Silas: What is effort?
iRealization: Effort cannot be there for something that doesn’t exist. In a dream what is the effort? Suppose you are working very, very hard in the dream, what is the effort? As we’ve discussed, everything is the past, is it not? You cannot see the future, obviously, can you see the present? No, because it’s now, it’s blank. What is it that can be seen? Let’s say you see a star in the sky and it is ten light years away… you are seeing the past, you know? You’re seeing the light that came from there ten years ago. Same thing is true for every thing you see, it just doesn’t take ten years, it’s a microsecond ago or a nanosecond ago or a billionth of a billionth of a second ago, but you are seeing the past. The past cannot be acted upon, so it doesn’t really exist, therefore where is the effort? Effort is in the mind, the sense that something has to be done. The very idea of doing something is effort. The very idea that something is there, and it is not the past and it must be changed, brings about the idea of effort.
Sofie: I’m smiling because I find it true and that’s a relief. Especially true in the most challenging moments, the backing off and just watching is the only possible way to “cope.” There I’m able to understand things more clearly.
iRealization: One has to see, when something is going on in life that’s difficult, who is it that is feeling that? Let’s say something that you have to cope with is happening in a dream, what exactly is the situation?
So, Silas, what do you think of the notion of effort now?
Silas: Still a bit foggy.
iRealization: For effort it requires work to be done. That requires an input and output, a transformation, is it not?
Silas: Yes.
iRealization: It means you’re taking what is there and you are changing it to something else. You are operating on what is there right now and you want it to be something else. The desire to want something else instead of what’s in front of you creates the idea that something has to be done, right? The idea of work, the idea that I have to do something, that can only come up from the idea of wanting something different than what is there. Otherwise where is the question of effort or anything to be done?
Silas: But what is there, it is not actually there. What happens is that I feel that it’s there.
iRealization: What is not there but appears to be there is all of this. Like in a dream situation, what is there? What appears to be there is not the reality, still there is something there. To say that there is nothing there… it is meaningless. The fact is that I am there. Without Me nothing can exist there, those things don’t exist without Me. To say that those things do exist in the moment as an appearance that I experience, this is true. But to say that they exist outside of me, apart from me, independent from me or as on their own is the illusion.
Silas: Aha, ok! Makes sense.
iRealization: So what exists when nothing exists? In other words, what is that nothing? Can nothing be really nothing? Nothing has to be something, right?
Sofie: Seems to me it is the watching, right? It’s that unnamed thing.
iRealization: It is the seeing. The seeing itself creates the seen. Without seeing can there be anything? Without perception can there be anything seen?
Sofie: Not at all. But… is there a difference between that and Awareness?
iRealization: There is, one-hundred percent. See, perception requires knowledge.
Sofie: Ok, why?
iRealization: How would you know what you’ve perceived?
Sofie: You don’t need to know.
iRealization: If you don’t need to know what you perceive, then it’s not perception. It is merely Being, Awareness.
Sofie: I’ll take that, yeah. An infant doesn’t understand its own perception, right? You don’t have to understand or to know to have perception.
iRealization: You have to know what it is. If you do not know what it is then it will cause what is called illusion.
Sofie: When you say what it is, what do you mean, it?
iRealization: It is what is seen. Seen and seeing is the same thing.
Sofie: All verbs.
iRealization: No. Verb is the seeing, seen is the noun, what is seen. How will you know that there is seeing, you know?
Sofie: Oh, I see, unless there is an object to be seen, is that correct?
iRealization: Yes, yes. Without something seen there cannot be seeing. Both of them arise at the same time, in fact they are the same. Which means what now? What is seen is the seer itself.
Sofie: So the creation is the…
iRealization: Creator.
Sofie: Exactly…
iRealization: After this you have to see that neither of them exist because both of them are the seen only. Even if you say “I’m seeing the seer,” the seer is an object.
Sofie: Yeah! So it doesn’t exist!
iRealization: It doesn’t exist. If I say I’m seeing the seeing itself… When we say see without seeing, what does it mean?
Sofie: I don’t know.
iRealization: Seeing is only knowing, is it not? How do you know that you’ve seen something? It requires knowledge also. Once you see clearly that the knowledge portion is not needed… to your point about infants, they don’t know right?
Sofie: Right.
iRealization: There they don’t know, and they don’t know that they don’t know. Here, the knowledge is being discarded but you are doing it consciously. You understand?
Sofie: Yes.
iRealization: The awareness portion is not there.
Sofie: Is not where? In which situation?
iRealization: In the case of infants, it’s veiled. Just like the dream situation, you don’t know that it’s a dream, there’s a barrier of knowledge while in it, and you cannot access any other state. For example, now you cannot access a dream. The word “dream” now is a hearsay, in this state nobody has experienced a dream. In waking state one can only talk about it and never experience it, nobody in the waking state has knowledge of the dream state, mere recollection, you see? Therefore one has to see what is the thing that is causing the states, what is the thing that is realizing that there are states and what are states.
Sofie: In doing so, is it not about peeling off all the crap?
iRealization: It is the removal of the ideas that there is crap and all that stuff. So Silas, you had a comment?
Silas: When we were talking about effort something came to my mind, are ideas also effort?
iRealization: Do you take any effort to come up with an idea?
Silas: I do feel something like that…
iRealization: There’s the idea then there’s the elaboration, the struggle to make that idea reality. But the idea itself is effortless, is it not? It suddenly appears to you, it occurs to you, you see? It’s not that you go and think it up, the idea comes to you.
Silas: Is that something related to how we see or perceive the reality or the partial understanding?
iRealization: Is it not? Otherwise why would many people get the same ideas?
Silas: I don’t follow..
iRealization: See, your ideas come only to you because that is your idea, your seeing. So it’s your conditioning, nobody else's. The ignorance is yours alone, is it not? If you believe in ghosts, whose ignorance is it?
Silas: Ah yes, that makes sense.
iRealization: So how does ignorance spread? It spreads because of the idea of knowledge. The very idea that you know something is the problem. That itself is the limitation, that itself is the conditioning, that itself is the filter, that itself is the holding on to the unreal.
Sofie: There were times I steered the conversation with others into this idea we’re discussing and I felt it’s upsetting to others or it makes me the fool…
iRealization: See… who wants to be in peace and in joy?
Sofie: Uh…
iRealization: I’ll tell you… I want to be, I want peace, bliss and joy. I want to experience it, and I don’t want to ever have a situation where I don’t experience this peace, because I’ve tasted it once there is no question about it. I know that I have it all the time and I experience it all the time. The minute a reaction occurs in me, the becoming process starts. The becoming process takes me from my own bliss to something that is not blissful, so there is no question about other people here. Zero!
Sofie: The moment I begin to allow sorrow, that makes me a thing and the bliss is gone because now I believe I am a thing that is experiencing sorrow…
iRealization: The knowledge of yourself begins to operate.
Sofie: Wow.
iRealization: Therefore you have to see clearly. It doesn’t matter what is happening with so-called other people, all that stuff has to be seen very clearly. What are these people? Who is it that’s experiencing anything? Therefore, what is actually there? What is actually there is what we said earlier: “I want to experience bliss, I want to be free from conflict.” Freedom is not an idea, you will not have it because you can prove it to yourself or somebody else. You will have freedom in your actual experience. So that experience is what we’re searching for, the actual experience of freedom, not the idea of freedom. To get that experience one has to see clearly what is the blockage in that experience.
Sofie: Only me.
iRealization: Forget the me. The me is not there, what is that me?
Sofie: The I-ness
iRealization: I-ness can not be removed because I am always there.
Sofie: When in any point I believe that my thoughts are significant enough to take me out of this moment, now, that’s the only time I’m not free…
iRealization: Correct. In order to see this much more simply, instead of saying whether I believe in it or if there is significance in what happened or all the stuff one can examine, one can see what is that examining of? It is of what has happened, as you said, and what has happened is the past. When you say you want be in the now, that is what? You mean to say not in the future and not in the past. Future you cannot be it but the past… you’re constantly slipping into the past, you know? The minute you say something, it is in the past. If you look at the stars, that light is over ten years ago. If you look at a car ten miles away, it took some time for the light to come to your eyes, so what you’re seeing it’s a split second ago. If you see it one foot away it’s also a split second ago, everything you are seeing is not the actual now. Therefore you cannot see the future, nor you can see the now, all you can see is the past. Any reflection is of the past, if you want now, now is the thing that causes the reflection.
Sofie: It’s always fresh, always empty.
iRealization: It’s not empty really, what is that nothing?
Sofie: By empty I meant that I am not planning or hoping, it’s just simply an openness.
iRealization: Yes, that situation you are describing is the situation when thought is not there.
Sofie: It’s a narrative.
iRealization: That narrative is based on past memories. In fact it is nothing other than memory. The minute you realize that thought is memory, that you are dealing with the past then the past is not there, it is dead. It’s just partial knowledge of what I saw. So now there’s no question about seeing what the thought represents as that is only past knowledge. I don’t need to know partial knowledge, not any knowledge, not because I need to know something else, but because I want to experience freedom. The cool shade of the now where it’s not constricted by any thought at all, where it is not constricted and anxious about the future. It’s about its own bliss right now.
Sofie: I feel like it’s always coming back to that, from the belief of what we are as adults and empty it everytime, everytime, everytime…
iRealization: Yes. Let’s come back to the question of effort. It takes no effort for any ideas to come. The only effort is to stop the ideas from coming. See, constantly ideas are appearing but you are not doing anything, just like breathing, automatically happening, the whole thing is happening already, yet we think we are doing it and the thought of doing it is a thought, is it not?
Sofie: In awareness it simply is. I can only use the mind to get out of those thinking mind patterns.
iRealization: That is called using the mind to kill the mind. Even if we say it’s not there, one deals with the thing that causes the illusion. Even if you say “this is illusion,” there’s something that causes the illusion, no?
Sofie: Sure, yeah.
iRealization: Because everything has cause. If I say “how did this world appear?” there is a cause, that’s why I can ask the question.
Photography - Courtesy of Frank Mckenna
