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#2416 - Friday, March 10, 2006 - Editor: Jerry Katz
This issue features an introduction to a new book by Greg Burkett. Greg is one of the first people I met when I came onto the internet in 1997, so he's been in the nonduality racket for awhile. We exchanged several emails before I ever got around to starting a website or email lists. Ordering information for his book is at the end of the text. --Jerry
http://www.personalenlightenment.com/
I am discussing enlightenment and the role of suspending
conceptual thinking. I am also including written accounts from
individuals who have discovered the
"witness-consciousness" which is the upstream of
thought.
The initial stages of enlightenment
concern transcendence of the ego. Spiritual practices have been
developed all over the world to assist individuals in moving from
the limited sense of self to the One Being of All. After
thousands of years however, why is it that so few are able to
cross that river? Many explain the inability to achieve
enlightenment on such things as destiny, karma, or non-readiness.
But if Truth is always there or present, why is it not perceived?
Rather than try to explain
enlightenment, there is something I would like to show you. Below
are two exercises that involve direct observation and, hopefully,
insight. Eventually, these exercises can be practiced at any time
or place. If you do not get immediate results, please do not give
up. After all, the ego does not want it's true status to be
known. You will know if you are being pointed in the proper
"direction".
Exercise One:
Find a quiet room where you can sit
alone. Without controlling, observe your attention as it moves
from one object to another. Notice how your mind automatically
labels everything it sees. You may also notice various thoughts
which come to mind that are associated with specific objects;
even feelings. Realize that your thoughts, concepts and labels
are not the thing observed. Wait for silence. Experience your
environment without the coloring of thought.
This is not as easy as it sounds, but if
you can see that there is a difference between "what
is" and "what you think there is", then you have
taken a great step towards transcending the ego.
Exercise Two:
Now turn your attention to the room of
objects you call your body and mind. In the same way you observed
the "external" room, observe your inner world. Let your
attention move away from the body and move towards the mind, the
thinker or the space behind the eyes. Watch your thoughts develop
various ideas, concepts, and philosophies, etc. Realize that
these thoughts and ideas are not you. Try listening to thoughts
as if you were listening to music; just something to enjoyed.
With your attention focused, try to
"target" the thinker or observer that is your self.
Please do not give up until you discover that whatever you find
is just another object of your awareness. Your self never
appears. This is because YOU ARE NOT THAT WHICH CAN BE AN OBJECT
TO YOUR AWARENESS. Who or what are you then?
By releasing your hold on all that you
are not, that which you are can begin to unfold. It may strike
like lightening or it may approach like the dawn. Contemplate
this....test this....discover this.
The most difficult spiritual leap is
from identification with the ego (and all of it's thoughts,
beliefs, memories, likes, dislikes etc.) to an awareness of that
which observes the ego. What you are does not appear in the
phenomenal world. Enjoy the silence and peacefulness that comes
with watching your thoughts go by like a river. Observe your self
pick up a stream of thought and then remember again who you are:
the awareness in which all appears.
I have attempted to collect written accounts of this state of
awareness. It is my hope that these words will spark a distant
memory or inspire you to take the Great Leap.
"I only know myself as a human
entity; the scene so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am
sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote
from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am
conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which,
as it were, is not part of me, but spectator, sharing no
experience, but taking note of it; and it is no more I than it is
you." - Henry David Thoreau
"The Self is the witness, all
perfect, free, one consciousness, actionless, not attached to any
object, desireless, ever tranquil. It appears through illusion as
the world." - Ashtavakka Gita
"When there is a watcher it is
merely the past watching, and that is not watching, that is just
remembering and it is rather dead stuff. Watching is tremendously
alive, every moment a vacancy. Watching without a single thought,
watching every reaction, watching without identity, only
endlessly watching, you are not really awake, you are absent
minded, not all there; you are not you but watching. There is no
thinker watching the thought, the thinker is the thought.
Somebody passes by you and wonders what you are watching. You are
watching nothing, and in that nothingness everything
is." - J Krishnamurti
"Summing up the long history of the
struggle for "liberation" all that can be stated with
finality is that sentient beings must always appear as such,
objectively extended in a space-time context, but that what they
are non-phenomenally, other than objectivised concepts, can never
be either perceived or conceived since cognizing cannot cognize
what is cognizing, and what is cognizing is what they
are." - Wei Wu Wei
"...my being present in the present
is phenomenally an absence." - Wei Wu Wei
"If you form a concept of the true
nature of anything as being visible or audible, you allow a
dharma of distinction to arise. Let me repeat that the perceived
cannot perceive. Can there, I ask you, be a head attached to the
crown of your head?" - The Zen Teaching of Huang
"Stillness or peace is realization.
There is no moment when the Self is not. Doubt or the feeling of
non-realization is due to the identification of the self with the
non-Self. When the non-Self disappears, the Self alone remains.
To make room, it is enough that the cramping be removed; room is
not brought in from elsewhere. Your duty is TO BE and not, to be
this or that. I AM THAT I AM sums the whole truth: the method is
summarized in BE STILL." - Ramana Maharshi
"You must open up and feel beyond,
without the self-contracted forms of mind, emotions and body. To
be so open to self-transcendence is to be continuous with the
Divine Self-Condition. It is not knowing what anything is-but it
is rather to be continuous with it, to be open to it and
therefore able to be expanded, able to experience the Revelation
of What Is. There is only this incredibly profound, mind-blowing,
ego-destroying, humbling Mystery. That is it.
IT!" - Adi Da
Want more?
In response to many inquiries
for more information, I have developed a self-exploration course
entitled, "Personal Spiritual Enlightenment - It's Not What
You Think". It is nearly 100 pages and includes exercises,
stories, quotations and recommendations for living the
enlightened life. Send $25.00 (US funds) to:
Gregory W. Burkett
P.O. Box 1
Elcho, WI 54428-0001
unenlite@personalenlightenment.com
http://www.personalenlightenment.com/
The price includes priority mail
shipping. The course should arrive in two or three days. If you
have any concerns or questions, please write to the above
address. Thank you.
If you are not satisfied for any reason,
please return the course and I will send a full refund.