The Seer

Often people ask questions about manifesting and the power of intention, and how that relates to the power of Now. One person asked me about the difference between the continuous wanting that I write about in A New Earth and intention — the intention to create something. What is the importance of manifesting things in your life, or creating, or is that counter-productive?

There are many exciting books these days about creating and manifesting: ‘The Secret’, ‘the teachings of Abraham’, and so on. Often people ask, how does that relate to Stillness and inner peace? And acceptance of what is? And surrender to the Present Moment? And living in alignment with Now? Is there conflict, is one wrong … or misleading? This is an important question for almost everybody.

Your own life is a microcosm of the macrocosm. If you look at the Universe, the first thing you will see is that it likes to create, and it likes to manifest. On this planet alone, the Universe is continuously creating and manifesting countless life forms. The life forms, both in the sea, and on land, including humans, they seem to enjoy a dance of coming into being and destruction. It’s a transformational process. By just looking at life, you can see that the Universe loves to manifest.

Also it seems to be the case that life forms, over periods of time, become more differentiated. Many more come. And even human societies become more complex. We have had ancient civilizations that were very complex, but our present civilization is the most complex. It’s also the most problem-ridden. That goes with complexity.

Every individual who is part of this civilization has a life that is full of problems. But complexity cannot go on forever. The Universe likes to create, to manifest, to experience the play of form. That’s one movement. And you can see it in yourself, at some level. There is something else in humans, you can only really see in yourself, an inner phenomenon.

The Universe wants not only to experience that manifested life, it also wants to experience peace and something that is not touched by the continuously fluctuating forms. It wants to know itself deeply, directly, in its essence. That really is the root of spirituality. The Universe not only wants the outward movement, but it also wants the inward — the return movement to the One.

Every human being also embodies these two movements. It seems that you are torn sometimes between the outward movement into form, and the inward return movement to the Source where it all started. The Source that was never really lost, it is always there because it is timeless, and it is within you. You feel drawn back to that, and that is the pull toward spirituality, peace, Stillness.

Not one or the other is right or wrong. It’s only perhaps if you totally lose yourself in one or the other — maybe that’s not quite it. Perhaps this is the challenge of the Universe here on this planet, and perhaps on other planets. The challenge to reconcile the two movements, rather than to have them be separate. Is it possible to reconcile the inner movement toward Stillness and Being, and the outer toward action, and doing? I would say it is, and that is our challenge at this time.

Traditionally, it’s been very unconscious what humans have manifested in this world. They have been identified with doing, and identified with form. That has been going on for as long as anyone can remember — since recorded history and beyond. And we call that ‘ego’.

The One consciousness that underlies everything moves into form, assumes forms, and enjoys the play of form but it’s not enough for the one consciousness to enjoy the play of form, it needs to completely believe in it to make it seem ‘real’. You need to lose yourself in that dream of form.

Every human believes that they have a life of their own, and that means they are identified with the form of that life. This particular physical body, this particular psychological life form, the accumulation of thoughts and the emotions that go with these thoughts; it all becomes part of that form-identity. Consciousness is trapped, or believes itself to be trapped in that. We could say that in that state, the Universe or Consciousness has entered a ‘dream-like’ state. It wants to do that, it must enjoy that dream, up to a point.

Consciousness has entered that ‘dream-like’ state where it is completely identified with form. It doesn’t realize that every other form is an aspect of itself. Of course, then you are just an isolated entity. It becomes quite unpleasant after a while. So you have to get together with other entities and instead of having an ‘I’ form, you have a ‘We’ form, an ‘Us’. For a while, the Universe seems to be okay with that, to have Consciousness identified completely with form. Then the ‘movie’ goes on.

Reading through history, you can see what happens when Consciousness is identified completely with form. Then it comes time for another stage to arise, when Consciousness is beginning to awaken from complete identification with form. This is beginning to happen at many stages, this is why human beings are drawn to spiritual teachings. It is the awakening from the dream of form.

~ by Eckhart Tolle

As you may know by now, Pearl and I have had to curtail group gatherings at Gurukula pending our anticipated move to Melbourne, However, Martine Tiller is keen to continue the Eckhart Tolle and Adyashanti group gatherings in Perth and is presently looking for a suitable venue. At this stage, Martine is considering two get-togethers each month.

If you were a regular attender at Gurukula, you’ll remember the wonderful support given over the years by our dear friends, Noel and Marion. As they are no longer able to help in this way, Martine would like to hear from any who would be willing to assist her set up the room and help with the refreshments etc.

If you’d like to be a helper or just attend the ongoing Eckhart Tolle and/or Adyashanti DVD groups in Perth, please contact Martine on (08) 9444 5917 or via martinetiller@yahoo.com

The ‘Headless Way’ group will continue to meet once a month at Julie Hillin’s home. For details and to get on the group mailing list, contact Sam Blight on 0412 039 050.

Our house is still on market, though, unless we get an acceptable offer soon, we may withdraw it for a month or two till economic conitions improve. Please note, we will continue to offer counselling services until we actually move, but our bookstore has been suspended until further notice.

Thanks again for many wonderful expressions of love and appreciation we’ve received over the past six weeks … we will try to acknowledge all these individually in due course.

A friend shared his confusion over knowing when his intuitions are true, and when the ego is imitating his intuition. He summed up by saying: “Anyway, maybe it doesn’t matter at any given point what you do, but it feels like it does, and not just for sensitives but for everyone who struggles with a decision. It seems to take a very long time and lots of experience to see past that – or else a naturally easygoing personality.”

Here is my response:

I just read through your message again. I would suggest that the truth not only has many levels, but that they are all operating at the same time. So when you have an intuition and follow it, there may be a degree of Essence working through you to create a certain experience in line with a deeper wisdom and your particular life purpose.

At the same time, your ego will either resist that intuition and try to block you, or decide it likes it and maybe even take credit for it! To a degree the ego can then interfere or even mix things up by trying to make something happen the ego thinks should happen in accordance with your intuition.

At the same time, there may be an even bigger truth that is felt: that it does not really matter very much what you do or where you end up. It obviously matters on a relative level, but the even bigger truth is that the empty spacious awareness that is experiencing all of this can not be harmed. Wherever you end up and whatever happens, the empty space of Being will be just as empty and just as aware.

And yet realizing this bigger truth can also then affect the unfolding of the smaller truths of intuition and egoic agendas. For example, knowing that you cannot be harmed can sometimes allow you to go ahead and follow your intuition, or even to indulge a particularly irresistible ego desire. It is like gambling with someone else’s money; what do you have to lose?

It appears that the truth is not something we can grasp or define or get a hold of. It might be more accurate to say the truth has got a hold of us and is playing us like a maestro plays the orchestra. A little more brass here, a little less ego there. The mind tries to get some kind of meaning or explanation for all of this. The Heart knows that love never gets meaning from life, it always gives meaning to life. And like any truly creative process, the results are always a wonderful surprise, even to the creator!

The inquiry into the truth is not meant as means to finally get it or to get somewhere. It is more a means to a never-ending creative expression of ever bigger mysteries. This is not a prescription for how to live your life, it is really a description of what has always been happening. And what an amazing journey it has always been.

~ by Nirmala, from his blog

Check out these excellent YouTube animated presentations of the teaching. What Is My True Nature?

Part 1. – Part 2. – Part 3. – Part 4. – Part 5.

When we are living in confusion, in suffering, in the ego, it seems natural to deify or look up to those who appear to have all the answers, who appear to be very spiritual – the gurus and teachers of this world. Of course, they are a real and valuable asset to society and the evolution of mankind, but we put them on a pedestal at our peril.

It may be true that someone who is widely regarded as being an ‘enlightened master’ has great clarity about life and, in many respects, may appear to be light years ahead of everyone else, but in essence his true nature and our true nature are no different.

The person may be different, the energy may be different — but essentially what he is we are also, except that he is conscious of it and we are not. His body will die and his mind will go, just as will happen with our body and mind. He, as an individual, can no more escape death than we can — except that we would like to and he is not bothered.

A truly ‘enlightened’ master will never tell you that he is great or that he is enlightened. He will never tell you that he alone can realize the ultimate, that he is a perfect master or avatar, whilst you are an ordinary human being. There are people who will tell you these things, who will make enlightenment out to be something exclusive.

There are people who will put themselves on a pedestal and encourage you to bow down before them, to serve them, to idolize them. The world is not short of a good supply of such ‘teachers’. But do these ‘teachers’ encourage you to awaken inwardly to the point where you don’t need them anymore?

When one goes with such a teacher, one instantly gives away one’s power, one’s autonomy, and one becomes dependent on their grace, on their goodwill, on their method of teaching. Of course, such teachers do offer a refuge, a support and advice for those who, for whatever reason, do not wish, or are not able, to take decisions or responsibilities for themselves in this life.

But if one is seeking ‘enlightenment’, it is better to go to a teacher who does not have pretensions about his or her status in life. It is better to go to someone who offers you a pure and unconditional mirror in which to see into your true nature, rather than one which is clouded with ego and the spirit of control and manipulation.

We all have the potential to be awake, to be conscious, in the silent emptiness of our true nature. However, there are thousands of us who have studied spiritual writings and scriptures for decades and still are unable to break through the enclosure of the mind, to taste the nectar of realization directly.

Thought cannot take us there. No prescribed practices will jolt us into this realization. No book will lead us there. The fact is that there is nowhere to go, nothing to realize and no one to realize it. We have created this myth about enlightenment and the enlightened seer, out of our own frustration and confusion. We have set them apart from ourselves, as something to achieve, something to reach out for, and in doing so have made them unattainable.

Enlightenment is something we have put on a pedestal, knowing that it is beyond our grasp. Even though the enlightened seer may tell us that all we need to do is to rid ourselves of the notion that we are not enlightened, still we are unable to put this notion, this concept aside.

So where do we go from here? Clearly, any move we make in any direction is a mistake. So, we stay where we are, fully experiencing our unclarity, our confusion, our frustration. But, instead of indulging in emotional reaction and negative moods, we simply stay where we are. We live our life, aware of our thoughts, our feelings, our moods and emotions. We do our work, raise our family, whilst all the time watching what arises in consciousness. We see the play of the world, of life, and we stand back from any emotional involvement in it.

There are wars here and injustices there. We may work for peace in the world or try to put right injustices that are taking place, but we continue to stand back from emotional involvement. In doing so, compassion may arise in the heart. When we get involved emotionally, there is a personal reaction.

This personal reaction neither solves the problem nor allows us to move on. When compassion arises, it comes with an all-seeing awareness of the suffering of all humanity. It takes us away from personal reaction into effective action. This compassion spirits us closer to realization. It takes us out of the ego, out of the personal, into the universal. We are then no longer concerned about personal realization. The realization comes as a natural side effect of the blossoming of compassion in our heart and mind.

It is natural to have respect for those who have greater knowledge, understanding and wisdom than ourselves. But it is also a mistake to get pulled in by appearances. Be careful of the one who stands before you offering sugar and spice. What’s in his other hand? Why is he so keen to get your attention?

There are many characters in life who have learned how to act in order to get what they want. If someone keeps telling you he is a good man, does it not arouse your suspicion? If someone goes around under the banner of ‘enlightened master’, do you not have a few questions to ask? Of course, the teacher doesn’t always go around claiming that he’s an enlightened master (though some are not ashamed to do this), but he often doesn’t try to prevent his followers from doing so.

In my own experience, every teacher I ever met who really impressed me deeply, made no such claims. The moment that someone does make such claims, it gives away the fact that they are living in duality, in separation, in the ego. The bigger the guru, the more likely it is that they have fallen into this trap.

We take their advice at our peril. Listening to the voice of our own true nature is what we really need to trust in. Then we need no outward teacher. The outward teacher then becomes, maybe, a source of inspiration and a motivating force rather than someone on whom we become dependent.

~ From: The Texture of Beingby Roy Whenary, Web site: >>>Lotus Harmony

“I see and find beauty in Truth or through Truth. All Truth, not merely true ideas, but truthful faces, truthful pictures or songs that are highly beautiful. People generally fail to see beauty in Truth, the ordinary person runs away from and becomes blind to the beauty in it. Whenever we begin to see beauty in truth, then true art will arise.”

~ Mohandas K Gandhi

Our apparently objective experience consists of thoughts, sensations and perceptions — that is, the mind, body and world.

When Awareness ‘takes the shape’ of thinking, it seems to become a thought. When it ‘takes the shape’ of sensing, it seems to become a body and when it ‘takes the shape’ of perceiving, it seems to become an object, other or world.

When thinking comes to an end, the apparently objective part of it (the thought part) disappears but its substance, Awareness, remains. In that timeless moment (timeless because the mind is not present) Awareness tastes itself as it is, unmediated through the apparent objectivity of thought. This experience is known as Understanding.

When sensing comes to an end, the apparently objective part of it (the sensation or body part) disappears but its substance, Awareness, remains, knowing itself as Love or Happiness. And when perceiving comes to an end, the object, other or world disappears but their substance, Awareness, remains, knowing itself as it is, unveiled by the appearance of objects. That is the experience known as Beauty.

In other words, Understanding, Love, Happiness and Beauty are all different names for one and the same experience, the presence of Awareness, the knowing of our own Being.

The paths through Understanding and Love (the paths of Jnana and Bhakti) are well documented but the path through perceiving is less often mentioned. The path of perceiving or the Way of Beauty is the way of the artist. It’s a path through which it becomes clear, and the means through which it is expressed, that the substance of all perceptions is made out of Awareness.

Although all seeming objects are made out of Awareness, it is not, at a relative level, the function of all objects to reveal this. For instance, the purpose of a kettle is to boil water, not to reveal the true nature of experience.

However, there is one category of objects, which are made specifically with the intention of revealing the true nature of experience and such an object is what we call a work of art. The function of a work of art is not simply to point towards, but actually to reveal the true nature of experience. As Cezanne said, to ‘give us a taste of Eternity.’

Like the words of the teaching, such objects come pregnant with their origin, the silence and love from which they originate and, as such, are tremendously powerful. So, Beauty is the experience through which we come to know and feel that all seeming things are made out of That which knows them.

Keats was right. ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty.’ The experience of Truth and Beauty are one and the same experience. ‘That is all ye know on earth.’ The mind (which is the expression of Truth) and the world (which is the expression of Beauty) are one. That is, the apparent ‘knower’ and the apparently ‘known’ are one.

Whether we recognize it or not, this is always our experience. It is, as Keats says, ‘all ye know on earth’ — the knowing of our own Being in and as all seeming things. ‘…and all ye need to know.’ Yes, this knowledge alone, if deeply considered and made one’s own and subsequently applied to all circumstances, is all that is required to lead a sane, happy and loving life. Keats was rather more economical with his words than I am!

The great artists of the past, of whom Keats was one, were perhaps the vehicles through which this knowledge was communicated most powerfully in our culture but it is not their provenance alone.

This experiential knowledge of the true nature of experience is, in fact, known by all but sometimes seemingly forgotten. However, it is never far from the surface and even in popular culture — music, fashion etc. — we see this same longing for Love, Beauty and Happiness, all of which are simply variations of our longing to return to the true nature of our most intimate being.

When this Love, Beauty and Happiness is seemingly veiled by the appearance of the ‘I’ entity, it cries out all the more loudly. All around us in our culture we hear these ‘love cries’ all desperately searching in the wrong place for what lies at their heart.

~ To read the complete interview: >>>Click Here

~ by Rupert Spira

An artist who was just beginning his professional career moved into a city flat. For more than a year he devoted his spare time to transforming the spacious bathroom into a stunning underwater scene with seaweed, lovely shells, brilliantly coloured fish and, on the ceiling, he painted the bottom of a small boat resting on the surface of the water.

Something went wrong with the plumbing one day and when the plumber arrived the artist directed him to the bathroom, and then returned to his own work.

In a few minutes the plumber emerged exclaiming, “Beautiful! Beautiful!”

“Why, thank you,” said the artist, flattered.

“Do you realise, Mate,” the plumber went on enthusiastically, “you don’t have a single galvanised pipe in there … they’re all copper!”

The recent rescue of the miners in Chile, broadcast live to over 1 billion people worldwide, had built in to it a sense of Presence. Perhaps that presence was transmitted by the Chilean President who looked deeply into the eyes of each miner as he emerged from deep inside the earth.

Or perhaps it was the way family members greeted these men who survived the longest underground entrapment from a mining accident that seemed so certain to take their lives. Or perhaps it was the collective energy of so many people all over the planet wishing and praying for the miners’ safety and then seeing these wishes come true as the best possible of all outcomes – every miner brought back alive and well.

Inside this Presence of Being lives other virtues like Cooperation, Compassion and the Brotherhood of Man. Deep inside this experience lives the teachings of Jesus beamed out to world from a country that is 70% Catholic. During this rescue mission, we truly saw one man being another brother’s keeper.

And the whole world watched, in unison. For 22 hours the world was joined in a shared, emotional moment of good will. Every viewer, onlooker, family member and rescue worker were participating in a New Earth moment. And the whole world watched.

In this New Earth moment, we became a planet and a people where care and consideration are resident dwellers of open and caring hearts; where the highest elected official of a country stands with his wife in parkas in the freezing cold all night to hold the space for safety and survival; and where each rescued miner is greeted like an equal by dignitaries and ordinary people alike.

We are capable of this kind of New Earth moment every day. It is the power of Now, fueled by genuine care and love for one another, infinite and all penetrating in every moment.

~ by Eckhart Tolle www.opraheckhart.com

I’m amazed that we ever find anything to say about a system that is not a system. About something that leads to nowhere. At least, simultaneously nowhere and everywhere.

Generally after I give a lecture I follow up with an informal talk. Tonight I’ll give a few facts about the system we work with, or at least the system of thinking that we’re involved in. And I prefer to have you ask questions because we get to the heart of the matter much more quickly that way. We get to what you want to know, while I could talk for two days and never hit the point of understanding for you.

This I consider a unique system or unique group. It has to do with self-definition. Some systems seem to be geared strictly to utility. To improve your business or serve as an anesthetic if your thinking becomes too traumatic.

Regardless, we are searchers after the truth. And you may immediately say, “Well, what do you consider the truth?” We don’t. I don’t ask you to consider what is the truth. I ask you to try to find inconsistencies and retreat from those inconsistencies.

~ by Richard Rose, beginning a talk in Cleveland, Ohio, Nov. 12, 1974.