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#3888 - Monday, May 10, 2010 - Editor: Gloria Lee

The Nonduality Highlights -
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights      

Whatever we need is what is given.
Whatever moment we are in is the moment we need.
- Adyashanti
 


  Radical Emptiness

To the extent that the fire of truth wipes out all fixated points of view, it wipes out inner contradictions as well, and we begin to move in a whole different way. The Way is the flow that comes from a place of non-contradiction - not from good and bad. Much less damage tends to be done from that place. Once we have reached the phase where there is no fixed self-concept, we tend to lead a selfless life. The only way to be selfless is to be self less - without a self. No matter what it does, a self isn't going to be selfless. It can pretend. It can approximate selflessness, but a self is never going to be selfless because there is always an identified personal self at the root of it.

Being selfless isn't a good, holy, or noble activity. It's simply that when there is no self, selflessness happens. This selflessness is very different from having a moralistic standpoint. When action is selfless, it tends to do no harm. It tends to be the salvation, the secret alchemy that awakens and removes conflict. It's a byproduct of not having a self. It just so happens that reality is overflowing with goodness and love.

This is radical emptiness - where everything is arising spontaneously. There is no more need to discriminate with the mind between what seems to be the right thing or the wrong thing to do. In ego-land it's helpful to have an ego that can discriminate between right and wrong, but at a certain point, that's not what you are operating by. You are operating by the flow of the Tao, which is a higher order of intelligence. You don't need to intellectually discriminate anymore because the Tao discriminates without discriminating; it knows without knowing; it moves without moving. There is no sense of being enlightened or unenlightened. Since there is no self, there is nothing to be enlightened or unenlightened.

We can talk about enlightened beings and non-enlightened beings, and conceptually that has a use. But when there is no self, when there is radical emptiness, the whole enlightenment thing is sort of irrelevant because reality has become conscious of itself, which is enlightenment. That's what is often missed. People believe that enlightenment is an improvement on reality, like becoming a super human being or God-knows-what. But enlightenment is when reality is awake to itself as itself within itself.

- Adyashanti
  posted to Wisdom-l by Mark Scorelle  


 

photo by Alan Larus  


  Some quotes below from Adyashanti collected from the Cafe Dharma website.


“Spirituality is not about coming up with the means to manage a situation.
It’s about relinquishing one’s attempt to control what’s happening.”

"The truth is you can’t try to let go. Trying is the opposite of letting go.
To let go is to relinquish trying. To let go is much more like to let be."

"All separation is literally imagination."

"Delusion hides itself in our most prized forms of conditioning --
spirituality and religion."

"A great insight is only as good as the surrender it engenders."


"We are but imperfect manifestations of an absolute perfection. In an
absolute sense, no manifestation can manifest the entirety of the
perfection. Yet each being has an infinite capacity to embody what they
realize in their humanity. If our awakening is genuine, we realize that what
we are is what everything is. It is whole and absolutely complete, and in
that sense, it is perfect. And that wholeness, that completion, that
perfection, has an infinite capacity to manifest itself more clearly and
more abundantly through our humanity. When the ultimate is realized in the
genuine spiritual awakening, that's the ultimate, that's the end point. But
your humanity has no spiritual finish line. It has an infinite capacity to
reflect absolute perfection. Always being, always becoming -- at the same
time with no contradiction."

 "To forgive, you have to join with the thing you're forgiving."

"The true silence isn't when your mind goes quiet, but it is that which is
still and silent even when the world isn't."

"Our bodies and psyches are designed to purge themselves of suffering."

"The desire to get rid of desires maintains the entire game. Your awakening
depends on seeing through it."


"There are different streams of infinity, of emptiness. If you become very
aware, you can feel the stream of emptiness that certain teachings embody."

"A mature healthy relationship with a spiritual teacher requires mutual
respect. The teacher needs to respect you as much as you respect them."

"What you run from owns you."

"The deeper a teaching is, the more you'll see in it, and there's no end to
that."


posted to TheNow_2 by Jani  



 

photo by Alan Larus

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