So the moment you have a theory about anything, your theory is basically a story. Whenever you have a system, whenever you have an approach, whenever you have a terminology, whenever you have a science, it’s a story that is being generated. There’s no Ultimate Truth other than what’s happening right now. You could say this is a school, we do work, people learn to develop themselves and be free and realize who they are and all that. We could say that and that’s a good theory, but it’s a story. Other people could have a different story—that this is some kind of cult with a secret force that pulls all these people together toward some secret purpose that will not appear until later. Neither story is accurate. The accurate perception is that this is the pattern in which reality emerges right now. – Diamond Heart Book Five: Inexhaustible Mystery, ch.11
Reality is not a monolithic, static truth that can be defined in a fixed way. It is actually way more alive and mysterious than that. We might feel chagrined by this if we believe that we have reached some final, eternal truth about reality; or we might feel delighted by the freedom of not having an end or a goal to reach. Regardless of how we feel about it, recognizing this indeterminacy of reality is crucial to living our realization and our freedom. – Runaway Realization: Living a Life of Ceaseless Discovery, Introduction
For a long time, looking for these spiritual ultimates powers the drive for enlightenment. And the ultimate can shift to a greater ultimate, a deeper ultimate, a more primordial ultimate.
At some point, though, those ultimates also need to be questioned; otherwise, we are not seeing the truth of reality. It’s not that the experiences of ultimate realization are not true or do not exist; it’s more that they turn out to be temporary. We can come to a place where we say, “The heck with it! Who cares about the ultimate!” When the idea of ultimate realization loses its usefulness, reality begins to deconstruct its own conceptualization, leaving itself and us wide open to whatever comes next. – The Alchemy of Freedom: The Philosophers’ Stone and the Secrets of Existence, Ch. 10
As long as we are looking for an ultimate realization, we remain fixed in the hierarchical view. When we recognize the subtle presence of the self and our attachment to conditions of realization in our experiences of nonduality or oneness, reality begins to show further possibilities of realization. When we are interested only in the truth, reality unfolds itself in unimaginable ways. We want to find the truth, whichever condition we find ourselves in; whatever realization is present, we investigate it and explore it to find out what it is, to find out what it has to do with reality. – The Alchemy of Freedom: The Philosophers’ Stone and the Secrets of Existence, Ch. 10