The Seer

Question: How long does it take to become free of the pain-body?

Eckhart: It depends both on the density of an individual’s pain-body as well as the degree or intensity of that individual’s arising Presence. But it is not the pain-body, but identification with it that causes the suffering that you inflict on yourself and others. It is not the pain-body but identification with the pain-body that forces you to relive the past again and again and keeps you in a state of unconsciousness.

So a more important question to ask would be this: “How long does it take to become free of identification with the pain-body?” And the answer to that question: It takes no time at all. When the pain-body is activated, know that what you are feeling is the pain-body in you. This knowing is all that is needed to break your identification with it. And when identification with it ceases, the transmutation begins.

The knowing prevents the old emotion from rising up in your head and taking over not only the internal dialogue, but also your actions as well as interactions with other people. This mean the pain-body cannot use you anymore and renew itself through you. The old emotion may then still live in you for a while and come up periodically. It may also still occasionally trick you into identifying with it again and thus obscure the knowing, but not for long.

Not projecting the old emotion into situations means facing it directly within yourself. It may not be pleasant, but it won’t kill you. Your Presence is more than capable of containing it. The emotion is not who you are.

When you feel the pain-body, don’t fall into the error of thinking there is something wrong with you. Making yourself into a problem – the ego loves that. The knowing needs to be followed by accepting. Anything else will obscure it again.

Accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment. It is part of the isness of the Now. You can’t argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer. Through allowing, you become what you are: vast, spacious. You become whole. You are not a fragment anymore, which is how the ego perceives itself. Your true nature emerges, which is one with the nature of God.

Jesus points to this when he says, “Be ye whole, even as your Father in Heaven is whole.” The New Testament’s “Be ye perfect” is a mistranslation of he original Greek word, which means whole. This is to say, you don’t need to become whole, but be what you already are – with or without the pain-body.

~ by Eckhart Tolle

Young Billy’s room always seemed to be in a mess, with clothes and toys strewn everywhere.

Determined to do something about it, his mother waited until he was in bed one night and then burst into his room demanding, “Who didn’t hang up his clothes before he got into bed?”

There was a movement under the coverlet, an innocent pair of brown eyes looked up to hers and a small voice said wonderingly, “Adam?”

You asked: “duz luv always hurt?” The answer to that, Ade, depends on where you are in yourself. If you’re immersed in your ’story’ and phenomena like thoughts and feelings, then, yes, love from this source always hurts.

I’m sure you know the reason why — love that comes from the ’soul’ and fixes on an ‘object’ makes us vulnerable … we open ourselves up to having our felt needs met or not met, to great happiness or bitter disappointment, pleasure or pain etc. etc.

Because nobody can fully or always satisfy the emotional needs of another, we are each bound to suffer if we look to other people or things to make us happy all, or most, of the time. We expect more from others than they can give and look for happiness in the wrong place … out there!

A love that focuses on some form always, however deeply disguised, inevitably has a hidden agenda that goes something like ,,, “I’ll remain truly happy if you do what I want you to do for me.” In other words, love that rises no higher than the level of form is a essentially a love that is dependent on or caused by someone or something else.

On the other hand, true love … the only love that lasts … arises from your true nature … your ‘formless’ Self … which some also call your unconditioned Self. This love is uncaused … it doesn’t rely on something else to inspire or engender it … and this love NEVER hurts … it just goes on shining whether it is reflected back or not. Nothing can ever touch your true Self of injure it in any way whatsoever … it just IS … always.

You can always tell the difference between ‘thought-based, emotional love’ and true love quite simply. Mind-made or emotional love is judgmental while true love is not. Love that arises from the story of ‘me’ inevitably thinks, “S/he should do/be etc. etc.” or “S/he aught to or aught not to have etc. etc.” and this soon leads to mind-made suffering and depression.

If we can ’step back’ inwardly and simply ‘watch’ judgments arising in our awareness, they will not take hold of us but drift on by like passing clouds. If we simply ‘notice’ our thinking processes and emotional shifts from the vantage point of spacious awareness, we find that there’s a loving acceptance of whatever arises in our world.

We notice the phenomena that come and go in our awareness, then notice that awareness itself does NOT come and go but always and already IS.

This pure, untouched, untouchable Consciousness is what you really are, Ade, and as you identify with ‘this’ rather than your transitory thoughts and feelings, I think you will find you are experiencing a true love that never hurts because it is never in opposition to anything that arises.

Your mind can be a wonderful tool but it can also be an obstacle to Self discovery and the discovery of the Love that never hurts (which is the same thing). The challenge is to move beyond the mind and rest in ‘that’ which was never born and will never die … the eternal, infinite and loving Awareness that you are.

Blessings,

Question: How do I maintain a sense of presence when I’m in the company of another person? How do I bring presence into conversation?

Eckhart: It’s not easy. The moment you start talking, the two minds come together and so they strengthen each other. A flow starts, a stream of thought. A moment ago you were present, and then somebody starts talking. What applies here is the loss of space during the conversation. Both participants of the conversation have lost any sense of space.

There are only the words, the mind, the verbalization, the stream of thinking that becomes sounds. They are taken over by that. It has its own momentum — almost a little entity, a stream, that doesn’t want to end. Often, it generates emotions in the body. That strengthens it, amplifies it.

If the mental stream triggers emotions, which it often does, especially when talking about other people, what they did, failed to do, did to you, did to others, criticisms, gossip, all kinds of emotional [things], the ego comes in. When you can criticize another, the ego feels a little bit stronger. By diminishing another, in the delusional system of the ego, you have enhanced your own self-image a little bit. Any criticism of another is a part of that energy stream.

And then emotions come, and they amplify the thoughts. It’s the loss of space.For you to regain space, without saying “I’m not talking anymore”, one thing is necessary for you — which is the realization that you’ve lost space. Without that, there’s nothing you can do — when you’re so taken over by a stream of thought, that you don’t even know you’ve been taken over by a stream of thought — there’s nothing you can do.

“Forgive them, for they know not what they do”. They are unconscious. They are the stream of thought. And as the stream of thought, you don’t want it to end — because you don’t want your own end. Every entity wants to remain in form for as long as possible.If there’s the slightest realization that you’ve lost space, at that moment you have a choice.

What is your choice? Your choice is to bring some presence, some space, into the stream of thought. But how do you do that? It’s coming at you not only from within your own mind, but it’s coming at you from the other person too. The awareness is there, and it may only last three seconds, and then it’s gone again. So you have to use those two or three seconds, where you realize the loss of space, and do something in that space where you have some freedom to act.

By a conscious choice, you take your attention out of thinking — but you have to anchor it somewhere else, otherwise it won’t work. So you choose your breath, or your body, or some other sense perception around you that you become aware of. When you are actually talking to another person, it’s probably easiest to either use your breath or your inner body.

Practice this beforehand, when conditions are easier, so that you can do it once it’s necessary. Go into your inner body, feel that your energy field is alive. And you’ll notice, you’re not thinking anymore. You can still listen. The amazing thing is that you can listen to another person, without thinking, easily, beautifully. You are listening, but part of your attention is on your energy field — so you’ve taken attention away from your thoughts.

There is a sense of aliveness in the background. It’s ultimately formless; it’s already the doorway into the formless. Feel that while you sit there and listen, and you’ve stepped out of the stream of thinking. Then, the quality of the interaction immediately changes. The other person may not consciously notice what’s happening, and may carry on for a while.

It also does not mean that you cannot respond anymore. But how you respond and the quality of your response changes, too. You are no longer contributing to the negative nature, which is often the case, in conversations. A certain amount of stillness, then, will also be a part of the words that you speak. It’s so subtle that the other person probably will not notice it, consciously.

So hang on to the inner body, let it be the anchor, and then you become present. If you lose it again, if the other person says something challenging, then after a little while you remember — and you go back into the inner body. That’s a powerful anchor, and then everything changes from there. It takes continuous practice.

~ by Eckhart Tolle

• Think about all the things you have to do. Do this as you are going about your day. Go over your to-do list mentally many times a day, especially in the midst of doing something. Then talk about how much you have to do and how busy you are with everyone.

• Keep checking the time, and think about time a lot: how much time something took, how much time something takes, how much time something will take, how much time you have left. Tell yourself you don’t have enough time, or worry that you don’t.

• Constantly evaluate how you’re doing as you go about your day: “Did I do that well enough?” “Could I have done it better or faster?” “How did it compare with last time or with how someone else does it?” “How could or should I do it next time?”

• Say yes to every request from others that comes your way. Believe that you should be able to do it all — everything you think you need to do and everything everyone else wants you to do. Assume that everyone else is juggling all these things perfectly.

• Tell negative stories about life, yourself and your life, and other people: “I can’t do anything right,” “Life is too hard,” “No one will ever love me,” “I will never be happy,” and so on. (What do you tell yourself that causes you to feel unhappy and stressed?)

• Don’t take time to rest or do the things you’d really like to do. Don’t expect or allow yourself to enjoy life — just get things done, as much as you can fit in, in one day! Be efficient. Don’t make happiness, love, or peace a priority. Don’t make your Self a priority, but your goals or everyone else’s needs.

The good news is that all of this stress-creation is happening within your own mind! The reason this is good news is that you don’t have to believe everything that goes through your mind. You can learn to ignore the mind when it is producing thoughts that create stress, and when you do, you will no longer feel stressed. Stress is not caused by life itself, but by what we tell ourselves about life, by how we choose to think and what we choose to believe.

Thinking is nearly always bound to create stress because the voice in our head (also called the e called the egoic mind) is a primarily negative voice and a time tyrant. This voice keeps us tied to it with fears, worries, admonitions, judgments, and commands. It’s a tyrant that, with its constant evaluations and demands, keeps us unhappy.

We all have a similar tyrannical voice in our head, but we don’t have to give it our attention. Instead, we can learn to be very present to whatever we are doing, which is actually very efficient. But more importantly, being present to what we are doing results in enjoyment of life.

When we are present to what we are doing instead of to the voice in our head and its demands and judgments, we feel peace, love, happiness, and contentment. These states are not achieved by following the voice in our head, but by ignoring the voice in our head and simply experiencing life without the mind’s constant commentary. What creates stress? This ongoing mental commentary does. This is a great discovery because it means we have the power to free ourselves from stress once

~ by Gina Lake – from her blog at RadicalHappiness.com

“When the dream self is seen to be nothing but an illusion, physical death is no longer feared. The fear of death arises only because the dream self believes it is a real entity totally separate from the rest of life — an entity that can die. But your real identity is beyond the cycle of physical birth and death. When the fear of death dies, the fear of living goes with it. That is non-dual freedom.”

~ From: Reflections of the One Life, by Scott Kiloby

The Awakened Eye blog is about the eye that perceives without labeling — we could also call it the innocent eye, or the eye of beginner’s mind.

Many artists and artisans have understood that the practice of drawing and engaging in creative encounters in the visual arts can — by making obvious one’s conditioned reactions — open the mind to another way of seeing, a way that transcends habitual dualistic assumptions.

There have been, and are, many wise teachers who speak of this transcendence of duality as one’s original or true state — a state which we seem compelled to seek and reject simultaneously. Their teachings are sometimes referred to as Advaita, which means “one without a second” — or more simply, non-duality. In this context the awakened eye is synonymous with the awakened “I”; this topic forms the wider agenda of this blog.

This blog and the website have been conceived as places where ideas and teachings on this topic put forward by artists, educators, scientists, philosophers, sages and saints, can be accessed. There will also be personal notes from she-who-scribbles, and hopefully plenty of useful links.

The author, Miriam Louisa Simons, says: “As the website and this blog develop, I hope you find inspiration and encouragement there to support your inquiry, and that you realize that your awakened eye — your vast, open, non-dual understanding is here, this very moment, reading these words …”

Also, Matt King has just launched the Non-Duality America blog which is devoted to celebrating the message of nonduality and bringing it to a wider audience. This blog is characterized by openness, inclusion and the diversity of voices that are now speaking about the truth of our beingness.

If we have learned
Our lessons from life’s
Losses and failures, and
All that makes it worthwhile…

If we have learned
From our journey
And found the new fullness
Of our human-hood,
We begin to see
The patterns beneath
The surface of things.

Everywhere there is
Something that is lasting…
That doesn’t change
In the center of all
The changes made…
All along the journey
To what we are,
Where we are
In this moment.

Deep and untouchable
Divine patterning
Like arrows
Pointing always to
Something undefined by mind,
Something still
but in motion,
Not old or new.

Gathering both together
Seamlessly being
What has always been
In the unabashed
Nakedness of reality,
Just here, just this,
Unadorned.

~ by Alice Gardner

A big dog goes into a Western Union office, puts his front paws up on the counter in front of a clerk, and says in a husky but quite audible voice: “I want to send a telegram.”

“What’s your message then?” asked the astonished clerk.

“Woof woof, woof woof, woof woof woof woof woof!” replies the dog.

The clerk diligently writes it down, looks at the dog and says “We have a promo going on today, ten words for the price of nine. Shall I add one more woof?”

The dog replies “Then it wouldn’t make any sense would it?”

~ Passed on by my dog, Turlow (who can almost talk). Thanks Mr T.

All things, all beings and all activities, no matter how ordinary, are equal expressions of the Infinite.

There is no more or less Infinite, no higher or lower Infinite. Therefore, all attempts to either find or hold onto the Infinite are based in illusion. And illusion itself is none other than the Infinite.

The Infinite uses all measures in order to awaken in all the various forms in existence. It uses birth, life, death, happiness, sorrow, clarity, and delusion in order to awaken.

All of your seeking is in reality the activity of the Infinite as well. No matter how far astray or deluded you become, you can never get a single step away from the Infinite’s embrace.

If you could all at once stop believing your dreaming mind and be completely still right in the midst of your present state, the Infinite would effortlessly present itself.

~ Adyashanti