You Are Reality
“What you are looking for is what is looking.”
— St. Francis of Assisi
No one can experience reality.
Reality is not an experience, but that in which all experiences come and go.
As individuals, we are confined to subjectivity—inescapably so.
No accumulation of experiences or knowledge can ever bring anyone closer to reality.
It is not an object one can possess, observe, or relate to in any way.
Neither is it an event nor a sensation.
Reality is the ever-present ground in which all objects, events, and sensations appear.
When all objects and furniture are removed from a room, what remains is the space that had always held them.
The space was always there. It is the fundamental substance of all that was in the room—and beyond.
The attention, though, was distracted, absorbed by form, color, and texture.
Similarly, between two thoughts, silence—emptiness—becomes apparent.
Like the space in the room, emptiness was always present.
But since it served no function for the mind, it was dismissed—trivialized and ignored.
Yet it is from that emptiness, from that silence, that all thoughts and concepts arise.
It is the very essence the mind—and what lies beyond the mind—are made of.
You can’t truly speak of that emptiness.
There is nothing left in it to be described, and no one to describe it.
It is impossible for the mind to look at itself.
Whenever it tries to, it vanishes.
To continue functioning, thought requires movement.
It needs duality—a subject relating to objects.
But when thought ceases, the effort of the separate self to define itself through actions, roles, or concepts ceases with it.
Then, what remains is the formless substratum in which all experiences unfold.
Once the space of a room is seen for what it is,
it becomes clear that no object—and no crowd of visitors—can ever diminish or disturb it.
So it is with the fundamental ground of being.
It exists completely beyond the subject and the object, beyond experience—beyond space and time entirely.
No experience can bring you closer to it—or further away.
No amount of pleasure or pain, gain or loss, success or failure can alter or stain it.
It is the unknowable, the unfathomable—
the still, silent, eternal womb of all that is.
It is at no distance from you, for it is the very fabric each and every object and being is made of—
the source from which all forms, all worlds, all stories arise—
and to which they inevitably return.
IMF - La Cathedrale Verte, Lausanne 20 June 2025
