Radically Condensed Instructions for Being Just as You Are

by J. Jennifer Matthews

We fail to appreciate the mystery of life. Because of this, we find ourselves wanting things to be different. We pursue external and internal goals in an effort to make things different. But this does not work. Our failure to appreciate the mystery inherent in our current situations, and our consequent attempts to transcend or improve them, causes our dissatisfaction.

We can be awake and intimately in touch with the mystery of the present moment. This is a lifestyle choice, not a goal. When something appears to take us out of present-moment experience, we can question it rather than follow it with credulity. We don’t have to let it hoodwink us with the promise that we will be in touch with the mystery of present-moment experience when we've received what we want in the future, in another city or at another job.

When we long for things, it happens that we become very good at longing. So why won’t we keep right on longing after we get what we want? When our desired conditions are finally met, they can’t take away our habit of longing, so they come too late.

The reason we are giddy with joy is because joy is our genuine nature. We just abandoned it for a little while because we were busy bothering ourselves with fantasies.

We can experience profound joy if we give ourselves permission to. Instead we look outside ourselves for a perfect situation. And it is the act of looking that takes us away from our happiness.

we don’t experience the mystery of life by ‘working through’ our perturbation. We just experience it. We simply decide to experience life, without judgment or expectation. A moment’s lapse is a moment’s lapse. The reason our occasional, alienating thoughts and feelings bother us is because we think we should be bothered by them.

Wakefulness or enlightenment can be reasonably defined as appreciating the mystery of life in the present moment, while knowing it is the only 'thing' there is. Wakefulness’ opposite – the dissatisfaction brought about by reactive emotions and alienating desire – can be reasonably defined as the futile attempt to ‘get something out of life.’

When we realize our true self is nothing other than present-moment experience, we are free to love whatever is happening, regardless of whether we like it!

We experience dissatisfaction when we live our lives to further our ambitions, entertain fantasies, or at least avoid unpleasantness.

we know the world only by means of our own experience.

all experiences are experiences of awakening. Every experience points to the truth if you look at it closely enough.

There is no such thing as objective reality! There is only experience.

when we understand and accept that this present, awake experience is the only 'thing' that truly exists, we lose motivation to pursue our grandiose identities and disturbing obsessions.

Experience is infinite: we can have any experience we want as long as we are willing to put up with the consequences.

We are absolutely, totally, and perfectly one with our nature as Awareness the instant we desist from bothering ourselves. That’s enlightenment. There is really nothing we must do or become.