There is an ancient taoist fable about a sheepherder boy who transcends the requirements of convention (maintenance of worldly concerns akin to duty), by changing the nature of his duty without violating the basis of what constitutes one’s natural relationship with creation.

Yes, one actually has a relationship with Creation. Its activation is the selfless intent of the real human body. One’s intent arrives at an open sincerity of enlightening being by its sustained, unbending quality. This is naturally inconceivable, naturally gradual entry into the nature of Power.

Sincere openness beckons the fruition of the selfless intent of the body of reality, which is one’s immaterial center, the locus of one’s aware living potential energy. It has no location. It is Mind. Open awareness is its substance, function, and intent. Sincere openness is the go-between, entering where the elements of the primal organization are not differentiated in the macrocosm nor in the microcosm. It is the most subtle and exquisite vessel of enlightening being(s). It is the point where thought arises. It is the door to all marvels. It is just this open sincere intent of one’s real body where the Way alights and wells forth.

Enlightening partnership in creation transcends one’s subjectivity to it. In working it, so to speak, one lets go of the small to partake of the great. It is a matter of clarifying the basis of one’s awareness, one’s relationship with awareness, that karmic evolution becomes a partner in oneself, and one is then no longer subject to its changes. Working it is the ability of buddhas, wizards, saints, sages and the enlightening beings of all times.

Working its activity is the duty of enlightening being. Self-reflective activity trapped within desire, form and formlessness is the duty of ordinary sentient beings.

Correct concentration and insight into the nature of Mind and furthermore maintaining a subtle continuous extension of mindful observation on this nature of Mind while functioning adaptively in ordinary affairs eventually develops into an unbending impersonal intent of open sincerity harmonizing with the Way. Harmonizing with the Way and its Power is making a bid with its Power, since the essence of the Way is the nature of human being.

Through a long process, self-refinement reaches a natural harmony with the Way, and one’s bid is recognized as resonance attuned to its Power. From that point on, enlightening being operates by a selfless fundamental reversal of the nature of one’s relationship with Creation hitherto unknown to ordinary people, who, furthermore, have no idea what constitutes their own nature. Ordinary people follow the light of creation within personalistic (selfishly) attuned ignorance, whereas enlightening beings turn the light around to align themselves with its universal undifferentiated source of illumination.

The source isn’t anywhere else but here and now. It’s you; though you are not it. Being here and now without employing psychological patterns habitually differentiating before and after, self and other, is already the light turned around. The terminology is only words, not the reality. The work of self-refinement is the dissolution of the mental patterns veiling authentic presence. Negotiating the viscidities of here and now is enlightening being; it is neither different nor the same as before and after, self and others because real knowledge is void of habitual mental patterns of discriminatory consciousness. This is why the nonpsychological is spiritual.

This is not a matter of sudden illumination, nor does its effect depend on the sudden. The spiritual is the very nature of the sudden. Therefore, the work of enlightening activity is the activation of the nature of the sudden operating in the midst of the gradual. Not only is this the nature of buddhahood, it is the nature of one’s own unborn awareness right now in the light of your eyes. It’s Mind through and through.

This is not a meditative exercise. One does not see light!! The light does not look like lights. Even ordinary light is essentially immaterial. How can the light of awareness be conceived? If you see lights, and instead want to see reality, stop whatever it is you are doing. ”Wonders” derivative of the psychological storehouse are not the light. Seeing the light is its reversal. As such, all things are just this light. The light looks just like things. Its reversal is the nature of reality alone, i.e.: it is things, yet things are not it. Seeing reality is the basis of not being subject to creation.

The alchemic manuals state that “whatever can be seen is not to be used; only use that which cannot be seen.” The medicines are immaterial. Fusing them permanently in terms of the spiritual potential of the being that is going to die is the work of alchemy. Those who work with material and plasmic elements will come to an impasse.

Clarifying the basis of one’s awareness, one’s relationship with awareness, karmic evolution becomes a partner in oneself, and one is no longer subject to its changes. All things reverting to potential in oneself doesn’t change anything. That’s the point of transcending changes.

Changes aren’t potential. Only creation changes. The business of stealing potential is absorbing the stability inherent in one’s essential unborn awareness by virtue of and in spite of things. Partnership with creation is embodying the function of fundamental unity which is the light. The stability of illumination is your nature, which is changeless.

One’s partnership with creation is proven by seeing Change. One sees Change by not following its changes unawares. How difficult is that? How difficult is it to not follow thoughts unawares? Not being subject to creation is before the first thought. That’s how close reality is. Before the first thought is already your own mind. Mind, as is, is already thus before “you” exist in terms of self-reflective pattern-awareness. Therefore, your own mind right now is the nature of the spiritual living potential, yet one’s innate living potential (enlightening being) isn’t the person. Although the person is a vector of the Changes, having awakened to one’s enlightening potential, impersonal adaption according to the time only serves the potential of the situational evolution of the times without involving the sense-gates and psychological momentum relative to habit-consciousness. Able to serve the Changes, able to see potential, is knowing Change. Those who know Change do not go along with its changes.

Observing this Mind, how important is correct concentration and insight into the nature of Mind? Furthermore, how is maintaining a subtle continuous extension of mindful observation on this nature of Mind while functioning adaptively in ordinary affairs important to turning the light of this Mind around?

In seeing the light, one partakes of the nature of the light and does not entertain acquisitive, speculative relationships with things based on patterns reifying the multifarious personality’s karmic imprint. Why? Because, in turning the light around, enlightening beings see that things are not absolute in terms of the nature of creation (which is karmic).

It is not a matter of belief, or faith. One does not act as if…(?) The perpetual result constituting Reality does not depend on seeing. Reality is already the way it is before the first thought. Seeing depends on you alone. If you see reality, then you do not abide in karmic energy, and the totality of the being that is going to die is the nature of enlightenment.

In turning the light around, things revert to unrefined potential in terms of enlightening beings seeing reality. This is how one “steals potential”— it is just a matter of (one’s operating the light in reverse that is) not partaking in the created aspect of karmic evolution whereby one “absorbs” potential. It is not that one takes anything, or that things themselves miraculously stop acting like things overflowing in their foolishness, poisoned, deluded. It is simply seeing for oneself that there is nothing whatsoever to take (in terms of transcendent relationship in the created), that one “frees” potential inherent in any given situational event and then stores it away in secrecy void of intellectualism.

The upshot is that one accumulates the subsequently purified primordial energy for enlightening evolution by oneself for the purposes of one’s duty, carried out as a highly-refined relationship with creation based on its (the created’s) uncreated potential.

It is found neither in oneself nor in others; it is itself in Reality alone.