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#3037 -
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
In this issue links to Dustin's Podcast
#5. I love the jazz opening and Dustin's relaxed reading
of fine excerpts. His news of upcoming interviews is exciting.
All the editors of the Highlights function independently, so I
pretty much find out what Dustin has put on his podcast
when everyone else does.
Sundance Burke's
new book is featured: Free Spirit: A Guide to Enlightened
Being. You'll read the book's description and an
excerpt. He writes clear as a whistle.
Nonduality
Highlights Podcast #5
Dustin writes:
I've just completed the next podcast for
Nonduality Highlights. A blurb about it is at the LiveJournal
nonduality community here:
http://community.livejournal.com/nonduality/144953.html
http://community.livejournal.com/nonduality/144953.html
And a direct link to the MP3 file itself is here:
http://lindensmith.com/nonduality/ndh_podcast_005.mp3
Hope you enjoy it!
Dustin.
Free Spirit: A
Guide to Enlightened Being, by Sundance Burke
http://www.freespirit-sundance.org/
Free Spirit
speaks as freedom, which is our Consciousness, the sweet essence
of our lives. The freedom spoken here is an inner knowing. We
cannot realize this liberation by catering to our bodies,
emotions or minds. No, this freedom is spiritual; an altitude of
perception that only arises when we are lighter than our
surroundings. We can realize this lightness of being if we are
willing to abide as Awareness and let go of the ego, the one who
suffers mind. For this enlightenment to happen, a quiet mind is
all we need and Awareness is our way. A guide to simply being.
Being Beyond
Belief
The experiences and
actions that evidence life do not require belief. The wind blows.
The birds sing. The sun and the moon rise and set over the
horizon. The sky turns color. The tide ebbs and flows. A newborn
child turns to its mother and father. None of this requires
belief. It just happens. This is not a satisfying interpretation
to the egocentric mind, but it is nonetheless true. Life and its
actions are inherently intelligent. Life does not require your
belief. So what is the effect of belief on life? Belief is an
artificial intelligence and it has no effect upon reality.
Belief is a fictional
story and as such, it is merely an illustration or interpretation
of what is. We make-believe, consciously and unconsciously. For
example, we are all familiar with a mirage of water in the
desert. There is no water in the mirage. There is only an image
of water and nothing more. This is imagination, a sensory
deception. At best, the mirage is a representation of water or a
pointer to water, but not the fact of water. A mirage is not a
belief in and of itself. A mirage is just an appearance in mind,
a visualized image. An additional element is required to form
"belief".
When who I am becomes
identified through the images I perceive, then belief is
created…something true in relation to "me." Belief
is a creature of what I think I am. All thoughts are capable of
being referenced to "me" and thereby made into "my
belief." Thoughts that are merely witnessed, without being
referenced to an objective identity, are beyond belief. When we
are not conscious of our thoughts as NOT SELF, we are living
under the influence of belief. As such, we are in ignorance to
who we are in the absence of our beliefs. This is the meaning of
the expression, "we cannot see the forest for the
trees." It is through the force of belief that we appear to
lose feeling contact with our pure Being and its free awareness.
You may remember the
scene in the classic movie, The Wizard of OZ, where Dorothy and
her friends entered the palace to meet the great wizard. In the
midst of a loud and fiery mechanical display by the so-called
wizard at the far end of the throne room, Dorothy's dog, Toto,
pulled back the curtain on a nearby cubicle. Therein, it is
revealed that a mere man is pulling and pushing the mechanical
levers that operate the all-powerful and fearsome wizard. The
man, realizing that his deception is being exposed, speaks into
the microphone serving as the voice of the wizard, and anxiously
says, "Ignore that little man behind the curtain." Like
this story, we have been under the false impression that the mind
is the almighty wizard. Our witnessing consciousness, Toto the
dog, has pulled back the curtain and we can see for ourselves
that the mind is nothing more than thoughts, parading as absolute
truth and reality.
All personal beliefs are
like a façade that may crumble without any disturbance to the
inner reality. For instance, the presence or absence of a mirage
has no effect upon the desert as it is. So, the question,
"Can human chaos be resolved?" is a belief-based
question. The very perception of chaos is a belief. Experience is
shaped by belief. Your experience may be chaos. But what is
experience?
It can be observed that
experience is just the reflection of what you hold as belief. Two
different people in similar life circumstances can have very
different experiences of the same event. Yet, life is what it is,
regardless of what we might think about it. So ultimately, our
chaos cannot be resolved when we think as we do, because we
believe in chaos. By believing in our fearful concept of self, we
support the experience of our suffering. The world merely
reflects the form and feeling of our convictions.
So, what is the real
nature of an identity founded in belief? Such an identity is
merely a concept, a thought-formed creation or fantasy. It cannot
be real, because this self-image disappears in the absence of
thought. It needs the activity of thinking to exist in any
manner. An identity gleaned from thought does not possess an
independent existence outside the realm of mind. It's true, you
can think about yourself. But who is that? You, as you truly are,
or simply a thought.
If your mental images of
self are not true, then neither are the desires and fears that
arise from those images. All images support the dream, including
the image of the dreamer. Thus, if "I desire to be
happy" and the "I" is misperceived, then the
desire is also a mistake. The effect of this irreconcilable
marriage is: I am desire and desire is I. If, we let go of the
imaginative attribute of desire in this equation, I am I is all
that remains. As this purity of presence, we are awake to all
experience, as its witness. While the witnessed is relative to
the shape of manifest conditions, witnessing is ever free.
Free Spirit: A
Guide to Enlightened Being, by Sundance Burke
Find out more about
Sundance, see a photo, and order the book here:
http://www.freespirit-sundance.org/