Start Here

Why are you reading this? If you're similar to me, it is because you're searching for something - you may not even know what it is. All you know is that "this" - whatever "this" is - can't be it. While you may not realize it, you believe the answer to everything is always around the next corner, on the next page, in the next book about awareness or nonduality or enlightenment...it will all become clear after reading the next post, viewing the next movie, after the next conversation with the next nondual teacher. I know. Me, too.

I am writing this in the hope of helping you bring your search to an end as mine has come to an end. I am a "slow-learner" advaita/nondual student! I am the guy who got it, didn't get it, got it again, argued about it, forgot it, remembered it, suffered over it, lost it, begged for it, cried about it, dismissed it, said "screw it," intellectualized about it, tried to "feel" it, questioned it, threw it away, talked about it, thought about it, dreamed about it and more...and finally realized clearly that I AM IT - AS ARE YOU!


What has become obvious is the ordinariness of IT. IT is so obvious, so clear, so present that it is UNKNOWABLE. IT is immediate - that is, unmediated - KNOWING. IT is what SEES that IT cannot be known. What you are is the awareness reading these words, hearing the sounds in the environment, feeling the gurgles, tingles, and tensions in the (seeming) body.


IT is completely obvious - but not if you are looking for IT. IT is doing the looking. IT is what registers the seeming you looking.


As I struggled with all of these pointers, these cryptic descriptions, I became more and more frustrated. Finally, with the help of many people - John Wheeler, "Sailor" Bob Adamson, John Greven, Stephen Wingate, Joan Tollifson, Gilbert Schultz, Jeff Foster, Randall Friend, and especially Annette Nibley - who compassionately pointed me again and again and again and again (I could add many more 'agains'!) in the direction of the utterly obvious, it clicked. What is seen is so very ordinary that it is almost embarrassing to have missed it for so long!

Nonetheless, miss it I did, for years and years.


What I am pointing to has been pointed to for eons by many more practiced and eloquent than I. There is nothing I can say that is new. My hope is that there may be something that I write that might be the straw that is needed to tip the scale for you, just as the generous writings and conversations of many teachers tipped the scale for me.


I have nothing special to offer you - I have nothing that you don't already have. However, as was the case for me, you probably don't recognize that you have it!