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#2839 - Sunday, June 10, 2007 - Editor: Gloria Lee
Nondual Highlights
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"Your recovered essence easily makes right
decisions because
it has no false self to protect."
--Vernon Howard
"Anyway, I told them I'm everything."
(A poem by Hafiz, 1320 c.e to 1389)
I have learned so much from God
That I can no longer call myself
a Christian, a Hindu, A Muslim, A Buddhist, a Jew.
The Truth has shared so much of Itself with me
That I can no longer call myself
a man, a woman, an angel, or even a pure soul.
Love has befriended Hafiz.
It has turned to ash and freed me
Of every concept and image my mind has ever known.
~ ~ ~ (A
poem by Ibn El-Arabi circa 1202 c.e.)
My heart is capable of every form:
A Cloister for the monk, a fan for idols,
A pasture for gazelles, a votary's Ka'ba,
The tables of the Torah, the Quran.
Love is the creed I hold:
Wherever turn His camels,
Love is still my creed and faith.
posted by Tom on GardenMystics
from http://www.atmapress.com/Articles/Ramana/Ramana_1.htm
(What follows below are answers given by Ramana at various
times to devotee's questions, strung together and brought into
flowing English for ease of comprehension.)
There is no greater mystery than this, that being the reality yourself, you seek to gain reality.
You think there is something binding your reality and that something must be destroyed before the reality is freed. This is ridiculous.
A day will dawn when you will laugh at all your efforts. What is there to realize? The real is always as it is.
You have realized the unreal, in other words, you regard the unreal as that which is real. Give up this attitude and you will attain wisdom.
There is nothing new nor anything you do not already have which needs to be gained. The feeling that you have not yet realized is the sole obstruction to realization.
In fact, you are already free. If it were not so, the realization would be new. If it has not existed so far, it must take place hereafter. What comes will also go, what can be gained can also be lost.
If realization is not eternal it is not worth having. Therefore what you seek is not that which must happen afresh. It is only that which is eternal, but not now known due to obstruction.
Remove the obstruction. That which is eternal is not known to be so because of ignorance. Ignorance is the obstruction. Get over the ignorance and all will be well.
The ignorance is identical with the 'I-thought'. Find its source and it will vanish. Then the Self alone will shine as it always has, in the stillness of being.
~ ~ ~
Free Books - Talks with Ramana Maharshi & Spiritual Discourses of Shri Atmananda
http://www.advaita.org.uk/reading/free_sages.htm
posted to Wisdom-l list
Some John Wheeler pointers.........
Your true nature does not fluctuate due to the changing states of the body and mind. Moods or thoughts appear within the same singular, knowing presence that you are. Understand your identity as this knowing presence, not as transient thoughts, feelings or bodily states. Knowing who you are does not imply any change in the states at all. Such changes may occur naturally as the false identity drops out of picture. The same (apparently good or bad) states may still arise, but your vantage point, your sense of self, shifts away from the content to a deeper and unchanging source. This is not an attainment, but a recognition of something that was ever present but overlooked.
******************
Questions and doubts are thoughts arising and setting before you. They come and go, but you remain as what you are. You clearly exist and you are clearly aware. Everything else is an object that comes and goes. Everything you can sense, perceive or know is a thing, an object, an appearance. This includes the apparent body, mind, personality and all else.
All you can say about yourself is "I am" and "I know". In relation to appearances, the most accurate thing you can say is "I am nothing perceivable or conceivable". Awareness or being are not things "out there" that you see apart from yourself. You ARE that which is present and aware. You are that pure knowing presence itself. This is so simple and intuitively obvious that we overlook the point that this is completely self-evident. Instead of simply pausing at this point, we are apt to jump back into the questions and doubts of the mind granting them a sense of reality. Suddenly, we are talking about "I" and "awareness" and trying to piece it all together at a conceptual level, and of course we come up empty handed. That is why the answer can never be found in the mind.
The mind, as such, has no capacity to know your real nature. The mind is simply a label for a collection of inert thoughts rising and setting before your knowing presence. That is why all the questions and doubts fail to lead us to the direct knowing of who we are.
Before the next thought appears, you ARE. This presence, the sheer fact of being and knowing, does not need any confirmation by thought. It is clear and certain knowledge that does not need any mind activity to confirm. Everyone knows "he is". That knowing does not engage the conceptual mind at all. It is evident. It is more than evident. It is beyond doubt, even now. You cannot say "I am not" or "I am not aware". Try it and see if you can convince yourself otherwise! That is what is very interesting about this. The clear and certain self-knowledge is already established. Our trouble is that we give undue emphasis to the mind. "What about this?" "What about that?" But can those thoughts even be there without your presence?
The mind creates the notion of a limited "I", a person, a being standing apart from pure presence-awareness, then we identify as that seeming entity. But that itself is just a concept that comes and goes, leaving us totally untouched and unchanged. Taking that separation as real, we look for techniques to gain reality. We wonder how we will achieve knowledge of who we are. But these are all founded on the notion that we are a separate "I" apart from reality. We take this thought to be who we are, imagine a duality and seek understanding, as if we do not have it. But it is all conceptual, because we have never left reality. Reality is simple being, which is present and aware. You are that even now. The notion of separation, the "I" thought, which is the basis of all concepts, is simply a notion that comes and goes as an image in the pure untouched awareness that you are.
So just pause thought and know that you are already that which you have been seeking. All the doubts and questions are based on the presumption that you are separate from being-awareness. But that separation never happened. You are that knowing presence, even now. Words are apt to over complicate the utter simplicity of this.
http://www.thenaturalstate.org/index.html
posted to TheNow_2