July 2005
Back to Archive index.
July 1st 2005
From Consciousness -- The Truth That Frees
"Know the truth and the truth shall set you free." These words spoken by Jesus refer not to some conceptual truth, but to the truth of who or what you are beyond name and form.
They refer not to something that you need to know about yourself, but a deeper, yet extraordinarily simple knowing, in which the knower and the known merge into one.
Now the egoic split is healed and you are made whole again. We could describe the nature of this knowing thus: suddenly, consciousness becomes conscious of itself.
When this happens, you become aligned with the evolutionary impulse of the Universe, which is towards the emergence of consciousness into this world.
Eckhart Tolle -- The Diamond in Your Pocket (Foreword)
---
July 2nd 2005
From Consciousness -- There Are No Mistakes
No matter how much you have achieved here, unless you know the living truth you are like a seed that has not sprouted and you have missed the true purpose of human existence.
And even if your life has been full of suffering and mistakes, it takes only this knowing to redeem it and retrospectively endow the seemingly meaningless with profound meaning.
If all your mistakes have taken you to this point, this realization, how could they have been mistakes?
"I am not what happens, but the space in which it happens." This knowing, this living truth, frees you from identification with form, from time as well as from a false, mind-made sense of self.
What is that space in which everything happens? Consciousness prior to form.
Eckhart Tolle -- The Diamond in Your Pocket (Foreword)
---
July 3rd 2005
From Consciousness -- The Jewel in the Lotus
Although at the heart of every religion lies "the jewel in the lotus," to use an ancient Tibetan Buddhist term, religion itself is not the truth but a story woven around the truth.
Sometimes the story only veils the truth and it is still able to shine through it. At other times, it obscures and even usurps it.
Whenever religion becomes divisive, as it frequently does, you know that the story has taken over. The essence that points to the underlying oneness of all life, has been lost.
The story, of course, is thought, the conditioned, the timebound. The essence points to the unconditioned, timeless, formless, the realm of the sacred. "Be still and know that I am God."
Eckhart Tolle -- The Diamond in Your Pocket (Foreword)
---
July 4th 2005
From Consciousness -- The Story of Me
For thousands of years, mythologies, that is to say stories, were the carriers of spiritual truth. Almost nobody was able to recognize the truth when it was pointed to directly.
Most spiritual teachers used stories as their main teaching device. "All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables, indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable." (Matthew 13:34)
For millions of humans alive today the age of collective mythologies has already come to and end. Some substitutes lacking any depth, such as communism, were tried but proved to be short-lived and were quickly recognized as an illusion.
All that's left now is each individual's private mythology, "the story of me." As Gangaji puts it: "Telling the personal story is the primary religion of most people on the planet."
Eckhart Tolle -- The Diamond in Your Pocket (Foreword)
---
July 5th 2005
From Consciousness -- What Is It?
Where is the truth hiding in all our stories?
When you wake up in the morning, you may remember your dream and realize: it was just a dream, it wasn't real. But there must be something real even in a dream, otherwise it could not be. What is it?
It is that which enables the dream or the story, the thought or emotion, to be.
This is the consciousness that you are.
Eckhart Tolle -- The Diamond in Your Pocket (Foreword)
---
July 6th 2005
From Consciousness -- Spiritual Truth in Stories
Stories that contain spiritual truth will continue to be enjoyed in books and films even by those who no longer need them.
They also still fulfill a vital function in initiating a first awakening in those who would not have been reached without the story and its ability to pass undetected through the ego's defenses.
The ego doesn't realize until it is too late that every spiritual story is ultimately about you....
This is because they have come out of a living realization of the truth, rather than the accumulated knowledge of the mind.
Eckhart Tolle -- The Diamond in Your Pocket (Foreword)
---
July 7th 2005
From Consciousness -- Stop and Be Still
I told him (a spiritual teacher), "I want freedom. I want to be free of all my entanglements and misconceptions. I want to know if final, absolute truth is real. Tell me what to do."
First, he said, "You are in the right place!" Then, he said, "Do nothing. Your whole problem is that you continue doing.
Stop all your doing. Stop all your beliefs, all your searching, all your excuses, and see for yourself what is already and always here.
Don't move. Don't move toward anything, and don't move away from anything. In this instant, be still."
Gangaji -- The Diamond in Your Pocket
---
July 8th 2005
From Consciousness -- The Truth, of Who I Am
In the spirit of investigation, I was willing in that moment to stop following and believing in the thoughts beneath my terror.
As I fell into what had initially seemed like an abyss of hopeless despair; the fulfillment and peace I was searching for revealed themselves to be here, to have always been here, with no possibility of ever leaving.
Most shockingly, I saw that I had always known it! In that instant I realized that everything I could ever have wanted was already here as the ground of pure, eternal being. All of the suffering I had called "me" or "mine" had actually taken place in shining pure beingness!
Most importantly, I saw that the truth, of who I am is this beingness. This same beingness is present everywhere, in everything, visible and invisible.
Gangaji -- The Diamond in Your Pocket
---
July 9th 2005
From Consciousness -- A Shift of Consciousness
In this realization (of What I really am), there occurred a remarkable shift of attention from my story of being to the endless depth of being that had always existed underneath the story.
The simplicity of what I realized in that moment was difficult to believe. I had thought that it couldn't be so simple.
I had always been taught that unless you are free of sin, greed, aggression, hate, and karma, you can't reach this place, and I had believed what I had been taught.
What Peace! What rest! I had previously experienced moments of cosmic unity or sublime bliss, but this was of a different order. It was a sober ecstasy, a moment of recognizing, I am not bound by the story of"me'.
Gangaji -- The Diamond in Your Pocket
---
July 10th 2005
From Consciousness -- Thought -- No Longer the Master
Finally, I realized that whatever I thought was always only a thought, impossible to rely on because it was subject to conditioning and disappearance.
In the discovery of truth, thought could no longer be trusted. Thought could no longer be the master.
The previous fear of not knowing was transformed into the joy of not knowing. To not know was the opening of my mind to what could not be perceived by thought.
What relief! What profound release!
Gangaji -- The Diamond in Your Pocket
---
July 11th 2005
From Consciousness -- It Does Not Come and Go
The field of pure presence is alive and intelligent and has the potential to consciously recognize itself in you.
The truth of who you are is consciousness: not your name, not your body, not your emotions, and not your thoughts.
These are just coverings that come and go. They have a birth, an existence in time, and a death.
Consciousness does not come and go. It is here now. It knows no other time.
Gangaji -- The Diamond in Your Pocket
---
July 12th 2005
From Consciousness -- Pure Consciousness
Consciousness is free. It is not bound by any name or concept. It is not limited by notions of time or space.
It is not affected by emotions or disease.
You are pure consciousness. You have always been free, for you have always been consciousness.
You have experienced yourself as a point in consciousness and from that imagined yourself to be limited to a body.
Gangaji -- The Diamond in Your Pocket
---
July 13th 2005
From Consciousness -- Not Rare or Difficult
The biggest barrier to awakening is the belief that it is something rare.
When this barrier is dropped, or at least you start to tell yourself, "I really don't know if my belief that awakening is difficult is true or not," then everything becomes instantly available to you.
Since this is all that exists, it can't be rare and difficult unless we insist it is.
The basis of all this is not theoretical, it is experiential. No one taught it to me, and no one can teach it to you.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
---
July 14th 2005
From Consciousness -- The Sense of a Me
What is so beautiful about awakening is that when you are no longer functioning through your conditioning, then the sense of "me" who was living that life is no longer there.
Most people are familiar with the sense of a me living this life. But when this is seen through, the experience is that what really runs and operates this life is love, and this same love is in everybody all the time.
When it is working its way through your personal stuff, it gets dissipated, but it is still there. Nobody owns this love. 'Everybody' is essentially the manifestation of this love.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
---
July 15th 2005
From Consciousness -- Little Peepholes
You have experienced moments in your life, whether or not you are aware of them, when you momentarily forgot the "I" with which you have been identified.
It can happen spontaneously at a beautiful sight, or it can occur from egoic forgetfulness.
People usually discount these moments. After experiencing the "nice moment," you then reconstitute your familiar sense of identity.
But actually these opportunities are like little peepholes through which the truth is experienced. If you start to watch for them, you will notice them.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
---
July 16th 2005
From Consciousness -- Experience the Gap
There can be a gap of quietness between thoughts, and if you are very present in that gap, you stop acting out your familiar identity.
As soon as identity jumps into the gap, you don't feel present anymore.
Being nobody is usually so baffling to the mind that it starts filling that gap very quickly. "How can I be nobody?" But to fill it up with a somebody is meaningless.
If you really want to know what you are, just experience the gap, experience the openness, and let it bloom inside. There is no better way to find out what you are.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
---
July 17th 2005
From Consciousness -- The Uncreated
This is when spirituality becomes not only real, but adventurous and fun. You ask, "This openness, this presence" -- call it what you will -- "this is what I am?"
You start to feel or sense that you're on to something that's not a creation of thought, belief, or faith.
And when you start to take it in, just this awakeness that's free of all identity, it's mind-boggling.
In Zen we call it the uncreated; it's the only thing around that your mind is not creating.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
---
July 18th 2005
From Consciousness -- Through the Needle's Eye
There is a wonderful saying from the Bible that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.
Trying to hold on to your identities, even if they are the most spiritual, most holy of identities, is like trying to shove a camel through the eye of a needle. They are too coarse, too big, too untrue, too fabricated to get into the truth.
But there's one thing that can get through the eye of the smallest possible needle. Space, your own nothingness, can get right through into heaven.
None of us can take one shred of a self-centered identity with us.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
---
July 19th 2005
From Consciousness -- A Ground of Joy.
Since I have stopped searching for fulfillment in the mind or in external circumstances, my life is now lived on a ground of joy.
There are moments of unhappiness, anger, and distress, there are moods that pass through, yet all is occurring on a ground of joy.
No mood needs to be feared, no moment needs to be avoided.
Finally, I see that all moods, all states of mind, all feelings, anything that is truly investigated, points back to the same source -- that pristine sky of fulfilled consciousness that is the truth of who I am, and is the truth of who you are.
Gangaji -- The Diamond in Your Pocket
---
July 20th 2005
From Consciousness -- Closer Than Your Breath.
The truth of who you are is utterly simple. It is closer than your thoughts, closer than your heartbeat, closer than your breath.
If you believe your thoughts to be real, if you follow your thoughts as the basis of reality, you will continually overlook what is closer, what has been calling you throughout time, saying, "You are here! You are home! Come in. Be at home."
To be home is to simply be here. To postpone simply being here is to engage in the infinite complexities of self-definition and misidentification.
Gangaji -- The Diamond in Your Pocket
---
July 21st 2005
From Consciousness -- This Flame of Truth
Right now is the opportunity to stop and tell the truth about the flame of consciousness that is the essence of your being.
To choose to deny it is to suffer. To choose to surrender to it is the end of all unnecessary suffering.
When you meet yourself, when you love yourself, when you recognize that this flame of truth that you love is yourself, you have no need to search for love or to try and extract love.
You are fulfilled.
Gangaji -- The Diamond in Your Pocket
---
July 22nd 2005
From Consciousness -- The Ordinary Awakening
At this point in our human history, what was once reserved for the most rare beings is available to ordinary people.
Because we have considered ourselves ordinary, we have kept a certain door closed within our brains and within our hearts to the truth at the core of it all.
But at this time there is a crack in our conditioning. If you are reading this you are already aware of it to some degree or you wouldn't have subscribed to this service.
This is a time of the ordinary awakening. This means you, not only those born under the brightest stars but the ordinary person as well.
Gangaji -- The Diamond in Your Pocket
---
July 23rd 2005
From Consciousness -- Overlooking Happiness
I have discovered that it is actually impossible to find happiness.
As long as you are seeking to find happiness 'somewhere', you are overlooking where happiness is.
As long as you are seeking to find God someplace else, you are overlooking the essential truth of God, which is omnipresence.
When you seek to find happiness someplace else, you are overlooking your true nature, which is happiness. You are overlooking yourself.
Gangaji -- The Diamond in Your Pocket
---
July 24th 2005
From Consciousness -- Simply Be
I would like to offer you the invitation and the challenge to stop overlooking yourself, to simply, radically, and absolutely be still -- to put aside, at least for a moment, all of your ideas of where God is, or where truth is, or where you are.
Stop looking anywhere. Stop seeking. Simply be. I am not talking about being in a stupor, or going into a trance, but going deeper into the silence of your heart where the revelation of omnipresence can be revealed as your true nature.
I am asking you to be still in pure presence. Not to create that, not even to invite it, but simply to recognize what is always here, who you always are, where God always is.
Gangaji -- The Diamond in Your Pocket
---
July 25th 2005
From Consciousness -- Being Unborn
Heaven is the experience when we've passed into our own nothingness. We realize our own pure awakeness and see that what we are is pure spirit with no form.....
That's the true meaning of being born again. Being born again is not just a great emotional religious conversion experience. That can be nice, but it's only like changing your clothes.
Being born again is actually being born again, not getting a new spiritual garment.
More accurately, it is being unborn when we realize that eternal nothingness is actually living this life called "my life."
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
---
July 26th 2005
From Consciousness -- Peace Surpassing Understanding
But just because you realize the truth and awaken spiritually, doesn't mean that your life is going to be an unending ascent of good fortune.
That would not be the peace that surpasses all understanding. As long as our lives feel good, it is easy to have peace.
But life does what it does, like an ocean moving. Whether the waves are high or low, it is just as sacred and, as nobody, you are not harmed by it.
Within this awakeness is the peace that surpasses understanding, and your life doesn't need to be doing better. It can just do what life does; it just flows. You don't care.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
---
July 27th 2005
From Consciousness -- It's All Stories
Thought can tell a million stories inside of awareness, and it's not going to change awareness one bit. The only thing that's going to change is the way the body feels.
If you tell yourself a sad story, the body reacts to that. And if you tell yourself a self-aggrandizing story, the body feels puffed up, confident.
But when you realize it's all stories, there can be a vast waking up out of the mind, out of the dream. You don't awaken, what has eternally been awake realizes itself.
That which is eternally awake is what you are.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
---
July 28th 2005
From Consciousness -- Beyond Roles and Stories
We each have a specific role and our stories about that role. But our roles and stories are not what we are.
The beautiful thing about hearing or reading the words of a true spiritual teacher is that it's an opportunity to wake up from the story of you.
When you start to realize what Truth is, you recognize that Truth is not an abstraction, it is not out there at a distance from you, and it is not something to learn tomorrow.
You discover that Truth is who you are without your story or script, right now.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
---
July 29th 2005
From Consciousness -- The Time to Awaken is Now
The real blessing of of an encounter with truth is the opportunity to be stopped right now, not tomorrow.
Awakening to the truth of your being won't be attained in the future. It's not something you prepare for or earn or deserve.
Awakening is a radical shift in identity. You think you're you, but you're not. You are eternal being.
The time to wake up is now. Not tomorrow. Now.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
---
July 30th 2005
From Consciousness -- The End of Strategies
There isn't anything wrong with getting an advantage at times. But in considering truth, what we come to see is that our happiness and freedom have nothing to do with gaining any sort of advantage.
Instead, they have everything to do with allowing ourselves to experience in this moment what it's like to be completely disarmed of our strategy.
That includes our strategy to be rid of strategy.
This is an opportunity to stop all strategies of becoming and simply be.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
---
July 31st 2005
From Consciousness -- The Divine Purpose
These daily offerings are not only about the transcendence of compulsive and unconscious thinking and the end of human suffering.
They are part of an evolutionary transformation of cosmic magnitude: the awakening of consciousness out of the dream of identification with form, the dream of separation.
The fact that you are reading these words means that it is your destiny to be an essential part of this great adventure of collective awakening....
You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are!
Eckhart Tolle -- The Diamond in Your Pocket (Foreword)
---
