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#3234 - Tuesday, July 22, 2008 - Editor: Jerry Katz
Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
In this issue a review and excerpts from Paradise Found: Recognizing and Living As the Infinite Love That You Are, by Charlie Hayes. Great summer nondual reading, full of spirit and life. I liked it a lot.
A 58 page sampler of the book: http://charliehayes36.tripod.com/free_paradisefound.pdf
Download Paradise Found or purchase hard copy: http://stores.lulu.com/charliehayes36
Charlie Hayes' website: http://www.theeternalstate.org
Paradise Found, by Charlie
Hayes, is one of those "last books you'll ever need
to read" books. It’s like one of those non-existent
Mackinaw peaches from
Sometimes the pit splits open (on its own for
whatever reason) and inside is a seed that’s smooth and
cool.
THE SKIN OF THE PEACH:
The Table of Contents is like the outer layer. There are 109 short chapters. Here is a selection of them:
3. What Is Unreal? What Is
Real?.............................................19
7. Is This All There Is?
.............................................................31
8. The Addict You Believe You Are
........................................32
14. What IS “Is”?
......................................................................43
46. The 'Aha' Is Always Here and Now
................................. 113
55. Who Cares??
....................................................................
131
56. There Are No "Accurate
Pointers"................................... 133
60. “Teachings” Are A Distraction
........................................ 139
70. How Do I DO the Investigation?
......................................163
73. What Is The Source of
SOURCE?....................................171
75. How To Stay In Awareness - I AM?
................................174
77. There Are No Teachers Of
This........................................177
91. What Is Seeking
Who?......................................................203
95. Thanks for The No-Bullshit Approach .............................213
THE FRUIT ITSELF:
[Bold portions were added by the Highlights editor.]
Questioner: How Do I DO the Investigation?
Charlie Hayes: Who Asks That
Question?
Quite a few have asked, essentially, “HOW do I
DO this
investigation? Do I just ask who am I over and over?
I have
tried that, it seems to reveal a sense of space and
openness but
soon I am right back into the pain of being me, and
I am still
suffering. This goes on in spite of years of
commitment to being
earnest and taking up practices and meditations etc.
I am tired
of flopping back into being a little complaining me
and I want
to end this search for real. What to do? How to see
that the I is a
phantom as is pointed out by these Nondual
teachings?”
The "pat answer" in Nonduality circles is
to ask, WHO wants to
know? That is a great pointer for some but for many
it just
increases the frustration and is often dismissed as
"fundamentalism” or
"Advaita-speak" and is certainly NOT
helpful in those cases. It's almost kind of condescending...
I can share that the two things that helped
the most for me were
the seeing that this that I am is not a concept or
experience but a
silent open background of space-like awareness that
is always
here before anything else and that I am that
awareness. As Bob
Adamson and John Wheeler reminded me, we START from
that simple undeniable fact that, undeniably, I
exist, I AM.
That led to a clear seeing that I AM what I was
seeking. Then
there came a dropping back into self-identification,
selfcentered
(selfish) thoughts, and the space of simply being
appeared to be lost again. That was painful! Then
the need for a
real down and dirty investigation challenging the
mind and its
false concepts and assumptions became evident as the
suffering
… painful emotions and unwanted intense
experiences of
feeling sad, contracted, angry, frustrated etc.
happened again
and again.
Something I found very helpful was
listening to Stephen
Wingate talk about his own experience of this, and
how our
mutual friend John Wheeler had guided him to make
the
investigation personal and real in his own
experience. In
Stephen’s case, as he shares, he began asking
himself new
questions, along the lines of what exactly IS “Stephen?”
He was
looking into his own experience of being alive
instead of
applying a “one size fits all” generic
pointer. This did the trick
for Stephen (you can hear him discuss in detail how
specifically
this happened on his excellent audio CDs.)
So I started looking in these more direct personal
ways, with
support from many friends, including Bob, John, John
Greven,
Stephen, and Annette Nibley. It is GREAT to have
friends like
these along the seeking path!
I started looking more deeply at what or who IS this
“Charlie”
person, what is it that I really believe I
am? Several things,
identities if you like, came up, and were tested for
“truth.” What
I found is that the mind makes endless assertions
about what I
am and when I fail to seek evidence for its
assertions I leave the
false unchallenged … and that leaves the cause
of suffering in
place and it continues to create havoc for this boy’s life!
For example: I am “Charles in charge.” I
am “the boss.” I am
"the actor, the doer, the decider.” I am
“me” and you are “not
me.” "I am me and the way things work
around here is we do
things MY way.” It’s “My way or the
highway.” And so on.
The I am as an identity that Charlie is, is bossy,
arrogant and
knows everything about everything. “I Am what I
think and I
am right” was another one. A know-it-all. But
all these fail the
truth test. I am always finding out I don't know
about
something. There is always a clear failure to
"make life go my
way" ... over and over! Wanting things to go my
way is as
effective as telling the weather not to rain. Or
trying to herd
cats.
But that was all a sort of “array of
branches” and the root still
had not been gotten down to. So the
looking into this space of
being I show up in for some root cause went on for a
while.
Then it became clear that “I am the one who is
looking for what
I am." “I must find out what I am.”
This arises as a sense of
frustration as there seems to be a power to think, I
can choose
what thoughts to focus my attention on, however,
while I CAN
choose a created thought like "Who Am I?"
what I have NO
control over is that power that causes thinking
itself to arise! It
happens! Thoughts happen, whether I want them to or
not! In
other words I can select from a menu of thoughts so
to say,
BUT I cannot choose to have NO thoughts come up. And
I saw
that experience follows concept,
that a thought of me that thinks
leads to the idea that I can choose and decide and
have it my
way, and the frustration of trying to practice
choice and having
my choices be thwarted is really painful. The mind
intends for
example to never get upset again because I know that
when I
get upset it hurts, and it’s unhealthy etc. BUT
the next time I am
triggered by some happening that is not in
accordance with
what I intend, bang! I am in a tantrum, like a
bratty kid, cussing
at myself for (again) overeating and getting fat, or
(again)
dropping something and berating myself for being
clumsy, etc.
So what this showed me is that for me, who I am is
“a stupid
idiot who STILL can’t do anything right.
Despite all these years
of experience and practice, I am still at the effect
of some
mechanism that runs me and makes me still believe 'I
am me'
and that 'me' is an old, clumsy, stupid, angry person."
So I came back to what Stephen was pointing out and
looked
into this more deeply than ever: What IS Charlie?
What actually
IS Charles? What IS "this person, here?"
This "me" is subtler
than a thought, finer than an experience, less
evident than the
surface stuff described above. What IS Charles?
Finally the seeing arose, “I don’t know!”
Abiding as this “I don’t Know”
brought the mind to a full stop
and there was and is what was sought … Perfect
Peace,
Absolute Freedom. Timeless Choiceless Awareness,
like a
blank clear transparent screen on which apparent
choices and
chooser arise together; on which the apparent
opposites of I and
other arise together. THAT, I AM. THAT, THOU ART.
This is inquiry: the key as far as I can tell is the
"making it real
for me.” Making it about my own experience
instead of
someone else’s, because no Guru or Friend can
be alive for me,
no one else experiences life as I experience it, so
it really HAD
to become directly and personally MY looking. The
guidance
from friends like John and Stephen that were
complete in their
search was invaluable, yet in the final analysis it
was up to me.
And so, the final truth is clear and self-evident: I
AM That I
AM. Being, Choiceless Awareness ... Just That and
Nothing
Else.
Finding your own path into this inquiry may take
some new and
fresh personal ways to look into yourself for
yourself. This site
and my books are here to support that looking for
yourself, by
yourself, as are the friends listed on my website
links page.
I love you all as my own Self, and of course I wish
you the very
best. Thanks for taking time to read this. I hope it
helps, if you
are still suffering.
THE PIT OR STONE:
Hayes writes:
Who chooses? That is what needs to be examined. So,
NO I do
not agree. There is NO ego! It's a ghost! You scare yourself
telling yourself ghost stories where YOU are the
main ghost
character, the star in your drama. It's crap.
Don't get me in the middle between you and that
writer, whom I
do not know. If you keep roaming the Internet and
writing to
other teachers I will NOT reply to you again. As a
wise man
said, if you are wanting to hit water digging a
well, dig in just
one place. Stay with one teaching. If you like that
expression
what difference will my assessment make? The real
question
which you keep avoiding asking yourself is Who Am I”?
I say
refuse all thoughts except who am I? If you can,
just do it. If not
keep looking in all the wrong places, in thoughts
and outside
yourself. But get real with it, man!
THE SEED:
The Seed is either stumbled upon or not and no quotation can be selected. However, you may have a better chance of stumbling upon split-open, seed-revealing peach stones via this book than with most others of its kind.
CONCLUSION:
Richly supplemental are many delicious quotations of teachers influential to Charlie Hayes. They include John Wheeler, Stephen Wingate, Leo Hartong, John Greven, Robin Dale, John Astin, Nisargadatta Maharaj. Bob Adamson is often mentioned.
Paradise Found is the perfect summer nonduality book, all year long, for generations to come.
~ ~ ~
A 58 page sampler of the book: http://charliehayes36.tripod.com/free_paradisefound.pdf
Download Paradise Found (only $11) or purchase hard copy: http://stores.lulu.com/charliehayes36
Charlie Hayes' website: http://www.theeternalstate.org
Paradise Found will soon be available on Amazon.