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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3018, Sunday, December 16, 2007, Editor: Mark


Self-enquiry is a passive rather than an active process. Mind is allowed to subside into its source even while engaged in normal activity, which then becomes an undercurrent of witnessing that gradually extends throughout all waking hours and begins to pervade all one's activities without intruding on them or interfering with them.

Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels




All questions and problems go POOF! right now in this present, spontaneous moment of being, in which there is nothing at all but awareness watching. Every moment is brand-new, free of all content. Right now, the whole world is brand-new. Nothing ever existed before this very second. An independent "you" seems to exist, as a few disconnected thoughts float in - an image here, a memory there - and they glom together and you start believing a story that there is a whole person.

And then in the next moment, a different image, a different memory, and they glom together, and a wholly different "you" is thought of. You think they are all the same "you," but they are obviously not. "You" changes every moment, as different thoughts of "This is me" arise, and form different patterns.

So who are you? In every moment there are different thoughts arising and forming your idea of who you are. You might insist that you have a lifetime history, but as you recall it right now, you'll only be recalling tiny glimpses of it, flashes, distorted memories. The stored "history of you," even if it did exist as a whole somewhere in the brain (and it does not - those memories go through changes as they recede in time), you can only be recalling any tiny portion of it at a time, a few brushstrokes, like an impressionist painting. So where is this solid story of you? Is it really real?

So what is being pointed to is this - that you do not exist as a solid, discrete entity as you believe, and ALL your questioning and suffering and problems refer to this NON-EXISTENT entity.

You ask: What am I not getting? Why are you getting it and I'm not?

There is no difference between what's going on for you and what's going on for me, what I "get" and what you "get," because neither of us has ever "got" anything. Both of us are in the same boat. That boat is: right now, there is awareness going on.

- Annette Nibley




I'd love to invite you to be completely clueless about what it was you experienced, about how to get back there, because you are! Be completely clueless about what you are. About everything! Just hang out here.

- Jeannie Zandi




Where is the need of changing anything? The mind is changing anyhow all the time. Look at your mind dispassionately; this is enough to calm it. When it is quiet, you can go beyond it. Do not keep it busy all the time. Stop it, and just be. If you give it rest, it will settle down and recover its purity and strength.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj from I Am That




MISHLOVE: It's really a pleasure to be with you. You know, in your writings you often describe the struggle, the conflict that we humans engage in as we're caught in between our dual nature. We're locked into a finite body, each with our own life story and melodrama, and yet simultaneously we're like God; we partake of the entire cosmos.

KHAN: Yes. I call that reconciliation of irreconcilables. It's very difficult for our minds to accept this dual nature of identity, and I think we're cutting right into the main problem of psychology. I think most people have a bad self-image, or overcompensate, or don't know how to assess their value in any way. Because it's very difficult to accept what my father calls "the aristocracy of the soul, together with the democracy of the ego"; or he calls it "the greatest pride in one's divine inheritance, and humility about one's inadequacy in bringing it through, and yet still accepting the divinity of one's being" -- I think as Christ said, "Be perfect as your Father."

MISHLOVE: Somehow, listening to you talk about this peculiar dilemma that we humans are in is making me feel that the whole thing is very humorous.

KHAN: Yes, I think there's some point about laughing about things we don't understand.

MISHLOVE: But it's almost ironic somehow, and maybe quite ridiculous, that as cosmic beings we're always finding ourselves in such dilemmas.

KHAN: Yes. Well, the Sufis say, "Oh, man, if you only knew that you're free. It's your ignorance of your freedom that is your captivity." And I would add, if only you knew what the potentials in your being are, you would realize that it's your ignorance of those potentials that limit you to the inadequate sense of your self-image, or your inadequate self-esteem -- denigrating yourself.

- excerpt from interview of Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan by Jeffrey Mishlove




Love yourself first and everything falls into line.

- Lucille Ball




My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right?

- Charles Schultz




If God can work though me, he can work through anyone.

- St.Francis of Assisi

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