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#3326 - Tuesday, October 21, 2008 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights
The Enlightenment Secret
You are not a separate being. You are Being, and never
separate. This is the Enlightenment, the nondual awareness,
the happiness, in which all apparent things consist. It is the
very Being of you.
How to "see" that you are nondual awareness?
Your experience confirms this at every moment. Look at it
with openness, without rehearsing a worldview you might have
learned in school or on TV:
The world, body, and mind appear as sensations, feelings and
thoughts. These appearances are all arisings in awareness. The
person does not see these arisings. Rather, the person is made up
out of these arisings, including the supposed act of seeing. If
these arisings are investigated, it can be seen that they do not
reach outside themselves. They cannot point to each other, touch
each other or contain each other. It is only memory that suggests
that there has ever been another arising. But memory itself is
nothing more than an arising. It cannot truly point backwards or
forwards to anything, for during this apparent pointing, there
are no objects to be pointed to. There is truly nothing in
experience that establishes that there has ever been anything
other than THIS. There is no evidence that there were ever even
two arisings. If there cannot be two arisings, how can there be
even one? What is left? Awareness, your true nature.
--Greg Goode
http://heartofnow.com
Gaining Confidence in Awareness
John Astin
http://www.integrativearts.com/blog/?p=193
I recently heard a phrase which I believe comes out of the Tibetan non-dual tradition of Dzogchen, “gaining confidence in awareness.” That is the sense of what has been happening here and I believe, happening for many of the people I know who are engaged in this kind of investigation and inquiry. Awareness is first recognized to be the ever-present ground and source of all that is, the light of wakefulness that illumines all experience, the emptiness that dances as all form. But for most people, there is not initially a deep and abiding confidence in its ever-present nature. And so, seeking for it, seeking for something else, returns in all its many forms. It is in many ways, understandable that we would seemingly lose sight of the ever-present nature of awareness, for the simple reason that awareness cannot be seen. It is what is SEEING. But you see, the seeing is always happening, is it not? Something is always being seen, even if in certain moments, what is being seen is the sense that nothing is being seen or that what is being seen is somehow not quite enough. But, it doesn’t much matter what is there - pleasant, unpleasant, clear, confused, ordinary, extraordinary, a sense of remembering or forgetting, opening or closing - the seeing is always there at the center. It cannot be absent for everything that appears, appears to the seeing. Everything is illumined by that dark and invisible light. And, even more, everything IS none other than that light, the seen none other than the seeing. The seeing outshines everything for it IS everything. Never absent. Always present. And always, only ever now…
May we all gain confidence in this Friend we will never see, this awakeness that is beyond all points of view even as it shines in and through and as them all.
In the words of Adyashanti, “You are neither free nor bound, but ever-present.”
In Gratitude and Love…
John Astin
http://www.integrativearts.com/blog/?p=193
Peter and Vicki
~ ~ ~
Even in a stiff gale,
Even with cloudless skies,
Many fathoms down, it's dark,
Sea depths are always calm.
Whales know this,
They visit the surface, but live deep.
Pete
~ ~ ~
Hi, Pete...this is lovely...
and reminded me of an essay on my Fishpond Page. Here 'tis...
Today found me frolicking on the surface of my life. On a hot
July day, I rose from the ocean depths to the clear blue of the
surface. I parted company with the water and briefly played with
the shore.
I responded to human love and companionship, a great treasure in
itself. But nothing compares to the depths of spirit where we
live and move and have our being. We are creatures of the deeps
of God. But He allows us moments and hours of sheer pleasure in
the company of friends.
I saw the white, white sands of personality and picked up a
precious sand dollar called "Being Understood." There
is nothing quite like putting a perfect sand dollar in your
pocket, is there? I touched the silken petals of the human heart
beating in time with mine.
All too soon it ended and I returned to the solitary sounds of
sonar and splash. I had made a momentary break with Oneness to
look into the mirror of daily life. A disco ball of joy flashed
on my brief time ashore. But I don't belong on shore after all. A
brief return suffices to remind me of my mission here on earth. I
will leave you with the mystery of what it is, for it is the same
as yours.
http://www.vickiwoodyard.com/fishpond.htm