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#3810 -
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
A nondual piece by Vicki
Woodyard, a definition of nonduality, an un-definition of
nonduality, and a review by Maren Springsteen of Greg Goode's new
book, Standing As Awareness.
The Sky....Is it
Falling?
Of course it is....it’s just a matter of
where and when.
I just bought myself a crash helmet. Now that I have it on, I
will no
longer be bothered by the fear of the sky falling. It’s
about time I got
practical about it. Up until now, I have worried myself sick
about the
sky and it’s tenuous grip on reality. And the sky doesn’t
give a flip
about me; that much I know. It would think nothing of falling on
just my
house, leaving everything else intact. That is how compassionate
the sky is.
I encourage all of you to get a crash helmet. I suspect you have
your
own fears involving the demise of your perfect little life.
You may be
planning an outdoor wedding or just a barbecue. If the sky falls,
it
will ruin the whole thing. No guru can prepare you for such an
event.
For that, you need a helmet.
Gurus are always telling you not to worry, to just be happy. I
believe
Meher Baba started that ridiculous belief. Obviously he never had
the
sky fall on HIM. That would have changed his philosophy. It’s
hard to
believe in unity when the sky has taken out your skylights and
blown out
all of your windows. And the insurance adjuster says the sky
falling is
not an act of God. How dumb is that?
I used to study books about enlightenment until the sky fell on
my
effing house and now there is no house at all. The sky gave me
enlightenment by taking away my house and the security it
afforded. Big
mistake, Sky. Big mistake. Because today I am wearing a crash
helmet and
you can’t touch me anymore.
I am offering a special deal on crash helmets. One size fits all
and the
only color they don’t come in is Sky Blue. I don’t want
to give the sky
any free advertising. I also have a treehouse you can timeshare
with any
or all of your buddies. If you have any brains at all, you will
want to
order your helmet before the sky gets wind of this and takes us
all out.
Vicki Woodyard
http://www.bobwoodyard.com
Re: definition of
Advaita/nonduality.
Just as the Vedantic idea
of Brahman always remains outside descriptive terminology,
so, too, nonduality is
outside description, name or form. So Vedanta in its timeless
wisdom gives us Ishwara,
The Divine manifest in name and form. The name and form
must always be a giant
step short of the ultimate reality. But it is the best
we can do.
In that spirit, I would
say Advaita/nonduality is SatChitAnanda: pure Being, pure Con-
sciousness, pure Bliss.
Orva Schrock
You ask for a definition
of "non-duality."
Why?
Non-duality does not have a definition and can't have one,
because it is a "pointer" to something that
must be perceived. Any definition you give it is unnecessary to
anyone who has had the perception,
and will be totally unintelligible to anyone who has not.
What is an orgasm? And if that can't be stated by definition,
then how could a mind boggling, Spiritual
Orgasm be stated by definition?
Its not really about a definition, its about stating a pointer to
help reveal the perception of what the pointer
is pointing to.
That's the real issue.
Brent Burrows
Notes on Greg
Goode’s book “Standing As Awareness,” revised 2009
edition
by Maren
Springsteen
http://www.marenspringsteen.com/MarenSpringsteen/welcome.html
This is one book I come
back to again and again and treasure deeply when seemingly stuck.
For those of you who, like me, come more from a Christian
Mystical background, combined with classical Eastern teachings,
finding common Truth in all of them, I’d like to add a few
notes that might prove helpful:
Firstly, do yourself a
favor and definitely get the revised edition from 2009, those
first three added chapters are just IT!
The remaining chapters,
derived from dialogues during many years of Non Duality dinners
in
Greg’s outstanding
book is based on Sri Atmananda’s teaching, “Atma
Darshan,” or by many called “The Direct Path.”
What might be unknown to
those of us from a Christian background is that Sri Atmananda is
nowadays widely regarded as one of the three most important sages
of the 20th century, the other two being Ramana Maharshi and
Nisargadatta.
There’s an aspect of
devotion and sweetness in Greg’s book that greatly appeals
to me, the way he brilliantly explains the Atma Darshan in these
first three chapters, shows it also as the gentlest, kindest
spiritual path in many aspects, not at all as harsh as the “Course
in Miracles” can be or other teachings that deconstruct the
ego.
To the wary seeker who
has been on a seeming path for a long time, this almost resting
alertfulness is a fresh breeze as a practise that stands apart in
that the practise itself is done with joy and ease, rather than
dread and effort.
Having said that, and I
hope Sri Atmananda will forgive me in this dream, I much prefer
Greg’s modern day language to the ancient document itself,
which may have to do with English not being my first language,
but I almost suspect that it’s even more the method
and manner in which Greg shines his own clarity onto this
material, dusting it off and presenting it original, fresh and
ready for the 21st century.
Starting with the premise
that we are that One, unchallenged Pure Awareness already, how
much more direct can it get?
What is so very helpful
regarding this gem of a book is how dear Greg explains in detail
how to dissolve anything that seems to cause pain, physical or
psychological, spiritual, back into its Source, untying that knot
similarly to the “forgiveness-practice” in many
devotional teachings.
Anything that appears in
Awareness, such as dense objects, among them one’s own body
(a prime obstacle to many seekers), the ‘outside world’,
or subtle appearances (mind/ego) such as thoughts or sensations,
Greg helpfully bundles together and simply names “arisings.”
Here’s an excerpt of
“Higher Reason,” or in devotional teachings “Grace,”
exploring experience:
On page 11, he writes:
You examine the gross and
subtle worlds, as well as the body, senses and mind. You come to
see that they are experiences as objects in witnessing awareness
and cannot exist apart from witnessing awareness.
You then investigate the
witness itself and come to see that it is an ever-so-subtle
structure suprimposed upon awareness.
When this is realized,
the witness gently and peacefully collapses into awareness
itself, which is pure consciousness.
Higher reason establishes
that pure consciousness is the truth of the world and your
experience at every moment, and leaves you unshakably established
in this truth.
(Many Eastern teachings
would refer to this last sentence as the “natural state”
as does Greg later on, too.)
On page 24, he goes:
When arisings occur, they
appear to witnessing awareness in a serial stream. They arise,
abide and subside, one after another. Sometimes there are gaps in
between.
And through it all,
awareness is present. You, as this awareness, are continuous and
unborken even if no arisings are present.
On page 25: “Your
nature as awareness is presence itself.”
Then, on page 27:
Higher Reason comes to
realize that any candidate that seems as though it personalizes
awareness is instead already internal to awareness as an arising.
Awareness is infinitely
more subtle than space, and is whole, unbroken and continuous.
After explaining why
“arisings are inert and have no causal power” (now my
words: as they borrow any seeming presence only from what
is prior to, and immanent always as Pure Awareness), Greg moves
on to the biggie, at least in my own experience: the
witnessing awareness.
To me, this is the knot
and all-important factor that likely remains hidden and keeps one
stuck, subject to pain in various ways, if not tackled directly.
One can “undo,”
“forgive” arisings ad nauseum and, if enough patience
persists, eventually will get to their collapse back into Pure
Consciousness, but it can be a seemingly endless road and is not
for those “on fire” that yearn for a faster way…
Even with the loving
intention to “forgive” whatever “one” sees
“outside oneself,” for the most part, separation will
ensue, as whatever object one forgives is experienced still as
separate from oneself, not seen as part and parcel of the same, a
stream of sense impression-projections, and very likely, more
often than not, as a consequence one will feel subject to what
ever is seen to be causing pain and tries rearrange the outside
world in a hapless effort to make it “go away,” really
only ever chasing shadows, obviously quite futile.
On page 33, Greg explains
that:
Witnessing awareness
collapes peacefully into pure consciousness when it is realized
that the witness is just as dualistic as walking up to the Eiffel
Tower and giving it a kick. The witness is much more subtle, but
just as dualistic.
The witness was a
structure consisting of a seer and a multiplicity of things seen.
But it was realized that this structure wasn’t verified by
experience.
Whenever there occurs a
seeming upset of any kind, it is usually normal human experience
that focus is automatically outward, onto whatever is judged by
dualistic, divisive ego/mind/witnessing awareness as “causing
pain,” “separate from oneself.”
The object attention
falls onto seems the culprit causing pain, when in fact, the
running of separation rather than one’s Natural State is
what really calls pain into one’s seeming experience.
Focusing outward only
strengthens ego/mind/pain/body identity, and the knot between
this and Pure Awareness is the–still dualistic–witness/observer.
Once attention is
directed a tad more inward towards this aspect, which Quantum
Physics verifies integrally as one with the observed, one has a
chance for real inner freedom, as this knot is all that keeps One
from experiencing Oneself, inclusive of All as Pure Awareness
Itself, in no personal sense whatsoever, rather universal and
infinite, beyond all dimensions, time and space.
In deep contemplation of
dear Greg’s lucid material, I have found it helpful to ask,
when seemingly stuck:
“To whom do these
arisings occur?”–then realizing that it always is to
“witnessing awareness.”
The first part of this
answer, “witnessing,” is that aspect of superimposition
that is still seen/felt as the snake and consists of nothing
other than a belief in otherness, duality, separation, hiding as
an appearance which makes it oftentimes so tough to distinguish
its real nature.
The second part of this
answer “awareness” turns the first part around, as it
were, reveals the harmless rope and shows that this witnessing
awareness, including its objects, is in quality the very same as
Pure Awareness, which contains all, and embraces all back into
Its Heart.
Finishing in Greg’s
own words on page 37:
You will see… [t]hat
you are awareness not only while taking your stand but that you
are awareness all the time.
You will see that you
were never anything else; you will see that there’s nothing
else to be made of.
You will stop believing
and feeling as though you are something other than awareness. It
is this simple…
[A]wareness is present as
your nature from the very beginning. Being it, you see as it.
You can visit Greg’s
beautiful website at www.heartofnow.com
2 Comments »
Hey Maren,
I like the way you
mention Christianity alongside the Advaitic-style investigation
in my book. “Alongside” – that is, you didn’t
place either way in a position superior to the other. Indeed, it’s
clear from your post that these approaches don’t need to
conflict with each other. And they needn’t be reduced to
each other either! Neither one “owns” the other.
This diversity is quite a
good nondual teaching. It takes you from here to everywhere in an
instant. It’s not that there is one big truth that looks
down on all points of view and encompasses them all within
itself. The teaching is more subtle and more …
compassionate: once you recognize your own dearest spiritual path
as a pointer and not the literal “truth,” then you
naturally see this about all paths, not just yours. None of them
seems more “true” or more “false.” This is an
indescribably beautiful realization. When you no longer feel the
compulsion to categorize points of view as “true” and
“false,” then more and more labels are seen through;
they lose their power to make you suffer. Absolutist categories
such as “exists/doesn’t exist,” “good/bad,”
“enlightened/not-enlightened” lose their …
seriousness. Seeing through labels and points of view doesn’t
rob things of meaning. It doesn’t drain the heart. Quite the
contrary! Thought and language become richer, more meaningful,
and light and playful. The heart opens outward in expansiveness
and joy, no longer meeting barriers or borders.
So, Maren, I’m so
glad you mentioned all these things in one post!
–Greg
Reply
Thank you for your enlightening comment of such incredible
beauty, dearest Greg, and thank you for your generous heart!
Love from your Maren
~ ~ ~
Standing As Awareness is
available through Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Standing-as-Awareness-Greg-Goode/dp/0956309151/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266453596&sr=1-1