Written on December 28, 2009 by Tom Stine
A while ago, a reader sent me the following question: “Do you have any thoughts on discipline and freedom?” After exchanging a few emails to clarify more specifically what he was asking, he sent me the following:
I’m on a spiritual path and I pick up stuff from all sorts of places like the Sedona Method, I’m checking out A Course in Miracles and the Work of Byron Katie and non violent communication, and other sources, and sometimes with all the techniques and stuff my mind can get really jumbled and I wouldn’t know which to use or when, and it gets to be this mess in my mind, where all messes are made—haha. I think a reason I cling to the forms and techniques is I would achieve pieces of peace and my mind would identify “Sedona Method” with peace and that would get me in trouble. Anyways, my question with discipline and freedom is I don’t know what to do! Should I keep with just one or how should I make sense of this? Should I stick with one discipline and go all the way with it or let freedom guide?
These are excellent questions. This dilemma he is facing is a very common one amongst spiritual seekers. There is a vast array of spiritual ideas, techniques and practices, and even worse pseudo-spiritual ideas, techniques and practices. In case you’ve been sleeping, try googling words like “manifesting” or “The Secret” or “abundance” and just look at the ads in the margin. Yikes! You could go nuts just trying to come to grips with all this… um… well… “stuff” for lack of a more polite term.
But, as is said, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and even in pseudo-spiritual teachings that pander to the basest human instincts, you can find some true gold. But how does one navigate through the trash and hopefully find the treasure?
Well, you don’t, to be honest. You will never find your way through this endless sea. However, that which you are, the Infinite, will lead you and show you the way. It always has been leading you, and it will continue to do so.
So, my suggestion to my reader is to do the following: sit down with any single one of the techniques and practices and work with it until you feel done with it. Just give it a whole hearted effort and see what happens. A bit of earnestness, as Nisargadatta called it, works wonders. We could also call this willingness to let all be undone and transformed
In my own experience, when I was going through a phase like this one, I found that if I would really dive into something, really give it my all, within a very short period of time, it would fade away. And then on to the next, and the same thing would occur. That little bit of intense effort would be all that was needed.
Eventually, all the techniques, all the practices, gave way to the only real practice there is: stillness. When the Infinite begins to awaken through you, it increasingly wants nothing to do with techniques or practices. It has one seeming agenda: to shine it’s light on everything in your mental-emotional system, to open every dark corner and shine a light into it. And what you discover is that it is operating on its agenda and its program, not yours. As a matter of fact, yours never mattered in the slightest. It has always been the Infinite doing its thing.
As a matter of fact, the first realization of truth that was experienced came in the midst of a rather odd “choice” of practice for me at the time. Something in me simply wanted to sit quietly and do nothing, no practices, no techniques, nothing. Just sit and be still. And within minutes, well, there was nothing but Stillness.
I find these days that all I can really do most of the time is sit, allow whatever is arising to arise, and simply watch it merge back into its Source, the Infinite. Ultimately, that is the only real practice. The only “discipline” required is to do one thing, one simple obvious thing, and do nothing else. How interesting!
Namaste.
Written on December 24, 2009 by Tom Stine
Twenty-one years ago, I was feeling a bit sick much of the time, and so I decided to find a doctor who was interested in a more alternative approach to health, as I had just gotten interested in a more healthy lifestyle. Fortunately for me, C. Norman Shealy, founder of the American Holistic Medical Association, had his offices nearby, so I scheduled an appointment with him.
After a thorough examination that lasted over an hour, Norm and I sat down to chat. As we neared the end of our time together, he looked at me and said, “What do you believe in?” I had to ask him to repeat the question because, well, no doctor had ever asked me such a thing. I said, “Well, you’re born, you live, you die. Nothing before or after. No soul, no God, nothing. I guess you could say I’m an atheist.”
Norm looked at me with a kindly smile, and said, “About 5% of the population believes as you do. And that’s okay. But statistically, people who believe in something beyond themselves tend to be healthier and happier. The research is pretty clear on that score.”
Then, he absolutely floored me with what he said next: “I’ve examined you thoroughly, and as far as I can tell, there isn’t anything physically wrong with you. You are quite healthy. Yet, you feel lousy. If I were you, I’d get a spiritual life.”
I’ll never forget the next words out of my mouth: “How the hell do I do get a spiritual life?!”
Norm smiled at me, patiently explained that he didn’t mean go to church or anything like that, and suggested a few books that I should read. He seemed to know, somehow, that once he pointed me in the right direction, I’d be okay. And he was right. After reading his few book suggestions, I discovered the local new age bookstore, Renaissance Books, and went crazy, reading everything under the sun.
After reading dozens of books in the space of nine months, a set of 3 blue books kept catching my eye. I would pick-up one, read it a bit in the store, and then put it away, somewhat disgusted, because the books had all this Christian sounding lingo in them. After doing this little drill 4 or 5 times, I finally broke down and bought them. Within a week, I was hooked. A Course in Miracles became my spiritual path for 12 years as a result.
Strange how these things get started.
I’d love to hear your story of how you got started on the spiritual journey. I’ve turned the comments on for you to share.
Happy Holidays. Namaste.
Written on December 22, 2009 by Tom Stine
This article is one of five articles on forgiveness posted today by several different writers. At the end of this article is a list of links to the others. Forgiveness is an excellent topic for the holidays as, to me, Jesus exemplifies forgiveness more than any other spiritual teacher. And while we have no idea when he was actually born, thanks to history, we celebrate his birth in three more days.
I have a somewhat radical perspective with regard to forgiveness. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say, “I can forgive, but I’ll never forget.” Well, I’m sorry, but that isn’t even within a hundred miles of forgiveness. As long as there is any perception of wrong doing, any perception of injury, any perception of being hurt by another, then you have not only not forgiven, but you, yourself, are trapped by your own inability or unwillingness to forgive. Even worse, the only person who is suffering from your unforgiveness is you!
Why is this so? Why would my unforgiveness be a cause of my suffering? The cause of my suffering is what the other person did to me! That certainly sounds reasonable. After all, one would argue, if the other person hadn’t hit me, yelled at me, abused me, raped me, left me, abandoned me (and on and on), then I would not be suffering. I think it would be hard to find 5 people that would disagree with that position. It is simply how the vast majority of the world thinks.
But let’s look at this situation for a moment. At the moment the incident took place, you were experiencing pain. I grant you that. There is no question that in the moment, really, honest pain, anguish and hurt occurred. I do not mean to imply that this is not the case. Pain is a hard thing to endure, and it is often difficult to get through. But as soon as the incident is over, what is happening now? Well, something different. Something without the pain. As always is the case, life moves on to something new.
So, where is the painful incident now? In memory. It is now a thought. It is also a feeling attached to the thought. More than likely these thoughts and feelings will form beliefs, such as “I must be a terrible person for such a thing to have happened to me.” And as these thoughts are repeated, as the feelings are regenerated, as the experience gets ground into the psychological-mental-emotional system, a whole complex of suffering gets built around the memories of the experience. But please notice, because this part is very important, all of it is now 100% in your mind. The incident may have occurred in the seemingly real world, but now that it is over, it is gone and exists only in the mind.
This state of affairs is both a curse and a blessing. It is a curse because an event that happened once in the past is now replaying in your awareness over and over and over again. It is traumatic in every sense of the word. But it is a blessing because you can now let it all go since it exists only in the mind. It won’t be easy, and recovery from memories that are traumatic are some of the toughest to let go of, but you can let it go. And letting it go, completely letting it go, is forgiveness. True forgiveness. The kind of forgiveness that matters.
Believe it or not, you can let go of a traumatic memory and all the emotion and beliefs attached to it to such a amazing extent that you will have a hard time even remembering that the event took place. It will feel as if it was a movie that you watched once upon a time and are now recalling. There will be nothing really left of it. It won’t be repressed, supressed, denied, or any of a dozen other psychological methods to try to get it out of your mind. As a matter of fact, almost surely you will have to re-experience a major portion of the traumatic event, even to the point of feeling all your anger, shame, guilt, fear, horror, etc., again. It can be brutal and rough. But on the other side is a freedom like nothing you’ve ever seen or felt. Believe me, I know from my own experience.
And that is why I can make the bold claim that I did in the title of this argument: “There is nothing to forgive.” EVER!! When you truly forgive, when you finally let go of something to the extent I’m describing, you will see in no uncertain terms that there is nothing to forgive, and, more shockingly, there never was!! You are healed in a way that is absolutely miraculous. The past is past, gone, never to return. It was only in your mind and now is gone! You are truly free.
Can there be any doubt that those strange words of Jesus, while hanging on the cross, came from a man who knew, really and truly knew, that there is nothing to forgive?
Forgive them for they know not what they do.
How true! How perfect! Jesus could look at his tormenters and have nothing in his heart but true forgiveness, a forgiveness that sees nothing to forgive, ever. To have that utter openness of heart is the greatest blessing by far.
If you want to read more about this somewhat radical view of forgiveness, I would suggest A Course in Miracles. The main theme of The Course is not miracles, as the title would suggest, but forgiveness. The Course says that true forgiveness as I’ve defined it above is the key to freedom, awakening and, ultimately, miracles.
The Other Forgiveness Articles
Beyond the Known
And last but not least, my good friend Takuin has produced an amazing e-book, “Beyond the Known.” It is a delightful, easy to read and stunningly beautiful book. And it has a great price: free. Please head over to takuin.com to download a copy.
Written on December 17, 2009 by Tom Stine
A sure sign that you are a member of The Half Awake (Half Asleep) Club is the almost inevitable pair of questions that the mind loves to ask:
What do I do with this… this… awakening thing that has happened to me?
and
What do I do now (in general)?
Ah, the poor mind. Even when it gets it, it still doesn’t get it. I’m going to call these questions the Half-Awake Dilemma.
There is nothing wrong with these questions, by the way. As long as one has any identification whatsoever with the world, the body, the ego, the persona, anything in the manifest world of form, the questions will arise. And given that so many of us are still somewhat (or greatly) asleep, the mind will ask these questions, and, like night follows day, we will at times believe these questions are important and must be answered.
I’ve found myself trying to answer these questions any number of times. One or both will arise, I get a little hooked into it, and then I’m pondering, writing, researching, even surfing the Internet looking for answers. And each time one of these questions arises, each time I sit with one of them, I always come inevitably to the same realization:
What do I do now?
NOTHING!
Nothing?
NADA!
ZILCH!
ZIP!
ZERO!
Now, please, don’t misunderstand me. I haven’t fallen into the quite common non-dualist trap of looking at everything in the world and in a droning voice uttering, “there’s nothing to do, no one to do it, nowhere to go, and no one to go there.” Not at all. While these statements may ultimately be true, they are more often than not a convenient excuse for sitting on your butt and doing nothing all day. Not my point at all.
Implicit in many questions like “What do I do?” is one of the following two words: should or need. “What do I do?” is almost always the question “What should I do?”. The should is the key. If you will sit with the question, really look deeply into this word should, you will discover that should is a false dilemma, a lie that hooks you into an entire world of problems that need to be solved.
For instance, let’s look at a pretty ordinary example to see what I mean. Let’s take the statement, “I should exercise more.” A pretty common sentiment that many, many people share, and one that almost any doctor or health expert would endorse. But let’s turn it around and ask, “Should I exercise more?”
Here’s how to explore the question: well, if I don’t exercise, what will happen? Hmm… according to the health experts, I will have lots of horrible diseases, be depressed, and look terrible if I don’t exercise a lot, which I don’t do. But is that true? Will I suffer horrible diseases? Well, there have been marathon runners who have dropped over dead in their 30’s and 40’s, and sedentary slobs who have lived into their 90’s. So, that isn’t necessarily true. And be depressed? I’m not depressed now. Look horrible? I don’t think I look horrible as it is (you may disagree if you feel inclined!).
So, are any of these statements true? Can I know that I should exercise more? No, I can’t know. There are arguments for exercise, but there is no seeming necessity. Much different from “there is a bus about to hit me in 5 seconds. I might want to move out of the way unless I want to die.” Nothing as obvious as that.
I know this example is quite mundane, but it points out how quickly a bit of inquiry into the notion of should will quickly break down the very nature of it. Suddenly you are left with questions that have no real answer. Ultimately, after you’ve done some inquiry like this one with many other “shoulds,” you arrive at the only possible destination: you have no idea ever if there is anything you should do. It would seem, in fact, that there is no such thing as “should do” in all of existence!
You see, now that you’ve joined The Half-Awake Club, you are going to start moving through life in an entirely different way. There are no more shoulds, no more should nots, no more rules by which you must play. No, there is something new, something more interesting, and ultimately, something more vital.
Your doing will be increasingly determined by what I like to refer to as “those insistent nudges that keep repeating over and over again until you pay attention.” There is a nice word for this: intuition. Most of us, if we are honest, have had experiences that go something like this:
You feel an intuition to do X. But you don’t want to, or are afraid, or hesitant, or invent one of a thousand excuses. So you do Y. And Y doesn’t turn out the way you expected. Then you get this quiet insistence, this intuition, to do X one more time. But again, you are afraid, resistant, hesitant, or come up with 30 more excuses. And you do Z. Then A, then B, and unfortunately for you, B hurts. A lot. And so you pick yourself up, shake off the pain, and in the end, you say to one of your friends, “You know, I knew all along that Y, Z, A and B weren’t the right things to do. I’ve known all along that X is the better direction for me to go.” And you end up doing X.
Sound familiar? Yes, it does. And that is how you are going to live from now on.
One nice thing about these little insistent urgings, these intuitions, that help you see them clearly is that they never argue with you. They never offer reasons, they never debate, they never tell you bad things will happen if you don’t do what they suggest. They are quiet, subtle, and while insistent, are often gentle. But they never let up. They are persistent and insistent.
So, if you ask me, “What do I do with this awakening thing that has happened?” my response is: what do you notice arising in you? What do you feel at a subtle level to do? You will probably say, “I’m not sure.” To which I will say, good, fine, go sit on it some more. Don’t do anything. Come back in a few months and see what has arisen. Don’t worry. Life will show you.
Increasingly, I’ve noticed that doing nothing can be employed almost as a strategy, and it often works quite well. I get something that feels like an intuition, but I’m not sure. So I do something I never would have done 10 years ago: I wait patiently. And then lo and behold, things start to move in interesting ways. And before I know it, I’m doing the very thing I had the insistent urge to do, mercifully without all the painful false starts in the middle.
This process is exactly what has lead me to spiritual teaching, writing and working with people. You see, in some ways, I haven’t really wanted to. But there has been this urging for a long, long time. I’ve resisted, I’ve blown it off, I’ve held back. I’ve thought of dozens of excuses. For instance, I’ve told myself it is arrogant to do something like this teaching and writing thing. But in the end, the urging is still there. I’ve done Y, Z, A, C, G, H, L, and even R, but in the end, only X will do. Teaching keeps showing up whether I like it or not. And, fortunately, more often than not I like it. There is something deeply satisfying for me about teaching and working with seeming others.
Conversely, at times I’ve actually tried to dive into the teaching or working with people, thinking that since there was this nagging insistence then I should start teaching. Ah, there is that nasty should word again. I would end up feeling pressured, forced by the should, and then I would resist and fight back. Invariably, the timing was never right every time I jumped in because I should do it. Things never quite reached fruition. As the should fell away, more and more things opened-up for me, both inside and outside, and thus I find myself sitting here today writing to you.
I suspect that most people that experience awakening then experience this odd state of affairs. Interestingly, as I’ve discovered over the past few years, the majority of people who experience awakening never do any spiritual teaching. They live quiet lives of service doing many, many other things. Many don’t even do anything that looks like service. But nonetheless, their very presence is abundantly of service to mankind.
Perversely, many of these people will struggle with an egoic insistence that they teach while at the same time feeling that subtle urging not to teach but to do something else. And they must then go through the process of letting go of the ego’s insistence that they teach, just the opposite of what I’ve gone through. Amazing how it all works, isn’t it?
And thus is the Half-Awake Dilemma. If you are experiencing it, enjoy it as best you can. It gets easier and easier the more you open to the Awakeness that you are. Namaste.
Written on December 12, 2009 by Tom Stine
But beauty, real beauty, ends where intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of a face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful.
Photograph of Oscar Wilde taken in 1882 by Napoleon Sarony:
Written on December 9, 2009 by Tom Stine
By using the term “Half-Awake” I’ve probably given a somewhat false impression to many people. Saying half-awake almost implies that there are 3 states that a person can exist in:
Asleep
Half-Awake (or Half-Asleep)
Awake
However, as a few of you can attest, a schema such as this one would be grossly over-simplified and possibly inaccurate. Let me try to clarify a bit what I mean by half-awake and how it fits into what is experienced along the spiritual journey:
1. ASLEEP
The vast majority of humanity is sound asleep. When I say the vast majority, I mean to say 99.99% (and I may have left out a few 9’s). I don’t think I need speak too much about this part, because, well, everyone reading this article knows exactly what asleep is like. *grin* I also recognize that more than a few spiritual people will take offense at me characterizing the vast majority as asleep. I never said there was anything wrong with being asleep, because there isn’t. It’s just a phase consciousness appears to pass through. In fact, there really is no such thing as asleep, it is merely the appearance of asleep. More on that another day. However, asleep is what many, many people experience.
2. An AWAKENING occurs
For no apparent reason (really, that’s how it works out), a moment of “Ah-ha!” happens, a realization, a seeing through the veil of illusion, a moment of pure knowingness. “Ah, so THIS is what I am!” The delusion of separate identity is uncovered to be a lie. An awakening is like no other spiritual experience. It is not an experience, in fact. It is beyond all experiences.
In this moment of utter clarity, one knows beyond question that the “me” that defined them, the psychological sense of self, is empty, void, nothing. Instead, what you are is everything. And beyond.
Very often, an awakening is accompanied by the expression, “Well, I’ll be damned!”
That said, for the most part, an awakening is not permanent. It does not last. Some teachers like to use the expression “non-abiding” to describe this experience. The old psychological sense of self resurrects itself, and once again you find yourself being trapped by the very thoughts and beliefs that you had seen through. You know it isn’t what you are, and yet, there it is.
3. HALF-AWAKE
The experience I’m calling half-awake can take many forms, varieties and “percentages” of awakeness (although measuring one’s awake percentage would be silly and quite futile to say the least). But this half-awake state is what follows from above. A real, genuine awakening occurs, and yet the psychological self is still operating. You are able at times (quite often, in fact) to get lost again in the seemingly important thoughts and beliefs of the mind. You seem to be a someone who has many somethings “he” needs to do.
What I’ve noticed in my own experience, however, is that this experience of being half-awake has changed over time. I would speculate that what I’m calling half-awake is quite evolutionary, fluctuates and is not a single, unvarying state. It changes as one dives deeper and deeper into the mental structure and uncovers more and more of the belief system that held the asleep condition in place. It also changes because there is a natural movement inward toward greater and greater clarity.
After the first awakening, it seemed that I fell back asleep. I couldn’t forget what I realized, and yet, I felt somewhat lost again. And yet, much of my life was different. I couldn’t stay asleep for long without the memory of that awakened state touching awareness. It really was more a contrast between the awake state and my new half-awakeness. But after a month or two, it became apparent that “half-awake” was very different from asleep. There was a sense, however, of going “in and out” of awakeness, but never that full experience of awakening that I had.
In the past 6 months, something new has become apparent, something different from what I had been experiencing. Now, I can’t really say that I’m ever really asleep. There is no more sense of “in and out.” Presence, consciousness, whatever word you care to use for the reality of what we are, is always “just inside my perception,” if that makes sense to you. It is like I can see it just out of the corner of my eye. Not really, but that’s the sense of it. “It” is here, now, present, and doesn’t leave, even in the midst of being occupied by a thought, belief or problem. I’m never asleep, even though I’m not fully awake.
It feels as if I’m moving along a continuum, a line of increasing awakeness. On the far left of the line was asleep. Then came “awakening” followed by what I’m now calling half-awake, but in reality is still a continuum of awakeness. Maybe a diagram will help make this explanation a touch clearer:
4. ABIDING AWAKENING
Ah, here is the Holy Grail of the spiritual journey. I know there is inevitable disagreement about the meaning of every term in spirituality, but abiding awakening is what is most often meant by the “E” word, Enlightenment.
At some point along the way, no one can say when, no one ever knows when or how, something within simply ceases. The psychological sense of self, the “ego” as it is often called, simply goes from the foreground of awareness to the background. It becomes irrelevant. It ceases to be of importance. The Buddha knew what he was talking about when he spoke of Nirvana, for that word simply means “cessation.”
What you are no longer is caught in the mind. It knows itself to be what it truly is. There is no “you” anymore in any real sense. There is just experience. What you are simply is.
I’ll be honest: I can sense this cessation. It is present in my very awareness, a sense that something will drop away, something will completely give way.
In the past 6 months I’ve had further glimpses of this shift. I guess we could say they’ve been “little awakenings,” although I have no idea what that really means. They’ve simply been deeper experiences of truth, further realizations of the Oneness of all things, the emptiness of what I used to see as myself. As so many before me have explained, there is emptiness and Oneness, simultaneously existing, no contradiction.
In the end, that’s all there is: deeper seeing. Even once you have ceased, once there is the experience of abiding awakening, this is still not the end. The spiritual seeking and spiritual journey may have ended, but there is further clear seeing to occur. Consciousness, if it has a purpose, wants to continually see things more clearly.
That’s why in the little diagram above, I put an arrow on the right end of the line. There is simply a continual movement of seeing all things more and more deeply, clearly, fully. Consciousness growing more conscious of Itself through the body called Tom or David or Sarah or Ellen. If enlightenment is anything, this further clear seeing is what it is.
And as long as there is a body that you, Consciousness (for that is what you truly are), seem to inhabit, there will never really be an end to looking and seeing. As my friend Davidya pointed-out in an email to me, there is quite likely always some arising of the psychological self, even in one who is what we might call enlightened. But it becomes a non-issue, arising and in the same instant falling away. Nisargadatta and Adyashanti both spoke of this occurrence, too.
I hope the above clarifies a bit more this experience I am calling half-awake. I’m sure there is still more to be said, and I’ll be happy to share it with you. Thanks for reading. Namaste.
Written on December 2, 2009 by Tom Stine
I strongly urge all of you to read Who Hears This Sound? Adyashanti On Waking Up From The Dream Of “Me” published a few years ago in The Sun magazine. Someone sent me a link to the article, and I found it to be one of the best and clearest presentations of Adyashanti’s teachings I’ve ever read. It is often hard to find succinct versions of a teacher’s ideas and thoughts, but the interviewer did a nice job of bringing greater clarity to an already fairly clear teaching. That’s one of the reasons I like Adya so much: he is extraordinarily clear for an awake guy.
Here are a few excerpts to read now to whet your appetite for the rather long and extensive interview:
Awakening is when you realize that what you thought you were was nothing more than a dream, and you perceive the reality outside the dream, what’s dreaming the dream of you. It’s not just a mystical experience. It is actually realizing the underlying unity of all things.
Simply because you’ve had an awakening, however, does not mean you stay awake. Enlightenment, in simple terms, is when you stay awake. If the awakening is abiding, that’s enlightenment. And most awakenings are not abiding — at least, not initially.
Enlightenment has nothing to do with the head or the heart. Certainly, the head and the heart tend to open up, but that’s a byproduct. Enlightenment is actually waking up from the head and from the heart. It’s waking up from the dream of “me” and seeing the oneness of all things. That’s what I mean by “reality”: that oneness. The truth is that you are that unity. You are not simply a particular person in a particular body with a particular personality; you are that one reality, which manifests itself as all these seemingly separate things.
Spiritual awakening doesn’t happen because you master some spiritual technique. There are lots of skillful meditators who are not awake. Awakening happens when you stop bullshitting yourself into continual nonawakening. It’s very easy to use disciplines to avoid reality rather than to encounter it. A true spirituality will have you continually facing your illusions and all the ways you avoid reality. Spiritual practice may be an important means of confronting yourself, or it may be a means of avoiding yourself; it all depends on your attitude and intention.
So life became my practice, and mistakes became my teacher. And once again I experienced failure after failure. It was humbling, even humiliating. I put myself in situations where my self-image would get crushed. Looking back I could easily say, “Boy, I made a lot of dumb mistakes.” But I needed to do it that way. I wasn’t going to let go of those identities on the meditation cushion. It would have been nice if it could have been contained in this safe environment — bowing and meditating and meeting with the teacher — but it often doesn’t work that way. Spirituality is much more of a bloody mess than we like to admit.
Excellent interview. It is Adyashanti at his best. Again, the link is:
Who Hears This Sound? Adyashanti On Waking Up From The Dream Of “Me”
Enjoy. Namaste.
Written on November 28, 2009 by Tom Stine
A reader sent me the following:
The moment one has to get involved with another person for any reason (or for that matter getting involved with any functional activity for which the mind needs to get involved), the mind moves away to fully involve in the next expected activity with that other person or activity. All that calmness and peace of stillness is suddenly pushed to the background. One can’t avoid interacting with people or doing some activity as they are mostly unavoidable to a large extent. Not to react with the person would mean ignoring and activating a pain body. Even giving attention to humans or a functional activity is taking away the stillness (and the awareness?) that was there when we did only the observation.
How do I manage both the events (being aware and interacting) without compromising the stillness/awareness and the mundane activity?
This question is a good one. And even better, the answer is not obvious at all to the mind:
There is no stillness that gets pushed aside when you interact with someone. Stillness always is present right here and right now, no matter what the body or mind is doing. You are resting in stillness, surrounded by stillness, always and forever in the midst of stillness. Even the interacting, the “someone else”, the doing, the talking, your very nature, everything, everything, everything, IS the stillness. This stillness goes nowhere, does nothing. It IS.
You don’t and cannot manage the events in your life. It isn’t a question of being aware, of actively keeping your mind on “something” that we call awareness. You are awareness. Your mind and thoughts and beliefs all exist within this awareness that you are.
Awareness is something you can know readily. Right now, you are reading these words. We say you are aware of the words. Before you think about them, before anything happens with the words, you are simply aware that they exist. As you think about them, now you are aware of the thinking about them. Without awareness, there is nothing.
So, dive into the awareness. Many words can be used as synonyms for awareness: presence, stillness, God, spirit, Brahman, “the kingdom of God” and on and on. But they all point at this “something” that is prior to everything, the very fundamental ground of all of existence. And YOU ARE THAT ground of existence.
You can never compromise the stillness, never compromise the awareness. You need give no thought to maintaining awareness, holding awareness, being aware, etc. Think about it: right now, can you stop being aware? If you aren’t aware, you are have no notion of existing or not. Without awareness, you don’t exist.
The simplest thing to do is, at times when it occurs to you, put your attention on your awareness. Simply notice it. Focus on it, get curious about it, even ask questions about it. Does awareness have a name? Does it have a color? Does it do anything? Where does it go when you aren’t paying attention to it? Focusing on awareness and asking questions about it a few times during your day is one of the best things you can do.
Namaste.
Written on November 23, 2009 by Tom Stine
Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing: the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not. And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that.
Written on November 21, 2009 by Tom Stine
The secret to happiness:
Make peace with your mind.
Make peace with the person you think you are.
Make peace with the world.
Make peace with life.
Make peace with everything.
Everything.
You, consciousness, make peace.
The mind can’t make peace with itself.
Make peace with all that you are.
The only cause of suffering is your argument with what is.
credit:
joxur223
