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Nondual Highlights Issue #2088 Sunday, March 20, 2005
To
be truly alive is to be deeply in love with this moment. Not the
moment that we imagine, not the moment of our thoughts and
beliefs about this moment, but this moment as it is. This moment
of suddenness and energy and surprise; this moment of wonder and
awe; this moment of light and stillness; this moment of beauty
and Silence. To be truly alive is to listen very, very deeply,
not with our ears but with our whole being, and not just with our
whole being but with the whole being of creation. Listening like
this, we have no center, no beginning, no ending - our center is
everywhere - so we begin and end here, and there, and here again.
Listening with the enormous ear of creation itself, we hear life
breathing. To be truly alive is to be open - just that: open as
the sky, even more so. As open as the heavens, even more so. In
this openness there is no fear, no hiding, no secrets, nothing to
protect. Why would there be? To be alive is to be an openness in
which everything lives without prejudice, without hatred, without
violence towards anything. This moment is Silence.
- Robert Rabbin
We all love the innocence we see in children. We delight in
watching them learn new things and play in wild abandon. We love
to hear their questions and reflections about the world because
they spring from original awareness and the brilliance that
obtains. We wistfully watch them sleeping and remember that
feeling of perfect peace. We delight in the company of children
because they remind us of our own innocence.
But, in awakened intelligence, innocence is no longer the special
province of children. We, too, delight in learning new things and
playing in abandon; our original awareness questions and reflects
in brilliance; and we, too, sleep in deep peace. Innocence is a
condition not dependent on age but on attitude. It lives in
continual surprise, not knowing how things are supposed to go,
not needing them to go a certain way.
- Catherine Ingram
All this comes down to is ordinary present awareness. It is as
simple as that: the awareness that allows you to read these words
right now, that's it. That is really it! It is the same awareness
that is glimpsed in your most spectacular mystical experience. It
is the same awareness as the avatars and sages 'have'. The reason
why I can say so without proving it is that this awareness is
limitless, borderless, and as a result there is only one
awareness. That's why 'your' awareness equals the Awareness. No
need to look any further.
- Jan Kersschot from This Is It
More here: http://3mg.fcpages.com/kersschot.html
JLW: Probably the most essential question that all of us ask at
some point is, "Who am I?" What comes up for you when
you ask, "Who am I?"
VALERIE: This is essentially what I am talking about all the time
with everyone I meet. For me, answering that question has had to
do with being able to sit in a place in myself, or rest in a
place in myself. And for a long time, "Who am I?"
became how to get to that resting-place. The one I was was always
trying to get to the resting-place. Somehow, it became very funny
at one point that I was trying to get to the resting-place by
doing something that wasn't resting. Then it just became obvious
who I am.
I am that very One that lives my body, that lives your body, and
I am absolutely energetic; I am in energy, I am as energy. And, I
am absolutely delightful, delightful in my trillions and billions
of modifications, and "how wondrous it is to be me!"
[Laughter] Seriously, all that exists outside of me as a
modification exists inside of me as a modification.
Simultaneously I can be all of that and this one thing that I am.
(So, if that can be expressed clearly in writing, I'll be
happy!)(See also Sri Ramana Maharshi: "Who Am I?")
LML: Can you say something about what that one thing that lives
you and lives all things is?
VALERIE: The best way I can express that with words is to say
that there is a stillness and then there's a wave and then
there's a stillness and then there's a wave, and I am That which
is the stillness and the wave. This sounds ridiculously
intellectualized, but that's the best way I know how to say it.
In motion, or in discussion, in love-making, or in shit-taking,
or birth giving, or even in sitting at the bottom of the breath,
just sitting and waiting for a breath to come in, I experience my
being as the One who observes the waves, allows the waves, feels
the waves and is the waves.
- excerpt from an interview that Lynn Marie Lumiere (LML) and
John Lumiere Wins (JLW) conducted with Valerie Vener in
connection with their book The Awakening West
True happiness cannot be found in things
that change and pass away.
Pleasure and pain alternate inexorably.
Happiness comes from the self
and can be found in the self only.
Find your real self (swarupa)
and all else will come with it.
- Nisargadatta from I Am That
