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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3894, Sunday, May 16, 2010, Editor: Mark
Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now
intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options:
remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it
totally.
-Eckhart Tolle, from The Power of Now
This Amazing Opportunity
Let's remember why we're here at retreat: for this amazing
opportunity to really look into the core of our own existence,
the core of life itself that is so easy to overlook. It's so easy
not to pay attention to it, because it's not noisy and it's not
clamoring for attention like all the other aspects of the human
mind. Egoic consciousness is always pretending to be the most
important thing that is happening.
And yet there's this thread, this sense of something other than,
deeper than, more real than, more essential than this scattered
and divided noise that so many human beings live in, in their
minds. And right in the midst of all that, there is a presence,
there is an awareness, an unconditioned awareness, an
unconditioned consciousness. Right in the middle of this
conditioned mind, conditioned consciousness, is this shining,
unconditioned essence. Essence doesn't mean a little part hidden
somewhere in us, the little teeny kernel of essence. Essence
means the totality, the whole thing. Essence means the truth of
you as opposed to the untruth of you.
Essence isn't a small thing, essence is an immense thing. The
essence of you is everything you ever see, taste, touch, and
experience. Everywhere you go, every step you take, every breath
you take is actually happening by the essence, of the essence, in
the essence, and to the essence. All the rest is noise and
chatter.
So we come here to give our attention, our affection, our time.
Our most highly prized commodity is our time. Anything or anyone
you give your time to shows immediately what is most important.
And I want to remind everyone that what you really are, what the
person next to you is, what the children in Africa scraping up
the little grains of rice are, this timeless essence, is not
hidden. It's not hidden at all. It's in plain view. Everywhere
you look, that's the essence. And the mind would say,
"Where? Where? I don't see it. All I see is a car, a
billboard, a tree, the person in front of me, the funny man on
the stage. Where is this essence?"
It's easy to grasp for it, isn't it? "Where is it? What is
it? I want to understand it. I want to know about it. How can it
work for me? How can I utilize it?" But it doesn't come upon
us through the grasping of it, through the striving for it, and
through the struggling for it. There's no merit gained through
wasted effort, through excess struggle. There are no merit points
for the people who drove themselves the craziest along the way to
self-realization. For most people it's so obscure that it seems
very intuitive to grasp and to struggle instead of relaxing, not
grasping, letting something come to you, letting the truth of
your being reveal itself to you on its terms, in its way, letting
it happen.
It will happen. It's always happening. It's always trying to show
itself.
- Adyashanti
It makes no difference what points of view arise. In clarity,
they vanish naturally, leaving no trace, like a line drawn in the
sky.
- Great Clarity
Clear Seeing: The Indisputable Whole
The Reality I experienced during the epiphany
is not different or separate from
the reality we experience under
"ordinary" circumstances.
What does differ is our interpretation....
In our "ordinary" experience,
the focus of attention is on the finite.
In a revelation of the transcendent,
the focus of attention shifts
to the Infinite Whole.
Ongoing Clear Seeing is
an indisputable, experiential recognition of
the inseparability and indivisibility of both.
- Metta Zetty
Nineteen To the ordinary person, the body of humanity seems vast.
In truth, it is neither bigger nor smaller than anything else. To
the ordinary person, there are others whose awareness needs
raising. In truth, there is no self, and no other. To the
ordinary person, the temple is sacred and the field is not. This,
too, is a dualism which runs counter to the truth. Those who are
highly evolved maintain an undiscriminating perception. Seeing
everything, labeling nothing, they maintain their awareness of
the Great Oneness. Thus they are supported by it.
- from the Hua Hu Ching
Words can never capture that which is beyond all things, but here
we go anyway:
The One knows itself as the only reality. This is unquestionable.
The peace, that is the One, is beyond anything that the mind can
comprehend. It is absolute. It is a peace born from timeless
existence and sole presence that is truly at home with itself. It
is a peace that just one taste of would satisfy a human mind for
a lifetime. It is a peace so profound that nothing can disrupt it
- just as nothing can touch space, nothing can touch this
all-prevailing peace. It is vibrant stillness and screaming
silence.
The source knows itself as timeless - without beginning and
without end. This knowing is absolute. There is absolute
certainty in the existence of the One. No question can arise in
the One, as all is clearly known. Not a knowing of things, as the
human mind collects, (although that is present moment to moment),
but a knowing of the single reality, that I Am. The Love and
Peace of the One are the same - seemingly different yet in
perfect harmony and balance. Nothing moves, while everything is
vibrant and seemingly alive.
As seeming individuals, we use a word called love. When speaking
of the Love that is the One, the human conditional love is
something different. The Love of the One, like the Peace, is
absolute and unassailable. It is a Love that is complete and
present in a source that is timeless. The mind would draw the
analogy to a Love and Peace that have evolved into perfection
over a timeless existence. Yet, the word perfection is too
limiting.
The One knows itself as all pervading yet without location or
space to fill. The One knows itself as absolute power - absolute
presence, yet nothing to effect.
The One - as the attempt above describes, is what you are. The
One does not exist without what you are and you are not without
the One. One presence. One Consciousness. One awareness. There
are no individuals within the One.
- John Greven