June 2006
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June 1st 2006
From Consciousness -- Staying Shifted
The price of sanity is vigilance.
What's the good of 'talking about' this world-transfoming shift of viewpoint without 'making' the shift, and going on to stay shifted?
How to do just that?
Cultivate the habit of 'seeing' that in fact it's no shift at all, but simply being where you were all along, at the world's Center.
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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June 2nd 2006
From Consciousness -- Awaken Your Mind
Basically, the trouble with my mind is the conviction I've got one, and returning it to the Universe at large is enough to set it in order.
It's really very inefficient to operate from a mind that is full of things to go wrong, and so efficient to operate from a No-mind that is empty of all that chatter. This isn't a dogma for the believing, but a working hypothesis for testing, all day and every day.
It's never too late to have a marvelous childhood. True maturity is that second childhood that I call alert idiocy.
One's mind awakens. Ideas, inspiration, guidance from moment to moment, flow without obstruction from their Source, which is experienced here as Itself mindless.
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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June 3rd 2006
From Consciousness -- Being Truly Broad-minded
I am truly broad-minded to the degree that my mind, let go of, alights on and merges with and irradiates the whole scene. There it comes into it's own.
To be opinionated, narrow-minded, under pressure, depressed, repressed -- all such diseases of the mind arise from its displacement and resulting compression.
Given back to the world, returned to where it came from, it expands and recovers.
At large again, it is infinitely vast and generous.
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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June 4th 2006
From Consciousness -- An Unforeseen Pleasure
What is the heart and substance of love?
We are built for loving. We are built to die for each other, to disappear in each other's favor.
Until the loss of one's head issues in the finding of one's heart -- a heart so tender that it is mortally wounded by the world's apalling suffering -- one falls far short of the goal, which is the love that transmutes all suffering.
Truly it is one of the unforeseen pleasures of the First Person life to gaze unabashed into the faces of one's friends, without feeling or thinking anything in particular, and just see them for what they always were -- 'things for looking at and never for looking out of.'
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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June 5th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Perfect Love
This (abiding in awareness) isn't an unloving state, reducing you to a cardboard cutout. Quite the reverse.
It is a most loving refusal to separate my Consciousness from yours, and it removes the last barrier between us.
Liberated from the superstition of plural spirits, we are at last really one.
This is the perfect love that casts out fear.
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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June 6th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Lie
The steady assumption of every grown-up, the basis of his life as a man among men (all the more massive for remaining unexamined) is that there lies at the center of his universe a solid, opaque, colored, compliated, active 'thing', mostly invisible to its owner but nevertheless perfectly real.
This universal human conviction isn't spelled out in so many words. It doesn't need to be; it's too evident, it goes without saying. And it's a lie! Actually, it's the lie!
In plain language, it's the basic assumptions that you and I make about ourselves and our status in the world -- and hence about the world itself -- that are the trouble.
Whatever I'm doing from the delusion and nonsense that there is a thing here doing it is worse done. Whatever I'm doing from my Space is better done.
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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June 7th 2006
From Consciousness -- Dealing With Situations
Presence is a state of inner spaciousness. When you are present, you ask: How do I respond to the needs of this situation, of this moment? In fact, you don't even need to ask the question.
You are still, alert, open to what is. You bring a new dimension into the situation: space. Then you look and you listen. Thus you become one with the situation. When instead of reacting against a situation, you merge with it, the solution arises out of the situation itself.
Actually, it is not you, the person, who is looking and listening, but the alert stillness itself. Then, if action is possible or necessary, you take action or rather right action happens through you. Right action is action that is appropriate to the whole....
All creativity, comes out of inner spaciousness. Once the creation has happened and something has come into form, you have to be vigilant so that the notion of "me" or "mine" does not arise. If you take credit for what you accomplished, the ego has returned, and the spaciousness has become obscured.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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June 8th 2006
From Consciousness -- I Am Is The Substratum
Although you cannot know Consciousness, you can become conscious of it as yourself.
You can sense it directly in any situation, no matter where you are.
You can sense it here and now as your very Presence, the inner space in which the words on this screen are perceived and become thoughts.
It is the underlying I Am. The words you are reading and thinking are the foreground, and the I Am is the substratum, the underlying background to every experience, thought, feeling.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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June 9th 2006
From Consciousness -- Be Aware Of Your Breathing
Be aware of your breathing. Notice the sensation of the breath. Feel the air moving in and out of your body. Notice how the chest and abdomen expand and contract slightly with the in- and outbreath.
One conscious breath is enough to make some space where before there was the uninterrupted succession of one thought after another.
One conscious breath (two or three would be even better), taken many times a day, is an excellent way of bringing space into your life.
Even if you meditated on your breathing for two hours or more, which some people do, one breath is all you ever need to be aware of, indeed ever can be aware of. The rest is memory or anticipation, which is to say, thought.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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June 10th 2006
From Consciousness -- Generating Consciousness
Breathing isn't really something that you do but something that you witness as it happens. Breathing happens by itself. The intelligence within the body is doing it. All you have to do is watch it happening. There is no strain or effort involved.
Also, notice the brief cessation of the breath, particularly the still point at the end of the out- breath, before you start breathing in again.
Being aware of your breathing takes attention away from thinking and creates space. It is one ,way of generating consciousness.
Although the fullness of consciousness is already there as the unmanifested, we are here to bring consciousness into this dimension.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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June 11th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Indwelling Divine Spirit
The German word for breathing - atmen -- is derived from the ancient Indian (Sanskrit) word Atman, meaning the indwelling divine spirit or God within.
Being aware of your breath forces you into the present moment -- the key to all inner transformation. Whenever you are conscious of the breath, you are absolutely present.
You may also notice that. you cannot think and be aware of your breathing. Conscious breathing stops your mind. But far from being in a trance or half asleep, you are fully awake and highly alert. You are not falling below thinking, but rising above it.
And if you look more closely, you will find that those two things -- coming fully into the present moment and ceasing thinking without loss of consciousness -- are actually one and the same: the arising of space consciousness.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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June 12th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Inner Body
Take two or three conscious breaths. Now see if you can detect a subtle sense of aliveness that pervades your entire inner body. Can you feel your body from within, so to speak?
Sense briefly specific parts of your body. Feel your hands, then your arms, feet, and legs. Can you feel your abdomen, chest, neck, and head? What about your lips? Is there life in them?
Then become aware again of the inner body as a whole. You may want to close your eyes initially for this practice, and once you can feel your body, open your eyes, look around, and continue to feel your body at the same time.
Some readers may find there is no need to close their eyes; they can in fact feel their inner body as they read this.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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June 13th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Desire For Truth
It is truly a blessed and divine moment in a lifetime when the desire for truth appears. The tragedy is that this desire is often translated into some mental concept of how to get truth, or how to get rid of obstructions to truth. This concept is then worshipped, prayed to, and relied on more than truth itself.
The desire for truth is the longing you feel in your heart.
The mental relationship with that longing is all of the things you throw at it to try to make it go away because it's bothering you. It won't be satisfied with anything less than pure authenticity, pure being.
If you are willing to stop throwing things at your heart's longing, to stop searching for an escape from the longing, it will reveal its own consummation.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket www.gangaji.org
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June 14th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Invitation Now
When the mind says, "Go here, do this, try that," you can refuse to listen. You can realize that time after time you have gone here, done this, and tried that without any satisfaction. The invitation now is to stop everything, to simply be still.
When you stop all your searching, your justifications, your excuses, what power does thought then have? In a millisecond of stopping, a thought is seen for what it is. In that same millisecond the presence of truth is recognized.
Yet this habit of searching, of relying on the mind and its latest interpretation of where more truth will be found, is very strong. So the cycling begins once again.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket www.gangaji.org
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June 15th 2006
From Consciousness -- A Sweet, Humbling Surprise
Possibly, you have had many experiences of truth, of the eternal presence that mind cannot conceptualize, and not just while you were on the spiritual search.
You've had experiences as a child, as an adult, in nature, in loving relationships, out of the blue, in the middle of a street, or the middle of the night.
You could not have planned these experiences, and yet because of your deep conditioning you imagine that you can do it, that you can create truth, that you can make God come to you.
What a sweet, humbling surprise to find that you can't, and that truth, which is God, is already here.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket www.gangaji.org
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June 16th 2006
From Consciousness -- Wonderfully Simple
This is so simple. What you are searching for, you are.
I don't mean your body, though the body is no obstruction and is included in you. I don't mean your thoughts or your emotions, your destiny, karma, past, or future, though they are not obstructions either. All of these appear, exist, and disappear in the truth of who you are. You are truth already.
You are consciousness. Consciousness is spirit. Recognize yourself, and you will see yourself everywhere -- in every other human being, in every animal, in every plant, in every rock.
Until you recognize yourself, you are still figuring out how to find yourself, how to get more of yourself, how to know what is yourself and what is not yourself.... In the end, you just have to stop and see. You have tried every technique except stopping. If you have not stopped, you are still searching. It is that simple.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket www.gangaji.org
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June 17th 2006
From Consciousness -- War In The Mind
In our minds, thoughts take the place of God, and they also take the place of the devil. A war is fought between the good thoughts and the bad thoughts.
A desire arises to accumulate more good thoughts so that they can defeat the bad thoughts, the forces of light can defeat the forces of darkness.
You are conditioned to believe that if the good thoughts win, your higher self wins, and you will be at peace. It is certainly true that the experience of life is enhanced when your mind stream has an abundance of good thoughts. It is equally true that pollution of your mind by negative or bad thoughts results in a poisoned mind and body.
Yet what is overlooked is that at the core, there is always peaceful, continuous, unmoving awareness. What you overlook is that who you truly are is already at peace. Winning and losing have nothing to do with the truth of who you are.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket www.gangaji.org
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June 18th 2006
From Consciousness -- We Are That Presence
Our minds are inactive for many moments during the day, but we are conditioned to pay attention only to the activity of mind, and these points of silence are simply overlooked.
When I speak of "stopping," I am pointing to that silence between thoughts, which is formless consciousness.
There is a presence there, and we can recognize that who we are is that presence.
We have been taught to believe "I think, therefore I am", rather than the truth, which is, "I am, therefore I think".
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket www.gangaji.org
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June 19th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Life WIthin Us
Your inner body is not solid but spacious. It is not your physical form but the life that animates the physical form.
It is the intelligence that created and sustains the body, simultaneously coordinating hundreds of different functions of such extraordinary complexity that the human mind can only understand a tiny fraction of it.
When you become aware of it, what is really happening is that the intelligence is becoming aware of itself.
It is the elusive "life" that no scientist has ever found because the consciousness that is looking for it 'is' it.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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June 20th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Unmanifested Source
Physicists have discovered that the apparent solidity of matter is an illusion created by our senses. This includes the physical body, which we perceive and think of as form, but 99.99 % of which is actually empty space.
This is how vast the space is between the atoms compared to their size, and there is as much space again within each atom. The physical body is no more than a misperception of who you are. In many ways, it is a microcosmic version of outer space....
So your physical body, which is form, reveals itself as essentially formless when you go deeper into it. It becomes a doorway into inner space.
Although inner space has no form, it is intensely alive. That "empty space" is life in its fullness, the unmanifested Source out of which all manifestation flows. The traditional word for that Source is God.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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June 21st 2006
From Consciousness -- The Presence That I Am
Thoughts and words belong to the world of form; they cannot express the formless. So when you say, "I can feel my inner body" that is a misperception created by thought.
What is really happening is that the consciousness that appears as the body -- the consciousness that I Am -- is becoming conscious of itself.
When I no longer confuse who I am with a temporary form of me, then the dimension of the limitless and the eternal - God -- can express itself through "me" and guide "me." It also frees me from dependency on form.
However, a purely intellectual recognition or belief that "I am not this form" does not help. The all-important question is: At this moment, can I sense the presence of inner space, which really means, can I sense my own Presence, or rather, the Presence that I Am?
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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June 22nd 2006
From Consciousness -- Entering The Body To Go Beyond It
Ask yourself, "Am I aware not only of what is happening at this moment, but also of the Now itself as the living timeless inner space in which everything happens?"
Although this question seems to have nothing to do with the inner body, you may be surprised that by becoming aware of the space of Now, you suddenly feel more alive inside.
You are feeling the aliveness of the inner body -- the aliveness that is an intrinsic part of the joy of Being.
We have to enter the body to go beyond it and find out that we are not that.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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June 23rd 2006
From Consciousness -- Inhabit Your Body
As much as possible in everyday life, use awareness of the inner body to create space. When waiting, when listening to someone, when pausing to look at the sky, a tree, a flower, your partner, or child, feel the aliveness within at the same time.
This means part of your attention or consciousness remains formless, and the rest is available for the outer world of form.
Whenever you "inhabit" your body in this way, it serves as an anchor for staying present in the Now.
It prevents you from losing yourself in thinking, in emotions, or in external situations.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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June 24th 2006
From Consciousness -- True Perspective and Balance
When you think, feel, perceive, and experience, consciousness is born into form. It is reincarnating -- into a thought, a feeling, a sense perception, an experience.
The cycle of rebirths that Buddhists hope to get out of eventually is happening continuously, and it is only at this moment -- through the power of Now -- that you can get out of it.
Through complete acceptance of the form of the Now, you become internally aligned with space, which is the essence of Now.
Through acceptance, you become spacious inside. Aligned with space instead of form: That brings true perspective and balance into your life.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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June 25th 2006
From Consciousness -- Returning To The Root
Returning to the core, the root of your own self, and seeing through everything that you take yourself to be, allows even your most sacred identities to drop away.
There is such beauty in discovering what we can do without.
The most beautiful gift of this wintertime is ultimately something that is unspeakable; it is only livable. The winter is actually begging you to just let go, and then let go of letting go.
Let this natural and spontaneous returning to the root of your own existence happen. Return to that which is not definable.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing www.adyashanti.org
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June 26th 2006
From Consciousness -- Coming Out of Nowhere
There is a wonderful poem about a lone tree with no branches standing at the edge of a cliff in winter, which was written by someone describing his own awakening.
A crack opens and runs through the bark of the tree, and then the bark peels off. Imagine cracking a tree or log open to see what is in the core.
To see what is inside, you have to crack through to the core. What would you find? You find radiant emptiness, the full radiant emptiness of winter.
Imagine something radiant coming out of nowhere, something just radiating out, coming out of nowhere, absolutely nowhere.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing www.adyashanti.org
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June 27th 2006
From Consciousness -- Your Spiritual Heart
When you reach the core that comes after allowing everything to drop, you are naturally cracked open. There is a spiritual heart in that core. You uncover not only the emptiness of the radiant mind, but the radiance and warmth of the spiritual heart as well.
When you're really resting, you can actually feel the radiant, empty mind -- not as a thought, but as the radiant emptiness of yourself, the no-thingness of yourself and of all selves.
You also experience the radiant heart fullness and realize that the emptiness isn't just a bland emptiness -- it is heart-full.
When the emptiness awakens, you know that it is also the compassionate heart. The warmth of your own spiritual heart comes alive.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing www.adyashanti.org
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June 28th 2006
From Consciousness -- Radiantly Alive
The true emptiness is when you realize there is much more to it than this protected emptiness.
When the bark falls open, when you get to the core, the ideas about yourself and others are seen to be untrue, seen to be just contrivance. You see these as things you were taught and took on, put on like clothes that say, "This is who I am."
When the mind is radiantly empty, it's a very alive emptiness. And when the heart is felt to be deeper than emotional, but is not emotionless, not a dead heart, there is sunshine in the middle of winter.
Have you ever walked outside on one of those freezing mornings, and it's really cold even though the sun is out, and you think, "How can it be so cold on such a bright, sunny day?" When you are coming from the sun here in yourself, then there is always warmth. The true emptiness is radiantly alive.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing www.adyashanti.org
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June 29th 2006
From Consciousness -- Nondual Awareness
Sometimes people ask me, "If I realize that I as a separate identity don't really exist as I thought I did, then who is going to live this life?"
Once you touch upon this radiant heart of emptiness, then you know what is living this life, what has always lived it, and what is going to live it from this moment on.
You realize that you are not living this life; this radiant heart is what is actually living this life along with this radiant, empty mind.
When you give up being who you thought you were and let yourself be who you really are, then this radiant heart lives your life. Then no-thingness becomes your reality, and nondual awareness is what you are.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing www.adyashanti.org
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June 30th 2006
From Consciousness -- Openness and Beyond
A great way to think about and explain the true nature of every person (which is all the concept of enlightenment is ever really pointing to) is to say that when true nature is birthed into full consciousness, your mind is open as far as it can go.
It doesn't mean your thoughts expand into the cosmos, it means your mind is so open that there are no edges to it. You notice that as soon as you grasp a thought and believe it, the mind closes down onto that thought.
So the natural mind is an open mind, and the natural heart is open, come what may. That's the shock of our natural condition -- the mind and heart are naturally open and do not know how to close under any conditions at any time.
And at the same time, you are beyond even the open mind and heart. Everything is contained within what you are.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing www.adyashanti.org
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