The Seer

In essence the entire spiritual endeavor is a very simple thing: Spirituality is essentially about awakening as the intuitive awareness of unity and dissolving our attachment to egoic consciousness. By saying that spirituality is a very simple thing, I do not mean to imply that it is either an easy or difficult endeavor. For some it may be very easy, while for others it may be more difficult. There are many factors and influences that play a role in one’s awakening to the greater reality, but the greatest factors by far are one’s sincerity, one-pointedness, and courage.

Sincerity is a word that I often use in teaching to convey the importance of being rooted in the qualities of honesty, authenticity, and genuineness. There can be nothing phony or contrived in our motivations if we are to fully awaken to our natural and integral state of unified awareness. While teachings and teachers can point us inward to “the peace beyond all understanding,” it is always along the thread of our inner sincerity, or lack thereof, that we will travel.

For the ego is clever and artful in the ways of deception, and only the honesty and genuineness of our ineffable being are beyond its influence. At each step and with each breath we are given the option of acting and responding, both inwardly and outwardly, from the conditioning of egoic consciousness which values control and separation above all else, or from the intuitive awareness of unity which resides in the inner silence of our being.

Without sincerity it is so very easy for even the greatest spiritual teachings to become little more than playthings of the mind. In our fast-moving world of quick fixes, big promises, and short attention spans, it is easy to remain on a very surface level of consciousness without even knowing it. While the awakened state is ever present and closer than your feet, hands, or eyes, it cannot be approached in a casual or insincere fashion.

There is a reason that seekers the world over are instructed to remove their shoes and quiet their voices before entering into sacred spaces. The message being conveyed is that one’s ego must be “taken off and quieted” before access to the divine is granted. All of our ego’s attempts to control, demand, and plead with reality have no influence on it other than to make life more conflicted and difficult. But an open mind and sincere heart have the power to grant us access to realizing what has always been present all along.

When people asked the great Indian sage Nisargadatta what he thought was the most important quality to have in order to awaken, he would say “earnestness.” When you are earnest, you are both sincere and one-pointed; to be one-pointed means to keep your attention on one thing. I have found that the most challenging thing for most spiritual seekers to do is to stay focused on one thing for very long.

The mind jumps around with its concerns and questions from moment to moment. Rarely does it stay with one question long enough to penetrate it deeply. In spirituality it is very important not to let the egoic mind keep jumping from one concern to the next like an untrained dog. Remember, awakening is about realizing your true nature and dissolving all attachment to egoic consciousness.

My grandmother who passed away a few years ago used to say to me jokingly, “Getting old is not for wimps.” She was well aware of the challenges of an aging body, and while she never complained or felt any pity for herself, she knew firsthand that aging had its challenges as well as its benefits. There was a courage within my grandmother that served her well as she approached the end of her life, and I am happy to say that when she passed, it was willingly and without fear.

In a similar way the process of coming into a full and mature awakening requires courage, as not only our view of life but life itself transforms to align itself with the inner mystic vision. A sincere heart is a robust and courageous heart willing to let go in the face of the great unknown expanse of Being — an expanse which the egoic mind has no way of knowing or understanding.

When one’s awareness opens beyond the dream state of egoic consciousness to the infinite no-thing-ness of intuitive awareness, it is common for the ego to feel much fear and terror as this transition begins. While there is nothing to fear about our natural state of infinite Being, such a state is beyond the ego’s ability to understand, and as always, egos fear whatever they do not understand and cannot control.

As soon as our identity leaves the ego realm and assumes its rightful place as the infinite no-thing-ness/every-thing-ness of awareness, all fear vanishes in the same manner as when we awaken from a bad dream. In the same manner in which my grandmother said, “Getting old is not for wimps,” it can also be said that making the transition from the dream state to the mature, awakened state requires courage.

Sincerity, one-pointedness, and courage are indispensable qualities in awakening from the dream state of ego to the peace and ease of awakened Being. All there is left to do is to live it.

© Adyashanti 2008

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This story illustrates the uniquely human ability to cling to the past by holding on to our stories.

When two ducks get into a fight, it never lasts long — they soon separate and fly off in opposite directions. Each duck then flaps its wings vigorously several times. This releases the surplus energy that built up in him during the fight. After they flap their wings, they fly on peacefully as if nothing had ever happened.

Now, if the duck had a human mind, this scene would go very differently. The duck may fly away peacefully, for a moment, but he would not put the fight behind him. He would keep the fight alive in his mind, by thinking and story-making.

The duck’s story would probably go something like this: “I can’t believe what he just did. He came within five inches of me. He has no consideration for my private space. He thinks he owns this pond. I’ll never trust him again. I know he’s already plotting something else to annoy me with. But I’m not going to stand for it. I’m going to teach him a lesson he will never forget.”

And in this way the duck’s mind spins its tale, still thinking and talking about it, days, months, or even years later. He man never see his adversary again, but that doesn’t matter. The single incident has left its impression and now has a life of its own deep within the duck’s mind.

As far as his body is concerned, the fight is still continuing, and the energy his body generates in response to the imaginary fight is emotion, which in turn generates more thinking. This becomes the emotional thinking of the ego. The emotions feed the story and the story feeds the emotions. Endlessly. Unless the duck chooses to recognize that the fight is over, unless he drops the story, he will suffer from the endless cycle of his mind’s creation.

You can see how painful and troublesome the duck’s life would become if he had a human mind. But this is how most of us live all the time. For the average person, no situation or event is ever really over and done with. The mind and the mind-made story keep it going.

Unlike the duck, we are a species that has the power to remember, which is both wonderful and problematic.

Our duck has an important lesson to teach us and his message is this: Flap your wings, which means “let go of the story,” and live your real life — here and now, in the present moment.

~ by Eckhart Tolle

“And his disciples said to him, ‘On what day will the kingdom come?’ And Jesus replied: ‘It will not come while people watch for it; they will not say ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘Look, there it is!’, but the Kingdom of Heaven is spread out over the earth, and people do not see it.’” ~ Gospel of Thomas

‘The Kingdom of Heaven is spread out over the earth, and people do not see it.’ The reason people don’t see it is because they are looking for it. Their attention is focussed on the future, and so they miss the gift of this moment. They are so caught up in the game of asking-questions-and-waiting-for-answers, so busy trying to be a ’somebody’ rather than a ‘nobody’, that they miss the astonishing intimacy that is already here, an intimacy that simply burns up all questions and answers, leaving only the wonder of what is.

The mind just loves to ask questions, because as long as it is asking questions, its continuity is assured: there is a sense of past, future, individuality. There is a person who has questions, and who will eventually find the answers. There is a seeker who, one day, will come to rest. Curious how it’s always ‘one day’…

Do you not think that if there were answers to find, you would have found them by now? Have you not already been given enough answers? Are your bookshelves not full of answers, overflowing with them?

You see, the questioning must continue, because thought must continue. It doesn’t want to give up, it doesn’t want to die. Answers to your questions have been given over and over again, but the mind cannot accept these as the real answers. If it did so, not only would the questions be annihilated, but also the one who asks them. The questioner arises and dissolves with the questions. They depend on each other. Ultimately, they are each other. If the questions go, so does the questioner.

What is the questioner but a bundle of conditioning, a mass of assumptions, collected over the years? The one who asks the questions, and waits for answers, is actually made of the answers that he has collected! So to let go of this knowledge, to let go of the questions and answers, would be to let go of his very self. No wonder we don’t want to stop seeking. The end of seeking is the death of the questioner, the death of the seeker!

It’s inevitable that the mind must continue to ask questions and wait for answers, for its very existence is at stake! So the great search goes on: “One day I will be liberated! One day I will be free!”

Why not today? Why not now? If not now, when?

What answers are you waiting for? What questions are you asking? For how much longer will you seek the Kingdom?

Perhaps eventually the futility of the seeking will be seen through, and then maybe you will burst out laughing when you see the ridiculous knots that you have tied yourself up in, trying to be free, trying to be liberated. Yes, there’s plenty of laughter when the dream of individuality and the struggle to be free from it all is seen through — indeed, there’s very little to be serious about then!

‘The Kingdom of Heaven is spread out over the earth, and yet people do not see it.’ Even that — even our ignorance of the Kingdom, even our search for the Kingdom — even that is part of the Kingdom.

There’s nothing that the Kingdom is not. It embraces everything. Everything.

~ From: The Wonder of Being: Awakening to an Intimacy Beyond Words, by Jeff Foster

“Life is a mystery. A mystery so awesome, that we insulate ourselves from its intensity. To numb our fear of the unknown we de-sensitise ourselves to the miracle of living. We perpetuate the nonchalant lie that we know who we are and what life is. Yet behind this preposterous bluff the Mystery remains unchanging, waiting for us to remember to wonder. It is waiting in a shaft of sunlight, in the thought of death, in the intoxication of new love, in the joy of childbirth or the shock of loss. One minute we are going about our business as if life were nothing special and the next we are face to face with profound, unfathomable breathtaking Mystery. This is both the origin and consummation of the spiritual quest.”

~ From: Jesus and The Goddess, by Tim Freke & Pete Gandy

There are many ideas about what enlightenment, or self-realization, is. Many envision it as some kind of blessed state where there are no more problems, and you experience a constant state of inner bliss, joy, and a profound compassion for all humankind.

Others think only saints can be self-realized, and for it to happen you have to have transcended the desire realm, and be beyond the need for companionship, physical comfort, sex and any personal wants or preferences.

This is why we don’t really like using the term enlightenment. It’s such a loaded word, weighed down by many far-fetched stories. We prefer to speak in terms of freedom, or self-realization.

What we teach is that the more you see (recognise What you really are), the freer you are, and the freer you are, the more you’re simply present wherever you are — present without any story.

The freer you are, the more you know yourself as pure consciousness or aware presence, expressing in this unique body, mind, and personality known as “you”.

You still have a story, but now you know you’re not your story. You still have an ego, an “I”, a “me”, but now you know you’re not your ego. You honor the past, keep an eye on the future, but live right here, now. You feel a tremendous gratitude for the gift of being alive, you’re always, essentially, at peace, one with the flow of life.

We say essentially because no matter how free we are, we are still human, and subject to human flaws and foibles, like illness, disability, mistakes, errors in judgment, and even occasional residues of old egoic patterns. Part of being free, or self-realized, is accepting and being at peace with our imperfect humanity!

Above all, you feel moved to share your good fortune with others. You see that the world needs this, before anything else.

~ by Jim Dreaver

According to a news report, a certain private school in Brisbane was recently faced with a unique problem. A number of 12 year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.

Every night the maintenance man would remove them and the next day the girls would put them back.

Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night (you can just imagine the yawns from the little princesses). To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required.

He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the nearest toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.

Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

There are teachers…. and then there are educators!

Sent in by Shana Davies — Thanks Shana.