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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3367, Sunday, November 30, 2008, Editor: Mark
Adya at Omega 2007
The gap between what is realized and what we can actualize
Somebody or a couple of people I think wrote me, questions...
I've been talking about it quite a bit, questions about, what I
would call, closing the gap between what we realized and how we
are, how we live and how we are being. Everything that could
happen. I could sit and talk for a week and bore you to tears
about it It can't really be put into a nice talk, but it's
something in many ways we each have to discover for ourselves,
you know?
My own teacher... fortunately I met a teacher, the very first
teacher I ever went to, by the way, that really resonated with me
and stayed resonant, and was exactly what I needed and her basic
attitude, her basic principle, at least with me - I would go in
and ask her this question sometimes, I'd ask her that question
sometimes and she would never give me a direct answer. I'd ask
her how to meditate, always the first thing she'd ask me, 'So
what are you doing?' Well, I'm doing this and I'm doing that.
'How's it going?' Well, it's kind of like this and kind of like
that. Through questions she would sort of reorient me to a deeper
perception of what was happening. But never say exactly 'Do this,
don't do that.'
Basically with me, her attitude was 'Sit down. Shut up. Find it
out yourself.' Which isn't always the necessary attitude but
ultimately we each have to find that we do have the resource
inside. You must discover the resource inside. You must discover
the resource inside. And when you discover that you can't
discover the all the resources inside, that you as a 'me' can't
do it, so when I say you must discover all the inner resources
inside of you, what I really mean is you must allow them to be
shown to you.
I can assure you that what I speak about; none of this for the
most part are things that my teacher told me or taught me. It all
comes from inside. It all comes from inside. Everybody finds out.
The unity inside, what we really are.
And there is a time when there is that gap between what is
realized and what we can actualize, right? How we are as a human
being. There's often a gap and there's no secret to closing this
gap except in amazing ability to be real and honest with
yourself. An unflinching willingness not to look away from
anything that causes the illusion of separateness, discord. To
not look away, to look at it, to bring it out into the light. To
let it dissipate under the gaze of a silent scrutiny. I hinted at
a few times in this retreat. I told a few stories. I could tell
many many more, which I won't, but this process that I'm talking
about; this wasn't a quick overnight process for me, as I said, I
had my first awakening when I was 25 years old. I would say it
took me a good 7 8 years to really be able to actualize it.
And it wasn't the only awakening. It was the first. The more I
could actualize, the more I realized and the more I realized the
more I could actualize. But those 7 years were a wild 7 years,
you know? It may not be 7 years for you; it may be 7 months, it
may be 17; you never know.
But the whole idea of just being totally real. The question is
there. Is it real? The belief systems are there. You'll see them.
They create the gaps, they create the illusion of separation. The
functioning of it comes to you. It comes to you through your own
inner contemplation, through really looking inside. Even when all
the contradictions and belief patterns are no longer giving you
much trouble at all, when Being is really moving and operating
for you, it still doesn't mean that you know exactly how to do
it. Some people that it happens very quickly for, can actually be
almost totally inoperable, so you may not want it totally
suddenly all at once, you know? A guy like Eckhart Tolle, he was
basically semi-inoperable for years. Because all the realization
was there but it takes the body and the mind and your whole
system to reorient itself to such a radically different
perspective than you have and basically anyone around you has,
that it takes time. So if it happens extraordinarily quickly, it
can really throw people into a semi-inoperable state for awhile.
Of course the nice thing is, if you're really awake, you don't
really mind. It's one of the nice advantages, you know? You
realize it's all fine. It's all good. You not really in much
anxiety about it.
For most people it doesn't quite hit that sudden, but almost
everybody will go through in their own way some sense of not
knowing how to actualize what they realize. And I'm talking now
even after vast amounts of the conditioning have been seen though
and fallen away. Still it doesn't mean you'll know exactly how to
actualize, operate. And no one can tell you. No one can say,
'Here's how to do it. Here's the 5 steps to doing it.'
Because you don't do it. It's more like your system adapts. So we
adapt to our own realization physically, literally physically. We
physically undergo transformations. The energy patterns in our
body change. The way the energy moves changes. I remember for a
couple of years I felt like somebody, you know those old
switchboards for telephones? Back in who knows when, you had
switchboard operators unplug and plug. It felt like somebody was
doing that in my brain for 2 years. Rewiring the whole way the
brain works. And so it can be in many parts of our being, there
can be a lot of physical changes, a lot of physical shakedowns.
The energies can be quite intense for some people. For some
people they are just a blip, for some people they are very
intense. And everything in between.
And so even on a literal physical level there is transformation
that happens in the body, there's of course transformation
emotionally and there is certainly transformation intellectually.
The way the brain works. And of course there's great
transformation transcendentally on the unmanifest being. All this
goes on as part of awakening. And it doesn't stay like that
forever. At a certain point it's like sediment settling in a
pond. Things do settle. Your system reorients. The mind comes
into a different and much more simple clarity. Even thought
itself it's not that you never think again you think much
much less. But thought itself becomes a tool of Presence. It
speaks Presence. It manifests presence rather than manifesting
discursive chaotic thinking patterns. And our speech is the same
way. So everything can undergo a transformation.
And something my teacher told me that I like to pass on a lot
which I think is really vital is that this is a totally natural
process. The more you trust it, the more you let it happen, the
more you stop trying to direct it, and self-guide it and make
certain things happen, the more you let go and realize it is a
natural process in just the same way that your body growing from
an infant to an adult, growing up and increasing in size, is
natural. You don't know how it does it necessarily and even if
you do, you don't really help it. Except feed it, take care of
it. But it's a natural process and a lot of people don't
understand that. It's a totally natural part of development.
It can get out of whack. It can get out of balance sometimes you
need a little help here, a little help there but you don't need
to be guiding it. Once you realize it's natural, something in you
very deeply in the core starts to relax. And the more deeply that
in the core of you relaxes, the more natural and simple it goes.
So I understand I'm speaking in generalities. To some people what
I am speaking about really won't make any sense at all. For other
people it will very much make sense cause they're experiencing
some amount of it. But there's difficulty in giving a talk about
it cause there's too much there. I just want to paint a picture
because the most helpful thing is for the mind have context. When
the mind has a certain context it relaxes. That's part of
forgetting yourself. Letting go of that which is trying to figure
things out. So that's the attitude...
- Adyashanti Omega 2007, posted to adyashantigroup