The Seer

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.

As far as I know, the late US spiritual coach, Richard Rose, coined the word between-ness, and if there is one word that can revolutionize our life-experience today, that would be it. Between-ness. But just how do I mean that? How did Rose mean it?

Between-ness is an elusive concept not easily explained, but once you relax into it and feel it, you know everything about it. Rose sometimes called it ‘white magic.’ If you place yourself, in consciousness, between thought and no-thought,” he would affirm, “everything will work together for your good in an extraordinary way.”

In the field of electro-dynamics, as we know, there must be an unbroken connection between the positive and negative poles before energy can flow and produce useful outcomes. In spirituality, you could say the the positive and negative poles represent the infinite and finite dimensions of our present manifestation.

If we are totally identified with either of these ‘polarities’, if there is no recognzied connection or inseparability between these two aspects of the One Reality, then there can be no ‘creative’ energy flow in and through our life-experience.

As long as we feel outselves to be a particular form only, sepaate and distict from all other forms, and especially, from the Formless or divine dimension, there can be no inate power to create or renew, no sense of our being in harmony with the Universe. or, as Rose put it … no ‘white magic’.

When, at last, we ‘let go’ our attachment to a particular form, and move out, in consciosness, into that space between all forms, and any concept of the Formless, we will find ourselves in that no-place where all things are possible because now everything is allowed to be.

Between-ness can be used to manifest anything that is required, from the most mundane to the most exalted. As an experiment, Rose even used it when playing poker to get the cards he wanted dealt to him. But most importantly, he also taught that between-ness could and should be employed as a means to Self-realization. Used in this way, he called it ultimate between-ness.

Of course, in ultimate between-ness, no longer any ‘person’ trying to get something, but simply an unconfined sense of “Thy will be done.” and the need of the moment is invariably met. Jesus of Nazareth knew the presence and power of ultimate between-ness, but so can we if we make the ’shift’ in consciousness that he lived. Only in this way can we move mountains — or, better yet, open a door to and from the Absolute.

~ by Pete Sumner

By resting as spacious awareness, we recognize that awareness is the great, loving, and vast source of all phenomena. There is an unmistakable confidence recognized in awareness. It’s not a mental certainty. It is not known only when we are expressing a view about awareness. It is not known through mentally convincing ourselves that awareness is the source. It is a fearless inner knowing that awareness is our primary identity.

This knowing permeates each and every thought, emotion, state, and experience. Even that isn’t quite accurate. Awareness is none other than each thought, emotion, state, and experience. Therefore this confidence is known while thinking about awareness, while not thinking at all, while chopping carrots, and while studying quantum physics. The knowing is unshakable.

Life is perfect seamlessness. The real treasure of awareness is seeing that thoughts, emotions, states, and experiences seamlessly, dynamically, and naturally bleed into one other so much so that the dividing line between them is seen as not real. Thinking will tell you that the experience of eating cake is a separate and distinct act from thinking about drag racing. But direct experience reveals that there is a seamless flow. Basic awareness appears seamlessly as eating cake and then thinking about drag racing. Only thought divides those up into discrete things.

The real beauty is that the thought that divides those things up also seamlessly appears from basic awareness. And the beauty beyond that is that there is a seamlessness even between awareness and the appearances of awareness, between awareness and thinking, between awareness and eating cake, between awareness and thinking about awareness, and between awareness and thinking about eating cake. It sounds complicated until you rely on direct experience. At that point, it is simply the truth. One no longer even sees awareness as something separate from its appearances or vice versa.

It may seem at first that there are separate and discrete thoughts, emotions, states, and experiences happening in awareness. But upon closer examination, there is nothing separate and apart from anything else. The categories ‘awareness,’ ‘thoughts,’ ‘emotions,’ ’states,’ and ‘experiences’ are — themselves — thoughts. Thoughts reify the seamlessness of life, giving the appearance of individual, discrete moments or things happening.

There can be a subtle leaning toward certain appearances and a turning away from others. That leaning itself is a mental point of view. This leaning is done apparently in the name of seeking, maintaining, or recreating the experience of awareness. But awareness is not an experience. It is the ground of each and every experience.

It may appear at first that thinking obscures awareness. It doesn’t. Awareness is the ground of thinking. Nothing obscures awareness because everything is an appearance of awareness, including reification. Reification is a brilliant function of mind. It is no small wonder that the human mind can conceptualize. It is brilliant progress. The intellect is not something to be destroyed or quieted. It is none other than awareness.

So then why does the intellect or thinking seem to obscure awareness? Why do certain emotions, states, and experiences feel like awareness and other emotions, states, and experiences appear to obscure awareness? Perhaps it is because awareness is being treated as a discrete experience or state to get back to or reach in time, rather than as the source of all states, thoughts, emotions, and experiences.

Although at first it may be helpful to rest as awareness and simply notice thoughts appearing and disappearing from awareness (i.e., witnessing), there can be a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) tendency to disengage from the reifying mind. It is important to say that witnessing thought and disengaging from it are also perfect expressions of awareness.

It’s also important to point out that, in reifying this seamlessness, thought can make thought itself into a problem. Thought then divides up experience between moments of thinking and not thinking and subtly chooses moments of not thinking as favorable. It then mistakenly calls the latter ‘awareness.’ But it’s all awareness. Only thought would separate out the seamless flow of life into categories of thought v. no thought.

So in the moment of believing that thought obscures awareness, a mental point of view is appearing. The point of view is ‘thinking is something separate from what I am and it obscures what I am.’ But this is a misunderstanding of what you are. Life is perfect seamlessness. You are life and life appears as everything.

There is nothing here that is not life including the intellect. The intellect seems to obscure awareness only when we miss that our fundamental, unchanging, primary identity is the source of the intellect — awareness. In that seeing, nothing obscures the source because the source is seen to appear as everything. Does the source obscure itself?

In really abiding in the deep confidence of knowing yourself as the perfect seamlessness of reality, there is a freedom way beyond simply resting as awareness. The freedom is in seeing that every single experience is also awareness. This is a fearless knowing, a confidence that thinking cannot provide.

This is the knowing that awareness, which is what you are, is not just appearing AS each thought, emotion, state, and experience, it IS each thought, emotion, state, and experience. Again, it’s fearless. You know, in this confidence, that nothing can be lost in this perfect seamlessness. There is nothing to be lost and nothing to turn away from because you are everything.

~ by Scott Kiloby

Peter’s Pearls is now featuring Scott’s teachings. If you would like to receive a short, free, insightful quote by Scott to start your day >>>Just Send This Blank Email.