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Our Natural State of Being
- Ray Brooks
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In this episode of Healing From Within your host Sheryl Glick author of The Living Spirit which shares stories of spiritual awakening, spiritual communication, healing energies and miracles is delighted to welcome Ray Brooks author of The Shadow That Seeks the Sun to share his amazing awareness of what lies within each of us and which in one way or another, we seek to remember, as we explore both the physical and energetic qualities of our life.
Listeners of “Healing From Within” are well aware that Sheryl and her wonderful guests share intimate and telling stories of Life as many have believed it to be before awakening or opening up to the truth of a splendid new reality as multi dimensional beings of energy and expansion. This expansion often leads to further amazing and unexpected wonderment through a self-investigative process: We are more than we appear to be and life is in one regard a journey of remembrance and finding peace in the joy of simply Being.
In today’s episode of “Healing From Within” Ray Brooks a British author and public speaker on the subject of non-duality will share his direct experience of the “natural state” through simple self-inquiry. Ray is also the author of Blowing Zen, Finding an Authentic Life and a musician and recording artist internationally respected in the world of shakuhachi music.
Ray shares his story of being raised by his grandmother who was quite taken with the concept of Reincarnation and how challenging life was for a young boy when she developed dementia. However he writes that perhaps his interest in India began in one of his childhood memories. Ray believes his fascination with India began in his childhood. He remembers being at his grandmother’s house and answering the door seeing a man with his head covered in a canary yellow length of cloth framing a shiny brown face a thick black beard and a moustache that curled at the ends selling colorful ties of pure Indian silk. When Granddad returned home that evening, Ray told him of the man he had met from India and he was shown on the map where India was and how it had once been part of the British Empire. Ray decided then that he would go to that faraway land teeming with mysterious people and colorful hats and neckties. Ray has indeed travelled many times to India and other exotic places including Japan
He goes on to tell of his encounter with an Anglo-Indian man Rudra on the ghats of the sacred River Ganges where he shares with Rudra that he has studied Zen philosopher and also the traditional Advaita non- duality teachings.
Ray was amazed and also loved the vibrancy of the interaction with Rudra and the unexpected chance encounter where the conversations quickly moved from small talk into the question of life and death. Ray felt such an exquisite sense of freedom sitting by the Ganga river and talking with Rudra.
Rudra tells Ray heightened experiences only have significance if they point to what is already there. Ray says if they didn’t point to something beyond ordinary than I might not be sitting here talking to you. Rudra goes on to say “There are no experiences. There is only experience, this that is happening now.” For there to be experiences there would have to be a separation between the observer and that which is being observed. In reality there is no such condition. This is the very heart of the matter. Rudra goes on to say you have never been apart from experience. Ray what you are looking for is not found in experiences. The last place you look—your actual experience which is right here. This changeless experience is so familiar, so obvious that it goes unnoticed. As for experiences bringing you to this point, how could anything bring you to where you have never left, or could ever leave. No matter how sublime the experience, it only ever point to this, where you already are.
What it feels like to be you—Beingness..experience – just being that needs no proof only, aware -beingness. You and experience are not two things. There is only ever experiences (of Self) There’s not a sense of becoming or wanting a more pleasurable experience..There’s just aware-beingness. There is only ever this—this present moment and it is all you, all awareness. Without you nothing could possibly be. Thought cannot get this. Thought cannot know peace. It can only know about peace. Peace is the absence of resistance to what “is.”
In the chapter “Awakening to the Dream” Ray tells of an experience that brought great change to his life and lead him to discover an Indian teacher named Jiddu Krishnamurti who he eventually travelled to meet leaving London and travelling to California. Ray tells of how he was living life and feeling so disconnected perhaps from his true needs and interests. He met a group of friends at a club called Samantha’s when a sudden strange sensation came over him..it was like the whole place had gone silent and a sense of disassociation only expanded. Ray felt like a spectator outside of his body watching actors in a play and was cognizant of the “dream” taking place. He left his date and the bar and sat on a damp wooden bench near Serpentine Lake. Whatever this was, he didn’t want it to end. When Ray later told your friends what had happened they said he had a break from reality: maybe an existential crisis. “To be or not to be.” Forget it, as no one knows, was their answer. To them anything bordering on the “spiritual” was for hippies and LSD freaks.
Ray writes, “They were good at managing their anxiety and fear and definitely did not want anything to upset the status quo. It was as if they were all sleepwalking from hangover to hangover. I was questioning the way I was living.”
Over the next year Ray moved to the countryside cut down on alcohol and finally stopped drinking, joined a sport club met new people took an interest in cooking healthy food at home and was later invited back by his friend Ronnie who was also trying to understand why he felt there was more to existence than the way he was living. Ray went to the art exhibition and met his future wife Dianne. She felt Ray’s experience wasn’t uncommon in Indian yoga or philosophy, although it might have been catalyzed by stress and overwork. A particular paragraph in a book Classical Indian Philosophy referred to a non-separation between subject and object leading to a state of oneness which summed up as close as he could get to what had happened that night in the London pub.
At that book store the owner of the book store suggested an Indian teacher named Jiddu Krishnamurti who had made a speech and said “I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion by any sect. That is my point of view and I adhere to it unconditionally. Truth being limitless unconditioned unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized: nor should any organization be formed to lead or coerce people along a particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief.” Krishnamurti also wrote, “The world lies in yourself and if you know how to look, the key is in your hands. Nobody no guru no teacher or practice could give either the key or the door to open, except yourself.”
Sheryl tells Ray how those thoughts remind her of when she was in the process of her own spiritual awakening and had a moment of awareness in an expanded state of her soul energy and when describing it to a colleagues husband who was a Rabbi was strongly and not positively told to take Torah classes. Not being particularly religious but always believing in a bigger universal plan Sheryl responded that any path to the truth of Being God or Universal Source was the right one and a personal connection was ultimately the best way to find Self and Spirit.
In California where Ray met and heard Krishnamurti speak who was eighty three years old at the time Ray also met a man George who told him he had a talk with Krishnamurti and had followed this teacher for many years hoping to learn the secret for being free.
“K simply said, I don’t mind what happens.. No matter what happens there are no problems.” Was Krishnamurti’s message available only to a few gifted people. A quote from Krishnkamurti answers that , “No matter where you find yourself, no matter what background you come from, no matter what state of mind you’re in, you can still clearly look and see what is actually going on, but the observation has to be choiceless and unconditional.”
Sheryl responds that her studies and meditation and Reiki healing work and readings with Spirit have brought her to accept that we are free when we allow accept and surrender and know all is as it is supposed to be. In Sheryl’s book The Living Spirit she writes something along those lines. “Life is about loving what is, which is never perfect—just in a state of conscious change. If we forget about perfection and just be, we will find love peace and freedom in our journey. Everything is perfect for self-discovery, thus perfection is the ability to accept imperfection. There is no normal or abnormal, and no one way to live love or develop our own personal paths to truly knowing who and what we are.”
Then she goes on to tell Ray that she often has meaningful coincidences with the authors who come on the show and that Ray had his magical mystical awakening in a place called Samantha’s. Sheryl’s first granddaughter is Samantha. She reveals another coincidence: In my next book New Life Awaits: Create your Best Afterlife by Living Consciously Now Sheryl writes about many connections to many people who show up in her life named “George.” The epilogue a reading or channeling she had with President George Washington which the book and can be found on her website www.sherylglick.com on the book link. As we are never separate from the moment and there is no time and space, all souls continue to exist and can offer guidance from that place of “Beingness.”
Ray and his wife have spent much time in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas and his wife Diane co-author of The Shadow That Seeks the Sun also had a love of the mountains and the rural areas of Northern India and Indian philosophy. The contrasts in India can also be quite intense which perhaps is an influence for observing life more fully and without impartiality.
Ray tells us of his meeting with Krishnamurti and the words he spoke to you, ‘Be a light unto yourself. Find out who the seeker is” which lead you and Diane to take a year off and explore North America. After returning to England you realized how much your lives and attitudes had changed during the year of “freedom. You continued to work and save and travelled as much as possible staying for extended periods in China India Nepal and Southeast Asia We lived in Tokyo Japan for several years.
While living in Japan for several years Ray studied shakuhachi flute. In 1998 Ray wrote a book about our time in Japan and his musical studies there. Ray tells how while living in Japan he had undertaken a rigorous discipline to play the Japanese bamboo flute for sixty consecutive days on the side of a sacred mountain. Everything became clear on that mountaintop. I could see how my intense highs and dreadful lows were temporary—coming and going but not changing who I essentially was. I could see how thoughts awareness and consciousness get in on the act and claim to know oneness. No activity or inactivity will manifest the peace you already are. The fourth truth Ray realized from Rudra is “What you are, what love is, has no evolution or possibilities. Love is the natural state of all experience before thought has divided it into selves and others. Only thought imagines something having possibilities or evolving.”
Many people believe there to be a duality to life and consider things such as good or bad, rich or poor, right or wrong. You talk about non-duality as the actual state of being. Ruda and Ray talk about his teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti and how he challenged organized religion and Indian gurus. He was called the ”gurus guru. He spoke from direct experience without any fear even if the CIA thought to investigate him. He spoke of a revolution but not the kind that would interest the CIA. Both men conclude we are never finished searching for everyone longs for happiness and freedom, which is just another word for peace and happiness.
We think about, What is it most people want? Isn’t it some kind of peace, some kind of happiness, a refuge permanence? It is essential to understand the movement of the seeker, before trying to find out about what you are seeking. Is the seeker different from that which he seeks? Sir, the real has no opposition. You don’t have to seek it. The only sure way to postpone the real is to continue to be a seeker of the real—and to invest your happiness in some experience that you once had or want to have in the future. The real is what is: it is the truth and that is the great beauty of it.
Thinking of God as love and is this changeless presence which is worthy of devotion. It can feel like there is a lover and a loved. But there is only ever oneness. Only ever love. God is only an idea held together by thought. If you think of God as Supreme Being, it is a separate entity, and yet, we are never separate from God or Love. Love shows you there is not a path to Love. There is no path to God. God is always present and not disconnected from our very own self with us within us and we are part of God as he is part of us.
The thread weaving the 9 lessons Ray had with Rudra during their talks was the overwhelming conclusion and truth of our interconnectedness and eternal energy or life force and that there is no separation between all living things. Only thought can say that there is separation. There has never been separation ever. There is only the belief that knowing is separate from the known. Actual experience always shows you the falseness of this. All takes place as you. All of this present scene has no here or there, no boundaries. You, as awareness are simply the knowing of yourself, as everything. Thought seeks to change actual experience for something better, creating the illusion of before and after, of time and space. Thoughts of an apparent time and place always appear right here and right now. You are simply another name for Oneness. You have never not been Oneness and Oneness has no dimension or location. It is all there is. The obvious is ”aware-presence-awareness only knowing awareness.”
Ray Brooke and his wife Dianne have encouraged within themselves a tremendous willingness to know freedom and to know life in its uniqueness unity and Oneness, without separation and in its simplicity to be able to enjoy experience as the true gauge of all that is.
In summarizing today’s episode of Healing From Within we begin to see that it is possible to view life and to see yourself as you are, if only, we can allow ourselves to be open to the forces of a creative process of mind body and spirit that allows us to find the greatest awareness of Consciousness and Being and to look beyond thought to be one with ourselves and all life.
Rudra told Ray, “All we are doing here Ray is pointing to the real which you alone are. The real is always real. Gold no matter what it appears as is never anything other than gold. Whether the gold takes on the appearance of a ring or statue those apparent objects only ever appear as gold, and only seemingly came into existence? The ring or statue is only an appearance. Only the gold exists. There is only ever gold. There is only ever you. Are we using gold as a metaphor for consciousness? Any label is fine if it communicates this inexpressible “isness” Awareness is the real. Or we could say that Consciousness is all there is.”
Ray Dianne and Sheryl would have you know in actuality there is… beyond all the perceptions of mind and physical reality and the fears and limits of our ego reality, the oneness and openness of our Being which in essence is our soul remembrance of the “Consciousness” where we came from and ultimately, never left and of life or energy eternal and constant which are our natural birthright.
