Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nonduality Highlights each day
How to submit material to the Highlights
Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3514, Sunday, April 26, 2009, Editor: Mark
How does one become a butterfly? You must want to fly so much
that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.
- Trina Paulus, posted to adyashantigroup
Q: So what we're seeing appears real, but we know it isn't. Now,
is the intellectual knowing of this significant or important?
Sailor Bob: It's not an "intellectual" knowing. An
intellectual knowing is some thing. What's the only sure thing
you can possibly say about yourself?
Q: I am. I exist.
Sailor Bob: There is a knowing that you are. You can't negate
that. Pure knowingness is going on. Now, who or what is knowing
that? Pure emptiness, or no thing, is knowing that. There's no
entity there. That knowing is the cognizing emptiness. That's
pure intelligence.
Q: It's knowing itself?
Sailor Bob: No. There's no discrimination of itself in there.
It's one without a second. It's pure knowing.
Q: So, when I'm seeing nothing...
Sailor Bob: No thing. There's no object. Pure subjectivity.
Q: So, this is an understanding.
Sailor Bob: Yes. Understanding is all. Now that you understand,
you get back into life. You've seen through the illusion. You
don't have to get into concepts about all this.
You cannot know the knower, for you are the knower. The fact of
knowing proves the knower. You need no other proof. The knower of
the known is not knowable. Just like the light is known in
colours only, so is the knower known in knowledge.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
To see the beauty of the flower you need silence not analysis;
beauty can never be understood through analysis.
- Osho
The Truth Of Who You Are
Experiences of truth have been given different names by different
spiritual cultures. Heaven, nirvana, resurrection, enlightenment,
satori, samadhi - all are names pointing to this supreme,
un-nameable, divine beauty, empty of suffering and filled with
grace.
In any moment, in a split second, there is the possibility of
recognizing the boundless, limitless, eternal truth of yourself.
Opening to the truth of our own essential being is simply a
matter of receiving; but, because of our conditioning, this
doesn't seem like a simple matter. We are conditioned to fear the
unknown depths of ourselves, suspecting the worst.
Yet, when we are finally willing to face head-on the suspected
worst in ourselves, we discover an amazing, unbelievable truth:
Opening the mind to what has previously been feared and avoided
reveals the capacity to bear and truly embrace discomfort, even
pain. And eventually, we discover that whatever we fully embrace
reveals the peace that we were seeking through all of our
attempts to avoid discomfort.
To open your mind to the silence that is the source of your mind
is to open to your true self. Conscious silence is already open.
You are already open. Allow your mind to stop gathering
information, to stop imagining the future, to stop strategizing
for survival. Let your mind simply be held by its source.
Recognize that the capacity to open to the truth of your being is
always here.
The world is not as you think it is. You are not who you think
you are. I am not who you think me to be. Your thoughts about the
world, yourself, or me are based on perceptions. Whether they are
inner or outer perceptions, they are limited. Recognize that, and
you hear the invitation into the truth of yourself, which cannot
be perceived or imagined, and yet permeates everything.
The desire for truth is the longing you feel in your heart. The
mental relationship with that longing is all of the things you
throw at it to try to make it go away because it's bothering you.
But it won't be satisfied with anything less than pure
authenticity, pure being. If you are willing to stop throwing
things at your heart's longing, to stop searching for an escape
from the longing, it will reveal its own consummation.
When all mental activity around who you think you are is stopped,
there is a crack in the authority of perception, in the structure
of the mind. I invite you to enter through that crack. Come in
through that opening. When you do, the mind is no longer filled
with its latest self-definition. In that moment, there is only
silence. And in that silence, it is possible to recognize
absolute fulfillment: the truth of who you are.
When the mind says, "Go here, do this, try that," you
can refuse to listen. You can realize that time after time you
have gone here, done this, and tried that without any
satisfaction. The invitation now is to stop everything, to simply
be still. When you stop all of your searching, all of your
justifications and excuses, what power does thought then have? In
a millisecond of stopping, a thought is seen for what it is. In
that same millisecond, the presence of truth is recognized.
A very strong habit of mind is the perceived need to know what
will happen if thoughts stop. In the end, you just have to stop
and see. You have probably tried every technique except stopping.
If you have not stopped, you are still searching.
Stopping is not a practice. It is simply the opportunity to see
that within this seemingly endless flow of thoughts, there is a
choice to not follow the thoughts. In not following thoughts, the
mind stops and what is here, what is silent, and what is always
stopped can be revealed.
In an instant of recognizing the silence that is always here, you
recognize your true face. You recognize the presence of God. You
realize truth. Then you can address the challenges of life - of
bodily pain, emotional turmoil, or mental confusion - with
greater clarity and insight, because you no longer identify these
states with who you are.
This is so simple. What you are searching for, you are. I don't
mean your body, though the body is no obstruction and is included
in you. I don't mean your thoughts or your emotions, your
destiny, karma, past, or future, though they are not
obstructions, either. All of these appear, exist, and disappear
in the truth of who you are.
You are truth already. You are consciousness. Consciousness is
spirit. Recognize yourself, and you will see yourself everywhere
- in every other human being, in every animal, in every plant, in
every rock. Until you recognize yourself, you are still figuring
out how to find yourself, how to get more of yourself, how to
know what is and is not yourself.
Truth is already here, regardless of the state of your body, your
emotions, your mind, or your circumstances. Stop and see.
- Gangaji, from The Diamond in Your Pocket