The Seer

“Hi! My name is Richard Lang. I’m sharing this in the hope that it will help more people become aware of who they really are, and as a result receive the many benefits that flow from this awareness.

“First of all, what do I mean by who you really are?

“If I were to ask you who you are, you would probably tell me your name. You might then go on to tell me other things about yourself, such as what you do and where you live. This is who you are. It’s how others identify you and how you identify yourself. However, it’s not the whole story about you – it’s not who you really are.

“You have another identity which is private and secret, which you may or may not be aware of — your True Identity. This is who you are deep down in the centre of your being. If you look there you won’t find your name or personality or anything at all — instead you’ll find pure, silent Consciousness.

“This silent Consciousness is boundless and empty, like space. It’s timeless — it was never born and will never die. And yet, though it’s empty and timeless, it’s endlessly creative and infinitely wise, the source of your life and of everything. If you cultivate awareness of this creative source within you, this pure silent spirit, you’ll find it benefits you in every area of your life.

“The idea of your True Self is not new. You’ll find it in one form or another within each of the world’s major religions. All great mystics have awoken to this Reality. Looking within themselves they’ve found total peace, unfading joy, eternal life. Many of them have tried to share their discovery with others, realizing that most people are unaware of their True Self, and are not receiving therefore the blessings that come with this awareness.

“If you’re not seeing who you really are, not aware of this pure, timeless Consciousness deep within yourself, you’re overlooking one of the most amazing things about yourself, and missing out on the many wonderful gifts it brings with it. How, then, can we awaken to our True Identity and receive its countless blessings?

“There are many ways or spiritual paths that lead to your True Self. Here I’m going to present a contemporary Western way developed by the English philosopher Douglas Harding. Sometimes called the Headless Way, it’s a method of looking directly into the centre of your own being.”

~ From the introduction to “Discovering Your True Self, an excellent Audio CD produced and spoken by Richard Lang.

Last week, after many years in outer space, the US Mercury Messenger space probe finally achieved orbit around Mercury, the smallest planet nearest to the Sun. For the first time scientists will get a good look at the Solar System’s smallest planet, a planet bathed in solar radiation millions of times stronger than the harmful radiation of any nuclear reactor.

If you choose to sit outdoors and look out into the night sky you can perform a thought experiment about form and space that will tell you more about reality than any space probe. The next time you look at the stars don’t worry about the shapes of the constellations and what their names are. If you see a planet, don’t try and figure out which one it is. Instead, let go of your desire to label or explain and become only aware of objects inside an infinite plane of endless empty space.

To contemplate this vastness you will have to become still enough to where the enormity of space can fill your awareness. When we think of space we think of nothing being there. And yet the word space implies that it is an object since we named it. The Buddhist word for space is Void and that term means an awareness of space that is really nothing but awareness itself – or what some would term the inner space or Void of consciousness.

Suddenly, at this point you may feel like you and your awareness is actually the universe becoming aware of itself. It turns out that anything that we objectify as form is form – even empty space. And it’s also true that that as you sense the vastness of outer space as your own inner space you will know this precious stillness that has no form to be more who you really are than any content of your daily life.

This practice can be a very important one to give our awareness perspective when earthquakes, tidal waves, nuclear meltdowns, and cruise missiles attacks in the Middle East dominate the airwaves and bombard us with news of the pain body of our culture and our planet. Remember, a sane and productive human life is a dance between form and space. You can call on the power of inner space at any time to summon compassion and perspective between what appears and what is.

~ Eckhart Tolle www.tolleteachings.com (see below)

Many traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and others, have nondual wisdom teachings and branches. These nondual teachings all point to the same core truth.

Or, as it’s been said, “There are many paths up the mounatin, but the view from the mountaintop is ever the same.”

In a nutshell, here’s the core message: All there is is Consciousness. Consciousness is all there is.”

In the statement above, you can replace Consciousness with God, Providence, Universal Mind, The Christ, The Buddha, Krishna, whatever (but not ‘creation’ or ‘the phenomenal world’).

The idea is that Reality is not two… there is actually no separation between you and God, or you and anything else (appearances notwithstanding). You — and every ‘thing’ around or within you — are simply God ‘manifesting’.

Consciousness (or God etc.) can exist without the manifest universe, but the universe could never exist apart from Consciousness.

Now, when first encountering these teachings, the ordinary conditioned mind revolts, particularly from two implications.

First, nondual wisdom teaching seems to imply there is “no self”… you are simply part of the universe. But as it has been pointed out, this wisdom does not mean there is no self (body/mind/personality). It means that essentially there is no separate self

divided off from the rest of reality. In the relative world … the world we experience through our senses, however, separate forms appear to come and go in time and space.

The true Self or essential nature of all forms, and especially human forms or beings, is Consciousness. Each form is uniquely different, but according to the great Wisdom Tradition, each is an expression of the exact same infinite and eternal Consciousness.

So, it follows, Consciousness is not something we have, but rather That which we already and always ARE.

To illustrate, the metaphor of the ocean and the wave can be helpful. The wave represents the personal self; the ocean represents everything that is.

Waves exist, surely, but they do not exist separate and apart from the rest of the ocean. We — and everything else — are just part of one big ocean.

Second, the mind wants to know, “If everything is an expression of God, how can there be evil in the world?”

According to the great Wisdom Tradition, Consciousness or God manifests and contains within Itself all opposites including good and evil, right and wrong, joy and sorrow, justice and injustice etc.

But ultimately, Consciousness or God is an infinite mystery quite beyond all opposites and cannot be conceived of by finite minds.

There is simply an ISness about the unfolding manifestaton of God at any given moment and a highly complex interactivity and reactivity of forms but in reality it is simply a transitory movement within the One.

To go back to our metaphor above of the ocean and the waves, a set of waves may roll in toward a rocky coastline and smash themselves with enormous energy at the cliff-base … disintergrating into shooting clouds of white spray etc.

One by one the waves seem to dissappear in a spectacular display of explosive noise and violence, but have they actually been harmed or lost? Of course not.

The water the waves were composed of is still there … part of the ocean again as it always was and their energy is simply dissipated and will be used to form more water movement somewhere else.

When conditioned dualistic concepts are dropped (e.g. waves are quite separate from the ocean), the mind can bring us to the ‘threshold’ of nondual wisdom, but cannot take us through the door, so to speak. The final step/s are not taken through intellectual

comprehension or mental analysis, but rather with what the wisdom masters call direct seeing. (This is just as well for otherwise the joys of this wisdom would only be available to a gifted few rather than to us all.)

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“‘What a Gift!’ — People say it with cancer, or on their death bed; people say it in the midst of scandal, or in the midst of any situation that they are certain isn’t a gift, a situation absolutely unwanted.

When you’re willing to open to what is here, all is a gift: every instant, every moment, every event.

When the worst happens, and we are legitimately traumatized or horrified, we still have the capacity to open to it all.

Opening doesn’t deny the horror, or the injustice, or even that the event shouldn’t have happened. But as an adult, as free consciousness, you always have the capacity to open.

How can this be? Because we are the source of it all. One Self, one heart; infinite forms, infinite experiences. In opening, we eternally and freshly discover the gift.”

~ Gangaji

In all the world, there’s nothing in existence more important and more sacred than “The Knowledge.” This Knowledge of the true Self, to which I refer, is the crowning glory, It is “The Knowledge” that makes all knowing, perception and life itself meaningful and most worthwhile.

Without this Knowledge, the average person is lost in any number of roles and never learns to differentiate between him or herself and these roles.

Today we find ourselves in a world full of recorded thoughts left for us by the preceding generations. Every child begins from the beginning but progress in thinking depends upon the ways he or she is exposed to the collective thoughts of humanity.

We all begin with an alphabet slate and story books, but our level of thinking usually depends upon the depth of the thoughts or ideas we are exposed to. We begin with tiny footsteps but whether those feet touch the earth, shoes, cycle pedals, motor cycles, cars, luxury cars, ship or plane, depends largely on the thoughts we gather and understand.

There are two different levels on which mental investigation can be undertaken. One is in the familiar ‘concrete’ world of things and the other is in the inner immaterial world of the thinker, the “I”. The investigation into the objective world can be never-ending due to its vast number of forms. The investigation into the nature of “I”, the subject, ends in the discovery of the Self, which is ever the same — eternal, changeless, all-pervasive and never subject to any growth or loss.

Today people enjoy unprecedented comfort and prosperity because of discoveries made in the objective world. We can also gain enormously by discovering the full potential of our inner subjective world. When the levels of gross and subtle consciousness are recognized, we are then able to discern “That” within us which is beyond all imagining and description.

When we remain at the level of the physical world, we become almost like a helpless animal — more exploited than really living. Even if we function up to the level of conditioned thoughts and emotions, without wisdom and spiritual insight, we still tend to live far below the level of happiness and fulfillment that was intended for us.

Hence we must never stop at the level of conditioned thinking which binds the “I” to different notions, including religious dogma and secular expediency. While travelling from the known to the (knowable) unknown, we have to progress through the gross physical level of consciousness, past our misconception of the mind-made self, past all our false beliefs and concepts to the highest consciousness of all which is the true Self or infinite “I”.

Hence Self-knowledge, the Knowledge of the “I”, the ultimate absolute meaning, becomes the crowning glory as the “I” is released from the hold of conditioned thinking and ignorance whch melts in silent, sacred Awareness.

The younger generation students will be inclined to learn, only if the teachers and elders understand this — the most important thing of all is to find “ultimate meaning” in their own being. When this happens, they willl be able to see everything as it truly is in its own place and not be afraid of anything.

So let us determine by all means to see ourselves as we really are — in our own “Self” or “Being” or “Truth” — as that nameless, formless, invisible expanse that fills up and embraces all names and forms. Let us see It, and be It — here and now!

~ by Swamiji. Abridged from: Self Knowledge Magazine Sep. 2003.

A company director was travelling on a plane late one night, when a young man in the next seat turned to him and said, “Excuse me, Sir, could you tell me the time?”

“Yes, I could,” the director said, “but I’m not going to tell you, because if I do we’ll get to talking. I’ll ask you what you do for a living and you’ll say you are a salesman from Sydney or some such place. You’ll ask me where I’m from and I’ll tell you Perth.”

“Then, I’ll ask you if you were ever there and you will say you get there now and then. Then, I’ll suggest that the next time you are there, you will give us a call and come over for dinner.”

“And the trouble is you’ll do it. And in that way you’ll meet my attractive young daughter and you’ll start going together and fall in love and get married, live in Sydney, have a family and I’ll hardly ever see my grandchildren.

“And I don’t want it to happen. I don’t want my daughter married to a travelling salesman … from Sydney.”

“And that’s why I’m not going to tell you the time!”

Let’s remember why we attend satsangs etc: for this amazing opportunity to really look into the core of our own existence, the core of life itself that is so easy to overlook. It’s so easy not to pay attention to it, because it’s not noisy and it’s not clamoring for attention like all the other aspects of the human mind. Egoic consciousness is always pretending to be the most important thing that is happening.

And yet there’s this thread, this sense of something other than, deeper than, more real than, more essential than this scattered and divided noise that so many human beings live in, in their minds. And right in the midst of all that, there is a presence, there is an awareness, an unconditioned awareness, an unconditioned consciousness.

Right in the middle of this conditioned mind, conditioned consciousness, is this shining, unconditioned essence. Essence doesn’t mean a little part hidden somewhere in us, the little teeny kernel of essence. Essence means the totality, the whole thing. Essence means the truth of you as opposed to the untruth of you.

Essence isn’t a small thing, essence is an immense thing. The essence of you is everything you ever see, taste, touch, and experience. Everywhere you go, every step you take, every breath you take is actually happening by the essence, of the essence, in the essence, and to the essence. All the rest is noise and chatter.

So we go to satsang to give our attention, our affection, our time. Our most highly prized commodity is our time. Anything or anyone you give your time to shows immediately what is most important.

And I want to remind everyone that what you really are — what the person next to you is — what the people in earthquake devastated areas scrabbling in the rubble for food are — this timeless essence. This is not hidden. It’s not hidden at all. It’s in plain view. Everywhere you look, that’s the essence. And the mind would say, “Where? Where? I don’t see it. All I see is a car, a billboard, a tree, the person in front of me, the funny man on the stage. Where is this essence?”

It’s easy to grasp for it, isn’t it? “Where is it? What is it? I want to understand it. I want to know about it. How can it work for me? How can I utilize it?” But it doesn’t come upon us through the grasping of it, through the striving for it, and through the struggling for it.

There’s no merit gained through wasted effort, through excess struggle. There are no merit points for the people who drove themselves the craziest along the way to self-realization.

For most people it’s so obscure that it seems very intuitive to grasp and to struggle instead of relaxing, not grasping, letting something come to you, letting the truth of your being reveal itself to you on its terms, in its way, letting it happen.

It will happen. It’s always happening. It’s always trying to show itself.

~ Adyashanti www.adyashanti.org

Approaching problems entirely from the ego-mind can result in some insight as well as some improvement in your situation, and in your ability to deal with your life’s problems. However, it does not result in freedom from them altogether. The change which insight does bring about is often temporary and there is still a conditioned identity that will continue to create problems and suffering in more subtle and creative ways.

What I am pointing to here is a deeper solution — one that frees us from the whole conditioned identity to begin with. Whether we know it yet or not, what we truly want is freedom from identification with that which creates the suffering in the first place. It is the difference between rearranging furniture in a prison cell in order to make it more comfortable versus getting out of the cell altogether.

In the realm of the nondual, absolute reality, psychotherapy is irrelevant because there is no separate self to receive it and no problem to work on or solve. Yet, there is also the expression of relative reality. There is both absolute and relative reality; they are two sides of a single coin. A therapist who has this understanding holds both at the same time.

If we say that psychotherapy is not needed because there is no individual self or problem, then we are stuck on the absolute side of duality. If we focus only on a self with a problem to fix without recognition of what is already present and free, then we are stuck on the other side of duality. In both cases we fail to notice the nondual truth that they are two aspects of the same one consciousness. From the vantage point of awakened, nondual awareness, there is a fresh, new view that is vast and all-inclusive.

This view does not ignore the dissatisfaction’s of our life and problems of the psyche; however, it views them from a much larger perspective. This view does not perceive things in terms of what’s wrong. The goal is not to change what is, but rather to awaken to the truth of what is. And from there, whatever needs to change will change on its own.

What does not serve us simply releases when met with the wisdom and compassion of our true being. As Adyashanti says, “When conditioning arises, if it is not claimed as “mine”, it arises within an undivided state of being. When conditioning meets an undivided state, there is an alchemical transformation. There is a sacred miracle.”

It is important to note that psychotherapy that includes nondual wisdom can never truly be another method or theory. It is about working from the Unknown Mystery itself and that cannot be clearly mapped out and concretized as a method. It is something that unfolds from the unknown, new and fresh each moment.

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~ Kevin Rockwell

We are now going through a time that calls for compassion and a centring into a deeper strength — a strength that is born of the Presence within us.

As we bear witness to ongoing adversity in the form of disasters (natural and social) it is natural, even for those not directly affected, to feel a sense of overwhelm or shock. What is significant is that we are all affected, even when we don’t necessarily recognise it. We are all affected because indeed we are all connected. We are ONE LIFE.

What is acutely highlighted at this time is the true nature of life… that all things are subject to change; even the things we have seen as our greatest source of security may be taken away suddenly or unexpectedly.

With compassion we can embrace a deeper Presence of Love — one that extends a presence of calm, guided by the knowing that life itself is eternal… and although we may cling to these bodies and objects we wish to hold on to… it is only love and the spirit of life that endures.

By gathering in Presence, whether in the silence of one’s own heart, or as a group, we may extend this calm to all those who are suffering at this time and are perhaps incapable of making an aware connection to their own eternal nature.

It’s a time to re-assess, to reconsider our priorities, to re-gauge what in our life has true or lasting meaning. As we gather our thoughts into a place of quiet contemplation we may also re-connect to the peace that is always here, underlying every moment… even in the midst of disaster.

Even in the face of tragedy there is an opportunity for true change… an opportunity to connect with the true nature of life again, to be freed of the burdens we have bound ourselves to through material attachments or indulgence, and to find the simple beauty and joy again of living in harmony with the true nature of our own being and life at large.

~ by Isira Living Awareness

A lot of people are upset and disturbed by the earthquake in Japan. How could this happen? In reality, what happens is actually the most unstable aspect of the known universe. The world of cause and effect is changing constantly, like the relentless movement of tectonic plates in the Pacific Ocean that created the latest disaster.

The 24 hour news cycle shows you the latest YouTube video uploaded by survivors more interesting in filming the catastrophic event than running for their lives and surviving it. What are these people missing? They are missing the deeper perfection of life itself, the Stillness that has nothing to do with the coming and goings of form. And this brings us to the problem of depending on what happens to make us happy.

As obvious and matter-of-fact as changing circumstances may seem to be linked to having a happier life, just look to the most highly paid US television actor’s most recent antics to see how futile relying on any form, anything that can be bought or sold; anything that can be earned or achieved, or any magical event. If Charlie Sheen isn’t happy with all his millions, what do you think will happen to you when you finally win the lottery?

As far as true Joy of Being is concerned, beating a computer at Jeopardy, or winning the Powerball is completely irrelevant. Simply put, true, satisfying, everlasting joy cannot be manifested by an act of will. Especially if that will is based on a goal or need from the outside world of circumstance. That will lives in the same world in which tsunami’s kill thousands, copper mines trap miners, and an infinitely fertile inner pollution of negativity thrives on our planet.

True joy actually derives from a place beyond form that cannot even be called a place. It is consciousness itself and is in the end the supreme identity of who you are… complete, needing no adjustment, requiring no attention, simply being there.

~ Eckhart Tolle www.tolleteachings.com