The Seer

We think that freedom consists in having what we want. In reality, freedom is a kind of loss. As Jesus said, you have to lose your life to save it.

When there’s no longer any ownership of life, no longer anyone there who is trying to possess any aspect of experience, life is no longer something to be feared and rejected, but something to be loved and celebrated.

Imagine this:

A balloon, filled with air, floats in an infinite sea of air.

And the balloon says to itself, “I’m an individual. I live in a world full of individuals. A world of me and mine: my thoughts, my memories, my beliefs, my achievements, my successes, my failures, my past, my future, my relationships. I own a little piece of the whole, a little piece of life. This is my little part of everything.”

What the balloon fears most is its own popping — in other words, its own death — because it sees this as the ultimate loss of ‘me and mine’. In other words, death is the loss of ‘my little part of everything’. The end of ‘my life’.

What the balloon cannot see is that death is liberation. Upon death, ‘my little part of everything’ simply explodes back into everything. ‘My life’ dissolves back into life itself. And what is seen is that ‘my life’ was always an illusion, because there was never anyone there separate from everything! There was only ever everything! The balloon never ‘had’ anything to begin with, and so could never ‘lose’ anything. Upon death, nothing is lost.

And this seeing can happen upon what we call physical death, or it can happen now. Die before you die, and there is no death.

The mind will never be able to comprehend what I am talking about. But somewhere beyond the mind, somewhere beyond thought, somewhere beyond the stories we tell about life, there can be a recognition, a resonance, a knowing. And that’s what this message is really about: a recognition that’s totally beyond mind.

You are perfect as you are — even in your imperfection. Life is perfect as it is, even if you cannot see that yet. This is a journey into your own absence, an absence which finally reveals itself as the perfect presence of everything, as the Home you’ve always been seeking, and what will be found is this: You wrote these words yourself, to remind yourself of what, deep down, you have always known.

~ by Jeff Foster

Since resistance is inseparable from the mind, relinquishment of resistance — surrender — is the end of the mind as your master, the impostor pretending to be *you,* the false god. All judgment and all negativity dissolve. The realm of Being, which had been obscured by the mind, then opens up.

Suddenly, a great stillness arises within you, an unfathomable sense of peace. And within that peace, there is great joy. And within that joy, there is love. And at the innermost core, there is the sacred, the immeasurable, That which cannot be named.

I don’t call it finding God, because how can you find that which was never lost, the very life that you are? The word God is limiting not only because of thousands of years of misperception and misuse, but also because it implies an entity other than you.

God is Being itself, not *a* being. There can be no subject-object relationship here, no duality, no you and God. God-realization is the most natural thing there is. The amazing and incomprehensible fact is not that you can become conscious of God but that you aren’t conscious of God.

~ From: The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle

The mystic-poet, William Blake, once noted the contrast between himself and a certain religionist, in the lines: “Both read the Bible day and night. But thou read’st black where I read white.”

The point is well illustrated by a fundamentlalist minister who once confronted an enlightened shoe-maker over the issue of eternal damnation.

The preacher taunted, “If I were like you and feared not the fires of hell, I could strike you down, steal your horse and saddle and ride away without a care!”

The shoe-maker quietly answered, “If you were truly awakened, that idea would never occur to you!”

All those who fully understood the life and teachings of Jesus came to realize that ‘Christ’ is not a person, but another name for the infinite presence latent in each of us — the divine Light, that scripture says, shines in everyone that comes into the world.

This means that essentially, you too are not a person, but the infinite, unborn, undying, field of awareness that witnesses every thought, feeling and eperience of your manifest self.

The challenge now, and in every ‘now’, is for you to turn from your confining egoic limitation and, like Jesus, become intentionally one with the limitless Christ-consciousness.

~ For more on The Inner ‘Christ’, >>>Click Here

There are two of us at all times. Even now, in this very moment, there are two of you living your life. Or it could be said, that Life is living you as two dimensions …

There is the You which is pure formless awareness, and, there is the you that you think you are and all of its stories and history and hopes and dreams. Another way of saying this is that you are consciousness itself AND you are an ego personality that exists in and because of your thoughts.

If we look at these two side-by-side, we get an even clearer picture:

Pure Consciousness ~ Ego Personality
Formless awareness ~ Thought forms
Known through presence ~ Known through thoughts
Present-moment being ~ Past and future idealization
Lives here and now ~ Lives elswhere, in the past and future
Body-centered ~ Thought-centered
Identity-less; free from all attachments and identifications ~ Identified with personal story, status, roles, nationality, jobs, things, etc

Transcendent ~ Temporal
Inner sense of aliveness ~ Mental thought processes
Infinite depth ~ Outer surface
The Observer ~ The supposed doer
Peaceful serenity, quiet equanimity ~ Drama, reactivity, suffering
At one with all that is, harmoniously ~ Separate from others; often in conflict

By dis-identifying with the ego, we naturally gain access to the experience of our true nature, the present-moment awareness that we know by being here, now.

~ by Eckhart Tolle. See >>>video clip

Truth is only discovered in the moment. There is no truth that can be carried over to the next moment, the next day, the next year. Memory never contains truth, only what is past, dead, gone.

Truth comes into the non-seeking mind fresh and alive. It is not something you can carry with you, accumulate, or hold onto.

Truth leaps into view when the mind is quiet, not asserting itself. You cannot contain or domesticate truth, for if you do, it dies instantly.

Truth prowls the unknown waiting for a gap in the mind’s activity. When that gap is there, the truth leaps out of the unknown into the known.

Instantly you comprehend it and sense its sacredness. The timeless has broken through like a flash of lightning and illuminated the moment with its presence.

Truth comes to an innocent mind as a blessing and a sacrament. Truth is a holy thing because it liberates thought from itself and illumines the human heart from the inside out.

~ by Adyashanti, 2009

“Dig in thine own field for this Pearl of Eternity that lies hidden in it; it cannot cost thee too much, nor canst thou buy it too dear; for it is ALL; and when thou hast found it, thou wilt know, that all which thou hast sold or given away (or ‘lost’) for it, is as a mere nothing, as a bubble upon the water.” ~ William Law

Centuries ago in China, Master Tsung-i would instruct others by saying, “The whole universe is One Bright Pearl.” (cf. ‘Consciousness is all there is’)

“One Bright Pearl” thoroughly expresses it even though not itself revealed in its name, and we can recognize it in its name.

“One Bright Pearl” directly transcends the eons, and because in eternal past it never ceased to be, it reaches up to the eternal present.

Though there is one’s mind now and one’s body now, they are just the One Bright Pearl. This grass or that tree are not grass and tree, nor are the mountains and rivers of the world mountains and rivers; they are One Bright Pearl.

Thus, the Bright Pearl, existing just so and being beginningless, transcends changes in time and place. The whole universe is One Bright Pearl.

We do not speak of two or three pearls, and so the entirety is one True Dharma Eye, the Body of Reality, One Expression. The entirety is Brilliant Light, One Mind.

When [the Bright Pearl] is the entirety, nothing hinders it. Round [like a pearl], it rolls around and around.

~ by Zen Master Dogen Ki-gen

To read the rest of this article >>>Click Here

“Jesus was the Christ, but the Christ is much more than what we see as Jesus. The body of Jesus had a beginning in the womb of Mary, but the Christ exists eternally — long before the body of Jesus came into being. The Christ is never born and, therefore, never dies. There is only one Christ in all eternity. Our confusion over the nature of Jesus stems from our inability to see the body as nothing more than a garment. Jesus knew he was the Christ and not the perishable body.”

~ by Ethan Walker III, from The Mystic Christ pp 103.

The good man may not be aware that somewhere on Earth, while he slept, other men were seeking the true Light and meditating upon it. And this Light that I speak of is the Light behind the light — the same that kindled the Sun and Moon and stars in the beginning. And this Light — the Light of the world — is what every man born is seeking all the days of his earthly life, whether he knows it or not.

I will mention the feeblest of all lights — the candle that burns all night in a cold cell of this monastery. The monks here are all frail creatures like the men of the ploughshare and the net and given to error, but now and then, here and there, in cell and sanctuary, all over the world, a great company of minds and hearts is set on a quest for the ultimate meaning of things — for that goodness and truth and beauty that are at the heart of life.

The world is wrapped in night and sleep: a solitary sits at his candle and his spirit is abroad on the ocean of God’s love. Presently, the night-watcher is aware that the flame of his candle is so thin as to be invisible. The Sun, new risen, is flooding through his window. It is not the Sun of all vanity, but the Sun of holy wisdom, and under it, wonderful things are done day after day to the end of time.

These truths are not given only to a solitary here and there in the long watches of the night, they aught to be part of every man, woman and child. If we are true to that Light, we shall know when our last day on Earth, if not before, that life is a thing of beauty beyond price. The peace of the Light that we tend and trim in our hearts will outlast the darkness and the dust of death. And so, dear children of the Light, go out in peace to your fields and your fishing boats.

~ From the novel: Vinland by George MacKay Brown, Ch. 5.
(the conclusion of a short sermon given many centuries ago by Abbot Peter in a monastery chapel in the Orkney Isles)

Conscious Awareness or ‘Pure Consciousness’, is not attainable via any religious theory, ritual, or belief. This is why Jesus told the Scribes and Pharisees, who held fast to their traditions and beliefs, that they did not understand his message, nor did they understand the message of their own scripture.

Jesus would say the same today to all those who hold dear to ancient, traditional beliefs, whether Christian beliefs or not.

The finite mind of self is incapable of realizing a Pure Consciousness that is other than self. Pure Consciousness is not realized through self, but through Christ. Not the Christian Christ, nor a person called Christ, but the living Christ — the Spiritual Christ.

The apostle Paul referred to the Christ on at least one occasion as the ‘mind of Christ.’ In so saying, he was speaking of an Awareness in Consciousness that is other than self.

Christ Jesus was Jesus in Christ, or Jesus having realized Pure Consciousness through Christ. The Kingdom of Heaven, which is Pure Conscious Awareness absent the self, is likewise realized (becomes real) through Christ.

Thus, following his awakening, Jesus could declare, ‘the time is fulfilled’ (Pure Consciousness has awakened in Man), therefore ‘the kingdom of God is at hand.’

~ From: The Christ is Not a Person, by J.C. Tefft. pp 22. (recommeded by Eckhart Tolle)

Truth (and the liberation it brings) tends to emerge in those who provide an environment within which it can more readily evolve. The Inner Garden must be tended to, cared for, and nurtured, so that the seed of greater conscious awareness can grow, flower and bear fruit. ~ J.C. Tefft