Wolter Keers: The Witness

Shhhh
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

I continue to try to see more clearly into what I’ve been calling “the witness.”
This morning during breakfast, I promised myself that tonight I will take the time to truly allow myself to settle back into It. I can’t recall how I exactly came to this resolve.
It may well have been after a glimpse at the trees once more produced the sensation of falling back into Nothingness and intuiting how such a falling back would snuff out all of Creation.
This sensation/perception has come up several times of late: while driving the car (not an opportune time to give into the urge), while at work (again, not real good timing). Once it came in the midst of doing the dishes. The form was somewhat different. I had the thought, completely out of the blue, “I must go pray.” I knew I didn’t mean prayer but rather complete transcendence. And I knew I meant “right now.” Even then, I hesitated a couple moments before giving in and drying off my hands. Oddly, I can’t recall just how all that played out.

Meanwhile, there’s one more day of work and a bit more time for perusing the internet for a teaching that speaks to me a bit. I found Wolter Keers:

After the finish of an action or a thought, a feeling or a sensory perception, an 'I' projects itself at the end, as a sort of tail. During listening there was no I. But, at the end of the story an I who heard the story, is manufactured.
How can an I, that isn't there at all, hear a story?
The 'I' is nothing but an invention. There is no such I and you have never done anything in your life. Things do themselves.
You are the witness of the movements of the body, also of the movement of what you call ‘your will' and that possibly precedes an action.
You are, whether you want to or not, and without any effort, the witness of fleeting thoughts and feelings. And you are - and that is the most important thing to see - also always witness of such an I-thought that you tack on like a tail behind a thought, a feeling, a perception or an action.
The I-thought is just a thought, similar to the thought about a nephew or niece, or about the Eiffel tower. It is one pan in the row of pans on a kitchen shelf. You are no more the one 'I-pan' than you are the other big and small pans…
The only thing that needs to be done is to see exactly that…

Oh! So any resistance I have to letting go is also not my doing?
Apparently I’m kidding myself to think I choose not to transcend while driving, or at work, or while sitting in the backyard. The Ocean is simply bidding it times and will take me when it wants…
I think I can feel this, at least partly. I certainly feel that something is pulling me along.
Even when I feel into “my” resistance it seems so rooted in my body that I sense it’s “not my doing.” I cannot choose to simply let go. Or so it seems.
Still, it feels like the situation is most delicate and brings to mind another teaching:

If you believe that there is something lacking, it is not quite so.
But if you think there is nothing to do, nothing needed, that is not quite so.
Elihu Genmyo Smith

It seems to me that there are two sides to the coin of language: one side speaks from the perspective of the One. The other side speaks from the perspective of the individual. As a seeker approaches the precipice it seems like you can get listen to both sides, as if the coin is stood up and balanced on its side. Yes, Grace is carrying me along. And still, it feels that “I”, this little me, has some responsibility. It’s not quite as if there’s nothing to do.

I was watching Wayne Liquorman this morning. He gave the best expression of this position: that even after enlightenment, there will be an expression of “individuality” as it runs about in a singular body. Maybe he is not into as thorough a Unity as other teachers of non-duality. Who knows? But, I liked how he put his teaching and he also wonderfully illustrated how we have to give up even our most cherished beliefs.
And I know I have my beliefs.
So, let’s get back to Wolter Keers:

Question: … I still think it is hard to achieve…. that getting the apparent-I out of the way is difficult to achieve.

W.K.: These sorts of remarks are an escape. Self-realization has nothing to do with easy or difficult. You don't need to do anything to look. Even if you close your eyes images come up. In this room there are at least four people who have completely seen what they are and what they are not.
Why them but not you?
Because they have opened themselves up to anything that wanted to come up for witnessing, sometimes slowly, and in some cases quickly. They never bothered with the question of whether it is easy or difficult. They consciously held their 'eyes' open and looked in clarity, surveyed.
That is the only possibility.
People who find this all too difficult are only lazy, nothing else. They are not destined for self-realization. The only qualification one needs to have is complete seriousness; that one is ready to jump into the abyss. But, whoever continues to listen to their fears, their cozy comfort, their laziness, remains where they are…

Question: Nevertheless it remains difficult to see that it isn't difficult.

W.K.: Whoever is in love, which literally means 'in the state of love', is a good lover, and if the partner is also in love, they are a beautiful couple. But whoever is neurotic thinks that they should love more than they do. In other words, whoever lays the accent more on himself instead of the beloved, and thinks that he, the personality, has to produce love, for him even love is an impossible task.
If you, you, you just don't do anything; if you just allow yourself to dissolve in the love that you are in the deepest part of your being, all other problems are solved.
The Rabbit In the Hat, Wolter Keers