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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3387, Saturday, December 20, 2008, Editor: Mark
Beingness has the quality to become whatever you think of.
Whatever concept you feed to the consciousness, the consciousness
will provide you with that.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
...if we dive into ourselves in genuine pursuit of
self-realization, we cannot grasp who we really are without, at
some point, encountering the irreducible mystery at the ground of
conscious experience. Then we will also meet and have to
challenge all the dogmatic beliefs that we hold about God or
Source that block us from true self-knowledge. Equally true is
that to know oneself is also to be capable of deep connection
with another. We discover that the distance we may feel from any
other person is actually the distance we are living, in that
moment, from ourselves. To mature spiritually we will have to
meet and overcome the obstacles within us to empathy and
compassion for others. Finally, if our nature is more
contemplative, we find that the effort to know God is always a
mirror of how we honor ourselves and others. Ultimately, there is
only one Consciousness, and we realize it and mature ourselves in
it through these three facets.
- Richard Moss, MD
More Richard Moss: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCwoEF5OlaA
My life is a succession of events, just like yours. Only I have
detached and see the passing show as a passing show, while you
stick to things and move along with them.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj,posted to ANetofJewels
You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
When you dwell in stillness, the judging mind can come through
like a foghorn. "I don't like the pain in my knee...This is
boring...I like this feeling of stillness; I had a good
meditation yesterday, but today I'm having a bad
meditation...It's not working for me. I'm no good at this. I'm no
good, period..." This type of thinking dominates the mind
and weighs it down. It's like carrying around a suitcase full of
rocks on your head. It feels good to put it down. Imagine how it
might feel to suspend all your judging and instead to let each
moment be just as it is, without attempting to evaluate it as
"good" or "bad." This would be a true
stillness, a true liberation. Meditation means cultivating a
non-judging attitude toward what comes up in the mind, come what
may.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
More Jon Kabat-Zinn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fpLGpeeW5c
In non-objective meditation, our attention is drawn towards the
non-objective, the ultimate subject, consciousness. This is
accomplished as a result of understanding. At the first stage,
the truth-seeker is asked to notice that the happiness he is
really looking for is non-objective, which means "not
contained in any object, gross or subtle". When this is
understood, he is then asked to realize that the mind, which can
only grasp mentations (thoughts and sense-perceptions), cannot
have access to the non-objective realm. It follows that any
attempt to secure the happiness he is looking for through the
mind is bound to failure. When this is understood, the mind soon
finds itself in a NATURAL state of stillness.
In this natural form of meditation, sensations or thoughts are
neither sought nor avoided; they are simply welcomed and seen
off. It could be described as a total openness, in which we are
totally open to our sense perceptions, our bodily sensations, our
emotions, our feelings and our thughts. We could compare these
mentations with the various characters of a play. As long as we
find the play interesting, our attention is completely drawn by
the actors on the foreground, but, if there is a weak moment, our
attention progressively relaxes until we become suddenly aware of
the background, of the stage. In the same way, as our attention
becomes global, unfocused, open, disinterested, (and this
detachment follows from our understanding that these mentations
have really nothing to offer in terms of real happiness), our
attention relaxes, until we become suddenly aware of the
background, consciousness, which reveals itself as the ultimate
immortality, splendor and happiness we were looking for.
It is not necessary for the actors to leave the stage in order
for us to be aware of the background of the stage; similarly, the
absence of mentations is not a prerequisite for awareness of the
Self. However, in the same way as, when the actors leave and our
attention relaxes, we have an opportuniy to become aware of the
background, there is an opportunity to "visualize" our
real nature when a mentation merges into consciousness.
The inner attitude of welcoming which is the essence of
non-objective meditation is also easily and naturally conveyed by
"induction", in the presence of someone who has merged
with the background, to a truth-seeker who has a genuine desire
for it.
- Francis Lucille
More Francis Lucille: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR0YDlrdKyQ&feature=related