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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3303, Sunday, September 28, 2008, Editor: Mark
The key is to be in a state of permanent connectedness with your
inner body - to feel it at all times. This will rapidly deepen
and transform your life. The more consciousness you direct into
the inner body, the higher its vibrational frequency becomes.
- Eckhart Tolle, posted to The_Now2
To realize this inexpressible truth, do not manipulate mind or
body, but simply open into transparency with relaxed, natural
grace, intellect at ease in silence, limbs at rest in stillness
like hollow bamboos. Neither breathing in nor breathing out with
the breath of habitual thinking, allow the mind to be at peace in
brilliant wakefulness.
Phenomena on every plane of being are constantly arising and
disappearing. Thus they are forever fresh, always new and
inexhaustible. Like dreams without solid substance, they can
never become rigid or binding. The universe exists in a deep,
elusive way that can never be grasped or frozen. Why feel
obsessive desire or hatred for it, thereby creating illusory
bonds?
Strenuously seeking truth by investigation and concentration, one
will never appreciate the unthinkable simplicity and bliss that
abide at the core. To uncover this fertile ground, cut through
the roots of complexity with the sharp gaze of naked awareness,
remaining entirely at peace, transpaent and content. You need not
expend great effort nor store up extensive spiritual power.
Remain in the flow of sheer awareness. Mahamudra neither accepts
nor rejects any current of energy, internal or external.
Since the ground consciousness is never born into any realm of
being, nothing can add to or subtract from it. Nothing can
obstruct or stain it. When awareness rests here, the appearance
of division and conflict disappears into original reality. The
twin emotions of anxiety and arrogance vanish into the void from
which they came.
- from Tilopa's Song to Naropa, from Mother of the
Buddhas by Lex Hixon
The Indispensable Qualities of Awakening
In essence the entire spiritual endeavor is a very simple thing:
Spirituality is essentially about awakening as the intuitive
awareness of unity and dissolving our attachment to egoic
consciousness. By saying that spirituality is a very simple
thing, I do not mean to imply that it is either an easy or
difficult endeavor. For some it may be very easy, while for
others it may be more difficult. There are many factors and
influences that play a role in one's awakening to the greater
reality, but the greatest factors by far are one's sincerity,
one-pointedness, and courage.
Sincerity is a word that I often use in teaching to convey the
importance of being rooted in the qualities of honesty,
authenticity, and genuineness. There can be nothing phony or
contrived in our motivations if we are to fully awaken to our
natural and integral state of unified awareness. While teachings
and teachers can point us inward to "the peace beyond all
understanding," it isalways along the thread of our inner
sincerity, or lack thereof, that we will travel. For the ego is
clever and artful in the ways of deception, and only the honesty
and genuineness of our ineffable being are beyond its influence.
At each step and with each breath we are given the option of
acting and responding, both inwardly and outwardly, from the
conditioning of egoic consciousness which values control and
separation above all else, or from the intuitive awareness of
unity which resides in the inner silence of our being.
Without sincerity it is so very easy for even the greatest
spiritual teachings to become little more than playthings of the
mind. In our fast-moving world of quick fixes, big promises, and
short attention spans, it is easy to remain on a very surface
level of consciousness without even knowing it. While the
awakened state is ever present and closer than your feet, hands,
or eyes, it cannot be approached in a casual or insincere
fashion. There is a reason that seekers the world ovr are
instructed to remove their shoes and quiet their voices before
entering into sacred spaces. The message being conveyed is that
one's ego must be "taken off and quieted" before access
to the divine is granted. All of our ego's attempts to control,
demand, and plead with reality have no influence on it other than
to make life more conflicted and difficult. But an open mind and
sincere heart have the power to grant us access to realizing what
has always been present all along.
When people asked the great Indian sage Nisargadatta what he
thought was the most important quality to have in order to
awaken, he would say "earnestness." When you are
earnest, you are both sincere and one-pointed; to be one-pointed
means to keep your attention on one thing. I have found that the
most challenging thing for most spiritual seekers to do is to
stay focused on one thing for very long. The mind jumps around
with its concerns and questions from moment to moment. Rarely
does it stay with one question long enough t penetrate it deeply.
In spirituality it is very important not to let the egoic mind
keep jumping from one concern to the next like an untrained dog.
Remember, awakening is about realizing your true nature and
dissolving all attachment to egoic consciousness.
My grandmother who passed away a few years ago used to say to me
jokingly, "Getting old is not for wimps." She was well
aware of the challenges of an aging body, and while she never
complained or felt any pity for herself, she knew firsthand that
aging had its challenges as well as its benefits. There was a
courage within my grandmother that served her well as she
approached the end of her life, and I am happy to say that when
she passed, it was willingly and without fear. In a similar way
the process of coming into a full and mature awakening requires
courage, as not only our view of life but life itself transforms
to align itself with the inner mystic vision. A sincere heart is
a robust and courageous heart willing to let go in the face of
thegreat unknown expanse of Being - an expanse which the egoic
mind has no way of knowing or understanding.
When one's awareness opens beyond the dream state of egoic
consciousness to the infinite no-thing-ness of intuitive
awareness, it is common for the ego to feel much fear and terror
as this transition begins. While there is nothing to fear about
our natural state of infinite Being, such a state is beyond the
ego's ability to understand, and as always, egos fear whatever
they do not understand and cannot control. As soon as our
identity leaves the ego realm and assumes its rightful place as
the infinite no-thing-ness/every-thing-ness of awareness, all
fear vanishes in the same manner as when we awaken from a bad
dream. In the same manner in which my grandmother said,
"Getting old is not for wimps," it can also be said
that making the transition from the dream state to the mature,
awakened state requires courage.
Sincerity, one-pointedness, and courage are indispensable
qualities in awakening rom the dream state of ego to the peace
and ease of awakened Being. All there is left to do is to live
it.
- Adyashanti
All effort at controlling thoughts, appetites and desires cannot
but strengthen them along with the ego. Whatever has to go must
fall off by itself. All that you are concerned with, all that you
are, is the impersonal functioning of understanding. So let that
understanding work through witnessing without judgement, knowing
that there is nothing else that you can do.
- Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels