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#2376 -
This Nondual
Highlights exclusive features a typed excerpt from Living
Reality: My Extraordinary Summer with "Sailor" Bob
Adamson, by James Braha.
An excerpt also appeared
not long ago in Highlights #2358: http://www.nonduality.com/hl2358.htm
Living Reality reads
like a cool glass of clean water and is a
solid contribution to today's literature of nonduality.
I very much like the inclusion of crisp, sharp color photographs.
There are 15 color photos showing James, his family and friends,
and mostly Bob Adamson and Bob's wife Barbara. I think that for
twenty bucks, this 322 page book with color photos is a good
deal. Throughout the book there is a sense of family - friends -
guru that is untainted and without a hint of cliqueishness.
To read more selections
and to order Living Reality, visit http://www.jamesbraha.com/home.html
Bob Adamson is one
of the most unadorned, accessible nondual teachers around.
Podcasts with Adamson are refreshing: http://snipurl.com/m0gc.
"It doesn't
matter what your experience is." A brief excerpt
from Living Reality.
Bob: So, how are you
going?
James: Pretty good. I was
thinking about something Nisargadatta said: "Either you live
in a world of desire and fear, or you live in freedom." I
still live with desires and fears. They're not nearly as intense
as they used to be, but they're essentially still here. And I
wonder how much this understanding deepens.
Bob: Well, it can't
actually deepen. You're already that pure intelligence energy,
which you've always been. But, different insights come up through
the mind. You might call it clear understanding or better
understanding. The essence is still the same. It's always been
"one without a second;" it can't be added to and
nothing can take away from it. It's already That.
James: Recently a friend
of mine said something interesting. "Many people think
they're enlightened. Wait until they hear some bad news, like
having cancer, and then they see how real their liberation
is."
Bob: Well, if they have
the true understanding, they will realize that it doesn't matter
because they were never born anyway. The fear of death disappears
altogether. Naturally, the way you die gives some concern. You
wouldn't want to be sick or in pain for a long time.
James: I've noticed that
when I'm sick with a really bad cold, non-dual understanding
doesn't make it a heck of a lot better. What that physical pain
is there.
Bob: Yes, but even the
intensity of that physical pain lessens a lot if you can stay
with it moment by moment. If the mind is constantly judging and
labeling pain, then it can snowball and get worse and become
overwhelming. But there's always a sense of peace or well-being
in the background. Nothing's been touched there.
James: I've also been
thinking about the fact that, in essence, nobody's better off
than anyone else. I hear stories and read books where people
claiming enlightenment say they "live in paradise," and
things like that. Then, of course, I start desiring what they
have. I want that paradise. But that must be nonsense.
Bob: Well, have a look at
all that. Those are all experiences. They come and go. What you
are is the experiencING. The experience and the experiencer are
conceptual. But the experiencing is the actual. The
experience of silence is not better that the experience of
chatter. They are both experiences. The experiencing, which they
happen on, has never been touched. The experience and the
experiencer are like reflections in a mirror. The mirror is the
experiencing essence, which allows experiences to happen. It
doesn't matter what your experience is.
James: That's where I
start to get tangled. I would definitely prefer to have nice
experiences. It doesn't seem like it's "all the same"
whether I have a good experience or bad experience or flat
experience. I want the good ones. That plays on my mind a lot,
because I seem to have continual flat experience -- nothing
great, nothing terrible. Just flat. And I wonder, "Shouldn't
there be some nice experience happening"? I understand
intellectually that that would simply be another experience
but...
Bob: It's just what it
is. It's that "cognizing emptiness," if you like. It's
pure awareness, or pure intelligence energy. Things appear and
things disappear. And if a preference comes, that appears on it
also. You couldn't have preferences without that essence.
James: Is it purely
conceptual about this "screen" or the
"experiencing that's always there?" Does it give you
some solace that it's there? Do you experience it?
Bob: You don't
"experience" it, but stay with the subtlety of it and
you'll see that in there is the uncaused joy, the uncaused
happiness, the uncaused love... . This is not the pairs of
opposites -- love/hate, joy/sadness, pleasure and pain. It's the uncaused
love and compassion. It's subtly there on its own. As you're
sitting with that subtleness, it'll become more pronounced.
Sitting with your essence gives it a chance to become more
pronounced. And even though the so-called pleasure or pain and
things are going on, there will always be that underlying sense
of well-being. Nisargadatta puts it in the negating way:
"There's nothing wrong anymore."
James: This sounds like
what often happens to me at night. I'll be in bed waiting to fall
asleep, or I'll awaken in the middle of the night, and this
experience occurs where all thoughts have abated and I'm with a
kind of dramatic silence or subtleness. It seems like an
experience. But it's not, is it? It's just what is.
Bob: Exactly. It's pure
isness.
James: One night, this
was happening and I notice my shoulder was hurting. And, honest
to God, it became clear to me that the sensation was in fact a
concept -- an idea in the mind! Then I realized all existence is
an idea. What doesn't this happen more often?
Bob: Well, give it a
chance. Allow it! You'll see it's happening all the time.
http://www.jamesbraha.com/home.html