The Seer

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This Living Teaching is right here, right now. It is, in fact, as close to you as your breath. When you look deeply into yourself you may be able to see that there is, in this moment, a quality of aliveness that is animating you that is not philosophical and is not abstract. It’s there! It is coursing the blood through your veins, it is animating your breath, it is what makes it possible for you to think and speak and see and hear.

This is something that is essential and fundamental and true. It’s independent of what you think about it, what you believe about it and what you feel about it. It is here, and with Grace you dissolve into it. You recognize your true self in it. It is this living force, this animating force that has manifested into the complexity we call Life. It is this living force that has manifested into this being which you call yourself.

It is at once wondrous and simply obvious.

by Wayne Liquorman

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Only when you find the formless dimension in yourself can there be true love in any relationship. The Presence that you are, the timeless I Am, recognizes itself in another, and the other feels loved, that is to say, recognized.

To love is to recognize yourself in another. The other’s “otherness” then stands revealed as an illusion pertaining to the purely human realm, the realm of form. The longing for love that is in everyone is the longing to be recognized, not on the level of form, but on the level of Being.

If you honor only the human dimension of the other but neglect Being, the other will sense that the relationship is unfulfilled, that something absolutely vital is missing, and there will be a buildup of pain in the other and sometimes unconscious resentment toward you. “Why don’t you recognize me?” This is what the pain or resentment seems to be saying.

When another recognizes you, that recognition draws the dimension of Being more fully into this world through both of you. That is the love that redeems the world….

It has been said “God is love” but that is not absolutely correct. God is the One Life in and beyond the countless forms of life. Love implies duality: lover and beloved, subject and object. So love is the recognition of oneness in the world of duality. This is the birth of God into the world of form. Love makes the world less worldly, less dense, more transparent to the divine dimension, the light of consciousness itself.

From, A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle.

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Last Tuesday morning’s webcast (Perth time) was one of the largest single online events in the history of the Internet. More than 500,000 simultaneously logged on to watch Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle live, resulting in 242 Gbps of information moving through the Internet.

Unfortunately, most experienced delays in viewing the webcast. As one friend reported: “Things started pretty well - downloading was running at about 770 kbits/sec - video quality great. So I sat back to watch and enjoy. Eckhart was really great — and it was fantastic seeing him live, rather than a recoding of ‘live’. Slowly, however, the bandwidth started dropping, and the video quality ‘ran aground’ from time to time. Then it really ran aground, and then the tide went out !!!”

Oprah’s IT people said: “We deeply regret that so many did not have an optimal viewing experience. Interactive Internet broadcasting to a mass audience is still an emerging medium, and we’re proud to have been pioneers in pushing the industry forward. We are trying to identify the specific causes for the problems experienced and will work diligently to rectify them.

The good news is that the first session of the Oprah-Eckhart webinar is now available in its entirety on Oprah.com for viewing or for downloading as a podcast.

The next Webcast, featuring Chapter 2 of A New Earth is
scheduled for Tuesday, March 11th at 11.00am (Perth time). For full information, go to our Oprah-Eckhart Page.

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Inquirer: My question for you is about weight. I get stuck though I now understand that my non-physical being is creating the physical being but I can only identify with my physical being even though I know better. A part of me has a real big problem with this. Does it mean I accept myself as 60lbs heavier? Then how do I do what I need to do to let go of the weight? Needless to say, I feel like I have been working with this problem for so many years, and each year my problem expands by 10lbs! Frustration, anger, and depression inevitably come along with the story about my weight.

Jim Dreaver: You must ask yourself: what is more important to me, finding the freedom, peace, and love inside me that comes with awakening to my true nature… or losing this excess weight that I’ve been struggling to lose for so many years? The more you find freedom within, the more the more you will perceive yourself as a contented and happy person, genuinely so. The “problem” of your weight will then fade from your consciousness. It simply won’t be a problem anymore. Then, maybe, the weight will also fade away. Or maybe it won’t! Whatever happens, you will be at peace.

How to find the freedom within? First, every time you find yourself suffering over your weight, welcome it. Welcome your experience, because it is showing you where you are not yet free. Then look for the story you are telling yourself (I’m angry, I’m depressed, I feel awful because I’m so fat!). Lastly, do the practice. Step back out of the story between your ears, but be very present, very aware. Affirm to yourself the one story that is always true: “I am not my story. I am the pure awareness that is present right now…” Then breathe and relax into the feeling of being aware, of being alertly present in this moment.

You will probably have to do this three-step transformational process many, many times a day to begin with, but I promise you, if you do it faithfully, it will work. You will become a freer, happier, and more fulfilled person. You will be vastly lighter in spirit… and maybe in terms of your weight, too!

by Jim Dreaver

Go to Jim’s secure site now to purchase his 165 page eBook, End Your Story Begin Your Life. You can download the eBook edition in a few minutes and then read it on your computer or print it out. First >Click Here.

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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.

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Water symbolizes the Tao in many ways. Here, in the Tao Te Ching Lao Tzu refers to its nourishing qualities. As we know only too well in Australia, all life depends on water. It has supreme power over all living things, yet it makes no claim

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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.

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If ever you’re fortunate enough to stand in a great cathedral like Chartres in Paris, or some other elsewhere, and gaze up at the gorgeous stained-glass windows depicting so many stories of saints and sinners, the great symbolism behind it all that the architect, artisans and mystics intended is simply this – through all the myriad figures and representations of nature, the one Light shines through and enlightens them all. Without that Light, they could not be seen nor could their translucent colours enthral us.

One Light shines through the many windows and the many differently shaped pieces of glass in each window section. It is the one Light making many appearances – the so-called saints and sinners stand out in every imaginable shade and hue.

These magnificent windows are trying to tell us – it’s all God! Not God and them or God and us – there is only God, the Light that is the substance of all. The same Light shines in and through everything that comes into being – there is nothing else!

The Christ-Light is What we really are – the Light of the world, as the Master always was, is now and ever shall be – beyond birth and death, beyond time and space. Let us then stand in awe and with the eyes of God, gaze the gaze of eternity – seeing God everywhere and in everything.

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Hi Juvenal,You asked: “have you ever read about alchemy?”

Yes, I have and now understand that most, if not all, of the great alchemists of past centuries were actually investigators, practitioners and teachers of non-dual philosophy. In earlier times, in religion-dominated societies, it was often quite dangerous for individuals to openly explore non-dual spiritual teaching, so they were forced to do this under the guise of searching for the so-called philosopher’s stone that would turn base-metal into gold. They knew this stated pursuit would be tolerated and even approved by wealth-seeking ecclesiastics and local authorities who would not then question their researches, collecting of books and travels to other enlightened masters etc. Of course, they had to set up laboratories and ‘experiments’ to keep up appearances, but their real passion was to discover the truth of man’s essential nature and pass their insights on to other earnest seekers.

Naturally, there were many thousands of lesser souls who heard about the lab equipment and thought there was a real chance that someone could create gold out of sheet lead, got in on the act and wasted the rest of their lives on a futile search for riches. The imitators, like the ecclesiastics, never guessed what the real alchemists were up to.

To the true alchemists, the so-called philosopher’s stone was a symbol of the transmuting power of truth when it is known, understood and practiced. They, as we have seen, were not in quest of a magical stone, but That which transmutes the ordinary into the extraordinary, the mundane into the divine, discord into harmony and mind-made suffering into peace. What they yearned for was found, not by some feat of wizardry or arduous attainment, but by simply seeing that all is Consciousness (or God) and that everything that appears is actually an expression of the divine Source! After this direct inseeing and consequent shift in their understanding of what constituted reality, they had to use symbolic language and codes to record their discovery.

One of the ways they might do this was to write an encrypted book or engrave a tablet that purported to be about turning base-metal into gold, but was really about the ultimate understanding or ‘enlightenment’. They had to be extremely secretive, for if their real purpose was found out, they know they could be put to death for being a heretic or a blasphemer. To the society of their day, the enlightened alchemists were content to be regarded as harmless cranks and dubious scholars.

Awakened or ‘enlightened’ people have never enlightened everyone that came in contact with them. We see this most obviously in the cases of Jesus and Gautama (Buddha). In fact, only a small number of those who encountered these great souls seemed to truly understand their teaching. (many are called but few are chosen.)

Why was this? Well, Juvenal, it’s pretty much the same today. Just as the heat of an oven will soften butter,but harden clay, so conscious awareness or the awareness of truth in a seer will attract those who are ready to awaken and repel those who are not. Those who are fully conscious will help those who are just beginning to wake up spiritually to become more and more conscious, while their effect on spiritually unconscious people will be to drive them further into unconsciousness and mind-conditioned behavior. You will probably be experiencing this to some degree or other right now among your associates in Iraq.

The good news, Juvenal, is that there are still ‘enlightened’ teachers in our midst today, only they are no longer disguised as alchemists, but as fairly ordinary people who wear blue-jeans, drive cars and use computers etc. Through their low-profile work, figuratively speaking, base stuff is being transmuted into gold in the lives of many who stumble upon them and recognize what they have to offer. But this only happens, it seems, when what is Deep in the teacher can reach what is Deep in the seeker. Then “Deep calls unto Deep”, and with the answering, there begins a steady transformation on every level of the respondent’s life-experience. A golden moment indeed!

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Dear Christine,

Always keep before you the central liberating truth that Consciousness is all there is and that is What you are … always and already. When you know this in your heart, all becomes clear. You are not a body/mind/personality having certain ’spiritual’ experiences, you are Spirit ItSelf having a temporary experience in and as a particular form.

As you know, all forms are unstable and eventually deteriorate over time. When the human form ceases to function, the life consciousness in that form becomes formless once again, not as a ‘bit’ of spirit or a ghost, but as Spirit in it’s infinite entirety.

Think of a wave breaking on the seashore. The form of the wave disappears, but the water is not lost in any way — it simply becomes part of the ocean again. There are no ‘ghost’ waves within the ocean … just water, however, from the ocean, other waves may arise eventually and roll across the sea to another shore.

The belief in or concept of ‘ghosts’ or ’souls’ going on and existing somewhere after the death of the body is just another way the little me tries to cling to its separate selfhood. It’s a way of reinforcing the idea that we are all individual entities and will somehow remain so forever. This is not the answer the egoic self is looking for and it will demand that you keep an ‘open mind’ on the subject and urge you to seek out those who will confirm its desperate hope of ongoing existence as a ghostly entity of some kind.

Once you have ’seen’ or understood What you really are (the ocean, not just the wave), you can smile at the ego and reassure it that it does not have to take on the task of preserving ‘you’ anymore, because you have now seen that your essential Self is deathless and eternal, and always was. If you like, you can thank the ego for its concern and allow it to resume the role it was meant to have in the first place — that of enabling you to function in society as a unique and special form for as long as that form will last. You then see the ego as a form within a form (within Awareness) and honor that form as we should all expressions of the One.

Finally, Christine, be careful about speaking of your ego as a separate entity within yourself to whom you must cater when ‘it’ makes ‘its’ demands. Remember, all is Consciousness … without any separation whatever. If enlightenment or awakening means anything at all, it means the healing of all divisions within us. The ego is then seen as a conditioned part of our mental functioning and not as a ’someone’ with whom we have a relationship. From the standpoint of infinite Awareness, view this ego-function with understanding and compassion and you will find this function will eventually become a peaceful and helpful part of your life-experience.

Your ever well-wisher,