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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3317, Sunday, October 12, 2008, Editor: Mark
The end of pain lies not in pleasure. When you realize that you
are beyond both pain and pleasure, aloof and unassailable, then
the pursuit of happiness ceases and the resultant sorrow too. For
pain aims at pleasure and pleasure ends in pain, relentlessly.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
To deal with things knowledge of things is needed. To deal with
people, you need insight, sympathy. To deal with yourself, you
need nothing. Be what you are - conscious being - and don't stray
away from yourself.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
Question: In The Power of Now, you describe having a
dramatic personal awakening. What exactly do you think happened
to you?
Answer: For many years I had been deeply identified with thinking
and the painful, heavy emotions that had accumulated inside. My
thought activity was mostly negative, and my sense of identity
was also mostly negative, although I tried hard to prove to
myself and to the world that I was good enough by working very
hard academically. But even after I had achieved academic
success, I was happy for two weeks or three and then the
depression and anxiety came back.
On that night there was a disidentification from this unpleasant
dream of thinking and the painful emotions. The nightmare became
unbearable and that triggered the separation of consciousness
from its identification with form. I woke up and suddenly
realized myself as the I Am and that was deeply peaceful.
- Eckhart Tolle. posted to The_Now2
The human condition is characterized by a compulsive and
obsessive personal relationship to thought. At its best, thought
is a symbolic representation of reality; at its worst, thought
takes the place of reality. Our thoughts describe and interpret
both the external world and our internal experiences. To conceive
of a life lived any other way is incomprehensible to most people.
Thought tells us who we are; what we believe; what is right and
wrong; what we should feel; what is true and what is false; and
how we fit into this event called "life." We literally
create ourselves and our lives out of thought. Further, we
associate the end of thought with sleep, unconsciousness, or
death. It is this very personal relationship with thought that is
the cause of all the fear, ignorance, and suffering which
characterizes the human condition, and which destroys the
manifestation of true Love in this life.
As long as your experience of self and life is defined by the
mechanical, conditioned, and compulsive moement of thought, you
are bound to a very, very limited perception of what is real. But
imagine a relationship to thought that was impersonal. This would
mean that you were no longer compulsively defining and
interpreting yourself and your experience by the movement of
thought. If this were the case, you would no longer be limited by
the conditioned perspective of thought. Suddenly your entire
perspective would shift away from thought to that which was the
very ground and source of all thought. A source which, because it
wasn't being compulsively interpreted by thought, would be
experienced as it actually is for the first time.
Why is this so important? Because when you are able to perceive
this Source, you are actually in direct experiential contact with
the truth of your own being. Out of that contact the possibility
is ripe to suddenly awaken to who and what you really are--the
Self--pure consciousness.
The Self is the context within which thought arises.
Manifestation in the world of time rises as a wave out of the
ocean of eternal consciousness. But the human condition is
defined by a very personal and compulsive relationship to
thought, which makes this realization impossible unless you are
able, either suddenly or gradually, to let go of the compulsive
need to know and understand with the mind. You must become more
interested in the context within which thought and all experience
arises than in the false security of thought itself. Most people
find this very difficult because facing the context, which is
prior to all knowing, is literally stepping into the unknown,
which is the last place most people want to go. Why? Because
thought always seeks security in itself, which is the known.
Fear and insecurity always wait for any and all who dare to probe
the depths of the Unknown. The true seeker of liberation must
have an uncompromising desire to discover Eternal Truth, a desire
that outweighs any tendency to hesitate and contract in the face
of fear. It is only when the fear of the Unnown is openly
embraced that it begins to transform into the positive energy and
intensity necessary to awaken from conditioned existence.
It is not uncommon in the presence of a powerful teacher, and
under ideal conditions, to have a glimpse of enlightenment. But
all too often most seekers are unwilling to surrender to the
overwhelming implications of that revelation. The profound
intimacy and vulnerability inherent in true freedom marks the
destruction of the ego's boundaries to such an extent that all
beings and all things become the content of one's own Self. To
most seekers this is simply too much because the limitlessness of
the Self leaves no room for any separateness from the whole. It
is this complete lack of separation from the whole which is the
very definition of selflessness and love.
The aim of spiritual practice is to discover in your own present
experience That which the movement of thought never touches. This
does not mean to suppress the thinking mind, nor does it mean to
attmpt to understand by using thought. What I am pointing toward
is the Unknown: the already, ever-present, silent-still-source
that not only precedes thought but surrounds it. You must become
more interested in the Unknown than in that which is known.
Otherwise you will remain enslaved by the very narrow and
distorted perspective of conceptual thinking. You must go so
deeply into the Unknown that you are no longer referencing
thought to tell you who and what you are. Only then will thought
be capable of reflecting that which is true rather than falsely
masquerading as truth.
What I am talking about is a condition where the mind never
fixates; where it never closes; where it has no compulsive need
to understand in terms of ideas, concepts, and beliefs. A
condition where you are no longer referencing the mind, feelings,
or emotions for security in any way. What I am talking about is
the complete surrender of all separateness until liberation
becomes a permanent condition, and you are forever lost in the
reedom of the Absolute.
- Adyashanti