Chick's Spiritual Blog

That Which We Were Then Is What We Are Now

2012-01-29T19:13:00.000-05:00

What you are looking for is what is looking.
St. Francis

A friend and I were exploring the inner landscape the other day. Anxiety and fear, anger, sadness have all arisen within me in the past week and the mind has been active in trying to figure out how to deal with it. He is a therapist as well as a traveler on the path of truth and we were discussing the inner child metaphor and how unresolved wounds from childhood play out in current situations.
The mind/body organism has an amazing ability to store memories and elicit the emotional reactions from long ago experiences in situations that bear a resemblance to them, this is well understood in western psychotherapy. I have written about the core wound, 'I'm not good enough', before and tracing my own emotional reactions back to this time and again. We talked of this and the corollary, being found out 'I'm a bad boy' and therefore unlovable. The persistence of this program is remarkable. Protecting the inner child, forgiving the inner child are useful ways in healing and dealing with this.
Is there anything else here besides these stored memories? Was there a child then and an adult now, or are these conceptual ideas in themselves? We take it for granted that these categories are true and real. But if we look closely at our experience a different understanding may emerge. What is looking out now is what was looking then, the bare awareness or consciousness has remained unchanged through time, it is the same regardless of changes in the dimensions of time or space. It seems to be easier to recognize this in spatial dimension, regardless of where we travel to, we all still believe we are the same 'me' experiencing the situation; since we are identified with the body and the body is still here, there is no reason to question this. It is much trickier with movement through time. The body changes through time and in this identification of 'me' with the bodymind we experience this as 'I am changing'. But is this unquestionably true? Is there something deeper that has not changed? Can there be a recognition of a pure 'experiencer' that has no physical qualities and yet is the essential nature that we associate with the feeling of 'me'?

This experiencer of every instant of life, has it changed over time? Isn't there a deep sense that something about us remains precisely the same as it was 10, 20, 30 years ago? What is this?

That which I called 'me' as a five year old is here in precisely the same way at fifty-five, that which experienced the trauma of feeling 'bad' or insufficient or unworthy then is still here now to experience anew those same feelings as they are reenacted through memory stored in the bodymind and triggered by current events.That which we were then is what we are now. All feelings and thoughts arise and pass away, time and again, yet the dimensionless remains unchanged, yet always here.

Using therapy or shadow work or other tools to reduce the stress and fear triggered by stored memory is very useful, however, in my opinion, to restore us, including this mind/body organism we inhabit, to a state of feeling balanced, serene, and joyful. Why would we not seek to release past wounds that terrorize our present experience, this is silly, if we see the roots of our suffering, let us heal them at the source.

But tremendous healing takes place on its own when we realize an unchanging, unmoving nature that cannot be disturbed by events in time and space.

Are There Limits to Forgiveness?

2011-12-31T10:54:00.003-05:00

I have shamelessly stolen this title question from Mike Sigman who posted a blog on this on the Huffington Post. Check it out here,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-sigman/are-there-limits-to-forgi_b_1170068.html

I am reprinting and expanding on my comment to it here as this is so central to the so called spiritual search.

How can there be limits on forgiveness? Here's how: I say to myself, I cannot forgive anyone who has killed anyone or I cannot forgive anyone who has committed adultery, or who has betrayed me, or committed child abuse, etc. In other words, forgiveness becomes limited when we tell ourselves that it must be limited, that there are actions which cannot be forgiven. So limits on forgiveness are always self created.

And when we create these limits, if we are honest with ourselves and look with clarity, we will see that our judgments have many facets to them; we may feel that we cannot forgive killing another human being, but we have mental categories, someone who kills in the name of their country in war, for example, is most likely exempted from our judgment.

We may also say to ourselves that only if someone expresses sufficient remorse for their deed can I consider forgiving them. Someone who commented on Mike's post stated that in Judaism, only if a person expresses sufficient remorse and makes amends may a victim consider forgiving them. Now I am no scholar of Jewish law or philosophy even though I am of Jewish heritage, but I do not believe this is truly the Jewish teaching. A stance such as this is truly contrary to the spirit of true religion, of true compassion.

The question we should ask ourselves is, how happy and at peace inside do I want to be? For however much happiness and peace I want is how much forgiveness I should practice, for they will be in direct proportion. Limited forgiveness will result in limited happiness and peace; unlimited forgiveness will result in unlimited happiness and peace. This is key, forgiveness is about opening our eyes and understanding to the truth of reality, and the truth will set us free. It means accepting life as it is, for to refuse to forgive is to argue with reality, to think and feel that something that happened should not have happened. To forgive is to accept everything that happens and go from there.

Forgiveness means to let go of anger and resentment and judgment. It does not mean condoning the action. I can forgive and still protest, or oppose, or set boundaries or any other action that feels appropriate. As mentioned in Mike's post, Trungpa Rinpoche discussed his willingness to kill Hitler given the opportunity in order to save other people. In Nazi Germany, there was an avowed pacifist pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer who became involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler for this very reason, and was killed for his participation.

Forgiveness leads to a deep understanding of the true nature of ourselves and our life, which ultimately are not two separate 'things', they are one. We are an intimate part of the process of life unfolding. There are no limits to forgiveness, and if there are, recognize they are self created and therefore we have placed limits on our happiness and peace and guaranteed some level of suffering for ourselves.

Societal Transformation Part 2

2011-12-14T22:02:00.000-05:00

In physics, you're playing against God, and He doesn't change His laws very often. In finance you're playing against God's creatures, agents who value assets based on their ephemeral opinions...If you are someone who cannot distinguish between God's creations and man's idols, you may mistake models for deep laws. Many economists are such people...Any assurance economists pretend to with regard to cause and effect is merely a pose...Financial models, because of their incompleteness, inevitably mask risk...

I came up with several principles for scientists to follow when applying their skills to finance:

-I will not give people who use my models false comfort about their accuracy. I will make the assumptions and oversights explicit to all who use them.

-I understand that my work may have enormous effects on society and the economy, many beyond my apprehension. (put in bold by Chick)

I am deeply disillusioned by the West's response to the recent financial crisis. Though chance doesn't treat everyone fairly, what makes the intrinsic brutalities of capitalism tolerable is the principle that links risk and return...In the past few years, that principle has been violated. When Wall Street and the U.S economy were threatened, the ethical principles of capitalism took a backseat.

Emanual Derman, theoretical particle physicist turned Goldman Sachs financial modeler, from his book "Models Behaving Badly: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality Can Lead to Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life"

What do I mean in the last blog about a transformation in consciousness that is more crucial to our individual and collective well being than any change in economic policy? Is it what I have written quite a lot about in this blog over the last couple of years, a spiritual awakening, a seeing of something intrinsic to all of us that is changeless, timeless, and unmanifested? This type of experience goes a long way in unleashing blocked love and compassion towards all living beings as we experience ourselves as life itself and therefore all life as ourself.

But rather than focus on such an event, I'd like to talk about the need for a greater sensitivity towards living, this is crucial and I believe it can be learned and then taught and passed on to our children. For we have learned the opposite, been conditioned towards a narrow focus, misled without malice by our parents and authority who didn't know any better to feel limited and anxious and grasping for comfort and security, thereby dulling an openhearted quality which embraces instead of retreats and pushes away. Rather than wait for an event to unlock love and compassion within, let us practice sensitivity towards the effects of our actions on ourselves and those around us and perhaps, just perhaps, this in turn will awaken our consciousness. Buddha taught the eightfold path to enlightenment, including Right Action, Right Intention, and Right Livelihood, not enlightenment and then the eightfold path.

In the United States, there has been much dialogue and strong opinion thrown around about what is known as the Occupy Wall Street movement. I do not want to engage in more opinion as to the movement's righteousness, but rather use it as an indicator of a restless anger that is brewing in many over perceived inequities and very real disparities in wealth that are brought into greater focus during difficult economic times.Many people in the financial sector are indeed among the 'smartest people in the room', they have been able to achieve unheard of profits and wealth accumulation through devising brilliant but complex, difficult to understand financial instruments such as derivatives. They themselves have been unable to fully grasp the risks of these instruments, so the rest of us have little hope of understanding them. Yet society bears the cost when these instruments fail, sometimes catastrophically as we have seen in the last few years.I don't want to portray these bright motivated people as evil or in fact anyway different or less moral than the rest of us, I believe they are generally people of as good intention as anybody else. What I venture to say is that they, like most of us, have had their sensitivity towards moral and ethical behavior dulled by the widespread misplacing of values in our culture. The focus of our education, of our relentless mass cultural blitz emphasizing status, money, celebrity, etc. has desensitized us to the subtler effects of karma, of cause and effect.We as individuals must bring our lives into balance, balance between our desires for security and wealth with realizing the importance of empathy and the good of all, for the good of all is our own good, as I tried to point out in the last blog.

Societal Transformation

2011-12-10T12:27:00.001-05:00

When we realize on a deep level that what is good for the rich should also be good for the poor and vice-versa, society will improve. The eradication of poverty is everyone’s problem and to everyone’s well being, the cost of war and crime and prisons and rehabilitation, etc. is a cost of everyone, not only monetarily but in an incalculable emotional toll, resulting in the age of anxiety in which we all live, rich and poor.

I would propose that a transformation in consciousness is more important than a change in economic policy, if we start from a true common good, the discussion on policy will be vastly different.

Flexible thinking is crucial and more important than supposed consistency to a label, whether it liberal or conservative or anything else. What passes for consistency is many times just lazy thinking, rather than looking at the present issues freshly and for the good of all, rather than starting at a preset agenda.

Why Am I Still Clinging To Anything At All- Rajesh Dalal

2011-12-02T18:09:00.001-05:00

We had a dialogue with Rajesh Dalal the other night in my home. Rajesh spent 10 years with Krishnamurti back in the late 70's-early 80's until K died in 1986. Four months after K died Rajesh described his inner explosion which ended even the possibility of clinging to anything outside himself for peace and happiness. Rajesh has devoted his adult life to the inner and outer freedom of which K spoke for 60 years.

Thirty-three years ago a friend handed me a slender book of K's writings which permanently transformed my inner life. I could not believe what I was reading, that someone had the wisdom and courage to say what he was saying, which spoke to my deepest held questions about what society and those around me were putting forward as truth. So it was like the closing of a circle for me to meet and spend time with Rajesh and discuss all that I have come to know and feel with him, including what clinging seems to remain. His challenge to deeply inquire into the question, "Why am I still clinging to anything AT ALL, why do I need anything at all?", was and has been working inside of me.

For me, reading K long ago was transformative but only to a point, my external life course went on pretty much the same as before, with much clinging and resultant suffering, anxiety and fear. For Rajesh, his outer life course completely changed flowing from his inner conviction to be free. For me, life continued to contain many compromises of my quest for inner freedom in the name of being responsible, being a good man (supposedly), being productive, etc.

But freedom does not compromise, it looks at the good of all concerned in any given situation, for it is not concerned with personal benefit, but it does not compromise itself, freedom does not compromise on freedom. Love does not compromise on love for the sake of seeming goodness or personal benefit or the approval of others or anything else.

We shared a great concern for the future of the world's children which is the future of mankind. We must free ourselves from false notions not only for ourselves but for all life around us, only this will truly help our children that we love so dearly and want the best for. Do we want to pass along anxiety and hatred and fear in the name of security and productivity, is that what we truly believe is best for them?

Do we want to instill in our children a sense of guilt and shame so they will say and do what relieves our own anxieties and worries, is this our idea of love?

Rajesh asked me directly if I understood what true selfishness was, was it selfish to say what I really think, to make it clear to those around me, especially those I love, what I truly want? It brought further clarity to the deeply held beliefs I continue to carry around that I may not be 'good' if I express what I want and what I don't, if it may clash with what someone close to me may want or expect from me.

The time is now not to squander any more opportunity to be free, that is the challenge of 'not needing anything whatsoever'. From there, what can hurt you?

Penn State- A View from the Edge

2011-11-13T08:36:00.001-05:00

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
J. Krishnamurti

I would like to look at the recent events at Penn State University from a point of view of what we can learn about our 'normal' state of mind, state of consciousness, and the nature of identity. Inotherwords, I don't so much want to add an opinion to the many thrown out in endless media reporting on what's right and what's wrong, who should have done this or that, etc.
Instead, I think it can be enlightening to focus on the reaction of the students in the wake of the arrest for child sexual abuse of the long time assistant coach and the subsequent firing of the president of the university and the long time, legendary football coach, Joe Paterno. As anyone who even casually watched the events unfold saw, many students reacted with grief and anger when the Board of Trustees announced the firing of Coach Paterno. They held vigils outside of his home, cars were overturned and burned, and the young assistant coach and former quarterback who had reported seeing one of the alleged incidents to Paterno years ago had numerous death threats aimed at him.
When looked at with some distance and objectivity, it is easy to point fingers at everyone involved and react with disbelief and sadness at not only the whole situation, but also the reactions of the students involved. I would like to explore a couple of points, however. One obvious one is that media coverage focuses on people, in this case students, who have the most extreme reactions to events, this makes for the most sensational news and therefore the best coverage in terms of ratings, which has become the overriding value and intention of media. We can assume that there were many more students that did not react in such a demonstrative and, on the face of it, childish and outlandish way. These students don't make good copy, though, students crying and unable to contain their grief and anger look better for the cameras. Barry Long, the deceased Australian spiritual teacher, wrote in his fascinating book 'Only Fear Dies', that media becomes an extension of the collective unhappiness that has overtaken the world.
But what exactly are these students crying and grieving over? What did they lose or perceive that they lost? This is more to my point, and if we look a little closer, we can begin to understand our collective involvement in these reactions, we are not distanced from it nor 'above' or superior to these students or indeed anyone else involved in any way. What are we teaching our children or how are we raising them so that when something like this happens, these types of reactions occur? I believe it has to do with what I'm trying to point out in blogs like my last post, showing how unconventional it is for a teacher to attempt to instill in small children a deep understanding that happiness should be a priority in their lives and that empathy for their fellow students is a must in order to have a truly sane, civilized society. A.S. Neill was attempting the do the same thing in his radical school Summerhill which was and continues to be an attempt to raise human beings with an innate sense of inner peace which naturally breeds love, empathy, and nonviolence towards fellow people and the world.
It becomes obvious that the students who reacted with this grief and sadness believe that their identity is somehow tied or rooted in the college that they are attending. They were not reacting from empathy for the victims, or heaven forbid, experiencing empathy to the point where one could see even the perpetrator as ultimately a victim as well.
What is so sad about it is, for the most part, the violent reactions were over the firing of the football coach, none of the reacting students gave a hoot about the firing of the president of the university nor were they motivated to look into the roots causes of child abuse, they were driven by unconscious feelings that somehow they themselves were threatened by the events, in particular the loss of their football coach, how important the status of the football program was to the identity of the college, and therefore to their own innate identity.
Can we look at the root causes of our own unhappiness, which is our own unconscious tethering of our sense of worth and value to what we look like, where we go to school, what our job is, who we marry, etc? So long as this remains our unconscious understanding of our relationship with the world, with our lives, this is the message that our children will receive loud and clear. To me, this is the crucial lesson of Penn State- so long as this is what we consciously or unconsciously believe, this is the value system our children will inherent and believe about themselves, and therefore we should not be in the least surprised over these reactions, they are inevitable without a transformation of our state of consciousness, both individually and collectively.

One Holy Man-Children Full Of Life

2011-11-02T22:01:00.000-04:00

The function of a child is to live his own life-not the life that his anxious parents think he should live, nor a life according to the purpose of the educator who thinks he knows best.
A.S. Neill, author of 'Summerhill"

When I was five years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life."
John Lennon

My son Dan sent me the first part of a five part documentary series on YouTube called Children Full of Life (also on Karmatube called Teacher in Tokyo). It's about the Japanese third and fourth grade teacher Toshiro Kanamori.

Here is a link to the video (if the link doesn't work just go to YouTube):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=armP8TfS9Is&feature=BFa&list=PL27D7F51F4598CD0A&lf=PlayList

All I really want to say, although I will say a bit more, is please watch this, at least take ten minutes and watch part one, if not all five. Take some time away from the standard reality show fare or the weekly football game and watch how one man transforms the lives of the children lucky enough to be in his class.

It must start with the children. Let me correct that and say it must start with ourselves, and then the children. We must teach them the things they truly need to learn, how to be happy and to have empathy. Math, science, english are all fine, but first we must give our children the blessed gift of placing their happiness first. What do we really want, our children to be good at math or to be happy? This is not a knock on the importance of education, it is a plea to change the world by letting the children in on the secret that happiness must come first, not last.

Years ago I read one of my all time favorite books, Awareness by Anthony DeMello, and towards the end he referred to the book Summerhill by A.S. Neill as a holy book. Of course I immediately got and read Summerhill, in which Neill recounts in detail the decades long results of the controversial freedom school he founded in 1921 in Britain. The school was dedicated to some of the same themes being explored in Kanamori's class, how to avoid the arising of unhappiness in children, which according to Neill is the root of all conflict in the world (the arising of unhappiness).

This modern Japanese elementary school is the home of a holy man who is quietly changing the world we all live in.

Ah the awesome nature of Reality

2011-10-25T10:24:00.000-04:00

Are you crazy like me, inspired by the awe inspiring nature of Reality? Not that I have any idea what that is, because I don't. As I bored my wife to tears last night, having her sit through an hour show on SCI channel listening to the top theoretical physicists and cosmologists opine on the nature of Reality, I was juiced and inspired. I should have been an astrophysicist or cosmologist, the only problem is I'm not close to being smart enough, these guys are so brilliant it's a joke. So instead I'm a student of Zen, of nonduality, of the inner life.

Direct realization has its benefits over theoretical analysis anyway.

But the beauty and power of things as they are is beyond words, miraculous. Current physicists realize that Reality is showing clearly our inability to capture its true magnificence in language, the only language that approaches it is mathematics, mathematics appears to be the language of Reality, God if you will.
The idea is being explored that the entire known universe, including you and me, is a three dimensional holographic projection based on information contained in two dimensions on the outer edge of the universe. I don't know what I'm talking about but how cool is that!

A story was related in the show about Albert Einstein calling up his friend and fellow genius physicist Neils Bohr and asking him, "So do you still believe that the moon isn't there when it is not being looked at?", to which Bohr responded, "Can you prove to me that the opposite is true?". Both my wife and I were immediately reminded of something Francis Lucille related in a webinar on Sunday, that when he asked his Advaita teacher, Jean Klein, many years ago the question that if Consciousness is universal, why is he (Francis) only aware of his own thoughts and not Jean's or anyone else's, Klein responded, "How do you know that you weren't aware and forgot?". This answer was slightly dissatisfying to me until the power of it hit me with the Einstein/Bohr story. The limitation of the worldview we perceive through our senses is being proved to us over and over and yet we cling to it like stubborn children.

And I haven't even started on the amazing understanding of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel prize winning Princeton psychology professor, and his research on the illusion of validity and how our and other's stories constantly give us a misperception of reality, but that's for next week's blog.

Pull back from the petty frustrations that trip us up constantly and be awed by Reality as it is, and this includes especially the so called mundane moment to moment happenings.

What are you complaining about?

2011-10-20T19:21:00.000-04:00

How can you live today without attachment to your own stories, how can you care for life? The response to this question given by Shakyamuni Buddha and Zen teachers is to train yourself thus. This is the teaching and the practice of the way you are, the teaching to simply be the way you have come to be.

One way to train yourself to be thus is to say to yourself with your whole being, “Thank you very much, I have no complaint whatsoever!” And no matter what you are, you are grateful for the opportunity to be thus. At this moment, in the middle of whatever is happening, you are grateful for the opportunity to care for what is happening, with no complaint. Even if you are complaining, you are grateful for the opportunity to not complain about your complaints.

Tenshin Reb Anderson

My brother was telling me the other day how my his wife's grandfather always told her never to complain about the weather. There is nothing you can do about the weather so there is no use complaining about it. This is a little nugget of wisdom that can have a profound impact on our lives. Imagine how our life would change if we followed this advice religiously, not only not complaining to other people but to actually have freedom from complaint within our minds.

If we could practice this regarding the weather, then perhaps we could take one other aspect of our lives, such as our work, and practice with that. Not complaining is not the absence of planning, it is the absence of complaint, the absence of feeling things should be different than they are. Not complaining is not even the absence of considering the possibility of making changes for the better, it is being okay on a deep level with the way things are now and proceeding-contemplating, thinking, planning, exploring possibilities- from a platform of inner peace.

So one by one we can practice approaching the different aspects of our lives without complaining, even going to our relationships with people. Imagine trying this practice with people! Not complaining about people- impossible, or so it seems. Here is where the rubber meets the road, our whole life will change if we can experience even one day without an inner complaint about another person. Experiencing life without complaint is the natural state, the enlightened state, transforming our world into the Garden of Eden. This doesn't mean absence of struggle or pain or sadness, merely absence of the desire for life to be different than it is appearing right now.

The Delaware Water Gap

2011-09-12T22:27:00.000-04:00

The first time I went on an extended silent retreat was almost ten years ago, up to the Springwater Center for Meditative Inquiry. At that point I had lived in New Jersey for over forty years, certainly long enough to have heard of the Delaware Water Gap for much of my life. Since camping was not a pastime in my family, however, we never actually went there as a destination, so it remained a vague concept in my mind, some place that was somewhere along the Delaware River and the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. So it was much to my surprise on that first solo trip up to Springwater, as I traveled west on Route 80 approaching the Pennsylvania border, that this unmistakable gap in the mountain ridges rose up in front of me in the early morning freshness. So this is the Delaware Water Gap, I thought, wow, it's really a gap; a clear, delineated, majestic gap. How wonderful it must have been for early pioneers traveling west to stumble upon this reprieve from traversing the steep mountain ridges.

From that moment on, the Delaware Water Gap went from being a vague, fuzzy idea in my mind to a concrete known place. I no longer need to think about it nor argue about it if the occasion ever arose (why it would, I have no idea, but still), when the Delaware Water Gap comes up, I know without question what and where is being referred to.

So it is with awakening to consciousness as our essence, our primary nature. With realizing that what we are referring to when we speak of, or indeed think of, 'me', is none other than consciousness, or Being. I heard such talk for decades along the path of spiritual seeking, but it remained at best a vague, fuzzy concept in my mind. An idea that was intriguing but exceedingly frustrating in its elusiveness when sought. Then in a moment of clarity and grace, consciousness recognizes itself in its actuality, in its reality. The fuzzy idea is forever replaced with a concrete reality, no longer is it necessary to ponder or argue over definitions, the description is never the thing, and here was the 'thing' itself, in all its glory and simplicity. For it is simplicity incarnate, pure existence silently aware of all that arises. Wow, this is it; the Heart Sutra was not about abstract, mystical concepts at all, rather it merely describes the simple reality-no eyes, nose, ears, tongue, body or mind. Consciousness has no form and does not change over time, it is outside of the concept of time. There is no 'I' that has consciousness, the 'I' is the consciousness. And this must be the case for everyone.

The irony of all this is- there really is no such thing as the 'Delaware Water Gap'. An object, a 'thing', was created by mind, it did not and does not exist prior to creation in mind. I know precisely what is meant by this label, and yet it does not ultimately exist. There is merely seamless reality, unbroken in essence; only in mind does it get divided into parts, into objects. Where is the exact beginning and end of the 'Delaware Water Gap'? We may even survey it, like a state line, or national border, and say here it is exactly, but this is again a creation of mind, a dividing done in mind that does not exist as separate objects in reality.
Consciousness is similarly seamless, it is not a 'thing' at all, there are no boundaries or qualities to partition or quantify it. Seeing this directly, what can be said about us?

Life as Pure Experience

2011-08-19T13:07:00.000-04:00

The best way to break down the seeming barriers between people is to realize the sameness of our fundamental experience. How is it the same? Our fundamental experience is pure experience; this is true for everyone, indeed for every living being. We are so caught in framing our experience in a conceptual overlay that we miss the raw experience, stripped of its filtering through our thoughts and emotions. Our reality is always pure experiencing, we might say our very nature is pure experiencing, that what we are is closer to a verb than a noun.
Put another way, our core experience is not as a body, but as conscious awareness; to realize or recognize this is the first step in realizing that everyone's core experience is such. We normally experience other people as their body/mind, on this I think we would all agree. We look out through our body/mind and experience others in the uniqueness of their physical and personality make ups. But we don't look out as a body, we look out as pure awareness, as everyone is fundamentally experiencing pure awareness. They are not actually experiencing themselves as you are experiencing them, as a body/mind, they are experiencing pure experience, even if thought is telling them they are this or that. Thought may be telling us that we are a body that is pretty or that is ugly, for example, or that we are smart or stupid or successful or a failure. But those are thoughts, not the actuality of our present experience.
I am finding that as this realization stabilizes, more and more I realize that as I am interacting with others, that although on one level I am experiencing them as a body/mind, their actual experience is not that, it is empty of physicality. It is pure experience, none of us actually experiences ourselves as pretty or ugly or successful or a failure, etc., these are merely ideas stored in the mind. These ideas cause emotional reactions, but are all part of the experience being experienced by pure experience, our essential nature.

Knowing and Not Knowing-Part Two

2011-08-07T11:49:00.000-04:00

I recently came back from a silent retreat up at the Springwater Center for Meditative Inquiry (springwatercenter.org), my home away from home for inner exploration. Aside from the silence and meditation, there is an hour group dialogue in the afternoon. What came up one day for one person was, "I'm getting the message that being clueless is okay." When asked to explain his thoughts further, he stated that he was clueless about a lot that was being discussed, and that seems to be what is being pointed towards as the goal, so to speak, i.e. not knowing.

In thinking on this, it occurs to me that being 'clueless' is okay if it is truly okay. For me it was not okay. For years and years of meditative practice, there was the nagging frustration surrounding the idea that I was missing something, that something was being pointed at that I didn't see. In fact, this was true. And no amount of pretending or telling myself that it was okay, or for that matter zen teachers telling me 'only don't know', could make that frustration go away. It was only in a flash of direct insight, when what is already and always present revealed itself, basically to itself, that the frustration disappeared. When that which we are, our true nature, reveals itself, consciousness recognizes itself for what it actually is, then there is no more confusion over the issue. The debate no longer matters, what is obvious becomes obvious.

I like the way Douglas Harding puts it when he says (and I paraphrase), 'This one essential point, that which we are, is the same for everyone, whether sage or one in delusion, whether Buddha or Jesus or you or me, it is the same regardless; and this one thing can be seen and pointed to relatively easily. Every other interpretation or story about the nature of things can be debated endlessly.'
My story about life, reality, truth, is never going to match yours, they may be similar or worlds apart, but they will never be exactly the same, for a story is merely a story, not truth. There is something here prior to the story, however, prior to name and form, it cannot even be pointed at as a 'thing' with limited boundaries and definition, yet it is undeniably here, for if it weren't here, 'we' wouldn't be here, for it is what we are. We don't need to create it or discover it for it to be here, how can we create our original nature?

If this one thing is realized, becomes known, from here resting in Not Knowing becomes residing in the Garden of Eden, in the Kingdom of Heaven, with all of its magnificent and terrible beauty. But to truly rest in Not Knowing, we must first go through the Known. At least that's been my experience.

Knowing and Not Knowing

2011-08-07T01:00:00.000-04:00

We all share a deep yearning to know, to know what's going on, to understand what life is about, to feel a sense of control and security. The idea of giving this up is frightening, yet this is what we start to experiment with if we begin a spiritual journey. To stop our busyness and begin to examine closely the nature of our lives, we see that the sense of control we feel is greatly an illusion. Generally it becomes a movement between feeling a sense of control and a lack of control. Experiencing a lack of control brings on a loss of feeling safe and secure; fear in the form of anxiety and even panic ensue. Back we go to our habits which return our sense of control, the void is too scary to glimpse much less embrace.
If we have courage enough, we continue to dip our emotional toes in the water of the unknown. Can we slowly become more comfortable in the realization of the insecurity of life, the unknowable quality of reality? There are endless examples of the insecure nature of life around us, we are surrounded by them in personal, professional, and worldly concerns; yet we filter the inflow of information in such a way that it doesn't conflict with our self generated beliefs of security, control, and safety. We tell ourselves tragedy won't happen to us or our family.
To be serene in the womb of uncertainty and change, which is woven into the fabric of our existence, it is indeed its most profound quality, that is our challenge. First to acknowledge the essential truth of this to our deepest selves and then to come to terms with it, to embrace it and welcome it with an open heart and vulnerability.
Can we change our quest to know to a quest to not know? This changes life into an endless freshness, full of possibility and wonder.
Our knowing will inevitably lead to suffering anyway, when the actual, what is, conflicts with our illusory yet carefully created construct of reality.

Less Knowing, More Loving

2011-07-16T16:17:00.000-04:00

This is the message I've been getting lately. I need to move towards more loving, less knowing. So much of my search has been geared towards knowing, I want to know what the sages know, I want to see what I'm missing. What I'm missing is that they know they don't know, but they understand what love is, real love. Not neediness or approval seeking or if I give than you give back; real love of life and it's beauty and beautiful creatures, including human beings, who I'm so damned afraid of. What am I afraid of? That they know more than me, that they will criticize me, that they are better than me?
The experience of oneness is the experience of love, the experience of completeness, I am complete as is.
To be in love with life, which is to say in love with ourselves and everything and everyone else, for isn't that what we call life, everything and everyone? Is there such a thing as life that is separate from everything? This is what we all want, we can hate and hate, but we really want to feel love.
Do I think I need to know something, some spiritual secret, to be able to love?
Stop wasting time looking for the secret and start loving life and the people in it. That's what I need to do, anyway.

The Ending of Permanence

2011-07-05T21:28:00.000-04:00

I would like to continue on this idea of permanent happiness, permanent freedom. We are not generally content to experience serenity and peace in the present, our mind, or ego wants a sort of guarantee that we will never experience sorrow, unhappiness or suffering in the future. This in itself is a root source of suffering, this demand for permanence, for a guarantee. I suspect this is why the idea of enlightenment is so appealing, certainly it was in my case. If we start on the spiritual path or any type of inner inquiry, we start to see the truth of the Buddha's teaching of the relationship between impermanence and suffering, that all experiences or arisings, all situations, are impermanent. Therefore, looking for lasting happiness in external things or situations brings on frustration and disappointment. So the plum of enlightenment, reaching a state where suffering and unhappiness are permanently gone, is a natural desire, advertised as better than the best car, the best mansion, even the best relationship. Who wouldn't want that?
So begins what Zen Master Seung Sahn called 'enlightenment disease', he would tell his students that they all have enlightenment sickness, this longing for enlightenment.
But of course this is why we do anything, all our actions are driven by a desire for happiness. So we start to hear that enlightenment is the answer but we can't desire it. Huh?
It appears to me that time is the culprit. Desire is by definition wanting something other than what is appearing right now, happening right now; desire is wanting something that will occur in the future, whether it be five seconds, five minutes, or five years from now. Even five lifetimes from now. But we cannot be assured of anything in the future, hasn't our experience taught us this? So if no experience whatsoever lasts, it is logical to conclude that accepting whatever comes our way is the path to peace of mind. Not even the path to peace of mind, it is the definition of peace of mind.

There is no way to happiness and peace. Happiness and peace are the way. Buddha

So this is what is being pointed to, that the ending of desire is the ending of suffering. If desire arises, not attaching to that is still the ending of desire. The problem begins when we believe the idea that whatever our current desire tells us will bring happiness will in fact do so. It may bring temporary enjoyment, and if we have thoroughly understood that beforehand, then all is well. This is life, we do things that bring temporary enjoyment and we experience events which bring sadness and sorrow. But if beneath all of the waves of external events there remains a calm acceptance, even of fear, sorrow, and desire, this must be our definition of peace of mind.
Enlightenment shows us that beneath all the striving and thinking is a silent experiencer that is outside of time and therefore the only 'thing' that is not subject to impermanence. Present awareness doesn't change from moment to moment even as all arisings, all experiences change. Enlightenment is not the ultimate toy, however, all experiences continue to arise and pass away, including those we may not like or choose. Jesus would not have chosen to be crucified, why else would he ask, "Father, why hast thou forsaken me?" The Dalai Lama would not have chosen to have his country taken away and his people tortured and massacred. Enlightenment doesn't make things go our way, it shows us there really isn't anything called enlightenment, nothing has really changed, this is the way it always was, only we were deluded. As Adyashanti says, "What is called enlightenment is actually the natural state, not an altered state; what we call the normal state of consciousness or the egoic state is actually the altered state."

There is no peace of mind to be found in time, it is in living outside of the idea of time, what has been called the Now, where happiness lies.

Am I Enough?

2011-07-02T22:13:00.000-04:00

I suspect that underneath all our fears, our anxieties, lurks that feeling, that thought- 'I'm not enough'. When I examine closely my worries about work or personal relationship, for example, there is always a trail back to this deep persistent program. The irony of it is how it conflicts with the other deep rooted fear of non-existence, of non-being. The fear that when we die we will cease to exist. To quote Woody Allen, "Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering- and it's all over much too soon." He captures the existential, contradictory nature of our suffering on both accounts-much of this life we spend suffering over not being enough and yet we agonize over giving it up.
Awakening shows us that there is no evidence that non-being is possible, all our experience rests on one constant, unchanging, timeless element of Being. This can be seen directly in our own experience in a flash of insight, Being realizes its own timeless constancy, its own reality in our very existence.
Despite this, on these two pillars are all our petty day to day worries and stresses built. Is it possible to be free of these fundamental fears? It is an important inner inquiry, psychological freedom is our deepest desire. What can be seen directly is freedom from fear in this moment, in the now. That is all that can be known for certain, all else is conjecture, any thoughts of the future are just that, mere thinking.
While we can't know 'permanent' freedom, inquiry can show us the delusion of the notion of not being good enough. How could this be possible? Any parameters, any benchmarks which we base a judgment on are inevitably arbitrary, either our own conditioned opinions, someone else's or society's, flawed sources all. If the illusory nature of this idea is deeply seen through now, the grip of fear and anxiety drops away. As time itself is conceptual, to desire a guarantee that this present freedom is permanent is to create suffering anew for ourselves.

Who Will Decide?

2011-06-12T14:06:00.000-04:00

They told you life is hard

It's misery from the start

It's dull and slow and painful

I tell you life is sweet

There is so much more

Be grateful

Who do you believe?

Who will you listen to

Who will it be?

It's high time that you decide

in your own mind

Natalie Merchant "Life is Sweet"

A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Who will we believe? Who will decide? When will we decide in our own mind? These are crucial questions for our happiness and peace of mind. Do we give up our power to choose what we believe? Our entire experience of the world, of our life, is dependent upon the stories we tell ourselves. Life can be heaven and life can be hell, this can be the Garden of Eden or hell on earth. You choose, what will you tell yourself. Do we tell ourselves we don't have a choice, life is actually this or that?

What life actually is, there are no words for. Life is not a story, life is before name and form. Whatever story we tell about it, it is possible to tell a different story that is at least as true, no story about reality is completely true.

If we are going to tell ourselves a story about life, make it one that supports our happiness and peace, our feeling free.

Given a choice, everyone would choose a story which promotes their inner well being. So it must be that we don't realize there is a choice. Looking closely, we may realize that the only choice we have is in the story we tell ourselves, we have no control over anything else.

Beyond Good and Bad

2011-05-20T09:23:00.000-04:00

I don't think that you are bad. I don't think that you are good. I think that you are God.

Ramtha, in 'What the Bleep do we know?'

Is it arrogant, as many religions say, to say that we are God? To say that I am God and you are God? In the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, when early members are struggling with the concept of God or a higher power, they are often told, "It's enough to know that there is God, and you ain't him." But what is meant by that? I believe that means that what the buddhists call the 'small self' or little 'I', as opposed to the Self, or God, is not God. When we think that we are this tiny 'thing' separate from the universe, separate from life, we are certainly not God. But when Jesus said "I and my Father are one," what did he mean? Using the language of 'I' and 'Father', that refers to two, yet he said we are one. Here is the essential paradox of life, the paradox of using concepts or language to describe the mysterious nature of reality.

There is an experience of unity, of non-separation, the enlightenment experience, which breaks down the rigidity of the seeming separateness of reality, it exposes the limits of language and concept. It also brings great joy and seeming certainty about the nature of life, wiping away years and years of doubt, at least in my case. But even this experience is not the end all, certainty passes, and hopefully what is left is a more joyful, more peaceful, wide open wonderment and humility of the magnificent mystery which we call life, reality, truth. We are Life, we cannot be separated from life, there is no boundary between us and life; therefore to say that I am God, you are God, it is all God, can be said with the utmost humility, with the utmost gratitude to be conscious of the precious nature of existence.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.

Rumi

Can I Forgive That?

2011-05-03T22:50:00.000-04:00

I was speaking with a friend this morning about forgiveness, about the idea, as quoted by Colin Tipping, the author of 'Radical Forgiveness', among many others, that forgiveness is not about 'letting bygones be bygones, it is about understanding that nothing wrong ever happened in the first place.'

I have written about this level of understanding before, numerous times in numerous ways, actually, because this is really a revolutionary and profound understanding. A state of mind in which there is no feeling that anything 'wrong' is happening, that indeed nothing 'wrong' has ever happened, is really a state of deep peace, of true happiness. We could name this state of mind many things, the natural state, Nirvana, living in the bliss of the Garden of Eden, etc. Before thinking makes it right or wrong, good or bad, etc., things are as they are.

So this friend posed the question, "I understand this idea about forgiveness and letting go of resentments, but can we really do this with big things? Suppose someone was driving and talking on their cell phone, not paying attention, and they crash into you and you are severely crippled, can you really forgive that? I mean, now you are crippled!"

So I would like to answer this question by presupposing two alternative scenarios and looking at our possible reactions to them:

1. As was stated, you are hit by a distracted driver, let's make it more extreme, who is not only on the phone but also stone drunk, and you are left severely crippled; or

2. You are taking a hike through lovely deep forest when an unexpected thunderstorm starts, lightening hits a big tree which falls on you, leaving you severely crippled equal to scenario one.

In both instances, the results are the same, you are now physically crippled for life. We can go through a process of grief and eventually come to acceptance in both situations, in neither situation, or in one situation but not the other. We can conversely remain bitter and resentful for the rest of our life in either or both scenario, feeling that this is so unfair that acceptance of such disaster is out of the question.

What makes sense, what is sane? I believe many of us feel that we would be much more likely to come to some level of acceptance, if we could come to acceptance at all, of scenario two, because this was either an accident, fate, an act of God, God's will, bad luck, depending on your belief system. But how can we accept scenario one, someone did this to us, they are to blame, we were seriously wronged, we are the victim of their bad, or evil, or at the least, grossly negligent behavior. This is unforgivable, or so we think.

But is it really? Is anything unforgivable unless we deem it to be so? Why is scenario two an act of God, a natural occurrence, but not scenario one; because there was another human being involved means it is unnatural? The teacher Francis Lucille often points out the fallacy in this type of thinking; are human beings less naturally occurring phenomenon than trees?

It is insane to refuse to accept reality, we are causing our own unending suffering. This is not to be confused with being happy about what happened, or condoning the driver's behavior, this is merely understanding suffering and its causes and the way out.

Perfect Equilibrium

2011-05-02T22:13:00.003-04:00

Before enlightenment, I was depressed; after enlightenment, I am depressed.

Anthony DeMello, "Awareness"

Of so many great teachers I've met in India and Asia, if you were to bring them to America, get them a house, two cars, a spouse, three kids, a job, insurance, and taxes... they would all have a hard time.

Sufi master Per Vilayat Khan,

as quoted in "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry", by Jack Kornfield

Do you believe in perfect equilibrium? Do you believe there are people that attain it? Is this what enlightenment is?

I don't believe it, but what do I know? We can never know another's inner experience, or more accurately the filtered inner experience of their body/mind, so how can we know? 'Enlightenment' can be experienced, realization of the 'I' as pure awareness is a possibility for anyone, and with this the realization that underneath all emotional/physical experience this is the reality for every living being. But if we carry around this notion that other people have attained some mythical emotional and mental perfection of experiencing unwavering peace, freedom and joy, we are destined to constant comparison and negative judgment of ourselves and our own experience. Some teachers seem to be representing this picture, so again I say, who can know? But let us work with what we know, let us work with the life, the movie, that is presenting itself to us here and now. And that life, this life, has its variations of emotional and mental states- pain, joy, frustration, sadness, grief, contentment, anxiety, etc.

Realization of pure awareness cannot be understood unless it is experienced. No experience, for that matter, can be fully understood unless it is directly experienced. The color green can be described endlessly but cannot be truly known until it is seen. This applies to true nature, to consciousness- when it is seen, it is seen, then one knows for oneself. This doesn't make anyone special or any more divine than anyone else, it merely makes someone know what they know out of direct experience, that's all. Out of this experience usually comes feelings of joy and relief of a certain suffering inherent in our 'normal' state of consciousness.

But this life is as it is, and we only create more suffering by carrying around some idealized picture of attainment, which may be perpetuated by the fanciful language and descriptions of teachers. Any fantasy in our head is only that, while reality beckons in the immediate moment, all around us, indeed everywhere, what we deem inside/outside, everywhere.

This many times unsatisfying reality is the only reality; not our story about it, but IT itself. Let this be enough, this imperfection is the only perfection.

Nature of Spiritual Awakening workshop

2011-04-07T22:31:00.000-04:00

I will be doing a workshop entitled "The Nature of Spiritual Awakening" this Sunday, April 10th at the Bhakti Barn yoga studio in Millburn, NJ for anyone who is local and interested in dialoguing in person on the topics of life and happiness and true nature that are explored in this blog.
Here is a link to the flyer:
http://files.meetup.com/1762785/Spiritual%20Awakening%20Workshop.pdf

Also here is a link to the meditation and dialogue group which gets together bi-weekly in Northern NJ:
http://www.meetup.com/Center-for-Inquiry-into-Awakening-New-Jersey/

Realize Being

2011-04-05T20:49:00.000-04:00

We live in illusion
And the appearance of things.
There is a reality.
We are that reality.
When you understand this,
You see that you are nothing.
And being nothing,
You are everything.
That is all.
Kalu Rinpoche (as reprinted in Awakening The Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das)

To realize Being is to realize our true nature. Literally, not metaphorically or theoretically. It is right here, right now, writing these words, and for you reading these words (since 'you' are reading these words, and Being is what you are, Being is reading these words right now). This is not difficult, nor hidden, it is only hidden in the sense that in our normal state of consciousness we don't realize or recognize this simple truth. In our conditioned identification with the body and mind, we overlook the obvious and intimately familiar.

This is not a definition of what it is that we are, for it cannot be defined. It may be described as without objective qualities, as in the Buddhist Heart Sutra. If Being is realized, from there understanding and wisdom may deepen and unfiltered perception increase. But the story we tell about life and reality continues to be that, a story. And if we notice, the stories of sages and sinners alike diverge and contradict each other all over the place. Interpretation is filtered by our conditioning no matter who is saying it.

But to realize Being in oneself, as oneself, is to awaken to the miracle of life, the mysterious quality of existence. What do we know; very little in the unimaginable scheme of things. We are a part of this incredible, unknowable infinity. Can we relax into that?

One Lesson

2011-03-27T20:30:00.000-04:00

Life holds many lessons but they are all really the same lesson. The ultimate lesson is that there are no mistakes, nothing wrong happens. How can something happen that is wrong? Does the event have a big tag on it that says 'THIS IS WRONG'? We think that it does, particularly with events that horrify us, like genocide or the recent tsunamis. But it is our mind, our thinking, that labels it wrong when we deem it to be unacceptable. What life is telling us over and over and over is that things are as they are; they are not a mistake, wrong, right, etc. Reality is not a judgment, a judgment is not real.

This is often expressed as 'everything happens for a reason'. But this is not quite right, this expression in itself is a judgment. Or it is frequently stated in the opposite, that 'there are no coincidences'. This is truer since labeling something a coincidence is also a judgment, nothing happens that carries its' own label 'THIS IS A COINCIDENCE'. Therefore there isn't any such thing as a coincidence really, but this doesn't mean the opposite is true, that 'everything happens for a reason'. Unless we want to say that the reason it had to happen is that it happened, this is the only reason we can really know, all else is fantasizing.

So can we learn the one lesson, all is as it 'should' be because it cannot be any other way? THINGS ARE AS THEY ARE, this is the one lesson that everything, every situation, is telling us.

Walking Miracles

2011-03-20T21:29:00.000-04:00

Have you noticed that everywhere you look there are walking miracles? Everywhere you go. I was just waiting for my takeout order at the restaurant, and wherever I turned, there they were. All shapes and sizes, moving, talking, laughing, scowling, full of unimaginable alive energy. On the news, in the midst of disaster, miraculous miracles. Tomorrow we are going away for a few days, and miracles will be all over the airport, and when we arrive, they will be waiting for us, God showing off everywhere. Amazing.

What Does God Want?

2011-03-20T18:12:00.000-04:00

I was reading an interesting article this morning about a prominent American Muslim cleric and his struggle to juggle conflicting ideas and show young passionate followers the way to faith and devotion to their beliefs and still practice non-violence. He has anger at American foreign policy toward many Muslim nations yet speaks out against the terrorist violence. He belongs to a conservative brand of Islam from which apparently spring many of the young men and women who turn violent in their actions. He is clearly a deeply thoughtful, intelligent man who is struggling to do the right thing according to his beliefs.

What I was struck by, though, is almost a passing mention in the article where he states his desire for the whole world to eventually follow his beliefs but that he realizes how unrealistic this desire is in his lifetime. The Muslims want the world to follow their beliefs, the Christians want the whole world to follow their beliefs, the Jews believe themselves to be the chosen people, etc.

Why this insistence that everyone believe and preach as we do? These are very intelligent, learned, mostly compassionate people who sincerely believe that God wants everyone to think as they do. What makes us think this ultimately arrogant notion? Do we really think that if there is a loving, compassionate God, he cares what you profess to believe? That she cares about talk as opposed to loving your neighbor as yourself? This is such a childish idea really. What you profess to believe means absolutely nothing, it has no meaning. God, if she exists, cares about love only and action which springs from it. Nondualists tell us we are love, this is our natural state if misunderstanding is seen through, if the fog of separation is lifted. For me, even this is a concept, that we are love, a beautiful concept but still a concept; love is a word. We are what we are, and no word or concept can touch the dynamic, flowing nature of life.

What can be discovered is that we are the very life that flows through all things, the reason flowers bloom and cells become full human beings and the very universe itself came to be. This is directly realizable when all our foolish and childish notions and immature arrogance that we are right and others wrong fall away.

The Truth Will Set You Free

2011-03-17T21:51:00.000-04:00

How many times are we having a discussion about another person with someone, and either we or our companion start a thought with, "I'm not judging but ..." This is a tip off that what's coming is a judgment. If we have started on the spiritual path, we are familiar with the caution against judging others, who hasn't heard the caveat, "Judge not lest ye be judged." So we don't want to feel like we are a judgmental person.

Do we want to believe we are a certain type of person or do we want to be free? Freedom ultimately comes from the realization that nothing that we think about ourselves is true. In reality, we are not this type of person or that type of person (we are not actually even a 'thing' called a person, but never mind). So censoring ourselves or pretending that we are not judging when if fact we are, are paths that will never lead to freedom and inner peace.

The truth will set us free, let us see what we are actually doing. Everyone judges, this is something people do. It is nothing to fret about if we don't have an agenda, an idea of how we should act or think. The cause of suffering is to be in denial, to be at war with ourselves. If we are judging, let's notice that is what is going on. I would say that to see clearly what others are doing is not judging, just seeing. If we are interpreting their actions, this is a type of judgment but this is what the mind does. When our thoughts go further, into the level of judgment where we are thinking that we know how others should be behaving, that we know what's best for them, we are venturing into different territory. Byron Katie tells us we are now in 'other people's business', and in danger of creating suffering for ourselves. But even here, if we have awareness that this is what the mind is doing and we don't give it undue weight or believe our judgments to be true, then where is a problem?

The problem arises, suffering arises, with attaching to these thoughts, believing them to be true, investing them with authority to cause emotional reactions within us. If this happens, whether we see it or not, we are at war with ourself, at war with reality as it is and creating suffering for ourselves. If we merely notice that this is what our mind is doing and treat it lightly, with bemusement at the fickleness of our thoughts, we will be at peace with whatever is happening.

Love

2011-02-28T21:27:00.001-05:00

What do we mean when we say that we love someone? Do we actually love that person as a separate entity, a separate object? And if we do and it is truly love, then it stands to reason that it would always be love that we feel around that person, not sometimes love but then resentment and hatred when they act in a way that doesn't fit with our expectations. What is real can be said to be those things that do not change, which do not arise and pass away like clouds forming and disappearing. The underlying substance of clouds is the water that may change form, from water to vapor to ice to clouds, etc., but nonetheless the basic substance is always present. So the changing forms are only that, passing appearances while the underlying reality is always present though not always realized.

In looking a little more deeply, it is seen that certain people's personalities tend to allow us to access feelings of love that are already within us. So following our reasoning, the feelings of love must always be present like the sun shining behind the clouds, but may not always be noticed if they are clouded over with anger, grief, resentment and fear. When someone's personality causes us to feel happy and joyful, we attach what we are feeling to the separate entity, the separate object of our attention, in this case another person but it could just as easily be an outside situation. But again, if their actions change which of course they do, all of a sudden they appear to be the cause of other, not so pleasant feelings.

Joy is the experience of happiness and acceptance with all of life exactly as it is appearing in the present moment, no complaints or problems with things as they are. Real love is also this, so love attached to another person is in a sense an illusion, it is their personality appearing pleasing to us at the time, allowing us to access the deeper love and joy that is always within us, although clouded over with other feelings due to our basic misunderstanding of life, which is that it is possible that life should be other than it actually is in this moment. It is wonderful to be with people or a special someone that does this for us so long as we don't attach our happiness to them, then it becomes a source of unhappiness and suffering as we expect them to make us happy, which is not actually possible.

A Quiet Mind

2011-02-26T16:31:00.000-05:00

Before thought, your mind, my mind, Buddha's mind, they are all the same.

Zen Master Seung Sahn

A quiet mind is a priceless gift. It cannot be bought for a million dollars or a billion dollars. We can acquire seaside homes, Rolls Royce cars, supermodel girlfriends, powerful boyfriends, and the like, but these will not quell the incessant chatter that threatens to drive us mad, nor will they tame the stormy, raging emotions that overwhelm us.

The simple beauty and power of a quiet mind is not an acquisition, it is available when the drive to acquire ceases, in all its manifestations. This includes so called spiritual acquisitions as well as material. The urge to be somebody, to be recognized, to be admired, can we see this as well?

A quiet mind is possible when the urge to control also ceases. The urge to control arises with the ego, they cannot be separated, when there is a separate person, that entity is looking for something, feels it is doing something, being something. It is in the very thinking that the separate entity arises. A truly quiet mind allows things to appear as they are, to be as they are, without interpretation. To interpret is to distort, to filter.

Sitting quietly, without motive, without distraction, is the beginning of the possibility of understanding what it means to be with a quiet mind. Only when the drive to do something, to get something, to change anything, ceases, is there a possibility of seeing what is here without distortion. Just to sit quietly, this is such a simple thing, really, yet to a large extent we have lost the ability to do so.

"How do I do that, I don't know how?"

What do we need to know in order to sit quietly, unless we want something, we want an outcome, we want it to occur a certain way?

Take a walk with absolutely no objective in mind, just to take a walk. How lovely is this to do something so simply, without motive or the urge to control, without the need for it to be a certain way.

With a quiet mind, discovering our true sense of being becomes available.

Race To Nowhere

2011-02-25T23:34:00.001-05:00

Just saw this great documentary, 'Race To Nowhere: the dark side of America's achievement culture', about the tremendous societal issue of the stress and anxiety experienced by our children from the pressure inherent in our current educational paradigm. This is a subject near and dear to my heart. Years ago I read Anthony DeMello's classic spiritual book, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality, and in it he referred to the book, Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Childrearing, as a holy book. I immediately purchased Summerhill and it had a tremendous impact on my perspective, or more precisely reinforced many ideas that I already had on the topic of raising our children, some put forth by Krishnamurti in his discussions on education.

It should be obvious to any sane person that the goal is to raise happy, psychologically free children who therefore become happy, psychologically free adult human beings. The goal is to create an environment that encourages the natural state of being. But the insanity of our current state of consciousness does not allow for this, we have constructed a system that encourages anxiety and fear, that equates value as a living being with performance and achievement. This is what was done to us, with the best of intentions, and we are doing to our children, again with the same intention. The antidote is to free ourselves and from there we can understand how to raise our children; until we do this our intentions won't prevent us from transmitting the same dysfunction and psychological and spiritual illness onto our children. This is what is happening, and this beautiful movie makes the effects of our actions very clear. Please see this documentary if you can, as a gift to yourself and humanity.

Buddha was a Liar

2011-02-18T08:34:00.001-05:00

Buddha was a liar. Jesus too, they were both lying.

A liar is someone who doesn't speak the truth. They were not speaking the truth, and neither is anyone else. Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, Byron Katie, Adyashanti, Krishnamurti, Ramana Maharshi, all these wonderful spiritual teachers, liars all. You too, and me. Especially you and me.

The truth cannot be spoken. It cannot be put into words. The description is not the thing; it can never, ever be what it is describing, no matter how beautiful or poetic the description.

This is the reason Miguel Ruiz ( The Voice of Knowledge: A Practical Guide to Inner Peace) advises us not to believe anything anyone says, and also not to believe anything we think. All thoughts are conceptual and therefore not real and therefore not true. We may think they are beautiful words, ugly revolting words, or anything in between, but they are just words, just thoughts, and empty of any reality other than being that, words and thoughts.

The difference between these spiritual teachers and you and me is that they know they aren't speaking the truth, they know their thoughts and words are not true. They are POINTING at the truth which they are experiencing, but they don't confuse what they are saying with the truth they are describing. We do, with their words and with our own thoughts. We think they are speaking the truth, we think that what we think is the truth. This is why we can't hear them, this is why we listen and listen and cannot see what they are pointing at. What they are pointing at is so simple and immediate that we can't see it because we are looking for the deep meaning of their words, which are empty of meaning.

I read a Jesus scholar who said that Jesus always pointed by saying, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like this ..." In other words, Jesus wanted to make sure nobody confused his description with the reality he was pointing at.

So Buddha and Jesus weren't really liars since they didn't confuse what they were saying with reality, but they will remain like liars for us until we realize the same thing, which is the understanding they were trying to point out to us.

What is your True Self?

2011-02-15T22:51:00.001-05:00

"But what is your true self? Your body has life and death. But your true self has no life, no death. You think "My body is me." This is not correct. This is crazy. You must wake up!"

"I ask you, what are you? Where are you coming from? What is your name? How old are you? When you die, where will you go? These are all simple questions. Maybe you say, "My name is Robert." That is your body's name. What is your true self's name? Maybe you say, "I am 35 years old." But that is your body's age. What is your true age? Tell me, tell me! If you don't understand, only go straight- don't know."

Zen Master Seung Sahn as reprinted in Only Don't Know: Selected Teaching Letters of Zen Master Seung Sahn

Mostly we go through our lives without examining for ourselves the nature of life, the deep fabric of existence and its meaning. It never seems important enough or crucial to what is happening at the moment. And if we are truly engaged with what is happening in the moment, wonderful. But if we start to become aware of the frequent feelings of dissatisfaction and dis-ease that accompany us throughout the day, the idea may arise to look a little deeper than what is happening in our external situation for the cause, the root cause of the feelings. The deeper we begin to look, the deeper the cause appears to lay. Deep existential feelings of loneliness, separation, and fear are discovered. What is the cause, where does this come from?

From a young age, being completely identified with the body made me constantly fearful of death, sometimes overtly but more frequently operating just under the surface of consciousness. At the very beginning of life after birth, we are not identified with the body, this notion of a 'me' in this body and a world out there which I am separate from has not formed, there is only the tremendous wonder and awe at the display of aliveness everywhere. But from the moment of communication, there begins the reinforcement of this idea. "What a beautiful baby you are, look at those gorgeous blue eyes! You are Chick, I am Mommy, that is Daddy over there." And so on it goes until this notion of separate people is so ingrained it never comes under question. Religious families also advance the idea of an omnipresent God although he/she is somehow separate from his creation, so even creator/creation are taught to be separate objects.

It is possible to wake up from the complete identification with the body as 'me'. Any number of things can happen to the body: we can lose hair, limbs, even have numerous organ removals or transplants, and yet the sense of 'me-ness' doesn't change one iota. This should be our first clue that what we think of as 'me' is not really the body, even though there is an intimate relationship with this body that is given in this lifetime. Discover what is the 'me-ness' that is unchanging, not time bound; in seeing this, we discover it is spaceless as well, there are neither boundaries in time nor space, it is merely present.

Peace and Happiness: Part Two-Change your thinking, change your life

2011-01-08T11:54:00.001-05:00

Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all we see.

John Lennon

As I start to see more and more that it is my thinking about life, my internal perception about events that occur, that cause the emotions that I feel, which in turn are the makeup of my overall experience of 'my' life, I turn to examine these internal thoughts and where they come from. I realize that the event is not causing my thinking, my opinions about how things should be, how life should be, are causing my reactions to outside events. The more I believe that my car shouldn't ever break down, for example, or I should never have a car accident like I did last week, the more upset and thrown off balance I will be if it happens. This is not to promote being a robot, trying to walk around in a zombie-like state without emotion, this is merely attempting to understand true cause and effect rather than our normal, misguided understanding which leads to being completely controlled by outside events instead of participating in our life by gaining internal control of our thinking and emotions. This is referred to sometimes as 'mastery of life'. It is not mystical or magical, rather it comes from seeing deeply the way things really are as opposed to just accepting what we are taught or told.

What about events like the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks or the Holocaust or other genocides? The life teacher Byron Katie tells us that "Nothing horrible ever happened except in our minds." What does she mean, how can this be? If we look deeply at the reactions that we have and that others have to these events, we can see that even here it is our belief systems that determine how we think and feel. As horrified as most people were by 9/11, there were many people with different belief systems that were overjoyed at the successful strike against what they perceive as the evil empire that is the United States. Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda all believe they are on the side of God and righteousness. We can shrug it off and label everyone who disagrees with us as insane. Fair enough, but we perceive the world as we believe it. Even these events are in an ultimate sense value neutral until they are filtered through our belief systems. Maybe these events are happening in order that we as humans awaken to the idea that we are all complicit in the continued violence, that 'an eye for an eye' leaves the entire world blind.

Again, I am not advocating a new belief system or pretending that I am not appalled and sickened to the core by what humans are capable of doing to one another, I am instead trying to see the true root of the problem instead of staying on the same old, tired, and clearly unsuccessful style of reacting to events.

I'm reading a fascinating book called Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, in it the author Jon Krakauer at one points quotes Hermann Goring, one of the most powerful Nazis responsible for much of the genocide, where in his war crimes trial he stated:

Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same way in any country.

Sound familiar? Our only way out is to think clearly, which comes from clear seeing of our internal reactions and how they come about, for ourselves.

Peace and Happiness: Part One

2011-01-05T23:28:00.002-05:00

I am interested only in peace and happiness, this is the purpose or goal of life. For we cannot give what we do not have. Everyone, at some level, would like do good, would like to contribute to the peace and happiness of the world, but if we are in turmoil inside that is what we will give to the world. Nobody seeks truth or money or even altruism for its own sake, regardless of what anyone says (this is a fairly arrogant statement, I grant you). We seek the truth of things when it dawns on us that understanding things as they actually are promises the only possibility of lasting peace and happiness; all other seeking leads to fleeting highs and inevitable frustration.

So it is helpful to see how the process of happiness really works, we must understand this process in order to gain insight which will help in our quest. Let us really understand that what we want is a feeling, not a thing. We want no external thing whatsoever in and of itself, even things which seem so dear, such as love of a partner, friends, admiration and respect of our peers, money, to serve our fellow man, etc. Can it be seen that what we actually want is how any of these things make us feel; again we want the feeling, not the thing itself. Any external thing is neutral in and of itself.

A simplistic illustration of this is rooting for our favorite football team. I root for the Green Bay Packers while my two older boys root for the NY Giants (my youngest son roots for the NY Jets to the chagrin of his brothers). Recently they played each other with a spot in the playoffs at stake. Regardless of the outcome, somebody was going to be happy and someone unhappy (the Packers kicked their butts, not that it matters, ha). So one thing occurred, yet I was happy and they were unhappy. The game and its outcome were neutral, what determined whether we were happy or unhappy was our thinking about what happened; so the game didn't cause our feeling, our thinking caused our feeling. In this basic example the truth of this is obvious, yet without separating the steps in this process, we become convinced that the external event actually caused how we felt.

It becomes more difficult when thinking about love of family or doing community service, or in reverse intractable pain or terminal illness. But using the same process of breaking it down through cause and effect, it can be seen that first, it is always the feeling that we are ultimately after, and second, it is always our thinking about outside circumstances that determines how we feel. The same person that we are madly in love with that causes us so much happiness at one point may be the same person who, when our thinking about them has changed, appears to cause us great anger, resentment, and grief years later. So was it the person or our thoughts about them all along that generated the internal experience?

So if we see this, and it must be seen with deep understanding, another possibility reveals itself. We can turn inward to see if peace and joy may be achieved without attaching it to the obtainment of some external goal. In fact, in the very turning away itself of looking outside oneself for happiness and peace, we may find they are available to us without any achieving at all. This is dawning of the realization of our natural state of being, or Being. If the seeking to change or control anything at all falls away, happiness and peace reveal themselves of their own accord. I reprinted the beautiful spiritual poem 'Free and Easy- A Spontaneous Song' last month which says "Although happiness and peace do not exist as an actual thing or place, it is always available and accompanies you every instant".

Life and Death

2011-01-05T22:09:00.000-05:00

Death is not the opposite of life, death is the opposite of birth. Life includes both birth and death. Birth and death are events whereas life is the totality of experience, life includes all events, all experiences. And as I pointed out in the prior blog, there is no point of separation between the experiencer, what we call 'me', and the experienced, or life. We are merely one of the myriad manifestations of life in its eternal movement.

We Are Not A Story

2010-12-26T12:59:00.000-05:00

Awakening, for me, is the deep realization that we are not a story. A story is not reading these words right now. Something alive is reading these words right now, and no description can begin to capture the profound and vital quality of aliveness. Even saying some 'thing' is here is too much; life is here reading these words, and life is aliveness, and we are that. There is no point of separation between us and life; I am not putting forth a theory here, only an observation. It is delusion to see a fictional separation between an 'us' and something called 'life'; if we look closely we see this is false.

Humans are storytellers, we are constantly telling stories about life, not only to others but to ourselves. This is what all thinking is, stories about what is happening that we are telling ourselves (not even that, really, more like fictional ideas that are arising out of nothing). But if we start to see our stories about life as the reality of life, then we begin to see a separation between us and life, we start to believe that our descriptions are the actual thing. The illusion of separation arises out of this, the mixing up of the stories about life with life itself, which is seamless, flowing, infinitely mysterious, ungraspable.

Without the story, nothing needs to be changed or controlled. Life moves and flows of its own accord, of which what we feel as 'me' acts according to our nature as part of this flow. This can be thought of as getting out of the way and letting God or Life run the show, which is really what's happening anyway. Our attempts to control what happens out of a illusion of separation, a belief in countless separate 'things' each with an independent existence, causes the anxiety, fear, and suffering we experience. Our minds are always going to tell stories about life, that is what they are beautifully designed for, it is in mixing up these stories with the wondrous magnificence of life as it actually is is where the trouble starts.

Is 100 Degrees Hot?

2010-12-14T22:48:00.000-05:00

I just walked the dog, it's 19 degrees outside, it's cold! But for someone living near the Arctic Circle, a winter reading of 19 degrees would be considered balmy. And of course 100 degrees is hot, when I'm sweating profusely and feel my skin burning, I know it's hot. But what if we were discussing the temperatures inside the sun would it be hot then? It would be considered a physically impossible cold spot were it even near the sun.

So hot and cold are judgments based on our expectations, they do not exist in reality. I've been reading an interesting little book by Stuart Wilde, Weight Loss for the Mind in which he makes this point in relation to showing how all our negative feelings can be traced back to our judgments, or opinions, clashing with reality. Without expectations on what should be, we would not suffer over what is. We may not like what is actually happening, but it is our judgment that it should not be happening, that something different should be occurring, that is the cause of suffering.

So it is not actually cold out, it is just a certain temperature. Which is not to say that if Ellen had asked me when I came in a few minutes ago if it was cold outside, I would say "It can't be, there is no such thing as cold." No, I would have said, "Yes it sure is!"

But it helps to notice how often we turn the neutrality of the weather into a negative, "It's so hot out, I can't breathe!", "It's so cold, when is Spring going to come already." Even if we like the day's particular weather, often we say, "Sure it's nice today, but I hear it's going to be crummy for the next three days."

It is not in using commonly understood judgments that we create problems and suffering for ourselves, it is in the unconscious use of these opinions making us feel like the victim of our lives, of things not turning out like we want or think they should be.

This is This

2010-12-09T08:57:00.000-05:00

This is this.
It is not religious, spiritual, nondual, material, immaterial, christian, jewish, buddhist, good, horrible, divine, nothing or something. It does not exist nor does it not exist. It is not separate nor is it one.
This is this.
The morning sunlight shines brightly through the window, illuminating the world.

Free and Easy: A Spontaneous Song

2010-12-02T20:52:00.001-05:00

I have been meaning for some time to post this beautiful spiritual poem, with much gratitude to Lama Surya Das who published it in his great book Awakening the Buddha Within. For me, pretty much all we need to know or contemplate in the spiritual life is contained within its wisdom.

Awakening the Buddha Within: Eight Steps to Enlightenment

I have used this poem as an enhancement of countless hours of my own meditation as well as a kickoff to meditation in a weekly group for years. Relax, enjoy, and realize there is nothing to do or undo.

Free and Easy: A Spontaneous Song

by Venerable Lama Gendun Rinpoche

Happiness cannot be found
through great effort and willpower,
but is already present, in open relaxation and letting go.

Don't strain yourself,
there is nothing to do or undo.
Whatever momentarily arises in the body-mind
has no real importance at all,
has little reality whatsoever.
Why identify with, and become attached to it,
passing judgment upon it and ourselves?

Far better to simply
let the entire game happen on its own,
springing up and falling back like waves-
without changing or manipulating anything-
and notice how everything vanishes and
reappears, magically, again and again,
time without end.

Only our searching for happiness
prevents us from seeing it,
It's like a vivid rainbow which you pursue without ever catching,
or a dog chasing its own tail.
Although peace and happiness do not exist
as an actual thing or place,
it is always available
and accompanies you every instant.

Don't believe in the reality
of good and bad experiences;
they are like today's ephemeral weather,
like rainbows in the sky.

Wanting to grasp the ungraspable,
you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as you open and relax this tight fist of grasping,
infinite space is there-open, inviting, and comfortable.

Make use of this spaciousness, this freedom and natural ease.
Don't search any further.
Don't go into the tangle jungle
looking for the great awakened elephant,
who is already resting quietly at home
in front of your own hearth.
Nothing to do or undo,
nothing to force,
nothing to want,
and nothing missing-

Emaho! Marvelous!
Everything happens by itself.

Are We All One?

2010-12-02T20:11:00.000-05:00

The concept of oneness, that we are all one, has entered popular culture. It is embraced on a theoretical level by many people and many religions, by many points of view. Which has a wonderful positive effect, I think, in that we tend to be more tolerant, more compassionate, when we consider such a possibility.
There is a reality, however, that is pointed to that is not theoretical, not conceptual, and I think the popular embrace of the concept can be a hindrance to direct, experience. When we think we 'know' something, it really means that we know a concept; and a concept is not actually true, it is only relatively or conceptually true. Direct experiential knowing, however, that is not a result of thought, in other words is not of the mind, is very different. It does not require defense, or conclusions as a result of conceptual 'proof', to be known as true. It remains true always, whether thought is occurring or not, whether anyone else 'believes' it or not.
Another hindrance to direct realization of oneness is the misunderstanding that it means in some way that all people are one. Chick, Ellen, Joe, Obama, and Tiger Woods are all one. Now I would like to be able to hit a golf ball 350 yards like Tiger, but it's not going to happen, at least in this lifetime. So the differences between people are obvious, and since the concept of oneness contradicts this, we tend to embrace this concept as nice and loving, but then relegate it to a distant part of the mind as unknowable.
In a world of people, we are not all one. But the world of people belongs to the conceptual world, 'people' is just a label put on to objects that appear to be separate from other objects. If we have a direct experience of our nature as Being, however, or we may call it consciousness or many other labels, then there is a realization that there is a level of reality in which there are no separate objects, just life happening. Breaking up this one life happening into separate parts is something our minds do, which is actually helpful in day to day living. But to only live out of this level is to miss a true understanding of oneness, to always have a feeling of separation from everything around us.
On this level, Chick, Ellen, Joe, Obama and Tiger, are indeed all one, prior to having those names and unique personality traits.

What Are You?

2010-11-15T23:25:00.000-05:00

Do you know? It seems so simple a question, yet when I ask people, and then ask that they really think about it, not to give a rote answer, most realize that they don't know. If we are happy, truly happy, then who cares? Knowing anything, including what we are, is not really important; being happy, joyous and free, that's important. That's what we all want.

Yet we refer to ourselves many, many times a day, how can we be honest if the thing we think about the most, talk about the most, care about the most, want the best for-we don't know what it is? Isn't that strange to realize, funny actually, this thing we call 'me', that we obsess over, can't stop thinking about if we wanted to, it seems; if we stop and really inquire to ourselves, "What am I?", we don't know.

If I ask "Who are you?", you probably know how to answer. We have that one down pat. My name is Steve, or Joe, or Sue; I live in New Jersey, or Timbuktu; I'm a policeman, or fireman, or carpenter, or walrus (ok, not a walrus); etc., etc., etc.

So we know the story of who we are, of course we know all that. But if I say, "I live in New Jersey", what is the 'I' part? We resort to the usual suspects, the body, the mind (what is this thing we call 'mind' for that matter?), our thoughts, our emotions. But is this really what we are?

Think about it, or grow still and look without thought. What we think of as me is more basic than that, more primary than even our body or thoughts. There is this undeniable sense of 'meness' that is always with us every waking moment, that is how we know we are here. It is here even if there is no sense of the body in that moment, and even when there is no thinking going on, although we are so used to being aware of thinking that we lose sight of the fact that we are here whether or not thinking is going on.

So we want to be happy. Maybe we have learned that thinking about ourselves constantly, obsessively, which has really become the norm, has not resulted in happiness, we may even notice that it generally has the opposite effect, it results in unhappiness. But since we don't know what else to do, all our training has been to think our way out of a problem, think our way to a solution; we assume that even though constantly thinking about ourselves has not generally resulted in happiness, at least not any kind of sustainable happiness, the way out must be to think more about ourselves and our dilemma. The next round of thinking will be the successful round.

What about the possibility of seeing the peace that exists in just being what we are, not the who we are in our thinking. There is a crucial difference that we generally overlook, 'who' we are is the story of ourselves in our thoughts, as opposed to what we are in reality. Can the enormous difference be realized?

Think about your car. What your car is as opposed to the story of your car are two completely different things. The story of your car could go like this, 'It was made by a car company named Ford, it was built in Detroit in 2006, I use it to drive to work, it tends to drift to the right on the highway, the radio doesn't get as good reception as my last car, etc.'

What your car is is simple, it is that thing sitting in your garage right now (actually it isn't even really that, but that's a lot closer). The name of it and the story of it are not it, it is it.

Same with you, the who of you, the story, is not actually you, not at all; you are what is reading these words right now. The story that you live in West Orange is not reading these words, you are reading these words. What is that? What are you? If you find you, if we find ourselves, really, we might not worry so much about the story. Peace lies in realizing we are not our story.

To Be A Free Man

2010-11-07T08:32:00.001-05:00

I have always been moved by the story of a German pacifist who, during the Nazi regime, gave up his ideological stance by becoming involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. So I did a little reading on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. According to Wikipedia, he was

"an avowed pacifist and pastor ... (who) advocated Hitler's assassination and ... who was actively involved in the planning. In the face of Nazi atrocities, Bonhoeffer concluded that "the ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation shall continue to live." He did not justify his action but accepted that he was taking guilt upon himself as he wrote "when a man takes guilt upon himself in responsibility, he imputes his guilt to himself and no one else. He answers for it...Before other men he is justified by dire necessity; before himself he is acquitted by his conscience, but before God he hopes only for grace.

We all have many perspectives and opinions based on our upbringing, culture, natural temperament, etc. As can be seen from this short excerpt, Bonhoeffer's frame of reference came from his intense religious Christian convictions, which framed all of his thoughts about meaning and purpose in a human life. Some Christian oriented writings focused on his intense Christ centered perspective, but I think this misses the inspiring point of his story. His unwavering commitment to decide for himself the right course of action, his willingness to stand alone, and his flexibility of thought when faced with extraordinary circumstances, are what set him apart. His strong belief in non-violence and love of his fellow man imbued all of his life, but when faced with extraordinary circumstances, he felt compelled to act although recognizing the possibility that his god would not forgive his actions.

He called this the necessity of being a 'responsible' man, I call it the actions of a free man. He was practically a lone voice in his unwavering criticism of the Hitler and the Nazis within Germany, including within his own Church.

Deep peace comes from the willingness to face seemingly unbearable consequences in the quest to do what is right, regardless of the opinions of other men. Men and women of great religious conviction have many times been able to make this choice due to the courage of their convictions; this becomes a greater possibility with a realization that nothing and no-one is truly separate form the whole of life.

Verona Park

2010-10-13T22:02:00.000-04:00

What a beautiful morning in the park. Not one but three great blue herons, walking delicately in the shallows, then spreading their incredible wings and flying a short distance to a new spot. Cormorants in the tree bordering the lake, ducks gliding on the lake's surface, canada geese flying in formation overhead. Or more accurately, as I read in a beautiful poem up at Springwater last week, not flying overhead but flying through me. Only when I identify myself as this body are they overhead, are they outside me. What tells me they are 'outside', over there? If I focus my concentration on where my eyes are, what do I see? I see all that is supposedly outside me, yet here it is appearing without separation from 'me'.
As I walk beside the lake, thoughts about anger arise. So much anger, so quick to arise, in me and in everyone. Why? We are so quick to argue with what is, demanding that it be different, be what we decide is best, what we expected, what we expect from ourselves and those around us. When this inevitably doesn't happen, we get angry. No, no, our mind cries, foul. I'll fix you, I'll get angry and force you, whomever, you God, to conform with my desires or else.
The sun rises over the trees and light dances on the gently swaying water.

Chick and I spend a few days at Springwater

2010-10-13T21:45:00.000-04:00

I went on silent retreat for a few days last week. Chick came with me, with his memories, comparisons, and expectations. As a matter of fact, that's what 'Chick' is, a bundle of memories, comparisons, and expectations. When those thoughts and images are not floating around, where is 'Chick'? What is left? I'm left, that's what.
What am I? I am what's here this moment; faceless, non-born, deathless awareness. No parents, no career, without a past or a future. Whenever Chick appears, past and future, parents and children, job and retreat, life and death appear with him. On retreat, time and space to inquire into this story, into the belief structure that creates tension, dis-ease, unhappiness.
Meditating the first day, Chick was there constantly, comparing this experience to past retreats, to remembered experiences, finding this one not good enough, not blissful enough, not peaceful enough.
Second day, third day, just sitting, doing nothing, hour after hour, looking at the story of 'Chick' when it arises, quietness of mind appears. Not very exciting, just what was happening. Occasional bird call, tightness in the back, now in my neck, now in my knee. No burning bush, just what was happening, what is happening. What is happening? Thoughts arising, fingers moving, words appearing on the screen, sitting is all happening.
One can say there is no 'me', one can say there is a me, what's the difference? What is is what is, it doesn't matter what we say about it. If there is a me, I have no face, no past and no future, and if that's my case, then it's yours too. What could anything living be except living awareness?

What Business Are We In?

2010-09-23T23:15:00.004-04:00

I'm not in the hope business, I'm in the truth business.

Adyashanti

Most people treat the present moment only as a stepping stone to the next moment.

Eckhart Tolle

When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want.

Byron Katie Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life

Most of us are in the hope business, not the truth business. We have hopes for the future, dreams for the future. Things are going to be better in the future, better when we achieve our goals. Life will be better when we improve ourselves, get rid of or at least a handle on our shortcomings. The ordinariness of the present moment, of our present circumstance, is not enough, cannot be all there is to life; there must be something more, more excitement. The future will be of more import than the present.

In the movie As Good As It Gets, in a classic scene Jack Nicholson asks a therapy waiting room full of people, "What if this is as good as it gets?"

We have trained ourselves, or were brainwashed when we were too young to know any better, to be dissatisfied with the present moment, with life as it appears now. And whether we understand it or not, life as it appears now is the truth, the one and only truth. Our thoughts about the past are not the truth, our fantasies about the future are not the truth, our interpretation of the present moment is not the truth; only life as it appears now, unfiltered through our mind with all its conditioning and belief systems, is the truth. Our belief that life as it appears now is a learning experience for a better future is not the truth either, although you can find endless teachers to give you that to hang onto, if that's what you're looking for.

What is the sense of arguing with the way things are? We actually believe that doing so, being perpetually dissatisfied with things as they are, is the way to happiness. It is helpful to stop for a moment and inquire, is this really true? It is madness to look for happiness by always wanting life to be different than it is. This is a recipe for suffering, not happiness.

It may also seem that if we accept things as they are, cultivate peace with life as it is, that we will lose motivation to do the right thing or achieve any goals. But do we know this is true, I do not believe it is. Is it equally possible that the opposite is true, that making peace with life as it is will free us to naturally do what is needed in any given situation, without neediness or fear? Jesus taught, "The truth will set you free", he didn't say if we change things to suit our desires, we will then be free. To do any real good in this world, to help others to achieve happiness and peace, which is what everyone wants, we must understand how to have it ourselves. We cannot give what we don't have.

And the place to start is by accepting the present moment, embracing life as it appears now, embracing the truth. This has become a cliche in our modern society but most of us don't have a clue of what it really means to do it, to really be at peace with things as they are.

When I argue with reality, I lose, but only 100% of the time.

Byron Katie

Discernment and Pointing

2010-09-14T23:28:00.000-04:00

After reading Scott Kiloby's beautifully written essay, on the blog NonDuality America to which I have a link on the right, on openness and awakening out of the rigidity of any one particular teaching, thoughts on the paradox inherent in any thinking about truth, teachings, and nature of reality have been floating around in my mind. Here are some counterpoints to add to the flavor.

Let us agree that fundamentalist positions that hold that any school of thought, tradition, religion, language, or concept can have a lock on truth are inherently misguided. All positions are contained within the nature of things as opposed to actually being the truth of it. The description can never be the thing; this is self-evident. This is where many of our current religions have veered off the track, when they put forth the notion that the descriptions, i.e. the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, are the actual truth as opposed to what they are attempting to point to.

On the other hand, the view from here is that all valid teachings on truth and the nature of things do point in the same direction, what may be called, borrowing from Zen, the ‘suchness’ of things as they are. All earnest inquiry into truth must look in the direction of what is here prior to language, prior to conceptual formulation of any sort. If this is followed to the end of the mind’s ability to formulate ideas, where can we end up but in unknowing? At that point, any description or formulation at all, i.e. oneness or duality, existence or non-existence, something or nothing, emptiness or form, must either fall away or lead us into hell, or at least out of the Garden of Eden, which is itself merely a depiction of what’s here now prior to language and conceptual knowledge.

So in a sense if we open our mouth to speak, we turn from the truth. But of course we don’t, for how could it be possible to turn from truth, the truth is inherent everywhere. The true truth has no opposite, for all is contained within it, all is an expression of it. But if we are going to have discourse on truth and the nature of things, openness must be tempered with discernment, for all teachings are not equal. Much of what passes for understanding or knowledge is nothing of the sort. Much of what is said comes out of ignorance or the misunderstanding that truth may be captured within language.

Furthermore, I am not sure it is possible to arrive at true openness with discernment without at least an initial awakening out of the concept of self, for to be stuck in this concept is to be stuck in conceptual reality without any way out. A conceptual self can only see a conceptual reality. At least this was my experience, certain teachings such as the Heart Sutra were hopelessly out of reach, even after decades of practice, until the simplicity and beauty of its pointing were revealed in a flash of realization. What is realized is the same always, although experienced in numerous ways and known by many names: awareness, consciousness, stillness, presence, Being, etc. But the instant the mind gets involved; the variety of interpretations is endless.

The known becomes clear as the unknown, and the unknown comes round to the known, and all becomes the miraculous dance of isness. Even with that, too much has been said.

The one thing that is needed

2010-09-09T10:19:00.000-04:00

There is something within you that remains unaffected by the transient circumstances that make up your life situation, and only through surrender do you have access to it. It is your life, your very Being-which exists eternally in the timeless realm of the present. Finding this life is "the one thing that is needed" that Jesus talked about.

Eckhart Tolle, from 'The Power of Now'

There are limitless teachings, opinions, paths, and steps to improve our lives, get what we want, or achieve 'enlightenment' or inner peace. This is okay, not good or bad, we all have opinions on all sorts of things, and many things we choose to do or follow seem to improve our lives, make us feel happier.
For me, however, the discovery for myself-in myself- as myself, of Being, remains the most profound, transformative experience of my life. Most of us go through our entire lives without any realization of what it is that we are calling 'me'. Recently, I asked my mother what she thought she was, and she replied, "skin and bones, I guess." As my wife said, however, "If that's what you are, what is the difference between someone who is alive one minute and dead the next?" The skin and bones are still there, but what we knew as the person, as the living being, is clearly not. Adyashanti tells a story of speaking with his mother, who was in her fifties at the time, who told him that there was something about herself that seemed exactly the same from when she was a young girl, an essence that remained unchanged through time. This was one of the stories that began the spark of recognition within me, for I identified deeply with that feeling. Inquiring deeply into who or what that is can be a powerful practice.
So thoughts arise almost ceaselessly about ourself, this 'thing' called me, and yet we rarely ever examine closely, through the course of an entire lifetime, what is it we are thinking about. If you ask yourself, or anyone else, the question "What are you?", you may be surprised at the uncertainty you encounter.
So while the ceaseless attempts to improve our lives may bring some increased happiness, turning our gaze inward to see what is looking allows us to recognize ourselves in the mysterious peace that waits patiently for the moment of realization.

"What is being looked for is what is looking"
St. Francis

Truth, Identity, and The Seeker

2010-08-29T20:45:00.003-04:00

I was with a friend recently and the subject of being a spiritual seeker came up. For many people, there comes a point in life when the desire for deeper understanding and meaning becomes paramount. It may seem an innate pull or it may come as a result of unhappiness and suffering. This is a wonderful event, a beginning of the possibility of wisdom, of loosening the complete identification with our story, or the character in our story, or society's story. An opening of the possibility of a revolution in consciousness.

But what happens so often is we form a new identity as a spiritual seeker. With this identification comes an idea about how a spiritual person behaves, speaks, and reacts. We begin to unconsciously (or consciously) take on these patterns of behavior. I will act loving and calm, free of anger and judgment, speak and move slowly, etc. We can end up acting like a passive, neutered doormat pretending to be an Indian sage with an irritating holier than thou attitude, all the while repressing our anger, fear, and confusion.

What are we really looking for? Are we looking for what's really true, for liberation; or a new identity, one that appears to make us a better person or allows us to garner compliments and approval from others? It appears few people are looking for true liberation, which requires a willingness to let go of all opinions and expectations and plunge into the unknown.

Liberation has no face or pattern of behavior. We cannot know what it will look like or what form it will take. This identity as the seeker can be very subtle and cunning, we can fool ourselves into believing what our mind tells us about ourselves, that we are really what we are pretending to be, this new mask we have donned. Liberation is about freedom by definition, about being who we are without any masks; it is about whatever it is that we are realizing its/our innate freedom and living from that. Since we are actually free all the time (for what could be keeping us in bondage, and I'm only referring to psychological freedom, not physical), liberation or awakening is only about realizing this innate freedom, for life is moving through us, as us, all the time.

So Life or God is already and always free and this is our true nature, this is the creator and the created. So spirituality is merely about recognition of this and being who we are, not looking like or imitating anyone else, for Life is living through us, not looking for us to be some other way or have some other personality. Only ignorance of this fact brings on seeking to be or look like something other than what we are. Most of us have bought into the lie that we must act or behave a certain way, according to rules that others propagate in order to be okay, to be worthy of a so called separate God's love. Liberation comes in as many forms as there are in this universe, infinite form.

What do we really want, freedom or approval?

What is Spirituality?

2010-08-22T22:52:00.003-04:00

Image by { pranav } via FlickrSpirituality is a term that has been used so frequently as to have been rendered nearly meaningless. As I have it in the title of my blog, I think it appropriate to talk about what it means to me. When I use the word spirituality I am pointing only and always at just one thing. That one thing has many descriptions, however I would call it the search for God or Truth. The word God has no religious connotation for me, unless one uses the word religion to mean this same thing, the search for Truth or meaning. The very word religion has been co-opted by institutions, large so called religious organizations propagating certain dogmas as being literally true. We have come to believe that the descriptions of reality are the truth as opposed to the reality itself, although by reality I do not only refer to the material or manifest. For the word God to have any real meaning it must refer to the all, the seen and the unseen, the known and the unknown.

It is clear that noone knows why we are here. Science can take us back to the Big Bang but has no understanding as to the instant before- manifestation out of nothingness, as well as no real understanding of what quantum mechanics or relativity have to tell us, in other words that our understanding of physics and the nature of time and space aren't true. Religion can postulate or fabricate meaning, purpose, and origination of the world, but this is mere speculation at best and total nonsense at worst.

The teachings of the Buddha, Zen, and Indian Atvaita or Non-duality come the closest. These point to experiential understanding of life and the nature of reality. When we move beyond experiential understanding, we are either in the realm of mathematics or we are in the realm of speculation. Mathematics has a certain truth to it even if what it points to is not graspable by the human mind, as is the case of quantum mechanics and relativity. Buddha confined his teaching to what he called 'the end of suffering' and kept silent as to meaning and/or speculation on the nature of God or what happens after death. Zen points only to what is seen in actual experience, albeit to what is difficult to see because of the conceptual beliefs that are so ingrained in us since birth that they remain unquestioned.

Spirituality as used here does not refer to the seeking of a better life, magical powers, relaxation, or anything referred to in The Secret. These all fall into what Chogyam Trungpa called 'spiritual materialism'.

Here spirituality is closer to what Francis Lucille speaks of when he says "This is not about becoming a better person, it is about seeing that we are not actually a person." This may sound out there, but it is possible to realize that even the idea of being a person is conceptual, life and reality are occurring prior to the addition of name and form, these are conceptual overlays on what is already here.

The Enlightened State of Mind-Final Episode of Lost

2010-08-15T11:39:00.000-04:00

In the final episode of the TV series Lost (if you haven't seen it and plan on watching, don't read this blog), many of the characters have an experience of remembering their time on the Island. This causes a psychic change to occur. In one scene that I found particularly moving, the couple Jin and Sun, after having had this awakening, encounter Sawyer with whom they spent so much time on the Island. Not having had this awakening to the Island experience yet, Sawyer doesn't recognize them, but of course they remember him very well and have deep feelings of friendship, kinship and love towards him. He is speaking with them from one state of mind, his current experience and what is going on within it, what could be called the story, like a situation in a fictional movie. They respond to him from a completely different place; they realize he doesn't recognize them, so they address him with his current 'name' so as not to confuse or challenge him, yet they are smiling at him and displaying obvious deep affection for him, which confuses him anyway.
He tells them how he is there to protect them and, as they continue to smile, they tell him with complete serenity that protection is not necessary. He presses on, saying he is there to keep them safe, and Sun responds with great peace, "We are already safe." They walk out, continuing to smile and exude love towards him, leaving him thoroughly confused.
This is a beautiful depiction of the enlightened state of mind. Realizing there is nothing to fear, things are exactly as they should be and will continue to be that way. There is no other possibility. Further, to see and greet everyone as an old friend who is remembered with great affection and love for who they are, regardless of whether they feel this way or not. To see everyone as on 'our side', to realize there are no enemies, even if we are seen as the enemy. This is what Jesus on the cross was referring to, "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do." He did not see an enemy, he saw part of himself in those who acted out of ignorance. Only ignorance divides reality into friends and enemies, good and bad, etc. Reality has no opposite.

Toni Packer and Springwater Center

2010-08-07T21:10:00.002-04:00

"Truth is a pathless land"- J. Krishnamurti

My friend Stew and I spent a few days at beautiful Springwater Center for Meditative Inquiry, just south of Rochester, NY. I have been attending silent meditative retreats there for the past eight years, having felt a powerful attraction after reading just the beginning of one of Toni Packer's books, The Wonder of Presence: And the Way of Meditative Inquiry, in which it talked of her transformation from a soon to be Zen Master to a teacher who walked away from all authority (even the role of teacher), all ritual, all tradition or affiliation of any sort after having been exposed to the writings of J. Krishnamurti.

As I have written about in an earlier post, reading Krishnamurti had a profound transformative effect on me many years ago, and yet prior to stumbling on Toni's book I hadn't met anyone else who had a similar experience. When I realized that here was someone nearby carrying on a similar exploration of truth to Krishnamurti, I felt compelled to go and spend time with Toni.

Springwater Center operates somewhat under the radar of spiritual centers, due to the lack of affiliation with any tradition and also, I believe, to the complete absence of philosophy, path, or dogma. Wikipedia quotes an article describing Toni as a "zen teacher minus the zen and minus the teacher". I cannot imagine a better place to explore the inner work of truth if one is looking for a place of peace, stillness, beauty, and the insight that arises out of these. Insight is also promoted by the talks and group dialogues provided by the current 'teachers' there along with Toni: Wayne, Richard, Sandra, and Stew, all of whom have made inquiry into the nature of reality, life, and our true nature the central focus of their lives. What distinguishes Toni's legacy and the atmosphere at Springwater is the willingness to look at the nature of our present experience without the benefit of any religious, spiritual, or philosophical framework whatsoever.

Meditating at Springwater is a truly personal journey into silence, simplicity, immersion in the natural world (Springwater is set amidst 200 acres of rolling meadows and forests), and complete dropping away of the social conventions and masks. With most of the normal sensory distractions not present, one is left to contemplate what is real and true about our present experience. There is no coercive structure or mandatory nature to the schedule other than keeping the silence and participating in a one hour work period.

Springwater is a hidden gem, away from the hordes of spiritual seekers flocking to traditional structured paths telling us how to look, what to expect and what it should look and feel like.

The Story of Everyone

2010-07-31T16:36:00.001-04:00

Once upon a time there was a happy young couple. One day to their delight the woman got pregnant and nine months later a beautiful baby boy was born. Let's say they decided to give this new little person the name Chick (why they would name a boy Chick is a mystery but that's for another story).

Chick had a little body and this incredible life within which was obvious to everyone who saw him through the joy, laughter and tears which flowed constantly through and out of him in a nonstop display of pure energy of being. Just being around this newly formed bundle of life made adults stop worrying and stressing for a few moments and feel the joy and life within themselves. Of course soon after being around the wonder-full baby the adults went back to doing what they were supposed to do as responsible adults, worrying about their problems and how they needed to solve them in order for their families and them to be happy, at least for a moment before the next problem appeared which they needed to worry, stress, and ruminate over in order to solve it and get another few moments of peace, and so on.

Meanwhile baby Chick was living with his little body slowly growing, his life or being within intact with wonder, and something else appearing, what we could call a mind. Both he inside and those around noticed that thinking was happening, Chick was able to have thoughts about himself and what was going on around him. So now there was this body, mind and the being or presence of life within. As time passed, through everyone around him calling him Chick it became obvious to him that that was who he was, along with the slow realization that he was separate from these other living bodies around him. And as he was praised for good behavior and scolded for bad behavior, mildly at first and more severely when he got a little older and should know better, he came to know what was expected of him and when he was a good boy and when he was a bad boy. Prior to this reinforcement, there hadn't seemed to be any good and bad; things happened, of course, which made him laugh and things happened which made him cry, but they were all part of the magic and wonder of this miraculous thing he came to understand everyone called life. Many times it was puzzling to him the reactions of those around him, even those closest to him, like the people he now knew as his mother and father. It was obvious how much they loved him, but they would get angry seemingly because of something he did, even when he hadn't intended to hurt anyone, he was just going along with life as it came. Everyone around, particularly the adults, seemed very sure they knew everything about what was going on around them and they understood how life worked and what it was about. He didn't feel this way at all, so much seemed mysterious and amazing and sometimes scary, but he didn't worry about it too much as he assumed that as he grew up and he too became an adult all would become clear to him as well.

As he grew older, however, it started to dawn on him that while he knew a lot more facts about life, he was acquiring knowledge; he wasn't really understanding what life was about any more than he had when he was little. His parents, teachers, religious school teachers and other adults were all telling him what it was about, but this just made it more confusing since not only did it not make sense what they were saying, but they all contradicted each other constantly. But in order to fit in he started to talk more and more like he understood what was going on and what everything meant, only this began to cause a conflict inside himself over what he presented on the outside and how he felt on the inside. No matter how much he thought and thought about himself and the world around him and everyone's opinions about it, he couldn't come up with a framework and understanding which really made sense and gave him the peace, serenity and joy which he craved and felt less and less. There was something about him which felt the same no matter how old he got, what he did, how he looked, and what people said about him. But this in itself didn't make sense since he was obviously changing, this body was getting bigger and going through many changes and his thoughts and emotions were constantly changing based on what happened to him in his life.

Life went on like this and of course Chick developed many opinions about it like everyone else, though no opinion seemed to hold true in all situations but Chick tried not to let this disturb him too much, at least not consciously. But try as he might, he couldn't deny the frustration that he often felt over his feeling that he was missing some crucial understanding about life. Happiness came and went, as did sadness, fear, anger and all the other emotions, but beneath those emotions he felt much the same as he always did, he felt like himself. But who or what was he? He knew he had this body, this mind, and this consciousness which seemed to be within it, within him.

Then one night in the middle of another bout of frustration over his inability to figure this thing called life out, it dawned on him in an extremely subtle way that what he was wasn't what he'd been told he was ever since he was born. He wasn't this body/mind at all with all its characteristics and its consciousness within, this was backwards; he was the consciousness itself, and within it, within him, appeared the body/mind that everyone, including himself, called Chick. Furthermore, it was obvious that this is what everyone is, every single so-called person along with every living thing in the world was this, this aliveness, this pure awareness peering out at everything through the eyes of bodies and hearing through the ears of bodies. How obvious this was, how could this consciousness which is 'him' not have seen itself for what it was, for what it is and always will be, no matter what happens to the body/mind called Chick? This was the story of everyone, whether they understood it or not didn't matter in the slightest.

Great joy and peace was felt with this realization of the mistake that was made, of the hilarity of the misunderstanding that brings so much frustration. But of course these feelings passed as all feelings do, and the whole range of emotions continued to arise and disappear as they always did. But the misunderstanding was gone, life was still a mystery at its core, but this was seen to be the truth of things as they are.

This is just a story, of course, and as such it isn't really true, but still, it makes you wonder.

Enlightenment

2010-07-14T21:40:00.000-04:00

A few more comments on the subject. Enlightenment, to me, refers to the simple movement from identification as a separate person or 'thing' that has thoughts and a physical body to identification as pure Presence, the awake awareness that is already and always here. It is not a change in belief, 'now I believe in Oneness, we are all one, etc.' A change in a belief system is no different than a change of clothes, it has no inherent truth or reality to it. Enlightenment refers to a recognition independent of thought that this is what's actually always here.
Douglas Harding describes this movement as a movement of about 12", from what you appear to be from a foot away from yourself, inotherwords what you look like from the outside, to what is actually being experienced from where you are. This brings the realization that we are no more what we look like from the outside, i.e. our physical body, than we are the clothes we are wearing on our body. This is at once very simple and for some reason extremely difficult, as the current rarity of such realization makes clear. Once experienced, it is in a sense very ordinary, sort of an 'ah yes of course'.

Can Enlightenment Be Found?

2010-07-12T22:28:00.001-04:00

I was watching a video interview with a current teacher of non-duality, Jeff Foster, An Extraordinary Absence: Liberation in the Midst of a Very Ordinary Life, a couple of days ago. He was saying that he failed in his spiritual search, that he didn’t find what he was looking for. He expanded on this by saying ‘Jeff” didn’t find what he was looking for.

I don’t know about that.

This is why one needs to be careful in taking too literally anything anyone says. Jeff is someone who appears to have awakened, so why is he saying this?

He’s saying it for a couple of reasons, or it might be better said that he is pointing towards what is realized when one has a realization experience, or awakening. It is realized that, in an ultimate sense, ‘Jeff’ does not exist, nor does Chick or whatever you happen to call yourself. That name refers to a character in a story, the story of your life, which is fiction, as is any story. No story can be true, that’ s why it’s a story. What’s true is true, or ‘whatever is is’, or ‘it is what it is’. But whatever is, the description of it is not it. The description of you is not you; you are you.

So a fictional character in a fictional story cannot find anything, so in an authentic awakening, what is realized is there is no separate ‘person’ to awaken, there is only pure awakeness, or life, itself, so the very notion that someone can awaken, or find something, is absurd.

What is also being pointed to is the idea that when one is searching, one is searching for something, and we have an idea what that something is, enlightenment, or eternal bliss or peace, and we have an imagined idea of what it would be like or feel like. And it never turns out to be like that, because there is no ‘thing’ to find, no ‘one’ to find it, This is what it is seen.

Furthermore, he was discussing the danger of hearing some teacher imply, “Well I had this happen to me, and unless it happens to you, then I’m up here spiritually and you’re down there.” If there is only life, or consciousness, then noone is up or down, better or worse, more or less awake, etc.

So far so good.

But he and others like him did find what they were looking for, which is the truth of their nature and the underlying, non conceptual truth of things. Spiritual teachers tend to like to have it both ways, be out there pointing to what they 'didn't find'. In one sense, the 'I' that remains after realization is not the 'I' that set out on a search, it now refers to the consciousness that realized it’s own nature, it no longer refers to a character in a story. The I is no longer personal. But to confuse it a little more, that was the only ‘I' that ever existed in the first place, so the 'I' that actually existed prior to and during the search is the same 'I' that is there after the search is over, is in fact the only 'I' that can ever be, since life, or consciousness, is all that is alive, or real, at any time.

Words are only words, or concepts, no matter who says them, so take everything with a grain of salt, or better yet, a grain of experience, and experience the truth for yourself.

Truth and Happiness

2010-06-28T18:27:00.002-04:00

A good friend of mine said to me the other day, "You seem to talk a lot about truth in your blogs, but not much about happiness." I've been thinking about that, since although my path appears to have an obsessive pursuit of truth flavor to it, the goal is happiness. Everything that everyone does is in the pursuit of happiness.

What is truth, anyhow? It is a word, a concept, is there any such thing in reality? If there is, it cannot be static, it cannot be captured, like holding water in your hand, if we try to grasp it, it slips away. The truth must be flowing, living, moving, at its root unknown and ungraspable. Truth is God, God is Truth, in the ultimate sense they refer to the absolute, what is unchanging and immutable in an ever changing reality. So if the truth cannot be known, what can we know? Maybe only that; that the essence of life, the underlying reality of things, is a mystery. God cannot be known or described, if it is known or described or limited, it cannot be God, and the same can be said for Truth.

So there I go again, off and running on about Truth. Why the obsession with Truth? It is in the pursuit of happiness that I pursue Truth, for the pursuit of false gods has not produced anything that resembles true, lasting happiness. Money, approval (even in the form of respect of our peers), fame, virtue, a healthy body, these are all ultimately false gods. There is something in me that is convinced that from seeing the false as false, a more reliable form of happiness arises. Self worth must be self evident, must be uncaused by external or mind made factors; for it to be dependable, for it to thrive under pressure, so to speak. If the mere fact of our existence, of our being, is seen, realized as the miracle; as cause enough to love and be joyful, life becomes a moving interplay of that joy 'full' ness, of love for the sake of love, not love to get something, to gain approval or respect or even self respect. To be full of love and joy as bursting from within, regardless of what is going on or anyone else thinks or feels is appropriate. Why in the world not?

Happy Father's Day

2010-06-20T12:14:00.004-04:00

As I sit here in the backyard, amidst the smell of the grass, the warmth of the sun, the song of the birds, my dog Murphy chewing his bone beside me, all these joyful sensory perceptions pervade my being. My three boys are in the house, one up and having wished me a Happy Father's Day already, along with the nice hug from Ellen. On the manifest level, this is as good as it gets. As Van Morrison sang, "Mama said there'd be days like this... When all the parts of the puzzle start to look like they fit..."

But it's not always days like this, that's how life is. So it's powerful to realize and then remember who we really are underneath our life story, or what Eckhart Tolle calls our life situation, as opposed to our life. To realize our true nature, our deepest nature, the alive, awake Presence that is recognizable and noticeable within our physical body, that is reading and comprehending these words right now. That is not even hidden deep within, for it is looking out of your eyes and hearing through your ears. What else can perceive except the consciousness that we are, the consciousness of God?

There is a wonderful story that Adyashanti told when I was on retreat with him recently that is especially apropos on Father's Day. He recounted how his own father had a powerful spiritual awakening while on retreat with him, and joined him on the stage, and shaking with the power and intensity of the realization, his father said to him, "I'm not even really your father, and you're not my son!" To which Adya replied, "I know, Dad." He said that soon after his father returned home, he got a call from his exasperated mother wanting to know "What did you do to your father?!" After telling this story, one of my fellow retreatants questioned Adya about the understanding of this episode, stating, "But there is no denying the biological connection that your father played in your life", to which Adya answered, "Of course, hence my answer to him, 'I know, Dad'."

This is a beautiful illustration of the interplay between the mysterious, miraculous, unknowable, yet undeniable Presence that we are in every moment, and our everyday experience on the manifested human, physical and emotional level. To realize the former is not to deny the latter, that is not the point although some are caught there at times after the intensity of the initial awakening. But we cannot be whole and truly at peace with the manifested life which includes happiness but also suffering, birth, illness, and death unless we have some intimate and personal experience of the eternal peace of Being which exists within each and every one of us, without exception.

Happy Father's Day, and yes I'm talking to you, the real you, do you know who you are?

Truth is a Pathless Land

2010-06-17T22:35:00.009-04:00

Have you read J Krishnamurti? There has been no one quite like Krishnamurti, reading or listening to him can create great power and energy. For a serious seeker of truth, his understanding and lifelong penetration into the nature of reality is invaluable.

Reading him for the first time in my twenties was a revelation, it blew my mind and opened up possibilities that I didn't fully comprehend at the time. Although I couldn't understand much of what I was reading, I knew it was important and unlike anything I had ever been exposed to. What he was pointing at addressed the deepest held questions and fears of my conscious and subconscious mind. The sheer courage to stand up and say what he did, the fearlessness to oppose all mass religious, political, and ideological thought, was astounding. He epitomized what he spoke of often, "the courage to stand alone".

He validated and strengthened a lifelong questioning of everything that was posed as truth. In the search for the true truth, everything must be questioned and looked at for oneself.

Krishnamurti was picked in the early 1900's by the Theosophists, a religious/spiritual movement, to be the next messiah based on his 'aura' as a young teenager. They created a separate movement to introduce the next 'World Teacher' to the world. Years later he addressed them in a seminal talk wherein he disbanded the movement to follow him as a saviour, beginning with the words, "Truth is a pathless land." From then on he refused to be associated with any group, movement, or tradition. They had found the next world teacher but were dismayed by what he eventually had to say.

Interested in the truth? Read this:

http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/1929-truth-is-a-pathless-land

http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/about-krishnamurti/the-core-of-the-teachings.php
Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti

What is Reality?

2010-06-16T22:07:00.004-04:00

New theoretical research suggests that three-dimensional space could be an illusion and that reality actually exists on a two-dimensional hologram at the edge of the universe.

This description appears in today's New York Times regarding a documentary on the Science channel. It could just as easily be the creation of an imaginative science fiction writer or creator of comic books, for that matter. The most brilliant thinkers in the world are constantly coming up with new, theoretical models of the universe and reality; models that contradict past models and theories. String theory, dark matter, anti-matter, multidimensional and multi universe realities, different laws of physics for 'everyday life' and for micro level reality (quantum physics) and macro level reality (Relativity theory).

We have learned a tremendous amount about how our universe works and how it appears, but with all of these descriptions and theories, we have no idea how we came into being in the first place and why we exist at all. For many people, the Bible becomes the source of truth and the fundamental answer.

One understanding of reality and truth is not contradictory to anything in our experience or anything that science has discovered, an understanding that is based in our direct experience once we are able to pull back the veil of delusion, the blanket of conceptual overlay. When we see what we are as consciousness, when this is discovered as the truth of our existence, it becomes obvious that every living thing is actually pure consciousness. All physical/emotional/thought is manifestation of pure timeless, spaceless consciousness. If this understanding of consciousness is then tested on all of reality, experimented with as the underlying truth of all reality, it begins to jive with everything that is known and perceived. This stands in contrast to theories of reality which begin with the assumption that matter or the material is the underlying fabric, which runs up against all sorts of problems and incongruities that need to be explained by more and more complicated and contradictory theories and models.

There is nothing to support the idea that consciousness is a product of matter, such as brain function, other than if we start with the belief that matter is the underlying fabric of reality. Nothing has ever been known to exist apart from consciousness, for if consciousness wasn't present to be conscious of it, actually to be one with it, then it could not be known to exist.

Forgive Everybody Everything

2010-06-01T20:51:00.002-04:00

There it is, one of the secrets of happiness. Along with recognizing that there is no such thing as a problem, just these two things have the power to completely change our life, for our lives to become continuous movements of happiness instead of a series of endless problems to be solved and resentments to be nurtured with brief periods of feeling happy in between.

So why don’t we do it? We all want to be happy, that is one of the universal principals uniting all of mankind, everyone wants to be happy. We have been taught, however, conditioned, brainwashed, into believing it isn’t really appropriate to forgive everyone. People do bad things and we need to condemn them for it, we can’t let them ‘get away with it’. But is this really true? The way to fundamental change in our lives is to consistently question whether these underlying ideas we carry around with us are actually true. I was listening recently to a CD called “Radical Forgiveness”, and the creator of the process talked about hearing a spiritual teacher respond to a question about forgiveness with this answer, “Listen, forgiveness is not about letting bygones be bygones, forgiveness is about seeing that nothing wrong ever happened in the first place!”

Nothing wrong ever happened in the first place. Can you imagine actually living the truth of ‘nothing wrong ever happened or is happening’? What would that life be like, feel like? It would be like living in heaven, in the Garden of Eden, in Nirvana. That is what heaven is, living in a reality where nothing wrong ever happens. Are we willing to entertain the idea that this life, this reality, is such a reality? Our minds, our thinking and emotions vigorously rebel against this possibility. “C’mon, look around, don’t be a chump or one of those naïve idealists with their head buried in the sand, there are problems everywhere, people are doing bad things everywhere, there are people suffering everywhere, wake up.” These are the ‘normal’ thoughts in my mind when faced with such a possibility. But these are all just thoughts. In one sense, people are suffering everywhere, there is truth to this, but only relatively. Only the mind tells me this, and as long as I believe it, emotional reactions occur and I am unhappy, I suffer. I read in an essay once where the author said his zen teacher used to say, “Don’t add to the suffering mass”. Whether you believe it is literally true that people are suffering everywhere or not, you’re suffering doesn’t do any good, doesn’t help anyone or anything. Actually the opposite is true, if we can awaken to happiness, we can help others to become happy. We can’t give what we don’t have. Living our lives in suffering because we can’t let go of the idea that this is necessary, this is proper, adds to the suffering mass, compounds the ‘problem’, so to speak.

How is it possible to forgive those who have seemingly done ‘wrong’, when it appears so obvious that they have acted badly, or atrociously? It is possible to see that in a sense everyone, absolutely everyone, is a victim of circumstance. Noone acts independently, with complete free will independent of outside influence. This is not just a Pollyanna notion, this is true, nothing happens without a myriad of influences acting upon the situation. In Buddhism this is referred to as ‘the ten thousand reasons’ for anything that happens. If everyone is seen as a victim of circumstance, we can start to develop compassion for everyone, for the perpetrator as well as the victim. When a lion kills a zebra to eat, do we have only compassion for the zebra, do we not see that the lion is merely living its nature, without killing its prey it will die of starvation. Do we resent the lion for being what it is? If we can begin to see the world of humans in the same light, in this way we can loosen the bondage of resentment and anger and hatred. Until we do this, there will be no lasting peace of mind, no true happiness.

The Perceiver Who Is Not Perceived-Francis Lucille

2010-05-16T18:18:00.006-04:00

There appear to be two of us: the perceiver who is not perceived, and the perceived who cannot perceive. We must choose who we are, for there are not really two, and we cannot be both the perceiver and the perceived. This is the beautiful teaching of Francis, with whom I spent a week recently. When confronted with the choice, put in this simple way, is there really a choice? There is clearly a perceiver perceiving everything in our experience, 'awaring' everything in our awareness. If this were not so, you could not be reading these words right now. If your true nature were not the perceiver, whatever that is, you could not be perceiving these words, nor anything else occurring in your life. This is obvious and inarguable. But generally we think we are both the perceiver and the perceived, the perceived being the character in the story of our life. But the perceived is only that, a character in a story, no different from the title character in your favorite TV show or movie. Furthermore, that character cannot perceive anything, therefore cannot be what you really are.

A story or image of you cannot perceive anything, thoughts cannot perceive, emotions cannot perceive, only a perceiving consciousness is capable of this miracle, the miracle of perception or awareness. How beautiful and wonderful is this simple discovery.

With this simple discovery, we are on our way to discovering the secret that happiness can be found by merely resting in the pure consciousness that is our nature, at peace with the knowledge that the perceived character in the story of our life is not real and therefore need not be agonized over or identified with. We start from happiness and proceed instead of starting from anxiety and suffering on an endless search for the perfect set of outside conditions which will allow us some temporary peace in between worry and stress.

We all acknowledge that the story ends with the death of the body, this character ends just as the hero of a beloved TV show ends with the show's cancellation. Yet we act and react as if this were not the case, that although the character that we actually aren't is a temporary phenomenon in the unchanging awareness that is our nature, we are completely invested in the story that this character is real. We do this because we have deeply bought into the idea that by fully investing in this character, we can control its destiny and life and manipulate it in such a way so as to bring us joy and peace. Everything in our experience contradicts this interpretation, but we are so completely conditioned in this belief that we don't correctly interpret what is right in front of our eyes, namely that we cannot control what happens in the story and have never been able to. So even though this fact of the illusion of control is continuously reinforced in our experience, we buy book after book and read magazines and watch shows which tell us how to correctly manipulate our life, it's not that we can't control it, it's just that we have been going about it the wrong way. Next time, with this or that new technique, we will start to be able to control everything successfully, and then we can finally experience some peace and happiness.

The Buddha said, "There is no way to happiness and peace, happiness and peace are the way."

Are you the perceiver or the perceived?
Eternity Now

The Reality Is Changeless

2010-05-16T17:54:00.003-04:00

My definition of real is this: That which never changes is real. The reality is changeless. It is absolute--truth never changes. It is always true.

Lester Levenson

The Ultimate Truth (About Love & Happiness): A Handbook to Life

Why do we have so much trouble deciding what is true? We cannot agree on what is true. Why? It is because we are always looking for truth, for the real, in concept; and even worse, in opinion, in judgment. We are looking for the true in the false. For opinions and judgments can never be true, the best they could possibly be is relatively true, meaning they are relatively false. And relatively true is not actually true at all. Saying that there is a laptop here on which words are being typed, this is relatively true. We would all agree on this, as in the fact that it is a seat that is being sat on. So we agree on these concepts, making them relatively true; not absolutely true, relatively true. Opinion and judgment is the worst, they cannot be said to be even relatively true; they are never and can never be agreed upon. We can continue the insane path of trying to kill off everyone who has a different opinion, a different political view, a different religious view, etc. But do we really think this will result in harmony, in peace? This is total madness, but we think it is perfectly reasonable and logical.

So what is real and true does not need agreement to be true, does not need consensus. It is true because it is true, period. The idea that the opinion held by the most people makes something true makes no sense. We develop our opinions and judgments for a myriad of reasons, to fit in with our society, for comfort, for a feeling of safety and security.

That which changes is not ultimately real. Is a dream real? Using this understanding, what is real? If we become very quiet; allow the mind, thinking, to become quieter and quieter until there is silence, what remains? Can we notice?

The description can never be the thing, it can only have relative truth. Yet we try to use words to point: beingness, aliveness, consciousness, awareness. When we are extremely quiet in the mind; it is here, unmoving, unchanging through time. It is not separate in any way from the relative, from the ‘world’, one is not ‘here’ and the other ‘there’. It is all just here. But once we try to separate, categorize, compartmentalize, label; we become lost in the unreal, in delusion.

There is no such thing as a problem

2010-05-11T21:56:00.003-04:00

There is no such thing as a problem. Have we noticed this?

What is a problem? I know what a math problem is, it is a mathematical question that can be solved. From there, we take this word, this concept, and we apply it to our lives. But is this real, does this make it an appropriate use of this idea? The concept of life being an endless series of problems to be solved is so engrained within our minds that it doesn’t even occur to us that there is a reality that is independent of our applying the judgment of ‘problem’ to it. ‘Problem’ is a judgment that occurs in our thinking. So ‘problem’ is just a thought, not a reality. Do we notice that humans are the only species on earth that have problems? We think this is part of what makes us more evolved, but this is misuse of our increased brain power; separating reality into separate judgments of problem and not a problem, essentially good and bad, prevents us from being happy, from having peace of mind

Life is just a flow of energy, of aliveness itself. Life is just aliveness appearing as separate objects, but the very notion of separation is created and embedded in the mind.

We separate our lives into categories, here are the good parts of my life, and here are my problems. Here is my personal life, here is my work life, and these weeks are my vacation. But life is not compartmentalized, this is not real. All of these ideas are useful for communicating with each other, but for the most part we have lost sight of the fundamental reality, the fundamental truth underlying these descriptions. And when the underlying truth is completely blocked, clouded over by the conceptual overlays, what were originally helpful tools of communication become the cause of suffering, of unhappiness. We are in bondage to our concepts, to an unending life of problems.

Animals don’t have problems and yet they still do what needs to be done in the moment. Lions chase down their prey when hungry, and the zebras attempt to elude them. What is amazing is when the predators are not hungry, they relax, and the prey species may relax nearby. Life has continued to flow.

To Love and Be Happy

2010-04-16T22:34:00.007-04:00

It is humorous how understanding arises sometimes. Ideas which seem foggy all of a sudden become crystal clear. This is what can occur with what is called awakening to one's true nature as consciousness or pure being. This occurred within me about six months ago and it was profound although simple.

Something else which I had read a few years ago suddenly became clear like that just recently. I had read the autobiography of a man named Lester Levenson who had a deep and profound spiritual awakening. Besides my usual interest in this, Lester was a Jewish man born in New Jersey, so being a Jewish man born in New Jersey my interest was piqued. He had reached a point of severe health problems and resulting depression and had isolated himself after being told by his doctor he didn't have long to live. He then described a process that began to occur in him where he was filled with more and more love for all people and the more love he felt for others the happier he felt. It became a continuing upward spiral of greater love and greater happiness until he was in a state of bliss where his health problems started to disappear and all of life started to fall naturally into place.

When he was describing the beginning of this process, he talked about starting to realize that he had been happiest when he was in a relationship with various women but he hadn't really understood why until now. His discovery was that it wasn't how they felt about him that mattered, it was how he felt about them that made him happy, the love he was feeling towards them that counted. From this simple realization, he started to recreate within himself the feelings of love he had felt during those times and he noticed that he began to feel happier. In this way the process began until he widened his feelings of love to include more and more people until it engulfed all of humanity. Now this may sound like a cliche, "I love everyone!", but Lester truly accomplished this within himself until he was the embodiment of love and joy.

What amazes me is that while this seemed logical when I read it and his story has stayed with me, it is only in the last day or two that it sunk into my being the truth of what he was saying. Prior to that, I didn't completely connect to what he was pointing to. It really does not matter at all what other people think about me when it comes to how I'm feeling, it only matters how I feel about them. If I am in a state of feeling love, then I am happy, it really is as simple as that. So if we can find a way to love others, truly be in a state of love for others, not just telling ourselves that we 'should' love others, then we will have found the secret to happiness. To truly love others is to love ourselves, and to truly love ourself is to love others.

For we are all the embodiment of consciousness, of being, of God if you like. This is true regardless of our personality, or whether we are emotionally sick and have done terrible things. This is also true regardless of whether we are happy and at peace or depressed and miserable.

Imagine that, the Beatles were right, "All you need is love, love is all you need.."

Emptiness Dancing-Commentaries: Chapter 6-Freedom, pp. 33-37

2010-04-13T16:29:00.003-04:00

A powerful chapter. Quickly Adya gets into a metaphor for the difference between our normal way of living, solving our personal problems, one after the other, with short times of happiness in between; and getting to the root of our unhappiness, of our fear and anxiety. He likens it to pulling weeds from the top versus digging out the roots, which I believe we can all identify with, the frustration of continually trying to get to happiness, and just when we seem to grasp it, it slips away under the stress of the next problem or conflict.

You need to know the root of how it began, the genesis of it. There was a moment when that innocent, wordless fascination and love that is your essence moved from being innocently fascinated and in love with what is to identification with what is thought. Right in that movement from innocent fascination to identification, that is where freedom is lost.

In the movement from wordless innocence to identification, freedom is lost. Here is the lesson of the fall from grace in the parable of the Garden of Eden. The movement from the miraculous mystery that is this life to a deep core belief that our concepts about life are the reality.

But then the mind shows up and says "mine." "That's mine. That's my thought. That's my problem."

It is so ingrained that life is personal, it is happening to 'me'. This is the root cause of suffering. There is a 'me' that is separate from the world, I am here and the world is out there.

Being your true self, being your true nature, is different from experiencing it with thought. Realize that you are the mystery... There is a very awake, alive, and loving mystery, and that's what is seeing through your eyes at this moment.

Seeing this, really seeing the truth of this, not through thought, is the essence of spiritual awakening. and it is right here, right now, for each of us. We would all agree that 'we' are awake and alive this very moment, so the only movement is the realization that there is no 'person' that is awake and alive, there is awakeness itself looking out; indescribable, mysterious being. St. Francis pointed to this very same truth when he said "What is being looked for is what is looking."

When you deeply know that you are the mystery experiencing itself, you realize that's all that is ever happening. Whether you call an experience a me or a you, a good day or a rotten day, beauty or ugliness, compassion or cruelty-it's all still the mystery experiencing itself, extending itself into time and form. That's all that is happening.

So what is called non-dual teaching is just this- reality does not consist of opposites, good days and bad days, beautiful things and ugly things, right and wrong, here and there, even you and me. All our judgements about reality are not actually true. In reality, there are no such things as opposites, only what is. Truth, another word for reality, the real, has no opposite; it is not the opposite of false, it actually includes the false. It includes everything.

If this understanding is held only in your head, you can know it but you are not being it. The head is saying, "Oh, I know, I'm the mystery," and yet your body is acting like it didn't get the message. It's saying, "I'm still somebody, and I've got all these anxious thoughts and wants and desires." When we are being it knowingly, the whole being receives the message.

This is where it gets tricky, at least for me. Even after direct experience of consciousness as who you actually are, what you actually are, the body can continue to feel just like this description, with the same frustrations and triggers as before. Living the mystery is a whole other ball of wax, but this is where the real joy, peace and freedom lie.

This is why is has always been said that the truth sets you free. But the whole being has to realize the truth. It has to be the truth, knowingly. That's what I mean about the limitation of picking the weeds and the fruit, replacing one thought or illusionary belief with another one, a better one.

Our normal tendency towards self-improvement is like this, to find another set of beliefs about reality that makes us feel better about things, about ourselves, for awhile. But that's the catch, it's only for awhile, then we need the next improvement. We have not yet gotten at the root. Finally, Adya ends the chapter with this:

The unknown, our own true nature, has the capacity to wake itself up when you start to fall in love with letting go of all the mental structures you hold onto. Contemplate this: there is no such thing as a true belief.

Garden of Eden

2010-04-03T22:23:00.001-04:00

Sitting in the park at lunchtime, bright blue, cloudless sky, green grass. It is the first seventy degree day of the spring so the young mothers are out with their small children running, laughing, crying; the birds are singing, forsythias showing their yellow buds, groups of people taking their lunch break to enjoy the sunshine like myself. Is it not obvious that this is the Garden of Eden, right here, right now, not millennia ago, now? What makes it not so? What appears in the description in the legendary Garden that is not here now? The sunlight, trees, birds, squirrels, green earth, air, laughing children, all of ‘God’s’ handiwork is right here in awareness.

So what am I? Am I the awareness that is infused in all of this aliveness that is all around, that sees all of this and yet cannot be seen to be separate, not apart but ‘a part’? Or am I the balding, aging man with his reading glasses whose image is reflected in the mirror-like surface of the computer screen by the bright sun?

Nisargadatta said “You see yourself in the world, I see the world in myself.” Without looking at the image in the screen, without thought telling me what I am, only ‘this’ is here, all of it, aliveness manifesting in all directions.

I watched an animated tv commercial the other day, with cartoon people talking about whatever product was being advertised. Did the animated people have any reality or in reality was I just looking at a bunch of changing shapes and colors on a screen? Is the play of aliveness going on here now really any different? Our thinking tells us it is different, that wasn’t real but this is, everything here is actually separate and distinct objects. How about these current virtual realities, Second Life for example, where people have corresponding avatars who live in the virtual world? I had read of a scientist who posited that it is highly likely that we are actually avatars of a highly developed life form. How do we know for sure what’s real?

Only our thinking, our mind, takes us out of the Garden of Eden. This is what the parable is actually telling us, biting the apple from the Tree of Knowledge brought forth the world of concept, of conceptually separate objects with names. But reality exists prior to concept, not prior in time, as many think the story means, but hidden behind the blanket of fog of conceptual understanding, as the shining sun is sometimes hidden behind a cloud. And in reality, there is no problem, only the miraculous aliveness of life moving and flowing.

Finding My True Self

2010-03-25T22:13:00.003-04:00

One of the keys is realizing there is no ‘my’ true self to find. There is nothing personal in what is referred to as true self or true nature. There is no ‘my’. What is seen or recognized is this unchanging awareness that is here and that has always been here since we were born. At the most basic, without going into what it is or whether it has location or continuity through birth and death, the seeing of this is awakening.

So we search and search for our true self, our true nature, our authentic self, when there is only this; unbounded and unqualified (devoid of qualities) awareness or consciousness. There is not my true nature and your true nature although it is sometimes talked about in this way, there is just true nature. No my awareness and your awareness, my consciousness and your consciousness; only awareness or consciousness. It may sound paradoxical to say there is no my true nature and your true nature, and then follow with the idea that it becomes seen that this is not only my true nature but also your true nature, but these are two descriptions of the same reality, the same truth. It is only mine and yours since there is in fact no mine and yours, only aliveness itself. This is the beauty of existence.

As is stated time and time again, the descriptions are only descriptions, they are not the reality, so paradox and contradiction are inherent in using words, which are conceptual by definition, to describe that which is not conceptual. Words are conceptual by definition, and concepts are fiction by definition, and since whatever reality is is real by definition, words can never capture what is. Does this make sense?

The wonder of aliveness is here right now, it does not belong to you or me, therefore it cannot be given nor taken away, neither found nor lost, neither created nor destroyed.

Riding The Bergen Railway

2010-03-24T22:01:00.003-04:00

Riding on the Bergen Railway in Norway, evergreen and snow filled mountains passing by through the window, occasional houses dotting the hillsides, below the stream runs along the railroad. It is a clear morning, blue sky and bright sun. The quiet creaking of the moving train, the chatter and laughter of the group of older women a few seats ahead in our railway car, the teenager fast asleep, my son on his Itouch, my wife journaling across the aisle, the young couple in the seat just in front smiling at each other.

What is okay and what is not okay? Are the young okay and the old not? Are the women laughing right and the teenager sleeping wrong? Are the thin people living properly and the heavier have a problem to correct? Or is everything part of the flow of life, the mysterious beauty of all that is? There are the times that we all experience when everything is okay just as it is, when nothing needs to be changed or corrected, nothing is a problem to be solved. For most of us, these are rare moments that occur in between ‘our life’, our life being the majority of the time when we need to solve our problems, we need to fix situations because they are not correct in our mind, we need to fix life.

So are the problems out there or are they in our mind? If we look closely I think we can see that things are always just as they are, it is in our mind, in our thinking that the problem is created. Things as they are become a problem when we carry a belief that things should be a certain way, life should appear a certain way. People shouldn’t fight with each other, people shouldn’t get angry, my children should listen to me and do what I tell them, my spouse shouldn’t criticize me, people should eat more healthily, the government should (or shouldn’t) enact universal health care, the list goes on and on. It gets tricky as some of these beliefs are so universally agreed upon and feel so right, such as the moral and ethical beliefs set out in the Ten Commandments or the Bible or the Koran, for example. It can be easily seen, however, if we contemplate this a little more deeply, that even these seeming absolute ‘rights’ are easily subverted and become the foundation for the very behavior that they were preaching against. We kill each other in the name of God, in the name of our particular savior, in the defense of our own moral code. Was Jesus not preaching love of thy neighbor as thyself, and forgiveness seventy times seven times? Do the Ten Commandments not start out with “Thy shalt not kill?” Yet we kill each other over supposedly “holy’ land, our Christian beliefs lead to the Crusades, people kill children today in the name of Islam. Is land truly holier than other people’s lives?

Is it noticed that problems only appear to exist in human affairs, that in ‘nature’ nothing appears to need solving, even the savage behavior of a predator hunting down and tearing apart its prey, or the spider that devours its mate after mating? Why does it seem to us that human affairs are ‘outside’ of nature, that they are not correct and need to be fixed?

Do absolute right and wrong really exist, as so many preach and insist?

Outside the landscape continues to pass by, pine trees, snow, rocks, blue sky; inside the railcar the women continue to chatter and the teenager continues to sleep. When the mind quiets down and becomes still, peace reigns.

Is there a me (or you)?

2010-03-14T09:42:00.003-04:00

It makes me laugh sometimes when the thought comes, "What if I said that you don't exist?" Try saying that in a business meeting.

What is existence, what exists? It is perhaps the most primary feeling, foremost sense; that we exist. Who could argue that we are here, I am here, typing these words, sitting on the couch, watching the rain and wind soak the trees and grass outside the window. It is inarguable that 'I' am here, or is it? What is inarguable is that something is here, this body is here, and that something is aware, watching, feeling. That you and I agree that it is me, further that it is Chick, is this a fact or an agreed upon concept? Everyone that knows me knows 'who' I am, who my parents are, who my wife and kids are, where I live, what my job is, how wonderful I am (okay I made that one up), etc.

But the fact that I am here, something is here, and the whole story of who I am, these are actually two different things. Although we all agree that I am Chick, I could change my name tomorrow and I would still be whatever it is I am, in fact many spiritual traditions and teachers do just that to make this point. When someone awakens to recognize fundamental truth underlying conceptual reality, many traditions bestow upon them a different name, basically to break what they are with all the conceptual baggage that comes along with the prior story of who they are. It is not done to create a new persona, as I think unfortunately happens in most cases, to create a new story of who they are as the new and improved spiritual person, but rather to be a pointer that they are what they are whatever they happen to be named, whatever they happen to do, wherever they happen to live, etc.

So all this discussion and writing and meditating and searching is primarily to allow us to see that we don't have to achieve anything or act in any certain way or special way to be what we are, to see that we have value because we exist, and to allow us to separate from the deep imbedded belief that we have to fit in or act how society dictates we act in order to have value. We search all around for miracles or for signs that miracles happen, we debate whether miracles can actually happen, when the truth is we are the miracle. We are the miracle. Can this be really seen, actually known? But because we settle into the familiar cage of our name and story of who and what we are, we lose sight of this fundamental truth, oh we are nothing special but I sure would like to encounter something special. If only I could see someone actually levitate or walk on water, then I could believe that miracles happen. But the fact that we exist is the miracle.

So if someone, some spiritual teacher says that we don't exist or there is no 'me', what is being stated is the whole entire story of me or you is just that, a story, which is fiction, made up. It is an agreed upon fiction and it can be very useful so we can communicate with each other, but it has also proven to be very harmful, which is what is being pointed out in the Christian notion of "gaining the world but losing our soul." We get lost in the idea that we gain value, innate, inherent value, by becoming 'somebody' in the eyes of others, in the eyes of the world. So this makes us feel okay, but in truth we feel okay temporarily because then our okayness can be taken from us when others turn on us or criticize us.

When we let go of the idea that we have to 'be' somebody, in other words act a certain way or achieve things in order to be okay as we are, then we regain our soul, our fundamental goodness, our innate happiness and peace that is uncaused and unaffected by external changes. Because on the surface and at the level of name and form, things are constantly changing and in flux.

Chick may not exist, but I am a miracle, and so are you.

Non-Duality and Shadows-Scott Kiloby

2010-03-04T20:30:00.004-05:00

I had a conversation with the spiritual teacher Scott Kiloby Love's Quiet Revolution: The End Of The Spiritual Search the other day, talking about, among other things, the recognition/realization of present awareness, and also shadow work. My focus here in this blog has been on the former; realization of awareness or consciousness as being here, now; and as being what we actually are. My sense and my experience is that this realization is fundamental in spiritual development; without awakening to the fundamental, ultimate nature of reality, it is difficult if not impossible to really live in this world, we remain locked more or less into the virtual world of concept, of forms. In other words, we remain in duality, a spiritual term for a world of separate, discrete, objects of which we are one, tiny, separate object in a world of opposites; this and that, good and bad, self (me) and other (you, the world, the enemy, etc.).

Recognition on a non-conceptual level of unbounded awareness or consciousness as actually existing, being here now, and tasting the experience of being that, loosens the existential grip of primal loneliness from which fear in its many forms, such as terror or anxiety, arises.

With this recognition the relative world of form does not disappear, at least not for most people, and if it does then not for long. Our sense of self does not drop away, we know who we are, where we live, know our jobs and our families, etc. But a sense of being at home in the world arises in a way that was not previously possible, access to a natural source of joy and peace becomes available.

What is eventually seen, however, and what Scott has been speaking about in many of his talks, is that this realization by itself does not make all of our personality issues go away. I can certainly attest to this fact in my case (as can my wife attest to this fact in my case). Situations which previously brought irritation and frustration continue to bother us, or begin again to bother us after a honeymoon period of intense joy. This is where what is sometimes called shadow work comes in. Bringing into the light of consciousness those sides of ourselves, of our personalities, that we don't like or approve of and have therefore repressed and denied. Those traits which don't fit in with our image of ourselves, with the story we carry around of who we are. What becomes very clear with awakening to our true nature is that we are not what we think we are, we are not the story of 'me' that we carry around in our mind. We are what we are, and what we are not is a story. When this becomes clear, it can be easier and more productive to do the work of owning all parts of our personalities. Scott called this Phase 2 of the process of awakening, where many teachers stop the teaching at phase 1, which is the realization.

Adyashanti and other teachers like Loch Kelly refer to this as the process of moving from head awakening to heart awakening, this opens the awakening to the body and emotions, whereby all of what we are starts to live and act from freedom and relaxation. Nothing need remain hidden from consciousness, there can be peace down to the cellular level with the fact of being human with all of its relative shortcomings, because on the ultimate level there is no personal self to attribute blame or praise to.

For anyone curious about this process of doing the shadow work, here is a link to a conversation that Scott had with the zen teacher and shadow counselor Diane Hamilton,

http://kiloby.com/uploads/DianeHamiltonFeb20100.mp3

Freedom

2010-02-28T10:23:00.007-05:00

Who doesn't want freedom? Freedom is one of those words, concepts, that is used in many ways. Physical freedom, emotional freedom, etc. What we are concerned with here is total psychological freedom, which has nothing whatsoever to do with physical freedom, freedom from pain, or even emotional freedom.

True psychological freedom cannot be achieved by solving our 'problems', this is the normal approach we take to our lives. We solve this problem, then we solve the next one, and so on. But as a friend of mine who likes to quote the sage Roseanne Rosannadanna (Gilda Radnor on Saturday Night Live) says, "It's always something!" Our normal approach to life will yield an unending supply of problems for us to solve.

So the only possibility for real freedom, freedom from endless suffering, endless anxiety, is to find the root cause. What is the root cause? Is it really 'out there'? If I only solve this relationship issue, this work issue, figure out how to accept all the turmoil in the world, then there will be peace and happiness.

Could the root cause be the fundamental idea that what we are is a separate 'thing' from the rest of life, and everything else 'out there' is a problem to be solved? Is it possible to look at this most primary assumption, this deeply held belief that appears to be an unquestionable fact?

Without thinking about it, what makes us separate? Is it not obvious that there exists an aliveness right here, right now, that cannot be fully explained, that is operating, flowing, moving through all things, mysterious yet undeniably here? Forget for a moment the names we sometimes give this aliveness-Consciousness, Being, Spirit, God; forget the attempt to understand it or make it a 'thing'; something is here and alive, awake. The spiritual teacher Miguel Ruiz said "The fact that you exist is proof that God exists." What is he pointing to?

Our thinking, our mind, insists that we have to know what is going on or else there can be no peace, no freedom. But this very notion keeps us in bondage, in suffering. Instead of solving all of 'our problems', and then finding peace; find peace first, relax first, then live in this world.

Commentary on Emptiness Dancing-Chapter 5, pp.27-32

2010-02-21T20:28:00.003-05:00

This chapter, entitled 'Harmonization', begins with a discussion of harmonization of spirit and matter. When these ideas are directly realized as two aspects of the one thing, of the One, that we are, this can be described as enlightenment. Adya points out that our 'normal' state of consciousness, of understanding, is complete identification with matter. Matter as used here includes body and mind, mind including thoughts and emotions or feelings. We think that the unique combination of these which we experience is what 'we' are. Generally we also believe that we 'have' a conscience.

A shift occurs when there is realization that there is no separate 'me' that has a conscience, that there is a consciousness that IS the me, that is what we are. Adya calls this moving from identification with matter to identification with spirit. He also calls this a part of realization, that "true enlightenment is when matter and spirit are in harmony. We could call this harmony nondifferentiation or oneness."

According to Adya, after this initial shift, further harmonization can occur with exposure to spiritual teachings and teachers, and in particular with continued dropping away of our opinions and stories about ourselves and reality. Our precious stories about reality and ourselves are what actually stand in the way of direct experience of what is, of true reality.

There is a profound discussion about the danger of charisma, of being seduced by the attraction of charisma in a teacher. We are blinded in a way by the emotional attraction, this can be seen in the increasing fascination with celebrity in society as a whole today. True spirit, aliveness, Beingness, shines through all sentient beings, all people equally; through the charismatic and through the forgotten, the admired and the reviled, through me and you equally. Only our likes and our dislikes, our opinions and our ideas, obscure this truth, cloud over this shining wisdom with deluded understanding.

Adya ends this chapter with a short, beautiful, pointing which I quote here directly, it needs no further interpretation:

"When you start to see the light that you really are, the light waking up in you, the radiance, you realize it has no intention to change you. It has no intention to harmonize. It has no agenda. The Truth is the only thing you'll ever run into that has no agenda. Everything else will have an agenda. Everything. That is why the Truth is so powerful. Give up your agendas and continue to expose yourself, and harmonization will naturally occur."

The Miracle of Creation

2010-02-07T10:34:00.003-05:00

It is a beautiful winter morning. Sunny and cold, the light streaming through the windows, making it hard to see the screen, but I am reluctant to move out of the sunlight, its warmth feels so good touching the body. A lone bird calls out in the distance; Murphy, our dog, lies curled up on the couch next to me. The tree branches glisten in the sunlight and sway with in the wind.

As the mind settled down earlier in quiet morning meditation, Thich Nhat Hanh's phrase, "The conditions of happiness are here right now" came to mind.

In a theme that was touched on in the reading this week in Emptiness Dancing, lasting peace seems possible only when it is seen to be untied to external conditions. The awakened consciousness, which could be described simply as consciousness which has realized its own non-personal existence, is happy and at peace merely because it is, and not for any other reason. This is happiness due to the pure miracle of existence, the miracle of this body, this mind, the swaying trees, the bright, warm sunlight, the calling bird. As I sat earlier this morning, the persistent aching pain in my shoulder was there; can this be included in the miracle, not seen as something that needs to be cured in order for peace to be experienced right now.

The miracle of creation is happening now, not only billions of years ago when this universe started with the Big Bang. That was the phenomenal creation of this current universe and matter, yes, but can it be seen that every moment is also the moment of creation? If the miraculous is only thought of as the past, then it is dead. Now is the miraculous, that consciousness and this world are here now, exist now; the process of creation is occurring every moment. This is the living miracle, if we have the eyes to see. Am I to wait until my deathbed to wake up to this fact, at that moment to realize that all the worry and fear was unnecessary, a waste of precious time?

As I quietly watch, a single leaf falls and dances in the wind.

Commentary on Emptiness Dancing-Chapter 4, pp.22-26

2010-02-03T22:11:00.003-05:00

We started reading where we left off, with Adya explaining that awakening is awakening from the idea of a personal self, of a me. Basically, before awakening, everything that happens is happening to me, all thoughts, emotions, perceptions are mine. After awakening, things are happening; thoughts, emotions, perceptions, are occurring, but not to 'me', they are just occurring. If we look deeper or more closely, without thought, what am 'I'? Consciousness is here, but apart from that, where is a personal self?

Then it is described that what takes the place of this personal self might be called innocence or love. Indescribable consciousness operates, experiences everything, with these qualities. What is moving about his discussion in these next few pages is that it imparts the value of awakening, why it is meaningful to see these deep truths about our lives. To understand this is to see why this is not a dry philosophical or intellectual discussion with no real value to our life. This is the most valuable gift, to move beyond self-centered experience into wondrous, innocent experience of moment to moment life.

This innocent awareness operates without an agenda, without a fixed point of view that needs defending. What we are is now seen to be thoroughly a part of the whole, not separate. I love when he says:

"It's (the consciousness) the only thing in the world that is very sure that it doesn't know what is going on. In innocence, there is no idea about what's going on, and this is the wonderment. When I say it doesn't know what's going on, I mean it's not relating to experience through thought. It's bypassing thought when it relates to experience. It's not being filtered at all. That's why it's innocent."

This is not comfortable for the mind, or ego, as they operate completely through thinking, actually exist only through thought.

He goes on to say:

"The other quality that I found in awakening was a love for the mere fact of existence itself. It wasn't a love that was caused by anything."

A love for the mere fact of existence itself. Isn't this what we all want, unreasonable or uncaused happiness, "the peace that surpasses all understanding?"

As opposed to our normal state consciousness, which Adya describes this way:

"The egoic state of consciousness is always closing the doors. Emotionally and intellectually, it's always slamming things shut as soon as the moment isn't the "right" kind of moment, which is about 99 percent of the time."

But at any moment, this moment right now, truth can be seen. Consciousness is the only 'I' here experiencing this mind/body and world.

Where Is Consciousness?

2010-01-30T09:11:00.003-05:00

Consciousness is what we are. It is not something that we have, because there is no me or you that can be found to exist or be here separable from Consciousness, from the Consciousness that experiences our life. That is reading these words right now. This is something that I have discovered, and that anyone can discover with close examination of their present experience, free from any preconceived ideas or assumptions.

Seeing the truth of this for oneself is a profound experience, very different from believing it to be true because it sounds logical or fits with our ideas about spirituality or because someone that is admired or exalted said that it is true. What has remained a question for me, however, after seeing this truth, is the question of location. Is this consciousness located within this body, within this body I call mine, and that body that you call yours? Even sitting in silence, sitting with a deep experience of the aliveness that is here, this silent presence, this awake awareness, that is here; this feeling that 'it', whatever it is, is located within this body, looking out of these eyes, remains. So is this true?

This is the question that I took to Rupert Spira the other day, through the magic of technology, by chatting with Skype. So together we looked at our present experience, not the ideas that he or I carried into the conversation, but what was actually occurring as we spoke and sat. What was my experience in the moment, what is my experience in this moment? In this moment I am aware of fingers typing keys on a keyboard, trees and sky out the window, a slight tightness in the abdomen, the sound of the garbage truck in the driveway, chest rising and falling with breath. This Consciousness, if we substitute the word Awareness, since the word is not actually it, how far from this Awareness is the breath, is the keyboard, is the sky? Is it possible to separate the notion of distance, of space, out of the actual experience of this moment? Without that preconceived idea, which is so strong within us so as to remained unquestioned, is anything nearer or farther from this Awareness that we are?

What I found is that the question itself presupposes that perceptions can be nearer or farther, can be separate from the Awareness that is aware of them. But this doesn't stand up to the actual experience; how far is the sky from the awareness, can any space be experienced?Without the preconceived assumption of space, how can the question of location arise? We are reminded over and over from our earliest memories that we are something, we are this named, separate being located in this body, with these traits, separate from everything outside of the body.

How far was Rupert from me, I experienced being with him right in front of me, but I was only with a screen with sights and sounds coming out of it. How far from Consciousness was he?

Is it possible to experience this moment without the preconceived ideas of time and space? What is happening right now?

Direct Experience of What We Are-Rupert Spira

2010-01-20T19:50:00.008-05:00

This week instead of reading a portion of Emptiness Dancing, we watched video of the non-dual (meaning not-two) teacher Rupert Spira, The Transparency of Thingsdescribing how, through step by step direct, careful observation of what our experience of this moment truly is, we can come to know for ourselves what we are. More precisely, we may not know what we are, but we come to know THAT we are, and we come to know what we are NOT. We are not actually able to know what we are because we see that what we are has no describable qualities, however we are able to see what we are enough to describe it conceptually using such words as consciousness, awareness, presence, or being. These words in no way convey the truth of what we are, but may convey a sense of it, a feeling of it to guide us in what we are looking for in direct observation.

Through continued observation we may begin to see things that weren't known previously, because we had never taken the time to look, and also because what we generally take for granted about ourselves is in opposition to this actual experience. We start to see that we are not the body or mind, we are the consciousness that is conscious of the body and mind, that experiences the body and mind in the same way that it experiences all other things that are supposedly 'out there'. We see that this consciousness or awareness is not conditioned, meaning it is not dependent upon any external or internal conditions for its existence, it merely and obviously is. We see that this consciousness is not limited, there are no boundaries in time or space that can be seen to exist.

One might say that noticing these things is almost miraculous if the seeing of them didn't feel so ordinary and obvious when we take the time to observe closely and deeply without any preconceived notions whatsoever. What I find so compelling about this kind of pointing is its invitation for anyone to see for themselves what is true, not dependent upon what anyone advises us to believe nor is there the suggestion to take anything as true purely based on faith without investigation.

This brief description does not convey the experience of watching Rupert discuss these things, I highly recommend it. I have included a link to his website, as well as a link to the wonderful website StillnessSpeaks.com where the interview took place, under "Links to Awareness".

Emptiness Dancing-Ch. 4-pp 21-22: Commentary

2010-01-14T19:15:00.004-05:00

In the beginning of this chapter entitled Innocence, Adya introduces 3 qualities that arise upon awakening: wisdom, innocence, and love. In his words, "Although they are actually parts of one whole, this wholeness can be expressed by these three qualities."

Wisdom is described as the realization of our true nature and the world's true nature, which he calls the Truth, the one and only true truth. I want to discuss this, because taken out of context, without understanding, this could be interpreted as arrogance or fundamentalism. Every religion and most philosophies put forth a claim on the one and only true truth. Is this any different?

It is in fact very different, what is being pointed to here is in a sense the opposite of traditional religious claims on the truth. What is being pointed out here is that upon awakening, one realizes deeply that what is, is the truth. Absolutely nothing that is said about what is, is the truth, only what actually is. Standing in opposition to this realization is the idea that descriptions of reality or truth, such as those found in holy books, are the truth. The truest teachings are those that acknowledge that the best any teaching can do, from any source whatsoever, is point in the direction of where to look for truth. The spiritual teacher Miguel Ruiz observed that we go everywhere in search of the truth, when the truth is that everywhere we look is the truth. Another way of putting it is when we recognize the false as false, the truth reveals itself. This is the "one and only true truth" to which Adya points. This Truth has no opposite, for all concepts are contained within this truth, all points of view exist as part of what is.

The second quality discussed is innocence. Innocence arises when it is realized, not in concept but in reality, that each moment of existence, of life, is completely unique, completely fresh and new, has never happened before and will never occur again. With the arising of this innocence, that is not called forth through discipline or belief, the mind's habitual tendency to compare and contrast the present moment with the past falls away, leaving a childlike wonder and awe at the beauty of existence. This wonder is childlike but not childish, as it arises along with wisdom.

This wonder and awe at the miraculous freshness of existence when experienced without the weight of comparison and memory gives rise to the third quality mentioned, which is love. Actually it does not give rise to love, it is the love, it is another way of describing this love. Love as used in this way is a state of joy, of appreciation, for the very nature of existence, for the aliveness that is in us and around us, the aliveness that we are. This is not love of any particular object or person, it is openended. It is an appreciation of the fact that anything exists at all, which is the true miracle. All of this arises spontaneously and without effort upon awakening.

Adya then points out that after realization, the 'normal' state of consciousness where everything that happens is experienced as happening to a 'me', a personal self, falls away, and what is here is a sense of beingness with these qualities of innocence and love. He describes the difference in a wonderful couple of sentences:

When the awakening is very deep, we no longer operate from a place of personal self. In other words, everything doesn't relate to "me." Thoughts don't relate to me; feelings don't relate to me; what others do doesn't relate to me; and what happens in the world doesn't relate to me. In the egoic state of consciousness, literally every single thing that ever happens is happening to a me. Right? That's the "normal" state of consciousness.

Recognition: Excerpts from emails to a friend

2010-01-03T22:52:00.005-05:00

1. How are you? Happy Holiday to you too. The relative can be happy and it can be challenging by turn, but my life has become much more focused on living awake as the most important thing.

It’s a funny thing, though, as you and I have discussed at length, that doing, and trying, many times get us nowhere but frustration.But for some of us, like myself (and Adya, by the way, as he related on retreat), going through frustration seemed the only way. Sitting is only ultimately useful if it allows recognition of Being, not some Being outside of ourself or even hidden within, but the Being, or Presence, that you will recognize as you, the you that is reading this email in this very moment. Can you notice it this instant, this consciousness that is reading these words right now? Not later when sitting, or in a month or two when you and I get together, though that will undoubtedly be wonderful, but right now? This sense of you that is unchanged with age, with time, even though the body has aged and thinking changes? Look for this constantly, this Presence, this Awareness, which is aware during all the moments of your life. You will recognize it, I promise you. When you do, let me know. If not, let me know what you find. Did you read the few pages this week of Emptiness and my short comments? That part where he talks about the mistake of looking for a hidden enlightened self inside, that is powerful, it was a big stumbling block for me. No hidden self inside, just the consciousness that is right here, right now and always; that’s it, no more, no less.

Happy New Year! Good to hear from you, I’ve been thinking of you, hope you are well. I did not talk about living more awake, I talked about being more focused on living awake as the most important thing. In a pure sense, we are always awake, there is no other possibility and no more or less. When this is seen, it is obvious. The fact that you are alive and are aware you are alive is proof that awakeness, or aliveness, is happening. Does that make sense? Then the key occurrence is recognition that ‘you’ are the aliveness itself, the aliveness that notices, experiences everything, including the experience of being in the body. The key is to see that it is not ‘my’ consciousness that is conscious of everything, I am the consciousness so it can’t be mine. It is not the car’s car, it is just the car. Similarly, it is not my consciousness, it is just consciousness, which is ‘me’. Just notice that ‘you’ and consciousness cannot be separated.

There is no filter, by the way, only lack of recognition, that’s all. This idea that we filter reality is not true, we can get lost in thinking, however; if we mistake our thinking about reality for reality, then we are deluded. But without thought, reality is as it is, no filter. See?

You are correct, awakening does not refer to a process, only to recognition or realization of what is true. It refers to awakening from the delusion that we are what we think we are. But it’s obvious that the thoughts about us cannot be us, right? The idea of something can never be the actual thing, yet we don’t grasp that this must hold true for what we actually are as well.

So when I talk about being more focused on living awake as the most important thing, I am merely referring to living out of that realization, out of recognition of Being. I find it easy to fall back into the ‘old’ mode of living completely identified with thinking. I just read somewhere a quote attributed to Gangaji that goes something like, “This is an invitation to live not in identification with your thoughts, but in recognition of the eternal Being that you are.” So that’s kind of the idea.

I suggest just to notice that thinking is just that, thinking. The content of the thoughts isn’t true and doesn’t actually matter, it is just energy passing through. You say, “I notice this consciousness in this instant as you say below. However, it must still somehow be filtered.” If ‘you’ notice without thinking, then it is not filtered, consciousness is consciousness. It is simple (the idea that it is filtered is actually the problem). So, who is noticing? Consciousness is actually noticing itself.

Why is it so hard much of the time to just be who we are? The cosmic joke on us humans.

Truth

2010-01-01T22:57:00.002-05:00

The truth needs no defense.

Only opinions, beliefs, need defending, need to be defended against competing, contradictory beliefs. Truth has no opposite, it includes all sides, all beliefs and opinions, without conforming to any. It doesn't fit your story or my story, it can never be captured in word or concept. The best we can hope for in word is to point in the right direction, and even this is difficult. Much of what is passed as truth points in the wrong direction, for the simple reason that it is paraded around as the truth captured in word, in concept. The truth is alive, moving, occurring moment to moment. It is right here, right now, living your life, appearing as you and everything else. It is not hidden, not secret, not known to a select few chosen by a higher power to guard and ration out according to their whim.

When we need someone else to validate our belief, then we are lost in delusion. If it is true, then it is true whether someone else corroborates it or not, and if it is false, it is false no matter how many people call it out on the mountaintop. There is nothing wrong with believing something without being sure, but if I delude myself into thinking it is actually true, then I must defend it against your skepticism. If I can be honest with myself about the fact that although I believe it, I don't know for sure if it is true, then I can be at peace with you having a different opinion.

On the other hand, if I know it is true, then it doesn't matter whether you doubt it or deny it. So either way, the need to make you see it as I do is rooted in delusion, confusion, insecurity and fear. I spent much of my life caught in this trap, which is unending, trying to force everyone to see it my way so I would feel comfortable with my thoughts. If I see what is true in my own thinking and what is only a story, then I can be at peace with the thoughts, beliefs and delusions of others. I can choose to point out my agreement or disagreement or choose not to, depending on the situation, without feeling a desperate need for confirmation or validation.

It has been said, 'Don't look for the truth, just see the false as false.' When delusion drops away, the truth is everywhere. Then the need for beliefs also falls away. When the miracle of what is right here, right now, is seen, where is the need for a future heaven?

Silence in the new year

2010-01-01T12:06:00.006-05:00

It is a new year, and as I sit here typing these words, I notice the silence. The silence that seems to be in my head. The dripping of the melting snow outside my bedroom. The hands and fingers that move across the keyboard. What is seeing this, hearing this, or as Toni Packer often said, "awaring" this? Silent presence, Being, is here and aware. Is it known that awareness is always aware, whether it is noticed, whether 'we' see it, or not? Who notices it; the awareness notices it is aware, can that be seen?

Outside the dog barks, the enormous collection of crows fill the sky, the space, with cawing. Inside the sound of water filling the coffeepot, as Ellen moves about the kitchen. What is inside, outside, these are all relative terms. Inside my head, inside or outside my house, what is the difference, where is sound heard, where is the snow on the ground seen? Everything is occurring within the awareness, everything is awared within silence, even the chest moving with the breath.

Where is 'last' year, where is 'this' year? Only now is here now, before thinking. Even now isn't actually here, only fingers, keyboard, barking, breathing, consciousness looking out through my eyes.

Peace is here in the quiet awareness of Being. Where else could it be found?

Commentary: Emptiness Dancing-Chapter 3 (pp 15-20)

2009-12-15T20:41:00.004-05:00

Chapter 3 is entitled Openness.

"When you are open, you do not filter your experience, nor do you barricade yourself. You do not try to defend yourself..."

Adya begins to point out a quality of our nature that, if deeply seen and felt, can have a dramatic effect on our thoughts and actions. We have been attempting to see pure consciousness, pure awareness as our actual nature, not a metaphor for it but a description of what we really are, as opposed to all these thoughts we have about who or what we are. Now a characteristic of that consciousness, that beingness, is a sense of complete openness, unboundedness, like space. With nothing to grab onto or resist, it is realized that there is really nothing there to defend, nothing that would need defending. Can we see how that would cause a major shift in our reactions, in our relationship with others? How much time is spent in defending ourselves from imagined attacks in one way or another?

"Openness has no particular location. It seems to be everywhere. It has room for anything.

There can be a thought or no thought... There can be sounds. There can be silence. Nothing

disturbs openness. Nothing disturbs our true nature."

If we begin to glimpse this Presence within us, as us, it has a quality of silence about it, but

what is pointed out here is again the unboundedness and also the inclusiveness, everything is included,

it is not actually possible for anything to be excluded. Consciousness includes everything, nothing can

manifest outside of consciousness. Unbounded means having no center, although our consciousness

appears to be looking out our eyes, before thought where are its boundaries?

"You can have an experience of openness right now. You do not need to open or to become more

open. Just recognize the openness that is already being experienced here and now."

Again the key understanding that awakening is about seeing what's already here, about being, not

about doing anything or creating anything. Adya talks later about any image of self brings about

the need for protection, defense, and therefore creates suffering, that one cannot have self image

without this occurring on some level. It must be understood that this can be very subtle. "With a

willingness to see that an image is not real, the walls come down."

"Now the funny thing about the Truth, or enlightenment, or awakening, is that we miss it even

though it's not hidden. It's not far away waiting for a moment when we deserve it. It is hard to

find because it's right here. This openness has always been here."

Here Adya is coming back to a powerful theme for me, a powerful truth which can also be very

frustrating when not seen. This consciousness is right here, conscious of these words, conscious

of the room around me, conscious of the body seated and the fingers typing. This is it, there is no

secret me hidden inside somewhere, no secret God out there somewhere, the miracle is the

aliveness, the awakeness that is here and operating right now.

Adya points out much more through the end of the chapter, including how life, or Truth, manages

itself perfectly without any control from the imagined self, the thought concept of self which is an

illusion.

Awakening

2009-12-13T12:05:00.004-05:00

What actually happens when you 'awaken', is not so much an awakening as it is a realization. You realize, or recognize, that awakeness is here now, has always been here, at least since you were born, and will always be here, at least until you die. The question of whether it was here before you were born and will it be here after you die, is one that I'm not going to address, for the simple reason that I don't know the answer, and I'm not convinced anyone else does either, although there are more than enough people out there claiming that they know. And it probably serves our understanding better to say that awakeness, or what we can also describe as presence, or consciousness, or Being, has been here since the instant the body was born and will be here until the body dies, since the question of who 'you' are is an open one.

So we don't awaken so much as recognize a truth. A truth which becomes obvious once it is seen. Of course this awakeness is here and has always been here, it's actually the most recognizable thing about 'me', more recognizable than my face in the mirror, for example. When we wake up from sleeping in the morning, we don't have to look in the mirror to remember who we are, do we? You don't have to throw off the blanket and examine your body to make sure you are you and not somebody else, you know immediately that you are you. Why? What is it that makes us remember, or recognize, who we are? It is this sense of Presence, of Being, this consciousness, that we actually recognize as 'me'. This is what we are thinking about when we think or say 'me'. This is also why when you talk to people that are older they inevitably say they have a hard time reconciling their sense of who they are with how old they are, how old their body is and what it looks like. Since this felt sense of who we are, which is this awakeness, this consciousness, doesn't change over time, it can be described as outside of time or timeless. You are no more awake at 20 than you are at 50 or vice-versa. You may feel more awake, or more conscious, but if one looks closely it becomes obvious that this aliveness is operating all the time, unchanged, behind the feelings of brightness or dullness or what have you. Our energy level certainly ebbs and flows and is constantly changing, but consciousness remains unchanged by conditions, appears to be the only thing unchanged by conditions. Everything else occurs within this consciousness or awareness.

So if this recognition occurs, if this is realized, we no longer have to run all over the place looking for someone to tell us or show us who or what we are. We know what we are, and also that we could never be anything else. We can't describe it very well because it does not have any describable attributes. It's not big or small, happy or sad, good or bad, black or white, hard or soft, etc. Our five senses cannot detect it, which is why it is said that the mind cannot find it, because the mind or our thinking uses our senses to tell it what's going on. Only the consciousness itself can detect itself, can 'wake up' to the fact of itself. "Oh yes, this is what's here, before thinking; during and after thinking, too."

Then it is realized that everything we have thought about ourselves is not true, or at least not true in an ultimate sense. Relatively, many things are true, these are my parents, this is my body, that is my job, I like ice cream, etc. But none of these things have anything to do with the incredible, miraculous aliveness, consciousness that is in us, that is us.

Who Is Here?-Emptiness Dancing pp. 10-13: Commentary

2009-12-08T21:07:00.005-05:00

In reading the rest of Chapter 2, Adya repeatedly points us inward to look and see 'Who is here', 'What is here' that we keep thinking of as 'me'. To look without words, without concepts about who we are. And he guards against more subtle plays of the mind or ego, whereby even when a recognition of something occurs, thought wants to put labels on such as consciousness, awakeness, awareness and make a 'thing' out of what is 'no thing'. I have found this to be very tricky, because we use words to communicate, to point, and these words are the nearest we have to what reveals itself to deep inquiry.

In a profound passage he talks about one of the dilemmas of the spiritual seeker:

What you are without your role is often assumed to be hidden somewhere. And so when you let go of your role, when you look past the character called "me" for the truth of your being, you may think that there's a someone to find who is somehow hidden. If this happens, when you come into this state of openness, you may think, "There's nobody here, but I'll for it anyway, look for the Self, the Truth, the enlightened me."

Again, this points to a subtle continuation of the mind constantly creating a 'thing' out of consciousness, awareness. I'll meditate and I'll become an enlightened 'me'. I was constantly looking for the enlightened me but there is no such thing, only this consciousness, this silent Presence, that is always there, always aware during every moment of my life. Nothing hidden, or if it's hidden than it's 'hiding in plain sight', as Adya says. It cannot be emphasized enough, awakening is about realizing Being, not about becoming someone different or 'better'. As Adya says, "This is an opportunity to stop all strategies of becoming."

Later, he addresses the idea that awakening involves getting what you want. "The awakeness could care less about the agendas you have.... And I say, you're damned lucky if you don't get what you want!... What a hideous dream it was-thinking those things were needed for me to be happy.

This is the end of suffering, the end of thinking that something external needs to happen in order for us to be happy. Seeing the natural peace and stillness of the silent presence that we truly are.

The Here and Now

2009-12-05T21:32:00.002-05:00

We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.
H. L. Mencken

The here and now have been talked about as the gateway to spirituality, to Truth, to God, for millenia. Eckhart Tolle reenergized this teaching in the The Power of Now. Mindfulness meditation is about coming 'back' to the here and now (there is, of course, no actual 'coming back' to the here and now because there is no possibility of ever getting away from the here and now). So we are all familiar with this as an idea, as a concept. But there are endless concepts out there, does understanding on a conceptual level get us anywhere, really change anything? Does anything need to be changed?
Spiritual concepts, if they are to have a purpose, allow us to become open to a possibility, a possibility of living in a different manner, of realizing that what is real may be different from what our previous thinking told us is real.
So is it understood, even on an intellectual level, on the level of thought, that 'now', the present moment, is the only time that is actually real, actually true? Even writing about this, which necessitates using words, concepts, is tricky, because to talk about the present moment as a thing is already a mistake. What is being pointed to is the possibility of seeing through the normal mode of perception, which sees reality as comprised of an endless number of discrete, separate things- including a past, a present, a future; a left, a right, an up, a down-and all the manifest things contained within these ideas of time and space. The use of 'here' in this context is not as opposed to a 'there', the use of now is not as opposed to a past or a future, they are being used in a manner to point to a reality with no opposites. This 'now' contains all of time, this 'here' contains all of the possible 'theres'. This is the pointing of nonduality, 'not two'.
Before thinking, before thought separates reality, what is here, now, here and now? Where are "you"? Do you perceive your body through sight and think "there I am"? But thinking created that idea of the body as you. Prior to that thought, where are you?
Prior to thought, you are nowhere, yet there is a sense that you 'are'. So what are you? This awareness, this being that we sense as us, is here, now.
Have we completely become enmeshed in the notion that what we think is reality is the only reality, that there is no reality outside of thought? There is certainly a reality outside of thought; a deeper inquiry is, is there a reality outside of consciousness? This consciousness that we cannot separate ourselves from, that we can in fact find no separate 'self' apart from.

Peace of Mind

2009-11-19T20:11:00.000-05:00

Every person, every living thing, wants happiness and peace of mind. I would think this is sufficiently clear, although not necessarily the first things some people would say if asked. So how is it that so few actually have what everyone wants; true, lasting peace of mind.

For me, the answer lies simply in what is being pointed to when Zen Master Cheri Huber says, "If happiness were to be found where you have been looking, you would have found it a long time ago."

This ceaseless looking for happiness, for peace, in our job, in our relationship, in our hobbies, at the movies or at the football game, or even in charitable acts, does it work? There is nothing wrong with any of these activities, we live and have to function in this world, so doing well in whatever we happen to be doing is fine, and deriving pleasure from it is certainly fine. The error, if one could call it that, I believe, is in not understanding that no matter how well we do any of these things or how often, none of them is going to be the cause of lasting peace of mind. These things are constantly changing and shifting, and if things go well and smooth one day, they go awry the next, that's the way life is. Hasn't our experience taught us at least that?

For some reason, we grow up to believe that we must 'succeed' in some way, in any way, to have value, to have worth, to be lovable. Certainly the seeds of this are planted early, when our parents tell us how good we are when we behave in a way that pleases them. Then grades in school become another way of succeeding, of absorbing the idea that if we do well we have worth, but if not there is something wrong with us. Athletics have become a prime breeding ground for this, what most certainly must have started out as a way of enjoying the release, relaxation and joy of physical activity, has turned into this endless cycle of trying to be good, to be better than the next person, to win, so then we can feel we are okay, we have value. Accolades are poured on the talented athletes among our kids and our adults, and the unskilled are tolerated at best, ridiculed if less fortunate.

It is my feeling that true peace of mind comes with the realization that our value, our worth, is inherent and innate to us as a conscious, living, part of life; and not derived or contingent upon any external circumstance of our life whatsoever. Until this is realized, I'm not sure there can be any lasting peace of mind or happiness.

A corollary of this is that it must be seen directly that we are a conscious part of life, not something separate from life that happens to be conscious. We are part of the miraculous aliveness that is operating; is that seen, is that known? The mere fact that 'we' are here, that we are conscious awareness, is proof of this miraculous aliveness. These facts are inseparable. The 'we' is the aliveness that is aware, that is conscious.

What We Are-Emptiness Dancing-Ch. 2 pg. 9: Commentary

2009-11-11T20:08:00.000-05:00

Pete and I read just one short page, the first page of Chapter 2, and the first few lines of the next page. But it doesn't take much to spark the recognition of what we are, what we really are when our mind isn't telling us stories about ourselves. Just ask my friend Pete about last night!

Realization, spiritual awakening, is about finding out who or what the 'us' is, when I say the mind is telling 'us' stories. See, it's not really about the story the mind is occupying itself with at the moment, the mind has a million stories, as anyone who has started to meditate has noticed. It's about seeing who is the 'me' that is perceiving the story , perceiving the thinking. "Oh, I'm thinking again." What is it that is perceiving the thinking? Do you see? It is you, just as you say, but what is that? It's consciousness, right? It's awareness. That's actually what we are, not our body or our thinking, those are just things associated with us, that arise in awareness or consciousness.

We don't think, "My eyes see the tree." We think "I see the tree" and our eyes are the instrument that allow us to see it. We are correct in this thought but we don't recognize what it is that we are referring to as 'I'.

So Adya points to this when he says "But our roles and stories are not what we are... Awakening is a radical shift in identity."

The other beautiful thing he points out is "When you start to realize what Truth is, you recognize that Truth is not an abstraction, it is not out there at a distance from you, and it is not something to learn tomorrow... The time to wake up is now. Not tomorrow. Now."

It can be very frustrating to hear this when nothing seems to be understood or seen now, but consciousness is always operating, like right at this very moment as I write this, or as you read it. That is the Truth, and seeing that, is where freedom waits for us, patiently, to see that under our stories which cause suffering, anxiety, and fear, lies this silent, peace-full Beingness.

Emptiness Dancing-Ch. 1-pp 7-8: Commentary

2009-11-05T22:36:00.000-05:00

We only read less than a page, the last two sentences of page 7 and the end of the chapter on page 8, but if what Adya answered here is understood completely, known for one's self, nothing else is needed. I'm going to reprint this short question and answer here entirely, and then discuss it briefly, although it can speak for itself.

Student: Letting go of our egocentricity so we can experience awakening-do you suppose it is peeled off us the way we peel an orange?

A: Peeling is like having a dream at night in which you dream you are going to a therapist, and you start feeling better and better, and you feel like you are getting somewhere. Awakening is as if you are sitting on the couch telling your story, and you are still a mess-haven't gotten very far. Then all of a sudden you realize this is a dream, this isn't real, you're making it up. That's awakening. There's a big difference.

Student: I've made up all of it?

A: The whole thing. But the awakeness in you is not dreaming. Only the mind is dreaming. It tells itself stories and wants to know if you're progressing. When you shift into wakefulness, you realize, "Wait, it's a dream. The mind is creating an altered state of reality, a virtual reality, but it's not true-it's just thought."

Thought can tell a million stories inside of awareness, and it's not going to change awareness one bit. The only thing that's going to change is the way the body feels. If you tell yourself a sad story, the body reacts to that. And if you tell yourself a self-aggrandizing story, the body feels puffed up, confident. But when you realize it's all stories, there can be a vast waking up out of the mind, out of the dream. You don't awaken, what has eternally been awake realizes itself. That which is eternally awake is what you are.

There are two big truths being pointed at here. The first is that self-improvement, the story that we are becoming a better us, a healthier us; may feel good, at least for awhile, but it is not the same as awakening. Realizing our true nature- this consciousness, this aliveness that is always operating, always experiencing our life through our senses- is waking up to something that does not change in time or space, so actually is operating outside of the concepts of time and space. Becoming always happens within time, so becoming someone healthier or improving our life is not associated with awakening; awakening is about being, not doing.

One of the big things about pursuing a spiritual path is to see, eventually, through frustration, that trying to do something, to achieve or get something, does not ultimately work. It may seem to work for awhile, but frustration sets in when we get stuck and realize we haven't really changed, or may have changed superficially. Even this realization is big, to finally be really honest with ourselves that we haven't really changed, maybe we've put on more spiritual clothes, maybe use more so called spiritual language. So pursuing a path may be helpful in setting the stage for the surrender of the seeking, surrender of the seeker itself.

The other truth Adya points at when he says that 'You don't awaken, that which is eternally awake realizes itself', is that whatever we think we are is not who or what we actually are. What we are is what recognizes itself, but it doesn't have anything to do with what we previously told ourselves we are.

I think we've all had a sense of who we really are at times, when we have that feeling that there is something about us that we can't quite grasp that hasn't changed no matter what age we are, or when we feel perplexed looking in the mirror and wonder why that older face doesn't compute since we don't feel changed.

But we overlook the obvious because it feels so familiar and also because this aliveness that we are has no describable qualities, and it is ingrained in us to make things real by being able to describe them. How can something we can't describe be real? Here is something that we have to realize is real outside of the mind, something that we can't even say is some-thing. But look closely, deeply in silence, and the dawning of recognition may come. Ohh, of course, it's not that I'm conscious, it's that I am consciousness, consciousness is the me, the real me, not the story of me!

What Am I Missing?

2009-11-01T17:00:00.001-05:00

Much of my life has been infused in some way with this question, "What am I missing?"

One of the causes, I believe, was that at some point in childhood an underlying sense of inadequacy set in. When this was felt, I assumed that other children understood something about life that I was missing, since I couldn't outwardly detect this feeling in others. This set me to trying to make myself look okay on the outside so maybe then this feeling of inadequacy would go away. But doing well in school or at sports did not really make it go away.

Another problem was that nothing that was being told to me, or sold to me actually, as truth, really seemed like truth. I was unable to swallow the teachings and moralities of nationalism and religion, even as a young boy. "How do you know this to be true?" kept coming up in my brain. Just because it is written in a book doesn't make it true. It made no sense that there was an almighty being somewhere that chose my religious group or my country over the others, or any group over any other. Something didn't compute. It wasn't until, in my early twenties, when a friend handed me a book by J. Krishnamurti, that anything anyone said about the meaning of life or truth of life made any sense to me. Reading Krishnamurti was like a revelation, here was someone, a spiritual sage no less, saying what had been roiling around in my brain for years. He had the courage to stand up and declare that nothing that was being passed around for truth was in fact true. Furthermore, the fact that millions of people insisted it was true still didn't make it true. This gave me the sense that I wasn't crazy, but I had no idea how to obtain the courage and inner peace of a Krishnamurti.

At a certain point in life, I started to see that no matter how many external goals were reached, that feeling of lack or of something missing wouldn't go away. I may have felt good for awhile, but then again it started, if only I resolve this or that, then I'll have peace. So if these outside achievements don't bring peace, then where do I look? This became the beginning of spiritual seeking. I became a seeker, and a seeker needs something to seek. That something was happiness and peace, but what would bring this? In spirituality, the goal seemed to be enlightenment, I didn't know what it was but it sounded like whoever had it found inner peace. The problem with spiritual seeking is the gnawing question, "What am I missing?", only gets stronger. I started sitting meditation at a Zen Center in NY, and it was wonderful in many ways, but reading and contemplating the Zen riddles or paradoxes known as koans brought much frustration.

What am I missing, What am I missing, What am I missing?

Eastern spiritual teachings say that ultimately all beings are already enlightened, already have 'Buddha Nature', already lack nothing. But there is a reason that the teacher is up on the stage talking and the seekers are sitting in the audience with varying levels of frustration. So what do the teachers have that everyone else don't?

It turns out that they don't have anything special, they aren't inherently different from anybody else, what is different is they see something that most don't, they recognize what we can call the truth of their being, their true nature; and in recognizing or realizing what they really are, it becomes obvious this is what everyone else is too. It is a realization that negates all the stories about ourselves as false, all the long held beliefs that cause suffering, such as I'm not good enough or I need this or that in order to be happy. The irony is that the very notion that something is lacking or that we are missing something is itself the block to seeing that we are free, free to be happy and at peace right here, right now, just exactly as we are. It is the story itself that we are not free, that keeps us from being free, or more accurately seeing that we are and always were free.

The consciousness, awakeness, beingness, that we are is unbound and unconditioned, it cannot be changed, improved or lessened by conditions. Seeing this, realizing this, is like waking up from a dream, since the stories in our minds about ourselves only exist in the mind. They do not exist as truth, although thinking is part of truth, part of reality, is a movement of energy like anything else.

Emptiness Dancing-Ch. 1-pp 2-7: Commentary

2009-10-27T21:36:00.000-04:00

Adya begins the second part of Chapter One with a brief description of his initial awakening experience, recounting the feelings of Oneness which arose followed shortly by consciousness, or spirit arising, completely independent and unidentified with form.

He then goes on:

"With that first step, when I realized that what was looking through my eyes and senses was awakeness or spirit rather than conditioning or memory, I saw that the same spirit was actually looking through all the other pairs of eyes."

This two step process of recognizing and then realizing pure consciousness or Presence as what we actually are, and then realizing that it is also what everybody else is, is available to anyone, as Adya tells us later:

"The biggest barrier to awakening is the belief that it is something rare."

But for it to be meaningful, it must be experienced, be seen for ourselves. Someone else telling us this is so, no matter who it is, makes it just another story, another belief that sounds good or 'spiritual'.

Later on there is description to try and point us to moments in our life when we have experienced pure awareness without the thought of 'me' in the mind. Starting to recognize these moments between thoughts as something profound and real can lead to greater recognition.

"If you really want to know what you are, just experience the gap, experience the openness, and let it bloom inside....

You ask, "This openness, this presence"-call it what you will-"this is what I am?" You start to feel or sense that you're on to something that's not a creation of thought, belief, or faith. And when you start to take it in, just this awakeness that's free of all identity, it's mind-boggling. In Zen we call it the uncreated, it's the only thing around that your mind is not creating."

It is exciting for me to reprint this description of Adya's because I experienced just such an awakening process, very much as he describes here, late at night alone in a cabin during a recent retreat with him. And it is mind boggling as it blossoms in the mind "Wait a second! This awareness, this consciousness, it's what I am? Not MY consciousness, it can't be MY consciousness, because I AM the consciousness, the awareness!"

Adya then concludes the chapter comparing this realization that "what we are is pure spirit with no form" to passing into heaven, to being born again. Although it has nothing to do with the idea that everything in life will go our way.

"...Life does what it does, like an ocean moving...Within this awakeness is the peace that surpasses all understanding, and your life doesn't need to be doing better. It can just do what life does; it just flows. You don't care."

Days of Joy

2009-10-26T20:02:00.000-04:00

Stevie Wonder sings in his song "I Wish":

Looking back on when I
Was a little nappy headed boy
Then my only worry
Was for Christmas what would be my toy
Even though we sometimes
Would not get a thing
We were happy with the
Joy the day would bring

Sneaking out the back door
To hang out with those hoodlum friends of mine
Greeted at the back door
With "boy thought I told you not to go outside,"
Tryin' your best to bring the
Water to your eyes
Thinkin' it might stop her
From woopin' your behind

I wish those days could come back once more
Why did those days ev-er have to go
I wish those days could come back once more
Why did those days ev-er have to go
Cause I love them so

Haven't we all had these thoughts or ones quite similar from time to time? Like Stevie, I wonder why those days ever had to go? Most of us carry around the idea, I think, that it's because that's just the way life is. Childhood had its innocence, with its joys and also its anxieties, but innocent still because the burden of responsibility, the weight of regret had not yet set in. But adulthood brings responsibility, and we need to worry about taking care of our family, holding down our job, being a good person, a good parent, a good employee, a good neighbor, a good patriot, churchgoer, etc. Time to let go of childhood innocence.

What if that program is not true? What if our parents and teachers and priests and rabbis who instilled that program in us did it because they felt it was right; but really only because it had been instilled in them? What if they too were conditioned the same way they conditioned us, early enough and consistently enough so it becomes embedded deep within us, so deep we don't even question whether it's true or still valid, so deep that we're not even conscious that this conditioning is what's making our decisions, even as we think it's our free will that is deciding.

I included the second paragraph to show that even in his nostalgic recollection, Stevie still recalls times of fear and anxiety, but this does not diminish his memory of those days being different. In those childhood days, when we were in trouble with our parents or the school principal, we were scared. But when judgement time came and went, consequences meted out and taken, whether it was a grounding or a detention, what have you; out we went again to the playground with our friends and joy was again ours. Now, of course, we know better, we're adults, we have to take these things seriously, we must analyze them to see what went wrong, where WE were wrong, this is our responsibility as adults. We can't just go back into joy and innocent wonder at the incredible beauty of this world, right?

But what if we could? What if we can access this consciousness that was there in childhood, and is STILL there in adulthood, behind all that conditioning and heaviness and worry? The spiritual teacher Miguel Ruiz calls them Agreements, these embedded beliefs which control us, which were instilled within us as children until we internally agreed with them, agreed to be our own judge and jury and find ourselves guilty and punish ourselves. What if it's possible that we can regain this childlike wonder without being childish, that all the morals we need to be a good person could flow naturally out of the freedom and peace that would come from seeing this conditioning for the delusion that it is, for the lie that it is?

My wife recently wondered aloud during one of our talks, "What would it be like to live all the time feeling that there was really nothing wrong with us?"

Imagine that. Better yet look deep inside and recognize that freedom that waits patiently in silence for us to finally let go of delusion.

Human Essence

2009-10-23T21:20:00.000-04:00

My friend Lew sent me a wonderful story yesterday about Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, the famous Lubavitch Rabbi, and Victor Frankl, who wrote the influential spiritual book, "Man's Search for Meaning", after his experience in the Holocaust. I'm not going to recount the story here, although if anyone is interested I will email it to them.

What I want to talk about is the short description lifted from Frankl's book about human essence.

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: The last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”

Of course, there are many things about our life we have no control over. But there is a dimension of the human self – the essence of human identity -- which nothing and nobody can control. It is transcendent by its very “nature” – free, uninhibited, wholesome and deeply spiritual, never defined by life’s circumstances and limitations, but rather free to define them, to define their meaning and message."

Frankl was able to discern, through personal experience of the worst possible circumstances of human behavior, a deep truth about human identity and what we are underneath all our stories and concepts. True spiritual awakening is about seeing, recognizing, this truth within ourselves, and thereby realizing it about all human beings. In fact all living creatures are in essence a consciousness or awakeness or aliveness that cannot be controlled, contained, or changed in any way by any means. Because it is free by its very nature, beyond the influence of external circumstance, tapping into it behind our normal modes of perception can allow the possibility of action that does not seem normal within our everyday states of perception. Action such as the type that Frankl refers to in the concentration camps, extraordinary acts of kindness and compassion in the face of horrific circumstance.

Another example that comes to mind is the actions of Mahatma Gandhi in the nonviolent revolution against the British in India. My son Dan was reminding me of how Gandhi informed his fellow countrymen of his intention to stand in fearless opposition against the British without lifting a finger even in the face of being beaten with clubs. How does a human being tap into that kind of courage, that kind of determination?

It is for each of us to look deep within themselves for that which cannot be controlled or intimidated by anything external, our essence which can never be taken away, simply because it is our true nature.

Frankl went on to call it our soul, and in the recounting the writer calls it our soul. I don't know about this because I don't see anything personal in it, a personal soul. It has no describable qualities except possibly silence, a deep silence in which all states and "things" arise.

Emptiness Dancing-Preface/Ch. 1-pp 1-2: Commentary

2009-10-20T22:17:00.000-04:00

Adya immediately focuses on what all his teaching is pointing towards, realizing our true nature, who we really are, behind and beyond all the labels and concepts of ourselves,which exist only in our minds and in the minds of others.

His wonderful beginning, "I welcome you, yes you, the one who is reading these words.", has a different meaning than is first thought with our normal mind. His 'you' is not Chick, or Pete, or Kathy, or anything in our minds, but is addressing the consciousness, the awakeness, behind all that, which appears or manifests as each of us.

"The truth is that you already are what you are seeking. You are looking for God with his eyes. This truth is so shocking and simple..."

There it is, it IS shocking and simple, so we miss it, or we may see it and dismiss it as unimportant, trivial. We may think, 'yes I see that I am a conscious being", so what's the big deal. This is a huge deal, this is the miracle of realization, the miracle of existence. Don't go looking for something else. This is where peace of mind can be found, the only place it can be found, and yet we run around like chickens without a head searching everywhere else for it.

You are not a thing with consciousness, you and I ARE consciousness, consciousness is living our life, experiencing our emotions and thoughts. All other thoughts or labels about ourselves are not true, they are the stories which become the ego or egoic mind, the mind that suffers from loneliness, inferiority, superiority, anxiety, depression and all the rest. Our minds want to make us into a thing, God into a thing, but the truth is 'no-thing', the indescribable silent Presence.

Adya says "Wake up! You are all living Buddhas. you are the divine emptiness, the infinite nothing. This I know because I am what you are, and you are what I am."

This can be seen for ourselves, recognized and realized for ourselves.

May you realize this and find true peace.

Our True Home

2009-10-14T23:11:00.000-04:00

The concept of 'home' is one known to all of us and used in many different ways, although we attach certain common notions to it . Home is where we hope to feel safe and secure, a haven to drop our anxiety and worry and just be. Like almost everything else that we try to 'get', we look for places outside of us to call home. The house that we live in is our most commonly thought of home, but also the country we reside in, the church or temple we belong to, a group affiliation we feel comfortable in. Each of these provides, at least part of the time, the feelings we are looking for when we think of being 'home'.

If we are honest with ourselves, however, I think we can see that wherever we find ourselves, even in our house with our family, we still experience anxiety, worry, fear, anger and all the rest of the feelings that we run from. No place outside of us feels much different moment to moment, life is still life with its challenges and its joys.

Does a deeper, truer 'home' exist, a true haven where just being is possible? If we are able to get in touch with what we truly are, underneath all the labels that we think of as us; 'father', 'son', coworker', 'American', even possibly 'human being', a true home reveals itself. The only true home. Where nothing needs to be done, indeed where nothing can be done, because being, or Being, is all there is. When the mind is completely still, quiet, then consciousness reveals itself, not 'to' us, but AS us.

When we experience this for even an instant, this place of being which is actually no place, but which paradoxically is occurring every place, no matter where we happen to be on the outside, then this becomes a true refuge, a true home that can be touched at any moment. Life will always present challenges along with its pleasures, but what we are, that immeasurable but aware silence and peace, can never, ever be taken from us, it is impossible, it is our true nature, not theoretically or as an analogy but ACTUALLY. This must be realized by ourself, however, no one can give it to us just as no one can take it from us.

Here I Go: What I Am, Part 1

2009-10-11T10:40:00.000-04:00

Even though it's all been said before, with great clarity and wisdom, Here I go! This blog will be an attempt to explore the truth of who or what we are, in reality, free of hope or belief or concept. What is our true nature?

Welcome to anybody and everybody reading this. Is anybody out there? I know I'm here, writing and reading this. The question is, What am I? This may seem an easy question or an impossible one, depending on your thinking. For me, it has plagued me for decades, leading me all over the place in search of an answer.

An answer came recently on a silent retreat. I was in my cabin one night struggling with some of the things the spiritual teacher Adyashanti had said earlier in the day, some of which sparked the beginnings of recognition within me. But mostly I was struggling with my seeming inability to stop seeking something that I couldn't quite grasp, even after years and years of looking. Then the dawning of realization, of true recognition, began.

"Oh wait a second, that is who 'I' am! That is what I am referring to all the time when 'I' think about 'I' or 'me'! Wow! That's it? I recognize that. It's the 'I' that's been here from the beginning and has never changed throughout my life."

Now, what is 'that'? The closest words we have seem to be that it's consciousness, or awareness, or being, or even awakeness. How can we describe something that has no physical attributes but when we look closely we recognize it as the silent Presence that has always been there since the beginning, that has been the experiencer of every moment of our lives?

Does this seem vaguely familiar? Adya and others talk about it hiding in plain sight. What is it that looks out of our eyes into the mirror, and the thought comes, "Why has this face changed, aged, when 'I' seem the same, unchanged?" The answer is that what we actually are, not what we think we are, is this consciousness, this awareness, not the the face or the body or any of our other thoughts about what we are. It is outside of time, unchanging, time occurs within it, it does not occur within time.

Upon seeing this, it becomes perfectly obvious that this is who we are, and who everyone else is as well, regardless of their thoughts on the matter. It is no longer conceptual, just plain to see, like the branches of the pine tree in front of me in the twilight of a cool fall evening.

What peace to be found in simple seeing, free of seeking and grasping.