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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Question: Does the feeling and expression of gratitude help to raise consciousness?

Eckhart Tolle: We are talking about a deeper gratitude. There are more superficial forms of gratitude, and that is not what we are talking about. By that I mean, to be grateful that someone else is worse off than you are … sometimes that is a source of gratitude. People say, “Oh I really should be grateful, because look at this person – they are worse off than I am, so I should be grateful.” That’s not the true gratitude, that’s the gratitude that is arrived at through thinking, where you compare yourself to others.

The deeper gratitude is not arrived at through some conceptual process, where you explain to yourself why you should be grateful. That’s a superficial form of gratitude, that’s not really what it is, that’s ultimately to do with ego. More fundamental than the true form of gratitude is the deep sense of appreciation. It’s not to do with what you are telling yourself in your head, it’s something that you sense in the present moment, it’s an appreciation of the ‘is-ness’ of this moment.

We are using words as pointers. When I say ‘appreciation’, some people might ask, “What do you mean by appreciation?” It’s to feel that the world around you is alive, and you share in the aliveness of the world that surrounds you. There’s the outer aliveness, in other human beings, even in your surroundings – whether it’s nature, or even in a room, you sense the aliveness of what’s around you at this moment, through your own aliveness.

And with that comes the feeling, “it’s good to be alive.” You appreciate the many forms of life that are arising at this moment. You don’t impose judgment on the form that life takes at this moment, because the form that life takes changes continuously around you – one moment you’re here, the next moment you’re somewhere else. It’s a deep sense of Being-ness, or aliveness, and through that you appreciate what is, in your life.

And by saying ‘in your life’, it always means in the present moment, because apart from the present moment, there is no such thing as ‘your life’. If there’s something else there that’s not the present moment that you call ‘your life’, it’s a mental construct. You have formed an image of “me” and “my life”, it’s a story, and you mistake that for your life.

Fundamentally your life is whatever form this moment takes. Your life is always what is now. That’s your life. Not some story you’re telling yourself in your head. Through that appreciation, you are sensing a sense of Oneness with what’s outside and what’s inside. There is no longer a separation that is created by excessive conceptual thinking between other people and the self, the separation is created by judgment. There is a sense of allowing the present moment to be as it is.

All these are fundamental aspects of gratitude. It’s that openness to the ‘is-ness’ of this moment. With that openness, comes an appreciation for the ‘is-ness’ of this moment. There is no longer a denial or a rejection of what is, because you have some story in your mind that clashes with what is around you at this moment. And that’s how many people live, so they go through life continuously, there’s a clash between their ideas of what should be now, and what is ‘now’.

The greatest form of suffering and frustration and non-fulfillment is the clash between the mental story of what ’should’ be and what is. That’s really the root of the madness. There cannot be gratitude when that operates in your life. When something seemingly negative happens, people may find it very hard to say, “Okay, I should be grateful, even for this.”

I’m not saying you should do that, because even that is an idea in your head. It’s better to forget about trying to be grateful when something seemingly negative happens, and simply let go of the mental judgment of it, and say, “This is what is, this is what happened, and this is the situation now.”

If you can be free of mental judgment and denial or projection, complaining, and so on … just allow what is, and then something deeper emerges, even in a seemingly negative situation. By coming into this place of acceptance, of the inevitable ‘is-ness’ of now, your inner state is no longer ultimately dependant on what is happening or not happening outside. That is a vital transformation of consciousness, where the external world no longer determines your state of consciousness.

So when something seemingly bad happens, say, “this is.” Whether it is a small thing or a large thing, be open to that. If you’re open to the ‘is-ness’ of what is, something within you which we could call ‘peace’ arises. Sometimes it’s very subtle, and you can’t notice it at first. You’re not grateful for the seemingly bad thing, but you’re grateful that you can still be at peace, even in this situation.

Internally you feel that by accepting, peace arises. Even in seemingly bad circumstances. And what is that peace? It’s an inner sense of aliveness, being-ness, presence. It’s the source of all gratitude. There can be gratitude even when something bad happens. Not for the bad, but for the fact that even in the face of something seemingly negative, there is still peace in the background. But you won’t find that until you first accept what is.

Gratitude is very important. It transforms your whole life, if you can remember the importance of being grateful for life. As you go through your day, every day, you can even have little reminders — of the importance of being appreciative of life. Every person has to verify for themselves, what can I be grateful for at this moment? Sense the being that you are — not just the physical, but the sense of your own presence. That’s a great source of joy, to feel your own presence, it cannot really be defined. That’s the ultimate gratitude.

When Eckhart Tolle TV began, Eckhart referred to it as an ‘experiment’. When asked recently how he felt about it now, Echart replied:

“What I’ve found hard at first with this unfamiliar medium was to have a relationship with a camera – because I’m not used to having a relationship with cameras, I have relationships with people who listen. And the camera, not being alive, I found it hard to speak into the camera, because I felt that there was nobody there.

We had a small studio audience, so I tended to look around the room at other people, at the live beings rather than the seemingly ‘dead’ camera. And people had to continuously point at the camera saying “Look here, look here!” so that you establish a relationship with the people, far more people than in the studio audience who are actually watching from their homes.

And yet, I tried several times and I just couldn’t establish a relationship with the camera, until the third or fourth time. Suddenly, it happened. And spontaneously I visualized the camera not as an object in itself, but as – to use a term from science fiction – a ‘wormhole’. So, I could feel that as I looked into the camera, the camera was no longer there as an obstacle, it was an opening.

So an inner shift had happened inside me, in relationship to the camera. And I could now feel that the camera was actually an opening, and through it I was speaking, suddenly, into the opening. I felt that I was reaching people – the other end of the wormhole. At first, the camera was in the way, and then suddenly my inner perception of it changed, and the camera became an opening.

That, for me, was the most surprising and revolutionary thing that happened, that I can now have a relationship with all the people who are sitting at the other end of the wormhole, in their homes, in their living rooms, or wherever they are. The vital thing here is to sense, to feel, that there is a connection, there is an energy outflow. The experiment seemed to work quite well … because this shift happened.

The next stage of the experiment is just to see how the teaching works through that, over the next year or so. I need to see that it works for people — that it’s transformational for the people who are watching at home. Also, another criterion that I always use for myself, is whether I enjoy doing it. If you are doing something and you don’t really enjoy doing it, then the energy flow isn’t there.

It’s also good to know that the Internet, which is used for many ‘insane’ purposes, is used to bring about a shift in consciousness, raising consciousness rather than lowering consciousness. In itself it’s neutral, like any technology – it is neither good nor bad, it depends how it’s used.

Technology tends to amplify patterns that are already there, in the human mind – so you can see the madness of the human mind amplified if you surf around the Internet, you can see it very clearly there. A lot of it is. But it can also amplify the opposite of that, it can amplify the rising consciousness, a new level of consciousness.

So far, there’s probably more madness than sanity on the Internet, but that could change. We are using this medium to see if it can be used for a positive purpose, rather than amplifying the insanity of the human mind – it counteracts that.”

~ Click here to go to EckhartTolleTV.com

“In the instant of simply opening, you experience that whatever you were struggling with is no longer there. True openness reveals that the struggle — the problem, the bogeyman, the wound — is actually nonexistent. The story is not transformed by openness; it is revealed to be actually nonexistent. The only thing that holds the story in place is the resistance to opening. What remains, when what was feared or fought with disappears, is the openness of existence itself — the truth in the center of your own heart.”

~ by Gangaji.

“You are not a being who is conscious. You are consciousness. Period. This core identity has none of the uniqueness of the individual self. Being beyond all attributes and identifying characteristics, your sense of I-ness is indistinguishable from mine. The light of consciousness shining in you, which you label as “I”, is the same light that I label as “I.” In this we are identical. I am the light. And so are you.”

~ Peter Russell

There’s no way *not* to live non-duality — everyone is being lived this way all the time, even if we think we’re not. This is the teaching of non-duality. Non-duality is not something that we must make true. It can’t NOT be so.

Here are some slice-of-life descriptions of experience that you might call mine, say in the last week. And how the being lived has a certain sweet fragrance that isn’t an experience.

My partner, Skye, and I once had a few wonderful slice-of-life exchanges like this, and I still remember them clearly.

Working, commuting on a crowded, hot, muggy, humid subway. Teaching computers, having to talk 8 hours a day some weeks. Friends breaking up. Girlfriend with Chicken pox. Friends living with AIDS, some smiling, some not smiling. Married couple, husband cheating on wife, telling everyone about it, she in pain. My eating too much too late, waking up with a stomach ache. Riding my bike through the city, no breaks, no gears, fixed-gear track bike, Zen-like motion connected to everything going on around …

…Taking dance-skating lessons, loving it but not being very good or having much time to practice. Weekly meditation meeting/satsang. Helping a friend buy new wardrobe. Attending the Budha’s Birthday celebration at a local Chan temple. Talking and corresponding with many people on the phone, in e-mail, in person, about non-duality. Going to the gym. Burning special Japanese incense. Not getting enough sleep. Paying bills. Reading Western philosophers who are similar to Nagarjuna in some respects. ….

The basic fragrance is an unbroken totally sweet miraculousness. Totally unaffected by the details of what happens. Things that happen are not really things at all, and do not happen by magic, or through a mechanistic scientific causal process. But a present miraculousness. Nothing left out.

It is not all pleasant, but it is all fine, perfect is-ness, because there’s no other way for IS-ness to be. Good day, Fine! Bad day, Fine! No difference, no distance. The meditation and bike riding can be seen as metaphors for how everything is, smoothly connected and not separate from anything. Things that aren’t pleasant aren’t in any way more or less separate than things that are pleasant — the difference is the same as the color red versus green.

None of it ever seems like an “I” or “you” is doing it, it’s all very direct, clear, very here and immediate, “things as it is.” There’s no thought that things should be this way, or that they should be some other way. No thought ever of a Greg or any other entity striving or grasping or letting go of anything. No thought that anything needs to be maintained or chased after or watched or kept. No thought that this is separate from what-is. No thought that a gap exists or must be bridged. Everything taking care of itself, in a smooth, uninterrupted flow. And the flow isn’t even a flow — it is just called a flow, the word arising in the context of this writing.

~ From: Standing as Awareness, by Dr. Greg Goode.

The phrase “Here and Now” is known to all. It is strange to even mentions it, like saying, “Breathe!” Isn’t it clear that we breathe? Well, just as breathing is sometimes strenuous so the experience of Now can be hard work. It happens to us when our attention is bombarded by troublesome thoughts that are not from here and now. Valuable psychic energy is wasted and the result is nervousness and exhaustion. It’s like pressing the accelerator in low gear.

How and when did we lose our connection to ‘Here and Now’?

When we were young and vulnerable, we operated on an automatic and reactive mindset aimed at survival. This mindset is security centered. The mind will struggle for security by constantly trying to make sense of life. That means trying to predict the future based on past experience. The mind gradually develops a ’story’ about oneself. The story consists of explanations of what happened in the past, interpretations of the present and predictions about the future.

Within the story, a child perceives him or herself as the main cause of his or her pains. This often develops into the delusion of “I am not lovable as I am.” The heavy price is a loss of authenticity, of connection to the flow of life, to NOW.

What does it mean to ‘live in the Now’?

Living in the Now means our attention is entirely focused at the present moment, as if we ‘forgot ourselves’ in favor of what is happening right now. Self forgetfulness is to forget the story your mind has created through your life. The story is like a prison whose bars are past memories. Returning to Now is liberation from this prison.

When your attention is fully Now, you don’t sense the effort but the lightness of a playful state of mind. You allow yourself to be who you really are. Does it mean that one should not learn from the past and plan for the future? On the contrary! Being with the flow of life is to experience learning because life is a movement forward through learning and growing.

The Now attention is not engaged in blame, guilt or catastrophising the future but simply in what one can learn for a better future. In Now the attention is free from the ’stories.’ Creating a healthy distance from your stories is what you want to achieve through a process of self-awareness. As you learn to disidentify with the relentless thoughts you free your attention to respond more effectively to the Now.

How can we return to Now?

Returning to Now is, to my view, the most transformative experience a person can have in his or her life. This is a transition in the center of gravity of one’s identity. From controlling-analytical mind — EGO — to the spirit, this loving-abundant capacity within each of us.

While our Ego-attention is operating on the survival pain/pleasure principle, our spirit operates on the abundance principle of unlimited possibilities for flourishing. The one who learns how to shift attention from survival mode to flourishing mode has freed him or herself from the conditioned ego. This will result in a more authentic life, a life that reflects one’s true potential, one’s true nature.

The spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, wrote in The Power of Now that a connection to life occurs when we disidentify with this mindset that psychologically lives the past and future. The liberation is not by taking control of it but by connecting with and observing it. The brain involuntarily generates electro-chemical events that we experience as thoughts and emotions. This is the nature of the mind. Resistance will only feed the same mindset.

We must understand that thoughts are neither right nor wrong. It is our relationship with them that give them the power. It’s like watching a movie: the impact on us is as strong as the belief that what we see is true. Our challenge is to see mental events — thoughts, images, memories etc., as what they really are — a content from the past running on the screen of our mind.

The method we use in order to train the mind to do so is known as mindfulness. Put simply, you learn to notice whatever is happening in the Now. As you develop the skill to just notice, you develop gradually the observer within you. In a state of self-awareness you are not carried away by your thoughts and feelings. The idea is simple, but not the implementation. One has to properly study and practice this ability.

According to Tolle, one of the main gateways to Now is our body. A short exercise of noticing your body experiences will anchor your attention instantly in the Now. Your body is always here, always alive and always changing. By noticing the subtle sensations you increasingly center your core identity as the spiritual self. Observing means unconditional acceptance, without analyzing or judging.

This is an emphatic observation, without ego’s contaminated filter. Such an observation is a skill we left in childhood. While playing in puddles we marveled at the jumping green thing before it became a ‘frog’. Such observation often leads to moments of wonder and awe. Once you experience it, you realize that coming back to Now is like coming back to life.

~ by Hagai Avisar (Hagai will be giving an extended workshop at Gurukula in November. For more details, >>>Click Here)

“The reality of your own self-nature, the absence of cause and effect, is what’s meant by mind (in Zen truth-teaching). This mind has no form or characteristics. It is basically empty, neither pure nor impure. It has never lived or died, appeared or disappeared, increased or decreased. It’s like space. It’s not the same as the sensual mind.

“Only the wise know this mind, this mind called dharma-nature, this mind called liberation. Its names vary but not its essence. The mind’s capacity is limitless, and its manifestations are inexhaustible. Your nature is essentially pure. Your real body is basically pure. Is has no sensation, no hunger or thirst, no good or bad.”

~ by Bodhidharma: the first patriarch of Zen (translation by Red Pine).

A woman inquirer asks to be in silence with UK spiritual teacher, Mooji, nothing more. Mooji tells her there is a real silence which is effortless and natural; that there is no one there to practice it — it only awaits discovery… >>>Click Here

And Prakash would like to gift you with his eBook, The Little Book of Silence Click the ETN logo button on the landing page to receive it free. It’s really an innovation that in such a short read, you really “get the point”.

Candace O’Denver covers the basics in her ‘Great Freedom’ teachings and gives excellent Introduction to Awareness talks entitled: ‘Fully Alive’ etc.

Finally — Check out Richard Miller’s TV channel, which runs archived shows 24/7, or choose the webcast you want to see on the VOD – Video on Demand – button. This is also the link where you will see the live show. There are so many things for you to look into.

H W L Poonja, later known as Papaji, became awakened after sitting with the Indian saint, Ramana Maharshi. Papaji himself became a powerful spiritual guide and helped many Western seekers to end their search after they in turn discovered their true essential Self. Probably best know among these is Gangaji, an American spiritual teacher who has visited Australia several times.

Papaji, as a body/mind/personality, passed away on September 6, 1997 – in India, they refer to the passing of any ‘awakened’ person as their Mahasamadhi. A special memorial to Papaji’s passing can be viewed on YouTube entitled, Papaji’s Prayer, created by Satya and Akshara, hosts of Beingness TV.

In the early 1990s, Papaji often began his Satsangs with a discourse centering around a particular topic. Powerful and direct, these discourses became known as Om Shantis and revealed what comes and goes, and what ever remains. The chant you will hear through the video presentation repeats the evocative words, ‘om shanti’.

Also while visiting this page, check out the video of Gangaji’s exchange with a satsang attender entitled, The Face in the Mirror. It gives a brief but insightful pointer to the truth from a ‘Headless’ perspective.