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Nondual Highlights Issue #1911 Saturday, September 4, 2004 Editor: Mark

Take away mind's attachment to the past
and mind is no-mind, because mind is the
attachment itself. So remove the attachments
and you will see the light of Peace and Love.

- Papaji posted by Catherine, on AdyashantiSatsang

A precious necklace was seen flashing from the bottom of a lake. Many felt tempted to recover the valuable ornament and dived deep into the water for it, but found no necklace anywhere. Yet it was clearly visible to everyone from the edge of the lake. They were all puzzled. Eventually they realized that there was no necklace at the bottom of the lake; what they saw was its reflection in the water. They looked up and discovered the precious ornament hanging from a tree. A bird must have picked it up from somewhere and deposited it there.

God who dwells within you is the source of true happiness. In the objects of the senses this happiness is merely reflected. The individual, misled by birth after birth by having only a glimpse of this reflected joy, thinks that this is the real thing, namely sensuous delight. So long as one believes that true happiness can be had in sense objects without searching within, one will never taste true happiness. The kingdom of God, hence of happiness, is within you.

- Anandamayi Ma

Thought is always in duality, divided. Awareness is non dual, whole. Thought can't see what is. It can only think about it. Awarenass sees. Awareness is open to anything. It doesn't "know" anything from the past; it is totally alive now - empty of preconceptions. Awareness sees no other. It says "yes" to what is. It includes everything and holds onto nothing. It is the aliveness, the energy, the core of everything. It is unconditioned, formless.

Thought thinks in opposites. It divides and classifies, resists and excludes. It knows what everything is,based on memory and projection. There are limited possibilities and many self-fulfilling prophesies. Thought is forever trying to get somewhere or accomplish something. It is mechanical, conditioned, habitual, patterned. Thought depends on awareness; awareness does not depend on thought. Awareness is upstream from thought; it contains thought and makes thought possible.

The action of awareness is unconditional love, infinite intelligence. Awareness has complete response-ability. It is spontaneous, free, open.

The action of thought is reaction based on memory, projection, habit, and survival. It is divisive, manipulative and strategic.

The danger in talking about all this is that the mind (which is a bunch of thoughts) is likely to conclude that awareness is "good" and thought is "bad", and soon we are desperately trying to "be aware" and "stop thinking", as if both are something "we" posses or not. We decide that enlightenment equals non-stop awareness, interpreted as mindfulness that never lapses, and no more unnecessary thinking ever. This is suffering. This is delusion. this is thinking.

Awareness is non-stop. It cannot be attained or practiced. Thought comes and goes in it. No "me" owns either experience. The "me" is simply a thought-sense that arises in awareness, an appearance with no actual reality.

taken from Awake in the Heartland, the Ecstasy of What Is by Joan Tollifson, posted on MiliionPaths by Yarden

When you know beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is and you are that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously. When you realize the depth and fullness of your love of yourself, you know that every living being and the entire universe are included in your affection.

- Nisargadatta, posted to AdyashantiSatsang by Bob O'Hearn

The Heart of Relationship

Awakening to the truth of perfect Unity, means to awaken from the dream of a personal self and personal others to the realization that there is no other. Many spiritual seekers have had glimpses of the absolute unity of all existence, but few are capable of or willing to live up to the many challenging implications inherent in that revelation. The revelation of perfect unity, that there is no other, is a realization of the ultimate impersonality of all that seems to be so very personal. Applying this realization to the arena of personal relationships is something that most seekers find extremely challenging, and is the number one reason why so many seekers never come completely to rest in the freedom of the Self Absolute. Inherent in the revelation of perfect unity is the realization that there is no personal me, no personal other, and therefore no personal relationships. Coming to terms with the challenging implications of this stunning realization is something that few people are willing to do. Because realizing the true impersonality of all that seems so personal, challenges every aspect of the illusion of a separate, personal self. It challenges the entire structure of personal relationships which are born of needs, wants, and expectations. It is in the arena of personal relationships that the illusion of a separate self clings most tenaciously and insidiously. Indeed, there is nothing that derails more spiritual seekers than the grasping at and attaching to personal relationships.

The revelation of perfect unity reveals the true impersonality of all relationships. The ego always interprets "impersonal" as meaning cold, distant, and aloof. However, "impersonal" simply means not personal, or void of a separate me and a separate you. The mind cannot comprehend of a relationship without separate entities. Much as a character in a dream cannot comprehend that all other dream characters are simply manifestations of the same dreamer. Yet when the dreamer awakens, he instantly comprehends that the entire dream, and all the characters in it, were none other than projections of his own self. In the dream there is the appearance of separate, personal entities in relationship, but upon awakening one comprehends the impersonal (non-separate) Self that is the source of all appearances.

To deeply inquire into the question "Who is another?" can lead to the direct experience that the other is one's own Self - that in fact there is no other. However, I have seen that for most seekers, even this direct experiential revelation is not enough to transform the painfully personal ways they relate. To come to this profound transformation requires a very deep investigation into the implications inherent within the experiential revelation that there is no other. It is in the daily living of these implications that most seekers fail. Why? Because, fundamentally, most people want to remain separate and in control. Simply put, most people want to keep dreaming that they are special, unique, and separate, more than they want to wake up to the perfect unity of an Unknown which leaves no room from any separation from the whole.

There is a powerful tendency in most spiritual seekers to avoid probing deeply into the implications inherent within profound spiritual experience and revelation, because these implications are always threatening to the sense of a separate self, or ego. It is the implications inherent within profound spiritual revelation that demand the transformation of the apparent individual.

Inherent within the revelation of perfect unity is the realization that there is no other. The implications of this realization reveal that in order to manifest that unity in the relative world, one must renounce the dream of being a separate self seeking to obtain anything through relationship with another. Indeed, personal relationship appears to happen in the relative world, but in reality, all appearances simply arise as temporary manifestations of a unified whole. In the relative world these appearances are in relationship, but not as separate entities. Rather, they are the play of the one Self projecting itself as apparent entities in relationship to one another.

As long as you identify yourself with the projection of separateness, you will continue to deny that you are the Source of all projections. When you truly and absolutely awaken to this fact, and comprehend the overwhelming implications inherent within this awakening, you will continually experience that all apparently personal relationships are in truth nothing other than the play of your Self. To realize that the personal me is an illusion born of false identification with the body, thoughts, and emotions, brings a profound sense of freedom. This is fundamentally the realization of emptiness, of what you are not. But contained within the realization of emptiness (formlessness) is also the realization of what you ARE. In the most absolute sense you ARE this conscious emptiness which is the source of all appearances (existence). But you are the appearance as well. Not just one part of the appearance called "me", but all of it , the entire whole. This is the challenge, to let your view get this vast. To let your view get so vast that your identity disappears. Then you realize that there is no other, and there is nothing personal going on.

Contrary to the way the ego will view such a realization, it is in reality the birth of true love. A love which is free of all boundaries and fear. To the ego such uncontaminated love is unbearable in its intimacy. When there is no clear separating boundaries and nothing to gain the ego becomes disinterested, angry, or frightened. In a love where there is no other there is nowhere to hide, no one to control, and nothing to gain. It is the coming together of appearances in the beautiful dance of the SELF called Love.

To the seeker who is sincere, an experiential glimpse of this possibility is not enough. If you are sincere you will find it within yourself to go far beyond any glimpse. You will find within your Self the courage to let go of the known and dive deeply into the Unknown heart of a mystery that calls you only to itself.

- Adyashanti, posted to AdyashantiSatsang by Bob O'Hearn

The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

- Mary Oliver. From The Paris Review # 124, Fall, 1992

Your Heart is the wisest thing in the universe. The sense of your self is always perfectly and accurately showing you how true things are, how complete your perspective is in every moment. Even when your Heart is contracted because of some deeply conditioned idea you’re holding, it is appropriately and accurately wise in its contraction.

No one has more capacity to distinguish how true things are than anyone else. No one is wiser than you, and no one is less wise than you either. Since no one else is able to experience your individual perspective, no one else can ever be more of an expert on your experience than you. Just as someone else cannot eat and digest your breakfast for you, others cannot experience and digest your perspective of the truth in each moment.

If no Heart is any wiser than any other, perhaps this is because there is just one Heart that functions through the many sensings of self through many bodies and yet is not contained in any of these particular expressions or experiences. What you are is this one Heart of Being.

- Nirmala from The Heart's Wisdom

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