Life, the universe, existence, God, Spirit, Big Mind, Buddha Mind, what is, leaves nothing out, so as long as we are leaving something out through beliefs and identities, something is missing. And we know something is missing. Something feels off. It is dukkha.
What in our own experience, here and now, leaves nothing out?
This awareness leaves nothing out. Something arises in awareness, and it is simple. There may be resistance to experiencing that something, and that too arises in awareness. There is no way awareness can leave anything out, just as space cannot resist anything happening within space.
If we explore this awareness, we find that it is no thing, has no shape, no color, no beginning, no end, and it allows existence and non-existence, life and death, mind and matter, nature and culture, and whatever we may label good and bad, right and wrong, and anything else.
So already, we – as awareness – allows it all. Already, we are aligned with life, the universe, Spirit, God, Big Mind, Buddha Mind. Already, we are that. We are the Ground of it all. We are the unmanifest and manifest. Effortlessly. Unavoidably.
But as soon as we cling to a belief as an exclusive truth, and identify with any exclusive identity (which means any identity at all), we don’t notice this. We are wrapped up in identification with a particular region of the manifest, and exclude the unmanifest and whatever happens outside of this region of the manifest. We have an exclusive identity, which filters the experience of everything through itself, making it appear very real. And that is when something feels off.
It feels off, because it is off. And it is off, because attention is wrapped up in stories, not available to notice what we already are.