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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3764, Saturday, January 2, 2010, Editor: Mark
If you but cease from useless conceptualizing, you will be what
you are and what you have always been.
- Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels
Adyashanti: Dialog from "The Fabric of Reality"
David: Hi Adya. Good morning, my name is David
Adya: Welcome David.
D: For years and years I have been puzzled by this entityness
that I exist, that falls away and reemerges again and again and
again. Sometimes very compellingly. And so you know you were
talking about this unconscious belief in there that supports that
and I'm just really curious about what is it that I am still
believing in...
Adya: It may be a totally different belief that you think. The
reemergence or the apparent reemergence of personhood or how did
you put it...can't remember...you get the idea, right? There can
also be, often is, in the spiritual mind, a belief, that that is
not supposed to happen. That that is not what enlightenment is
about. Enlightenment is somehow about that not happening.
Is there any belief like that in your system or along those
lines?
D: It feels like I hold that much more loosely. That this
personhood is kind of this curiosity I get to play with
throughout the day.
A: Loosely is a good step in the right direction. It's holding a
concept loosely but it's not the quite same as not holding it.
It's in the right direction.
D: There's the grasping. There's the desire for something that I
want. It's not so loose.
A: Any thought, loose or not, is going to distort your perception
of what is. Any thought that's believed, consciously or
unconsciously, is going to distort your perception of what is.
Let me just make a suggestion, because I am reading what I feel
more than I read what people say to me. There is a very very
thin, it's almost like a transparent veneer in there that has
some sort of notion, there is some resistance to entityhood. It's
not there very much but its there enough to cause havoc.
Enlightenment, awakening, whatever you want to call it is not the
same as this sense of personhood never comes back. It's more like
that the sense of personhood no longer has any ability to pull
you into the trance of personhood or the limitation of
personhood. Which are two completely different experiences.
D: Say the second one again.
A: Right now I am talking to you through personhood. Through the
apparent entityness. If that is totally obliterated, I am not
going to be able to open my mouth, which might be a good thing
for all of us. (Laughter all around)
The difference is not having any identity in it. That's very
different than getting rid of it. Very very different. It's the
identity in it that causes the distortion and the difficulty and
the contraction. It's not the presence of personhood or the
apparent sense of separate personness. That's not a problem. It's
the subtle forms of identification with it.
And one of the most powerful ways to identify with it is to have
any resistance to it. At all.
But you see there is something inside, in the middle, it's in the
center of consciousness that really wants to survive. That wants
to stay there. As long as it has a problem, a dilemma, even a
subtle one, it gets to stay there. It gets to remain. The dilemma
isn't the problem. The dilemma isn't what's causing anything.
It's that there's something, ourself, that wants to stay in the
center, right? It needs a dilemma to stay in the center. It needs
opposition to stay in the center of consciousness.
D: I feel it right now, it's like trying to understand what it is
that you are saying. And there's this movement to just drop it
all. And here I am, it's my opportunity to talk to you so I
really want to understand what you are saying.
A: That's natural, right? You've got a mind that wants to
understand but I can guarantee that the mind understanding is
totally irrelevant. Because I'm not even talking to the mind. I
mean to talk like this to the mind would be ridiculous. (laughter
all around) Cruel at best. So I am not speaking so that the mind
understands. The mind doesn't understand. The mind can't
understand. The mind's very desire to understand comes from that
imaginary self wanting to stay in the center. It needs
opposition. Now its opposition is fine, 'I'm trying to
understand.' 'Okay. I'm here.' 'I'm trying to understand.' 'I'm
in the center.'
See what I mean? So I would completely concur with your intuition
to just let it all go. Nothing will be solved because you
understand what I am saying. Nothing! You see, because there's
nothing to understand. That's the illusion, isn't it.
- Adyashanti, posted to AdyashantiGroup
Take yourself as the object of inquiry, and ask yourself, 'If I
exist, where do I exist?' Next, investigate your body to see if
this 'I' can be found. After the preliminaries, and then
(tranquility) meditation, you proceed to this point of examining
(vipassana) the nature of your own existence, asking yourself
whether or not you truly exist. ...You will see that it is
untenable (can't hold onto) to conclude that you do exist; but it
seems equally implausible that you don't exist!
- Gyatrul Rinpoche, from Naked Awarenes, posted to
DailyDharma
All names and forms are the garbs and covers under which the one
life is hidden.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
The real understanding of religion is not in disputing over the
diversity of the forms, saying. 'Your religion is worse and my
religion is better.' The true religion is in recognizing the one
life in all.
The divisions of one into many are caused by light and shade, and
if we looked keenly into life, both within and without, we should
realize clearly that it is one life, one light, which appears
divided and made into many by different shades.
When one observes keenly the nature of this life of variety, one
finds that behind the world of variety there is one life, the
source and goal of all things. It is that life which may be
called the blood of the universe circulating through the veins of
the universe. It is substance or spirit or life: something out of
which all that is seen and all intelligence is molded, kept alive
and in working order.
This gives a logical explanation of the law of cause and effect.
A wrongdoer may escape earthly witness, but he cannot escape this
one life in which he lives and moves and has his being. A person
who has done good to another may never see that other again, yet
good must return to him because there is one body and one life.
Just as with the circulation in the physical body all we eat is
absorbed as essence in the blood, so our every thought, word and
action affects the one life.
Real virtue only comes by understanding the oneness of life,
binding man to friend or enemy. Jesus Christ teaches, 'Love your
enemies'. While it is often easy to love our friends, we are not
able to love our enemies unless we realize the secret of the one
life behind all.
- posted to SufiMystic
the truth catches up with me
I am not enough
never have been
never will be
what relief to admit this finite container
can never contain infinity
what joy to find infinity
needs no container
- Nirmala, from Gifts with No Giver - a love affair with truth
When my mind was cleansed of impurities,
like a mirror of its dust and dirt,
I recognized the Self in me:
When I saw Him dwelling in me,
I realized that He was the Everything
and I was nothing.
I saw and found I am in everything
I saw God effulgent in everything.
After hearing and pausing, see Siva
The House is His alone; Who am I, Lalla?
- Lalla