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#4348 - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

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

 

The following is from Advaita Academy:

 

http://advaita-academy.org/Extracts/I-Once-Worried.ashx

 

The following is an extract from Orva Schrock's book ‘Grandpa's Notebooks: The Evolution of an Amish Soul’.

 


When I was a little kid I worried about if I would grow tall, have a happy home, be independent, find an appropriate career, have my own family, find out what truth is and on and on I worried.

 


I did grow tall enough, I found out how to support myself, I had my own family and I learned something about truth. I read what others wrote of it. I heard what others said of it. I prayed that God would show it to me. I searched within and without.

 


In spite of my searching and efforts, truth made its appearance now and then, seemingly randomly. It often wasn't what I expected or thought I needed. But in the nick of time, light came, this, that and the other appeared just when most needed and least expected.

 


I did survive and get away from my oppressive home of origin. I did have wonderful children to love. I did find an interesting and successful career in business. A great light did finally dawn on me. Every worry was for naught, because there was always a greater hand guiding mine. A greater purpose seemed to surge ahead of my own feeble reasoning and efforts.

 


I looked for God in religion and found Him instead within my own heart. I looked for God in church and found Him instead in the laughter of children, in summer breezes, and in the sound of water trickling over rocks.

 


Now I see finally that always and in everything a higher power led, blessed, pointed, pushed and pulled, protected, whispered to me.

 


I see now that all has happened as it needed to and it always will be so. The light of consciousness in which all things appear points directly to pure beingness, pure awareness, and pure bliss.

 


It's when we let our own imaginings and worries control us that we will have troubles and fears in our lives.

 


Am I all these dramas and human foibles and fears? Am I a father and husband and business man? Do I exist as anything outside of pure awareness?

 


It seems obvious now: Consciousness is indeed the root and basis of all. It's where God and everything in every infinite universe always appears.

 


It has become totally obvious. I open my eyes and the creation appears in all its glory. I close my eyes to sleep and in dreams the appearances spring forth again. Great battles, flying machines, a giant bear, fireflies, angelic beings. There is no limit to what may appear in dreams. Now just where are those inner visions appearing? They are not dancing about in your bedroom while you sleep. No, they appear within your consciousness, the very same consciousness that contains your waking world.

 


Even in dreamless sleep, there is consciousness without details. As Ramana used to point out, ‘we say we slept well or happily.’ Consciousness lying there in a timeless and spaceless condition of pure potential. Whether inner or outer visions, they arise nowhere else other than in the light of consciousness which we are and in which all things appear and disappear.

 


I say ‘I’ and imagine myself a separate and self-sufficient being. Where does this ‘I’ thought come from to begin with? You guessed it; it always arises in pure consciousness along with everything else.

 


So I need not worry anymore. But if I do worry, I know it's just something pure consciousness is doing now and ‘I’ am nowhere around.

 

 

 

photo: Orva Schrock

 

explore the riches at Advaita Academy:

 

http://advaita-academy.org/Pages/Default.aspx

 

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