is, we are doing the very opposite! The opposite for most people requires the willingness to take a big risk. For the individual who is fundamentally insecure already, this kind of risk poses quite a challenge. But in the end there is no other way, if we want to be free. The individual who is successful in truly allowing everything to be as it is, the one who is willing to take that risk, will experience enormous relief. From what? From the burden of knowledge, from the burden of accu- mulated knowledge. In that knowledge are all of the ideas we have about who we are. In that knowledge are all of the ideas we have about the world. Suddenly it all falls away. Then there is no idea about who we are. There is no idea about how the world is. There is no idea about how anything is. Not only is this a great relief, but more importantly we begin to discover that almost always the more we think we know, the less we're able to recognize the truth. When someone begins to see this for themselves, it is something very profound indeed. When we discover the place of absolute peace and perfect stillness, when we discover that place where we no longer make distinctions, where we no longer know who we are or how things are, if successful, we die and are reborn. You see, it's possible to experience this kind of depth and come back and still be intact. But it is something else altogether when one experiences this kind of depth and lets go of everything and is reborn anew. Anew means with no history. Reborn means, in a very deep sense, having no notion of being that person who one was before this event occurred.