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#3979 - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights -
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In this issue are excerpts from Scott Kiloby's book, Reflections of the One Life. Excerpts were also in included in issue 3945: http://nonduality.com/hl3945.htm
Reflections of
the One Life
Daily Pointers to Enlightenment
Scott Kiloby
~ ~ ~
January 8th
The inseparability of awareness and thought
In confirming awareness, it is tempting to deny or suppress thought or to treat concepts as undesirable. Just notice the tendency to deny or suppress thought. That is the dream (mental) self doing what it does best—controlling. The mind is seeking a state that is free of the mind. Can you see the futility of that?
Confirming awareness simply means recognizing—even repeatedly—the space in which concepts arise and fall. This awareness has its own quieting mechanism. Timeless, non-conceptual awareness is already free of thought and time. It is the vast, inward space in which time and thought arise. The space is naturally quiet and still. It is the emptiness from which everything—every movement of thought—comes.
That is the amazing thing. It is the space
from which every concept arises, which means the concept is none
other than the space from which it comes. In this seeing,
thought is seen to be empty, just as the space that gives birth
to it. Thought no longer has the power to cause suffering
and seeking, yet it remains there to serve its practical
functioning. Thought is allowed to flow freely and
naturally from its source but there is no longer
identification with it. This dance between the source and
its manifestation is one dance—One Life appearing as many,
non-dual awareness appearing as dualistic thought.
January 11th Confusing
non-conceptual awareness with denial of concepts
No concept will get you to non-conceptual awareness because you are already there. Awareness is a seeing that who you are is beyond form and time. No amount of thinking or future will reveal it. In fact, if the mind is constantly engaged in seeking and intellectualizing non-duality or presence, there is likely identification with thought happening, a little “me” that is looking for its own absence. It’s futile. The goal of that stream of thought is to avoid its own absence.
However, it’s easy to confuse non-conceptual awareness with a total denial of concepts. Without concepts, how could we ever point to awareness? How could math or science ever be communicated? How could you tell your kids you love them?
‘This’ is a seeing beyond attachment to concepts (not a denial of them). In that seeing, it is realized that who you really are is this non-attached, non-conceptual, timeless seeing or being. But concepts are expressions of that non-attached, non-conceptual awareness. Nothing is appearing as everything. To deny form is to deny the formless. To deny time is to deny the timeless. To deny the intellect is to deny its very source.
Walking around totally identified with emptiness is
a dualistic split between form and formlessness. Notice
that non-conceptual awareness is your essence. Then be who
you are totally, including embracing fully, without attachment,
everything that arises from, and is not other than, awareness.
November 15th Openness
Non-duality is experiential. It is not about conclusions, although conclusions naturally arise as a result of interpreting experiences. So if liberation, no self, no choice, or any other experience is happening, watch the mind return to make a conclusion about it. It wants to believe it “gets it.” It wants to place the experience of life into a conceptual category and then preach to the others about the validity of its own conclusions. It brings the experiential nature of non-duality into a dualistic conclusion. When there is identification with that conclusion, the separate self is rearing its head once again under the guise of “enlightenment.”
Throughout our lives, the mind analyzes and categorizes everything. From the time we are children until we die, it grasps for conceptual understanding. It wants to place life into neat little packages. But non-duality is not a neat little package. It blows open all packages. It is openness itself—the ongoing discovery of life as it unfolds in this timeless space.
As a sense of presence, no self, or no choice is realized, notice the mind’s attempt to place the vast landscape of experience into a neat dualistic conclusion. Life is not a conclusion or concept. To even say, “It’s all One” is a packaging of sorts. When this openness that you truly are remains open to what is happening and the mind is no longer fixating on its interpretations, liberation is realized.
Reflections of
the One Life
Daily Pointers to Enlightenment
Scott Kiloby
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