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#3273 - Friday, August 29, 2008 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
In this issue an excerpt from Scott Kiloby's new book, Love's Quiet Revolution: The End of the Spiritual Search. Scott lives near Evansville, Indiana, U.S.A. On his website, http://www.kiloby.com, you can read more from his book, access his other writings, watch videos, find out about retreats, addiction recovery, and internet satsang using Skype. Scott offers a solid nonduality, as I think you'll see.
Love's Quiet Revolution: The End of the Spiritual Search
by Scott Kiloby
http://www.kiloby.com/
Order from http://www.amazon.com/Loves-Quiet-Revolution-Spiritual-Search/dp/1419695789/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220097646&sr=1-1
Excerpts from Chapter 24: The Liberation of Not Knowing
Beliefs or thoughts such as, “It’s
all One,” or “there is no self,” will not lead to
enlightenment. They are merely forms arising in ‘This.’
They can actually keep thought locked into the dream of self.
Belief cannot see ‘This’ because belief is
identification with thought, which is self. Belief is too busy
maintaining an identity or holding onto a position to see the
truth beyond all identities and positions. ‘This’ just
is. It is free, loving, and open. It has no preference for the
characterizations we place on it, the positions we take on it, or
the identities we make out of it. Thought is temporary,
self-involved, and largely involuntary. To believe that thought
can truly tell you who you are or what ‘This’ or God
is, is the dream.
. . . . . . . . . . .
So what is ‘This?’ What is enlightenment? It is not the
words ‘This,’ One, enlightenment or God. ‘This’
is realized through seeing what it is not. Liberation is beyond
belief and thought, and yet it includes it. In other words, it
plays with preferences and concepts, but it is not attached to
them. It is not seeking a sense of self from them.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
If you listen to non-duality teachers or read books on it, the
mind may start to believe this stuff. It gets lost again in the
conceptual. Then, it believes that all is One. But belief will
never see ‘This.’ ‘This’ is nothing the
intellect can grasp. It is vast, and includes it all. ‘This’
does not get stuck on the level of the mind in any way, including
notions that we should use only certain words or that words can
even express it. In other words, ‘This’ does not get
stuck on self. ‘This’ is that within which expressions
of ‘This’ arise.
To say that the spirit should be expressed a certain way, or is a
certain thing, comes from a point of reference, which is
identification with thought. It is self. If I use the word “God”
or “Allah” here and you are a Christian or a Muslim,
something in your brain will register that word as being the
truth. On the other hand, if you read a lot of non-duality books,
the word “One” or “presence” may trigger a
familiar mental response. The brain is simply stuck in words and
beliefs. It is chasing after its own ideas. This stuckness is
obscuring the truth of ‘This.’
. . . . . . . . . . . .
You will know liberation when it strikes. You will close this
book and never open it again. I wrote this book knowing that if
you see what it is pointing to, you will stop reading it. When
liberation strikes, you will see your favorite guru as no
different than your neighbor or a frog beside the road. You will
stop being concerned with making the point that your guru, your
neighbor, and the frog are not separate. You will know in your
heart that they are not separate, but you will see that the
mental insistence energy behind your point just creates the
illusory separate self known as you. You will stop making points
about God, as if you have any idea who or what that is. Or you
will continue making points, without any notion that your points
have anything to do with that to which the word God points.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Every moment is teaching us. But it is not teaching us an
accumulation of ideas, which we can carry with us over time. We
are not becoming spiritual egos who know something. Life is
teaching us that we are not separate from it and that love means
not knowing, not resisting, and not trying to control.
Accumulation, by its very nature, creates a rigid, separate dream
self which is trying to know, resist, and control life. This self
is at war with life.
Insight is fresh, new, innocent, and clear. It cannot be carried
over into the next moment. True spiritual learning has nothing to
do with memory. It is the moment by moment awareness of what is
arising and falling. It is holding onto nothing. It is the wisdom
that sees that life begins and ends in this moment. It is
constantly waking you up out of your points of reference, out of
your false sense of mental certainty, and out of the dream of
separation—all of which is the past in you.
Love's Quiet Revolution: The End of the Spiritual Search
by Scott Kiloby http://www.kiloby.com/