Levels of Being in This World

     "We access the mind of calm abiding through recognition. What do we recognize? Awareness: the ever-present knowing quality of mind, from which we are never separated for an instant. Even though normally we do not recognize awareness, we can no more live without it than we can live without breathing. ... Discovering our own awareness allows us to access the natural steadiness and clarity of the mind, which exist independent of conditions and circumstances, and independent of our emotions and moods."  
       Mingyur Rinpoche


      “normally, for probably all human beings in all cultures, the default state is an ego state. In neurobiology, we know that the default state of most people, where they’re not doing something or actively thinking about something, is a running commentary about themselves and their own life and what’s going on. Trungpa Rinpoche called it ‘subconscious gossip.’ That is like a one-foot layer of debris on top of the ocean of our state of being, and most of us think that who we are is just this incessant thinking and ruminating and grinding away at our issues, obsessions and so on. We have no awareness at all of who we really are in the full sense."
       Reginald A. Ray  http://www.soundstrue.com/store/weeklywisdom/?page=single&category=IATE&episode=6324


 

Phases of the Moonsnail by Kath Kornelsen Rutherford www.fogforestgallery.ca