The Seer

It’s like a game of hide-and-seek, because it’s always fun to find new ways of hiding, and to seek for someone who doesn’t always hide in the same place.

God also likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and

I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars.

In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear.

Now when God plays hide and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. But that’s the whole fun of it — just what he wanted to do. He doesn’t want to find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game. That is why it is so difficult for you arid me to find out that we are God in disguise, pretending not to be himself.

But when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will wake up, stop pretending, and remember that we are all one single Self — the God who is all that there is and who lives for ever and ever.

God is the Self of the world, but you can’t see God for I he same reason that, without a mirror, you can’t see your own eyes, and you certainly can’t bite your own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden because it is God hiding.

~ From: The Book: on the taboo against knowing who you are, by Alan Watts

VIDEO: The ‘non-event’ that led an Irish woman to the discovery of the kingdom of heaven, seeing the Light, Awakening and the mysterious disappearance of the old self, An arresting Interview by Renate McNay with Tess Hughes.

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More about Tess: >>>Here

An elderly couple cherished a chiming clock which could be heard in every part of their small house.

Early one morning, while they were still in bed, the chiming mechanism broke down and on the hour the clock struck … eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen times!

Hearing this, the old lady shook her husband who was still asleep and said anxiously, “Wake up Henry, it’s later than it’s ever been before!”

I became exquisitely aware of the Stillness — around, within, underneath everything. It was a Stillness so profound that all that is seemed to be originating from and contained in it. I felt it most intensely at a locus in the center of my chest, and it radiated outward, filling my entire being and moving beyond. But it also undergirded and surrounded me and everything else.

The Stillness was not a Negative or an Absence, but neither do the opposite terms seem at all apt. It simply Was (Is). It seemed the basis, the grounding, the totality of all that is. To describe it as a person is to limit and trivialise it. And to call it “it” is not at all accurate either, for what I experienced was no-thing. What I do know is that I experienced an absolute wholeness, integrity, serenity, and union with everything, a union that cannot be expressed in language.

My intuitive reaction was “This is It!”, “This is What Is!” without in any way being able or feeling it necessary to articulate conceptually what I was experiencing, what “It” was. I sensed that all that is being continually birthed from the Stillness, sustained and supported by and in the Stillness, and returned to the Stillness itself. The Stillness is fundamentally All.

What analogies can I use to help clarify this, what metaphors? It is as if the velvet darkness of the night were producing the stars, steady but ultimately transient expressions of being out of itself, the fundamental reality being the living darkness, and yet the stars being intrinsically the night also. But is the Stillness then alive? That too is an inadequate description of what I knew. I fear that metaphors fail me.

The Stillness is what is between and under and in the words we speak, the print we read, the notes of music we hear; all these are expressions of the Stillness and are nevertheless not other than the Stillness. The Stillness is what surrounds, contains, and delimits and even is the objects we see.

The Stillness precedes, contains, and follows the feelings we feel. The Stillness is that out of which our thoughts and ideas arise, and yet those thoughts and ideas are not really apart from and other than the Stillness. And much, much more.

I anticipated the experience fading rapidly. It has not. The Stillness remains much in my awareness. I sense it most of the time — a groundedness, a centredness, a peace and wholeness impossible to describe. My awareness turns to it repeatedly and frequently, and I become aware that I was never really away.

And yet I do not sense that it is I turning to the Stillness but rather that the Stillness is continually drawing my awareness. I find myself looking at life, people, things, circumstances — how shall I say? — gently, tenderly. The fragility, the poignancy of all that is touches and overwhelms me.

Aware of the Stillness, sitting in the Stillness, I am left almost breathless, stunned, yet curiously cherished, shielded beyond all danger or possibility of separation. I experience the validity of Julian’s affirmation that all is indeed well.

And yet these latter feelings seem unimportant, almost beside the point, personal well-being seeming somehow irrelevant, for as a part of the Stillness I am (we are) not other than It. I am trying to describe another dimension of experience altogether, and I fear that I am failing.

Poems sometimes speak truth the most clearly, and one of my favourites by Rumi seems appropriate here:

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make sense.

~ From: Stillness, by Bruce K. Nagle

I can’t tell you what the ‘kingdom of God’ is; no one can. It’s not a thing, it’s not a concept, it’s not a place.

The scriptures indicate that the ‘kingdom’ co-exists with that realm of consciousness witnin us which knows no change nor decay, no beginning nor end and that is subject to neither time nor space.

Our body, mind and personality develops, changes and deteriorates over our life-time, but there’s a dimension of Spirit at the core of our being, they say, that is constant, limitless and the seat of all that is sacred.

If this be true, it surely means that the ‘kingdom of God’ is neither remote nor unattainable. It’s closer than our skin and more immediate than our next breath.

You may wonder why so few seem able to find that which is closer than close and can never be lost, but it’s a bit like searching for your glasses when you have them on all the while.

St Paul urged those in a death-like spiritual sleep to awaken and to become completely open to the inner Light of Christ (Eph. 5:14). This light is like no other, being infinite, invisible and the living, luminous background that enables all things in our world to be known for what they truly are.

Those awakening out of spiritual torpor soon realize that the divine is as much inward as heavenward and that in the final quest of the soul, seekers become finders … and then, seers. In this way, they experience the divine at the core of their being.

Spiritual awakening is usually described as the final freedom, freedom from previous conditioning and mind-made suffering — freedom at last to consciously be What we really are and have always been. Awakening has nothing to do with perpetuating our egoic self.

Awakening is an opportunity to encounter our imperishable Self (the Christ) before the transient vehicle of the body/mind/personality disappears, as in the cycle of nature, it surely must.

~ Pete Sumner www.peterspearls.com.au/

“Some people who have come to me have been disappointed to discover that I have no supernatural powers to transmit, no magic wand to wave, no extraordinary knowledge to dispense which can make them instantly wise, loving, and happy.

“Who, then, are you?” they ask. “What’s your secret?”

My secret can be summed up in one word: selflessness.

Selflessness is the Truth. Selflessness is the Way. Selflessness is the Fruit. In reality, there is no ‘you’ nor ‘I’ nor any ’self’ whatsoever. There is only Consciousness Itself — the One True God — which is what we are.

All that is necessary is to Realize This, because to Realize This is Wisdom, to Live This is Love, to Be This is Happiness. So, if you really want to know my secret, look to your ’self’.

In finding the source of your ’self’, you will find Consciousness Itself, and nothing else. Then, you, too, will be free of your self and all its sufferings.”

“Enlightenment, Realization, or Gnosis is nothing that can be attained through any of our conventional ways of knowing. This is because conventional knowledge is based on imaginary distinctions, which we take to represent reality.

The Reality that Gnosis reveals, however, is non-dual, and without distinctions.

To the extent that we reify the distinctions of conventional knowledge as inherently existing entities and objects, they act as veils to our Realization of this Non-dual Reality (‘I and the Father are one’).

Thus, to attain Gnosis we must surrender our belief that conventional knowledge gives us knowledge of Reality.”

~ From: Naked Through the Gate,, by Joel Morwood

~ To see and hear a 10-minute presentation by Joel, the director at the Center for Sacred Sciences, where he explains how Gnosis is beyond all concepts, how thought and language create duality, and how even “nonduality” is a relative concept: >>>

href="http://www.centerforsacredsciences.org/publications/online-video.htm">Click Here

‘Illusion’ simply means ‘a play’ or ‘deceptive appearance’ — not ‘non-existence’.

The self, the ‘me’, is an illusion, not because it doesn’t exist, but because it doesn’t exist in the way we imagine it to. You’re not what you think you are.

The ‘me’ seems to be solid and separate — a ‘thing’ at the centre of life, a separate entity running my life — in the same way that there seems to be a wave separate from the ocean — but upon investigation, those assumptions crumble. The ‘illusion’ is seen through — the wave is inseparable from the ocean.

Now, it might also help if I were a little more clear about what the word ‘existence’ actually means. In the past I used to use this without realising what it actually meant. It literally means ’stand out’ (ex-sistere).

Does the wave ’stand out’ of the ocean? Yes, it appears to, AND no, it doesn’t stand out in reality, because it IS the ocean. Depends on the angle from which you’re answering the question. Both are true, both are not true.

The wave appears to exist, AND it does not exist — it does not exist SEPARATELY from the ocean. If it has an existence, that existence is inseperable from the whole. (And instead of the word ‘ocean’, you can use the words consciousness, beingness, aliveness, source, void, wholeness, nothing …)

If you can’t handle paradox, time to get out of the nondual kitchen!

In the same way, the ’self’ (the story of me) only exists as a story. I never, ever found Jeff outside of a presently-arising story about Jeff. Jeff is not there ‘lurking’ in the background — the story of Jeff appears and disappears as a story.

The story of Jeff does not appear to Jeff — that would be another story! The story of Jeff simply appears.

And where does every story appear? Here, in this wide, clear open space — awareness, consciousness, Being, Life, doesn’t really matter what words you use to point here. They’re just words. Perhaps this is what some are referring to as the space of ‘no self’.

You could say the story of the self arises and falls in this space pointed to by the words ‘no self’. Every story, every thought, every sensation, every form, comes and goes in this open space.

I gave up years ago believing that this could be captured in words. It’s like trying to capture water in a fishing net. The best we can do is point and know that we are only pointing.

Thoughts, sensations, sounds, do not happen to a ’self’ — there’s no evidence for a solid central self whatsoever — they arise and fall here, as waves appear to do in an ocean. In reality, even what we call ‘forms’ are inseparable from this formless openness, this emptiness which is actually totally full. Then we cannot talk of ‘emptiness’ or ‘void’ at all! The Heart Sutra says ‘Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form’. Langauge fails here, totally. It collapses.

And all language simply comes and goes in this space. All concepts of self and no self arise and fall away, leaving no trace. All concepts of duality and nonduality, choice and choicelessness, collapse. All we can do, in the end, is use words as pointers. The rest is just arguing over our favourite pointers.

Years ago, I was very certain that there was no self, and tried very hard to convince people that there was no self. I couldn’t see back then that this constant need to convince others, this sense that I was right and needed to wake others up, WAS the very self I was denying! It’s absolutely ingenious, this whole game.

Seeing the impossibility of putting this into words, the total inseparability of what I am from all that appears, the total intimacy with all impermanent forms as they arise and fall, brings much lightness and laughter. And we can still carry on debating whether or not there is a self — there’s room for that too.

There’s room for everything here! So let’s play! The only question left is — what are you defending? Even the certainty that there is no self, and the need to constantly prove that to others, can simply be something else to hold onto.

The ego becomes a ’spiritualised ego’ and pretends there is no ego. “I know there is no self, and I am right, and you are wrong… and by the way, there’s no you and no me, and it really pisses me off when you think otherwise. But there’s nobody here being pissed off.” Ingenious. And totally innocent too, by the way. And it’s all available to be seen for what it is. Always.

It’s not that I believe any of this — belief doesn’t hold up for very long. This inseparability and intimacy is confirmed in every single moment, as everything appears right here, not to Jeff, but to the wide open space that holds the story of Jeff, just as the ocean ‘holds’ all of the waves that are, intimately, itself….

And the ‘play’ goes on…

~ Jeff Foster, www.lifewithoutacentre.com/

I’ve discovered that it’s actually impossible to find happiness. As long as you’re seeking to find happiness ’somewhere’, you’re overlooking where happiness is.

As long as you’re seeking to find God someplace else, you’re overlooking the essential truth of God, which is omnipresence.

When you seek to find happiness someplace else, you’re overlooking your true nature, which is happiness. You’re overlooking yourself.

I’d like to offer you the invitation and the challenge to stop overlooking yourself, to simply, radically, and absolutely be still — to put aside, at least for a moment, all of your ideas of where God is, or where truth is, or where you are.

Stop looking anywhere. Stop seeking. Simply be. I am not talking about being in a stupor, or going into a trance, but going deeper into the silence of your heart where the revelation of omnipresence can be revealed as your true nature.

I’m asking you to be still in pure presence. Not to create that, not even to invite it, but simply to recognize what is always here, who you always are, where God always is.

At this point in our human history, what was once reserved for the most rare beings is available to ordinary people.

Because we have considered ourselves ordinary, we have kept a certain door closed within our brains and within our hearts to the truth at the core of it all.

But at this time there is a crack in our conditioning. If you are reading this you are already aware of it to some degree or you wouldn’t be subscribed to this eZine.

This is a time of the ordinary awakening. This means you, not only those born under the brightest stars but the ordinary person as well.

~ Gangaji — From: The Diamond in Your Pocket www.gangaji.org/

The three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are largely about the historical Jesus who worked miracles, who taught, who promised us a new way of seeing, a new way of life in this world. It is seldom pointed out, however, that Paul is not talking about Jesus; Paul is almost always talking about “Christ.”

Paul hardly ever quotes the historical Jesus and never knew him in the flesh. Really rather shocking when you realize that his letters are one third of the New Testament! The phrase “in Christ” is his most common usage­over 100 times, I’ve been told. We take Paul as a touchstone of orthodoxy, the central, foundational teacher of Christianity -­- and yet he hardly quotes Jesus!

Something else is going on here, which has largely been off of the Christian radar. Paul has largely fallen in love with “the Christ” and it was Jesus who pointed him there. Most Christians still need to make the same movement, and to believe in both Jesus AND Christ. They are two distinct faith affirmations.

Jesus is the microcosm; Christ is the macrocosm. There is a movement from Jesus to the Christ that you and I have to imitate and walk, as well. A lot of us have so fallen in love with the historical Jesus that we worship him as such and stop there. We never really followed the same journey which he made, which is the death and resurrection journey –­ Jesus died and Christ arose.

As Bede Griffiths insightfully put it: “The real resurrection is the passing beyond the world altogether. It is Jesus’ passage from this world to the Father. It was not an event in space and time, but the passage beyond space and time to the eternal, to reality. Jesus passed into reality.”

Unless we make the same movement that Jesus did, from his one single life to his risen and transformed state, we probably don’t really understand what we mean by the Christ ­– and how we are part of the deal! That is why he said “follow me.” The Jesus that you and I participate in, are graced by, and are redeemed by is the RISEN Jesus who has become the Christ, which is an inclusive statement about all of us and all of creation.

Stay with this startling truth in the days ahead and it will rearrange your mind and heart and change the way you see everything, because you are the Christ Mystery too!

~ Richard Rohr. From his book: The Cosmic Christ

Sometimes spiritual seekers seem like alcoholics,
And gurus like bartenders,
And sanghas like nightclubs,
And “God”… the Ultimate Hottie.

Alas… when satsang ends,
And the “high” wears off after a few days,
And She stops returning your calls,
The Ultimate Hottie seems the Ultimate Tease.

Beside yourself with Grief and Longing,
You drink your way into oblivion,
And awaken, dawn after dawn,
In the arms of Maya.

Until one morning, turning to gaze,
Once more at the face of despair,
You find, instead, your long lost Beloved,
Your Heart’s Desire.

It was Her all along,
Wearing Maya’s makeup.
You were simply too drunk,
On the bartender’s “words”.

~ Chuck Surface