The Seer

We’ve been hosting regular gatherings at Gurukula — our home and centre at South Fremantle for the past seven years now … almost without a break! During that time, we’ve had the pleasure of sharing facilities with thousands of local visitors and a significant number of visiting teachers and seminar leaders from many parts of the world.

Understandably, with all this traffic, the house has become a little worn, so we’re taking the next month or so off to do some much needed renovations. Floors will be sanded and repolished, old carpets lifted or replaced, new curtains fitted and, of course, the place will be repainted throughout.

Adventurously, we’re going to attempt all this while still living in our home with our three dogs and one cat! It will mean shifting from one level to another while work is done in stages. Hopefully the outcome will be worth all the disruption and dislocation.

What this will mean for our community of friends, however, is that there will be no gatherings at Gurukula during September and into early October. Our first get-together back in the dojo is scheduled for Sat. Oct. 16th (Eckhart Teachings Group).

A revisedl listing of upcoming Gurukula activities can now be found by going to the Gurukula Calendar.

We apologise for this interruption of services, and, if you live in Perth, hope you’ll make a point of visiting us again to see the new upgrades when our gatherings resume.

In the dojo (meeting-room) at Gurukula has been a large hand-embroided wall-hanging of the ‘Tree of Life’, that was given to us by our daughter.

The wall-hanging clearly depicts in stylized form, the whole tree — leaves, branches, trunk and even the exposed roots.

What is the hidden meaning of this symbolic tree? What deeper understanding does it offer us?

The way we see it, the leaves are the symbol of our individual identities. There are so many leaves and so many individuals on the tree of life.

If we see ourselves only as a leaf, we tend to live minly for ourselves and experience what could be called, personal love.

But, when as a leaf, we realize we are connected to a particular branch, we may move from an individual identity into a collective identity. This identity unites us with some and separates us from others, just as one branch is separated from another.

At this level, our love becomes collective
love. We live for our collective identity and may even be willing to die for our collective identity.

The trunk is the symbol of the universal mind. All branches and leaves are attached to the trunk, but at the same time it transcends them. Identified with all humankind, our love becomes universal and more like compassion.

The roots, however, are symbolic of Consciousness, Spirit or God. When ‘enlightenment’ happens, there is an unshakable identification with this inner presence or dimension and we experience what could be called, divine or unitive love.

Each of us is a leaf for we are a unique physical being. Each of us is a branch in as much as we belong to a particular nation, culture or tradition. And each of us is the roots in as much as we are one with the divine or absolute … whether we realize it fully or not.

To accept intellectually the truth that we are, right now, each grounded inseparably in and as the divine is one thing, but to actually see It, even briefly, is another thing, and to experience this unitive vision continuously is quite another altogether … and joy unspeakable.

There have always been a few such visionaries in every age whose lives seem to correspond with the whole Tree of Life … including the trunk.

These rare individuals serve the Tree by becoming mediators or conduits between the roots, which represent the unmanifest and the manifest branches and leaves.

The Buddha, Jesus, Shankara and Ramana Mahashi etc. could be described as ‘enlightened beings’, who lived for all humankind. They are the way-showers, the truth-revealers or the connectors, as it were, between the the roots and the leaves /
branches of their time.

We are fortunate to be served by a growing number of contemporary spiritual teachers who are fulfilling much the same function today. These are the teachers we respect and attend to at Gurukula.

No one is outside this Tree and no ideology, religion or belief-system is outside this Tree that is ‘Life’ Itself. There’s only one way, one truth and one life. This is the way of the Tree — ulitmately, there is no ‘other’.

The great transition or shift isn’t about an individual entering into a branch (belief-system) or moving from one branch (belief-system) to another branch (belief-system).It’s an invitation to make the leap in consciousness from leaf to branch to trunk and from there to the roots. Now that’s radical!

Most will agree, this haunting song by John Lennon has many levels of symbolic meaning — spiritual and otherwise. For your enjoyment and inspiration, here’s a video of street singers from around the world being recorded, overlayed and mixed with one another while singing the song “Stand By Me”. It’s a marvel to listen to and watch. They all deserve to be heard. The finished product is tremendous! So turn up the speaker volume and >>>Click Here.

~ Sent in by Linley Anderson – thanks Linley.

“To know that the known cannot be me nor mine, is liberation enough. Freedom from self-identification with a set of memories and habits, the state of wonder at the infinite reaches of the being, its inexhaustible creativity and total transcendence, the absolute fearlessness born from the realisation of the illusoriness and transiency of every mode of consciousness — flow from a deep and inexhaustible source. To know the source as source and appearance as appearance, and oneself as the source only is self-realisation.”

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

I’ve only just encountered the ‘Headless Way’ — a way of seeing Who or What you really are, pioneered by D E Harding and currently taught by Richard Lang … it’s an amazing thing to have discovered, especially given my past experiences of encountering the boundless space, and the changes in view I’m just going through.

I’ve had a very slow internet connection over the last few days; so slow that web pages sometimes take a couple of minutes to load. The www.headless.org site has been no exception. Interestingly, as the page loads, instead of the top tabs reading “Home”, “Douglas Harding”, Experiments” etc., in the brief moments before loading properly, they all read “home”. And that’s how I feel just right now. I have found “home”. All my remembered life, I have had glimpses of the eternal boundless space, but, paraphrasing Eliot, “I had the experience but missed the meaning”

Climbing in the Welsh mountains, poised on a rock face, my boundaries dissolve and I am one with the universe. Every small plant, the sky, the rocks, are glorious and detailed, glowing with light and I am not separate from the sky, from the mountain goat who springs through the mist, from the misty valley below Walking up a valley in the Wiltshire downs one spring morning, suddenly it’s as if someone has switched on a glorious light I have never seen before. I am nowhere but everywhere. The spring flowers glow, the sky is a heavenly azure blue, bird song is the most delightful sound I have ever heard. I am not separate. I am the world, the universe.

In church on Easter morning at dawn, under flickering candles. Instead of reading a sermon, Robert decides to fling open the doors and we sit in silence listening to the sound of a solitary blackbird. I am no longer “me”, the identified me which is within this parcel of flesh and bone and skin. I am everywhere. I am unbounded space. The sounds of the bird arise from within the space and fade and rise again in a glorious ripple of notes and silences. In a retreat centre in Bleddfa, doing the washing of the feet meditation. I am transported. I am not me, I am Mary washing the feet of Jesus and knowing I am going to lose him. I am in that eternal boundless space but full of the grief of the world.

In literature, certain things have moved me and stayed with me for reasons I have never been sure of. At school, I particularly loved Edward Thomas’ poem :”Adlestrop”, with its simple and elegant description of those timeless moments. Similarly, Eliot’s Four Quartets (for reasons which seem obvious now) and that glorious line in Kahlil Gibran’s “the Prophet” which reduced me to tears when first encountered: “For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.”

At one stage in my life I even longed for death. When confronted with cancer, I spent quite some time contemplating what death would be like, and far from finding it terrifying, eventually came to the point where death to me would be a reunion with the glorious boundless space. In my meditation as I “died” I felt myself distributed in particles of golden light back to join with the infinite, deep and tranquil unbounded space. Like a cosmic orgasm. On “return”, back to my body, I felt immensely sad and full of longing. Why did I have to spend more time away from this space? Why spend more years in my earthly body, when I could be part of the unbounded eternal space?

All these experiences which came unbidden have been transitory. I have revelled in the feeling of boundlessness, but know it will fade and I will be left lumpen in my solid and all too fleshy body, sad and full of longing for these glorious experiences. And as I think about them now, they have also all been experiences of losing myself completely in the boundless space… I no longer am “me”, but the boundless space (but if so, who is recognizing the experiences?).

I have, for the most part, conceptualized it as an either/or. Either I am “me” in my body, or I am the boundless space. The only real experience of anything other than this has been in Tantra practice, when I have had the experience of being both the boundless and infinite glorious universe surrounding me, and also at the same time, me. Shakti and Shiva, the giver and receiver, both at the same time… being in my body, and being the infinite space surrounding my body. Quite a glorious, but again relatively transitory experience.

Last week, by complete accident (or is anything ever a complete accident?) I found a link to the Headless Way website. It sounded quite whacky… but being a fairly experiential person, when I read the word “experiments”, and knowing I had some idle moments I decided to give them a go.

Exercise 1 — the pointing exercise. I point at the walls of my boat, at the table, at my knee, at my hand. I take in the shape and form, the edges and boundaries and the space between. I really look. And then I turn my pointing finger towards myself, towards my eyes. I feel my eyes going cross-eyed, trying to turn my eyeballs backwards to look at myself.

Then.. WHAM.. I’m looking into unbounded space. I am unbounded space (and apparently, everythng arising in it) — at this moment … and always!

~ by Carol Dent

Question: How long does it take to become free of the pain-body?

Eckhart: It depends both on the density of an individual’s pain-body as well as the degree or intensity of that individual’s arising Presence. But it is not the pain-body, but identification with it that causes the suffering that you inflict on yourself and others. It is not the pain-body but identification with the pain-body that forces you to relive the past again and again and keeps you in a state of unconsciousness.

So a more important question to ask would be this: “How long does it take to become free of identification with the pain-body?” And the answer to that question: It takes no time at all. When the pain-body is activated, know that what you are feeling is the pain-body in you. This knowing is all that is needed to break your identification with it. And when identification with it ceases, the transmutation begins.

The knowing prevents the old emotion from rising up in your head and taking over not only the internal dialogue, but also your actions as well as interactions with other people. This mean the pain-body cannot use you anymore and renew itself through you. The old emotion may then still live in you for a while and come up periodically. It may also still occasionally trick you into identifying with it again and thus obscure the knowing, but not for long.

Not projecting the old emotion into situations means facing it directly within yourself. It may not be pleasant, but it won’t kill you. Your Presence is more than capable of containing it. The emotion is not who you are.

When you feel the pain-body, don’t fall into the error of thinking there is something wrong with you. Making yourself into a problem – the ego loves that. The knowing needs to be followed by accepting. Anything else will obscure it again.

Accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment. It is part of the isness of the Now. You can’t argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer. Through allowing, you become what you are: vast, spacious. You become whole. You are not a fragment anymore, which is how the ego perceives itself. Your true nature emerges, which is one with the nature of God.

Jesus points to this when he says, “Be ye whole, even as your Father in Heaven is whole.” The New Testament’s “Be ye perfect” is a mistranslation of he original Greek word, which means whole. This is to say, you don’t need to become whole, but be what you already are – with or without the pain-body.

~ by Eckhart Tolle

Young Billy’s room always seemed to be in a mess, with clothes and toys strewn everywhere.

Determined to do something about it, his mother waited until he was in bed one night and then burst into his room demanding, “Who didn’t hang up his clothes before he got into bed?”

There was a movement under the coverlet, an innocent pair of brown eyes looked up to hers and a small voice said wonderingly, “Adam?”

You asked: “duz luv always hurt?” The answer to that, Ade, depends on where you are in yourself. If you’re immersed in your ’story’ and phenomena like thoughts and feelings, then, yes, love from this source always hurts.

I’m sure you know the reason why — love that comes from the ’soul’ and fixes on an ‘object’ makes us vulnerable … we open ourselves up to having our felt needs met or not met, to great happiness or bitter disappointment, pleasure or pain etc. etc.

Because nobody can fully or always satisfy the emotional needs of another, we are each bound to suffer if we look to other people or things to make us happy all, or most, of the time. We expect more from others than they can give and look for happiness in the wrong place … out there!

A love that focuses on some form always, however deeply disguised, inevitably has a hidden agenda that goes something like ,,, “I’ll remain truly happy if you do what I want you to do for me.” In other words, love that rises no higher than the level of form is a essentially a love that is dependent on or caused by someone or something else.

On the other hand, true love … the only love that lasts … arises from your true nature … your ‘formless’ Self … which some also call your unconditioned Self. This love is uncaused … it doesn’t rely on something else to inspire or engender it … and this love NEVER hurts … it just goes on shining whether it is reflected back or not. Nothing can ever touch your true Self of injure it in any way whatsoever … it just IS … always.

You can always tell the difference between ‘thought-based, emotional love’ and true love quite simply. Mind-made or emotional love is judgmental while true love is not. Love that arises from the story of ‘me’ inevitably thinks, “S/he should do/be etc. etc.” or “S/he aught to or aught not to have etc. etc.” and this soon leads to mind-made suffering and depression.

If we can ’step back’ inwardly and simply ‘watch’ judgments arising in our awareness, they will not take hold of us but drift on by like passing clouds. If we simply ‘notice’ our thinking processes and emotional shifts from the vantage point of spacious awareness, we find that there’s a loving acceptance of whatever arises in our world.

We notice the phenomena that come and go in our awareness, then notice that awareness itself does NOT come and go but always and already IS.

This pure, untouched, untouchable Consciousness is what you really are, Ade, and as you identify with ‘this’ rather than your transitory thoughts and feelings, I think you will find you are experiencing a true love that never hurts because it is never in opposition to anything that arises.

Your mind can be a wonderful tool but it can also be an obstacle to Self discovery and the discovery of the Love that never hurts (which is the same thing). The challenge is to move beyond the mind and rest in ‘that’ which was never born and will never die … the eternal, infinite and loving Awareness that you are.

Blessings,

Question: How do I maintain a sense of presence when I’m in the company of another person? How do I bring presence into conversation?

Eckhart: It’s not easy. The moment you start talking, the two minds come together and so they strengthen each other. A flow starts, a stream of thought. A moment ago you were present, and then somebody starts talking. What applies here is the loss of space during the conversation. Both participants of the conversation have lost any sense of space.

There are only the words, the mind, the verbalization, the stream of thinking that becomes sounds. They are taken over by that. It has its own momentum — almost a little entity, a stream, that doesn’t want to end. Often, it generates emotions in the body. That strengthens it, amplifies it.

If the mental stream triggers emotions, which it often does, especially when talking about other people, what they did, failed to do, did to you, did to others, criticisms, gossip, all kinds of emotional [things], the ego comes in. When you can criticize another, the ego feels a little bit stronger. By diminishing another, in the delusional system of the ego, you have enhanced your own self-image a little bit. Any criticism of another is a part of that energy stream.

And then emotions come, and they amplify the thoughts. It’s the loss of space.For you to regain space, without saying “I’m not talking anymore”, one thing is necessary for you — which is the realization that you’ve lost space. Without that, there’s nothing you can do — when you’re so taken over by a stream of thought, that you don’t even know you’ve been taken over by a stream of thought — there’s nothing you can do.

“Forgive them, for they know not what they do”. They are unconscious. They are the stream of thought. And as the stream of thought, you don’t want it to end — because you don’t want your own end. Every entity wants to remain in form for as long as possible.If there’s the slightest realization that you’ve lost space, at that moment you have a choice.

What is your choice? Your choice is to bring some presence, some space, into the stream of thought. But how do you do that? It’s coming at you not only from within your own mind, but it’s coming at you from the other person too. The awareness is there, and it may only last three seconds, and then it’s gone again. So you have to use those two or three seconds, where you realize the loss of space, and do something in that space where you have some freedom to act.

By a conscious choice, you take your attention out of thinking — but you have to anchor it somewhere else, otherwise it won’t work. So you choose your breath, or your body, or some other sense perception around you that you become aware of. When you are actually talking to another person, it’s probably easiest to either use your breath or your inner body.

Practice this beforehand, when conditions are easier, so that you can do it once it’s necessary. Go into your inner body, feel that your energy field is alive. And you’ll notice, you’re not thinking anymore. You can still listen. The amazing thing is that you can listen to another person, without thinking, easily, beautifully. You are listening, but part of your attention is on your energy field — so you’ve taken attention away from your thoughts.

There is a sense of aliveness in the background. It’s ultimately formless; it’s already the doorway into the formless. Feel that while you sit there and listen, and you’ve stepped out of the stream of thinking. Then, the quality of the interaction immediately changes. The other person may not consciously notice what’s happening, and may carry on for a while.

It also does not mean that you cannot respond anymore. But how you respond and the quality of your response changes, too. You are no longer contributing to the negative nature, which is often the case, in conversations. A certain amount of stillness, then, will also be a part of the words that you speak. It’s so subtle that the other person probably will not notice it, consciously.

So hang on to the inner body, let it be the anchor, and then you become present. If you lose it again, if the other person says something challenging, then after a little while you remember — and you go back into the inner body. That’s a powerful anchor, and then everything changes from there. It takes continuous practice.

~ by Eckhart Tolle

• Think about all the things you have to do. Do this as you are going about your day. Go over your to-do list mentally many times a day, especially in the midst of doing something. Then talk about how much you have to do and how busy you are with everyone.

• Keep checking the time, and think about time a lot: how much time something took, how much time something takes, how much time something will take, how much time you have left. Tell yourself you don’t have enough time, or worry that you don’t.

• Constantly evaluate how you’re doing as you go about your day: “Did I do that well enough?” “Could I have done it better or faster?” “How did it compare with last time or with how someone else does it?” “How could or should I do it next time?”

• Say yes to every request from others that comes your way. Believe that you should be able to do it all — everything you think you need to do and everything everyone else wants you to do. Assume that everyone else is juggling all these things perfectly.

• Tell negative stories about life, yourself and your life, and other people: “I can’t do anything right,” “Life is too hard,” “No one will ever love me,” “I will never be happy,” and so on. (What do you tell yourself that causes you to feel unhappy and stressed?)

• Don’t take time to rest or do the things you’d really like to do. Don’t expect or allow yourself to enjoy life — just get things done, as much as you can fit in, in one day! Be efficient. Don’t make happiness, love, or peace a priority. Don’t make your Self a priority, but your goals or everyone else’s needs.

The good news is that all of this stress-creation is happening within your own mind! The reason this is good news is that you don’t have to believe everything that goes through your mind. You can learn to ignore the mind when it is producing thoughts that create stress, and when you do, you will no longer feel stressed. Stress is not caused by life itself, but by what we tell ourselves about life, by how we choose to think and what we choose to believe.

Thinking is nearly always bound to create stress because the voice in our head (also called the e called the egoic mind) is a primarily negative voice and a time tyrant. This voice keeps us tied to it with fears, worries, admonitions, judgments, and commands. It’s a tyrant that, with its constant evaluations and demands, keeps us unhappy.

We all have a similar tyrannical voice in our head, but we don’t have to give it our attention. Instead, we can learn to be very present to whatever we are doing, which is actually very efficient. But more importantly, being present to what we are doing results in enjoyment of life.

When we are present to what we are doing instead of to the voice in our head and its demands and judgments, we feel peace, love, happiness, and contentment. These states are not achieved by following the voice in our head, but by ignoring the voice in our head and simply experiencing life without the mind’s constant commentary. What creates stress? This ongoing mental commentary does. This is a great discovery because it means we have the power to free ourselves from stress once

~ by Gina Lake – from her blog at RadicalHappiness.com