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#3888 -
Monday, May 10, 2010 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Whatever we need is what is given.
Whatever moment we are in is the moment we need.
- Adyashanti
Radical Emptiness
To the extent that the fire of truth wipes out all fixated points
of view, it wipes out inner contradictions as well, and we begin
to move in a whole different way. The Way is the flow that comes
from a place of non-contradiction - not from good and bad. Much
less damage tends to be done from that place. Once we have
reached the phase where there is no fixed self-concept, we tend
to lead a selfless life. The only way to be selfless is to be
self less - without a self. No matter what it does, a self isn't
going to be selfless. It can pretend. It can approximate
selflessness, but a self is never going to be selfless because
there is always an identified personal self at the root of it.
Being selfless isn't a good, holy, or noble activity. It's simply
that when there is no self, selflessness happens. This
selflessness is very different from having a moralistic
standpoint. When action is selfless, it tends to do no harm. It
tends to be the salvation, the secret alchemy that awakens and
removes conflict. It's a byproduct of not having a self. It just
so happens that reality is overflowing with goodness and love.
This is radical emptiness - where everything is arising
spontaneously. There is no more need to discriminate with the
mind between what seems to be the right thing or the wrong thing
to do. In ego-land it's helpful to have an ego that can
discriminate between right and wrong, but at a certain point,
that's not what you are operating by. You are operating by the
flow of the Tao, which is a higher order of intelligence. You
don't need to intellectually discriminate anymore because the Tao
discriminates without discriminating; it knows without knowing;
it moves without moving. There is no sense of being enlightened
or unenlightened. Since there is no self, there is nothing to be
enlightened or unenlightened.
We can talk about enlightened beings and non-enlightened beings,
and conceptually that has a use. But when there is no self, when
there is radical emptiness, the whole enlightenment thing is sort
of irrelevant because reality has become conscious of itself,
which is enlightenment. That's what is often missed. People
believe that enlightenment is an improvement on reality, like
becoming a super human being or God-knows-what. But enlightenment
is when reality is awake to itself as itself within itself.
- Adyashanti posted to
Wisdom-l by Mark Scorelle
photo by Alan Larus
Some quotes below from
Adyashanti collected from the Cafe Dharma website.
“Spirituality is not about coming
up with the means to manage a situation.
It’s about relinquishing one’s attempt to control what’s
happening.”
"The truth is you can’t try to let go. Trying is the
opposite of letting go.
To let go is to relinquish trying. To let go is much more like to
let be."
"All separation is literally imagination."
"Delusion hides itself in our most prized forms of
conditioning --
spirituality and religion."
"A great insight is only as good as the surrender it
engenders."
"We are but imperfect manifestations of an absolute
perfection. In an
absolute sense, no manifestation can manifest the entirety of the
perfection. Yet each being has an infinite capacity to embody
what they
realize in their humanity. If our awakening is genuine, we
realize that what
we are is what everything is. It is whole and absolutely
complete, and in
that sense, it is perfect. And that wholeness, that completion,
that
perfection, has an infinite capacity to manifest itself more
clearly and
more abundantly through our humanity. When the ultimate is
realized in the
genuine spiritual awakening, that's the ultimate, that's the end
point. But
your humanity has no spiritual finish line. It has an infinite
capacity to
reflect absolute perfection. Always being, always becoming -- at
the same
time with no contradiction."
"To forgive, you have to join with the thing you're
forgiving."
"The true silence isn't when your mind goes quiet, but it is
that which is
still and silent even when the world isn't."
"Our bodies and psyches are designed to purge themselves of
suffering."
"The desire to get rid of desires maintains the entire game.
Your awakening
depends on seeing through it."
"There are different streams of infinity, of emptiness. If
you become very
aware, you can feel the stream of emptiness that certain
teachings embody."
"A mature healthy relationship with a spiritual teacher
requires mutual
respect. The teacher needs to respect you as much as you respect
them."
"What you run from owns you."
"The deeper a teaching is, the more you'll see in it, and
there's no end to
that."
posted to TheNow_2 by Jani
photo by Alan Larus