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

Can We Change Now?

     "'Is the universe a friendly place or not?' ... If we believe that the universe is unfriendly ... peace will be elusive at best." Joan Borysenko. “Fire in the Soul. A New Psychology of Spiritual Optimism.” Warner Books, 1993. 

     In the interim, ever more human beings keep ravaging our fellow humans, animals & Nature. We continue to prioritize short-term gain & profit over sustainable peace. We are not merely unfriendly, but openly hostile. Can we change sufficiently before we destroy our planet & ourselves along with it?

      "Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry asleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. You know, all mystics – Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion – are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare.”
     Anthony de Mello. “Awareness. The Perils and Opportunities of Reality.” Doubleday, 1992.

     “If a man achieves or suffers change in premises which are deeply embedded in his mind, he will surely find that the results of that change will ramify throughout his whole universe.” Gregory Bateson

     "The non-dual understanding (direct path or Advaita Vedanta) addresses two essential questions: one, ‘How may we be free of suffering and find the lasting peace & happiness for which all people long above all else?’, and two, ‘What is the nature of reality?’
     In relation to the first question, the non-dual approach suggests that happiness is our essential nature, or simply that we are happiness itself. We might then ask, if happiness is our essential nature, why is it not experienced all the time? And the reason is simply this, that whilst all people have a sense of being or knowing their self, not all people know their self clearly. It is this absence of clear self-knowledge that is responsible for the feeling of lack that accompanies most people’s lives and drives them to seek fulfillment in objects, substances, activities, states of mind and relationships.
     ... chances are that the search for happiness in objective experience has failed you sufficiently often to make you doubt that it can ever be truly found there. The non-dual understanding suggests not. In fact, it suggests that in order to find lasting peace and happiness one must know the nature of oneself as one essentially is. As such, self-knowledge is considered to be not only the means by which peace and happiness may be found but the very experience of happiness itself. It is for this reason that the non-dual teaching starts with an investigation into the essential nature of our self, and you can find a video giving an ‘Introduction to Self-Inquiry’ in this section of the website.
     This clear knowledge of oneself is also the basis of the second aspect of the non-dual understanding, namely, the recognition that reality is an infinite, indivisible whole, made of pure consciousness, from which all separate objects and selves borrow their apparently independent existence. Everything we know or experience is mediated through the mind, and therefore, the mind’s knowledge of anything can only ever be as good as its knowledge of itself. In order to know what anything truly is – that is, what reality truly is – the mind must first know its own essential nature. Therefore, the investigation into the nature of the mind must be the highest endeavor upon which any mind can embark, and the knowledge of its essence or nature the highest knowledge.
     Thus, whether we approach non-duality as a means of finding lasting peace and happiness or, more philosophically, as an answer to the ultimate question about the nature of reality, we begin with an investigation into the nature of our self. This understanding is found at the heart of all the great religious and spiritual traditions, and is expressed in the particular language of the time and place in which it arose. For instance, in Christianity it is said, ‘I and my Father are one’. That is, the essence of our self and the ultimate reality of the universe are the same. In the Sufi tradition, ‘Whosoever knows their self knows their Lord’. That is, whoever knows the essential nature of their self knows the ultimate reality of the universe. And in Buddhism, ‘Samsara & Nirvana are one’, meaning the nature of the world and the essence of the mind are identical.
     Indeed, the words ‘Know Thyself’, carved above the entrance to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, indicate that at the very foundation of Western civilization lies the non-dual understanding that our knowledge of our self is not only the means by which lasting peace & happiness may be found within an individual, but is also the basis for peace amongst individuals, communities & nations, and must, as such, be the foundation of any truly civilized society." Rupert Spira https://rupertspira.com/non-duality/introduction-to-non-duality

 

Awaken to the Oneness of Life, the One Body

     "The word Buddha means the Awakened One. Awaken to what? My opinion is that we awaken to the Oneness of Life, the One Body. That is my opinion of enlightenment. This awakening keeps deepening and deepening. What do I mean by deepening? Most of us are enlightened to the Oneness of our own body. I think that my arms, my legs, my face, etc. are all part of One Body. In fact I generally act according to that opinion without thinking about it. It is very natural to do so and, in fact, if I didn’t act that way, people might say I am deluded.

     Kōbō-Daishi (774–835, founder of Shingon Sect) said that we can tell the depth of a person’s enlightenment by how they serve others. If they are focused on themselves, they have awakened to the Oneness of themselves. If they are focused on their family, they have awakened to the Oneness of their family. If they are focused on their nation, they have awakened to the Oneness of their nation, etc., etc. In my opinion, the Dalai Lama has awakened to the Oneness of the Universe.

     The bottom line for me is that the person has realized and is living the realization of the interconnectedness of life (the oneness of life). For me, that’s the awakening. For me, the enlightenment experience is awakening to the interconnectedness of life, that oneness of life; independent of what institution you belong to you can have that realization and you can function that way, and you could be within the Buddhist institutions and not be functioning that way.

     So that’s my standard for making somebody a teacher. I don’t even like the word empowering or transmitting. I like the word recognizing. I recognize somebody as a teacher in my family, the Zen Peacemakers, if I feel that they are living a life that shows they are an exemplar of someone who has awakened to the interconnectedness of life."

       Bernie Glassman    http://zenpeacemakers.org/

     See also: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2012/02/42-practicality-of-heart-mind-approach.html

 

Taylor Shute   Maclean's magazine