November 2005
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November 1st 2005
From Consciousness -- The Inner Eye of Truth
Sometimes our fearful eyes need outer eyes to steady them in the midst of great emotion, great doubt, or great uncertainty.
The eyes that beckon remembrance pour forth a steady stream of Only This! that is awake to the truth of Itself, to the truth of what has never been born and never dies.
They shine with clarity and compassion. They are the agents of drowning in the ocean of love.
We know these eyes when we see them, for the seeing is really our own seeing, the seeing that comes from the inner eye of truth within us.
Dorothy S. Hunt -- Only This!.
From Consciousness -- The Idea of Illness
As there are no problems in the Now, there is no illness either. The belief in a label that someone attaches to your condition keeps the condition in place, empowers it, and makes a seemingly solid reality out of a temporary imbalance. It gives it not only reality and solidity but also continuity in time that it did not have before.
BY Focusing on this instant and refraining from labeling it mentally, illness is reduced to one or several of these factors: physical pain, weakness, discomfort, or disability.
That is what you surrender to -- now. You do not surrender to the idea of "illness."
Allow the suffering to force you into the present moment, into a state of intense conscious presence. Use it for enlightenment.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing The Power of Now
From Consciousness -- Illness is Not the Problem
Surrender does not transform what is, at least not directly. Surrender transforms you. When you are transformed, your whole world is transformed, because the world is only a reflection.
Illness is not the problem. You are the problem -- as long as the egoic mind is in control.
When you are ill or disabled, do not feel that you have failed in some way, do not feel guilty. Do not blame life for treating you unfairly, but do not blame yourself either. All that is resistance.
If you have a major illness, use it for enlightenment. Anything "bad" that happens in your life -- use it for enlightenment.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing The Power of Now
From Consciousness -- Who You Truly Are.
If ever you are ill, withdraw time from the illness. Do not give it any past or future. Let it force you into intense present-moment awareness -- and see what happens.
Become an alchemist. Transmute base metal into gold, suffering into consciousness, disaster into enlightenment.
Are you seriously ill and feeling angry now about what I have just said? Then that is a clear sign that the illness has become part of your sense of self and that you are now protecting your identity -- as well as protecting the illness.
The condition that is labeled "illness" has nothing to do with who you truly are.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing The Power of Now
From Consciousness -- Transmuting Pain and Suffering
Whenever any kind of disaster strikes, or something goes seriously "wrong" -- illness, disability, loss of home or fortune or of a socially defined identity, breakup of a close relationship, death or suffering of a loved one, or your own impending death -- know that there is another side to it, that you are just one step away from something incredible: a complete alchemical transmutation of the base metal of pain and suffering into gold.
That one step is called surrender.
I do not mean to say that you will become happy in such a situation. You will not. But fear and pain will become transmuted into an inner peace and serenity that come from a very deep place from the Unmanifested itself. It is "the peace of God, which passes all understanding." Compared to that, happiness is quite a shallow thing.
With this radiant peace comes the realization not on the level of mind but within the depth of your Being -- that you are indestructible, immortal. This is not a belief. It is absolute certainty that needs no external evidence or proof from some secondary source.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing The Power of Now
From Consciousness -- A State of Grace
In certain extreme situations, it may still be impossible for you to accept the Now. But you always get a second chance at surrender.
Your first chance is to surrender each moment to the reality of that moment. Knowing that what is cannot be undone -- because it already is -- you say yes to what is or accept what isn't.
Then you do what you have to do, whatever the situation requires.
If you abide in this state of acceptance, you create no more negativity, no more suffering, no more unhappiness. You then live in a state of nonresistance, a state of grace and lightness, free of struggle,
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing The Power of Now
From Consciousness -- Your Resurrection and Ascension
Now here is your second chance to transmute suffering into peace.:
If you cannot accept what is outside, then accept what is inside. If you cannot accept the external condition, accept the internal condition.
This means: Do not resist the pain. Allow it to be there. Surrender to the grief, despair, fear, loneliness, or whatever form the suffering takes. Witness it without labeling it mentally. Embrace it.
Then see how the miracle of surrender transmutes deep suffering into deep peace. This is your crucifixion. Let it become your resurrection and ascension.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing The Power of Now
From Consciousness -- Your Story Isn't Who You Are
The truth of who you are is not a story. The vastness and the closeness of that truth precedes all stories. When you overlook the truth of who you are in allegiance to some story, you miss a precious opportunity for self-recognition.
As a means of exposing your own particular story, you can ask yourself honestly and directly: What is my story? Exposing the story is not for the purpose of getting rid of it or following it. The purpose is to see what stories you are telling about who you think you are, or who you think you should be.
Whatever your answers may be, can you entertain the possibility that it is all just a story? It is not right, it is not wrong, it is not real.
Experience the possibility of its unreality. Drop your consciousness back into the space where there is no story, where there is no thought. If a thought arises, see that it is just passing through. It is neither wrong nor right. It is just a thought, having nothing to do with the essential truth of who you are.
Gangaji -- The Diamond in Your Pocket
From Consciousness -- Self-Inquiry
Self-inquiry is not the fixed question, Who am I? Self-inquiry is a way of being, a way of living.
It is the willingness at any moment to stop and ask yourself: What is going on? What is being thought? What is being believed? Is it real? Is it true?
In this open investigation it is possible to recognize that whatever the story is, it is always only comprised of thought. However strong the thoughts may be, however relatively real the story may seem, it is still just made of thoughts.
Deeper than those thoughts, before them, after them, and gloriously even during them, is the truth of who you are. Without denying the relevance of any particular thought, it is possible to discover that truth.
Gangaji -- The Diamond in Your Pocket
From Consciousness -- Individualization
Direct self-inquiry questions the basic assumption that you are "somebody".
This assumption is rarely examined because what usually follows is, "What I need, what I want, what I have, what I don't have, what I should have," and on and on.
These stories keep you identified as a person set apart from the vastness of your true identity. It keeps you identified only as a particular form, a body that is subject to birth and death. This identification is conscious individualization.
There is nothing evil or even mistaken about individualization. It is natural in the evolution and development of the human being. It is part of the mystery of human beingness.
Gangaji -- The Diamond in Your Pocket
From Consciousness -- Suppressing The Story
For most spiritual seekers, the belief that personal identification obstructs self-realization gives rise to the drive to get rid of the personal story. But this is still just another part of the story. It is so important to recognize this. Attempting to get rid of the story is just another tangent of the story, another example of the power of mind to control.
I have often seen in spiritual circles that instead of a real examination of our storylines, there is a tendency to suppress the story. In that suppression, the story may seem to be removed, but there is still no peace. You cannot rest in the beauty and transcendence of yourself while suppressing the story of yourself.
The story is still going on, but since you identify yourself as a spiritual seeker, you push it out of conscious awareness. Spiritual conditioning has simply taken the place of worldly conditioning. The story is still operating, but now it operates subconsciously. And you are confused as to why you still suffer.
Continued suffering is proof that your story is still being told. If you are willing to not label that suffering as bad, then you can be willing to simply see what the story is.
Gangaji -- The Diamond in Your Pocket
From Consciousness -- Telling The Truth
One expression of self-inquiry is to "tell the truth." I have noticed that people will often express a relative truth, for example, "I'm angry", or "You hurt me", and then assume that this is as far as it goes.
The immediate, relative truth may very well be that you are angry or hurt, but that is not the whole truth. That is what you are feeling. What you are feeling in the moment may be the relative truth, but it is not the deepest truth.
Normally we interpret what we feel, sense, and experience as the full truth, and our interpretation perpetuates the cycles of suffering. Our feelings, thoughts, emotions, and circumstances comprise the personal story. The personal story is believed to be the truth.
Whether the emotional storv is one of anguish or one of bliss, it is not the final truth. To be able to distinguish between the story and the truth is an aspect of discriminating wisdom, which in turn is a natural by-product of self-inquiry.
Gangaji -- The Diamond in Your Pocket
From Consciousness -- Opportunities to Tell the Truth
Great confusion arises in our misidentification of who we are with the physical body, the emotional body, or the mental body.
When the physical body experiences pain we say, "I hurt, I feel bad." This is the common usage of language. Saying, "My body hurts, my body is feeling pain" has a very different meaning.
When the emotional body is in turmoil we say, "I am upset, I am despairing, I am angry," rather than, "My emotions are in turmoil, there is anger appearing, there is despair appearing."
Whether you are happy or sad, you have the opportunity to tell the truth about what is deeper than that feeling.
Gangaji -- The Diamond in Your Pocket
From Consciousness -- Just Feel It
The quickest access to the openness to your true nature is not so much by thinking, but through the five senses.
For example, if you listen to the whole moment and not just the sounds available to the ears, if you feel the entirety of the whole moment, you will be opened beyond the limited space of the me.
There is a particular feeling in your body, and you just feel it -- it stretches.
You feel the absolute quietness. You feel the birds. You feel what it is like to feel a sound.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
From Consciousness -- Let Your Five Senses Open Up
The five senses give you immediate access beyond the virtual reality mind, to something that is not mentally created.
It is amazing when you start to let your five senses open up.
You realize that ninety-nine percent of your problem was that you had everything confined, focused in one direction only, and when you open to the whole, everything becomes very clear.
As soon as you start to suffer, you notice that your five senses have given up focusing on the whole and are instead focused on only one thing, which causes suffering.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
From Consciousness -- The Whole Perceiving Itself.
You can start to see that so much of our suffering has happened because our focus on a narrow point of experience makes it very hard for our Unborn nature (the Whole) to manage Itself.
But as soon as focus opens, the Unborn is known to be managing Itself and everything is okay, even if it seems to be not okay.
Then you can move beyond a limited point of view and see that it isn't really true that you perceive all of these experiences, but rather it is the Whole that perceives Itself.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
From Consciousness -- The Realization of Truth
Three qualities arose in me when I experienced a deep awakening -- wisdom, innocence, and love. Although they are actually parts of one whole, this wholeness can be expressed by these three qualities.
Awakening opens wisdom. When I speak of wisdom, it doesn't mean that I suddenly became smart. It simply means that I realized the Truth.
This Truth is what I am. This is what the world is. This is what is. The wisdom is the realization of what you are. It is the realization of Truth, the one and only true truth.
This Truth is not a matter of philosophy, or science, or faith, or belief, or religion. It is beyond all of that -- far beyond.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
From Consciousness -- Innocence
Another quality born within this awakening was innocence. This tremendous innocence produces the feeling of an ever-present newness in life.
Since the awakening, the brain no longer holds and compares, so every moment is experienced as new, just as it would be in the mind of a young child.
The adult mind tends to take things in, compare its perceptions to the litany of things that have happened in the past, and basically hold the attitude, "Been there, done that." It is rather arid, dry, and boring.
The innocent mind arises when this comparison is no longer happening. This innocence could also be called humility. But I personally like the word innocence because I think it stays closer to the actual experience.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
From Consciousness -- Tremendous Love Arises
Another quality that arose was love. This love is simply for existence. What is born in awakening is a love of what is -- of everything that is.
The fact that there is anything at all seems wonderful because when the insight of awakening goes very deep, there is a realization about how tenuous existence is. I don't simply mean that we could be killed at any moment. I mean we see an unbelievable miracle, we see how unimaginably easy it would be for absolutely nothing to be here.
That anything exists at all is seen as an absolute and utter miracle, and from that seeing there is the birth of so much love simply for what is. It's a different love than when we love getting what we want or we find the perfect partner.
This is a love just for the fact that we have shoelaces or for the fact that toenails exist, that kind of love. A tremendous love arises simply for the miracle that is life, realizing that all and everything is the One.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
From Consciousness -- Theory-and-Practice
Thousands of years of conditioning have created the belief that everything in life, to be learned and lived, means understanding the theory and then putting it into practice.
This applies as much to hitting a golf ball as to medicine, law and accounts. The same principle is carried over to the spiritual search.
The theory-and-practice principle applies to physical yoga or meditation. It, however, cannot apply to the concept of non-doership.
The truth indicated by ths concept is clear enough: everything happens according to a Cosmic Law; there is no action done by any individual entity (only by the Whole).
Ramesh Balsekar -- Nuggets of Wisdom
From Consciousness -- You Don't Have to Remember
If there is no action to be done by any individual, who is to do something to remember the principle of non-doership in daily living? How is one to remember that he or she is not the doer of any action while living life day after day?
This is what I am inclined to call the 'hard problem' in spiritual seeking. There are two aspects to this problem: Firstly, what is one to do to make the intellectual understanding turn into total understanding? Secondly, how can one remember the basic understanding of non-doership in daily living while necessarily doing something or the other in a given situation?
If and when the understanding will be total is entirely a matter of destiny. The same thing applies to the other problem. But the important point is that you don't have to remember the teaching.
The understanding itself, at any level, arises by itself and cuts off the involvement. You cannot expect to use the understanding as an instrument.
Ramesh Balsekar -- Nuggets of Wisdom
From Consciousness -- Maya
'Maya' is an Indian word used by spiritual teachers to indicate the hypnotic identification we develop soon after birth with a particular form -- which is the cause of mind-made suffering)
One is free before birth, one is free after death: Maya happens in between when the individual is not able to accept totally that everything is a happening according to the Cosmic Law -- God's Will.
How each happening affects whom is the destiny of each individual. This Maya creates the bondage from which each individual seeks freedom.
If the individual is able to accept this fact -- which, in effect, means that everything being a happening, no individual does any deed -- then there can be no question of any bondage for the individual entity.
Ramesh Balsekar -- Nuggets of Wisdom
From Consciousness -- Stages in Life Experience
Between birth and death, the human being passes through three main stages: infancy, adolescence and old age. In infancy, the vital force is concentrated, the will is single-pointed and there is a general harmony of the system.
External objects produce no injurious impression, and nothing need be added to the moral nature. In adolescence, the animal passions are widely rampant; the mind is filled with never-ending desires and preoccupations. Man is vulnerable to attack by sense objects and thereby the moral nature becomes enfeebled.
In old age, the desires and preoccupations have lost their keenness and the physical frame yearns for repose. He is obviously different from what be is in adolescence but lacks the perfection of infancy. In death, he comes to rest, and returns to the Absolute.
Death abolishes all artificial and temporary distinctions between good and evil, which hold only in this world of relativity. Death is always welcomed by the wise and feared by the ignorant.
Ramesh Balsekar -- Nuggets of Wisdom
From Consciousness -- Love and Hate
Love and hate usually go together as a pair of interrelated opposites, which form the basis of the functioning of manifestation that we call 'life'.
But 'love' in the directive 'love thy neighbour' has a distinctly positive flavour, which can cause confusion.
Does it mean that I should let my neighbour have free access to whatever I possess? If not, I would certainly be quite happy if I am able not to hate my neighbour.
Loving someone has the flavour of attachment. Not hating someone has a sort of detachment.
Ramesh Balsekar -- Nuggets of Wisdom
From Consciousness -- Does God Exist?
Does God exist? The only answer to this question would be: God is all that exists. It is you and me (as separate entities) who do not really exist. "I Am that I Am."
There can only be a mystical awareness of God that can never be proved scientifically for the simple reason that any external or indirect proof can only be something separate from That (Source) which is proved. Any external proof could only be circular logic -- a dog chasing its own tail!
In a word, you cannot truly 'think' about God, because it is He who is the thinker and the thinking. The fact of the matter is that there is indeed a Reality that exists, but it cannot be reached. That Reality can reach you.
Therefore, there is an extraordinary consistency in the assertions of the mystics through all time and space. Their assertions were totally in agreement with one another, however far apart they may be in time, distance and culture. Reality can only be experienced.
Ramesh Balsekar -- Nuggets of Wisdom
From Consciousness -- Seeing As God
Into the soul's essence no speck can ever fall.
Anything, however small, adhering to the soul, prevents your seeing me. We cannot see the visible except with the invisible.
When all things are reduced to naught in you then ye shall see God.
God is not seen except by blindness, not known except by ignorance, nor understood except by fools.
Meister Eckhart
From Consciousness -- A Good Lodger.
God is a stay-at-home.
He in whom God dwells has a good lodger.
Our being here is our eternal being. Many people imagine here to have creaturely being, and divine being to be yonder. It is a popular delusion.
God's in, I'm out.
Meister Eckhart
From Consciousness -- The Still Hinge
The outward and the inward man are as different as earth and heaven.
The outward man is the swinging door; the inner man is the still hinge.
At the centre, where no-one abides, there this light is quenched… for this Ground is the impartible stillness, motionless in itself, and by this Immobility all things are moved.
To one who knows naught It is clearly revealed.
Meister Eckhart
From Consciousness -- The Denier of Denials
Every creature denies it is the other… But God is the denier of denials.
Things are all the same in God: they are God Himself.
If I knew myself as intimately as I ought, I should have perfect knowledge of all creatures.
As long as I am this or that, I am not all things.
Meister Eckhart
From Consciousness -- By God Only
The word SUM, I AM, can be spoken by no creature, but by God only.
This one alone is lacking in every mode and quality.
The soul has a light in her with which she creates all things.
Man gets lost, settles abroad, goes so far out he cannot get back again.
Meister Eckhart
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