The Seer

If God is truly infinite, then there is not the smallest place, nor the shortest moment where God is absent. God, to be truly infinite, must (by definition) be everywhere, all times, with all life.

There can be nothing that is not God, nothing that is not made of God, because in the beginning there was only God and nothing else — pure creativity. God already filled all of existence. There couldn’t have been any room left over because if there was, then God wasn’t infinite.

Thus, God only had Itself out of which to make everything God created and thus, despite the illusion of separateness, we can not actually be separate from God because there is nowhere else to be separate from God.

All of God is right where you are now and nowhere else. I AM is one. There is no second I AM to stand in your light, to put up the feeblest opposition. All is as you would have it because you are Who you are. Here is no spark of that Fire, but the blazing Furnace itself.

~ by Douglas Harding. See: Who or What is God?

Some few persons we find move into Stage Six, which we call universalizing faith. In a sense I think we can describe this stage as one in which persons begin radically to live as though what Christians and Jews call the “kingdom of God” were already a fact.

I don’t want to confine it to Christian and Jewish images of the kingdom. It’s more than that. I’m saying these people experience a shift from the self as the center of experience. Now their center becomes a participation in God or ultimate reality. There’s a reversal of figure and ground. They’re at home with what I call a commonwealth of being.

We experience these people on the one hand as being more lucid and simple than we are, and on the other hand as intensely liberating people, sometimes even subversive in their liberating qualities. I think of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the last years of his life. I think of Thomas Merton. I think of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. I think of Dag Hammerskjold and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the last years of his imprisonment.

These are persons who in a sense have negated the self for the sake of affirming God. And yet in affirming God they became vibrant and powerful selves in our experience. They have a quality of what I call relevant irrelevance. Their ‘subversiveness’ makes our compromises show up as what they are.

~ From Stages of Faith, by James Fowler

If you’d like to test whether you can experience a shift of consciousness: >>>Click Here

There once was a Scots house-painter named Jock who was very interested in saving a penny where he could, so he sometimes thinned down his paint to make it go a wee bit further.

As it happened, he got away with this for some time, but one day, the Church of Scotland decided to do a big restoration job on the outside of one of their biggest buildings.

Jock put in a quote, and, because his price was so low, he got the job.

So he set about erecting the scaffolding, buying the paint and, yes, I’m sorry to say, thinning it down with turpentine.

Well, Jock was up on the scaffolding, painting away, the job nearly completed, when suddenly a huge black cloud rolled in, there was a tremendous clap of thunder, then the sky opened up and the rain poured down washing the thinned paint from all over the church.

Jock was so startled by the thunderclap that he fell from the scaffolding and landed among some bushes. He lay there not moving for some minutes watching the rain wash away the thinned and useless paint.

Jock was no fool. He knew this was a judgment from the Almighty, so he crawled onto his knees and cried: “Oh, God, forgive me; what should I do?”

And from the depths of the great black cloud, a stern voice boomed out … (you’re going to love this!)

“Repaint! Repaint! And thin no more!”

The Peace of God, which passes all understanding,
Go with you.
And be comforted by the Presence within
That makes all things new; and
That lives and moves in all who know
The true Self to be infinite and eternal.
May the Peace brood over you,
And the Presence restore you in its pure Light,
May it keep your hearts and minds
In the knowing and loving of God,
And of Jesus who showed us the Christ.
And may the Blessing of God Almighty,
The Father of us all,
And the Holy Spirit,
Be brightly in your midst
And ever in your journeying.

Amen.

Look around you; there is only one reality. The reason that you are here, wherever here is for you, is because it is the only place that you can be right now. But even though reality is right here, and even though there is quite literally nothing but reality, it is very possible for you to miss it altogether.

By miss it I mean to imagine that reality is something or somewhere other than here. As strange as it may sound it is very possible, even probable, that even though you have eyes to see, you do not see. And even though you have ears to hear, you do not hear.

What you see and hear is not exactly what is actually here, but what you imagine is here.

Our imagination is a very powerful force in determining what we perceive. If we imagine that the world is teeming with evil forces, we will surely perceive the world as evil. But if we imagine the world to be essentially good, we will perceive it as good. Either way it is the same world that we are looking at. But the world is neither good nor bad in and of itself; it is simply what it is. And if we see the world as either good or bad, we will not be able to see it as it actually is. We will only be able to see it as we imagine it to be.

Now take this idea and apply it to everything and everyone in your life. Try it for a moment, or an hour, or a day. And if you do, you may begin to notice that the world you imagine to exist does not exist at all. This may cause you some fear, or possibly the thrill of discovery, but either way the important thing is to get some distance from the habitual way the mind contorts and creates perception.

But even though our mind imagines the world and everything in it to be other than the way it actually is, the reality of existence remains eternally untouched by our misperception of it. This is both relatively good and bad. It is good in that existence is eternally what it is. We need not worry about reality becoming something other than reality. But it is bad in the sense that the world we imagine to exist is always colliding with the world as it actually is. This collision is the cause of immense human suffering and conflict.

So we are trapped within our illusions and misperceptions. And the greatest illusion of all is to believe that we are not trapped. But even when we realize that we are confined within a prison of our own making, we are trapped because all the ways we struggle to get out of our illusions are illusions themselves. So, yes, we are trapped, and helpless to boot.

But there is a very strange thing that can occur at exactly the point where you realize that there is no escaping the imaginary world of your illusions. You bare your heart open to illusion, surrender your eternal struggle against it, and admit to being bound by its cunning imagination. I don’t mean that you become despondent or resigned to your fate. I mean that you truly let go in the face of your utter defeat and stop struggling.

And when all the struggle ceases, we realize that the prison of our mind cannot hold us in anymore, because the prison was all along something we imagined into existence. And imagined things aren’t real, they don’t exist. But we could never really see this as long as we were fighting the phantoms of our minds. We needed the one thing that our imaginary minds could not bring about, could not fake or create: the genuine surrender of all struggle.

In the blink of an eye, we are no longer confined within illusion nor our attempt to avoid illusion. When all struggle ceases, there is nothing to bind us to a distorted perception of existence and we can finally see. What we see is … that we do not simply exist within existence, but all of existence exists within us as well. And although everywhere we look we see the endless diversity of life, we also now see our own true face in everything under the sun.

~ Adyashanti, 2010. www.adyashani.org

The ego is behind multitasking. What is it that is trying to get so much done? What is it that feels there is so much to get done? What is it that pushes you to do more and more and do it more quickly, more efficiently, and to get it done as soon as possible? What is it that feels there isn’t enough time (the mind’s own construct) in a day for everything you “have” to do?

What this is, is the ego, which is reflected in the voice in your head. It is, at its root, a voice of fear: “Terrible things will happen if you don’t get it all done and do it right!” Or the voice may promise a reward: “When you get it all done, then you’ll be happy and feel good (not before then).” Whether the mind prods you with fear or with the hope of happiness or success, this voice is the generator of stress.

The truth is, you can only do one thing at a time. So how stressful can that be? It’s easy to do one thing at a time, no matter what it is. Even if it’s brain surgery, you’re only making one movement at a time. What’s stressful and therefore what makes something difficult is thinking about everything you have to do while you’re doing something, worrying about what needs to be done, trying to conform to the ego’s arbitrary deadlines, and trying to do too many things at once (multitasking).

Since the mind can only give attention to one thing at a time, moving back and forth quickly between a number of tasks, or even just two, isn’t necessarily more efficient, and it often results in mistakes or a job less well done. Even when multitasking is more efficient, and there are times when it is, is the stress involved in trying to keep track of a number of things at once and trying to get them done quickly worth it?

What’s more important — getting things done as fast as you can or experiencing what you are doing, being connected to it, and enjoying it while you are getting it done, because that’s what happens when you take time to be present to what you are doing?

The trouble with doing a number of things at once is that we usually aren’t fully present to any one of those things, we’re hurrying, and we aren’t enjoying ourselves. When you slow down and are fully present to whatever you are doing, a natural enjoyment arises. More importantly, perhaps, a wisdom about how to do whatever you’re doing and even whether it’s worth doing has a chance to register within you.

When we allow the egoic mind to run our activities, we end up feeling like a machine: soul-less and joyless. You can be a machine if you want, but is that how you want to live your life? There is another choice, and that is to slow down, be present, notice what’s arising to be done, do it, and move on to the next thing that arises to be done.

This isn’t in keeping with the business model, but the way the corporate world runs isn’t a healthy model for how to run our lives. We’ve seen what this mentality has done to our environment. When profit is your god, then Life is not honored. When you allow your mind to be your master, you lose your soul, your juice, your joie de vivre. Multitasking is the result of an egoic mind that is not reined in, a mind that has been allowed to run amok, a mind that is driven by fear, lack, and desire.

The antidote to such an egoic mind is noticing the result of multitasking in your body and in your spirit. If you are feeling contracted, stressed, or unhappy, then change how you do things until you’re enjoying life once again. You don’t have to be a slave to your egoic mind or to other people’s egoic minds. On the other hand, if you can multitask with joy, then have at it! You are responsible for the quality of your life. Only you can choose whether you will enjoy life or not.

~ by Gina Lake, from her Blog

“The narcissistic ego always wants to know who we are when we look in the mirror. But when we die into our own True Self and recognize ourselves to be that which is impersonal and absolute, we stumble upon the miracle of enlightenment. We find that the Self that we have discovered is a mystery that cannot be seen with the eye and cannot be recognized by the mind. And that is why, if we want to truly know that Self, we have to be willing to not see it with our eyes and not know it with our mind. If we want to be free, we actually have to let go of the very thing that we want to know in order to truly know it. We have to be willing to forget ourselves utterly and die into that ungraspable mystery. And from then on, we have to always be willing to live in a state of unknowing, a state in which we don’t know who we are.”

~ Andrew Cohen, Living Enlightenment

The spiritual path is the search for truth. In truth there is Relative Truth and Ultimate Truth. Relative Truth is a moving target of increasing honesty with ourselves. Ultimate Truth is our deepest perception of the Present Moment.

The global controversy over Wiki-Leaks stems from the question of whether there are some things that everyone should know and other things that only a few should know.

Certainly we could all agree that to stop nuclear proliferation, the knowledge of how to manufacture nuclear weapons should be restricted.

Some world leaders feel that revealing state secrets on the Internet is tantamount to the Rosenbergs revealing US atomic secrets to the Russians after World War II.

What about the secrets of self-realization?

A lot of questions were asked about A New Earth. Who do we share it with? The answer pertaining to all spiritual transmissions is always that those who relate to the information will be informed and those who are not yet at a level to understand or appreciate the information will fear, disagree or ignore it.

Certainly evangelical religions may state that any religious conversion, even under the might of God’s “terrible swift sword”, is better than no conversion. After all, Osama Bin Laden told the U.S. there would be no attacks if America converted to Islam.

Will Wiki-Leaks change the international landscape or be forgotten like Y2K? This is the difference between Relative Truth and Ultimate Truth. The Wiki-Leaks story is important now in 2011, but ultimately the long term effect may have no impact on history.

In the meantime, each of us needs to return to the Present Moment. The gossip of the 24-hour news cycle is a meaningless Relative Truth, while the Ultimate Truth is always a breath away.

~ Eckhart Tole www.tolleteachings.com

It’s good to realize that the mind is a “thing” and that you can be totally swallowed up in it, or … you can be outside of it, observing it like an object.

We aren’t always aware of this distinction. Sometimes it’s hard to tell that you’re in the mind, much like you can be in a dream and not know it.

When you contemplate, being outside the mind is not only useful, it is practically essential. Why so important?

If you’re identified with the mind, you’re telling stories, analyzing, remembering, visualizing and so forth. You never get beyond the dualisms that are inherent in conceptual thought.

Instead of directly knowing (and experiencing) the truth, you would just have ideas about it.

When you make it your intention to observe your own mind, you soon develop the ability to be outside of it. That, is somewhere around the threshold of direct knowing.

~ Edrid Riddle, www.sandoth.com/

Now is the moment we abide in primordial essence
luminous nature of mind
empty awake awareness itself
Whatever experience arises
pleasant neutral unpleasant
no need to change it

Whatever arises let it be
without judgement positive or negative
without past or future
without attachment or aversion
without affirmation or denial
without closeness or distance

Whatever arises does so
in the pure clear light of awareness
that opens into the very ground of being
Thus whatever arises is liberated

Now let it be exactly as it is
Perfect openness
Perfect space
As it is already accomplished
Simply relax into it

~ David Paul Boaz, www.davidpaulboaz.org