Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nonduality Highlights each day
How to submit material to the Highlights
Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3252, Saturday, August 9, 2008, Editor: Mark
When asked what he did for his disciples, the Master said,
"What a sculptor does for the statue of a tiger. He takes a
block of marble and pounds away at anything that doesn't look
like a tiger." When his disciples later asked what exactly
he meant, the Master said, "My task is to hammer away at
everything that isn't you -- every thought, feeling, attitude,
compulsion that adheres to your form, your culture, and your
past." - Anthony de Mello, S.J., posted to The_Now2
The mind creates time and space, and takes its own creations for
reality. All is here and now, but we do not see it. Truly, all is
in me and by me. There is nothing else. The very idea of
"else" is a disaster and a calamity.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
One of the most spiritual practices is to meditate deeply on the
mortality of physical forms, including your own. The physical
form dissolves and is no more. Then all thoughts also die. Yet
you are still there - the divine presence that you are. Radiant,
fully awake.
- Eckhart Tolle, posted to The_Now2
There comes a point of willingness to surrender individuality. In
that willingness, what is actually released is conditioned
individuality, and individual consciousness reveals itself to be
unified with all consciousness. Yet, first must come the
willingness to lose everything that is perceived to be the
individual self.
Fear arises only because the reality of this loss cannot be
imagined. When the loss comes, it is actually very good news. The
individual identity is revealed to be the husk that covers the
sweet truth of self-realization.
Mind patterns of defense against nothingness, against emptiness,
can be found wrapped around this fear. These patterns are
strategic responses to fear.
The mind may quickly become very active: "Yes, but what does
this mean? This can't be so. How will I be able to do my
job?"
Just for this moment, let all those thoughts fall aside. Allow
your mind to rest in nothing -- being nothing, doing nothing,
having nothing, getting nothing, keepng nothing.
In this moment, if you can actually, willingly, consciously,
simply be nothing at all, in a flash you can discover the peace,
the expansion, the freedom from boundaries inherent in
nothingness.
- Gangaji, from The Diamond In Your Pocket, posted to
The_Now2
Awakening reveals that there is no personal self, and that
everything is myself. It appears to be a paradox. We find we are
nothing and absolutely everything simultaneously.
When we see this, we realize there is nothing more happening
other than love meeting itself -- or we could say you are meeting
yourself, or the Truth is meeting itself, or God is meeting
itself.
Love meets itself each moment, even if it's a rotten moment. This
will never happen through the egoic state of consciousness,
filtered through the mind. But from the innocence, love is simply
meeting itself.
If you love me, it meets that. If you hate me, fine, it meets
that, too. And it loves meeting that. I am talking about the One
meeting itself, realizing itself, experiencing itself.
- Adyashanti, from Emptiness Dancing, posted to The_Now2