The Seer

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In her illuminating book, The Diamond In Your Pocket. Gangaji writes about our “true face” – which “is actually no face at all, with no gender, no agenda …”

Now, where do you find this wonderful no face of yours – this nothing that is “full, whole, infinite, in everything, everywhere?” This nothing that is consciousness, your true identity… The Pointing Experiment is exactly about this – literally you point at your no face. There it is. Or rather, here it is!

As Gangaji writes, you don’t need years of spiritual practice to find this no face of yours. Of course, that’s clear. No qualifications at all are needed. Simply point back at where others see your face, and look. There it is, your no face — visible!

And self-evidently seeing your no face has nothing to do with what kind of person you are. Look there in the mirror and you see your face – you see there the kind of person you are. But look here, this side of the mirror, and you see your no face, shining perfectly — timeless, indivisible, free, obvious …

>Click Here to see the full quotation from Gangaji

by Richard Lang

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Right now, part of the dog’s divine purpose is to assist humans. That’s why they have chosen to be with humans. They have been with humans for thousands of years and now there is a link between dogs and humans, much closer than it has ever been. A dog can keep you in touch with Being — the innermost core, beyond mind. You can look into the eyes of the dog and see that innermost core.

Something that’s very important for many people is they realize, consciously or unconsciously, that their dog is not judging them. For some people, it’s the only relationship that they have where there’s no fear and where they realize they are being accepted and not judged. For many people it’s the only relationship they have with another being.

That’s a pity, because really they should have deep relationships with humans also, but that’s difficult because every human being has a mind and every human being judges and so people become afraid, they withdraw, they put up barriers. I believe that dogs are keeping millions of
people sane who would otherwise become deeply neurotic in our alienated world.

There are teachings that say every being is a spark of the divine or God. You can see it sometimes more clearly [in dogs] than in a human being because the human being has the veil of mind, negative emotions, and ego, and plays a role. I believe that dogs fill a vital function in the collective consciousness of humanity. I would call them “the Guardians of Being.”

They show us what we have lost and, once we realize that, they can help us in our shift into a deeper state of consciousness. Of course, we don’t want to be confined to only deep relationships with dogs, but they can teach us how to relate deeply to another being and then we can learn to relate deeply to humans also. That has to be the next step.

by Eckhart Tolle, in Modern Dog Magazine - 07 Fall Issue. (Eckhart has a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Maya, and together, they live on the edge of Pacific Spirit Park in Vancouver, British Columbia)

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Once upon a time, Truth had a human form. He had a passion to set people free from their wrong ideas so they could live better, and in the end, happier lives but he was thwarted in his desire.

All of you will be familiar with the phrase, ‘The naked truth’ and this stems from the fact that it was in the nature of Truth not to wear any covering. Although Truth in his nakedness was not uncomely and was even thought to be beautiful in an awesome kind of way, whenever he appeared to people in this unclothed fashion, they were surprised, shocked and often offended. They fled from Truth in the street, shunned his company and never invited him into their homes.

This made Truth feel frustrated and miserable for he longed for the company of ordinary people and wanted only to do them good. In the same town, lived Fiction who, at that time, also had a human form. Fiction owned his own theatre and put on plays every night for the
people. Truth noticed that, unlike himself, Fiction was very popular and eagerly sought out by the people who enjoyed his theatrical productions.

Fiction happened to meet Truth one day and, noticing how sad Truth looked, asked how he was getting on. Wiping away a tear, Truth told him that he was always being avoided by people and how unhappy this made him. “I have so much of value to tell them,” he said
despondently, “But they won’t even let me speak to them.” Fiction said, “Perhaps I can help you. Meet me at my theatre in an hour.”

When Truth arrived at the theatre, Fiction showed him a vast wardrobe of bright attractive costumes which he used for his productions. “There are far more here than I will ever need,” Fiction said, “Dress yourself up in some of these clothes, call yourself by another name and go out into the world with your wisdom and see how you get on.”

After a moments hesitation, Truth accepted the advice. He dressed himself from Fiction’s wardrobe and, taking the new name of Parable, he went out into the world and immediately found he was accepted and appreciated by almost everyone. From that time on,
wherever Parable has gone, he has been welcomed not only into the homes of men and women, but into their minds and into their hearts.

(And by >Clicking Here you’ll find a tale, involving a drunken sailor, loneliness, Sufis, and a sudden realization. Just a story …)

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This is love: to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First, to let go of life.
In the end, to take a step without feet;
to regard this world as invisible,
and to disregard what appears to be the self.

Heart, I said, what a gift it has been
to enter this circle of lovers,
to see beyond seeing itself,
to reach and feel within the breast.

by the Sufi poet and mystic Jelaluddin Rumi

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The Rev Harland Butterley, a much appreciated Australian clerical speaker, was invited to speak at a monthly lunch meeting of the Rotary Club. Also present at the meeting was a reporter from the local newspaper, who enjoyed as much as anyone the vicar’s light-hearted ecclesiastical anecdotes.

At the end of his speech, Butterley approached the reporter and begged him not to print too many of his tales as he wished to use them at future speaking engagements. To Butterley’s dismay, when he read the newspaper a few days later, the reporter had written, “The vicar made an excellent speech but most of the stories he told cannot be repeated here.”

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Enlightenment is seeing that the “self” concept you have been building since about age two or three inside your head is totally unreal. Once you see this, once you get it, you will be awake. You will live fully and effortlessly in the present, because you will understand that the present is all that exists. You will always be at peace. You will always flow cheerfully with whatever is happening. Sure, there may be more fun awaiting you tomorrow evening, when you go out on some hot date, or do whatever else you love to do, but you don’t dwell on that.

In the meantime, there is only now, there is only ever the now, and even working in a freezing, windowless salad factory is okay when you are inwardly free. However, you may certainly form a plan, from a place of clarity and presence, to move on from the salad factory as soon as you realistically can.

So, the sixty-four million dollar question: how do you get free? You breathe, you come back to being very aware in the present, you notice your own mind stuff, your story, and you tell yourself, “This is not who I am.” You tell yourself, “Peace is my true nature, and I am always at peace, deep within.” Your consciousness is like a deep lake, and while the surface may get ruffled and buffeted by the challenges of life, deep down that stillness, that peace, is always here. You have to stop, and begin to feel into it.

One last tip: whenever you find yourself doing something you don’t really want to do, ask yourself, “If I were an enlightened Zen master (or Sufi, or Christian mystic, or whatever inspires you) how would I approach this?” Then act as if you were that.

Remember, the way to tell whether someone is enlightened or not is that what is happening right now is always the most important thing. Awakened people honor the past, keep an eye on the future, but they are always right here, enjoying and appreciating what is happening now.

by Jim Dreaver

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A great way to get in touch with your resistance to what is, is asking the following questions: Am I willing to have the experience I am having right now? and Am I willing to not have the experience I am having right now? If the answer is even slightly no to either of those questions, then suffering is present.

This is a very high standard because it means that you have to say yes to every experience you’re having right now and yes to every experience you’re not having right now. One of our favorite ways of saying no to our current experience is fantasizing about all the other experiences we’re not actually having. We often think we should be having some other experience than what we’re having.

Fantasizing about the past is another way we keep ourselves outside of our present experience. The truth is that every experience you’ve had you’ve managed to lose. You’re already losing the experience you’re having right now, and a new one is taking its place. Are you also willing to lose every experience you have?

These questions help to broaden our focus so that we’re not just noticing what’s happening but also our relationship to what’s happening. They broaden your focus to also include what’s moving in you in response to whatever is happening-is it willingness or unwillingness? Is it a yes to this moment or a no?

When you ask these questions, what you quickly discover is that basically the answer is almost always no. Either grossly or subtly, there is usually a no there. For example, you might be willing to have a lot of money, but you aren’t willing to lose it. Or you might be willing to have an experience end, such as an illness, but you’re not willing to have it.

If you pay attention, you’ll discover that trying to manage your experience is what your life is about. We are always trying to have the right experience by saying yes to the right ones and no to the wrong ones. When you practice this inquiry, you begin to see how much of the activity of your mind is caught up in resistance, in saying no to something. Even wanting something is a form of saying no to the way things are. When you are wanting something to be different, are you willing to have it be the way it is? No.

Nevertheless, there are moments when we experience an aspect of our Being that says a big yes to it all, to whatever is happening. In those moments, willingness is present, but it doesn’t feel like you had anything to do with that. The suffering goes away, but we didn’t do it. In hearing this, we may get excited: “I get it.” — I just have to stop resisting. But this is just another way of saying no — this time to resistance-and this will cause you to suffer as much as ever.

What I’m pointing to with the inquiry question “Am I Willing?”; is not so much this dilemma (which you can’t do anything about, because anything you try to do would just be more resistance) but another way of being with your resistance. Can you ask this question simply to see what’s there?

We’re not very familiar with being with our experience in this way. Most of the time, our questions are in service to trying to get something to be better. What about asking this question just to find out what’s there? Just touch your experience without any added push or pull, without a sense of trying to change your experience. This isn’t a denial of your experience or an attempt to transcend it so that you don’t have to experience your suffering. You’re bringing your experience into focus but not doing anything about it. You’re just experiencing it with an openhearted curiosity about it as it is.

What’s it like to have the experience of resistance? In the space that this inquiry opens up, it’s possible to discover a surprising thing: This big yes even shows up for our resistance. There is a place in our Being that is perfectly willing to have any experience and perfectly willing to resist and therefore suffer. In touching our resistance this gently, just letting it be the way it is, it’s possible to touch more of our experience. To whatever extent we can touch our resistance, it’s possible to see what else is present. Space is given to our whole experience, beyond the struggle and dissatisfaction created by our various strategies and ideas about what we should and shouldn’t resist, what we should and shouldn’t allow.

This question, Am I willing? illuminates the endless flow of unwillingness that is our conditioning. This is what we were all taught to do. We’ve all been programmed to say no to this and yes to that.

It can be helpful to realize that none of your conditioning is your fault. All of it is inherited. Our parents, our teachers, our spiritual teachers, our friends, TV, and the books we’ve read have all contributed to the ways we resist. They’ve all been telling us what to say no to. The beauty is, if you’ve been around long enough, you’ve been taught to say no to everything, to opposite things: Don’t be poor and don’t be rich, don’t be proud and don’t be self-effacing, and on and on. If you get to know your own conditioning, you discover how contradictory it is. That’s why you never got it right — because when everything is wrong, nothing is right.

In the midst of this conditioning is the big yes that you can’t make happen. There’s no technique or process for bringing you to a place of that wholehearted yes. And yet, just by being willing to experience your suffering and struggle in this moment, you can discover that this big yes is also present. Nothing has been gotten rid of: Your conditioning is still present, but the view has broadened to include this Presence that has no problem with any experience nor with the resistance to it. Paradoxically, you discover that being willing to see all the ways you say no, opens the door to experiencing what is always saying yes.

From the expanded edition of Nothing Personal, Seeing Beyond the Illusion of a Separate Self by Nirmala

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This week, we learned that more than 250,000 people have recently joined Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club so they can participate in her upcoming series of Webcasts with Eckhart Tolle on his latest book, A New Earth.

Oprah hopes her Web course with Eckhart will become “the world’s largest classroom” and, all the indicatons are, that her hopes will be realized.

Being a Web course or Webcast means you will be able to see and hear it on your own computer. The course is free, but you have to register on-line to access it. You can register quickly and easily >Here

The 10-program course begins March 3, 2008 at 9.00pm Eastern time in the USA and runs each week till May 5.

For Australian viewers, 9.00pm Monday March 3, in US/Eastern (9/8c) converts to 11.00am Tuesday March 4, in Perth — 1.00pm Tuesday March 4, in Sydney/Melbourne.

>Click Here for details on how to o be part of this great event,

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The lamps are different, but the Light is the same.
So many garish lamps in the dying brain’s lamp-shop,
Forget about them.
Concentrate on essence, concentrate on Light.
In lucid bliss, calmly smoking off its own holy fire,
The Light streams towards you from all things,
All people, all possible permutation of good, evil, thought, passion.
The lamps are different,
But the Light is the same.
One matter, one energy, one Light, one Light-mind,
Endlessly emanating all things
One turning and burning diamond,
One, one, one.
Ground yourself, strip yourself down,
To blind loving silence.
Stay there, until you see
You are gazing at the Light
With its own ageless eyes.

By Rumi, from: The Rumi Collection by Andrew Harvey

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Addressing a group of schoolboys, a bishop gave this example of moral courage — a boy in a dormitory who, in front of the others, kneels down and says his prayers before hopping into bed.

The bishop then asked the boys if they could think of another example.

“Sir,” piped up one boy, “A bishop in a dormitory full of other bishops who hops into bed without saying his prayers!”