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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3415, Saturday, January 17, 2009, Editor: Mark
Editor's note: I've got two peices this evening. One is a bit of
a satsang with Adyashanti, transcribed by Mark Scorelle. I have
been so grateful to Mark for transcribing these and posting them
to adyashantigroup, and so I'm posting it here. The other is
access to a video in 4 peices; the first 3 of which are an
interview with Eckhart Tolle, and the 4th of which is a panel of
Unity Ministers discussing the interview. Neither are
short, but I thought both were well worth the time.
Love, Mark
Adyashanti: Good evening.
Questioner: This is my first retreat with you.
A: That's funny. It's my first retreat with you.
Q: But I'm the beginner.
A: You better believe I am too. More than you would imagine.
Q: Well, I'm struggling with something and its going to sound a
bit theoretical but its really very personal.
A: Okay.
Q: A little background, I get paid to think. I'm a teacher. Okay
that can become an addiction. My background is Christian and I'm
still hanging in there.
A: Very good.
Q: Trying to preserve what I think is really valuable in the
tradition although I must admit I am a bit religiously
promiscuous in my Christianity.
A: Apparently so, yeah.
Q: You might say I sit around a lot.
This is it, it goes back to the question that came up the first
evening, with the gentleman who watches CNN and BBC and gets
upset. I watch CNN and BBC too... and get upset. Now what I'm
trying to do; I want to be as brief asI can, I'm trying to make
connections between what I've been and what I'm trying to be -
all that I've learned, I think I've learned so much during these
past days. But part of my tradition that I still want to affirm
is what we Christians inherited from our Jewish parents. It's
called 'tikkun olam;' fixing the world. We've got to fix the
world. That's especially the Jewish prophets - including Jesus -
and they all said 'you've got to fix the world.' The main reason
they said 'you've got to fix the world' is because they saw not
only the suffering within each of us that we cause ourselves so
often; not only the broader, but they were kind of specific,
Adya. They saw the suffering of people who are suffering because
of what some people do to them. In other words some people who
are not very enlightened of course but it's the suffering that is
inflicted and it comes under the rubric of 'justice.' Or
'injustice.' And responding to injustice, we've got to fix the
world.
You addressed this and I got partof it but I guess I just want
you to say it again once more for me. How do I put together,
'everything's okay the way it is,' 'surrender to it,' and 'the
world needs to change.' 'Accept it; fix it.'
A: They seem diametrically opposed.
Q: And it gets really... I feel it. When you look at the
suffering that is inflicted on innocent people blown away by
bombs, either terrorist or military. By families in the inner
city that can't feed their kids. Children denied health care. And
the biggie that touches us all, what we are doing to this
wonderful Earth. I know you're going to tell me...
A: Well this will save time, won't it?
Q: I think you're going to tell me that before you can fix it,
you've got to accept it. I see because of the trouble with our
fixing it, I guess I tend to get fixated on our fixing. Ego
enters into it.
A: Yeah. Q: Just help me; what's the gap? I think we've got to
overcome the gap between accepting it and trying to do something
about it. How does one mov?
A: Because either one of those - even the accept everything as it
is - if that gets taken as the 'truth,' then that's just as
illusory as 'it's a mess, we gotta fix everything.' You see it's
more like a medicine; it's a prescription, right? If we have this
terrible disease of apparent division and strife, then one of the
prescriptions is 'allow everything to be.' But it's like taking
antibiotics if you're sick. True health isn't taking antibiotics
for the rest of your life, is it? True health isn't contained in
the drug and true health isn't contained in the sickness. It's
contained ultimately outside of either one of them, so... - by
the way, these are two difficulties that people run into even in
their own realization.
Sometimes we start out from a divided point of view, seeing
seemingly everything's a mess and division and hate and ignorance
and greed and violence and all of that, and that leads to a lot
of division. And then we can have a great awakening and see
there's nobody doing it. t's all done spontaneously, and then the
mind still jumps in and makes a conclusion, "Ooh, why get
involved?"
It's just doing - and even then the realization becomes, as I
have said many times, a new fixation. Right, so let's see it this
way... If you're gonna think of it, more importantly; feel it,
allowing everything to be as it is. It's sort of restores a sense
of balance. It heals a certain anxiety and if there's a total of
spontaneous happening of truly allowing everything to be, which
is like surrender. Our nature is surrender; the ground of our
nature is "allowing every thing to be." So let me talk
to you in concrete terms. because I could keep going
abstractly...
From my own experience, (because again, my teacher was smarter
than me; she never tried to teach me any of this); its all
inherent within being. But there was a time when; it was after a
certain realization, and I was standing at a wedding, after the
wedding, and it was a big wedding and it was a gymnasium after
the wedding nd I went over to get a second plate of food which is
one of the best things about weddings, you know? So I went over
to get a second plate of food and I'm going over there... And of
course, I'm the first to get the second plate of food because I
eat almost as fast as any one I've ever known - I'm not very Zen
in my eating habits, you know... - "steam shovel
version," yeah.
I get a plate of food, and I turn around after I get the food,
and I look out in this big room and there's the whole wedding
thing; after the wedding, the dancing, and the kids and the
grandmas and all of humanity, and you mingle for awhile so you
get to know, "Oh there's a little tension over there in the
family, and these people are having a great time."
It's like it encapsulates humanity in a sense, and I sit there
and look at it, and just this realization dawns, and I realize
it's over... I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever see life the
same way. It sounds separating, but its not - the way that these
people are seeing ife. I will never see life ever again, the way
that most of humanity is seeing it. And it was at that point I
felt just a tinge of what I would call the "taboo against
being totally free." It's like, and then I felt; "how
dare I?" "How dare I leave humanity totally
behind?"
You feel like a taboo; like it's not right. You must stay in the
muddle and help make it. I'm not saying that I had all these
thoughts; it was just a feeling, right?
And there's a taboo in the collective consciousness that most
people actually feel at a certain point of development, and I
felt it, and it was very obvious to me, luckily, that it was just
time to let it go. It was "let go" and it was no big
explosion; nothing like that; very, very simple. And all of a
sudden I'm there, plate in hand, looking at the wedding like I
was before, and the next moment it was like, well,.. into the
fray. And so I walked right back into it; it was like leaving the
dream unequivocally, and then walking right back into it and its
hardto make sense of that, but what arose was "from this
place, everything is accepted."
Because everything IS accepted. Literally... Literally. I can
feel great compassion for hideous things that humanity does to
each other, but I don't go into emotional psychological division.
And that's the taboo... You feel that in the collective
consciousness; that it's like not okay "not to go into
division..." You must go into division; you should go into
division.
That's what the collective consciousness feels.
And there I was not feeling it anymore...
But what would happen, instead of division, would be a great
outpouring of love or compassion when I see inhumanity. And out
of that came a response; not from anxiety; not from "we've
got to fix it," but from that state of non-division -from
the love itself.
From the state of "everything is fine exactly the way it
is;" there's nobody to do anything anyway.
Right out of that state, arose an action, an activity, that looks
like elping, contributing to the welfare of others. It's not a
disengaged, "there's the disengaged everything is just God
happening," and then there's the "everything is God
happening," with the emphasis on happening...
It's a verb; it's not a place to hide. And this to me, is a true
expression. I mean you see it: all the realizers - they all have
the same message basically. "All is well." "All is
unimaginably well - you can't imagine how well it is." And
they're spending their whole life dedicated to the welfare of
others. It's very odd, you know?
Q: So you end up fixing the world not by intending to...
A: Right.
Q: ...but by loving...
A: Yes.
Q: And the fixing results...
A: ...from the loving... Right, and that was Christ's message.
Was it not?
Q: Yes, absolutely.
A: Right; "treat your neighbor as yourself." So many of
his teachings were basically saying, "Don't act from
division." He could just as well have said, "Don't act
from hatred... Love yur enemies." Right. And we hear that as
a commandment but actually what he's telling us is, "This is
the way Truth is. This is the Truth of your being."
"This is how it works if you're just awake to it." But
that's the funny thing; ultimately egos are afraid of love
because they think, "If I was really undivided, I'd have no
response to what I see." Where would the motivation come
from?
Q: There also may be, or I should say, "we're also afraid
of... I don't know afraid of; but you end up, excuse me, you end
up loving the bastards who are doing the oppression."
Adya: Exactly. You have to... Otherwise, your division creates
another bastard to do more oppression. Get rid of one, and
remember - if you understand the dynamics of it, your division
must manifest. It will manifest, it must manifest. So you can get
rid of one nasty character but all that division inside is
mysteriously creating another one over here or two or three. And
this is what the world hopefully is starting to catch up to...
We'll see, but we've tried everything else. We've tried to just
get rid of all the bastards; get rid all the bad people...
Q: ...evil doers...
A: ...Right. The funny thing is you notice all the evil doers -
most of them really believe in their heart they are doing the
right thing. Do you really think that somebody who has the
wherewithal to literally sacrifice their life = like fly a jet
into a building - they have to think they're doing the highest
good. Just like me and you do. And when we see that, we go:
"Umm, the problem here isn't some disembodied evil force.
The problem is actually illusion" We do the same things.
We've done it. We may have not driven a plane into somebody but
we've driven our mind into somebody, haven't we? In many ways
just as violently. Yeah. Does that make more...?
Q: ...Oh yeah...
A: ...more sense...
Q: ...Yeah... Thank you very much.
A: You're welcome.
(Audience applauses.)
- Adyashanti - Omega 2007 disk 15, transcrbed by Mark Scorelle,
posted to adyashantigroup
My second offering is a link to a video, in 4 parts, with Eckhart
Tolle: Eckhart Tolle visits Unity Village:
http://unityonline.org/eckhartTolle/eckhartTolle.html