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#3519 - Friday, May 1, 2009 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
"We have the power to not think (i.e., ignore our thoughts) and to experience the gift that this life is." -Gina Lake
Featured is an excerpt of Gina Lake's new book, What About Now? Reminders for Being in the Moment.
Find out more at Gina's website: http://www.radicalhappiness.com
On each page of What About Now? Reminders
for Being in the Moment by
You think you need your thoughts and
feelings to function. You think they are you. But you don’t
need them, and they aren’t you. They are part of the
conditioned, false self that you think of yourself as, but
they aren’t what is alive in you and living this life and
experiencing this moment. What is experiencing this moment,
including what is aware of contraction over identification with
thought, is who you are. It is very silent, though, unlike the
egoic mind, which chatters away constantly. The real you is the
Silent Experiencer who is alive and having the experience the
false self is creating.
Your
attention is important. It determines your experience of reality.
You have a choice about what you give your attention to once you
realize you have a choice. Life is transformed by this
realization. It’s really very simple: Choosing to listen to
the egoic mind takes you out of the moment and misleads and
misguides you, while ignoring it brings you into the moment,
where life is happening and wisdom and guidance are available.
Who
you really are can only be experienced in this moment, not
through thought. When we move our attention away from thought
onto anything else, we land in the present moment, and the
experience of being present is the experience of our true Self.
This experience is one of love, compassion, acceptance, joy, and
contentment. When you feel these, you know you are identified
with your true Self rather than the ego. When you feel the
opposite—discontentment and unhappiness—you know you
are identified with the ego, with your thoughts.
Surrendering
to life happens simply and naturally when we stop paying
attention to our mind’s version of life and start paying
attention to life itself as it is coming out of the now. There’s
something else to do besides think! And that is to notice—to
be aware of what is happening now. Look, feel, listen, sense, and
you will drop into the now.
The
more accustom we become to being present, the more we begin to
live as Essence, which is a free and joyful experience. So, it
turns out that the now isn’t just a place of sensory
experience, although that is sufficiently rich, but it’s
also where life comes out of, and if you aren’t paying
attention to the now, you might miss what life is trying to bring
about through you. You can follow the egoic mind’s plans and
ideas for your life if you want, but something else right here
and now has a plan, and that plan will be much more satisfying
than anything the ego has to offer.
Experiencing
what you are experiencing and experiencing your thoughts are very
different realities—very different experiences. When you are
experiencing what you are experiencing, you are at peace,
relaxed, content, absorbed, with no thoughts about “me,”
how “I” am doing, or any other stories, which are the
ego’s version of reality. Instead of experiencing reality,
the ego tells a story about it, and that becomes its reality.
Love
is not an emotion but comes from jumping into experience fully
and being willing to really have the experience you are having.
Every moment is an opportunity to jump in with both feet, without
holding back by evaluating the experience. The egoic mind inserts
itself in every moment, or tries to, by evaluating it, worrying
about it, or telling a story about it. This commentary doesn’t
enhance life or keep us safe; it simply distracts us from the
experience and prevents us from being fully involved with it.
Most people have one foot in their minds, so to speak, and one
foot in their experience. This doesn’t feel the same at all
as having both feet in the experience.
Freedom
is truly a state of mind—or, rather, a state of no mind, or
ignoring the mind’s complaints about life. We are already
free and always have been. We have been given this great gift of
choice—the freedom to choose how we see life and respond to
it. Happiness is under our control more than we may realize. We
have more power than we may think—we have the power to not
think (i.e., ignore our thoughts) and to experience the gift that
this life is.
Because
thinking is our default position as humans, we have to learn to
notice what else is present besides thought. We have to learn to
notice what is Real and true in this moment. We have to train
ourselves to pay attention to the subtle joy, expansion,
relaxation and yes of Essence as it enjoys life through us. This
subtle experience becomes less subtle and easier to notice the
more we put our attention on it rather than on thought, and then
the mind becomes quieter, softer, and more in the background.