Archive
Back to Archive index.
December 1st 2006
Today’s Gem -- Changelessly Seeing
The notions of who you are have an age, they change, they appear in the past, and they are projected into the future. What sees these changes has always been here, changelessly seeing.
The seeing does not have a face, does not have a personality, and finally, does not even have an essence. It is without thought, without attribute, without past, and without future. And yet, when there are attributes, a past, a future, it is not absent. It is eternally here.
The formless truth of who you are is inseparable from any formulation of who you are, for it is all-inclusive.
Right now, in this present moment, the formless truth of who you are is just as present as when your body is dead and all those images are finished. Your incredible and thrilling opportunity is to realize yourself as the formless truth before your body dies.
From: 'The Diamond In Your Pocket', by Gangaji www.gangaji.org
Today’s Gem -- Your Final Fulfillment
In the moment of death, if you can realize the formless presence that has been inseparable from every moment of your life, then your life will have been lived in the glory of that conscious awareness.
Your final fulfillment will be a testimony to the world.
The thoughts of yourself are the only obstacle to this fulfillment, yet they are not a problem because you, as consciousness, have the capacity to see through any obstacle. You are the seeing itself.
You have full and absolute capacity to know yourself, to be true to yourself, and to be tested in this knowing. In that testing, you will discover and know yourself in ways that are deeper and always fresher.
From: 'The Diamond In Your Pocket', by Gangaji www.gangaji.org
Today’s Gem -- Release
Just for a moment imagine that you are experiencing an unpleasant night dream: You are in the ocean, swimming; you have gone out too far; you look back toward the shore and see that there is very little hope of rescue.
Even though you shout your lungs out, no one can hear you. And so you are seized with fear. You struggle and strive to reach the shore, and, of course, the harder you fight, the harder the ocean fights you.
There is only one thing left for you to do -- drown. Yes, drown -- but wait! In your fight, you shouted and someone heard you, came over and shook you, woke you up, and behold the miracle! The drowning self disappeared; the ocean disappeared; the struggle disappeared.
You awakened and found that you had never left your comfortable home. All that was necessary in order to be released from the struggle was to AWAKEN!
Joel Goldsmith -- The Art of Spiritual Healing www.joelgoldsmith.com/
Today’s Gem -- Holy Truth
Holy Truth is the perception that there are no divisions and no duality between things, that everything is one Beingness, one existence.
This is the reality beyond egoic reality, true existence independent of the personal mind. It includes everything without any separations, and it does not matter whether you call it God, the One Mind, the state of the Buddha, the Tao, or the Divine Being.
The most important understanding of Holy Truth is that physical reality and true existence are not separate.
A H Almaas -- Facets of Unity. www.ahalmaas.com
Today’s Gem -- Other Dimensions
Physical reality is made up of objects which can be discriminated. If you perceive the world exclusively through the physical senses, you perceive only discrete objects, such as people, trees, animals, rocks, clouds, oceans, earth.
If you experience this level only, which is the basis of the egoic perspective, the universe that you see is dualistic. But if your perception is unobscured by your beliefs, your inner perception becomes unblocked, and the universe looks quite different.
If your perceptual capacities are clear, you recognize that other dimensions exist in addition to physical reality, such as love, Beingness, and awareness.
A H Almaas -- Facets of Unity. www.ahalmaas.com
Today’s Gem -- Only One
At the highest level of perception, you see that there is only one existence, one homogeneous medium.
This medium encompasses physical reality, which is one particularization of it.
Objects are seen as objects, but they are not discrete -- they are more like waves on the surface of an ocean, lacking existence without the whole of the ocean.
So differentiations exist, but not ultimate divisions.
A H Almaas -- Facets of Unity. www.ahalmaas.com
Today’s Gem -- Omnipresence
So according to the Idea of Holy Truth, reality, when seen objectively, has no divisions in it. It exists, it is now, and it is nondual.
There is no me, no you, no other, no universe separate from God; no universe separate from the Void; no you and Essence, no personality and Essence; no physical body and soul -- all these distinctions are illusions and are not ultimately real.
There is only one thing, and it cannot even be called "one" because if you call it one, you are comparing it to two, and it is not one in contrast to two. It is nondual, an indivisible existence, no matter how you look at it or think about it.
While the different teachings may emphasize different qualities of this unity, seeing it from the perspective of love or awareness, for example, the assertion here is that fundamental to reality is the fact of unity. All the religions assert this sense of the all-inclusiveness of reality: Another way of saying it is that God is everywhere, omnipresent.
A H Almaas -- Facets of Unity. www.ahalmaas.com
Today’s Gem -- The Origin of Things
To experience the teaching with others who are doing the same is a most important thing for us, because this practice is the 'original' way of life. Without knowing the origin of things we cannot appreciate the result of our life's effort.
Our effort must have some meaning. To find the meaning of our effort is to find the original source of our effort. We should not be concerned about the result of our effort before we know its origin. If the origin is not clear and pure, our effort will not be pure, and its result will not satisfy us.
When we resume our original nature and incessantly make our effort from this base, we will appreciate the result of our effort moment after moment, day after day, year after year. This is how we should appreciate our life.
Those who are attached only to the result of their effort will not have any chance to appreciate it, because the result will never come. But if moment by moment your effort arises from its pure origin, all you do will be good, and you will be satisfied with whatever you do.
Shunryu Suzuki -- Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
Today’s Gem -- Evolution Derailed
There are many teachers on the tent revival satsang circuit talking about enlightenment as the next great step in the evolution of the human race, and it's all very exciting because that step is happening now, with lots more people waking up than was ever the case at any other time in history.
This kind of thing is just confused and dream-bourld thinking. Enlightenment has nothing to do with turning points in history, with lots of people waking up. It has nothing to do with evolution.
As Jed McKenna notes, "If anything, enlightenment is evolution derailed." Evolution is a completely dualistic concept.
Individuals, or the whole race, growing and changing and developing and becoming better over time: this is a description of dualism, of how dualism operates. Evolution is about change in relative objects. Enlightenment is the opposite; it is about realizing the Truth, absolute subjectivity, which is unchanging.
David Carse -- Perfect Brilliant Stillness
Today’s Gem -- Back to Reality
The whole concept of evolution assumes the existence of separate individual entities, a collective species or 'race' of such entities, and their existence in something called time. It also involves a whole set of value judgments as to what condition the human race is in now, and in what direction it should be going.
This way of seeing things, and the way of seeing things after true awakening or Understanding has occurred, are mutually exclusive. When awakening occurs, the whole context which contains individuals, the race, time, and value judgments is seen as an illusion, a dream.
Awakening, enlightenment, means popping out of the context in which evolution makes any sense.
"Anything that implies a continuity, a sequence, a passing from stage to stage cannot be the Real. There is no progress in Reality; it is final, perfect, unrelated. Reality is not the result of a process; it is an explosion." ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
David Carse -- Perfect Brilliant Stillness
Today’s Gem -- Keeping Us Occupied
In spiritual circles great value is placed on personal growth, personal improvement, becoming a better person, becoming more aware, teaching others how to become better, making the world a better and more enlightened place.
The hope for a better future, the belief in an upward spiritual evolution that carries the whole race with it, is like the belief that there is something wrong and something that needs to be done.
It seems hard-wired into the human mechanism but is in fact the device by which the 'divine hypnosis' operates, keeping the dream characters motivated and occupied in the dream.
This belief is an illusion, and it is what creates suffering.
David Carse -- Perfect Brilliant Stillness
Today’s Gem -- All Is As It Is
In Truth, in the Absolute, in All That Is, there is no evolution, no progress, no becoming better, no becoming. All is as it is.
The idea that the world is in bad shape and that the present point in history is pivotal and that something has to be done, is as old as the human mind; it has always seemed thus, at every point in 'human history.'
In truth everything is in perfect balance; the world never gets better and never gets worse, although to the apparent individual instruments it may seem that it does.
Teachers who draw on these recurring themes in the dream to appeal to the ego's hopes and dreams and to popularize their message are deluding themselves and others and have not seen beyond the dream.
David Carse -- Perfect Brilliant Stillness
Today’s Gem -- Only The Truth
This belief in ongoing evolution, the dream of becoming a better person, the goal of improving oneself and others and society and making the world a better place: all these and more certainly seem to be noble beliefs and goals by any standards.
Our cultures value them as ideals and it is believed that these high goals are what keep individuals and the human race from descending or regressing into chaos.
And of course it is the 'divine hypnosis' itself that allows these beliefs, because without them the dream would not go on. But as Buddhist teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, has noted, "Enlightenment is the great and final disappointment, the dissolution of all our egoic fantasies and grand hopes."
This is true seeing, and it will never sell in the revival tents. What is being said here is not a politically correct message, nor even a spiritually correct message. It is not a comforting message, and it will never in any culture be popular. It is only the truth, as near as can be told. All is as it is.
David Carse -- Perfect Brilliant Stillness
Today’s Gem -- Never The Same Again
Do you remember when you were young and you heard people talking about orgasms? You could only imagine what they might be referring to.
But once you experienced your first orgasm, there was no doubt in your mind whether or not you had actually had one. There's too much difference between having and not having one to doubt it.
Well, the same knowing applies to the "awakening." Along with the "deliverance" of awakening comes the "rapture." But unlike an orgasm that lasts only a few seconds, the rapture basically is happening almost all of the time.
Once you know --"I AM THAT"-- you are never the same again.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
Today’s Gem -- The Rapture
I can't give you an accurate definition of the rapture, but I can describe it. The first and predominant experience of the rapture is the overwhelming sense of freedom.
For me this was ironic, because I always heard that bliss was the main ingredient of awakening, and here I was in a federal prison with gun towers and razor-wire fences surrounding me, and all I could feel was freedom.
Yes, there is some bliss, too, but it's not as predominant or as constant as the experience of total freedom from limitation.
When bliss hits you, you are a dysfunctional ninny while it's in motion, whereas the pervading sense of freedom allows you to carry on with normal life.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
Today’s Gem -- Peace Beyond All Understanding
The secondary effect of the rapture (of awakening) is a deep, deep sense of profound peace -- the peace that the Bible talks about that surpasses all understanding.
Part of this peace comes from the knowing that since Consciousness is all there is, then all is truly well and good. It's like you are in the free fall of life and the human predicament, but you have this immense safety net that will catch you should fear arise.
Whereas I used to live in a sea of suffering and inner conflict, with an occasional island of relief, the rapture now allows me to live in a sea of peace, with an occasional island of momentary contraction.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
Today’s Gem -- The Constant Knowing
Before awakening, no matter how much wealth, health, romantic love, power, or adult toys I possessed, there was always a constant free-floating, high anxiety that something was terribly wrong, that some catastrophe was surely imminent, and that I had landed on the wrong planet by some accident of birth.
Right below the surface of feeling imminent doom was another gadfly provoking high anxiety. Somehow I needed to do something terribly important, but I just didn't know what it was.
And so there ensued a constant battle, using my weapons of distraction, such as drugs, sex, and rock 'n' roll to momentarily ease the discomfort or outright suffering caused by living with these anxieties.
The rapture (on awakening) changed all that into a constant knowing that not only is all well, but also that there is nowhere to go, nothing to do, and understanding is everything.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
Today’s Gem -- The Constant Joy
Another level of rapture (on awakening) is the sweet delight of experiencing everything through the eyes of Source, as fresh and new.
All of nature, all other humans, everything animate and inanimate, is equal and pure Consciousness, to be embraced and appreciated as such. What is -- as is! What a delight!
And since you are no longer responsible for any causality or effects, the rapture allows you to enjoy whatever is -- as it is! No need to change, improve, ameliorate, or eliminate anything. Just be, and enjoy what is -- as is!
The experience is akin to a constant hum or buzz of joy. It's not the dysfunctional bliss that blows you away occasionally, when all you can do is weep with sobs of gratitude.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
Today’s Gem -- The Unfathomable Wisdom
To tell you the truth, I would have expected compassion to be the predominant expression of awakening and the rapture. After all, I had read a lot of material about Buddha and his heavy emphasis on compassion.
But somehow seeing the world and the human predicament from the viewpoint of Source, all that I see is what is -- as is, exactly as it is supposed to be fully animated, designed, and running on the inner wisdom of Consciousness. So, my reaction is: "Ah, life is gooooood!"
I see through the apparent suffering now as a balanced equation of freedom and limitation in which Consciousness is amusing Itself. In Genesis after creating the world, God is reputed to have said: "All my creation is good." This has become my definition of love.
Embracing what is -- as is, because Consciousness is all there is. Yes, there is still sensitivity and empathy to the suffering of others, but all is not as it seems. Deliverance then becomes a vehicle to deepen the understanding that connects the human predicament of suffering to the embrace of it as the unfathomable Wisdom of Source.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
Today’s Gem -- The Great Forgetfulness
When consciousness forgets itself, it can make all sorts of mistakes. The first mistake that it almost always makes is to identify itself with whatever it created, in this case, a human being.
That's like a wave forgetting that it belongs to the ocean. It forgets its source. So instead of being the entire ocean, it suffers under the hideous delusion that it's just a wave on the surface of the ocean. And so it has a very surface experience of itself.
Of course, it is still conscious of itself, but it's conscious of something that's incredibly surface and limited. When all it's identified with is a very small wave, it creates all sorts of confusion because that identity isn't true.
Anything that's not true quite naturally leads to suffering, and the only reason there is suffering or conflict is ignorance.
From: 'Emptiness Dancing', by Adyashanti www.adyashanti.org
Today’s Gem -- Just A Blip
Spiritually, the human condition is a natural part of the evolution of consciousness trying to become conscious through a form. It takes itself to be the form rather than the source of the form. When it makes this misidentification, it suffers under the tremendous illusion of separation.
Hence comes the isolation that most human beings feel in their hearts, no matter how many people are around them, no matter how much they're loved. They have to feel alone because they're quite sure that they're different and separate from everybody else.
Fortunately, this is only a blip in the development of consciousness. The human condition, for as many eons as it's been going on, is really just a blip.
When somebody wakes up out of that blip, which means consciousness evolves through a human form, it evolves so far that the person matures beyond the blip of separation, much like maturing from a child to an adult. We call that person a liberated human being.
From: 'Emptiness Dancing', by Adyashanti www.adyashanti.org
Today’s Gem -- Liberated From What?
Consciousness is liberated from the mistake, from false identification and separation. Consciousness, or spirit, is pretty crafty and wise. It has a lot at its disposal as a human being.
In life forms with no conscious awareness, the evolution cannot speed up or slow down; it's just going to move at whatever speed it moves. However, when consciousness becomes aware of itself in a human being, it sets up a very interesting dynamic that's not available to any other form of planetary life.
The dynamic is that when consciousness wakes up out of the illusion that it's a separate being, consciousness can then use that form to wake itself up in a much larger sense.
When it wakes up to the fact that it's really not a wave but it's the ocean of being, it can then use that wave to deliver the message -- to get other waves to contemplate this possibility of awakening.
From: 'Emptiness Dancing', by Adyashanti www.adyashanti.org
Today’s Gem -- The Game
In human beings, this awakening process can speed up incredibly because of the conspiracy that consciousness enters into.
Once it wakes up in one form, it doesn't have to wait for a natural maturation to happen in all other forms.
When that form relates with another form, the awake consciousness relates with sleeping consciousness. Now the sleeping consciousness is much more likely to make this very big leap of awakening.
That's the game that consciousness plays in satsang. That's what it's all about.
From: 'Emptiness Dancing', by Adyashanti www.adyashanti.org
Today’s Gem -- On To The Next Stage
Spiritually, you may come to some very wonderful places, but if they're not complete and absolutely true, then eventually you're going to outgrow them. It doesn't feel good to leave them behind because that's where you're comfortable, and the new hasn't been revealed yet.
Then the misinterpretation that's usually made is that you have fallen away from, rather than reached the limitation of, the realization that you had before, as wonderful as it was.
When you mature, it's time to leave earlier stages behind. It makes it much harder to leave if you say that you have fallen away from it rather than matured out of it. These are completely different interpretations.
With one, you are trying to grasp or get back to what was before. With the other, you look back over your shoulder and bid it goodbye as a nice experience, realizing something more mature is coming.
From: 'Emptiness Dancing', by Adyashanti www.adyashanti.org
Today’s Gem -- The Best Thing You Can Do
See how vital the interpretation you give to your spiritual experience is, and you see that the mind is conditioned to give interpretations that usually aren't correct.
An incorrect interpretation actually creates more suffering and makes the difficulty many times worse than it needs to be.
If you know that, then you'll stop grabbing behind you for what you once had and get more interested in the unknown into which you're moving.
You turn all your attention forward. That's really the best thing you can do, nothing other than that.
From: 'Emptiness Dancing', by Adyashanti www.adyashanti.org
Today’s Gem -- Your Bottom Line
Above your Bottom Line is the place of No-choice. Everything there is caught in a close-knit web of mutual conditioning, and freedom is a dream.
The Bottom Line itself is the place of Choice. Here is the only place where freedom is real, seeing that there's nothing to bind or be bound.
Our freedom does not consist in denying all that determines us and asserting our own self-will. On the contrary, its true ground is our willingness to accept every necessity, so that it ceases to be merely external.
We are free insofar as we join our will to God's. We have the choice of His freedom or our bondage.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions. www.InnerDirections.org
Today’s Gem -- Mystery
No longer so damned cock-sure I know what it's like being me, I dare to start all over again and 'bow before the evidence' -- actually as well as metaphorically. I bend and bow so deeply that I come to the very edge of me and my world, to the 'Bottom Line' it all arises from.
It is a frontier that doesn't prevent me from gazing past it and into the Infinite Source of All, brilliantly on display yet awesomely mysterious. Here is not a case of I am this or that or the other, but plain I AM -- and, back of the I AM, the I AM NOT from which it arises without reason and without stint.
The bottom line is that I know myself as unknowable. I'm rooted and grounded in complete mystery, unknowability, ineffability, unawareness.
Here, completing my submission to the evidence, I come to the most overlooked and underrated spot in the world, the place that's replaced with No-place, the Terminus of termini, unique, baffling, the Mystery that's more than worthy of my humblest obeisance.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions. www.InnerDirections.org
Today’s Gem -- Rediscovery
The discovery that I am absolutely all right as I am -- as I AM -- has to be actualized by its patient rediscovery, and rediscovery, and rediscovery, until all traces of artifice and effort, all sense of attainment, have vanished.
Until it has become in ordinary day-to-day living what it always was in fact: one's natural state.
To un-thing yourself when all's going well is good habit-forming practice. But un-thinging yourself when all's going badly is better still. Then the act of homing-in makes a deeper impression, and life in the future is that much less likely to catch you out, or napping.
While it's the easiest thing imaginable to see yourself intermittently as bare Capacity, it's far from easy to keep up the seeing. What challenge can compare with the one great adventure that is never completed, yet is ever complete because you can enjoy being at the goal from the very first step along the road!
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions. www.InnerDirections.org
Today’s Gem -- Wholeness
This immense and self-aware emptiness that I find here isn't just empty. It's empty for filling.
Ultimately, no one and nothing is left out. In fact I'm not well ... not quite sane, not "all there," not whole until I'm the Whole.
To put it another way: Is the universe whole while I split it into an observer here and an observed there, into a me-part and a not-me part!
To enjoy the universe as a Universe, and no longer to suffer from it as a 'Duoverse', I have to be none of it centrally, and all of it peripherally. They are two sides of the coin.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions. www.InnerDirections.org
Today’s Gem -- Perennial Philosophy
The basic doctrine of the Perennial Philosophy is that you and I are God herself traveling incognito. The one we all really are is the one reality behind all things -- call it God, Buddha-nature, Atman-Brahman, what you like.
What one is doing is only to connect up with and celebrate and live from this perennial wisdom, which is to be found at the very heart of all the great religions. There it is -- unrecognized, neglected, scorned, denied -- but there it is.
No mere spark are you of that Eternal Fire, no mere ray of the One Light that lights every man and woman and child that the world comes into.
You are all that All, which is strictly indivisible.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions. www.InnerDirections.org
Today’s Gem -- True Spirituality
Until I locate for certain my humanness in its proper place out there among all those other humans, until I hold it out there in my bare hands, there is always the danger that it will succeed in creeping here and infecting my Divine Center, and will go on to reduce it to a horrendous -- indeed devilish -- delusion of grandeur.
What I find difficult and unacceptable really, is the wishy-washy reliance on words, on concepts, of so much alleged spirituality. True spirituality is real, down to earth, concrete -- it's coming home from your appearance to your reality.
As the Buddha said, you won't by going reach that place where there is the end of suffering. You'll get it by coming. We are so good at looking 'that' way, and lousy at looking 'this' way.
'Nirvana' is the shore that's washed by the ocean of 'Samsara', their meeting place; and Wisdom is the contemplation of that shore as absolutely bare and empty. Relief from suffering is found by basing oneself on, by consciously coming from that ineffable but conspicuous shoreline.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions. www.InnerDirections.org
---
