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#4022 - Thursday, September 23, 2010 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
"You do not need to leave
your room, just remain sitting at your kitchen table ...and
listen, not even listen, just simply be quiet and wait, be still and solitary, the world
will offer itself freely to you
to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your
feet." - Franz
Kafka. posted By Tom
McFerran to Facebook
"Out beyond
ideas of wrong-doing & right-doing
There is a field, I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase, 'each
other'
Doesn't make any sense."
- Rumi
From the book "The Illuminated Rumi," published by Broadway Books
posted by Dainen Kelly to Daily Dharma
You will never
"know" the Truth.
You can only "Be" the Truth.
There is no "knower" that's really separate from
the Truth that's being known.
The ego says that it wants to experience the
Truth, but it survives more by saying "no" to the
truth than it does by saying "yes" to it.
However, consciousness is truth, itself, and so
it needs no one present in order to validate it.
Life is just as it is.
There's nothing more than "just this."
And, quite amazingly, there's nothing else than
"just this."
- Chuck Hillig
Seeds for the Soul posted to
Along The Way
Q. Jeff, do you really believe all of this 'nonduality' stuff?
I know that not a word I say could possibly be true, because no word can touch life. Life is too alive for words. So, no, I don’t actually believe in this stuff, in the sense that I cannot form it into a ‘belief’ that I’m separate from. I don’t believe in life – because there is only life. Life as it is does not require belief, and that’s the beauty of it. It is simply this – here and now. It is breathing happening, it is the heart beating, it is sights and sounds and smells appearing exactly as they appear. It is sound of the washing machine whirring. It is the taste of the cup of tea I’m drinking. So simple, so obvious, so present. So wonderfully ordinary, so extraordinarily wonderful. No need for belief, at all. All belief comes and goes, but this remains, whether Jeff believes it or not!
Life is the bonfire that burns up all beliefs, all words, even these words, leaving only presence. These words appear and are immediately burnt up. Jeff knows he is not special or different – he is simply an appearance in life. I cannot be an ‘authority on nonduality’, I cannot ‘know’ this, because these words are equal to the barking of a dog or the tweeting of a bird. It is all the One expression, it is all an expression of the One, and nobody can separate themselves from that expression and claim ownership. Nobody can teach life itself, nobody can give you that, because the dog barking, the bird singing, the sun shining is already life itself. Nobody can teach you it because everything is teaching it – everything is it.
I’m not saying “there is no authority, except for Jeff!” (and this is the guru trap of course). I’m saying there is no authority, and that includes Jeff and his expression . To be totally free from all authority, including your own... that’s the real freedom.
Q. You speak as though you know! But I’ll ask again: how do you know?
‘I’ don’t know. The ‘I’ cannot know. Because there is no ‘I’ separate from life that can know. There is only the not-knowing. And all knowledge arises and falls away in that.
See for yourself, and it’s as obvious as breathing.
Q. How do you know that?
These words come from the certainty that there is nothing to know. It’s not the certainty of the mind, but the certainty that is not-knowing itself.
All knowledge, all intellectual certainty, is just a play of thought. Beyond thoughts, there is no world. Beyond the world, there is nothing to know. Who would know it?
You see, where there is belief, there is doubt. Anything you believe, you can also doubt. If I believed any of this stuff, I could also doubt it. But because for me this is not a belief, there is no doubt either, not a trace of it.
Life as it is, cannot be doubted. In simple language, you cannot doubt that you are awake and present, right here, right now. You cannot doubt this simple feeling of being that is identical with life itself. You cannot doubt the sound of that bird singing, or the taste of this cup of tea, or breathing happening…
Oh yes, you can doubt everything you know about life, you can doubt all the language we use to point to and describe life, you can doubt even the word ‘life’ itself, but you cannot (unless you are in total denial!) doubt the reality to which the word ‘life’ points. And even if doubt appears, life is that which is doing the doubting. So in the end you can’t escape it. You are Home, no matter what. Beyond belief, beyond doubt, just this.
When there is nothing to know, when there is no belief and therefore no doubt, all that’s left is life itself, in all its beauty and rawness, and a deep, unshakeable knowing that this is all there is – and that this is enough (simply because this is all there is).
It’s not something that ‘you’ know. But, undoubtedly, it is known. Life knows, because life is. The Knowing is the Being, and in that, everything comes full circle, and life completes itself. The origin of life is its destination, and its destination is its origin. Creation and destruction are not-two.
To look life in the face, and to see only love, only an intimacy beyond words looking back at you, that’s when you know it’s all over... and only just beginning.
Welcome to Life Without A Centre, the life you are already living... the life you've always been living.
Jeff Foster
Watch :: The Work of Byron Katie tinyurl.com