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Nondual Highlights: Issue #2916, Saturday, September 1, 2007, Editor: Mark
The human being as an entity is only the result of thought, of
the accumulated and constantly repeating conditioning that there
is something in us which survives through time. Thus our private
identity has been established in each of us as our own personal
tradition.
- Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels
The memory of the past unfulfilled desires traps energy, which
manifests itself as a person. When its charge gets exhausted, the
person dies. Unfulfilled desires are carried over into the birth.
Self-identification with body creates ever-fresh desires and
there is no end to them unless this mechanism of bondage is
clearly seen. It is clarity that is liberating, for you cannot
abandon desire unless its causes and effects are clearly seen. I
do not say that the same person is reborn. It dies, and dies for
good. But its memories remain and their desires and fears. They
supply the energy for a new person.
- Nisargadatta, posted to ANetofJewels
You want out
You want escape
You want relief.
You meditate
To block out life.
You chant
To put the world on hold.
You pray
To get what you want.
You take drugs
To get there faster.
Ram Tzu knows this -
Your noble search for God
Is but a sly dodge.
- Ram Tzu, posted to AlongTheWay
Expectations are resentments under construction.
- Anne Lamott, posted to TrueVision
Everywhere You Look
There is nowhere that the Divine is not. Stop a moment and really
take this truth in, because the mind has a very different
perception. If really grasped, this truth will change your life.
Everything you see, everything and everyone that exists, and
everything that happens is a manifestation of the Divine. The
Divine is not only behind every good act but every evil one,
which is what happens when the Divine is lost in fear and the
illusion of being separate. The Divine is both the perpetrator
and the victim, the lover and the hater. It plays every role that
has ever been played because there is no other. There is only the
illusion of other.
Imagine that - there is no other! The mind is so good at
imagining, but it has difficulty imagining this because it goes
against its programming. So when Oneness is experienced, as it is
momentarily many times even in one day, it is not acknowledged.
It goes unnoticed, unappreciated by the mind. Worse than that!
Oneness is rejected by the egoic mind because acknowledging it
would threaten its existence. The ego doesn't exist in Oneness;
it can only exist in separateness. It is created by and
perpetuates separation. That is the very definition of the ego.
The ego and Oneness are at odds, or so it seems. However, Oneness
designed it that way, so Oneness has no problem with the ego,
although the ego has a problem with Oneness.
Everywhere it looks, the ego sees separation. It translates all
the differences it sees as separation: The ego sees a tree, and
because the tree is different from the ego's image of itself, it
sees itself as separate from the tree. But is that true? Where
did this definition of self come from, which sees anything that
is different as separate from itself?
It is the ego's own definition that creates the idea of
separation: Different equals separation. The ego sees boundaries
between things and people. It even creates boundaries
conceptually in terms of time and by holding particular beliefs.
This is just how the egoic mind digests life. All of these
differences are seen by the ego as potentially dangerous and
problematic. It is constantly on the defense, trying to protect
itself from everything out there that is different from itself.
Its world is full of fear, anxiety, jealousy, hatred, anger, and
pain. Hence, this viewpoint and the sense of being separate is at
the base of all suffering.
But reality is not as the ego supposes. There are no boundaries.
There is no separate self in opposition to the world. There is
only the Self - the Divine - creating each moment fresh from
itself. Everything is the Divine expressing itself as tree, as
dog, as person, as thought, as emotion, as light, as sound. No
boundaries. No one. Only One. Only the Divine creating and
expressing itself through life.
- Gina Lake, from Radiance: Experiencing Divine Presence
When something arises, one can have the experience that 'this is
me' or that 'I'm back here -- that is not me.' Both of these are
movements of mind, of afterthought, which is better known as ego.
But when the undivided state occurs, two things may happen.
The first can be an awakening to our true nature, which is this
undivided state, this undivided being. The second thing that can
happen is that the conditioning, the confusion that was
innocently passed on through ignorance, can reunify itself.
When conditioning arises within a person who is in an undivided
state, where he or she neither takes ownership nor denies it,
then there can be a sacred alchemical process through which the
conditioning reunifies itself all by itself. Like mud in water,
the conditioning naturally just sinks. It's like a natural
miracle.
This can be very delicate because, if there is the slightest
ownership or the slightest denial of ownership, that process is
in some way corrupted. It asks of us an inward softness and
openness because this undivided sense is very soft, and we can't
search for it like a sledgehammer looking for a nail.
That's the reason spiritual teachings stress humility, which
helps us to enter the truth of our being in a gentle and humble
way. We cannot storm the gates of heaven. Instead we must allow
ourselves to become more and more disarmed. Then the pure
consciousness of being becomes brighter and brighter, and we
realize who we are. This brightness is what we are.
Adyashanti, from Emptiness Dancing