March 2005
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March 1st 2005
From Consciousness -- Wonder
if asked what are the characteristics of life that is fully embodied in non-duality, I would simply reply, wonder.
You are always surprised. You are always, always, always surprised because there is no longer a clinging to past, present, or future.
The human being is what links consciousness to its own infinite expressions in form. Through the form of an awake human being, consciousness becomes conscious of itself as both formlessness and as all forms.
This is why, to the true sage, everything is divine, whole, and complete. Everything is God, the Self.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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March 2nd 2005
From Consciousness -- An Unnamable, Mysterious Whole.
For most people self-inquiry stops at the realization that I am formless consciousness. But when I am speaking of embodiment, I'm taking self-inquiry back into the world, the world which still remains whether it's perceived as a dream or not. This is an inquiry into what that world is.
The realization, "I am formless consciousness," is simply the opposite of "I am an individual somebody." Even with that realization, there is still going to remain the appearance of somebody. So embodiment is simply a reflection of the realization that every manifest thing that exists is the one body of the one consciousness.
This is a return to wholeness, to a completeness that includes the unmanifest and the manifest alike. It is perceiving that both formless consciousness and the world of form are simply two aspects of an unnamable, mysterious whole.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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March 3rd 2005
From Consciousness -- Only the Perceiving
Self-referencing is the mind's tendency to locate itself. Anything that you can perceive is partial, and therefore cannot contain your whole Self.
So when it's realized that there is no self apart from the perceiving, then the tendency to try to find one's Self in any experience, insight, or concept -- ceases.
This is why the highest attainment is not an experience, and it is not something perceivable. It is the death of trying to find yourself because there is no self apart from consciousness.
There is only the perceiving, there's no body that perceives.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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March 4th 2005
From Consciousness -- Instruments of the Divine.
When it is realized that there is no body perceiving and that perceiving is all there is, then quite naturally the perceiving and what is perceived are seen to be two aspects of a unified whole, like heads and tails on a coin. Heads and tails on a coin cannot be separated.
The body is a sensing instrument of consciousness. Without the body and the mind, the trees couldn't see themselves.
Usually we think that we are looking at a tree, but the tree is looking at itself through us.
Without this instrument, the tree doesn't get to see itself. We are sensing instruments of the Divine.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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March 5th 2005
From Consciousness -- Enlightened Action
Non-duality could be defined as cessation of conceptualization -- perceiving before the mind -- perceiving without mind.
Enlightened action leaves no trace.
Enlightened action comes directly from Emptiness, not from the mind. It is spontaneous.
If it comes in the form of words, the words come from Emptiness. If it comes in the form of actions, the actions come from Emptiness -- from before the personality and the mind.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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March 6th 2005
From Consciousness -- Personal Freedom
In the experience of awakening what's discovered is personal freedom.
Personal freedom is freedom from everything that ever happened.
It is freedom from identity being confined to the body, mind, memory, and all the ideas that we hold about ourselves.
In personal freedom, one has the sense of "I am free." The "I am" has a perfume of the personal. Here, freedom refers to the "I am;" later one will go beyond the "I am."
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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March 7th 2005
From Consciousness -- A Love Greater Than Oneself
Once you're finished being enamored with your freedom from all that is personal, there arises a love greater than anything that could be called personal. The dawning of this love within the human heart seeks something far greater than anything previously experienced. It's a love that seeks the liberation of the whole. In that light, personal liberation starts to seem almost petty.
The expansion from personal liberation into a far greater love and concern for that which could never be called personal, is often one of the hardest things for spiritual seekers to come to grips with. This love is so big that often our self-concern and our fascination with our own liberation feel threatened. By "threatened" I mean that it makes such self-concern seem small in the face of something so much bigger.
The Love of which I am speaking, arises directly out of a profound depth of realization. It has nothing to do with doing the right thing or being a good person. Such notions come from an egoic mind masquerading in spiritual clothing. I am speaking about a force of Love that originates from beyond the mind -- from consciousness itself.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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March 8th 2005
From Consciousness -- Thoughts as Food
The moment your thinking is aligned with the energy field of the pain-body, you are identified with it and again feeding it with your thoughts.
For example, if anger is the predominant energy vibration of the pain-body and you think angry thoughts, dwelling on what someone did to you or what you are going to do to him or her, then you have become unconscious, and the pain-body has become "you." Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath.
Or when a dark mood comes upon you and you start getting into a negative mind-pattern and thinking how dreadful your life is, your thinking has become aligned with the pain-body, and you have become unconscious and vulnerable to the pain-body's attack.
"Unconscious," the way that I use the word here, means to be identified with some mental or emotional pattern. It implies a complete absence of the watcher.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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March 9th 2005
From Consciousness -- Transmuting Suffering into Consciousness
Sustained conscious attention severs the link between the pain-body and your thought processes and brings about the process of transmutation.
It is as if the pain becomes fuel for the flame of your consciousness, which then burns more brightly as a result.
This is the esoteric meaning of the ancient art of alchemy: the transmutation of base metal into gold, of suffering into consciousness.
The split within is healed, and you become whole again. Your responsibility then is not to create further pain.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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March 10th 2005
From Consciousness -- The Silent Watcher
Focus attention on the feeling inside you..
Know that it is the pain-body. Accept that it is there. Don't think about it -- don't let the feeling turn into thinking. Don't judge or analyze. Don't make an identity for yourself out of it.
Stay present, and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you.
Become aware not only of the emotional pain but also of "the one who observes," the silent watcher. This is the power of the Now, the power of your own conscious presence. Then see what happens.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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March 11th 2005
From Consciousness -- Ego Identification with the Pain-Body
Once you have understood the basic principle of being present as the watcher of what happens inside you -- and you "understand" it by experiencing it -- you have at your disposal the most potent transformational tool.
This is not to deny that you may encounter intense inner resistance to disidentifying from your pain. This will be the case particularly if you have lived closely identified with your emotional pain-body for most of your life and the whole or a large part of your sense of self is invested in it.
What this means is that you have made an unhappy self out of your pain-body and believe that this mind-made fiction is who you are. In that case, unconscious fear of losing your identity will create strong resistance to any disidentification.
In other words, you would rather be in pain -- be the pain-body -- than take a leap into the unknown and risk losing the familiar unhappy self.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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March 12th 2005
From Consciousness -- Inner Resistance
Observe the resistance within yourself. Observe the attachment to your pain. Be very alert. Observe the peculiar pleasure you derive from being unhappy. Observe the compulsion to talk or think about it. The resistance will cease if you make it conscious.
You can then take your attention into the pain-body, stay present as the witness, and so initiate its transmutation.
Only you can do this. Nobody can do it for you. But if you are fortunate enough to find someone who is intensely conscious, if you can be with them and join them in the state of presence, that can be helpful and will accelerate things. In this way, your own light will quickly grow stronger.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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March 13th 2005
From Consciousness -- Sabotaging Our Healing
When a log that has only just started to burn is placed next to one that is burning fiercely, and after a while they are separated again, the first log will be burning with much greater intensity. After all, it is the same fire. To be such a fire is one of the functions of a spiritual teacher.
Some therapists may also be able to fulfill that function, provided that they have gone beyond the level of mind and can create and sustain a state of intense conscious presence while they are working with you.
The first thing to remember is this: As long as you make an identity for yourself out of the pain, you cannot become free of it. As long as part of your sense of self is invested in your emotional pain, you will unconsciously resist or sabotage every attempt that you make to heal that pain.
Why? Quite simply because you want to keep yourself intact, and the pain has become an essential part of you. This is an unconscious process, and the only way to overcome it is to make it conscious.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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March 14th 2005
From Consciousness -- The Power of Your Presence
To suddenly see that you are or have been attached to your pain can be quite a shocking realization. The moment you realize this, you have broken the attachment.
The pain-body is an energy field, almost like an entity, that has become temporarily lodged in your inner space. It is life energy that has become trapped, energy that is no longer flowing.
Of course, the pain-body is there because of certain things that happened in the past. It is the living past in you, and if you identify with it, you identify with the past.
A victim identity is the belief that the past is more powerful than the present, which is the opposite of the truth. It is the belief that other people and what they did to you are responsible for who you are now, for your emotional pain or your inability to be your true self.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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March 15th 2005
From Consciousness -- Letting Go into a Love That Big.
(Spiritual enlighenment) is the awakening of a love that makes whatever is happening in oneself unimportant. For such a person self-concern has dropped out of the center of awareness.
Enlightenment is not only the experience of transcending the me; it's also a condition where the me, as a separate somebody, doesn't hold importance anymore.
It doesn't always start out this absolute, but this is the direction non-personal love pushes you toward.
Very often at this point, at this juncture, whatever's left of a me who is clinging to itself will start to scream and come up with 101 reasons why it can't yet let go into a love that big.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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March 16th 2005
From Consciousness -- Gray Areas
Ultimately one is either going to say "yes" to that movement of love which is completely non-personal, or to say "no." It may or may not be a long path getting to that point of ultimately saying "yes," but that's exactly what needs to be done. God is only waiting for an unconditional ....Yes.
The whole idea is to get to the point where it is no longer a minute-to-minute choice. Of course it may be a continual minute-to-minute choice, but the problem is that choosing takes effort. It's always a decision; at each moment you're never sure which way you're going to go.
However, there can, and must, come a point when one simply says "yes." Period. You know inside that choice has been made because choice falls away. It ultimately comes down to a black and whiteness that most people have a great amount of difficulty with. Whatever is left of the me always seeks the gray areas.
As long as we're seeking gray areas, it means we haven't really come to a reckoning inside with that Love which seeks only itself.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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March 17th 2005
From Consciousness -- A Non-Personal Miracle
Love is a tremendous caring that arises in the wake of transcending the personal self.
In the wake of this transcendence, something amazing arises. A deep love and caring arises from within emptiness, from nowhere.
This love and caring seeks only the Truth in every moment and in all circumstances.
True love is something far greater than anything that could be called personal. True love is a non-personal miracle. It is the nature of reality itself. It is the natural and spontaneous expression of the undivided Self.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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March 18th 2005
From Consciousness -- This Love is You
True love is not something that can be created. A love greater than oneself, by its very nature, is something that we can't manufacture. The me cannot manufacture it, even if it wants to. This Love arises from the Self -- from realization of the Self.
Listen and feel into the intuition of oneness within. The feeling of oneness is love; the experience of oneness is realization of your true nature. Love only seems other than you or bigger than you when you are trapped in the perspective of a personal me.
This non-personal love actually is you because you, as you truly are, have never been that which is personal. In one sense, it's simply a matter of how deep enlightenment has gone, how thorough it is.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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March 19th 2005
From Consciousness -- We Are the Whole
We can't really love the whole until we have a deep realization that we are the whole. Otherwise, the vastness of that love is always going to be experienced as a threat to the me.
Love cares not for the me, it cares only for that which is true, undivided, and whole.
When the me dissolves, when it surrenders itself to a unity far greater than anything the mind can comprehend, that is Love.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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March 20th 2005
From Consciousness -- Feeling and Emotion
Non-personal love is not a feeling, yet within it there can be, and there is, feeling and emotion. But the feeling and emotion are not derived from a personal me.
The feeling and emotion are derived from the absence of a personal me.
Only a personal me puts feelings into the concept of positive or negative. From the non-personal perspective, feelings are just feelings.
Some fall into a category that could be called positive, and others fall into a category that could be called negative. But from the standpoint of the ultimate perspective, those are just arbitrary categories that create division.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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March 21st 2005
From Consciousness -- A Passion for the Truth Alone
It's the attachment to our feelings that creates the sense of separation, suffering, and the illusionary me.
In the face of true Love, any holding onto a liberation or freedom that is personal becomes absurd.
Love sweeps you up into a mysterious passion and utter commitment to the whole where to live only for oneself is seen as utter madness. The mind does not want to see that this obsession with the personal is madness; it wants to find meaning in it.
From the standpoint of Love, all that is false is to be consumed in a passion for the Truth alone.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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March 22nd 2005
From Consciousness -- Watching It is Enough
The truth is that the only power there is, is contained within this moment: It is the power of your presence. Once you know that, you also realize that you are responsible for your inner space now -- nobody else is and that the past cannot prevail against the power of the Now.
Unconsciousness creates it; consciousness transmutes it into itself. St. Paul expressed this universal principle beautifully: "Everything is shown up by being exposed to the light, and whatever is exposed to the light itself becomes light."
Just as you cannot fight the darkness, you cannot fight the pain-body. Trying to do so would create inner conflict and thus further pain. Watching it is enough. Watching it implies accepting it as part of what is at that moment.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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March 23rd 2005
From Consciousness -- Love / Hate Relationships
Unless and until you access the consciousness frequency of presence, all relationships, and particularly intimate relationships, are deeply flawed and ultimately dysfunctional.
They may seem perfect for a while, such as when you are "in love," but invariably that apparent perfection gets disrupted as arguments, conflicts, dissatisfaction, and emotional or even physical violence occur with increasing frequency.
It seems that most "love.relationships" become love / hate relationships before long. Love can then turn into savage attack, feelings of hostility, or complete withdrawal of affection at the flick of a switch.
This is considered normal.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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March 24th 2005
From Consciousness -- True Love Has No Opposite.
If in your relationships you experience both "love" and the opposite of love -- attack, emotional violence, and so on -- then it is likely that you are confusing ego attachment and addictive clinging with love.
You cannot love your partner one moment and attack him or her the next. True love has no opposite.
If your "love" has an opposite, then it is not love but a strong ego-need for a more complete and deeper sense of self, a need that the other person temporarily meets.
It is the ego's substitute for salvation, and for a short time it almost does feel like salvation.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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March 25th 2005
From Consciousness -- Ego Games
There comes a point when your partner behaves in ways that fail to meet your needs, or rather those of your ego. The feelings of fear, pain, and lack that are an intrinsic part of egoic consciousness but had been covered up by the "love relationship" now resurface.
Just as with every other addiction, you are on a high when the drug is available, but invariably there comes a time when the drug no longer works for you.
When those painful feelings reappear, you feel them even more strongly than before, and what is more, you now perceive your partner as the cause of those feelings. This means that you project them outward and attack the other with all the savage violence that is part of your pain.
This attack may awaken the partner's own pain, and he or she may counter your attack. At this point, the ego is still unconsciously hoping that its attack or its attempts at manipulation will be sufficient punishment to induce your partner to change their behavior, so that it can use them again as a cover-up for your pain.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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March 26th 2005
From Consciousness -- Covering Up Our Pain
Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever the substance you are addicted to -- alcohol, food, legal or illegal drugs, or a person -- you are using something or somebody to cover up your pain.
That is why, after the initial euphoria has passed, there is so much unhappiness, so much pain in intimate relationships. They do not cause pain and unhappiness. They bring out the pain and unhappiness that is already in you. Every addiction does that. Every addiction reaches a point where it does not work for you anymore, and then you feel the pain more intensely than ever.
This is one reason why most people are always trying to escape from the present moment and are seeking some kind of salvation in the future. The first thing that they might encounter if th focused their attention on the Now is their own pain, and this is what they fear.
If they only knew how easy it is to access in the Now the power of presence that dissolves the past and its pain, the reality that dissolves the illusion. If they only knew how close they are to their own reality, how close to God.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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March 27th 2005
From Consciousness -- Avoidance is Not the Answer
Avoidance of relationships in an attempt to avoid pain is not the answer either. The pain is there anyway.
Three failed relationships in as many years are more likely to force you into awakening than three years on a desert island or shut away in your room. But if you could bring intense presence into your aloneness, that would work for you too.
Whether you are living alone or with a partner, this remains the key: being present and intensifying your presence by taking your attention ever more deeply into the Now.
For love to flourish, the light of your presence needs to be strong enough so that you no longer get taken over by the thinker or the pain-body and mistake them for who you are.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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March 28th 2005
From Consciousness -- Freedom, Salvation and Enlightenment.
To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.
To disidentify from the pain-body is to bring presence into the pain and thus transmute it. To disidentify from thinking is to be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior, especially the repetitive patterns of your mind and the roles played by the ego.
If you stop investing it with "selfness," the mind loses its compulsive quality, which basically is the compulsion to judge, and so to resist what is, which creates conflict, drama, and new pain. In fact, the moment that judgment stops through acceptance of what is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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March 29th 2005
From Consciousness -- Saving All Beings
When some with a Bhuddhist background think about the implications of awakening, they think of the phrase "saving all beings," but often they don't know the exact form that would take in their life.
"Saving all beings" is not something that you do. Saving all beings is a verb that you become.
You become the saving of all beings. That is what you are. In that there is, quite naturally, the very spontaneous and effortless manifestation of love, compassion, wisdom, and a dedication to the Truth above all else.
Saving all beings is not what you do; it is the definition of what you are.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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March 30th 2005
From Consciousness -- Earth Shattering Enlightenment
Personal enlightenment is an exclusive transcendence, in that it excludes the world of space and time. It arrives at eternity by a transcendent exclusion of the relative world of space and time.
Non-personal enlightenment is an inclusive transcendence; it sees that the world of space and time is the expression of eternity. Thus, it is a truly non-dual perspective.
The implications of personal enlightenment are profound, indeed, but the implications of non-personal enlightenment are earth shattering in the most positive sense.
Realize that you are the whole, and you will see what I mean.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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March 31st 2005
From Consciousness -- What Words Can Ne'er Express
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes By the deep sea, and music in its roar. I love not man the less, but nature more, From these our interviews in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Lord Byron
I said Oh no! Help me! And that Oh no! became a rope let down in my well. I've climbed out to stand here in the sun. One moment I was at the bottom of a dark fearful narrowness, and the next, I am not contained by the universe. If every tip of every hair on me could speak, I still couldn't say my gratitude. In the middle of these streets and gardens, I stand and say and say again, and it's all I say, I wish everyone could know what I know.
Rumi
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