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April 1st 2007
Today’s Gem -- At The Center
Here at the center, one unchanging Identity exists: Spirit, Consciousness, Awareness. This Identity is The-One-being-I, being this consciousness of existence right here and now.
Here it is recognized that all the action going on, including the situation you are presently concerned about, is the action of God perceiving Himself. Here it is seen that all substance is Spirit being Spirit, and no other Identity actually exists to misperceive or be misperceived. The Identity who is present "belongs" to Godl
Here at the Center of Being -- simple Awareness -- there is no need to judge whatever appears in that awareness. Turmoil may arise from time to time, but in the place of turmoil comes a simple, quiet resting in the Holy of Holies, the Secret Place of the Most High.
Then, from this position of felt quiet, as Tranquillity Itself, we look at our situation without having to cringe because of it, and we find ourselves knowing precisely what should be done, or not done, about it.
From: A Guide to Awareness & Tranquillity, by William Samuel www.williamsamuel.com
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April 2nd 2007
Today’s Gem -- Stop There
Mankind says NOW is not good enough. So, he leaves it, he thinks, to go scampering around in the imaginary world of not-now. Exactly so, he says this Center-Peace is not good enough. Ecstasy and elation are bound to be so much better, he believes.
Don't believe it! They are not. It is the belief of a "better" and a "worse" that has humanity bouncing back and forth like a puppet on a string, swinging between valley and mountain, life and death, sickness and health, poverty and wealth.
Who can convince another to stop at the NOW? To stop at Tranquillity? To stop at the center called Sufficiency? It happens that Now-Tranquillity and Now-Sufficiency is this Identity we are. It is time to stop desiring the positive, "good" side of the old misidentity. It is not good that we want, neither wealth nor health, not even illumination.
Ours is the Identity that is unjudged and unjudging. This instant -- this NOW -- Tranquillity am I! Peace am I! Sufficiency am I! Love am I! The One Identity am I; and there is no other "I" but Isness being Itself! Here Identity stands as I!
From: A Guide to Awareness & Tranquillity, by William Samuel www.williamsamuel.com
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April 3rd 2007
Today’s Gem -- Tranquillity
Tranquillity is another name for the Identity we are. We each determine its significance for ourselves.
To "me" Tranquillity is an inner sense of peace, contentment and desirelessness. It stands fast before the sundry onslaughts of the world.
It is a place of refuge, a peace-be-still to tribulation. It is a rock, a solid foundation to stand AS when human values crumble and fall in a sea of sand.
It is the Christ-real-within that appears to rectify the misjudged-without. It is the Identity through whose eyes the universe appears the Heaven it is.
From: A Guide to Awareness & Tranquillity, by William Samuel www.williamsamuel.com
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April 4th 2007
Today’s Gem -- Happiness Itself
Tranquillity is found to be just that -- Tranquillity, and not elation, ecstasy, or super-exhilaration; it is serenity and calm, not the mere opposites of agony or depression.
It is a balanced, centered quiet which appears to the intellect as a "midway" between emotional extremes in precisely the same way that "sufficiency" has an intellectual residence between poverty and wealth.
Tranquillity is not a condition of overflowing happiness, but happiness itself; not a state of jubilation, but joy itself.
Tranquillity is the preclusion of consternation, desire and fear. Tranquillity is Love. Tranquillity is the Secret Place, the Heart, the Christ, the Shekinah, the Holy of Holies wherein nothing enters that makes a lie.
From: A Guide to Awareness & Tranquillity, by William Samuel www.williamsamuel.com
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April 5th 2007
Today’s Gem -- Felt Self-knowledge
Tranquillity is being absolutely all IDENTITY is; hence, all "I" am! Tranquillity am I!
Here is where one stands! From this posture we do whatever appears necessary to do. From this felt standpoint we look the universe in the eye and behold all is Heaven at hand!
This leads us to another point that involves the "living" of this Truth. Once we have ascertained "felt" Tranquillity as "real" Identity, we are able to comprehend this feeling in the light of another fact already known: the fact that Identity does not change and that Identity cannot be altered.
We are able to stand on and as a concrete, here-and-now FELT Self-knowledge with the positive knowledge that "I cannot be changed into another identity and made to feel and act a different way every time the wind blows."
From: A Guide to Awareness & Tranquillity, by William Samuel www.williamsamuel.com
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April 6th 2007
Today’s Gem -- Insist On Being What You Are
Become acquainted with the "feeling" of Peace. Understand that it is the only legitimate sensation. This "feeling" itself is one's identification, not the body-ego which appears to be experiencing it. Proclaim Tranquillity and insist on being this one onlyI "Round" is "round," forever being itself. Exactly so, Identity does not change; it forever remains itself; nothing changes it; nothing prevails against it!
If one finds him or herself disturbed and untranquil, suffering fear, loneliness, grief or any contrary emotion whatever, he or she need only make the conscious "return" to Identity to re-mind "him or herself" that unchanging Tranquillity is who he or she is -- not grief, not loneliness, not any wayward thingl!
No misery can turn Perfection into imperfection; no experience can change Tranquillity-I into grief-I or loneliness-I. WE NEED ONLY INSIST ON BEING TRANQUILLITY TO FEEL TRANQUILLITY! Try for yourself and discover that this is so.
From: A Guide to Awareness & Tranquillity, by William Samuel www.williamsamuel.com
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April 7th 2007
Today’s Gem -- The Prayer of Gratitude
After awakening, there's an overwhelming moment-to-moment feeling of gratitude, which is very akin to prayer. Each breath is a deep "Ahhh!" of profound gratitude for the experience of such oneness with Source -- relief that the conflict and confusion are now over and one can relax into no more doing, just being, and reveling in this deliverance that deepens the understanding daily.
This gratitude of which I speak does not mean that the "me" is so fortunate as to have won this universal lottery of awakening.
No, there's no "me" home now to enjoy anything. There is just awareness that the "I," as in "I Am That," is the "I" of Consciousness at rest and Consciousness in appearance, and they are one and the same Source.
In Pearl Vision, the only prayer worthwhile and meaningful is the prayer of gratitude, singing out in joy at the awesome diversity of the One in the many.
From Onions to Pearls, by Satyam Nadeen. www.satyamnadeen.com
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April 8th 2007
Today’s Gem -- The Last Time I asked God
I remember my last prayer of supplication to God, whomever that might be. It happened about six weeks before the wake-up call, and I had pretty much resigned myself to never understanding this whole spiritual evolution trip.
All I could do was cry out daily from the depths of my anxiety about survival here: "Please God, grant me the vision and the understanding of this so-called 'Oneness' of the universe that the spiritual masters are always describing in their awakened states."
The next thing I knew, there came the wake-up call, and he everpresent experience of this yearning for "Oneness." Now, I'm not presuming that my last fervent prayers for Oneness were effective and prompted God to bend His Will. I am just saying that I happened to be at that fork in the road of the lawful unfolding of my manifest destiny.
Grace, Destiny -- right time at the right place -- prayer. Guess which word here has become one of those irrelevancies of onion vision?
From Onions to Pearls, by Satyam Nadeen. www.satyamnadeen.com
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April 9th 2007
Today’s Gem -- Illusionary Separation
Source has done a pretty good job of locking us all into a state of illusionary separation. This is accomplished nicely by giving us an intellect whose main function is to receive the thoughts of Source, separate them into the duality of opposites, and to choose one of the polarities as good or bad.
This whole process of separation is then securely reinforced by the multiple layers of conditioning that our original pure Pearl of Consciousness gets all wrapped up in by just being alive.
There are seekers reading this who are ready to be finders in the process of awakening back to their original state of innocence.
So it seems to me that if you can intellectually understand the concepts laid out here so far and allow them to percolate on down to the heart over time, that is the most probable scenario for you to explode at some point into an intuitive knowing that becomes your wake-up call.
From Onions to Pearls, by Satyam Nadeen. www.satyamnadeen.com
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April 10th 2007
Today’s Gem -- The Feeling on Awakening
In our human dreams, we are in our bed at night at rest. Once we fall asleep, from seemingly out of nothing there appears a reality that, though we know it is only an illusion, sure feels real to all our senses and emotions.
Dramas involving the deepest expression of love or fear, with all their accompanying sidekicks, are lived and played out. People often get hurt, tortured, and even slaughtered at will. You, as a gentle, evolved soul in your waking life, do things in dreams that are unspeakable.
When you wake up from a nightmare, was anybody really hurt, really killed, really raped or abused? No, it was all an illusion!
When you were stuck in a nightmare where vicious dogs were at your throat, your feet were stuck in mud, and your voice couldn't call for help, weren't you relieved and excited when you suddenly awoke in a cold sweat and found that this was just a dream and you are not limited like that? It felt good to hug your pillow then, for the intensity of the nightmare added to the freedom and safety you felt in your secure little bed.
From Onions to Pearls, by Satyam Nadeen. www.satyamnadeen.com
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April 11th 2007
Today’s Gem -- Big-time Experience
Are you getting the connection here as to what Consciousness at rest is doing in the world of appearance? As above, so below!
At times Consciousness is at rest, dwelling in Its infinite vastnessternal, aware, and at peace. Then for a change of pace, It periodically creates a world of appearance through a dreamlike process in which It becomes the Subject of that object, though It remains one with it.
In this dreamlike, illusionary reality that exists only in the world of thought energy, the Subject is able to experience through Its objects a Leela of limitation, the one quality It doesn't have in Its infinite arsenal. But in this dream, Source gets to experience six billion times a day the intense experience of limitation, with no two of them being alike.
And that's just through the humanoids on planet Earth. Throw in the quasi-infinite number of plant and animal life expressions of limitation, and the experience heats up. Now add on all the other galaxies, and we are talking big-time experience!
From Onions to Pearls, by Satyam Nadeen. www.satyamnadeen.com
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April 12th 2007
Today’s Gem -- The Divine Leela
When the dream ends and all the bubbles that we are on the fabric of being finally dissolve back into Beingness at rest, was anyone really hurt? Did we really die, or was it like our own dream characters?
In a dream this real and intense, imagine how great it has to feel to know that the limitation was only imagined.
And because of the equal balance of freedom alongside of the limitation in the equal ion, it was all bearable and highly amusing.
It seems that Source, the Subject, allows dreams to happen in Its objects so they can more easily understand the whole process of the Divine Leela, and how important it is that Maya (illusion) be realistic to be effective.
From Onions to Pearls, by Satyam Nadeen. www.satyamnadeen.com
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April 13th 2007
Today’s Gem -- True Awakened Knowledge
The pointers (to What you really are) can be more or less true, but no matter what the pointer says, no matter how it says to get there, it doesn't say anything about what's beyond. Nothing. Because as soon as you are beyond, as soon as you are being what you are, nothing applies anymore.
That's why so many of the great spiritual teachers have said that there is nothing to know. In order to be flee, in order to be enlightened, there is absolutely nothing to know, and there is no enlightenment as long as you think you know something.
As soon as you absolutely know that you don't know anything and there is absolutely nothing to know, that state is called enlightenment because all there is is being.
When there is Oneness, who is the One going to know about? The One knows only, "I am that. I am this." As it says in the Bible: "I AM THAT I AM." This is true awakened knowledge. All other knowledge is secondary.
From: Emptiness Dancing, by Adyashanti. www.adyashanti.org
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April 14th 2007
Today’s Gem -- Being Has Great Wisdom
Everybody has had transcendent wisdom break through into the mind. When you've wracked your brain with a problem for a long time and then, for some reason, you've stopped struggling, and then all of a sudden you got an 'aha! That's it," where does that come from? Wisdom has broken through.
It could be something really small, a day-to-day kind of thing. It might register in the mind as an "Aha!" but it isn't a product of thought. It came from somewhere else, from being.
So being has great wisdom. It's a shock because we are not used to operating from that wisdom, which seems to break through only every now and then. But actually your beingness is operating that way all the time.
Lots of things are relatively true, but nothing that arises from the mind is absolutely true. What a relief it is for the mind when it no longer has to struggle, and your whole orientation, spiritually speaking, moves from knowing to being.
From: Emptiness Dancing, by Adyashanti. www.adyashanti.org
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April 15th 2007
Today’s Gem -- The Ego
The fall guy of spirituality is the ego. Since there is really no one to blame for everything that happens in our lives, we manufacture this idea called the ego to take the blame.
This causes a great deal of confusion because the ego doesn't really exist. It is simply an idea, a label for a movement to which we have attached our sense of self.
When we consider that the ego is just an idea that doesn't really exist, we can see that many spiritual people are blaming it unfairly for all the things they believe they should get rid of. They misunderstand that something arising inside of them -- perhaps a thought, feeling, predisposition, or moment of suffering -- is proof of an ego, thinking that just because it arose, ego exists.
They think they have an ego because of all these things that point to it. All we ever find is this proof or evidence that ego exists, but we can never find the thing itself.
From: Emptiness Dancing, by Adyashanti. www.adyashanti.org
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April 16th 2007
Today’s Gem -- Looking for the Ego
When I ask someone to look for the ego, he or she cannot really find it. It isn't there. An angry thought or emotion triggers the belief, "Oh, I've got to get rid of that -- that's my ego."
It's as if everything that's happening in a human being, especially a human being who is interested in being spiritual, gets used as proof of the existence of an ego that must be annihilated.
And yet nobody can find it. I have yet to have somebody show me the ego.
I've seen lots of thoughts, feelings, and emotions. I've watched expressions of anger, joy, depression, and bliss, but I have yet to have one person present me with the ego.
From: Emptiness Dancing, by Adyashanti. www.adyashanti.org
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April 17th 2007
Today’s Gem -- It's Mine
Many people present me with an assumption that because all these things exist, there must be a fall guy, somebody or something in themselves to blame.
That's the common understanding about ego. But that is not ego. Things are sometimes as simple as they appear.
Sometimes a thought is just a thought, a feeling only a feeling, and an action just an action, with no ego in it. Now the ego that exists, if there is any ego at all, is the thought that ego is there. But there is no evidence whatsoever for this ego's existence.
Everything is just arising spontaneously, and if there is any ego at all, it is just this particular movement of mind that says, "It's mine."
From: Emptiness Dancing, by Adyashanti. www.adyashanti.org
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April 18th 2007
Today’s Gem -- Like a Ghost
Now usually this thought, "It's mine," follows the arising of a thought or emotion. It might be, "I feel confusion -- it's mine," or "I feel jealous -- it's mine," or in response to whatever other experience is arising, "It belongs to me."
One thinks there was ego present, and it caused this thought or feeling or confusion. Yet every time we go directly back to find the ego, we find that it was not there prior to thought but followed afterward. It's an interpretation of an event, of a given thought or emotion. It is the after-the-fact assumption that "it's mine."
Ego is also the after-the-fact interpretation that says, "It's not mine," the rejection of a thought or feeling. It is easy to see that such a position implies that there is somebody there whom it doesn't belong to. That's the world of duality. It's my thought, my confusion, or whatever it is, or it's not my thought, not my confusion, not mine.
Both of these are movements or interpretations of what is. Ego is only this interpretation, this movement of mind, and that is why nobody can find it. It's like a ghost. It's just a particularly conditioned movement of mind.
From: Emptiness Dancing, by Adyashanti. www.adyashanti.org
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April 19th 2007
Today’s Gem -- Hide-and-Seek
To push home your inquiry into my existence is to destroy it, for I am always elsewhere, like a rainbow or a mirage. If I take myself as I am to myself, I find presented these men, trees, clouds, stars and I scatter them all as if in a giant centrifuge, leaving the center empty.
If instead, I take myself as I am to others, I am a host of creatures of numberless shapes and sizes; and all of them, though they belong out there, I pull in here as if by a powerful magnet, leaving none at large. Accordingly, it is impossible to pin me down either to my center here or to the centers of my regional observers there.
I am something like a game of hide-and-seek in which hider and seeker never meet because each takes refuge in the other.
Everybody is out on a visit: but because no one will stay at home to be visited, there are no meetings. We all keep our distance by changing places, and live inside out. One of the reasons why we can never meet is that we more than meet: we become one another.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas Harding. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang (Editor). Reprinted by permission. www.headless.org
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April 20th 2007
Today’s Gem -- Resistance
It's strange. We think we want to see Who we are; we think we want to be free. But I perceive a great resistance, largely because seeing that we are nothing seems to be the end of the story.
If we can quickly go on to pereceive that as "nothing" we are also all things, that it's a case of trading one little guy for the whole world, then we can see it's very good business. It's not losing out. Quite the contrary.
Saying Yes! to what happens to me is often excruciatingly difficult, of course, but it turns out to be the recipe for the only peace worth having. I see that right here all my resistance is dissolved and I'm burst wide open to receive whatever's in store for me.
So at last the paradox holds: It's because I have no will that my will is done.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas Harding. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang (Editor). Reprinted by permission. www.headless.org
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April 21st 2007
Today’s Gem -- Behavior
I find that when I clearly see Who's seeing, it is unnecessary -- it is fatal to that seeing -- to worry about what to say or do, or think or feel: the fitting expression of FIrst Personhood occurs as a matter of course, spontaneously, according to circumstances. The outcome is unpredictable.
If it proves unconventional, crazy, shocking, or even wicked by local third-person standards, this can't be helped. In the long run, it is what's needed.
I know how to wait, but cease dithering. When they are really required, the right things are done.
So I don't resolve in advance not to be unloving and mean and petty and irritable: not to boast, overeat, steal, flatter, despise, fret, sulk (the list is endless), though it may well turn out that such behavior doesn't occur when I'm attentive to the Source of all behavior.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas Harding. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang (Editor). Reprinted by permission. www.headless.org
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April 22nd 2007
Today’s Gem -- Feelings
When people say they don't see it they generally mean they don't feel it; the inner landscape leaves them cold. But of course it does! Thank God for that. This is a matter of fact and not of feeling, of one's eternal and natureless Nature and not of the ever-changing kaleidoscope of thoughts and emotions it gives rise to.
It's the Truth that sets us free, and the truth couldn't be more plain: plain in the sense of cool and undecorated, plain in the sense of unhidden. We're always trying to manipulate our feelings. The only way to do something about our feelings, perhaps not very much, is to go upstream of feelings and see Who has them.
So feelings, whether negative or positive, are an opportunity for seeing Who we are. It's not symmetry; it's asymmetry. It's feelings to No-feelings.
The Space I am is not a feeling Space. It's capacity for feeling. My nature always is to be free from what is filling it. Feelings are up and down. That makes life interesting. But Who I am Here is not subject to those variations. Who I really, really am is my blessing, my refuge.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas Harding. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang (Editor). Reprinted by permission. www.headless.org
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April 23rd 2007
Today’s Gem -- Timeless
Different places have different times, and when you go there you check what the time is by consulting clocks and watches. To find out what the time is at Home, you bring your watch right up to your Eye -- only to discover that here the time isn't!
Intrinsically you are timeless.
To realize this instantaneously Now, to live in the present moment, taking no thought for tomorrow or yesterday, must be my first concern. And my second must be to find in this Now all my tomorrows and yesterdays.
Seeing Who one is occurs out of time, because seeing Who one is is God seeing Who He is.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas Harding. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang (Editor). Reprinted by permission. www.headless.org
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April 24th 2007
Today’s Gem -- Spirit
Spirit by itself, the Awareness and the I AM and the Being that 'has to be,' that automatically is its sole self from all eternity, is wonderful.
But infinitely more wonderful is the Spirit, the Being that doesn't 'have' to be, the Awareness that with no help and for no reason continually arises from Unawareness, from Nothing whatsoever -- thereby making that Nothing extremely precious, as well as indispensable.
By virtue of this Nothing, it's not 'what' Spirit is but 'that' it is which is so breathtakingly adorable. Much the same applies to the arising of our entire Body Mind (which is none other than the universe), with no help and for no reason, from bare Spirit.
What a universe it is, what incredible richness and variety gush tirelessly from this unutterably simple I AM that I am.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas Harding. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang (Editor). Reprinted by permission. www.headless.org
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April 25th 2007
Today’s Gem -- The Light of Being
You are Being, you are not “had been,” And not “would be,” but “Being.”
You are the timelessness in which no death can enter for where there is no time there is no death. That Timelessness is Now, and That is Being.
Being is always shining, 'I am' is the Light of Being. This Diamond cannot hide, and can never be hidden.
When there is no mind the face shines with beauty and innocence. Just simply be quiet, just be as you are.
From: The Truth Is, by H W L Poonja. www.poonja.com/
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April 26th 2007
Today’s Gem -- Pain or Suffering?
I am sometimes asked about the difference between pain and suffering. Pain is sensation in the body at a particular time. Suffering is spread over time and must by accompanied by some story about the pain.
The story can of course have infinite strands and arrangements - who caused the pain, why, when, how, the metaphysics of it - but the particulars of the story only serve as a distraction and as resistance to the pain itself.
Most people aren't willing to give up their investment in mental and emotional suffering. In the willingness to stop the suffering, which means to stop the story about the pain, the pain can be experienced just as it is.
What has been previously thought of as unbearable can be experienced with an open mind, because the mind is no longer closed around some idea about the experience. The mind is open. It has dropped all definitions.
When pain is met with an open mind, then pain, like every phenomenon, reveals the truth at its core.
From: The Diamond In Your Pocket, by Gangaji. www.gangaji.org
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April 27th 2007
Today’s Gem -- A Vehicle for Truth
Suffering is the mental, emotional, and physical contraction around pain, the history, justification, blame, sentimentalizing, and dramatization of the pain.
In the willingness to simply and directly experience any kind of pain, just for an instant, you will discover that the essence of pain is intelligence, clarity, joy, peace - the same essence as bliss!
The truth of yourself is revealed even in the midst of pain, and pain is revealed to be another vehicle for truth.
In following the story of the pain, this vehicle is overlooked, and the potential gift of pain is wasted.
From: The Diamond In Your Pocket, by Gangaji. www.gangaji.org
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April 28th 2007
Today’s Gem -- The Surprise
Let me emphasize that wishing to alleviate pain is natural and appropriate. Medications, the embrace of a loved one, communion with nature, the rhapsody of music and art, are all used to alleviate pain.
None of these is a problem. The problem is that the choice of meeting the pain, of stopping the resistance to pain, goes unrecognized.
That you have the freedom to stop and intimately face what is tormenting you, at any level, is generally unknown. The lack of recognition for such a choice keeps you bound as the victim of some tormentor.
The surprise that awaits this choice is the discovery of what is alive and waiting in the heart of everything -- spacious consciousness, love, that which heals all, even death.
From: The Diamond In Your Pocket, by Gangaji. www.gangaji.org
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April 29th 2007
Today’s Gem -- One Less
Who can say what pain will come into your life? Certainly all of us have experienced pain of one kind or another. If you have had the experience of surrendering in the moment that pain arises, of actually opening your mind to pain, whether it is physical, emotional, personal, or worldly, then you have discovered a secret wisdom.
In this discovery you are no longer preoccupied with personal pain, and then there is one less whining, screaming, crying, "What about me?" What a relief!
This "one less" is huge, because when the story of personal pain no longer has prominence, you can experience pain you had no idea existed -- your neighbor's pain, your parents' pain, your children's pain, the pain of the universe -- and in that, you are not making war with what is painful, or hiding from potential future pain.
You are living a life open to meet what is here. Then pain, as any experience, is to be bowed to as none other than truth itself.
From: The Diamond In Your Pocket, by Gangaji. www.gangaji.org
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April 30th 2007
Today’s Gem -- Not What You Thought
Although it may sound surprising, I do not intend to help anyone get rid of their suffering. Suffering is not the problem. Rather than trying to get rid of suffering, it is more important to inquire into the suffering itself, to investigate the reality of the sufferer. Inquiry is the front door.
The inquiring mind is an open mind, willing to explore most deeply. In that openness, it can allow the presence of suffering without rejecting it or trying to escape it.
This can be just as powerful, just as terrifying, and just as profound as facing your own death. When you inquire into suffering, you meet suffering, and when you meet suffering, it is possible to discover that suffering is not what you thought it was.
In a direct meeting between subject and object, sufferer and suffering, both disappear. Both are discovered, in reality, to be nonexistent.
From: The Diamond In Your Pocket, by Gangaji. www.gangaji.org
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