The Seer

It is easy to turn awareness into a static mental conclusion. Instead of abiding in and as actual awareness, there is a tendency of the mind to repeatedly play the conclusion, “I am awareness” or “there is only awareness” or some other conclusory non-dual label.

A conclusion cannot see. It just repeats itself. A false sense of mental certainty often comes with this repetition. If any conclusion is repeated enough, it turns into a rigidly held position. Conflict is right around the corner. The need to be right arises directly from egoic insecurity. Conflict arises from attachment to thought — from an attempt to take ownership of reality. No one owns reality.

Actual awareness is not a conclusion. It is a deeply and relentlessly compassionate and loving awakeness to everything that is arising now including to any particular conclusion that may be arising or being held onto as “truth.” The degree of conflict and self-righteousness in your life are good indicators of whether awareness is being treated as a static mental conclusion or whether there is true abiding as actual timeless awareness.

Awareness is naturally secure and confident. It has nothing to prove. This confidence is different than mental certainty. It is a confidence of the heart. It is a confidence with a deep resonance of love, compassion, and pure openness to what is arising now. Conclusions fragment life into pieces. Awareness reveals that the fragments are illusory. It reveals wholeness.

From: Reflections of the One Life, by Scott Kiloby

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You could say that intuition is a kind of knowing, but you don’t know how you got there. You know something, but you don’t know by what path you’ve arrived at what you know. It’s a sudden arising of knowledge or knowing something, but “I don’t know how I know this.”

What is at work here is non-conceptual intelligence, when intuition arises.Intuition is not arrived at by thinking, not by logic. It’s arrived at in a way that we cannot explain. It is closely related to creativity and inspiration. Inspiration also comes from that place.

Intuition is given to you. [It is given to] all great artists, musicians, writers, and even great scientists who made deep discoveries that were revolutionary — like Einstein. Einstein had a ’sense’ of his theory of relativity. Before he could fully prove it, he already knew it was true.

It was intuition that came to him. Of course, he had done a lot of thinking before that happened.

Sometimes you have to do a lot of thinking, and then suddenly, thinking doesn’t get you anywhere anymore, and you stop thinking, and you go out and take a few deep breaths. Or you go out into nature and sit under a tree. And suddenly, intuition is there. Something you couldn’t have arrived at through thinking.

It’s vital for every human being to contact that place within, where intuition arises, because otherwise you are confined to the limitations of your conceptual mind … your life is just repetitive, and no new ideas can come. If it’s a fresh and new idea, it comes from a place where all creativity arises — which ultimately, is the stillness within. That’s where intuition arises.

If you can be still even for a moment, then there’s a possibility that some intuitive thing arises as a thought or as a spontaneous thing that you say, and you’ve surprised yourself. Maybe somebody needs your help or advice, and rather than thinking “I should be helping that person. What can I say next to help them?”, rather than that, you just become still, listen, look. And suddenly you may find yourself saying something. It’s intuitive. Suddenly a deeper intelligence comes and uses your mind. That’s what we call intuition.

Realize that this is at the basis of all creative activities, all truly creative activities. Perception is something that comes from the outside, and intuition comes from the inner. It comes from you. It is essentially one with who you are, intelligence itself.

The easiest way to develop intuition is to develop the ability to be still at times. Rather than ‘trying’ to develop intuition, go to the place where all intuition arises. You don’t need to worry about becoming more intuitive if you focus more on being still. Not necessarily for long periods of time, but have moments of stillness in your life, so that every day is interspersed with moments of stillness.

You could just close your eyes and take one or two deep breaths. Or you don’t even have to close your eyes, but while you’re listening or looking at somebody, feel yourself breathing. Feel the inner aliveness within your body. If you are looking at your computer screen, look away for a moment, or close your eyes for a moment, and take one or two conscious breaths. It brings you to stillness.

Wherever you are, there are always opportunities for a moment of stillness. And that is vital, because otherwise your life is unbalanced. If you don’t find stillness, all you have is activity — one thing after another. And this covers up your potential intuitive faculty, continuously.

Seek out moments of stillness. Even the busiest person can do it. If you’re driving home, or driving to work, every traffic light is an invitation to stillness. [There are] so many opportunities for stillness. Stillness is where intuition arises.

~ by Eckhart Tolle (who was born on this day in 1948 — Happy Birthday Eckhart: )

“Be ye perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt. 5:48)

Perfection is not a flawless state, a state when one ceases to make “mistakes”, but a state where one has transcended the need to judge seeming flaws and faults. It is unconditional love and unconditional acceptance that allow us to see the perfection beyond the duality of good and bad.

What we call “pain”‘ results from our belief in separation, in the belief of the reality of the egoic self which lives in a state of perpetual fear and desire. What we call “evil” also stems from ignorance of our Oneness but is coupled with willful actions to maintain and enhance a separate self — at the expense of others.

Believing in separation from the One Self, we produce on-going cycles of individual and collective winners and losers, victims and perpetrators. It is by willfully acting on our Oneness that we will bring these negative and destructive cycles to an end.

Unconditional love means to love without condition, to see only perfection — then that is what exists. The Divine One Self sees all as perfect, since it sees with the eyes of unconditional acceptance and love.

Do you love your life as it is? This is not easy, the human egoic mind has developed many stipulations on what it takes to be perfect. These conditioned beliefs keep us from seeing our perfection.

How do you respond to your life with its seeming ups and downs? Is this present moment good enough for you? Are you attentive to life and patient enough with it so that you can see the light behind the shadow, the sacred fire in the darkest experiences?

Can you see your life is just perfect because you chose to create it just as it is right now? If you created a shadow,it was in order to better see your light in contrast to it. Our humanity does not interfere with our divinity:, it simply makes it more evident.

~ From: Living As God by P. Raymond Stewart pp 101

Stand up, wake up, take note!
New possibilities have arrived
For these lives we had thought were our own.

The possible human stands free now
Of its past constraints,
Of the cage it grew up in, that served it well,
Trembling now with wonder at what it sees.

Old habits of mind fall away like old skin
No longer needed, no longer helpful
Outgrown and abandoned.

A different world, a new earth
Comes into view, fresh and alive
By a change of perception,
A new way of seeing.

We are joined together now
In a new maturity
A new awareness of how it is,
How we are carried on a new wind,
And a new response stirs.

~ by Alice Gardner, © 2009

We can choose to reside in the middle, the center of the Wheel of Life — to be simultaneously connected to and detached from the whirling world. This is how we can be in this world but not of it. We can choose to move our attention away from residing on the rim of the wheel of life, running continuously through changing terrains, to its center where we experience stability and calm.

We intuitively know that in challenging times we need to “get centered”, to gather ourselves back from the superficial borders of life and connect again to our ’soul’ — the essence of our Being.

The Wheel of Life is always in motion, going through different fields — gravel and grass, cowpats and daisies. If we identify solely with the edges of the wheel, always interfacing variously with happiness or sadness, always anxiously reaching and racing towards the next thing, how can we be at peace? At the surface of the wheel, ups and downs with accompanying insecurities are experienced, but at the center we find stability.

So let us choose to reside at the center of the Wheel of Life, watching life’s events spin around us, embracing it all — supporting, loving, accepting, connected yet detached from the “drama”, creative yet not controlling. It is in the center of our being that we meet the One Self. It is here we see we are not different, not separate from each other. It takes all of us: it takes the One Self to form the center. The center is where we, as infinite “spokes” of the One Consciousness, find community.

~ From: Living As God by P. Raymond Stewart

In Christian history, Thomas Aquinas is well known as the author of the huge theological treatise, Summa Theologica. However, the following facts seem to be not known widely: The Summa Theologica was not completed for Thomas died before completing the comprehensive work.

Furthermore, about three months prior to his death, on Dec. 6, 1273, after he saw something shown to him by God during a time of contemplative prayer, he became totally a different man. One day before Dec. 6, he was ardently writing Summa Theologica, but he suddenly stopped writing. Even though he was encouraged by many to complete the work, he replied, “I cannot do it any more. Compared to what I saw, the works I did are like straws.” So, he never resumed his work.

‘What,’ we may ask, ‘did this eminent churchman see, that made the product of all his scholarly mental activity seem like mere chaff by comparison?’ What all the great sages and mystics ’saw’ was that … the transcendent reality out there is the same reality in the very depths of the heart, in the hiddenness of subjectivity.

Meister Eckhart says, for instance, that “the eye by which I see God is the same eye by which God sees me.” How is that possible since God does not have form, and certainly doesn’t have eyes?! Well, obviously the eye is a metaphor for something else. Let us substitute the personal pronoun I for eye, and see where it leads us.

Thus we have: “The “I” by which I see or know God is the same “I” by which God sees and knows me.” That’s better, or closer to the meaning, but I think we can do better than that.

Let’s interpret the personal pronoun “I” as a metaphor for consciousness, and then read it again. It would go something like this: “The consciousness by which God knows me, and sees me, is the same consciousness by which I know and see God.” I believe that’s Eckhart’s meaning … and what Thomas saw.

~ by Wayne Teasdale

“What amazing grace to see clearly that the very thing that looked so heavy in the world of form, the very thing that seemed to be limiting me on all sides, that very thing is the doorway into the formless and into who I am beyond form. Limited form arises from limitless Spirit and that Spirit is the form each of us is at this moment. What grace to see now that ultimately they are one.”

~ Pete S.

Allow awareness to rest into the quietness in the room. Notice that the same quietness that is “out there” in the room is also “in here” in the body and mind. Just rest into that quietness. The quietness is a portal to the pure awareness that is who you are.

What are you seeking? You may believe that you are seeking more money, a better relationship, a better drug, a new job, or enlightenment. But what is it that you really want?

If you are really honest, you will discover that you already know those ‘things’ outside you will not provide the permanent contentment you are seeking. Even if you get the new job or the new lover, at some point the newness will wear off and the seeking for something more or something better will begin again.

If you are really honest, you will discover that what you are really seeking is the end of seeking itself. But if you listen into the quietness that is already here in this moment, that silent stillness already contains peace.

That peace is who you already are. The notion of seeking into future to find what you already are is insanity. Just rest as awareness in this moment. The end of seeking is already here in the quiet stillness of awareness.

~ From: Reflections of the One Life, by Scott Kiloby. If you would like to get an inspirational reflection like this each day by email for free, >>>Subscribe Here.

“Enlightenment is the realization, the lived experience, that we are made of pure consciousness; that pure consciousness is our fundamental nature and our ultimate reality; and that everything else in the universe is also made of pure consciousness, so that our own being is fundamentally unified with all of nature. As one fourth-century Chinese sage put it, “Everything in the universe is one and the same root as my own self.”

In enlightenment, we experience life from the vantage point of that root. We experience our own self as unbroken consciousness, pervading our body and our environment. This means that there is a continuity between our inner and outer perception. We have a sense of vast space, as if all our perceptions were one single tapestry of reflections in a single mirror.

We feel that we are made of clear, empty space, finer than air, unbounded and motionless. Within this vast space moves the changing progression of our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions. I call this unbroken, pervasive dimension fundamental consciousness.

Before we realize fundamental consciousness, we identify ourselves as our sensations, feelings, perceptions, ideas, memories. But when we realize fundamental consciousness, we recognize that these discrete, transitory experiences come and go within the fundamental ground that is our true identity.”

~ by Judith Blackstone.

Judith is a psychotherapist and student of Eastern contemplative traditions, and a meditation practitioner for 25 years. She is the author of The Enlightenment Process and other works. More info >>>HERE and HERE.

It’s the holiday season again with its special Christmas lights. For each of us, however, our entire life-experience has had but one purpose behind it — discovering the Light of the Eternal.

This season marks the timeless moment when immaculate awareness comes to free us from the mistaken worship of the graven images of limited light in order to recognize, what the Bible calls, “the Father of lights (the Light of Conscousness), with whom is no

variableness, neither shadow of turning.”

God’s light is enfolded within the awareness that sees Christmas lights twinkling, that watches the evening sky with starlight gleaming. In the same way that the “words” are “information,” just so is light unfolding the wisdom and knowledge of God within us.

Who is “us”? The Self-Awareness of the Infinite Eternal.

Life runs in Light because Life is that light. The searching soul that struggles to see, skirts the edges of shadows, plumbs the darkened valleys of hidden hills and measures the forms of opaqueness.

But for each of us, in each one’s time, the experience examined, the shadows searched, leads us to the Light, the Light to the Godhead. The shadows are gone, having let us see so we know we see the immeasurable allness of Light.

~ by William Samuel. To read the rest of this luminous article, >>>Click Here.

Also, on the weekend of Dec. 11, there will be an audio podcast of one of William’s talks posted on Urban Guru Cafe