April 2005
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April 1st 2005
From Consciousness -- Widening the Circle
A human being is a part of the whole called by us “the universe,” a part limited in time and space.
He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection of a few persons nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Albert Einstein
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April 2nd 2005
From Consciousness -- Just Say Yes
The responsibility in being Love is more than the mind could imagine or hold up under. If most human beings truly realized the impact that they have on the whole, they'd be crushed by the realization of it.
But what I'm talking about is being thrilled by it. All you have to do is say "yes." Don't make some big project out of it. Don't make some big deal out of it. Just say "yes."
You don't even know what it means to say "yes," but you say it anyway. You'll never know what it means to say "yes," but you do it anyway. Freedom and Love arise when you die into the unknown mystery of being.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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April 3rd 2005
From Consciousness -- Objects of Fascination
Realization is direct experience and insight which can lead to liberation. Realization is that which allows one to truly let go. The result of that letting go is liberation.
We can have many, many spiritual realizations, many spiritual experiences, many deep insights, and still remain very attached to the experience of realization.
In this sense, realizations themselves can become forms of addiction. Even deep and profound realizations and spiritual experiences can be co-opted by the mind and become mere objects of fascination.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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April 4th 2005
From Consciousness -- Beyond Any Experience
Liberation is beyond any experience, or any insight. It is the ultimate non-attainment.
Realizations are often extraordinary and entertaining.
Liberation is ordinary and thorough.
As I said, realization can lead to liberation if one completely surrenders into the non-state which deep and profound realization can open you to.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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April 5th 2005
From Consciousness -- Our Onlyness
There is only consciousness. There is no individual apart from consciousness who is conscious. The individual is consciousness, and the consciousness that is aware of the individual is consciousness. Whether formless being or in manifest form, all that is, is consciousness.
Before consciousness there is emptiness. Emptiness is neither formless nor has it any form. Emptiness neither exists nor does not exist, for it is beyond all conceptual understanding.
Neither the mind, nor the senses, nor consciousness can touch emptiness. Emptiness is the Ultimate Principle, the Self, the Source of all. That awareness of consciousness is emptiness.
When you go to sleep at night you are no longer conscious, but there is awareness. When you sleep, consciousness is no more; being-ness is no more; oneness is no more. And yet, you still are. What is that?
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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April 6th 2005
From Consciousness -- Be It - Knowingly
When you wake up, you are the same person who went to sleep, even if you have no memory of being aware during sleep. Something continued through the night, something more than the body, mind, or memory.
If there was no continual awareness, the body would wake up and you would not know who you are. Memory is nothing without awareness. Awareness is the first principle. Pay attention to it, and it will grow in intensity throughout all states.
Do not tie your freedom to what comes and goes. Liberation is the discovery that you are That which always is. But to understand what I say is not enough, you must be it -- knowingly.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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April 7th 2005
From Consciousness -- The End of Codependency
The greatest catalyst for change in a relationship is complete acceptance of your partner as he or she is, without needing to judge or change them in any way.
So, first you stop judging yourself, then you stop judging your partner.
That immediately takes you beyond ego. All mind games and all addictive clinging are then over. There are no victims and no perpetrators anymore, no accuser and accused.
This is also the end of all codependency, of being drawn into somebody else's unconscious pattern and thereby enabling it to continue. You will then either separate -- in love or move ever more deeply into the Now together, into Being. Can it be that simple? Yes, it is that simple.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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April 8th 2005
From Consciousness -- A State of Being
In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form.
You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature. You look beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realization of oneness. This is love.
Although brief glimpses are possible, love cannot flourish unless you are permanently free of mind identification and your presence is intense enough to have dissolved the pain-body -- or you can at least remain present as the watcher. The pain-body cannot then take you over and so become destructive of love.
Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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April 9th 2005
From Consciousness -- Changing Disharmony
As humans have become increasingly identified with their mind, most relationships are not rooted in Being and so turn into a source of pain and become dominated by problems and conflict.
If relationships energize and magnify egoic mind patterns and activate the pain-body, as they do at this time, why not accept this fact rather than try to escape from it?
Why not cooperate with it instead of avoiding relationships or continuing to pursue the phantom of an ideal partner as an answer to your problems or a means of feeling fulfilled?
With the acknowledgment and acceptance of the facts also comes a degree of freedom from them. For example, when you know there is disharmony and you hold that "knowing," through your knowing a new factor has come in, and the disharmony cannot remain unchanged.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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April 10th 2005
From Consciousness -- An Opportunity for Salvation
When you know you are not at peace, your knowing creates a still space that surrounds your nonpeace in a loving and tender embrace and then transmutes your nonpeace into peace.
As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else.
All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.
So whenever your relationship is not working, whenever it brings out the "madness" in you and in your partner, be glad. What was unconscious is being brought up to the light. It is an opportunity for salvation.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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April 11th 2005
From Consciousness -- Hold the Knowing
Every moment, hold the knowing of that moment, particularly of your inner state.
If there is anger, know that there is anger. If there is jealousy, defensiveness, the urge to argue, the need to be right, an inner child demanding love and attention, or emotional pain of any kind -- whatever it is, know the reality of that moment and hold the knowing.
The relationship then becomes your sadhana, your spiritual practice. If you observe unconscious behavior in your partner, hold it in the loving embrace of your knowing so that you won't react.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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April 12th 2005
From Consciousness -- Aligned to Higher Consciousness
Unconsciousness and knowing cannot coexist for long -- even if the knowing is only in the other person and not in the one who is acting out the unconsciousness. The energy form that lies behind hostility and attack finds the presence of love absolutely intolerable.
If you react at all to your partner's unconsciousness, you become unconscious yourself. But if you then remember to know your reaction, nothing is lost.
Never before have relationships been as problematic and conflict ridden as they are now. As you may have noticed, they are not here to make you happy or fulfilled. If you continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again.
But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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April 13th 2005
From Consciousness -- Actions Simply Happen
In Liberation you are in that state which is prior to any causation. Therefore, actions happen without any motivation for doing them.
You are not doing for yourself or for the love of others. You are prior to any motivation. Actions simply happen.
From the outside such actions may be viewed as loving, kind, and wise, but to the liberated one, all happens spontaneously and free of any motive. Actions arise out of the most natural, primordial state.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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April 14th 2005
From Consciousness -- Swept Up By Love
First, one awakens to personal freedom: the realization that you are formless consciousness itself. As consciousness, you are free of body-mind identity.
Then, there is the awakening to non-personal freedom. This is the birth of a vast non-personal Love for the whole, for all beings and all things. It is the realization that, you are the whole. Therefore, a freedom that is in any sense personal seems pale in comparison to a love, which is so much greater.
This is a phase of surrendering any and all personal attachments to the greatest good, the Self. As self-centered concerns dissolve, a love that is all-inclusive sweeps you up into its arms and into a new life of service, celebration, and love.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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April 15th 2005
From Consciousness -- Not Fully Awakened
With the dawning of Liberation, all motivations drop away. One does not act out of any reason or motivation, action simply occurs. Many mistake personal freedom for liberation because in personal freedom it is common to lose self-centered motivations to act.
Many get stuck there thinking that they are in the highest state, but they are actually stuck in the emptiness, or absence, of self-centered motivations.
They have not yet awakened to a truly selfless, non-personal love and life of service.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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April 16th 2005
From Consciousness -- The Liberated One
Beyond non-personal freedom lies Liberation. A liberated person has transcended any motivations, personal or non-personal.
Everything happens spontaneously, free of any sense of being the doer of deeds.
The liberated one has association with consciousness but does not dwell there. The liberated one has returned consciously to the ultimate principle, which resides before the consciousness. He or she is the awareness of consciousness. An evolution has taken place in that person.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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April 17th 2005
From Consciousness -- Suffering Isn't Necessary
Embracing suffering can be a key to liberation if, by embracing suffering, we mean to not avoid it, but do not indulge in it. Embrace the suffering so that you can go beyond it. Ask yourself: Who suffers? Who embraces?
There are lots of people who suffer and don't desire liberation. The desire for liberation comes into the sense of a separate me from outside of that me. It's an evolutionary impulse that either is or isn't awakened.
The impulse to be free may use suffering in order to accomplish its task, but it does not need suffering to do so. There is no great significance or purpose to suffering. Suffering is a waste of your time.
If you are suffering, you are not perceiving the Truth. Seek the true and right perspective on things, starting with yourself.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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April 18th 2005
From Consciousness -- Incredible Freedom
Those who are free don't want anything.
They don't want anything from their mind, they don't want anything from their emotions, they don't want anything from anyone, and they don't want anything from life.
They don't want anything.
If you don't want, all that's left is an incredible sense of being free.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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April 19th 2005
From Consciousness -- Only Through You
How many people does it take to make your life into a spiritual practice? Never mind if your partner will not cooperate.
Sanity -- consciousness -- can only come into this world through you. You do not need to wait for the world to become sane, or for somebody else to become conscious, before you can be enlightened. You may wait forever.
Do not accuse each other of being unconscious. The moment you start to argue, you have identified with a mental position and are now defending not only that position but also your sense, of self. The ego is in charge. You have become unconscious.
At times, it may be appropriate to point out certain aspects of your partner's behavior. If you are very alert, very present, you can do so without ego involvement -- without blaming, accusing, or making the other wrong.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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April 20th 2005
From Consciousness -- Bring in the Light
When your partner behaves unconsciously, relinquish all judgment. Judgment is either to confuse someone's unconscious behavior with who they are or to project your own unconsciousness onto another person and mistake that for who they are.
To relinquish judgment does not mean that you do not recognize dysfunction and unconsciousness when you see it. It means "being the knowing" rather than "being the reaction" and the judge.
You will then either be totally free of reaction or you may react and still be the knowing, the space in which the reaction is watched and allowed to be.
Instead of fighting the darkness, you bring in the light. Instead of reacting to delusion, you see the delusion yet at the same time look through it.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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April 21st 2005
From Consciousness -- Catalyst for Transformation
Being the knowing creates a clear space of loving presence that allows all things and all people to be as they are.
No greater catalyst for transformation exists. If you practice this, your partner cannot stay with you and remain unconscious. If you both agree that the relationship will be your spiritual practice, so much the better.
You can then express your thoughts and feelings to each other as soon as they occur, or as soon as a reaction comes up, so that you do not create a time gap in which an unexpressed or unacknowledged emotion or grievance can fester and grow.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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April 22nd 2005
From Consciousness -- Learn to Give and Listen
Learn to give expression to what you feel without blaming.
Learn to listen to your partner in an open, nondefensive way.
Give your partner space for expressing himself or herself. Be present. Accusing, defending, attacking -- all those patterns that are designed to strengthen or protect the ego or to get its needs met will then become redundant.
Giving space to others -- and to yourself- is vital. Love cannot flourish without it.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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April 23rd 2005
From Consciousness -- Love That Has No Opposite.
When you have removed the two factors that are destructive of relationships -- when the pain-body has been transmuted and you are no longer identified with mind and mental positions -- and if your partner has done the same, you will experience the bliss of the flowering of relationship.
Instead of mirroring to each other your pain and your unconsciousness, instead of satisfying your mutual addictive ego needs, you will reflect back to each other the love that you feel deep within, the love that comes with the realization of your oneness with all that is.
This is the love that has no opposite.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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April 24th 2005
From Consciousness -- A Major Challenge
If your partner is still identified with the mind and the pain-body while you are already free, this will represent a major challenge -- not to you but to your partner. It is not easy to live with an enlightened person, or rather it is so easy that the ego finds it extremely threatening.
Remember that the ego needs problems, conflict, and "enemies" to strengthen the sense of separateness on which its identity depends.
The unenlightened partner's mind will be deeply frustrated because its f'Lxed positions are not resisted, which means they will become shaky and weak, and there is even the "danger" that they may collapse altogether, resulting in loss of self.
The pain-body is demanding feedback and not getting it. The need for argument, drama, and conflict is not being met.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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April 25th 2005
From Consciousness -- No One to Whoop and Holler
Liberation is not stopping; it's cessation. The two are very different.
Cessation means extinction. It means the death of identification. Stopping implies no motion, while cessation is the end of struggle. Stopping is what you do when the traffic light turns red. Cessation of struggle is like free-falling through space without a care in the world.
When realization matures, you have realization but there's nothing there to reflect on it. So, quite naturally, there's a sobriety to realization.
That's why sages throughout time have said that the deepest realization is beyond experience -- because there is no one left to be whooping and hollering about it. This is the attainment of non-attainment.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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April 26th 2005
From Consciousness -- You Go Beyond.
Things are simply the way they are. Liberation is a complete acceptance of what is. Accept everything, and you will no longer be tied to anything.
Whatever you accept, you go beyond. Liberation is complete acceptance and, therefore, complete transcendence. If you accept everything, you go beyond everything.
Going beyond the world, you are free to be in it because you are the world. The knowingness that you are all-that-is, that knowingness itself, is beyond the world, beyond consciousness, beyond all.
The truly liberated one has transcended even the oneness of consciousness, as if being in deep sleep but fully awake.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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April 27th 2005
From Consciousness -- Only in the Now
All inquiry is meant for one purpose: to take you experientially into the Unknown as efficiently as possible. Once you get there, simply be still because the inquiry has delivered you to its destination. The rest is up to Grace.
Do not hold onto any knowledge that comes your way. Even the greatest revelations must not be clung to, or you will end up with a head full of memories and a heart empty of substance.
The truth is ever new, existing only in the now. The highest truth is beyond knowledge and experience. It is beyond time and space, and beyond beingness, consciousness, and oneness.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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April 28th 2005
From Consciousness -- Like a Blazing Fire
Just remember that all direct path techniques are meant simply to undermine, to cut away, the one who is performing them.
No matter what spiritual path you've walked or what teachings you've followed, they must lead you back to no path and no teaching.
A true teaching is like a blazing fire that consumes itself. The teaching must not only consume you, but consume itself as well.
All must be burned to ash, and then the ash must be burned. Then, and only then, is the Ultimate realized.
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April 29th 2005
From Consciousness -- One Too Many.
True Enlightenment destroys enlightenment. As long as you can refer back to yourself and say, "I'm enlightened," you're not. Enlightenment is authentic only when there is no one left to be enlightened. Even to say, "I am nobody," is one too many.
There's a point when you intuitively realize that to be Free you have to give up your attachment to Freedom. You have to quit asking yourself: Is it still there? Am I okay? You have to decide to never look over your shoulder again to see if you're Free or if others know you're Free. You just have to let yourself burn there -- no matter what.
This isn't something I can help you with. I can tell you what you need to do, but you have to do it. In the beginning, teachers can help a lot. But the deeper you go, all they can do is point, and clarify, and tell you what you need to do. Only you can take this step. Nobody can push you into this place.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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April 30th 2005
From Consciousness -- True Teachers
In all too many cases, the student of spirituality is not seeking the Truth, but is actually seeking a mother or father figure -- someone to tell them what to do and to relieve them of the insecurity of not knowing what e Truth actually is.
When this is so, the student, with the help of the teacher, first needs to be aware of, or made aware of, the projection. Many students don't want the teacher to point this out because it robs them of their most cherished illusions that they use to protect themselves from their own insecurities.
A true teacher will not intentionally use any projection for any reason. If the student holds onto it and finds some temporary usefulness in it, that's his own doing.
The true teacher simply is who he or she is, and does not get involved in the game of projections. You'll find that the true teacher, whether you have projections or not, does not alter the way they behave toward you at all. If they do, run the other way as fast as you can.
Adyashanti -- The Impact of Awakening
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