Big Sky Mind

Received December 2023 Listen to the complete audio on SoundCloud

You lift the veils, there's no one. 

One voice singing eternally.

Here it is, look no further. It is here.

It is this, just this.

Many masters, many traditions, have proclaimed: This is it. Right in front of us. If you look for the divine up in the clouds, you would look too high. If you would look for God in holy visions, you would look too far. For all you need to do is look inside of your heart.

What is right in front of us—the everyday, ordinary reality—there is no other greater miracle than that. You cannot go looking for miracles, because the very act of looking that you are is a miracle itself. You cannot go looking for the divine, because it is only ever and always the divine that looks. 

[Participant laughs in amazement]

That's the only correct response. 

[Everyone laughs]

So if you look at your mind, if you look directly at your mind, where do you look? What looks, and what do you find?

In a moment like now, you look and there is peace inside you. I want you to remember what it's like to close your eyes and feel contentment, to feel peace, to feel tranquillity. I want you to know what it feels like to not want to go anywhere, to not need anything extra, to be okay just where you are, to let the world be okay, just where it is.

The problem is not how to find this pristine, beautiful place inside of us. The problem that we should all ask ourselves is why we constantly run away from it? Why we constantly distract ourselves? We pretend like we want peace, but we look everywhere else, instead of stopping and pausing and allowing peace to be present.

And so when you close your eyes in a moment like this, there's more quietude inside, more stillness... I assume, I hope.

When you close your eyes like this, right now, the mind is like a big sky. Big sky mind. And if you keep inquiring, if you keep looking there, you find that that's close to what you are: like a big sky, like an ocean without a shore. What happens is when that big sky, that big sky, trips over the clouds, and it thinks that it is the clouds. It thinks that it is the weather. Just like all of your thoughts when we were very young, we were given a name, a place we come from, beliefs, attitudes, languages, societal conditioning, and this is how we learn. And all of those things that we learn, that is a veil that covers up what was already there. Do you understand? So when you lift that veil of all those things that were put on, this is what they say in the East, is to look at your original nature. Your original nature is what was there before, it was what was there all along, before you accumulated anything in your life, in this life.

And so when you close your eyes now, and you look at this quietude inside, I want you to remember your original nature: your ancient awareness, your primordial personality before the Big Bang. Who were you then? And so from this big place, what happens is to become like a cloud we have to contract all that big place. We have to create a lot of walls and limitations in order to believe that we are very small. And when we are contracted into the contents of our mind, into the contents of our thoughts, it's hard to see the periphery, it's hard to get a sense, it's hard to lift our head out of the water. It's hard to get perspective, and we do our best, as we are very small. But if we step back from the cloud and we see the vastness of the sky that is behind the thought that is our mind, we become very large. And if you can do that, if you can rest there, if you can see that number one, it says it shows you that you can be aware of your thoughts. And therefore the narrative in your mind is not actually you talking to yourself. It can be an object. It can be objective. But just by the act of observing it, it means that it's not the observer. So observing from this big sky place, if you can do that, that is a place where you can touch real joy, not conditional joy. And because when we are the cloud, we think, Why me? What can I do? What have I done? Why am I sad? Why am I this?  The big sky doesn't ask those questions that the cloud does. Because the cloud is the formulation of our thoughts, our concepts, our rationality. But if we step behind all of that before a thought takes place, there is nothing there to ask why or what or how, because that is the place of freedom, that is the place of peace. That is a place of love, and that is what we are looking for: to lift the veil, and there is no one there. There’s just one voice singing eternally. 

It's a very brave, wonderful, courageous, incredible, miraculous thing to be a human being. But a human being is born of life. We are born into a body, into a mind. We are housed in this beautiful thing. But our true home, our true ground that we stand in– beyond the name, beyond the form, and beyond all that we've ever known–is this wordless silence, is this divinity. Our words can't do justice to say how holy it is of what our essence is.

So, drinking this medicine, I try to zoom out as far as I can. It tells me, it pushes me to zoom out as far as I can, because it shows me that's where it is from. And it wants to show me my nature, because it is from nature. And our nature, one, it's a natural thing. And two, it's something that we cannot not do. It's underneath all of the clothes. It's underneath all of the thoughts. And it's been there all along, since before time and space existed. This is why we could say that this medicine is like a grandmother. If we go back far enough, it's a wise teacher. And somewhere long, long, long ago, we were relatives and we were in the plant kingdoms, you and I, further back when we were atoms, she was there looking over us like that. It shows me how we are connected to everything. And so I say it is a familial medicine. A family medicine, because it touches all things. And we can approach it like that. We can approach it from this big sky mind, this place of openness, profound openness, and, too, we can approach it from the place of the cloud, from our life, from all of the pain, the sadness, the trauma that we carry in our body and in our mind, all of the stories that we hold. We can approach it from there too. She doesn't mind where we approach it from. She cleans anyway. Sometimes the cleaning is gentle and joyful. Sometimes it's hard, but the cleaning what it's sweeping, it's cleaning, all of the stuff that we've put in that we didn't know, that we put in, put into our mind, put into our body, all of the crap that we pick up, all of the crap that's given to us and we think is ours, we hold on to it for such a long time, it becomes a weight, becomes a density, becomes tension in our body, contraction in our mind.

So speaking tonight to point a finger at some of those things, I hope you recognize what I'm pointing to, so that you can unravel and untie that knot. You can relax the tension.

It's a very profound thing, to be able to relax your entire nervous system, your musculoskeletal system, all at once, to open your mind, to let it be fully surrendered to this moment, to let the breath find you, and to give up the control that we constantly try to hold, and to start to trust life, to trust this moment, or to trust the experience that you can have when you entered completely into this moment.

So this medicine is about presence, and the door is always open.

And so, my friends, I hope you're listening. I want to ask you, ask all of us, just to take a moment of silence, to do what we just said, to relax the body, to let the body be completely as it is. Let your mind be just as it is. Don't try to fight anything. Don't try to control anything. Don't try to go anyway. So do that: go into your body, your fingers, your toes. Let it all unfold. From your skin to your muscles, your tendons, feel the weight of your bones. Let your breath become gentle, and place your entire awareness on your whole body, and place the awareness of your whole body into the centre of your mind. See if you can softly stay there, just for a few moments, leaving everything behind.