one with life

2011-10-28T11:09:00.001Z

Liberation of the mind

2011-01-23T19:34:00.001Z

Once you know your mind and its miraculous powers, and remove what poisoned it - the idea of a separate and isolated person - you just leave it alone to do its work among things for which it is well suited.

To keep the mind in its own place and on its own work is the liberation of the mind.  

- Nisardadatta Maharaja
Nonduality Highlights 4141

There is only one mistake you are making

2011-01-02T12:24:00.001Z

You take the inner for the outer and the outer for the inner. What is in you, you take to be outside you and what is outside you take to be in you. The mind and feelings are external, but you take them to be internal. You believe the world to be objective, while it is entirely a projection of your psyche.

That is the basic confusion and no new explosion will set it right. You have to think yourself out of it. There is no other way.  

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
Nonduality Highlights 4121

There is no good and no evil

2010-12-26T12:06:00.000Z

In every concrete situation there is only the necessary and the unnecessary. The needful is right, the needless is wrong. The situation decides.

Every situation is a challenge which demands the right response. When the response is right, the challenge is met and the problem ceases. If the response is wrong, the challenge is not met and the problem remains unsolved.

Your unsolved problems - that is what constitutes your karma.

Solve them rightly and be free.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
Nonduality Highlights 4114

Everything Under the Sun

2010-12-20T13:00:00.000Z

Look around you; there is only one reality. The reason that you are here, wherever here is for you, is because it is the only place that you can be right now. But even though reality is right here, and even though there is quite literally nothing but reality, it is very possible for you to miss it altogether. By miss it I mean to imagine that reality is something or somewhere other than here. As strange as it may sound it is very possible, even probable, that even though you have eyes to see, you do not see. And even though you have ears to hear, you do not hear. What you see and hear is not exactly what is actually here, but what you imagine is here.

Our imagination is a very powerful force in determining what we perceive. If we imagine that the world is teeming with evil forces, we will surely perceive the world as evil. But if we imagine the world to be essentially good, we will perceive it as good. Either way it is the same world that we are looking at. But the world is neither good nor bad in and of itself; it is simply what it is. And if we see the world as either good or bad, we will not be able to see it as it actually is. We will only be able to see it as we imagine it to be.

Now take this idea and apply it to everything and everyone in your life. Try it for a moment, or an hour, or a day. And if you do, you may begin to notice that the world you imagine to exist does not exist at all. This may cause you some fear, or possibly the thrill of discovery, but either way the important thing is to get some distance from the habitual way the mind contorts and creates perception.

But even though our mind imagines the world and everything in it to be other than the way it actually is, the reality of existence remains eternally untouched by our misperception of it. This is both relatively good and bad. It is good in that existence is eternally what it is. We need not worry about reality becoming something other than reality. But it is bad in the sense that the world we imagine to exist is always colliding with the world as it actually is. This collision is the cause of immense human suffering and conflict.

So we are trapped within our illusions and misperceptions. And the greatest illusion of all is to believe that we are not trapped. But even when we realize that we are confined within a prison of our own making, we are trapped because all the ways we struggle to get out of our illusions are illusions themselves. So, yes, we are trapped, and helpless to boot.

But there is a very strange thing that can occur at exactly the point where you realize that there is no escaping the imaginary world of your illusions. You bare your heart open to illusion, surrender your eternal struggle against it, and admit to being bound by its cunning imagination. I don't mean that you become despondent or resigned to your fate. I mean that you truly let go in the face of your utter defeat and stop struggling.

And when all the struggle ceases, we realize that the prison of our mind cannot hold us in anymore, because the prison was all along something we imagined into existence. And imagined things aren't real, they don't exist. But we could never really see this as long as we were fighting the phantoms of our minds. We needed the one thing that our imaginary minds could not bring about, could not fake or create: the genuine surrender of all struggle.

In the blink of an eye, we are no longer confined within illusion nor our attempt to avoid illusion. When all struggle ceases, there is nothing to bind us to a distorted perception of existence and we can finally see. What we see is that we do not simply exist within existence, but all of existence exists within us as well. And although everywhere we look we see the endless diversity of life, we also now see our own true face in everything under the sun.

- Adyashanti
Nonduality Highlights 4102

Why worry so much about causation?

2010-11-23T08:29:00.000Z

What do causes matter, when things themselves are transient? Let come what comes and let go what goes - why catch hold of things and enquire about their causes?

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
Nonduality Highlights 4075

Don't trouble the mind

2010-11-23T08:26:00.001Z

and don't let it trouble you. This is how to control the mind.

- Papaji,from The Truth Is, posted to DailyDharma
Nonduality Highlights 4075

There is no such thing as enlightenment.

2010-11-17T07:39:00.000Z

The realization of that fact is
itself enlightenment.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj

This is the open secret

2010-10-31T10:52:00.000Z

which all can discover
for themselves. We live our lives, as it were
"inside out," projecting the existence of an "I"
as separate from an external world which we try
to manipulate to gain satisfaction. But as long
as one remains in the dualistic state, one's
experience has always underlying it a sense of
loss, of fear, of anxiety, and dissatisfaction.
When, on the other hand, one goes beyond the
dualistic level, anything is possible.

- Namkai Norbu, The Crystal and the Way of Light
Nonduality Highlights 4060

Destined for enlightenment

2010-09-20T09:34:00.001Z

Do understand that you are destined for enlightenment. Cooperate with your destiny, don't go against it, don't thwart it. Allow it to fulfill itself. All you have to do is to give attention to the obstacles created by the foolish mind.  

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
Nonduality Highlights 4018

The desire for truth

2010-08-30T16:08:00.003Z

is the highest of all desires.

Yet, it is still a desire.

All desires must be given up for the real to be.

Remember that you are.

This is your working capital. 

Rotate it and there will be much profit.  

- Nisargadatta Maharaja, "I Am That"
AlongTheWay 30 August 2010 

The secret to bliss

2010-08-27T17:16:00.002Z

is to stop the search,
stop thinking,
stop not-thinking,
and keep quiet.

- Papaji, The Truth Is 
AlongTheWay

There's no state in which one is seeing reality

2010-08-22T13:04:00.001Z

WHO is seeing WHAT? You can only BE real. And that you are always.

The problem exists only in thinking. Let all false ideas go, that's all. There's no need for true ideas, since there are none.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj
Nonduality Highlights 3989

Same thing

2010-08-13T06:14:00.002Z

Apparently one of the most difficult things to "get" is that the non-dual and dual are the same thing.

So we really don't have to hide out in emptiness and not being a person and saying everything is a dream, an illusion. That is a half-baked state.

This, as you/it are right now, is IT.

Tom Thompson on Face-book
Nonduality Highlights 3980

Who cares?

2010-08-13T06:12:00.002Z

Every month the disciple faithfully sent his Master an account of his progress.

In the first month he wrote: “I feel an expansion of consciousness and experience my oneness with the universe.” The Master glanced at the note and threw it away.

The following month, this is what he had to say: “I have finally discovered that the Divine is present in all things.” The Master seemed disappointed.

The third month the disciple’s words enthusiastically exclaimed: “The mystery of the One and the many have been revealed to my wondering gaze.” The Master shook his head and again threw the letter away.

The next letter said: “No one is born, no one lives, and no one dies, for the ego-self is not.” The Master threw his hands up in utter despair.

After that a month passed by, then two, then five months—and finally a whole year without another letter. The Master thought it was time to remind his disciple of his duty to keep him informed of his spiritual progress.

Then the disciple wrote back: “Who cares?”

When the Master read those words a look of great satisfaction spread over his face.

Nonduality Highlights 3980

Let there be a silent understanding

2010-08-03T08:28:00.001Z

and no more. Away with all thinking and explaining. Then we may say that the Way of Words has been cut off and movements of the mind eliminated.

~Huang Po
Nonduality Highlights 3971

The ego is a monkey

2010-07-05T16:23:00.000Z

catapulting through the jungle: Totally fascinated by the realm of the senses, it swings from one desire to the next, one conflict to the next, one self-centered idea to the next. If you threaten it, it actually fears for its life. Let this monkey go. Let the senses go. Let desires go. Let conflicts go. Let ideas go. Let the fiction of life and death go. Just remain in the center, watching. And then forget that you are there.

- Lao Tzu, from Hua Hu Ching, translated by Brian Walker
Nonduality Highlights 3942

This is the truth

2010-05-31T22:26:00.000Z

There is nothing to accept,
Nothing to reject,
Nothing to hold on to,
Nothing to let go of,
Nothing to grasp,
Nothing to spurn,
Nothing to embrace,
Nothing to relinquish,
Nothing to dissolve.

This is the truth.

~ From Ashtavakra-Gita translated by Thomas Byron
Nonduality Highlights 3910

There is no such thing as a person

2010-05-02T18:40:00.000Z

There are only restrictions and limitations.
The sum total of these defines the person.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
NonDuality Highlights 3879

Quietness

2010-05-02T18:32:00.001Z

Inside this new love, die. 
Your way begins on the other side. 
Become the sky. 
Take an axe to the prison wall. 
Escape. 
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color. 
Do it now. 
You're covered with thick cloud. 
Slide out the side. Die, 
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign 
that you've died. 
Your old life was a frantic running 
from silence.

The speechless full moon comes out now.

- Rumi,
The Essential Rumi,
translations by Coleman Barks, with John Moyne

Breaking the harmony

2010-04-25T19:52:00.001Z

I have not really known myself, 
or anyone else.  

I've tried to do good, and not 
just what my appetites wanted,  

but that was all infatuation 
with this precious, isolated, body.  

That you and I were constantly joining,
 I didn't know. I didn't know

  that even to ask "What are You?"
 or "Who am I" breaks the harmony.  

- Lalla, version by Coleman Barks, from Naked Song
AlongTheWay

Reality alone exists

2010-03-21T12:43:00.000Z

- and that we are. All the rest is only a dream, a dream of the One Mind, which is our mind without the 'our'. Is it so hard to accept? Is it so difficult to assimilate and to live?

Wei Wu Wei, from Why Lazurus Laughed
Nonduality Highlights 3841

The Essential Nature of Mind

2010-03-21T12:42:00.000Z

No words can describe it
No example can point to it
Samsara does not make it worse
Nirvana does not make it better
It has never been born
It has never ceased
It has never been liberated
It has never been deluded
It has never existed
It has never been nonexistent
It has no limits at all

It does not fall into any kind of category.

- Dudjom Rinpoche
Nonduality Highlights 3841

We are the answer

2010-03-01T10:30:00.000Z

We take long trips. We puzzle over the meaning
of a painting or a book, when what we're wanting
to see and understand in this world - we are that.

- Rumi, version by Coleman Barks from Open Secret
Nonduality Highlights 3821

There is no such state as seeing the real

2009-12-28T23:21:00.000Z

Who is to see what? You can only *be* the real -- which you are, anyhow. The problem is only mental. Abandon false ideas, that is all. There is no need of true ideas. There aren't any.

Nisargadatta Maharaj
Nonduality Highlights 3759

The core principal to all this

2009-12-06T11:25:00.000Z

is that the mind doesn't like to be challenged as being nothing more than a pre-programmed illusion. Once this is seen through as clear as daylight, the game is over, there are no more assumed problems that existed for an assumed self. This whole show of light and sound is just seen for what it is and the undying peace that was always present is all there is, and all there ever is in the present moment.

Know that all the resistance to this is only the conceptual mind, just doing its thing. Don't worry about it, it's just what must play out. With a little investigation, this whole shooting match can come to an end, and the suffering is over!

- J.D. Hazlewood
Nonduality Highlights 3736

To know the self as the only reality

2009-11-17T08:51:00.000Z

and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy. It is all very simple. Instead of seeing things as imagined, learn to see them as they are. When you can see everything as it is, you will also see yourself as you are. It is like cleansing a mirror. The same mirror that shows you the world as it is will also show you your own face. The thought `I am' is the polishing cloth. Use it.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That
AlongTheWay, 16.11.09

The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory

2009-10-31T15:49:00.000Z

Why go anywhere? Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another. Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that need be done.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, from I Am That, posted to AlongTheWay

Ego

2009-10-13T07:14:00.000Z

The teaching that the ego does not exist -- repeated so often in so parrot-like a way -- can help no one, can only create intellectual confusion and thus harm the search for truth. But the teaching that the ego is only an idea -- however strongly held by the mind -- and as such does exist, can help everyone in the struggle for self-mastery and can throw intellectual light on the search for truth.

— Notebooks of Paul Brunton
Nonduality Highlights 3683

What we are looking for

2009-09-06T10:11:00.000Z

is what is looking.

- St. Francis of Assisi
Nonduality Highlights 3646

Waking up from the dream

2009-08-19T15:11:00.000Z

To know itself the self must be faced with its opposite - the not-self.

Desire leads to experience. Experience leads to discrimination, detachment, self-knowledge - liberation.

And what is liberation after all? To know that you are beyond birth and death.

By forgetting who you are and imagining yourself a mortal creature, you created so much trouble for yourself that you have to wake up, like from a bad dream.  - Nisargadatta Maharaja ‘I Am That’ AlongTheWay, 19 August 2009

The momentum for this Cosmic Game

2009-08-15T11:38:00.001Z

is created whenever you pretend that what isn't, somehow, is far superior to what is. Although this belief keeps you focused on a never-ending journey towards happiness, enlightenment, etc., it also guarantees that you will never reach a point of permanent satisfaction and peace. Why? Because this whole notion of being on a `journey-to-fulfillment' is actually the secret method that the desperate ego uses in order to survive in the face of personal annihilation by Consciousness.

In other words, as long as the ego stays more focused on making the `journey,' it can continue to avoid disappearing entirely in the blinding realization of the true identity of the mystic `traveler.' This frenzied activity around pursuing enlightenment helps the ego to maintain a sense of personal doership. When what is not present is perceived as better than what is present, the precious reality contained in this very moment is inwardly resisted. However, Consciousness has no opposite, it's the only thing that's present, and it can never really change into `what isn't.'

It just is what it is. However, by pretending that `something else is better,' the ego hopes to
survive by enthusiastically pursuing the disowned `other.' Of course, the cosmic joke, is that the ego is caught on a selfgenerated treadmill because it already `is' what it is looking for.

The valiant struggle to be enlightened secretly protects the ego from being exposed as the phantom it truly is. As long as the search continues unabated, the searcher is validated as being separate from the very thing that he is searching for.

But, in Truth, we can never really run away from ourselves because we already are who we are
running from, and we already are where we are running to.

-Chuck Hillig
NonDuality Highlights 3264

If you but cease from useless conceptualizing

2009-08-11T17:14:00.001Z

you will be what you are and what you have always been.  

- Ramesh S. Balsekar, "A Net of Jewels"
 AlongTheWay, 11 August 2009

We are permitted to let go of the pointers

2009-07-07T08:14:00.001Z

(laughter)
And you’re also permitted to stop going to satsang. And stop pursuing awakening. And stop going to other people that have a transmission. It’s all bullshit because none of that applies because you have everything. Because that pointer, even though it’s a conceptual pointer, what we’re basically saying is, you know, that is it.

- John Wheeler
Nonduality Highlights 3585

It’s not rocket science

2009-07-07T08:10:00.001Z

So when you drop all the words and you don’t even think 'I am That' and it is just you are what you are: that. And because it’s present and because it is a reality, because it’s not conceptual, and because it’s who we are, we can actually come to understand it, recognize its qualities, see the truth of that, because it’s not rocket science.

- John Wheeler
Nonduality Highlights 3585

You need

2009-07-06T10:49:00.001Z

some food, clothing and shelter for you and yours, but this will not create problems as long as greed is not taken for a need. Live in tune with things as they are and not as they are imagined.

  - Nisargadatta Maharaja,
Nonduality Highlights 3584

To be a living being is not the ultimate state

2009-06-22T21:56:00.001Z

There is something beyond, much more wonderful, which is neither being nor non-being, neither living nor not-living. It is a state of pure awareness, beyond the limitations of space and time. 
Once the illusion that the body-mind as oneself is abandoned, death loses its terror, it becomes a part of living.   

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, "I Am That" 
AlongTheWay, 22 June 2009

It is all the mind can do

2009-05-13T14:52:00.001Z

– discover the unreal as unreal. The problem is only mental. Abandon false ideas, that is all. There is no need of true ideas. There aren't any.  

- Nisargadatta Maharaj
AlongTheWay, 13 May 2009

The Great Way

2009-05-07T15:34:00.001Z

is embracing and spacious - to live in it is neither easy nor difficult. 

Those who rely on limited views are fearful and irresolute: The faster they hurry, the slower they go. 

To have a narrow mind,  and to be attached to getting enlightenment is to lose one's center and go astray. 

When one is free from attachment,  all things are as they are,  and there is neither coming nor going.  

- Seng-ts'an, Third Zen Patriarch  Hsin
Hsin Ming Translated by Richard B. Clarke
AlongTheWay 6 May 2009

The counter question to every problem

2009-05-07T15:32:00.002Z

is:

"Who has this problem?"

The realisation that he who has the problem is merely a concept without any substance is the only solution.  

- Ramesh S. Balker, A Net of Jewels
AlongTheWay 7 May 2009  

Awakening is a paradox

2009-04-13T09:13:00.000Z

as it reveals that there is no one to awaken and 'no-thing' that could be called awakening. Awakening - like a self consuming fire - cancels itself out in the realization that there is no awakening and no one to awaken while, at the same time, it may be seen that 'Awakeness' is already and always fully present. There is only This-Oneness and this Omnipresent One cannot reach 'awakening' as it IS already everywhere. It cannot really lose or find anything either, as it is everything. When there is only This-One, appearing as apparent diversity, then who or what could exist apart from this, get closer to this, or avoid THIS?

- Leo Hartong
Nonduality Highlights 3500

Pause all thought

2009-04-13T09:10:00.000Z

and look in direct experience. What is here and now, and what are you? How far are you from non-conceptual presence-awareness, and where is the presumed person, with his or her need for paths, practices and purifications? Before granting the need for such things, one must first establish the presence of the defective person. If there is no person, then who are we speaking about? The problem with teachings, however grand they may be, is that in the end they are collections of concepts. The recorded teachings of the greatest teachers, such as Shankara, Buddha or whomever it may be, are nothing but words and concepts. What I am talking about is your natural state, which is here and now and not even touched by the mind. This is the beauty of the direct, non-conceptual truth of things. All the questions and problems are constructions in thought, for and about an imaginary entity whom we cannot even establish as present. That is the hitch with approaches that are dualistic and unfold in time or through a process of becoming. These approaches reaffirm the primacy of the individual, time, processes, attainments, teachers and students and so on (all of which are purely conceptual), as opposed to the ever-present, non-conceptual reality that you are.

- John Wheeler
Nonduality Highlights 3500

Final truth

2009-04-13T09:06:00.000Z

Q: Do you foresee a time in the not too distant future when there will be many people on earth who are Enlightened?

A: There is no future, there are no people, there is no earth, there is no one seeking Enlightenment, and no one gaining it. This is the final and only Truth.

- Papaji
Nonduality Highlights 3499

Awakening is a readjustment

2009-03-30T16:35:00.000Z

The state is always present, is our normal, permanent, real nature - as the Masters of all the doctrines never tire of telling us - but the conscious experience of it is denied us by a deviation of subjectivity on to a concept that, as such, is unreal, an object in consciousness appearing as its own subject. Until this phantom is exorcised by being exposed, subjectivity appears to be bound, and we cannot experience it as it is in reality.

When this anomalous situation is understood, we need to start putting this understanding into practice, that is not just thinking about it, but experiencing it. There have been people, apparently born 'ready', for whom the fact of understanding has been sufficient in itself to produce the experience, but for the rest of us habit and practice are a necessary prelude to conscious experience of our reality.

However it is important to understand that there is nothing to acquire, but only an error to be exposed, because acquiring necessarily involves using, and so strengthening that spurious 'I' whose dissolution we require.

For this merely a readjustment is needed, such readjustment being the abandonment of identification with an inexistent individual self, an abandonment which leaves us unblindfold and awake in our eternal nature.

To seek to persuade ourselves that we do not exist as individual entities is, however, to ask an eye to believe that what it is looking at is not there. But it is not we alone who have no existence as entities: there are not any anywhere in the reality of the cosmos, never have been, and never could be. Only whole-mind can reveal this knowledge as direct cognition which, once realised, is obvious. That is the total readjustment. And only 'I' remains.

- Wei Wu Wei from Ask the Awakened: The Negative Way
Nonduality Highlights 3485

If you need time to achieve something

2009-03-16T19:31:00.000Z

it must be false. The real is always with you; you need  not wait to be what you are. Only you must not  allow your mind to go out of yourself in search.
- Nisargadatta Maharaja
Nonduality Highlights 3473

It's the ego that causes separation

2009-03-15T22:56:00.001Z

When I am full of ego, I become strong within myself. I become totally separate. So the more you like yourself as a person, the bigger your ego is. You say, "Well, I'm not supposed to like myself?". You're supposed to love yourself, but what self are we talking about? We're not talking about your body self, because that comes and goes. We're talking about your permanent self, that has always been here. And your permanent self is me, is you, is the world, is the universe, is everything. That's your permanent self.

- Robert Adams
Nonduality Highlights 3471

If you need time

2009-03-12T17:03:00.001Z

to achieve something, it must be false. The real is always with you; you need not wait to be what you are. Only you must not allow your mind to go out of yourself in search.   - Nisargadatta Maharaja
AlongTheWay, 12.3.09

Seek only the knowledge

2009-03-02T17:03:00.000Z

that un-ties the problems
of your life
seek it soon
before
your number is up
leave alone
what seems to be
but is not
seek what
seems not to be
yet it might

- Rumi, Quatrain 106, translation by Nader Khalif
Nonduality Highlights 3456

Liberation

2009-02-26T22:44:00.000Z

is the aliveness beyond belief, the aliveness of awareness itself.
Liberation is when all the answers, explanations and positions disappear, and you're left with the open mind of not knowing.

- Joan Tollifson
Nonduality Highlights 3453

The novel of life

2009-02-22T19:30:00.000Z

When you read a novel, and you read about various characters, you may like some and not like others. Or when you watch a movie, think about your relationship with the characters. You might like them; you might not like them—but you're not finding your sense of self in them. You're not referencing your self-worth by the characters in a novel or when you turn on the TV. You just have your thoughts about them.

But imagine if you turned on your TV or you read a novel and you actually completely derived your sense of being and your sense of self from one of the characters. Immediately your perspective is very different, isn't it? Now your perspective has gone from something that's very vast to something that's very limited, seen only through the eyes of the character. Sadly, that's how most human beings spend their lives. They have this little character in their mind called "me," and they're actually viewing that "me" as personal when it's not.

The "me" is very impersonal, not meaning cold or distant, but just meaning without inherent self nature, in the same way that when you read a book, the characters are without self nature. They actually don't exist outside of your imagination. They don't even exist in the book, because the book is just words. And without someone reading the words and bringing it all alive within imagination, nothing even exists on the printed page. It's all within the reader, all the life.

When the Buddha talked about the realization of no-self, he was talking about the self that's an image in the mind being completely seen through. And when there is no image of self, experience has nothing to bounce off of. Everything just is as it is, because there's no secondary interpretation. The one that's interpreting is the one that's in pain. And that's the one who suffers. That's the one who causes others to suffer.

The false self, the self that's an image in the mind, uses every experience to measure itself: "How am I in relationship to what's happening? Am I wise? Am I stupid? Am I clumsy? Am I courageous? Am I enlightened about this?" That's the movement of consciousness reflecting on an image of itself that doesn't actually exist. It's always measuring each and every experience, and then believing in the interpretation of the experience rather than seeing "Everything just is."

Everything actually just is. From the perspective of consciousness, even resistance just is. And if you resist resistance, that's just what is. You can't get away from it. You start to see that the only thing that goes into resistance, a story, or an interpretation of what is - whatever it is - is this mind-created persona. It's like a character in a novel. When you read a novel, every character has a point of view. It has beliefs. It has opinions. There's something that makes it distinct from other characters. Our persona is literally this mind-created character that's always making itself distinct. So it always needs to evaluate everything against its preconceived idea.

There's another vantage point. The other vantage point is not only outside the character, it's also inside the character. It's the ultimate vantage point that's outside, and it's also playing all the parts from the inside.

That's basically what it means to really wake up: we're waking up from the character. You don't have to destroy the character called "me" to wake up from it. In fact, trying to destroy the character makes it very hard to wake up. Because what's trying to destroy the character? The character. What's judging the character? The character.

So you leave the character alone. The character called you, just leave it alone. Then it's much easier for the awakening out of that perspective to happen.

You don't lose the character; you just gain the whole novel of life. It's not like you lose anything. You just gain the whole book. You gain the whole universe. As Buddha would say, "Lose yourself, gain the universe." It's not a bad deal. Or Dogen: "To know yourself is to forget yourself, and to forget yourself is to be enlightened by the 10,000 things," which means to see yourself everywhere. Wake up from your character, and then you see your self nature in all characters - not just one, but all of them.

So we don't lose anything. We gain all characters. We just lose the fixation, that's all.

- Adyashanti
Nonduality Highlights 3444

Disinterestedness

2009-02-09T06:36:00.000Z

You need not stop thinking. Just cease being interested. It is disinterestedness that liberates. Don't hold on, that is all.  - Nisargadatta Maharaja
Nonduality Highlights 3437

Your constant utilization of thought

2009-02-09T06:35:00.000Z

to give continuity to your separate self is 'you'. There is nothing there inside you other than that.  - U.G. Krishnamurti
Nonduality Highlights 3437

Is there enlightenment, realization or awakening?

2009-02-03T18:54:00.002Z

Your own true nature is an "expression of the One Life" - the Aliveness - Consciousness - Awareness. It cannot be anything other than that - as this would be Dualistic.

Your own essential nature - Aliveness - Life itself - is not personal. There is not a separate entity there which is 'you'. It is pure Life itself. NonDual.

We have a sense of self when the conceptual self-image builds up - and it is just that - a mental image. It is not who or what we actually are.

That self image becomes a reference point. But it is a 'cherry picked', modified and edited version of your characteristics, your foibles, your personality, your attributes, your history, your good points, your faults, your tragic qualities, etc. Just a mental image - not 'you'.

It is insubstantial and has no existence other than the content of thought. The apparent 'me' actually does not exist and when looked for cannot be found.

The 'me' is an abstraction. The actuality of what you are is what exists in the immediacy of the moment - which is Presence - Awareness / Aliveness.

All the rest is a mental construct - an abstraction. What that means is that 'the one who you think you are' is a mental abstraction and is 'not it'.

So then comes the 'desire' to become enlightened, or to awaken, or become self realized.

But your essential nature, which is present and aware right now as you read this, is an expression of the One Life. It is completely NonDual and completely untouched by the travails of life.

Your essential nature does not need to become enlightened, or to wake up, or to become self realized. It does not need to 'learn' how to become 'more Present', become more compassionate, be able to 'surrender' or 'go 'deeper'. It is already 100% Present and the concept of 'surrender' does not arise.

Who then 'wants' to be come 'Enlightened'? Who wants to 'Wake up'? It is the one who feels incomplete, unsatisfied, unhappy. Who is the one who suffers? It is the Self Image, the Reference Point, the Ego, the one who we think we are. The one who we believe is us.

It is entirely a case of mistaken identity. We are not who we think we are and we want to fix that one up.

Our real nature does not need 'fixing up'.

Our true nature does not need to become 'enlightened'.

Our true nature was never asleep and does not need to 'wake up'

Our true nature does not need to become 'realized' as it is already fully Real.

The reference point, the Ego, has no existence beyond the content of thoughts, has no aliveness of its own and has no awareness whatsoever in its own right. No wonder it feels incomplete and miserable! No wonder it suffers.

Who is the one that is the "I" in "When I awoke" or "I am enlightened", or "I am self-realized"? The only 'one' there that regards itself as a separate entity is the Ego itself - the reference point.

In fact there is no one there at all. The reference point, the so-called ego, does not exist beyond the content of thought. It has no substantial nature at all.

Our essential nature is Aliveness / Presence Awareness / Consciousness - but that is entirely non-personal - there is no separate entity at all. No Self, as the Buddha puts it.

So there are three good reasons to discard the old concepts of enlightenment, awakening and self realization.

1. Firstly there is no separate 'me' there to 'achieve' enlightenment, an awakening or self-realisation.

2. Secondly, our true nature does not need enlightening, waking up, or self-realization.

3. Thirdly - 'enlightenment', 'waking up' and 'self realization' are actually concepts - more than that - they are abstractions.

Far better to look into the matter of mistaken identity - just that and only that.

There-in lies the end of suffering and the end of seeking.

- Mike Graham
http://www.theendofseeking.net
Nonduality Highlights 3431

The end of becoming

2009-01-31T19:56:00.000Z

In the teachings of Vedanta we sometimes speak of 'the end of becoming.' What does the phrase, 'the end of becoming' mean?

The thing is, one cannot become what one already is. And what one already is, is what one wants to become. (So that's the good news.)

But one does not know that as yet. (The not so good news.)

However, that ‘not knowing’ can end. (The very good news!)

Let's say right now I don't know what I am. I know that I am. I know that I exist. I know that I am a conscious being. So, I know that I am a conscious/existent being.

But I don't know what that existence/consciousness, truly is. So, I take myself as limited. The mind, being the great labeler (as that is its job) takes whatever is handy (in this case the body/mind) to be me.

The mind takes my existent conscious self to be limited, and a product of, the body/mind and sense organs. What are the implications of taking my self to be the limited mind and body? (Not so good.)

I 'as though' (and it really is only 'as though') become subject to birth/death, disease, pain, old age, unhappiness, you name it! Not a pretty picture.

Even though it is only 'as though', that doesn't matter in terms of the effect this has on the mind. It's the scariest thing there is. Like even if I'm walking along a path on a dark night, and I take a crack in the road to be a deadly cobra, it doesn't matter to my mind what the reality is of what I'm seeing, if I don't know what the reality of it is. If my mind projects 'deadly cobra' onto the crack in the earth, and has no doubt about it, trauma will ensue.

And then, even when some kind friend, noticing my distress, shows me what is really there, and I see, "Oh, it is only a crack in the road," my heart may still be beating fast from the residual effects of the mental trauma caused by my totally incorrect conclusion.

Taking my existence/conscious self to be the body/mind is the most traumatic experience there is. There is nothing worse, and it is completely untrue.

But if someone walks up to you and says those words, I'm not sure that they would help. You would have to feel the person knew what they were talking about, and that they were not crazy or deluded, and be open to hearing and wanting to know what they had to say.

If all of the above criteria were met you might ask that person: "If you know that I am not the body/mind, and if you know that you are not the body/mind; if that is your direct experiential knowledge, is it possible that I can know the same thing? And, if so, how I can I know it? Can you actually prove to me and show me that what you are saying is true?"

Although there is nothing you can do to become who you are (because you are already that), there is something you can do to know who you really are.

Although you don't know it now, you can know it, because you are here to be known.

The truth is here to be known. It is only a matter of having someone, whom you trust and who is skillful, logically point out to you certain incontrovertible facts about yourself and the nature of your experience, and then giving your mind time to assimilate those facts. Then you yourself will recognize the truth.

The end of becoming is knowing that you never could, and never have, become anything in the first place other than what you already are. And what you already are has never been subject to becoming ever.

When the Gordian knot of ignorance (taking my self to be the body/mind) slips apart, then I see, Wow! This existence consciousness which I am, never becomes, never changes, is ever the same, and it is the most wonderful constant 'me' that I have always loved in every changing moment.

It is what I always wanted to be! And what I always wanted to be, I am! Amazing!
There is nothing that I can do to become my self, because I am already my self, and the recognition of that is called freedom!

- Durga
http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/teachers/becoming_durga.htm

Freed from bondage

2009-01-27T06:33:00.000Z

For the Realized mind at one with the Way
all self-centered striving ceases.
Doubts and irresolutions vanish
and the Truth is confirmed in you.
With a single stroke you are freed from bondage;
nothing clings to you and you hold to nothing.
All is empty, clear, self-illuminating,
with no need to exert the mind.
Here, thinking, feeling, understanding, and imagination
are of no value.
In this world "as it really is"
there is neither self nor other-than-self.

- Seng-ts'an, Third Zen Patriarch
Hsin Hsin Ming

Translated by Richard B. Clarke
-Nonduality Highlights 3424

True nonduality

2009-01-22T06:52:00.000Z

To awaken to the absolute view is profound and transformative, but to awaken from all fixed points of view is the birth of true non-duality.

- Adyashanti
Nonduality Highlights 3419

Fixing the world

2009-01-18T16:27:00.004Z

Adyashanti: Good evening.  

Questioner: This is my first retreat with you.  

A: That's funny. It's my first retreat with you.  

Q: But I'm the beginner.  

A: You better believe I am too. More than you would imagine.  

Q: Well, I'm struggling with something and its going to sound a bit theoretical but its really very personal.  

A: Okay.

  Q: A little background, I get paid to think. I'm a teacher. Okay that can become an addiction. My background is Christian and I'm still hanging in there.   

A: Very good.  

Q: Trying to preserve what I think is really valuable in the tradition although I must admit I am a bit religiously promiscuous in my Christianity.  

A: Apparently so, yeah.

Q: You might say I sit around a lot.   

This is it, it goes back to the question that came up the first evening, with the gentleman who watches CNN and BBC and gets upset. I watch CNN and BBC too... and get upset. Now what I'm trying to do; I want to be as brief as I can, I'm trying to make connections between what I've been and what I'm trying to be - all that I've learned, I think I've learned so much during these past days. But part of my tradition that I still want to affirm is what we Christians inherited from our Jewish parents. It's called 'tikkun olam;' fixing the world. We've got to fix the world. That's especially the Jewish prophets - including Jesus - and they all said 'you've got to fix the world.' The main reason they said 'you've got to fix the world' is because they saw not only the suffering within each of us that we cause ourselves so often; not only the broader, but they were kind of specific, Adya. They saw the suffering of people who are suffering because of what some people do to them. In other words some people who are not very enlightened of course but it's the suffering that is inflicted and it comes under the rubric of 'justice.' Or 'injustice.' And responding to injustice, we've got to fix the world.   

You addressed this and I got part of it but I guess I just want you to say it again once more for me. How do I put together, 'everything's okay the way it is,' 'surrender to it,' and 'the world needs to change.' 'Accept it; fix it.'  

A: They seem diametrically opposed.   

Q: And it gets really... I feel it. When you look at the suffering that is inflicted on innocent people blown away by bombs, either terrorist or military. By families in the inner city that can't feed their kids. Children denied health care. And the biggie that touches us all, what we are doing to this wonderful Earth. I know you're going to tell me...

A: Well this will save time, won't it?

Q: I think you're going to tell me that before you can fix it, you've got to accept it. I see because of the trouble with our fixing it, I guess I tend to get fixated on our fixing. Ego enters into it.  

A: Yeah.

Q: Just help me; what's the gap? I think we've got to overcome the gap between accepting it and trying to do something about it. How does one move?  

A: Because either one of those - even the accept everything as it is - if that gets taken as the 'truth,' then that's just as illusory as 'it's a mess, we gotta fix everything.' You see it's more like a medicine; it's a prescription, right? If we have this terrible disease of apparent division and strife, then one of the prescriptions is 'allow everything to be.' But it's like taking antibiotics if you're sick. True health isn't taking antibiotics for the rest of your life, is it? True health isn't contained in the drug and true health isn't contained in the sickness. It's contained ultimately outside of either one of them, so... - by the way, these are two difficulties that people run into even in their own realization.  

Sometimes we start out from a divided point of view, seeing seemingly everything's a mess and division and hate and ignorance and greed and violence and all of that, and that leads to a lot of division. And then we can have a great awakening and see there's nobody doing it. It's all done spontaneously, and then the mind still jumps in and makes a conclusion, "Ooh, why get involved?"   

It's just doing - and even then the realization becomes, as I have said many times, a new fixation. Right, so let's see it this way... If you're gonna think of it, more importantly; feel it, allowing everything to be as it is. It's sort of restores a sense of balance. It heals a certain anxiety and if there's a total of spontaneous happening of truly allowing everything to be, which is like surrender. Our nature is surrender; the ground of our nature is "allowing every thing to be." So let me talk to you in concrete terms. because I could keep going abstractly...

From my own experience, (because again, my teacher was smarter than me; she never tried to teach me any of this); its all inherent within being. But there was a time when; it was after a certain realization, and I was standing at a wedding, after the wedding, and it was a big wedding and it was a gymnasium after the wedding and I went over to get a second plate of food which is one of the best things about weddings, you know? So I went over to get a second plate of food and I'm going over there... And of course, I'm the first to get the second plate of food because I eat almost as fast as any one I've ever known - I'm not very Zen in my eating habits, you know... - "steam shovel version," yeah.  

I get a plate of food, and I turn around after I get the food, and I look out in this big room and there's the whole wedding thing; after the wedding, the dancing, and the kids and the grandmas and all of humanity, and you mingle for awhile so you get to know, "Oh there's a little tension over there in the family, and these people are having a great time."  

It's like it encapsulates humanity in a sense, and I sit there and look at it, and just this realization dawns, and I realize it's over... I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever see life the same way. It sounds separating, but its not - the way that these people are seeing life. I will never see life ever again, the way that most of humanity is seeing it. And it was at that point I felt just a tinge of what I would call the "taboo against being totally free." It's like, and then I felt; "how dare I?" "How dare I leave humanity totally behind?"   

You feel like a taboo; like it's not right. You must stay in the muddle and help make it. I'm not saying that I had all these thoughts; it was just a feeling, right?   

And there's a taboo in the collective consciousness that most people actually feel at a certain point of development, and I felt it, and it was very obvious to me, luckily, that it was just time to let it go. It was "let go" and it was no big explosion; nothing like that; very, very simple. And all of a sudden I'm there, plate in hand, looking at the wedding like I was before, and the next moment it was like, well,.. into the fray. And so I walked right back into it; it was like leaving the dream unequivocally, and then walking right back into it and its hard to make sense of that, but what arose was "from this place, everything is accepted."  

Because everything IS accepted. Literally... Literally. I can feel great compassion for hideous things that humanity does to each other, but I don't go into emotional psychological division. And that's the taboo... You feel that in the collective consciousness; that it's like not okay "not to go into division..." You must go into division; you should go into division.   

That's what the collective consciousness feels.   

And there I was not feeling it anymore...   

But what would happen, instead of division, would be a great outpouring of love or compassion when I see inhumanity. And out of that came a response; not from anxiety; not from "we've got to fix it," but from that state of non-division -from the love itself.

From the state of "everything is fine exactly the way it is;" there's nobody to do anything anyway.

Right out of that state, arose an action, an activity, that looks like helping, contributing to the welfare of others. It's not a disengaged, "there's the disengaged everything is just God happening," and then there's the "everything is God happening," with the emphasis on happening...

It's a verb; it's not a place to hide. And this to me, is a true expression. I mean you see it: all the realizers - they all have the same message basically. "All is well." "All is unimaginably well - you can't imagine how well it is." And they're spending their whole life dedicated to the welfare of others. It's very odd, you know?

  Q: So you end up fixing the world not by intending to...  

A: Right.  

Q: ...but by loving...  

A: Yes.  

Q: And the fixing results...  

A: ...from the loving... Right, and that was Christ's message. Was it not?  

Q: Yes, absolutely.  

A: Right; "treat your neighbor as yourself." So many of his teachings were basically saying, "Don't act from division." He could just as well have said, "Don't act from hatred.... Love your enemies." Right. And we hear that as a commandment but actually what he's telling us is, "This is the way Truth is. This is the Truth of your being." "This is how it works if you're just awake to it." But that's the funny thing; ultimately egos are afraid of love because they think, "If I was really undivided, I'd have no response to what I see." Where would the motivation come from?   

Q: There also may be, or I should say, "we're also afraid of... I don't know afraid of; but you end up, excuse me, you end up loving the bastards who are doing the oppression."   

Adya: Exactly. You have to... Otherwise, your division creates another bastard to do more oppression. Get rid of one, and remember - if you understand the dynamics of it, your division must manifest. It will manifest, it must manifest. So you can get rid of one nasty character but all that division inside is mysteriously creating another one over here or two or three. And this is what the world hopefully is starting to catch up to...   

We'll see, but we've tried everything else. We've tried to just get rid of all the bastards; get rid all the bad people...  

Q: ...evil doers...

A: ...Right. The funny thing is you notice all the evil doers - most of them really believe in their heart they are doing the right thing. Do you really think that somebody who has the wherewithal to literally sacrifice their life = like fly a jet into a building - they have to think they're doing the highest good. Just like me and you do. And when we see that, we go: "Umm, the problem here isn't some disembodied evil force. The problem is actually illusion" We do the same things. We've done it. We may have not driven a plane into somebody but we've driven our mind into somebody, haven't we? In many ways just as violently. Yeah. Does that make more...?  

Q: ...Oh yeah...  

A: ...more sense...

Q: ...Yeah... Thank you very much.   

A: You're welcome.

Adyashanti - Omega 2007 disk 15, transcribed by Mark Scorelle, posted to adyashantigroup

- Nonduality Highlights 3415

Mind exists, mind doesn’t exist

2009-01-13T20:14:00.000Z

Nothing to do, something to do. Practice, no practice. Past, no past. Self, no self. No need to stick to either polarity, or even negate both polarities. It happens so often: people go to see nonduality teachers (or non-teachers), and hear that there is nothing they can do, so they give up and sometimes get very depressed. But look: part of the dance is that on this astonishing planet there are a million things to do, or so it would seem! This world – as every child knows – is an adventure playground. It neither exists nor doesn’t exist, but either way it’s a play. And so the whole thing ends in the absolute paradox of it all. Nothing to do, lots to do. Nothing, something. Self, no self. There is nobody, there is somebody. The opposites collapse into each other, and what is seen is that nonduality could never be understood. Run a million miles from anyone who claims to understand this! This is a plunge into the mystery, totally beyond words. That is what all the words in all the books are really pointing to.
- Jeff Foster

Not this, not that

2009-01-13T20:11:00.000Z

To say "it is" is to grasp for permanence.
To say "it is not" is to grasp at nihilism.
Therefore a wise person
Does not say "it is" or "it is not".
- Nagarjuna

Nothing happens next - Beware of false gurus

2009-01-13T19:45:00.000Z

Over the past four years it has become quite clear that endless YouTube videos, the plethora of so-called "nonduality websites" and the hundreds and hundreds of books on advaita nonduality (yes, including MINE) do little else but feed the seeker's addiction to more and better and different whilst that addicted seeker steadfastly ignore what never changes - The True Self.

There is nothing to get and no person to get that nothing. So what makes you keep seeking? Look at that and see what energy is here now that drives the seeking. That same energy propels the planets and makes the sun burn.

You are That. That is the entirety of this message.

So for this New Year I have removed the 130+ videos from YouTube. I refuse to feed this addiction! I shall for the most part let those who want to play guru continue to constantly express this in more, different and better ways on YouTube. I for ONE have had enough already! It's SO simple - This you seek is just this plain old everyday waking aware being. Nothing special!

I shall continue to speak - by telephone or in person (not in e-mail q and a) with sincere people who are truly committed to ENDING the search rather than argue concepts and play the guru game. I am NOT a guru, make no mistake. If you want a guru look elsewhere. Moreover if you are looking for a quiet, kind, always polite and spiritually correct charlie, forget about it! The programmed personality of charlie hayes can be described as "asshole". It may be that the primary difference between charlie and you or these gurus on YouTube may be that I KNOW that "I" am an asshole where you and they may NOT know that the Human Condition is we are all upset three year old assholes. (Look at the news!)

Ever notice in video clips of Nisargadatta HE appeared to be a virile, loud and red-faced angry guy? Yet can you have any doubt that his sharing was immensely potent?

Please read the following essay and do "beware of false prophets". The guru game comes out of a bankrupt paradigm! Ponder this also ...

Seeking "Wholeness, Completion, Happiness, Love or "Liberation" from "Another", whether that "revered other" be a "Guru, Guide, Lover, or Friend", is a perfect way to avoid Paradise. Paradise is THIS. Just as it Is and just as it Isn't. All seeking "out there" is a dream of a "me", foolishly knocking on the door to Paradise, from inside Paradise. Paradise is only lost in seeking it. This Loving Oneness Cannot Be Known. To "know" Oneness there would have to be a sense of separation FROM Oneness. Who cannot see the fault in that logic?

Don't Buy Into "The Guru Club"!

A pitfall for some who are exposed to Nonduality It has been observed by many who share the Timeless Message al all being one essence, one love, one being appearing as this multidimensional dream of "me in the universe" that a common pitfall comes and the false sense of ego self comes back in the back door to claim "I GOT IT" and "I will teach it to you!"

This is a manifest lie and an expression out of a bankrupt paradigm of "guru-disciple" that has been propagated by false teachers since this so called dream began.

Here is how it works: You talk with a true expression - one offered by The One through such authentic non-teachers who have no students as John Wheeler, Bob Adamson, Gilbert Schultz, and John Greven. They point out the obviousness that YOU ARE and all that any book or so-called sage has EVER said is THAT is Being and THAT is inescapably what you are. And it is rigorously reaffirmed that every human IS already THAT. There is only THAT.

Then you get hooked into a whole new ego trip: You join "The Guru Club". You look for others who claim "I GOT IT and I TEACH IT to those poor ignorant seekers", hang out a satsang and retreat shingle, put up a website, and proceed to rake in the bucks and rupees and euros form hapless seekers desperate to "get what YOU got".

This is nothing more or less than a new "spiritual ego trip". If you encounter these sites and books that hold out a promise of gaining some magical mystical "state" grab your purse or wallet and run like hell for the exit!

So any teaching that claims to offer "you" something you are not already, namely "enlightenment, awakening or liberation", is just flat bullshitting you. You do NOT need to go to a retreat in Arizona or India or California or a satsang in Oregon or Paris or anywhere else to BE. As Bob Adamson likes to point out, the only problem is the search itself" - how can we find what already is the fact: Your own Being, which could be called "Ordinary Awareness"?

So don't get sucked in by these moneychangers, these false gurus who speak one message and yet live another. They have the concepts down pat BUT that is ALL they have - concepts and "spiritual truths" (THERE is an oxymoron for you). The bottom line is that the true sharing of this Oneness simply cannot come through these Guru-Ego trips.

You cannot get what you already are any more than space can know it is space. You cannot lose what you already are any more than a tree can not be a tree.

You need not ever buy a "Nonduality book" again - though they can be fun to read. Just don't take 'em serious or personal!

Don't give these fakes your money! Get real and get with one who really knows that YOU cannot gain anything from them and have no agenda to rope in a flock of seekers and sell books, tapes and seminars.

Whether you have been seeking The Self for a long while or just starting, this website is about ending that search RIGHT NOW.

Then you will be neither a buyer or a seller. You will be as you are here and know: Ordinary Awareness.

Take that and BE.

My final concept is this: There is Only Love. All else appears IN, ON and AS That One Love, One Essence. All Is One Full Stop.

You cannot GET That. You already ARE That. It is an Eternally Done Deal and whenever it is and wherever it is Here You Are. The One, God, Awakeness, Buddha-Nature, Christ-Consciousness or whatever other label you like to use to point to the timeless labelless IS that IS.

Charlie Hayes: http://www.theeternalstate.org/

Nonduality Highlightes 3411

As a flower blown out by the wind

2008-12-28T10:01:00.000Z

goes to rest and cannot be defined
so the wise man freed from individuality
goes to rest and cannot be defined.
gone beyond all images -
gone beyond the power of words...

- from Sutra Napa
Nonduality Highlights 3394

Giving up profit

2008-11-30T11:11:00.000Z

There's nothing from which the world could profit more than from giving up profit. A man who's no longer thinking in terms of winning and losing is truly a non-violent man, since he's above all conflicts.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
Non-duality Highlights 3366

MInd

2008-11-13T07:35:00.002Z

From ‘I Am That’, Nisargadatta

Stop making use of your mind and see what happens. (p197)

Nothing can trouble you but your own imagination. (p.113)

General knowledge develops the mind, no doubt. But if you are going to spend your life in amassing knowledge, you build a wall round yourself. To go beyond the mind, a well-furnished mind is not needed. (p50)

The window is the absence of the wall, and it gives air and light because it is empty. Be empty of all mental content, of all imagination and effort, and the very absence of obstacles will cause reality to rush in. (p260)

Abandon all verbal structures, all relative truth, all tangible objectives. (p340)

All are mere words, of what use are they to you? You are entangled in the web of verbal definitions and formulations. Go beyond your concepts and ideas; in the silence the truth is found. (p295)

Too much analysis leads you nowhere. There is in you the core of being which is beyond analysis, beyond the mind. The legitimate function of the mind is to tell you what is not. But if you want positive knowledge, you must go beyond the mind. (p341)

So far, you took the mind for the knower, but it is not so. The mind clogs you up with images and ideas, which leave scars in memory. You take remembering to be knowledge. True knowledge is ever fresh, new, unexpected. It wells up from within. When you know what you are, you also are what you know. Between knowing and being there is no gap. (p520)

What is independent, uncreated, timeless and changeless and yet ever new and fresh is beyond the mind. When the mind thinks of it, the mind dissolves and only happiness remains. (p488)

Of course, you can only learn what you are not. To know what you are, you must go beyond the mind. Awareness is the point at which the mind reaches out beyond itself into reality. In awareness you seek not what pleases, but what is true. (p346)

- Nondual Highlights 3349

The perfect futility of all intentions

2008-10-30T20:30:00.001Z

By knowing for an absolute fact that he does not live but is being lived, the man of wisdom is aware of the perfect futility of all intentions.

  - Ramesh S. Balker, A Net of Jewels
AlongTheWay, October 30th 2008

Why worry so much about causation?

2008-10-17T18:49:00.001Z

What do causes matter, when things  themselves are transient? Let come what  comes and let go what goes - why catch hold of things and enquire about their causes?  

- Nisargadatta Maharaja, I Am That
AlongTheWay, October 17th 2008

The map is not the territory

2008-10-17T05:46:00.001Z

Now the trouble with the map making is when one takes one's map very seriously and says, "Well, this is the correct road map, and there's no other map that is as good as this one." That's when you are implicitly making the claim that you actually know the territory, that you have walked it, and that there's some kind of correspondence between the territory and the map. As soon as the map making ceases to be fun and play, as soon as we take the maps too seriously, I think it actually becomes a hindrance to walking the terrain. If you are reading a map when you're walking, you're missing everything along the way. As Sasaki Roshi says, "You're running around thinking that there's some kind of a spiritual path or great way laid out in front of you like a road. You are fools. There is no road in front of you. The great way comes into being as you walk." There is no road that is ready-made, let alone a map that will describe the road. The road itself comes into being in the walking.
~
- Kaisa Puhakka, What is Enlightenment magazine
http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j17/puhakka.asp?page=2
Nondual Highlights 3321

Is there free will? Is there freedom?

2008-10-17T05:43:00.002Z

Depends on who you are asking. Are you asking me as a person, or asking me as Awareness?   As a person, I have free will only if I can choose my next thought. But I can't do that. In fact, I can't even *predict* my next thought. So the person doesn't have free will.  As Awareness, I *am* freedom. I am not bound or limited by anything, and I don't block or prevent anything. I don't willfully "choose," but choices freely arise in me.   As a person I am not free, but as Awareness I am never bound.

- Greg Goode, Nondual Highlights 3321 http://heartofnow.com/files/links.html)

Everything happens altogether by itself

2008-10-15T16:16:00.002Z

The shadow of causation can never be caught because all things and events are  merely interconnected differentiations in  the form of a single, unified field.

  - Ramesh S. Balker, A Net of Jewels 
AlongTheWay, October 15th 2008

Find the Buddha

2008-09-30T06:01:00.002Z

If you wish to find the Buddha,
first you must look into your own mind,
outside of the mind, there is no Buddha.

- Hakuin
Nonduality Highlights 3304

Stale buzzwords

2008-09-30T05:58:00.001Z

Whatever happened to “understanding”? Remember when that was a buzzword a few years ago? People were divided between those who had understanding and those who didn’t. I don’t think I had it because I talked about donuts a lot.

When I used to hang around the Muktananda ashram in Santa Monica in 1980, there were people who were “receiving the light” and those who weren’t. I know I wasn’t receiving the light because … because I wasn’t receiving a damn light, that’s why.

Another buzzword: “Are you free?” Someone asked me the other day whether I was free. I said, you mean do I have the time to go get a beer or something? He said, “No, are you FREE.”

“Oh, I got you,” I said. “I don’t know if I’m free or not. I don’t know if I have understanding. I don’t know if I’m receiving the light. I don’t know if I have clarity. But if you want to hang out for a few minutes, fine, If not, fine.”

Another popular thing is the ability to see what’s obvious and to recognize it as “this.” There’s some kind of connection between “obvious” and “this.” Like you’re walking with a fellow nondualist and one of you goes, “Yeah, like it’s all just ‘this’.” Yeah, I get that. I don’t get the other buzzwords, but I get that one.

In a few years we’ll be all nostalgic about the days when “this” was such a cool buzzword. And it’s the only one I get.

I don’t think I had understanding, I was never in the Be Here Now, I definitely didn’t receive the light, and I’m not Free especially if it means I have go around asking people if they’re Free. I’d rather have a cell in San Quentin, thank you.

What I do have is my finger on the pulse of all the buzzwords. I can tell you that they go stale as quickly as a half eaten donut underneath the seat of your car. But when they’re hot and fresh we sink our teeth into them, one after another. Mmmm, the good greasy sugar of carnival food.

- From the Nonduality Blog of Jerry Katz at
http://nonduality.org/
Nonduality Highlights 3304

All effort

2008-09-29T05:57:00.001Z

at controlling thoughts, appetites and desires cannot but strengthen them along with the ego. Whatever has to go must fall off by itself. All that you are concerned with, all that you are, is the impersonal functioning of understanding. So let that understanding work through witnessing without judgement, knowing that there is nothing else that you can do.

- Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels
Nonduality Highlights 3303

The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory

2008-09-16T05:30:00.002Z

Why go anywhere?
Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out.
The dream is not your problem.
Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another.
Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining.
When you have seen the dream as a dream,
you have done all that need be done."

- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Nonduality Highlights 3290

The person

2008-08-25T11:06:00.001Z

is what I appear to be to other persons. To myself, I am the infinite expanse of consciousness in which innumerable persons emerge and disappear in endless succession.

The person, the "I am this body, this mind, this chain of memories, this bundle of desires and fears" disappears, but something you may call identity remains. It enables me to become a person when required.

Nothing troubles me. I offer no resistance to trouble - therefore it does not stay with me. On your side there is so much trouble. On mine there is no trouble at all. Come to my side.

Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That
Nondual Highlights 3267

Desires

2008-08-14T14:02:00.001Z

are just waves in the mind.  You know a wave when you see one.  A desire is just a thing among many.  I feel no urge to satisfy it, no action  needs to be taken on it. Freedom from  desire means this: the compulsion to  satisfy is absent  .

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, "I Am That"
 AlongTheWay, August 14th 2008 

The art of being exactly where we are

2008-08-11T08:29:00.003Z

Being where we are. We've all heard that "being where we are" is where we need to be. But do you see the joke in that? Here we are, trying to get somewhere again!!

Being here fully gets translated by mind into a being something to work towards. Somewhere new to get to at some point in the future after lots of hard work, discipline and time, lots of time! Are you laughing yet? It's funny, and it makes us feel crazy, but its really just mind doing what minds do. That's all. Mind is so good at figuring out how to do things, and its just trying to do this too, but it can't. As soon as we realize it can't, we are free to just smile at its efforts and relax. All is well. Mind is doing its thing and it doesn't matter. No need to pay overmuch attention to it.

Meanwhile Here we Are! Here we are in this moment with whatever is going on inwardly and outwardly. There is nowhere else we could ever have possibly been except as we allow ourselves to listen overmuch to the stream of thinking. Our minds may be saying to us right at this moment that "this can't be it" because this moment is totally mundane, empty, boring, painful or... (fill in the blank for yourself). Mind can always come up with reasons why this particular moment can't be what is being referred to, because it can't find anything special there. Nothing. (Are you laughing yet?)
Meanwhile, smiling and relaxing we fall into a reality that mind doesn't even notice. Its kind of like falling asleep at night--we have to relax for it to happen.

Our thinking minds have everything boxed and labeled and categorized according to past knowledge, and our own structure of understanding whatever is encountered. And those capabilities are so very useful to us for practical things. But what the logical left-brain thought-stream doesn't even notice is anything that is outside of its structures for understanding the world--and that very definitely includes Reality with a capital R. Not because thought is wrong or bad, but because it is constrained within self-constructed bounds and can't see beyond that. It is blind to whatever doesn't fit its own structures (at least not until those structures are broadened enormously). So for now it tries to shrink everything to make it fit its constructs. But in contemplating what is really going on in life, thought has run into something much bigger than its constructs, something that contains mind and everything else within it. It has come to the edge of its ability to be helpful and will, when its good and ready, relax and allow us to fall into this new territory. To fall awake.

When we run into a fabulous sunset or an unusually beautiful flower, our mind's processes of naming it, talking about it, and so on, can detract from our seeing and appreciating it fully. It is the same with the present moment. Relaxing into being exactly where we are, we begin to notice what is here (including thinking and a LOT else), and that this has been here all along. Its just like a new door of perception has opened. We now see where we were blind before.

We stand in a new territory beyond the previously held paradigm that our mind provided us, telling us how life worked, who was to blame, and so on. We have reconnected with something familiar, something we never really left. Something that we have, over all the years we thought we were separate, never left for a second.

As we look around we begin to see how it all is working. Now everything that is happening, even including our own seemingly idiotic or unenlightened episodes are perfect setups for continued awakening into a fuller and fuller embrace of being this that we truly are. Slowly we relax our incessant argument with life, and trust our circumstances, even our thoughts and feelings, as being perfect as they are, even as they flow and change. We offer ourselves, including our thinking minds and their amazing capabilities in service to this perfect alive presence we now can see and that is also who we are.

-Alice Gardner, Wide Awake Living Newsletter
www.wideawakeliving.com

All is here and now (2)

2008-08-11T08:21:00.001Z

Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. In reality all is here and now, all is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind only.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
Nonduality Highlights 3253

All is here and now (1)

2008-08-11T08:17:00.002Z

The mind creates time and space, and takes its own creations for reality. All is here and now, but we do not see it. Truly, all is in me and by me. There is nothing else. The very idea of "else" is a disaster and a calamity.  

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
Nonduality Highlights 3252

Save me from this pillar!

2008-08-05T07:37:00.001Z

A Sufi teaching tells of the man who visited a great mystic to find out how to let go of his chains of attachment and his prejudices. Instead of answering him directly, the mystic jumped to his feet and bolted to a nearby pillar, flung his arms around it, grasping the marble surface as he screamed, "Save me from this pillar! Save me from this pillar!"

The man who had asked the question could not believe what he saw. He thought the mystic was mad. The shouting soon brought a crowd of people. "Why are you doing that?" the man asked. "I came to you to ask a spiritual question because I thought you were wise, but obviously you're crazy. You are holding the pillar, the pillar is not holding you. You can simply let go."

The mystic let go of the pillar and said to the man, "If you can understand that, you have your answer. Your chains of attachment are not holding you, you are holding them. You can simply let go."

- Dick Sutphen, "The Oracle Within"
Nonduality Highlights 3247

The mistake

2008-07-28T05:37:00.001Z

As long as you do not see that it is mere habit, built on memory, prompted by desire, you will think yourself to be a person - living, feeling, thinking, active, passive, pleased or pained. Question yourself, ask yourself. 'Is it so?' 'Who am I'? 'What is behind and beyond all things?' And soon you will see your mistake. And it is in the very nature of a mistake to cease to be, when seen.  

- Nisargadatta Maharaj
Nonduality Highlights 3239

The myth of better

2008-07-27T08:35:00.001Z

We are conditioned to believe something that has very little truth to it, so little truth that it's more accurate to call it a myth: We believe that things could be better. We deeply believe that we can have a better experience or a better life or become a better person. And, of course, the flip side of this is that we believe that things could be worse.

One clue that this belief is a myth is that not everyone agrees on what's better or worse. There's always someone who thinks the exact opposite of what you think. You don't even have to look to others for such contradictions: What you think is better or worse is always changing. What you once felt was good often becomes bad and visa versa: One day you think it would be better to be in a relationship, and then when you're in one, you think it would be better to be alone. The fact that your ideas about better and worse are so variable is another clue that this is a myth. Better or worse are just ideas with no substance or final definition.

The effort to try to make things better or to avoid something worse is our suffering. In order to hold the idea that something would be better, you have to narrow your awareness. Take the example of a relationship: In the beginning, we're all masters at narrowing our awareness onto all the good qualities of the other person. This narrowing of awareness is effortful, and it causes us to suffer. This struggle is not natural, so awareness doesn't stay contracted. Just naturally, our awareness expands, and we see not only the advantages to being in a relationship but the disadvantages.

Or visa versa, for example, if we've been avoiding something we consider bad and then it happens, with time, our awareness naturally expands to realize that it's not all bad. Those who've experienced something like cancer often speak about the advantages, the tremendous blessings in their life, from having cancer, even when they may be dying from it.

No one can keep the illusion of better going constantly because of the effort it takes to keep awareness narrowed; so it naturally eventually expands. When this happens, it often feels like waking up because the experience is so different. You wake up out of your particular dream of better, and it's often a huge relief. You wake up, for instance, to the fact that you're in a relationship with a real person, and it's both good and bad. Then, if you still choose to move forward with that person, you're doing it with more truth, with your eyes wide open.

We're so used to operating from this conditioning that even when we wake up from one dream of better, we usually latch onto another, although the next illusion may be subtler. For instance, you may now see that a million dollars won't make your life better, but you still believe that enlightenment will, so now you suffer over that idea. Or you might think that life will be better if your internal state were different - if you felt this way or if you didn't feel that way.

What would it be like to be here without referring to any ideas about what would be better or worse? What would it be like to be here without moving towards something "good" or away from something "bad?" It's possible that just as much would happen in life. Life wouldn't stop. What would it be like without any extra effort and struggle?

When we stop creating the division between good and bad, we begin to experience all of what is instead of just half of it. Our perspective is more complete because we're no longer denying half of it. Having ideas about better is like having blinders on. What you see with blinders on is only a part of the truth. If you're aware of the blinders, then there's no problem if, for a moment, you step into just a part of the truth. At times, it's even functional, like when you're balancing your checkbook: It's better to add up the numbers correctly. If you're willing to explore and question the underlying assumption of better, then you can hold this idea more lightly, with more flexibility. Then, if the numbers don't add up right, it's not a big deal.

The other question to ask is, Who is it better or worse for? Not only does the idea of better or worse make our experience very narrow, it makes the sense of our self very small. In order to even hold the idea of better or worse, there has to be a me that it will be better or worse for. Whenever you take on the idea of better, you feel very small.

You also have to watch out for the idea that it would be better to never think in terms of better or worse. The myth of better is so much at the heart of our struggle and suffering that even when it's pointed out to us, our tendency is to turn that into a struggle as well. This myth is functioning all the time. It won't go away and it doesn't have to. Just become aware of it and learn to be flexible about it. Sometimes it's necessary to step into the idea of better for a moment, like when you're at a restaurant and you're handed a menu. But if the idea of better starts to be believed or becomes fixed, the sense of your self becomes very small and you suffer.

What is it like when you do have an idea of something being better? By the way, none of these ideas are yours or your fault. They're just what you've been told all your life, which is why there are so many opposite ideas within each of us. What's it like when you take on a small self? That small self is just as mysterious as a larger experience of your Being. The experience of this small self, this contracted state, is not any better or worse than the experience of more of your Being; it's just different.

How many different small selves we all have! Every one of your ideas of better is related to an idea of who you are: If you think it's better to get drunk and bust up a bar, there's an identity that goes with that. And if you think it's better to sit in meditation and be in touch with Peace and Being, then there's an identity that goes with that - an idea about who you are.

What's it like when you just give up your ideas about how things might be better and your concern about how things are going? Things are always different, but they're never better or worse. That anything could ever be better or worse than the way it is, is an illusion.

It's all a question of what you are devoted to in this moment. Are you devoted to things being better or to what's real, what's true, what's really going on? There's no judgment here because there's a richness to the experience of having an idea of better and striving towards that. However, the possibility exists for that striving to release and to realize that striving isn't very relevant - you've been devoted to better your whole life, and you still haven't gotten there. You've been devoted to avoiding worse, and it still comes around. Even when you do reach something better, it's never enough.

When this is seen, it's possible to get in touch with a deeper drive, or longing - the longing to know what is really true. Rather than getting rid of any of the ideas about better, just let your devotion get bigger. It's still fine to try to make your life better in practical ways. The important thing is where your devotion lies. What are you really devoted to in your life right now? Is it the biggest truth?

Besides, do you really know what is better? You've taken it all on faith. You've believed what others said was better, but right now do you really know what is better? You don't really know what would make your life better or worse. So, now what? You don't know. What's it like to not know? Life doesn't grind to a halt. In fact, there's something very alive about this place of not knowing. When you don't know, you look around a little more. You're more present to what's really going on.

Without the idea of better, you can know things just for the joy of knowing things. You can know, for instance, the difference between one shade of green and another. They're different, but one isn't better or worse. When you're not narrowing your perception onto an idea of what's better, you're free to experience the richness of life and take in the differences. You can start to really enjoy whatever you're experiencing without the added layers of your hope.

- Nirmala
Nonduality Highlights 3238

The best way for one to serve the world

2008-07-15T16:05:00.001Z

The sage helps the world merely by being the real Self. The best way for one to serve the world is to win the egoless state. If you are anxious to help the world, but  think that you cannot do so by attaining the  egoless state, then surrender to God all the world's problems, along with your own.

- Sri Ramana Maharshi, "Be As You Are"
 Along The Way, 15/7/08 

All concepts are dualistic

2008-05-31T13:43:00.001Z

Therefore in order to transcend dualism (the opposites and complementaries) we must transcend concepts. That is known as direct cognition.

-We Wu Wei, Fingers Pointing to the Moon
http://web.ionsys.com/~remedy/WEI%20WU%20WEI.htm

Making positive effort to stop thinking

2008-05-30T18:26:00.002Z

as a spiritual practice is an exercise in futility,  and so is any other kind of effort. The only  effective effort is instant apperception of  truth, which is in fact effortless.

  - Ramesh S. Balker, "A Net of Jewels"
 Along The Way, May 30th 2008 

Living Truth

2008-05-22T08:09:00.001Z

What we are looking for is our nearest. The question is the answer, because the answer was before the question. Otherwise there could never be a question. Any other answer would be only an object. We are the ultimate subject. What we profoundly are can never be an object. Understanding this immediately produces a reorchestration of energy. Looking for something, achieving something, grasping for something, living in end-gaining, becoming-all this eccentric energy comes to a stop. It is not a process of will; it is a natural giving up. In the stillness which follows, we are completely available.

Allow whatever desires to come, to come, because you can never go to it, it can only come to you. We can never go to it because there is no way to go to it and nobody to go there. It is the instantaneous awakening of our totality which is neither outside nor inside, neither introversion nor extroversion.

It is not a state because in a state you go in and you come out. It is the light, permanent light, eternal light, which is behind all perception. This openness is our real nature where there is nobody open and nothing is open. There is only openness. It can never be named, because it is without any quality. That is why it is the ultimate negative state.

We are so accustomed in our life to functioning in subject-object relationship on the level of the mind. it is mainly the personal entity which we believe we are which hinders us from being available. Speaking simply, one should be free from being somebody. In the state of openness there is no place for somebody, for an I-concept. The question "Who am I?' is the answer. There is no other answer. It is the living answer.

Jean Klien, 'Living Truth'
Non-duality Highlights 3173

Enlightenment

2008-05-22T08:07:00.002Z

is the sudden recognition that non-duality is, has always been, and will always be the reality of our experience. Duality is an illusion. Consciousness is not private and personal, but impersonal, universal, and eternal. There is no limited personal entity, no conscious ego. The ego is a perceived object, not the all perceiving awareness.

-Francis Lucille
NonDuality Highlights 3173

Confused by thoughts

2008-05-22T08:05:00.001Z

we experience duality in life.
Unencumbered by ideas,
the enlightened see the one Reality.

-Hui Neng
Non Duality Highlights 3173

To Call It One is

2008-05-21T10:00:00.001Z

One too many,  To call it nothing,  Minimizes its importance,  To say it is in me,  Implies it is not outside,  To say it comes from somewhere,  Says it is not here,  To say it has a beginning,  Makes it appear to have an ending,  To think it will come,  Implies it has not arrived,  To search for it,  Implies it is hidden,  To wait for it,  Implies it exists in time.   To try to describe it is futile,  It has no edges,  You cannot catch it,  You cannot find it,  You cannot see it,  You can only  Be It.

-   Larry Epston
www.epston.com
Non Duality Highlights 3172

Reality

2008-05-20T08:10:00.001Z

is simply the loss of the ego. Destroy the ego by seeking its identity. It will automatically vanish and reality will shine forth by itself. This is the direct method.

There is no greater mystery than this, that we keep seeking reality though in fact we are reality. We think that there is something hiding our reality and that something must be destroyed before reality is gained. How ridiculous! A day will dawn when you will laugh at all your past efforts. That which will be on the day you laugh is also here and now.

- Ramana Maharsh, from The Essence of Wisdom
Non Duality Highlights 3269

Drop out, tune in, turn on: Tony vs Tim

2008-05-20T08:07:00.001Z

"Turn on, tune in, drop out.” Did Timothy Leary have it backwards?

The following is from the Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_on,_tune_in,_drop_out'

“Turn on, tune in, drop out” is a counterculture phrase coined by Timothy Leary in the 1960s. The phrase came to him in the shower one day after Marshall McLuhan suggested to Leary that he come up with “something snappy” to promote the benefits of LSD. It is an excerpt from a prepared speech he delivered at the opening of a press conference in New York City on September 19, 1966. This phrase urged people to initiate cultural changes through the use of psychedelics and by detaching themselves from the existing conventions and hierarchies in society. The phrase was derided by more conservative critics.

“The phrase is derived from this part of Leary’s speech: ‘Like every great religion of the past we seek to find the divinity within and to express this revelation in a life of glorification and the worship of God. These ancient goals we define in the metaphor of the present — turn on, tune in, drop out.’”

Now consider what nondualist Tony Parson invites. The following was posted to the Nonduality Highlights:
“Drop asking ‘why’ and simply become totally involved in the absolutely wonderful miracle of life just as it is, right here, right now. Can you not see that whatever has just happened for you at this moment has never happened before and will never happen again? It is totally unique and fresh and innocent, and it is here and then it isn’t. Isn’t that just great?”
Seems like Tony is saying first to drop out: “Drop asking why…”

Then he’s suggesting you “see” the moment for what it is, or tune in. "Can you not see...?"

Finally he asks you to value the moment to be turned on to the moment. "Isn't that just great?"

Using Leary’s terms, those three invitations might be re-phrased as, “Drop out, tune in, turn on,” the reverse of what Leary declared.

Dropping out is the main step. It means to stand free of the thousands of trances that compete for your mental space.
Then you will be able to tune in or “see.” See what? God, creation, the structure of reality.

Finally, when you value this seeing, you will turn on, which means to naturally express it (perhaps silently, perhaps through some creative effort), send it forth, cast the light of it in all directions, emit the perfume, turn-on the world, whichever metaphor you prefer.

To walk on Nonduality Street, rather than Psychedelic Boulevard, discriminate. If a practice or a person makes you feel high or blissful, you are turning on. If in the presence of a person or practice you see the futility of everything, that “all is vanity,” then you are dropping out.

Dropping out is only the beginning. Often fear sets in and one settles for a glimpse of the freed mind, which is better than not having had a glimpse.

Remember the chant of the nonduality generation: Drop out, tune in, turn on. Or does hearing it put you in a feel good trance? Well, no one ever said there’s a winner in the nonduality game.

-Jerry Katz
NonDuality Highlights 3168

If a man considers that he is born

2008-05-12T18:41:00.001Z

he cannot avoid the fear of death. Let him find out if he has been born or if the Self has any birth. He will discover that the Self always exists, that the body that is born resolves itself into thought and that the emergence of thought is the root of all mischief. Find from where thoughts emerge. Then you will be able to abide in the ever-present inmost Self and be free from the idea of birth or the fear of death.

- Ramana Maharshi
Non-duality Highlights 3162

Separate

2008-05-12T18:40:00.001Z

If you imagine yourself as separate from the world, the world will appear as separate from you and you will experience desire and fear. I do not see the world as separate from me and so there is nothing for me to desire, or fear.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels

Drop asking "why"

2008-05-12T18:39:00.002Z

and simply become totally involved in the absolutely wonderful miracle of life just as it is, right here, right now. Can you not see that whatever has just happened for you at this moment has never happened before and will never happen again? It is totally unique and fresh and innocent, and it is here and then it isn't. Isn't that just great?

- Tony Parsons, from As It Is - The Open Secret of Spiritual Awakening
Non-duality Highlights 3163

Nature

2008-05-12T18:37:00.003Z

does not know or care about the world or man-made opposites. Nature is perfectly satisfied and happy to produce a world of infinite, rapturous variety that knows nothing about pretty or ugly, ethical or unethical. Nature never apologizes for anything, nor does it see or acknowledge anything of man's misconceived errors of opposition.

-Ramesh Balker
Nonduality Highlights 3163

We do not really live

2008-04-14T17:24:00.001Z

but are being lived. There is nothing anywhere but the one universal, impersonal "I", and not a single object anywhere has any existence independent of it.

- Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels
NonDual Highlights 3135

Forgetting your Self

2008-04-03T21:44:00.001Z

is the greatest injury: all the calamities flow from it. Take care of the most important, the lesser will take care of itself. You do not tidy up a dark room. You open the windows first. Letting in the light makes everything easy. So, let us wait with improving others until we have seen ourselves as we are - and have changed. There is no need to turn around and round in endless questioning; find yourself and everything will fall into its proper place.

- Nisargadatta Maharaja
NonDual Highlights 3124

The futility of effort

2008-04-01T20:14:00.003Z

Apart from the futility of effort itself, any attempt  to prevent thoughts from arising divides the mind  artificially into that which does the prevention against  that which is being prevented, creating only neurosis  and conflict. Whatever thoughts arise (being without  substance) will promptly vanish by themselves if they  are not accepted and pursued as effective reality.  To try to erase thoughts consciously and deliberately  is like trying to wash away blood with blood.  

- Ramesh S. Balker, A Net of Jewels 
AlongTheWay, April 1st 2008

A myriad bubbles

2008-04-01T05:44:00.002Z

were floating on the surface of a stream.
'What are you?' I cried to them as they drifted by.
'I am a bubble, of course' nearly a myriad bubbles answered, and there was surprise and indignation in their voices as they passed.

But, here and there, a lonely little bubble answered, 'We are this stream', and there was neither surprise nor indignation in their voices, but just a quiet certitude.

- Wei Wu Wei, Ask the Awakened
NonDual Highlights 3122

Existences clash, being - never

2008-03-30T08:05:00.001Z

To exist means to be something, a thing, a feeling,a thought, an idea. All existence is particular. Only being is universal, in the sense that every being is compatible with every other being. Existences clash, being - never. Existence means becoming, change, birth and death and birth again,while in being there is silent peace.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
NonDual Highlights 3120

Can the mind come to a halt?

2008-03-24T14:29:00.001Z

Can the vast, running-river mind slow down, come to a halt? Not practising to halt it, but seeing what is there and ceasing to be swept up in it? If we human beings do not understand ourselves freely, profoundly, from moment to moment, there cannot be any intelligent, loving, and compassionate relationship among us. Division and sorrow will persist. Is this clear?

The Work of This Moment, Toni Packer, page 20.
NonDual Highlights 3108

Let erroneous thinking perish

2008-03-24T14:28:00.002Z

Q: If I follow this Way, and refrain from intellectual processes and conceptual thinking, shall I be certain of attaining the goal?

A: Such non-intellection is following the Way! Why this talk of attaining and non-attaining? The matter is thus--by thinking of something you create an entity and by thinking of nothing you create another. Let such erroneous thinking perish utterly, and then nothing will remain for you to go seeking.

- The Zen Teaching of Hunag-po, On the Transmission of Mind, page 86
NonDual Highlights 3108