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April 2004
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April 1st 2004
From Consciousness -- Life Just Happens
The awakened woman (or sage), like the ordinary woman, has no control over her thoughts.
By and large, even in the case of a sage, what she is going to say or do is not in her control. Even after enlightenment the body mind organism will live according to the programming.
The mind visualizes the sage as, "She can do no wrong". "He is very compassionate". "She helps everybody". That is a misconception.
Life continues more or less as before. Previously she thought she was doing things. Now, she knows she's not doing anything. She sees everything as the impersonal functioning of the totality.
Ramesh S. Balsekar
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April 2nd 2004
From Consciousness -- Acting Without an Actor.
You are that being, that Awareness, in whose presence actions, perceptions, and thoughts take place. When you say, "I perform action", it is not Awareness that performs any action. It is the eyes which see, the thoughts which move in the mind, all in Awareness, in consciousness.
Swami Dayananda
When you act you are one with the action, it is only afterwards that the ego appropriates the act from which it was absent, and says "I have done this". At the moment of acting there is only acting, without an actor.
Jean Klein
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April 3rd 2004
From Consciousness -- In Total Harmony
If we face a situation without any intention, free from fear and desire, this openness paves the way for an intuition that will lead to a decision or an action in total harmony with that situation.
Such a decision may bring about an apparent change, but this change is not an escape from or an avoidance of the situation; it doesn't originate from the person; it emanates from intelligence.
Francis Lucille
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April 4th 2004
From Consciousness -- The Way is Pathless
There is no path to here. There is no path to now. You are already, always, eternally, only, here, now.
Now is the only time you can be awake. Now is the only time you can be free. Now is the only time you can care or be curious about anyone or anything. Now is the only time you can do or be anything.
Saniel Bonder
Let this truth go as deep in you as possible: that life is already here, arrived. You are standing on the goal. Don't ask about the path.
Osho
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April 5th 2004
From Consciousness -- Luminous With Awareness
You can clean the floor like a robot, a mechanical thing; you have to clean it, so you clean it. Then you miss something beautiful. Then you waste those moments in only cleaning the floor.
Cleaning the floor could have been a great experience; you missed it. The floor is cleaned but something that could have happened within you has not happened.
If you were aware, not only the floor but YOU would have felt a deep cleansing. Clean the floor full of awareness, luminous with awareness.
Osho
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April 6th 2004
From Consciousness -- Everything is Your Awareness
So everything is your awareness, everything is you, everything you see, everything you understand.
You are the fabric out of which this universe is made. And it is created in this present. It was not created in the past.
Everything is created from moment to moment, always new. Like fireworks, this universe is a celebration and you are the spectator contemplating the eternal spectacle of your absolute splendour.
Francis Lucille
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April 7th 2004
From Consciousness -- Only Beauty Sees Beauty
Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work.
So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine...
Never did eye see the sun unless it had first become sunlike, and never can the soul have vision of the First Beauty unless itself be beautiful.
Plotinus
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April 8th 2004
From Consciousness -- Ripples on the Surface
On the surface, you may still be happy when it's sunny and not so happy when it's rainy; you may be happy at winning a million dollars and unhappy at losing all your possessions.
Neither happiness nor unhappiness, however, go all that deep anymore. They are ripples on the surface of your Being. The background peace within you remains undisturbed regardless of the nature of the outside condition.
The "yes" to what is reveals a dimension of depth within you that is dependent neither on external conditions nor on the internal conditions of constantly fluctuating thoughts and emotions.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
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April 9th 2004
From Consciousness -- No Demands
Surrender becomes so much easier when you realize the fleeting nature of all experiences and that the world cannot give you anything of lasting value.
You then continue to meet people, to be involved in experiences and activities, but without the wants and fears of the egoic self.
That is to say, you no longer demand that a situation, person, place, or event should satisfy you or make you happy. Its passing and imperfect nature is allowed to be.
And the miracle is that when you are no longer placing an impossible demand on it, every situation, person, place, or event becomes not only satisfying but also more harmonious, more peaceful.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
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April 10th 2004
From Consciousness -- Inner Nonresistance
Allow the "suchness" of this moment. That's enough.
When you completely accept this moment, when you no longer argue with what is, the compulsion to think lessens and is replaced by an alert stillness. You are fully conscious, yet the mind is not labeling this moment in any way.
This state of inner nonresistance opens you to the unconditioned consciousness that is infinitely greater than the human mind.
This vast intelligence can then express itself through you and assist you, both from within and from without. That is why, by letting go of inner resistance, you often find circumstances change for the better.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
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April 11th 2004
From Consciousness -- The Isness of This Moment
Surrender is surrender to this moment, not to a story through which you interpret this moment and then try to resign yourself to it. For instance, you may have a disability and can't walk anymore. The condition is as it is.
Perhaps your mind is now creating a story that says, "This is what my life has come to. I have ended up in a wheelchair. Life has treated me harshly and unfairly. I don't deserve this."
Throughout history, there have been women and men who, in the face of great loss, illness, imprisonment, or impending death, accepted the seemingly unacceptable and thus found "the peace that passeth all understanding."
Can you accept the isness of this moment and not confuse it with a story the mind has created around it?
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
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April 12th 2004
From Consciousness -- In Everything, A Seed of Grace
Acceptance of the unacceptable is the greatest source of grace in this world.
Surrender comes when you no longer ask, "Why is this happening to me?"
There are situations where all answers and explanations fail. Life does not make sense anymore. Or someone in distress comes to you for help, and you don't know what to do or say.
Even within the seemingly most unacceptable and painful situation is concealed a deeper good, and within every disaster is contained the seed of grace.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
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April 13th 2004
From Consciousness -- The State of Non-Surrender
When you fully accept that you don't know, you give up struggling to find answers with the limited thinking mind, and that is when a greater intelligence can operate through you. And even thought can then benefit from that, since the greater intelligence can flow into it and inspire it.
Sometimes surrender means giving up trying to understand and becoming comfortable with not knowing.
Do you know of someone whose main function in life seems to be to make themselves and others miserable, to spread unhappiness? Forgive them, for they too are part of the awakening of humanity.
The role they play represents an intensification of the nightmare of egoic consciousness, the state of non-surrender. There is nothing personal in all this. It is not who they are.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
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April 14th 2004
From Consciousness -- Leave Life Alone
Surrender, one could say, is the inner transition from resistance to acceptance, from "no" to "yes."
When you surrender, your sense of self shifts from being identified with a reaction or mental judgment to being the space around the reaction or judgment. It is a shift from identification with form -- the thought or the emotion -- to being and recognizing yourself as that which has no form in spacious awareness.
Whatever you accept completely will take you to peace, including the acceptance that you cannot accept, that you are in resistance.
Leave Life alone. Let it be.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
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April 15th 2004
From Consciousness -- What Nature Knows
We depend on nature not only for our physical survival. We also need nature to show us the way home, the way out of the prison of our own minds.
We got lost in doing, thinking, remembering, anticipating w lost in a maze of complexity and a world of problems.
We have forgotten what rocks, plants, and animals still know. We have forgotten how to be- to be still, to be ourselves, to be where life is: Here and Now.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
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April 16th 2004
From Consciousness -- Resting in Being
Whenever you bring your attention to anything natural, anything that has come into existence without human intervention, you step out of the prison of conceptualized thinking and, to some extent, participate in the state of connectedness with Being in which everything natural still exists.
To bring your attention to a stone, a tree, or an animal does not mean to think about it, but simply to perceive it, to hold it in your awareness.
Something of its essence then transmits itself to you. You can sense how still it is, and in doing so the same stillness arises within you. You sense how deeply it rests in Being -- completely at one with what it is and where it is.
In realizing this, you too come to a place of rest deep within yourself.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
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April 17th 2004
From Consciousness -- The Great Troublemaker
When walking or resting in nature, honor that realm by being there fully. Be still. Look. Listen. See how every animal and every plant is completely itself.
Unlike humans, they have not split themselves in two. They do not live through mental images of themselves, so they do not need to be concerned with trying to protect and enhance those images. The deer 'is' itself. The daffodil 'is' itself.
All things in nature are not only one with themselves but also one with the totality. They haven't removed themselves from the fabric of the whole by claiming a separate existence: "me" and the rest of the universe.
The contemplation of nature can free you of that "me," the great troublemaker.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
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April 18th 2004
From Consciousness -- Feeling Your Aliveness
Bring awareness to the many subtle sounds of nature m the rustling of leaves in the wind, raindrops falling, the humming of an insect, the first birdsong at dawn.
Give yourself completely to the act of listening. Beyond the sounds there is something greater: a sacredness that cannot be understood through thought.
You didn't create your body, nor are you able to control the body's functions. An intelligence greater than the human mind is at work. It is the same intelligence that sustains all of nature.
You cannot get any closer to that intelligence than by being aware of your own inner energy field -- by feeling the aliveness, the animating presence within the body.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
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April 19th 2004
From Consciousness -- The Inner State of Pet's and Their Owners
The playfulness and joy of a dog, its unconditional love and readiness to celebrate life at any moment often contrast sharply with the inner state of the dog's owner -- depressed, anxious, burdened by problems, lost in thought, not present in the only place and only time there is: Here and Now.
Thought reduces nature to a commodity to be used in the pursuit of profit or knowledge or some other utilitarian purpose. The ancient forest becomes timber, the bird a research project, the mountain something to be mined or conquered.
One wonders: living with this person, how does the dog manage to remain so sane, so joyous?
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
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April 20th 2004
From Consciousness -- Plants Can Teach Us
When you perceive nature, let there be spaces of no thought, no mind. When you approach nature in this way, it will respond to you and participate in the evolution of human and planetary consciousness.
Notice how present a flower is, how surrendered to life.
The plant that you have in your home -- have you ever truly looked at it? Have you allowed that familiar yet mysterious being we call 'plant' to teach you its secrets? Have you noticed how deeply peaceful it is? How it is surrounded by a field of stillness?
The moment you become aware of a plant's emanation of stillness and peace, that plant becomes your teacher.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
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April 21st 2004
From Consciousness -- The Breath of Life
The air that you breathe is nature, as is the breathing process itself.
Bring your attention to your breathing and realize that you are not doing it. It is the breath of nature. If you had to remember to breathe, you would soon die, and if you tried to stop breathing, nature would prevail.
You reconnect with nature in the most intimate and powerful way by becoming aware of your breathing and learning to hold your attention there.
This is a healing and deeply empowering thing to do. It brings about a shift in consciousness from the conceptual world of thought to the inner realm of unconditioned consciousness.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
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April 22nd 2004
From Consciousness -- Our Life Force is The Now
Attention has no past. Attention has no future. Attention is always in the now. And now is the Life!
That thought about Death -- 'I know I am going to die one day' -- is inattention, that is itself Death.
So an ignorant man alterantes between life and death. He is alive but he is dying every moment, by wasting his life force, the now.
V. Ganesan
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April 23rd 2004
From Consciousness -- The Real You Does Not Die
You have agreed that you will die only because you have accepted from someone that you (as a separate entity) were born.
H W L Poonja
No one is born; no one dies. What is born is only a concept. There is no entity to be freed.
Not understanding this fact constitutes the bondage of ignorance; apperception of it is the freedom of truth.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
If you seek the kernel, then you must break the shell. And likewise, if you would know the reality of (birth and death in) Nature, you must destroy the appearance, and the farther you go beyond the appearance, the nearer you will be to the essence.
Meister Eckhart
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April 24th 2004
From Consciousness -- A Matter of Desire
All desires are bad, but some are worse than others. Pursue any desire, it will always give you trouble. Why desire at all? Desiring a state of freedom from desire will not set you free.
Nothing can set you free, because you 'are' free. See yourself with desireless clarity, that is all.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
What is desired is bliss (Ananda), which exists at all times in myself and everything. The realisation of this bliss was lost to me when I became a separate ego, thereby losing sight of my essential identity (or oneness) with it.
Jean Klein
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April 25th 2004
From Consciousness -- The Limited Ego
The (mind-based) ego is eagerly looking for concepts, affections, and instincts because it must compensate for its non-absoluteness and non-reality; it has to fight its caducity (literally - the infirmity of old age).
It attaches itself to objects because it hopes to find in things/events its perpetuity and its happiness.
Raphael
I would define the ego as a concept originating from the "I am" experience, pure being without attributes, the absolute certitude we have that we exist. When I conceptualize this experience, I name it "I" or "I am".
There is nothing wrong with the pure concept "I am". The ego comes in the moment I say "I am this or that". The "this or that" superimposes a limitation onto something that, up until now, was limitless.
Francis Lucille
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April 26th 2004
From Consciousness -- Enlightenment Happens to No One
If you have the choice between enlightenment and a million dollars, take the million dollars! Because if you get the million dollars, there will be somebody there to enjoy the million dollars; but if you get enlightenment there's no one there to enjoy the enlightenment.
Ramesh Balsekar
No one is enlightened. Any experience of understanding happens to a me, and no me can ever be enlightened. All experiences are in phenomenality.
Wayne Liquorman
So called enlightenment is not freedom for the individual. It is freedom from individuality.
T M P Mahadevan
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April 27th 2004
From Consciousness -- Do We Have Free Will?
The question of free will versus predetermination is really not free will versus, or free will against, predetermination. The free will is part of this predetermination.
You consider free will as something you have as a result of a certain thought. But that thought occurring, leading to what you think is your free will is part of the totality of functioning. So it is really a misconception to consider free will as opposed to predetermination.
Ramesh Balsekar
All the activities that the body performs are predetermined. The only freedom you have is to choose not to identify with the body that is performing the actions.
H W L Poonja
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April 28th 2004
From Consciousness -- More Comforts Less Happiness
The tragedy of human history is decreasing happiness in the midst of increasing comforts.
Chinmayananda
Happiness is not a result to be attained through action, but a fact to be realised through knowledge. The sphere of action is to express it, not to gain it.
Alan Watts
You do not acquire happiness. Your nature is happiness. Bliss is not newly acquired. All that is done is to remove unhappiness.
Ramana Maharshi
You are free once you understand that your bondage is of your own making and you cease forging the chains that bind you
Nisargadatta Maharaj
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April 29th 2004
From Consciousness -- That Which Enfolds and Penetrates
The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Love, as the word is generally understood, denotes separation, whereas in true non-objective relationship we do not love others, we ARE others.
Ramesh Balsekar
When love has carried us above all things . . . we receive in peace the Incomprehensible Light, enfolding us and penetrating us. What is this Light, if it be not a contemplation of the Infinite, and an intuition of Eternity?
We behold that which we are, and we are that which we behold; because our being, without losing anything of its own uniqueness, is united with the Divine. Jan Ruysbroeck
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April 30th 2004
From Consciousness -- Can Reincarnation Occur?
Reincarnation implies a reincarnating self. There is no such thing. The bundle of memories and hopes, called the "I", imagines itself existing everlastingly and creates time to accomodate its false eternity.
To be, I need no past or future. All experience is born of imagination; I do not imagine, so no birth or death happens to me. Only those who think themselves born can think themselves re-born.
All exists in awareness, and awareness neither dies nor is re-born. It is the changeless reality itself.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
