April 2006
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April 1st 2006
From Consciousness -- Knowing is Effortless
To know what you know in the core of your being without understanding is effortless.
The effort arises in having to understand it so that you can mentally know it and remember it, so that it will be there for you if you get into trouble.
I invite you to stop that search for understanding right now and meet the very force that has fueled your search. To not move toward either rejecting or grasping. To be still, regardless of the fears, anxieties, helplessness, hopelessness, despair, bliss, thrill, or explosion of realization.
Is it possible to simply be here, not understanding a thing?
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket. www.gangaji.org
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April 2nd 2006
From Consciousness -- The Truth of Who You Are
Is there some belief that in order to survive as an individual you have to understand with the mind?
As you inquire into the reality of that belief, you can discover that the truth of who you are, consciousness itself, already knows itself, is already in surrender to the mystery of itself, and in this realization you know yourself even more deeply.
Whatever understandings follow are secondary, even the most profound understanding of the unity of all existence.
The truth of who you are as pure consciousness, the totality of being, is infinitely deeper and vaster than any mental understanding of it..
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket. www.gangaji.org
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April 3rd 2006
From Consciousness -- Too Close To Be Reached
The effects of realizing who you really are can be quite exquisite, and there often follows some capacity to articulate it, as we know from holy books and scriptures.
But once the thoughts are believed -- "Now I know it, now I understand it, now it is mine" -- the mystery becomes a concept, a story about a moment of truth experienced sometime in the past.
The simplicity of the truth is what keeps it out of the reach of any concept, including whatever concepts might be used in the moment to point to it.
It is out of reach because it is too close to be reached. Concepts of the mind are distant compared to the closeness of the truth of who you are.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket. www.gangaji.org
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April 4th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Paradox
At a certain point you recognize that you don't understand a thing (about who you really are), and you experience a moment of surrender.
The paradox is that, as soon as you surrender the need to understand, you do understand; and the moment you think you do understand, you don't understand.
In your willingness right now, in this moment, to relinquish all understanding, all that you ever searched for through understanding is revealed.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket. www.gangaji.org
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April 5th 2006
From Consciousness -- Ungraspable By The Mind
What my teacher offered to me, and what I am offering to you, is very simple.
It has nothing to do with acquiring any special power. It has nothing to do with acquiring a particular state of mind. It has nothing to do with any qualities, not even warm, gentle ones.
It is about what is eternally, undeniably, uncontrollably, permanently here in every moment, every second, every situation, and every state of mind.
Everything that is graspable by the mind, even the most sublime and elevated states, has a birth, an existence, and a death. What is permanently here is ungraspable by the mind because it is not an object.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket. www.gangaji.org
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April 6th 2006
From Consciousness -- Permanence
If you look into your life, you will recognize that this is true of every thought, emotion, conclusion, self-definition, or definition of other.
All these are constantly being born, they exist for a while, they change, and then they die. I cannot emphasize this enough.
This is perhaps the biggest leap for the mind to make: everything that can be grasped by the mind is subject to birth and death. In this recognition is an opening where, for an instant, there is a true knowing of the permanence of our essential nature.
The truth of ourselves has nothing to do with body, thoughts, emotions, accomplishments, elevated states, or lowered states, which are impermanent.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket. www.gangaji.org
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April 7th 2006
From Consciousness -- Becoming Whole
When you feel the pain-body, don't fall into the error of thinking there is something wrong with you. Making yourself into a problem -- the ego loves that.
The knowing needs to be followed by accepting. Anything else will obscure it again. Accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment. It is part of the is-ness of the Now.
You can't argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer. Through allowing, you become what you are: vast, spacious. You become whole.
You are not a fragment anymore, which is how the ego perceives itself. Your true nature emerges, which is one with the nature of God.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth. www.eckharttolle.com
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April 8th 2006
From Consciousness -- Knowing Yourself
Knowing yourself goes far deeper than the adoption of a set of ideas or beliefs.
Spiritual ideas and beliefs may at best be helpful pointers, but in themselves they rarely have the power to dislodge the more firmly established core concepts of who you think you are, which are part of the conditioning of the human mind.
Knowing yourself deeply has nothing to do with whatever ideas are floating around in your mind.
Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth. www.eckharttolle.com
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April 9th 2006
From Consciousness -- What Matters To You?
Your sense of who you are determines what you perceive as your needs and what matters to you in life -- and whatever matters to you will have the power to upset and disturb you.
You can use this as a criterion to find out how deeply you know yourself. What matters to you is not necessarily what you say or believe, but what your actions and reactions reveal as important and serious to you.
So you may want to ask yourself the question: What are the things that upset and disturb me? If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small. That will be your unconscious belief.
What are the small things? Ultimately all things are small things because all things are transient.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth. www.eckharttolle.com
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April 10th 2006
From Consciousness -- Nonreactive and Absolutely Alert
If peace is really what you want, then you will choose peace. If peace mattered to you more than anything else and if you truly knew yourself to be spirit rather than a little me, you would remain nonreactive and absolutely alert when confronted with challenging people or situations.
You would immediately accept the situation and thus become one with it rather than separate yourself from it. Then out of your alertness would come a response.
Who you are (consciousness), not who you think you are (a small me), would be responding.
It would be powerful and effective and would make no person or situation into an enemy.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth. www.eckharttolle.com
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April 11th 2006
From Consciousness -- Who Is Looking?
The more limited, the more narrowly egoic the view of yourself, the more you will see, focus on, and react to the egoic limitations, the unconsciousness in others.
Their "faults" or what you perceive as their faults become to you their identity.
This means you will see only the ego in them and thus strengthen the ego in yourself.
Instead of looking "through" the ego in others, you are looking "at" the ego. Who is looking at the ego? The ego in you.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth. www.eckharttolle.com
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April 12th 2006
From Consciousness -- Inner Space
Most people define themselves through the content of their lives. Whatever you perceive, experience, do, think, or feel is content. Content is what absorbs most people's attention entirely, and it is what they identify with.
When you think or say, "my life;" you are not referring to the life that you are but the life that you 'have', or seem to have. You are referring to content -- your age, health, relationships, finances, work and living situation, as well as your mental-emotional state.
The inner and outer circumstances of your life, your past and your future, all belong to the realm of content -- as do events, that is to say, anything that happens.
What is there other than content? That which enables the content to be -- the inner space of consciousness.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth. www.eckharttolle.com
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April 13th 2006
From Consciousness -- Being Conscious Participants
Behind the sometimes seemingly random or even chaotic succession of events in our lives as well as in the world lies concealed the unfolding of a higher order and purpose.
This is beautifully expressed in the Zen saying "The snow falls, each flake in its appropriate place."
We can never understand this higher order through thinking about it because whatever we think about is content; whereas, the higher order emanates from the formless realm of consciousness, from universal intelligence.
But we can glimpse it, and more than that, align ourselves with it, which means be conscious participants in the unfolding of that higher purpose.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth. www.eckharttolle.com
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April 14th 2006
From Consciousness -- An Archetypal Image.
Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego. The man on the cross is an archetypal image. He is every man and every woman.
As long as you resist suffering, it is a slow process because the resistance creates more ego to burn up.
When you accept suffering, however, there is an acceleration of that process which is brought about by the fact that you suffer consciously. You can accept suffering for yourself, or you can accept it for someone else, such as your child or parent.
In the midst of conscious suffering, there is already the transmutation. The fire of suffering becomes the light of consciousness.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth. www.eckharttolle.com
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April 15th 2006
From Consciousness -- No Agenda
When you start to see the light that you really are, the light waking up in you, the radiance, you realize it has no intention to change you.
It has no intention to harmonize. It has no agenda. It just happens.
The Truth is the only thing you'll ever run into that has no agenda. Everything else will have an agenda. Everything.
That is why the Truth is so powerful. Give up your agendas and continue to expose yourself (to the Truth), and harmonization will naturally occur.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing. www.adyashanti.org
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April 16th 2006
From Consciousness -- Clearing Out Identification
Freedom is the realization that this deep, deep peace and this unknown are what you are. Everything else is just an extension of that unknown.
Bodies are just an extension of that unknown. The trees outside are just an extension of the unknown in time, in form. Thought and feeling are also extensions of the unknown in time. The whole visible universe, in fact, is just an extension in time of this unknown, this mountain of quiet.
So it's really important to get to the point of maturity where you are willing to look at what is fundamental. There is a difference between pulling the weeds of confusion out and getting to the root of Truth.
Did, you ever pull weeds from a lawn, grabbing only their tops, and discover they were back again so quickly that it was as if the lawn was never weeded at all? Clearing out identification is like this.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing. www.adyashanti.org
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April 17th 2006
From Consciousness -- Finding The Root
To pull your identification as a limited self out by the root, you must look at it in the most fundamental way.
This means you look beyond your usual concern with solving personal problems. Looking at personal issues is like pulling just the top of the weeds out of your lawn: they pop right back up.
You may have some relief from the trouble of the day, but the root is still there, totally untouched. But having experiences, even if they clear up problems or offer beautiful insights, is very different than finding the root of who you are.
If you don't get to the root, you just get another weed.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing. www.adyashanti.org
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April 18th 2006
From Consciousness -- Where Freedom Is Lost
And so we ask, "What is the root of this location called The '?" You need to know the root of how it began, the genesis of it.
There was a moment when that innocent, wordless fascination and love that is your essence moved from being innocently fascinated and in love with 'what is' to identification with what is thought. Right in that movement from innocent fascination to identification, that is where freedom is lost.
It happened way back in the beginning of time, and it is also happening right now. Each moment there is innocence, the fascination with whatever is, just as it is. But then the mind shows up and says "mine." "That's mine. That's my thought. That's my problem." Or it might also say the opposite, that the thought or problem is "yours."
Right at that point lies the genesis, the root, of all suffering and separation.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing. www.adyashanti.org
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April 19th 2006
From Consciousness -- See What Is Looking
Being your true self, being your true nature, is different than experiencing it with thought.
Realize that you are the mystery, and that you can't really look at the mystery because you are only capable of looking 'from' the mystery.
There is a very awake, alive, and loving mystery, and that's what is seeing through your eyes at this moment. That's what is hearing through your ears at this moment. Instead of trying to figure it all out, which is impossible, I suggest you ask, "What's ultimately behind this set of eyes?"
Turn around to see what is looking. Encounter pure mystery, which is pure spirit, and wake up to what you are.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing. www.adyashanti.org
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April 20th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Mystery Experiencing Itself
The mystery always takes care of itself -- as long as we are not addicted to following concepts. This addiction cuts off your access to the mystery.
It's like having a jewel in your pocket but you can't get your hand into the pocket to pull it out.
When you deeply know that you are the mystery experiencing itself, you realize that's all that is ever happening.
Whether you call an experience a me or a you, a good day or a rotten day, beauty or ugliness, compassion or cruelty -- it's all still the mystery experiencing itself, extending itself into time and form. That's all that is happening.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing. www.adyashanti.org
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April 21st 2006
From Consciousness -- A Hidden Harmony
When we go into a forest that has not been interfered with by man, our thinking mind will see only disorder and chaos all around us.
It won't even be able to differentiate between life (good) and death (bad) anymore since everywhere new life grows out of rotting and decaying matter.
Only if we are still enough inside and the noise of thinking subsides can we become aware that there is a hidden harmony here, a sacredness, a higher order in which everything has its perfect place and could not be other than what it is and the way it is.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth. www.eckharttolle.com
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April 22nd 2006
From Consciousness -- Realigned With Life
The mind is more comfortable in a landscaped park because it has been planned through thought; it has not grown organically. There is an order here that the mind can understand. In the forest, there is an incomprehensible order that to the mind looks like chaos. It is beyond the mental categories of good and bad.
You cannot understand it through thought, but you can sense it when you let go of thought, become still and alert, and don't try to understand or explain.
Only then can you be aware of the sacredness of the forest. As soon as you sense that hidden harmony, that sacredness, you realize you are not separate from it, and when you realize that, you become a conscious participant in it.
In this way, nature can help you become realigned with the wholeness of life.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth. www.eckharttolle.com
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April 23rd 2006
From Consciousness -- Not Minding What Happens
When I don't mind what happens, what does that imply? It implies that internally I am in alignment with what happens.
"What happens," of course, refers to the 'suchness' of this moment, which always already is as it is. It refers to content, the form that this moment -- the only moment there ever is -- takes.
To be in alignment with 'what is' means to be in a relationship of inner nonresistance with what happens. It means not to label it mentally as good or bad, but to let it be.
Does this mean you can no longer take action to bring about change in your life? On the contrary. When the basis for your actions is inner alignment with the present moment, your actions become empowered by the intelligence of Life itself.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth. www.eckharttolle.com
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April 24th 2006
From Consciousness -- Friendly Toward the Present Moment
Once you have reached a certain level of consciousness, (and if you are reading this, you almost certainly have), you are able to decide what kind of a relationship you want to have with the present moment.
Do I want the present moment to be my friend or my enemy? The present moment is inseparable from life, so you are really deciding what kind of a relationship you want to have with life.
Once you have decided you want the present moment to be your friend, it is up to you to make the first move: Become friendly toward it, welcome it no matter in what disguise it comes, and soon you will see the results. Life becomes friendly toward you; people become helpful, circumstances cooperative.
One decision changes your entire reality. But that one decision you have to make again and again and again -- until it becomes natural to live in such a way.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth. www.eckharttolle.com
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April 25th 2006
From Consciousness -- A Vital Question
A vital question to ask yourself frequently is: What is my relationship with the present moment? Then become alert to find out the answer. Am I treating the Now as no more than a means to an end? Do I see it as an obstacle? Am I making it into an enemy?
Since the present moment is all you ever have, since Life is inseparable from the Now, what the question really means is: What is my relationship with Life?
This question is an excellent way of unmasking the ego in you and bringing you into the state of Presence. Although the question doesn't embody the absolute truth (ultimately, I and the present moment are one), it is a useful pointer in the right direction.
Ask yourself it often until you don't need it anymore.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth. www.eckharttolle.com
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April 26th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Elimination of Time
The elimination of time from your consciousness is the elimination of ego. It is the only true spiritual practice.
When we speak of the elimination of time, we are, of course, not referring to clock time, which is the use of time for practical purposes, such as making an appointment or planning a trip. It would be almost impossible to function in this world without clock time.
What we are speaking of is the elimination of psychological time, which is the egoic mind's endless preoccupation with past and future and its unwillingness to be one with life by living in alignment with the inevitable 'isness' of the present moment.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth. www.eckharttolle.com
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April 27th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Boundless Essence
Consciousness isn't a thing to be split up and shared among things. It is the unique prerogative, the boundless Essence, of the First Person singular, present tense.
'What' I experience depends upon many things: the state of my physical and chemical layers, my brain, my body, my world, and ultimately the whole of things.
'That' I experience depends upon 'No-thing'. Awareness is the function of -- it is -- this unbounded Emptiness at the heart of my many layered world.
To imagine it lurking in third persons as such is as common as it is absurd, and as absurd as it is distressing.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions, Carlsbad, California. www.InnerDirections.org
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April 28th 2006
From Consciousness -- Never-failing Inspiration For Nonpersons
It's not as if, arriving at this No-man's-land and No-thing's-land -- or, if you like, this Never-never-land -- one comes to a 'dead' end, to a region so nonexistent that it could hold no meaning and excite no interest. Exactly the reverse.
It is that Unknowable from whose depths the known gushes without reason and without stint, that Unthinkable Seed of all life and all thought -- including 'this' thought about it.
Search as I may, I can find no decision making or maker, no ideas or feelings or impressions of my own -- bright or dull -- no mind at all but only this bare Consciousness or Awakeness that reads as absolutely clueless, useless, incompetent, idiotic. Yet, what's needed is coming up from the depths just when it should. In Heaven you discover this quiet upsurge from the Abyss.
Try it out, learn to trust it, and go on relying on it more and more. Here is never-failing inspiration for nonpersons.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions, Carlsbad, California. www.InnerDirections.org
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April 29th 2006
From Consciousness -- Creativity
In ordinary life we find hints of the vital connection between Self-awareness and creativity.
Don't our very best moments always include a heightened consciousness of ourselves, so that we aren't really lost in inspiration or creative fervor or love, but newly found? At its finest, doesn't the opaque object over there point unmistakably back to the transparent Subject here?
It may even happen that the transparency comes first: we attend, our idiotic chatter dies down, we consciously become nothing but this alert, expectant Void -- and presently the tune or picture, the key notion, the true answer, arises ready-made in that Void, from that Void.
If we wish to find out what it's really like to create the world, we have only to desire nothing and pay attention.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions, Carlsbad, California. www.InnerDirections.org
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April 30th 2006
From Consciousness -- Problems
The true function of problems is to direct you to their solution at the Centre. Having some problems is very helpful.
Having quite severe problems brings me back to the place where there are no problems. Because Who I really, really, am is problem-free. I'm living from the problem-free area out into the world.
Part of the price of involvement in the world is to have feelings, some of which are agreeable, some of which are disagreeable, some of which are tragic.
I can't exist, can't express at all without this dualism: the dualism of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, black and white, etc, which is the inescapable condition of expressing into the world from the place that is free of those dualities.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions, Carlsbad, California. www.InnerDirections.org
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