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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3352, Sunday, November 16, 2008, Editor: Mark
Most people are in a constant state of struggle with themselves.
Tremendously burdened by the past and in constant anticipation of
the future, most human beings are rarely able to be fully present
for more than very brief moments. The tremendous openness and
intimacy that is required to be fully present is beyond most
people's ability to sustain for more than a few moments before
they habitually contract back into the familiar condition of
separateness and struggle that so characterizes the human
condition. This constant state of struggle manifests as a
compulsive and addictive relationship to the movement of thought,
emotion, and time.
There is great reluctance to stop struggling because in the
absence of struggle you suddenly begin to lose your boundaries
and definitions of who you are. For many people this causes fear
to arise as they experience the loss of their familiar sense of
self. Struggling is how the ego-personality maintains its
existence. When you cease to struggle, identification wth the
personality begins to break down and you become aware of your
emptiness and lack of boundaries.
The most difficult thing for spiritual seekers to do is to stop
struggling, striving, seeking, and searching. Why? Because in the
absence of struggle you don't know who you are; you lose your
boundaries, you lose your separateness, you lose your
specialness, you lose the dream you have lived all your life.
Eventually you lose everything that your mind has created and
awaken to who you truly are: the fullness of freedom, unbound by
any identifications, identities, or boundaries.
It is this locationless freedom of being that spiritual people
are seeking, and at the same time are running away from because
its faceless nature gives no fixed reference point for the
personality to hold onto or to seek security in. As long as you
remain identified with the personality, you will always be
seeking security to the exclusion of the Truth, and will remain
in a constant state of struggle. It is only whe your love and
desire for Truth outweigh the personality's compulsive need for
security that you can begin to stop struggling and be swept up
into the arms of an ever-unfolding revelation of the Truth and
Freedom of Being.
- Adyashanti
Once you realize that all happens by itself (call it destiny, or
the will of God, or mere accident), you remain as witness only,
understanding and enjoying, but not perturbed.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANewofJewels
The mesmerizing seductiveness of the dream is seen in the
long-standing belief that, someday, (if the dreamer only plays
his cosmic cards right), he will, eventually, "awaken."
But, in truth, the so-called "Enlightenment Bus" that
he's been waiting for will never show up for him. Why? Well in
expecting that some future awakening may occur for him somewhere
in time, he's only reinforcing the belief that the very same
Consciousness he is seeking is not 100% fully present for him...
right here and now.
- Chuck Hillig, posted to The_Now2
There is a great momentum of suffering and confusion that every
spiritual seeker encounters. It is the momentum of ignorance
which manifests as the experience of conflict and confusion and
which causes suffering. In order to discover the perspective of
liberation, which alone transcends this entire movement of
ignorance and suffering, one needs to let everything end.
"Letting everything end" means to stand in the moment
completely naked of attachment to any and all ideas, concepts,
hopes, preferences, and experiences. Simply put, it means to stop
strategizing, controlling, manipulating, and running away from
yourself--and to simply be. Finally you must let everything end
and be still.
In letting everything end, all seeking and striving stops. All
effort to be someone or to find some extraordinary state of being
ceases. This ceasing is essential. It is true spiritual maturity.
By ceasing to follow the mind's tendency to always want more,
different, or better, one encounters the opportunity to be till.
In being still, a perspective is revealed which is free from all
ignorance and bondage to suffering. From that perspective,
eternal Self is realized. The eternal Self, the Seer, is
recognized to be one's true nature, one's very own Self.
This is an invitation to let all seeking end, all striving end,
all efforting end, all past identity end, all hopes end, and to
discover That which has no beginning or end. This is an
invitation to discover the eternal, unborn, undying Truth of
being. The Truth of your being, your own Self. Let the entire
movement of becoming end, and discover That which has always been
present at the core of your being.
- Adyashanti