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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3793, Sunday, January 31, 2010, Editor: Mark



If you imagine yourself as separate from the world, the world will appear as separate from you and you will experience desire and fear. I do not see the world as separate from me and so there is nothing for me to desire, or fear.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels




Q: I have a hard time making decisions or choices.

A: Probably harder now than before (initial realization) because the reason is because the things you base decisions on before, in the past, that's been part of what's been swept overboard.

Q: Yeah, exactly. It didn't work anyway.

A: Of course not.

Q: Took me places I wish I wouldn't have ended up in.

A: So it's not like you've lost anything.

Q: But it seems like decision-making needs to continue.

A: It appears that way. Yeah it appears that way and so you appear to make them. (laughter) Right? So you just appear to make them. You're not really making them. You never made them. You never make them now anymore than in the past. But in the appearance of things, we like to know what we are doing. Don't we? We like to delude ourselves into thinking we know what we are doing, that we are doing it correctly.

Q: Actually I don't feel like I am doing anything.

A: Good. That's a good benefit for you. A start.

Q: But it leaves a sense of not having any kind of investment, it's happening. People are saying, 'oh, you did this.' No I didn't do anything. I just showed up.

A: Right.

Q: There's a loneliness in there, there's a wanting to feel a connection. I don't know what that's about. You do?

A: I understand, yes. We'll get back to that point. Let's do the decision thing first.

The vastness that we are, it simply moves in the most obvious way. It's not the same as making decisions. That's what confuses. Its like your consciousness moves into a dimension where decision-making is no longer valid. That's not the paradigm from which you move anymore. And yet we drag these old paradigms because we just don't know anything else, right? You feel the paradigm, how do I make a decision here when there is nothing to base it on? 'What do you want? I don't really want. What do you desire. I don't really desire. What's the outcome you're looking for? There really isn't one.' Kind if like that?

Q: Yeah, like that. Or more like something big in me isn't being released. And so it's like the decision-making is wanting to be made so this can get out.

A: Yes, okay. Good. That's the next step too. So that old way, it's not going to work that way. That's the first thing we need to establish. Trying to make or even knowing how to make the right decision is an old paradigm, your consciousness has moved past it, but your mind is a little slow on the uptake. Which is the same way with almost everybody. Our consciousness moves like that and our mind comes stumbling in saying, 'What the hell is going on around here now?' (laughter)

Everything's different! Where did my desires go, where did my wants, everything I used to base what I was on. It's all gone, right? Your mind is slower, actually. There's usually a lag time. So the mind looks at this in an old framework, in a decision-making framework. As long as the mind is trying to solve it from that old framework, it obscures how things actually can work and actually are working right now. Because you are not back there making decisions on what you can make them on. Decision-making itself is a paradigm that is quickly disappearing where you are, and it's totally not existing where you are going.

So when we stop looking at it, let's say there's five different ways I can go but I'm not going to look at it as far as decision-making, doesn't work that way anymore. And as soon as you stop looking at it that way, even to solve it that way, it's like you're there at the precipice. There's five ways you could go and only when you stop trying to decide, stop trying to know the right one, let go of the old paradigm, there's just a knowing. It just arises. It's like 'that way.'

It's not a decision though. You haven't looked at your options. When the old way is let go of all of a sudden at the moment its really let go of. You're not trying to decide or to know really. All of a sudden, that way. And there's no reason for it. 'Do you want to go that way? I don't really care.' It's not based on desire or reason or wanting and if your mind comes in as it often does and goes, 'Why that way? How do I know that way's the right way?' That's how it's used to operating, right? But none of those questions in that new dimension, those questions, the reason they can't be answered where you are is cause they don't make sense where you are. You can never come up with an answer. That's over with. That's why the answers aren't coming. Cause your mind's asking questions that don't exist where you're consciousness is. Right?

Q: Yeah.

A: Like if you're sitting on the ground and someone says, 'Which diving board are you going to jump off of?' There's no diving board so the question is irrelevant. You see what I mean? So as soon as it's let go, all of a sudden it arises---this way.

Q: And the movement happens on its own. Cause there's the action component.

A: Yes there is, it depends on how far along it's all gone, at one point its all hooked up, you know, all one thing. The noticing, the acting are just one movement.

But at times there's the 'oh, that way.' And then there's the 'Okay I'm going that way.' There's the appearance of the ability either to go or not to go. Whether you actually have that ultimately, that's not something, I'm not even interested in talking about at this moment because that will just confuse the whole subject. But at that moment, yes. It is useful then to agree with it. 'Oh, that's the obvious way, okay. I'll do that.' 'Why?' 'I don't know.'

Because none of those questions exist in this different dimension of existence, different dimension of being. You just go that way. And you find out. 'Why' isn't answered in a concept, 'why' is answered as you're actually walking that way and doing that. So yes to have your agreement is very useful. In fact its absolutely necessary. And it ties in to the last thing you mentioned too. There's something that wants to express itself, right? It's trying to get out but it's not quite breaking though.

Q: Yeah.

A: It will break though. It's like being; it's very much like being pregnant actually.

Q: I feel like you're standing in as a midwife of sorts.

A: I am, yeah. I can't tell you how to get pregnant or any of that but yeah basically a midwife. That's a good way of putting it. And it does feel like you're pregnant with something, you feel somethings coming, some way of moving, something and I have no idea what it is. I can't make it happen. Anymore then you can sit there when you are three months pregnant going, 'Now how am I going to do that birthing thing.'

Q: It just happens.

A: Yeah you go to all your classes and then you get there, well then you really find out, as far as I can tell, in a way, that I could never actually know. It's very much like that. As you start to move in these ways, as these new ways of being, like this new way of deciding. This is a new way of being, this is a new way of moving. It's the activity of awakening. Awakening is a revelation...Ah! The truth. Then there's the flip side of awakening which is the activity. And that doesn't just come instantly. Bumble your way into that one. Stumble into it.

Q: That's where I'm intrigued and curious and want more.

A: I'm kind of midwifing you along on this particular point. And just like, okay, decision-making doesn't work the way it used to. I'm trying to say this is more kind of like what it looks like. Decision-making looks more like this. When you stop trying to make the decision, at some point it becomes more the obviousness of a direction comes up. Then you just say yes and you move that way whether you want to or not.

Q: Okay I'll look forward to that.

A: Yeah! As thing start to open up like this as the awakened vision turning into awakened activity, how to function. Bit by bit it becomes more obvious. At a certain point it becomes obvious enough, you are just moving that way enough, that this that's trying to birth itself, it can now do it. When the activity part has gotten clear enough now there is almost like gateways through which the expression can happen. And until then you'll feel kind of pregnant like something wants to happen, it's not quite...

Q: It's more and more uncomfortable.

A: It's just like pregnancy, I'm told. Yeah, it's just like that. It gets more and more uncomfortable. But its totally absolutely natural. This is the way it goes. And it's no, you heard me at the beginning this morning saying and I've said it several times in the past couple of months that as I see it that this whole awakening and enlightenment thing, we think it's about our revelation. 'Now I know the ultimate nature of what I am, of reality.' You get that then later, much later you realize that's not ultimately what its about. That's like a doorway that opens. What it's really about is about this that's trying to be birthed. The enlightenment has to happen so that can be birthed. That's why awakening is important but its only important as a step to this inside that gets birthed and manifest. That's what its about. It never really was about our little experience of being free and happy. That's a nice side benefit that we run into but it's what you're pregnant with. That's what its really about. That's where it's all been going.

Q: Halleluiah.

A: Yeah, yeah.

Q; Thank you.

A: You're welcome. That why all of have in our own way, even those of us like myself that see themselves as horrendously uncreative, whether I am or not, I don't know but even those who we don't necessarily think are great artists or whatever, everybody in them has this impulse, this sort of very creative impulse, right? It's there within everybody. Ultimately it comes from this place.

Adyashanti - The Fabric of Reality Disc 3, posted to adyashantigroup




Once at Cold Mountain, troubles cease -
No more tangled, hung-up mind.
I idly scribble poems on the rock cliff,
Taking whatever comes, like a drifting boat.

- Han Shan, posted to AlongTheWay




The Guru is basically without desire. He sees what happens, but feels no urge to interfere. He makes no choices, takes no decisions. As pure witness, he watches what is going on and remains unaffected. Victory is always his, in the end. He knows that if the disciples do not learn from his words, they will learn from their own mistakes. Inwardly he remains quiet and silent. He has no sense of being a separate person. The entire universe is his own, including his disciples with their petty plans.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, from I Am That




Papaji, and enlightened people in general, never have any reasons for the actions they undertake. Since they don't have minds that choose and decide, they don't generate reasons for future courses of action.

I remember when there was a plan to go on an extensive foreign tour. Tickets had been booked, visas had been obtained. When the travel agents arrived with the tickets, he simply said, 'I'm not going anywhere,' and the trip was cancelled. A few weeks later, when someone asked him the reason for the sudden last-minute cancellation, he said, 'Reasons? I don't have reasons for anything I do.'

When you abide as the Self, you do whatever the Self prompts you to do, without thinking or knowing why. There is nobody there who can say, 'I should do this; I should not do that,' because there is no one left who can make these decisions.

I once met someone who lived with him in Hardwar. They used to go for walks along the Ganga every day, often taking the same route. Sometimes Papaji would start off along one route and then, for no apparent reason, he would veer right or left and head off somewhere else. The following dialogue once ensued:

'Where are we going?'

'I don't know.'

'Why did you turn off the path?'

'I don't know. Something just impelled me to walk in this direction.'

'How far do we have to go?'

'I don't know. I will know when we get there.'

'Where's ''there''?'

'I don't know. When we get there I will know why I started walking this way.'

Eventually, they met a man in the forest, and that man had a waking-up experience with Papaji. The Self knew that this man was ready for such an experience and it directed Papaji towards him. Papaji didn't know that he had been diverted towards this meeting until he met the man. He simply accepted that the Self had propelled him in a particular direction. He didn't question or doubt the diversion. In fact, he didn't think or worry about it in any way. He just let the Self take him to where he was needed.

- David Godman, from an interview with Maalok

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