Awakened Perspective

    “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.” Jonathan Haidt & Dacher Keltner

    “The only service you can do for anyone (including yourself) is to remind them of their true nature.” Stephen Levine

 

    This information Jonathan Ashford brought back will resonate, uplift and help guide when you're ready to hear it:

    “It was made very clear to me on the other side, that the information that I have is for those who are ready to receive it. One of the messages which was very clear is that it’s for the one, not the 99. And coming back, it’s kind of like, well, who’s that one? Who’s that one person this is for? But you get to this understanding that the information is catered to each individual. It’s for the one, the one, the one, the one. And everybody hears it in a way that helps them. 
    But the message is, if I could say there is one message, is everything that I was shown was based on love. It’s the glue that holds together who we are, what we are, reality, the formless. It’s understanding that everything can be boiled down to love. Even the worst day of your life is a loving day. But you can only get there when you wake up. You can only get there if you make the free will choice to try and remember what you are and live consciously. Otherwise, it will never make sense.

    There are a few reasons (why we come here over and over again). I like to remind everybody that if you chose to come back here, you came to serve. You serve the whole with your next breath. There’s not anything you need to do or change. But you do serve the whole. We’re all tools in the garden that get picked up to be used appropriately when they’re needed to be used. So, we all experience what we need to experience through others, through our circumstances, through what we experience in life. If you lived in that cave your entire life, you wouldn’t experience much. The reason we come down is to remember. You could say it’s to remember love. And you could say we turn away from the sun so that we can remember that there’s a sun behind us, and turn back and experience it. So, it’s always going out to return. And most people try to intellectualize their way there, but it’s more about the free will choice of remembering love, not intellectual love, not conditional love, but unconditional love.

    And unconditional love is saying there’s nothing to worry about. I go on forever. Death isn’t death. Unconditional love is knowing that there’s a benevolent force in the room with you at all times. It doesn’t sit in a throne somewhere. Unconditional love is recognizing everybody here has the same amnesia and they’re just doing what they’re doing because of the amnesia. And when you wake up, you can grow in compassion in ways that are beyond measure, just recognizing that that neighbour you don’t like just doesn’t remember.

    (Our future depends on) 2 possibilities (according to) the visions I’ve had recently. Those 2 possibilities are right back to that free will choice: whether I choose to live as an awakened being OR I’m asleep. And that directly affects what we will experience.

    Everybody asks me how to change the world. How can we help? And I give everybody the same answer. ‘Wake up.’ You awake changes the world. I was shown this on the other side. Imagine that the billions of people in the world all wake up tomorrow and everybody’s awake and are loving beings. What happens? Well, the earth stops. This whole reality stops. The whole reality here is based on contrast, because the contrast is the sandpaper that wakes you up to what you are. And if you no longer need it, what’s the point of contrast? 
    But it’s the understanding that it’s not about volume, it’s about authenticity. So, it isn’t well, if we only get 3 million people to wake up, we’re safe. It’s more about there’s a hand that moves pieces on a board, and we’re the pieces. Are we giving it the opportunity to move us in a way that benefits the whole? Or are we fighting the hand? When you wake up, you don’t fight the hand. You know that the hand is there for you. You know that the hand is there for all others. But if we’re in our intellects and our egos, we fight the hand because we’re viewing reality through our own intellect and our intellect has its own lens of what it thinks is right, wrong, good, bad, where we want to end up. 
    So, it’s a time of surrender. Surrendering to the fact that you’re something more. Does everybody need to wake up? No. But those who are close to waking up, should.

    Interviewer Q: Do you fear death?
    Jonathan Ashford (JA): No. Not at all.

    Q: If you met somebody that was grieving over the loss of a loved one, what type of advice would you give?
    JA: I’ve done it many times. I speak to a lot of widows and people who are about to pass. And I tell them, imagine yourself as the ocean. And then a warm or cold air hits the ocean and you turn into fog. And then a warm or cold air comes again and you turn into a cloud. And a warm or cold air shows up again, then you turn into the rain that falls back in the ocean. Were you ever not the ocean? The ocean was always there. Death is nothing more than a change of state. 
    You’re not going anywhere. You’re not lost. You’re not in some other realm. You’re just the fog now or the cloud or the rain. You’re still in the same room. You’re still here. You still have access to everything, to everybody. And I often tell people to just speak to them because they can hear you. Everything here is alive. Everything here is connected. And it’s just understanding that we’re no longer in form. We’re just formless. But we’re not gone.

    Q: How would you explain what God is in all of this? 
    JA: I think God, as I understand it in my experience of it, it’s so many things. It’s love. It’s a binding force. It’s a personality. It does have a personality, and it does have a sense of humour. 
    Can it be a guy with a long beard and a tunic? Sure. Can it be invisible forever? Sure. It can be whatever it wants to be. But, it’s knowing that all things have it within. Your doorknob is God. Your door is God. The paint on your wall is God. You are God. The air is God. Your clothing is God. Everything has it within. It’s the circle from which all things come. And all things are constantly connected to it. Is it one thing? No. Often, I refer to it as they because it is many. It’s many things. It’s all things. If you’re breathing air, you’re breathing God. 
    We try to personify it. We try to make it into a human with a certain level of power that makes certain decisions. And it can be that. But, honestly, it’s much bigger, and it’s much more. And it’s something that moves pieces on this board of existence for something greater. And it’s just the reminder to say your existence was never your own. It was never your existence. It was ours. We’re all together in this. We’re all just holding hands through it. And when you understand God, the All, the Universe, the Source, plays a part in literally every second of your existence. When you wake up to that and acknowledge it, life changes.

    Q: Can you give us some practical ways to live our lives, to make the right choices? 
    JA: Yeah. It’s going to sound really simple, but I just tell everybody to pause for a second before you make a decision. Just 1 second. Just 1 second of pause. We tend to be reactive, right? We’re human, so we’re very reactive based on the inputs we receive, or we’re instant like a calculator. But do the math. Do it longhand. Take your time. And try to make a decision based on the infinite you rather than the desire that the human has.”
    Jonathan Ashford "DEAD for 3 Hours & Who He Saw Changed Everything! (NDE)" 50-minute interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl3RJ-DIUiY     

    To appreciate where Jonathan is coming from, invest two & a quarter hours in Rick Archer's excellent, in-depth, recent interview: Jonathan Ashford: C‑Level Executive’s NDE, Life Review, and Radical Spiritual Awakening https://batgap.com/jonathan-ashford/ 
    A 40-minute documentary for a condensed overview: "The near death experience of Jonathan Ashford" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXSnS2jMY4k

    Other excellent Q&A style interviews also well-worth immersing yourself in:
    Jonathan Ashford "Dead for 3 Hours, What I Learned will Change you" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyeHC2wGdAY
    Jonathan Ashford Q&A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRplu6SjXrQ 
    From Zero to Enlightenment: Jonathan Ashford’s Near-Death Experience 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMA8kApZVGk

You HAVE to Try THIS!

     Okay, you don't 'have to,' BUT I sincerely recommend you do, because this is a surprisingly simple but not easy "game changer."

    1) Become aware of your Mood or overall Attitude. 
    Unless you feel: Open & Curious to ANYTHING that might happen, Ready to Learn & Evolve, and Grateful to be Alive, then DROP YOUR BORING, DEADENING, SELF-DEFEATING MOOD. You've done shit mood & "ordinary unhappiness" (or worse) to death. It's time to LIVE!

     2) FRESH START EVERY MORNING!
    Anything, ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING can happen today! None of us have a clue how our day will go when we first open our eyes. YET, a pessimistic or anxious, or one of our other pet shit moods loves to rush in to pathologically distort our attitude for the whole day. This is our fear-based choice akin to people choosing to return to a familiar abusive home rather than 'risk' a new safe house. BE BRAVE! Admit you don't have a clue about the future, NOR can you micromanage the future. The best you can be is PRESENT: Not Knowing, Relaxed yet Alert & Energized, Ready to Learn & Evolve, and Grateful to be Alive. 

    3) PRESENCE
    This is relatively rare, YET simple, ordinary, AND feels joyful. Have you ever been somewhere with so many overwhelming noises that you can't think clearly? For most, the source of the overwhelming noises is our own "self-talk" - the ongoing dialogue from our small self. We, as individuals, "need" a "noisy ego" like we as a society, "need" a narcissistic dictator taking a wrecking ball to our world ie like we need a hole in the head. 95% of our self-talk is useless or harmful. We CAN ignore self-talk, and CAN direct our awareness ANYWHERE we choose. 
    CHOOSE Open Awareness! Open Awareness is a meditation practice that's also the ideal way to be 24/7. When we're not narrowly focused on a specific task such as cooking a meal, or driving, our awareness is wide open to & monitoring all of our sensory inputs, in the present moment. Unless we specifically choose to narrow our awareness down, we remain open, present. This is peaceful & joyful because it's so effortless & freeing - free from our infernal neurotic, fearful, anxious self-talk. TREAT yourself to this experience - even for a minute - to appreciate the miraculous peace. This peaceful 'liminal space' feels energized at the same time, a bit like a helicopter that has risen off the ground hovering, yet able to take off in any direction when it chooses to do so.

    This 'everyday miracle' is YOURS to enjoy, yours to LIVE. It's your birthright! You WILL kick yourself if you delay letting go of needlessly living in 'ordinary unhappiness' or worse.

    

small self vs Self

St. Michael Defeating Satan (c. 1633) by Guido Reni

     

Spaciousness and Contraction

    There is a back-and-forth rhythm or dance between (apparent) opposites to many aspects of life, as popularized by Pete Seeger's song, "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)."

         One of these 'dances' is our tendency to AT TIMES contract into our "small self," into self-concern: sadness, anxiety, basically a low mood or "ordinary unhappiness" AND AT OTHER TIMES, expand into our "true Self" or wisdom, "a peace that surpasseth all understanding," experiencing uncaused joy, awe, gratitude, awareness, concern for, and even Oneness with, all of creation!

    Expansion can occur spontaneously, because 'everything is perfect as it is' as experienced & understood by shamans, saints, prophets & mystics of all wisdom traditions throughout the ages. Expansion usually occurs when we're able to relax, self-reflect, and finally allow ourself to deeply listen to our inner wisdom's whisperings. 

    Today's mystics agree: 
    "... happiness is our default setting. That’s the way we come wired from the factory. It is our natural state. ... quieting of your mind allows that natural state to come back to the surface." Interview of Chip & Jan Chipman on The Three Principles and Relationships https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmqLI8_9pko
     “All we are is peace, love & wisdom, AND the power to create the illusion that we’re not.” Jack Pransky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kni9VRMIuD4 . 

    Contraction can be very easily triggered & maintained by stress. BUT, the WEIRDEST CAUSE IMAGINABLE is that WE are used to thinking shitty thoughts, which invariably CAUSE our shitty moods - our "ordinary unhappiness." YES, WE habitually choose to continuously re-tell & thus continuously re-suffer the sad "story of me," the sad story of my tribe, and visualize in gory detail horrible future events, which, to paraphrase Mark Twain, "never happened!" The QUALITY of OUR MOODS are ENTIRELY OUR CHOICE! Though we habitually blame our moods on our external circumstances, they have almost nothing to do with it! 

    “The simple truth is this: We’re living in the feeling of our thinking, NOT the feeling of our circumstances.” Michael Neill 

    “The original, shimmering Self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all. 
    Instead, we live out of all the other selves, which we are constantly putting on & taking off like coats & hats against the world’s weather.” Frederick Buechner 

    “Stories are prisons we choose to live inside.” Bob Falconer  

    "How we experience life depends on our level of consciousness." Sydney Banks 

    “You can’t be in fear and curiosity at the same time.” John Clarke 

    WHEN you've had enough of being trapped in sad & anxious stories and wallowing in 'ordinary unhappiness' or depression, burnout or worse: 
1) realize self-talk's destructiveness,  
2) recognize self-defeating self-talk within seconds,
3) let it go,
4) immediately bring attention back to the present moment. 
5) cultivate the courage, perseverance & curiosity to remain, rest in, live in & savor the present moment. THIS is the HEART of Mindfulness Training & Practice! 

    You are cultivating PRESENCE - being fully awake, alive, free, engaged with whomever you're with, whatever you're doing - whether in motion or at rest. 
    While in presence, you will feel free, light, peaceful, relaxed, warm, loving, competent no matter what is going on, including a painful medical procedure!

    As soon as you start to feel down, anxious or otherwise troubled, DROP the shitty old thinking habits, go to #4 & 5 above.

    From Jack Pransky's excellent book: “Somebody Should Have Told Us!: Simple Truths for Living Well" 2011. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
    “I realized that if we deeply understood three spiritual facts or principles, how these facts work together and how our use of them gives us every experience we can possibly have in life, with this perspective we can move through life with peace of mind, well-being, mental health and psychological freedom. … The Three Principles point to ten little (but huge) points about life and relationships that would be extremely helpful for people to understand. … Each takes exploration and reflection. Thus a full chapter is devoted to each:

I. Our thinking is our life 
II. Wisdom is always available to guide us, if we know how to access it 
III. If someone’s thinking doesn’t change, they can’t change 
IV. When our mind clears our wisdom appears 
V. We don’t have to think our way out of our problems (or to happiness) 
VI. The feeling is what counts, and it’s foolproof 
VII. What we see is what we get 
VIII. In low levels of consciousness, it is unwise to believe, trust or follow our thinking 
IX. To deeply listen to others instead of to our own thinking gives us a richer experience 
X. We’re only as stuck as we think we are

    To deeply understand the meaning of these statements is to live in a different world, and inside-out world. You may never see yourself or the world in the same way again.

    Our innate Health and its natural intelligence is always hidden within us, just waiting to rise to the surface. All we have to do is allow what we think we know to drop away, or no longer take it seriously, and this wisdom will speak to us. It is so close to us that we have forgotten it is there – like the air we take for granted – yet it holds the key that unlocks the potential in everyone.” Jack Pransky

     Spiritual porosity refers to one of the qualities of Self: openness, connectedness, inter-relatedness or "interbeing," and ultimately Oneness with everyone & everything - nonduality. An old saying, "No man is an island." 

    “I’ve had the honor of being able to work with some of the Northern Plains indigenous peoples here - the Crow, and Sue, and the Northern Cheyenne. And I think they were much more comfortable with ‘porosity of mind.’ When they talked about the world around them, it was ‘all my relations.’ That’s a porous attitude toward the world. And I also think if we really could get back to that different attitude, we wouldn’t be able to treat the world around us so badly anymore.” Robert Falconer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSa9hvEgWpk WONDERFUL INTERVIEW

     Simon & Garfunkel sing about the opposite of porosity, the "small self":

Feelings are Important

    "Our feelings are a barometer of how our thoughts are being utilized." 
     Sydney Banks, "The Enlightened Gardener" Lone Pine Publishing, 2016.

     How am I? Seriously - check in with yourself! Why? Because the whole gamut of BAD feelings are caused by "thinking." It's NOT what happens to us, but how we THINK about it that causes MOST of our suffering. And we're OFTEN caught - much like whales entangled in fishing nets - in useless thinking (self-talk, internal chatter). We're almost constantly talking to ourselves in our heads, and 90-95% of it is useless, even harmful. We innocently but WRONGLY assume that this steady chatter tells us the objective truth, who we actually are and provides evidence that we're alive & thinking rationally. NO! The vast majority of self-talk is old, repetitious bits of "the story of me" - a poor, wronged, separate me, barely surviving in a crazy, hostile world.

    Whenever we're caught up in self-talk, we actually feel BAD: stressed, overwhelmed, out of control, contracted, sad / angry, lonely & disconnected. Our "mind racing" is not normal. "Multitasking" is not productive. There's often a real sense of "time crunch" - not nearly enough time to get everything done, even in a "half-assed" way. You may be thinking, 'Stop the world, I want to get off!' This is just rushing towards burnout.  

    “Every human being is sitting in the middle of mental health and they don't know it.” Sydney Banks

    So we can't stop the world, BUT each one of us CAN let go of the actual cause of most of our unnecessary, self-inflicted suffering - we CAN let go of self-talk!  

    We can easily detect when we're caught up in self-talk because it makes us feel BAD. So we first notice self-talk going on AND we drop it, just let it go, stop supplying energy that sustains noise. EVERYONE CAN DO THIS. Then repeatedly bring awareness to the silence that is always there between, behind, underneath the words & other noises. Be curious, "listen for" & enjoy resting, luxuriating in the silence. 

    Quickly you'll begin to appreciate all that comes with silence: peace (instead of stress & time-poverty); wisdom & calm competence (instead of feeling overwhelmed & out of control); spaciousness & relaxation (instead of contraction & tension); intimacy & oneness (instead of loneliness & disconnectedness). Within this peaceful silence we effortlessly connect with deepest intelligence or wisdom & creativity which far exceeds our personal (egoic) intelligence. We operate FAR more wisely, efficiently, empathically, and joyfully when we're acting from the depth of who we truly are.

    "When mind and soul are in unison, you will experience mental well-being."
     Sydney Banks, "The Enlightened Gardener" Lone Pine Publishing, 2016.

DO listen to this EXCELLENT 56 minute Michael Neill interview

 

My small self OR the Divine OR ...

     From my earliest childhood memories, I've sensed a wise, loving, guiding presence in my life. As an adult, I thought that somehow I'd forgotten who exactly this powerful influence on me was - perhaps my Dad, my favorite aunt or some other kind individual. This sense arose almost certainly before "individuating" into my small separate self.  
    Nevertheless, I maintained the connection to this relationship, understanding that my mind was not enough, that I needed all of my intelligences to deal with the challenges of daily life. So here I was assuming that this was something like intuition, perhaps bodily way of knowing, or even some spiritual connection to animals or nature.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us." Marianne Williamson

    When I was 50 or so, I had the insight that a key spiritual shift was the realization that instead of desperately needing love, our very nature can somehow transform, and spiritually turn inside out, becoming the source of love. 

    “In my world love is the only law.  
     I do not ask for love, I give it.”                     Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

 
    Then, facilitating Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) courses, I would talk about each of us having both a "Hurt Inner Child" as well as a "Wise Grandparent" sub-personality or 'part' (Internal Family Systems {IFS}). When the Hurt Child in us is triggered & upset, the Wise Grandparent in us can see the bigger picture and bring loving comfort.

    This morning, while listening to Helen Hamilton's wise nondual teaching (below), I realized after almost 8 decades of wondering, that the mysterious presence from my early childhood was, is, and will be "Self" - the aspect of our unique personhood that is one with the transpersonal Divine. This is love, the life force that animates us and all phenomena as well as the unseen. 

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, 
we find it hitched 
to everything else in the universe." 
John Muir

 

    Recognizing nonduality is said to be as challenging as it is for fish to recognize the water in which they live. Water is everywhere outside & inside the fish, it's what they are, it's taken for granted, and therefore "hidden in plain sight" - almost undetectable. And yet, the difference in one's quality of life as one shifts from dualism to increasingly seeing from a nondualistic perspective is indescribable. Here is Angelo DiLullo's story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OKU-3-jXAA

    Below, Helen Hamilton provides guidance in self-inquiry to help discern who/what we truly are, which is also "hidden in plain sight" - almost undetectable.

Helen Hamilton: “Cutting Through Illusion with the Sword of Discernment!"

 

Waking Up from the Trance

    Many of us, without realizing it, bring our driven, perfectionistic energy to spiritual practices. For decades we may fail to realize that the goal of spirituality is not a perfectly-polished, shiny version of our personality nor even a consistently happy life - which are just goals of the ego. Who we think we are is as simplistically inaccurate as a stick-figure drawing of a human being, or humanity's conception of Divinity.

    Eighty-three-year-old “teacher, author, & spiritual leader Gangaji, offers Sri Ramana Maharshi and Sri Poonjaji's radical invitation to stop the search for fulfillment & enlightenment and to fully recognize the truth of one's being, which is already completely whole and permanently at peace. 
    Her radical invitation is to: 
        Examine your own life. 
        Choose to wake up from the trance of who you think you are and experience the truth of who you really are. 
        Resolve not to go back into the trance by turning away from that essential experience of waking up. 
        Freshly inquire anew as thoughts or feelings of separation arise.

    Gangaji's invitation is radical in part because it is not based upon a particular philosophy or religion. There are no prescribed practices or rituals, unless one considers self-inquiry or self-observation a practice. Most radically, it calls into question the very structure of who we've believed ourselves to be.  
    Who you are is not separate from God or Love or Truth or Freedom or Peace or Silence, whatever one chooses to call it. 
    Therefore, there is nothing you have to do to 'get there.' No merit to be earned. Who you are is already here, has always been and will always be.
    The invitation is to wake up and be Yourself.” 
    Gangaji. “Freedom and Resolve: Finding Your True Home in the Universe.” Hampton Roads, 2014.   

    Below, Gangaji reads & comments on a letter written to her:
    Letter:    “I experience full being ecstasy when I see someone crack open, when the ‘aha’ shines from their face, when their tears leak the truth that has been bottled so long. I simultaneously experience the ‘aha,’ the tears, the nowness. I have experienced these moments in my own heart too. So many times now that it seems normal. 
    And it is this normalcy that I wonder about. When I stop, am I stopping too soon? I always have the feeling that there must be just one more hidden attachment or contraction to notice.”

    Gangaji: “Well, that’s the hidden attachment. ‘There must be one more’ - that’s the hidden attachment.” 

    Letter:    “There must be one more hidden attachment to unburden my heart from. I am like a dog looking for that last morsel of food that rolled under the refrigerator out of reach, but well within smell.” 

    Gangaji: “So then, you’ve had the experience, you see the play of the mind, and then the play of the mind gives this ‘scent of more nourishment.’ That’s when, are you willing to stop, right there, to die? Because that’s what this is about."

    Letter:    “Well, I just need to get a little more of something, so I don’t die in the stopping. I mean, I don’t want to stop until I have all my goods handled."

    Gangaji: “So it has to do with ‘unburdening,’ and so forth. But you have to see it through the wiliness of the mind. It’s still a postponement of stopping. It’s still a postponement of death. 
    You can spend your whole life like that, having been graced with exquisite moments of truth, and then getting on with the business of accumulation.” 

    Letter:    “If I can just get that one last tidbit of untruth, then I can rest.” 

    Gangaji: “There is always more untruth. You get that one last tidbit, it’ll only make you hungry for the next last tidbit. Haven’t you had enough of the lies? Haven’t you had enough of untruth? When is the point when you say, 'Stop!'? 
    This is such a trap of the mind. This trap of the mind is psychological sophistication. ‘Well, I’m sure I have to clean up a little more. So best not to stop now.' 
    Stop and die. That’s what it’s about. Stop and die imperfect as you are, without any hope of being cleaned up and shiny, and presented to God as some pure vessel. Just as you are right now, you present yourself, fully, nakedly, with all your imperfections and no hope of cleaning them up, and see what welcomes that as you are, not as you will be, if you follow this little morsel, this stink under the refrigerator. 

    Letter:    “It just feels like, ‘There’s something I must be missing.’” 

    Gangaji: “You see, here we go. This is the rebirth now. So if it feels like that, feel like that fully and completely missing the boat. Missing it all. You are missing it. It’s true. When there’s this feeling, ‘I’m missing,’ – that’s right. That feeling is a Divine feeling. 
    But our tendency is to get rid of that feeling. So, we find one little bit of spiritual morsel, one little way to clean up the act a little better, so that we’ll be ready to stop next time. 
    If you are feeling that you are missing something, recognize I am missing something, and be that missing fully and completely. BE the pain of that, the horror of that, the self-betrayal of that, the lie of that, all the spiritual and psychological maneuvering around that is a way to escape that. 
    But as you can quite clearly see, you may sense or feel that you escape it in the moment, because you take the morsel and there’s some alleviation of the hunger. But it arises. It will haunt you until you meet it. And be glad it will haunt you until you meet it. Be glad that you haven’t fully learned how to deny. This is the pain of anything less than full self-recognition, and it is quite reliable. 

    Letter:    “I feel like I must be absolutely clean sometimes before I can present this who I amness to the world.” 

    Gangaji: “‘Who I amness’ is nothing! It’s not clean. It’s not dirty and it’s not clean. So when you are thinking I have to be absolutely cleaned before I can present this who amness to the world, you’re still thinking about this object called you. This is now me, as who amness! This is a big thought. The thought I amness. You are not who you think you are, whether that’s I am notness or I amness. 

    Letter:    “There seems to be a shadow and veil separating me from me.” 

    Gangaji: “Yes, it is. And that shadow and that veil, is this lie: ‘I am separated from me.’ That’s the shadow. That’s the veil. Dive into it and see how thick it is. 

    Letter:    “And I spend much of my time looking for confirmation of my separation in the world. 

    Gangaji: “That’s right. And you will find it. 

    Letter:    “Looking for a wink, or a twitch, or a glance that will confirm this doubt that I am not here yet. 

    Gangaji: “That’s right. ‘You’ aren’t here yet, because ‘you’ don’t exist. ‘You,’ who are thinking has to get somewhere, doesn’t exist. It’s a thought in your mind. It will never get there. It will never get there! 
    If you can appreciate the pain of that, the frustration of that, the absurdity of that, that you can die to that. (Fully process all of it physically http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=physical+processing)
    It’s not about ‘you’ getting somewhere. It’s not about ‘you’ becoming clean or you becoming the I am that. That ‘you’ does not exist. It’s a thought. It’s made up. It’s illusion. Investigate it for yourself and see. That’s what self-inquiry is. 
    Rather than continuing this pursuit of satisfaction for this madeup you, now it’s like this. This messy image of me, I don’t like. I want this squeaky-clean image of me. They’re both just images – the clean and the messy. Both just images. Both made up in the mind to keep the mind entertained, spinning, weaving, moving, deflecting, imagining. ‘Stop’ has nothing to do with stop so that you get clean; stop so that you wake up. 
    Stop so that you can see that who you think you are, you are not! Stop so that you can see that when the thoughts of who you are stop, you remain! You don’t need thoughts of who you are to be, whether the latest thought is squeaky clean or filthy dirty. Neither are needed. You exist independently from any thought. No thought exists independently from you. Every thought needs you for its thought. But you exist independently of any thought.” 
    Gangaji "The Lie that Keeps You Searching" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DepjSGrRjL8

    We're so STRONGLY identified with our small, narrow-minded personal and group stories (MY country, MY race, MY religion, MY dogmas, MY political party, MY skin color, etc) that we rarely if ever remember the infinitely wiser, greater spirit we actually are. Being trapped in any story is being confined to a small, cold, dark prison cell that we ourselves maintain by continuously engaging with self-talk. 

    STOP engaging repetitive, circular self-talk in your head. Learn to shift awareness to your heart center and live authentically - spacious, free, loving, nurturing, warm, peaceful. 

 

Not Separate!

    "There is something in all of us that seeks the spiritual … 

     The spiritual is inclusive. It is the deepest sense of belonging & participation. We all participate in the spiritual at all times, whether we know it or not. There’s no place to go to be separated from the spiritual, so perhaps one might say that the spiritual is that realm of human experience which religion attempts to connect us to through dogma & practice. 

    Sometimes it succeeds and sometimes it fails. Religion is a bridge to the spiritual — but the spiritual lies beyond religion. Unfortunately, in seeking the spiritual we may become attached to the bridge rather than crossing over it."      Rachel Naomi Ramen MD

 

    More and more brave, intelligent adults are freeing themself from religious & secular orthodoxies, evolving & awakening into their authentic, mature, spiritually-independent Self. 

     “We write here in conversation with Rilke and each other, opening to a ‘wiser way’ than is more generally offered in our hectic, demanding societies, where individuality is so highly praised and our inevitable interconnectedness is so poorly understood. It might well enable you to ground your life in what the ancients knew as the ‘transcendentals’: ‘the true, the good, and the beautiful.’ Those are the collective attributes we find singly and learn to live socially. 
     Rilke suggests in one of his early poems that ‘you are the future.’ You! 
     Is it the ‘you’ of the divine one Rilke often addressed simply as ‘Lord’ but equally call ‘neighbor’ or ‘friend’? Is it the ‘you’ of the poet himself? Or the ‘you’ of the reader? Rilke refused, characteristically, to define whom he is addressing. For in the deepest things in life, the truest things of the heart, the most enduring things of the soul, these three are not different. Not distinct. Not separable. 
    You are the future.”
     Mark S. Burrows, Stephanie Dowrick. “You are the Future. Living the Questions with Rainer Maria Rilke.” Monkfish, 2024.

    It's fascinating to frequently hear a wide variety of spiritual experiences in which the experiencers are completely surprised by their experience, that it was nothing at all what they expected. Indeed one may be at a complete loss to identify the source of a powerful, authoritative voice, that neither quite sounded as if it were God, nor themself. 
    And many decades later, the awe remains ... and probably there is no difference, no distinction, no separation between Self and God.

    We CAN pull up our big adult spiritual pants and
stop externalizing the Divine!

 

"Every Day, Think As You Wake Up, 
Today I Am Fortunate To Have Woken Up, 
I Am Alive, I Have A Precious Human Life, 
I Am Not Going To Waste It 
I Am Going To Use 
All My Energies To Develop Myself, 
To Expand My Heart Out To Others, 
To Achieve Enlightenment For 
The Benefit Of All Beings, 
I Am Going To Have Kind Thoughts Toward Others... 
I Am Going To Benefit Others
As Much As I Can."

H.H. The Dalai Lama

 

Courtesy of Buddha Doodles  www.buddhadoodles.com