The Seer

---

At day’s end, what honest effort do you look back upon? Did you express one thought that was not in defense? Did you look at your self from another person’s perspective? Did you understand the why behind another person’s actions? Did you laugh at your self? Did you remember you will die? How long till you experience one night utterly alone, where silence absorbs every hope, and boils you down to zero? How long till you remember these questions every day, then end them?

by Shawn Nevins

---

Question: In your latest book (Journey Into Now), you say that there is a fundamental choice available to us. Either we are fully present in the NOW (Heaven) or we are in the mind (Hell). Do ‘we’ have a choice, or is it destiny? Advaita says there is no choice because there is no ‘you’ present.

Leonard Jacobson: You ask, do we have a choice, or it destiny? In the context of your awakening, both are true! It is your ultimate destiny to awaken fully into Oneness and the truth of life. But when that will occur depends upon the choices you make. Your choices can lead you into Oneness, or they can lead you further into separation and illusion.

You might also ask “Who is choosing?” That depends. It can be your ego which chooses, which will keep you in the separation, or it can be some deeper dimension of you, which at some very subtle level, remembers the Oneness and longs for it. A choice made from this longing will lead you home. When Advaita says that there is no choice, because there is no you, my question is “Who is saying that? Who is aware of that.”

Of course, when you are fully present, in any given moment, then your mind is silent. There are no thoughts. All spiritual concepts dissolve. There is no doer and there is no choice. But there is no Advaita. There is no Ramana. There is no past or future. There is no opinion. There is no understanding. There is no agreement, or disagreement. There just is!

Is this the ultimate state of awakening? If so, I would ask, “Who thinks so?” Is this the state you desire? If so, I would ask, “Who desires that?” In true awakening, all spiritual opinions, concepts and understanding dissolve. Ultimately, we are left with that ancient expression, “Neither this nor that!”

And beyond that, nothing!

---

When Tesshu, the famous medieval samurai swordsman, was young, he visited one Zen master after another. Once he went to visit Master Dokuon and told him triumphantly that all that exists is empty, there is no you or me, and so forth. The master listened to all this in silence. Suddenly he snatched up his pipe and struck Tesshu’s head with it. The infuriated young swordsman would have killed the master there and then, but Dokuon said calmly, “Emptiness is surely quick to show anger, is it not?” Tesshu left the room, realizing he still had much to learn about Zen.

---

This cannot be understood. It can only be recognised. Until recognition, there can be a trying to understand or grasping at the words, which are pointing to what is beyond words. Recognition cannot be forced and no particular circumstances are necessary. But there can be a tiring of trying to understand that which can never be understood. Sometimes it can take years before trying to understand is exhausted. Sometimes this only needs to be heard once or sometimes there is recognition ‘out of the blue’ with no apparent connection to anything in the story.

In recognition there is never any connection to anything that has come before this. In recognition, there is no story of past or future. There is no time. Any apparent story is recognised as simply a story. Nothing causes recognition because any apparent cause is simply a story. Recognition is the end of the belief in the story. Recognition is a leap beyond concepts. Beyond belief. Beyond what has always been assumed. It is a leap into the unknown. It is a leap into what has always been known but simply overlooked. I can recognise what is being pointed to in these words, because I am that. This is what I am, beyond any story of ‘me’. This is how I know that which is pointing, and that that is pointing to what l am.

From I am Life Itself by Unmani Liza Hyde????????

---

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

---

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

---

Inquirer — “I just started reading one of your books for the first time A New Earth. I am still having a hard time understanding why we have an ego and why it seems to be our enemy. Can you explain it more simply for me so I understand the ego’s purpose?”

Eckhart Tolle — The ego is a stage in the evolution of human consciousness. It is not your enemy. To perceive somebody or something as an enemy is in fact one of the main misperceptions or delusions of the egoic unconsciousness. So, you cannot fight against the ego and win that fight. If you think you have won the fight against the ego, it is the ego in you that thinks so and it has enlarged itself.

So the ego is not an enemy, but a dysfunction. Looked at from one point of view, it is an entity that the mind created. From another perspective, however, it is simply a delusion, resulting in a distorted way of perceiving reality and consequently in dysfunctional behavior. This second perspective is probably a more helpful one.

A delusion dissolves when you recognize it as delusion, and so does the ego. The ego is the by-product, as it were, of the rapid development of our faculty of thought over the past six thousand years. We lost ourselves in thought, that is to say became identified with it to such an extent that we now derive our sense of who we are from thinking. Thought is a particular way for universal intelligence to express itself. It is no more than a tiny aspect of that vast intelligence.

Thought, through naming things, analyzes, dissects, and separates reality into bits and pieces. Thinking can be a helpful practical tool, but when you identify with thinking the delusion of separation arises. Your reality becomes fragmented. You lose your original sense of connectedness with Being (“paradise”). You become unhappy, needy, discontented, full of ever unfulfilled desire, and you are always unconsciously attempting to regain your lost sense of being, of who you are.

Life is one and I am one with all life.

When you know this truth, the ego dissolves. To know means to realize. How, then, do you realize this truth?

At this moment – the only moment there is – there are some thoughts moving across your mind (the words you are reading and whatever your mind is adding to them). However, you can also KNOW that these thoughts are moving across your mind. That knowing is the dimension of awareness. It has nothing to do with thinking. While thinking happens, you can know yourself as the awareness behind the thinking, the alert stillness in the background – ungraspable, indefinable, elusive.

When you disidentify from thinking, you may also discover a growing ability within you to perceive things and people without immediately naming them. In this way, the ego, which is the unconscious habit of identifying with every thought that arises, begins to dissolve.

---

It is fashionable in spiritual circles, to believe that to become ‘enlightened’ we must destroy our ‘ego’. The word ego is used by different people to mean different things, which is a source of much confusion.

If the word ego is used to signify the matrix of negative personal habits which keep us unconscious in the life-dream, then the ego is indeed something which stands in the way of our awakening. It is a psychic knot we need to untie.

But often the word ego is used to signify our individuality generally. In this case the ego is not something to destroy, but something to emancipate from its illusionary isolation, so that we experience our individual identity as a part of the greater whole.

Awakening is not eradicating our personality and living a bland, boring existence as some sort of saintly zombie. Awakening is consciously being all that we are and having fun as a person in the life-dream, free from debilitating fear and isolation.

Awakening doesn’t diminish our individuality. It enhances and fulfills it. In this sense, lucid living is the celebration of the ego, not its destruction. But this celebration of our individuality is possible because we have transformed ourselves from an isolated self into an integrated self.

From, The Laughing Jesus by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. To see an in-depth interview with Tim by MarkMolaro Click Here.

---

There is a very famous poem written by the third patriarch of Zen, Seng-ts’an, called the Hsin-Hsin Ming, which translates as Verses in Faith Mind. In this poem Seng-ts’an writes these lines: “Do not seek the truth; only cease to cherish opinions.” This is a reversal of the way most people go about trying to realize absolute truth.

Most people seek truth, but Seng-ts’an is saying not to seek truth. This sounds very strange indeed. How will you find truth if you don’t seek it? How will you find happiness if you do not seek it? How will you find God if you do not seek God? Everyone seems to be seeking something. In spirituality seeking is highly honored and respected, and here comes Seng-ts’an saying not to seek.

The reason Seng-ts’an is saying not to seek is because truth, or reality, is not something objective. Truth is not something “out there.” It is not something you will find as an object of perception or as a temporal experience. Reality is neither inside of you nor outside of you….

This article by Adyashanti is continued on his Web page.

---

Recently, I was meditating on the words ascribed to St John who is believed by many to be a Jnani (a seer) as well as a Christian saint. You may remember he wrote: “God is love … ” and then added, “he that abides in love, abides in God and God in him.” (1 John 4:16)

To abide or dwell in love doesn’t mean for us, as a separate entity, to have constant love for some object or person, divine or otherwise. John wants us to see here that love — true love — is not something we have or do, but rather what we are in essence — already and always.

Consider what is the greatest ‘love’ of any sentient being. If he had the choice of possessing either all the wealth in the world or his ‘beingness’ or ‘consciousness’ (call it what you will), that which gives him the sense of being alive and present, and without which the body would be nothing but a cadaver, what would he choose? Obviously, without consciousness, all the wealth in the world would be of no use to him.

It is this conscious presence one loves more than anything else because without it, there is no universe, no anything! This therefore, is Presence-Love-God. And St John obviously had this in mind when he said, “God is love ….”

This conscious presence which makes us aware of this, here, now — the beingness of every sentient being on the earth — and indeed, the very soul of the entire universe, — this cannot be anything other than God.

It is clear that he meant that he (John) and He (God) were not different as pure subjectivity, but one in conscious awareness. And, therefore, he who is anchored in the conscious presence that is Love — that is God — abides in God and God in him.

The Love John speaks of here is love for the mere (or mysterious) fact of existence itself.

As Adyashanti says, It isn’t a love that is caused by anything. It isn’t based on whether one has a good day, or a good encounter, or a good feeling etc. In fact, it could be not such a good day, not such a good encounter, or not such a good feeling, and there will be still just as much love for it.

This is a love that loves to live this life because in life it is actually meeting itself moment to moment.