Tom Stine | Living as Consciousness » spirituality

The Meaning of Satsang and Truth from June 20, 2010, Online Satsang

Tom Stine — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 18:33:56 +0000

Below is an excerpt from the first online satsang broadcast live on June 20, 2010. In it, I speak about the meaning of the word satsang and its relationship to truth. I will be making excerpts available from time to time from the satsangs as I record each one. Within 2-3 months, full satsangs will be available either by subscription or by download for a small fee. Enjoy! And feel free to leave comments if you wish.

Live Online Satsang Schedule Available

Tom Stine — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 19:20:38 +0000

I have posted a schedule on the website for the next several live online satsangs. Please check it often for updates:

Online Satsang Schedule

I also must inform you that the live online satsang scheduled for this Sunday, July 18, is canceled due to circumstances beyond my control.

The next live satsang will be Sunday, July 25, 2010, at 8:00 pm EDT. I look forward to seeing you then.

Namaste…. Tom

Next Live Online Satsang on July 3

Tom Stine — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 21:23:39 +0000

Greetings everyone. The next online, live satsang will be broadcast on Saturday, July 3 at 5:00 pm Eastern/2:00 pm Pacific. For those of you in other lands, that will be 21:00 GMT. (I recommend The World Clock for converting time zones. Very handy.) Satsang will last 60-90 minutes depending upon the volume of questions. As with the last one, please feel free to email questions to me at live@tomstine.com before or during the broadcast.

The last satsang went extremely well. I had a very nice turnout, with an average of 25-30 people throughout the entire broadcast with close to 100 dropping in to check it out. I would have been happy with 5 people showing-up, so I’m very pleased. The questions asked were great, and I think, all in all, I enjoyed answering questions as much as talking.

I did have one technical snafu, namely, my phone service crapped out on me right before the broadcast. I’ve still not unraveled the glitch keeping me from taking phone calls, but I’m confident I will have it resolved soon, hopefully by this weekend’s satsang.

I recorded the last satsang, and hopefully this week I’ll be posting a short excerpt or two. The equipment I’m using is producing beautiful video and audio, and I’m really pleased with the quality of the recording. You may or may not care for the content of the video and audio, but damn if it doesn’t look good! *grins* See below for a still shot from the video.

To those of you who attended last week’s satsang, I’m grateful and honored to have had you present. For those of you who attended in spirit, I’m grateful for you, too. I look forward to your presence again. Until then, be well. Namaste.

Live Satsang Online June 20

Tom Stine — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:14:03 +0000

It is my pleasure to announce my first live satsang, broadcast online, on June 20, 2010, at 5:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time in the United States. For those of you in other parts of the world who would like to watch, the time is 21:00 GMT.

To watch, simply point your browser to:

live.tomstine.com

Once you reach that page, you’ll find some additional information on the broadcast, plus the option of watching a higher definition version for those of you with very fast Internet connections.

The format will be: a talk by me for 20-40 minutes followed by questions from the audience. I’ll be taking questions via email before and during the broadcast at the following address:

I’ll also be taking phone calls during the question portion of the satsang. I’ll have the phone number posted during the broadcast. If you do call-in, please note that this is a time to ask whatever questions are on the forefront of your mind or are of greatest concern. It isn’t open mic night.

The broadcast will be recorded and eventually made available on my website via subscription. More on that in the future.

For now, I look forward to having you “attend” satsang this Sunday, June 20, at 5:00 pm EDT. Namaste.

I Feel Like a Math Problem

Tom Stine — Mon, 24 May 2010 19:10:40 +0000

credit: Ben Sutherland

I feel like some sort of strange math problem, in which there is a constant dividing, subtracting, square rooting, you name it, and the answer keeps getting closer and closer to some limit. And the limit is somewhere between 1 and 0. Or maybe the problem simply ends up with no solution. Yes, that’s about right. No solution.

Namaste.

I Don’t Read the Buddha Much. Why Not, You Ask?

Tom Stine — Sun, 16 May 2010 17:00:24 +0000

credit:
Frames-of-Mind

Buddhism has a problem, an unfortunate one, but such is life. And that problem is: there is no way to know for certain what the Buddha said. It is a problem with any spiritual teaching more than a thousand years old, or any history for that matter. It has to do with written texts and oral transmission.

The first written Buddhist texts are in the Pali language and are based upon 400 years of oral tradition. That means that whatever the Buddha said 2500 years ago was repeated generation after generation, from one man to the next, for four centuries. Even if the monks who recited the Dharma for 400 years didn’t add a single thing to the words they were taught, not a single new interpretation or correction or improvement, the chance for inaccuracy is huge. Remember playing telephone in elementary school?

When you consider that the Buddha’s followers were about as likely to be enlightened as Saint Peter was to have understood Jesus’ teachings (sorry, but Simon called Peter had no clue what Jesus was talking about!) then, well, the odds are really good that there are major errors. In other words, we have no real idea what the Buddha actually said. I can’t see any way around it.

It’s the Jesus problem. The earliest Christian texts were written about 40-60 years after Jesus’ death. We don’t have any of those. We have fragments of texts that were produced 300-400 years after the actual documents were supposedly written. And we don’t have all that was written in those early years, just the stuff that the early church wanted to keep plus a bit of other stuff. So, we have oral tradition problems, interpretation problems, etc. At least Theraveda Buddhism attempted to preserve the Buddha’s words, something that Christians didn’t even really try to do, except with sayings gospels like the Gospel of Thomas. (Note: contemporary Jesus scholarship is a fascinating subject, worthy of a bit of study. I strongly suggest Marcus Borg. Needless to say, what modern Jesus scholars have to say is not what you are likely to hear in most churches today.)

So, when I started reading Buddhism a bit a few years ago, I was like most people are: confused. My question was: how do I get to the words of the Buddha? And after a while, I knew the answer was the same one I had discovered years before with Jesus: you don’t. You can’t. We will quite likely never know what he really said. And the most likely reason is that his followers didn’t have the slightest idea what he meant by the things he said.

Think about it: the average follower of the Buddha was like most spiritual seekers today. He kinda, sorta, maybe had a sense of what the Master was saying, but he wasn’t so sure. If suddenly things got clear and he experienced some sense of awakening, would he then really care if the Buddha’s words got accurately transmitted to the next generation? Probably not. He might have gone on and done other things with his life, or he might have started teaching others using his words and thoughts.

No, unfortunately, the folks most likely to have been sticklers for repeating the Buddha’s words were quite likely not completely understanding everything he said but were hoping that the Master’s words would enlighten them some day. As time went on, not only did error creep into the transmission but so did interpretations and “improvements” and “he must have meant something else when he said that.”

I know, there is no way to prove such a thing, but it is pretty obvious that in many traditions other than Buddhism that the interpretations became more important than the original words. Just look at Christianity. Go to any modern church and count the number of times the minister quotes a passage from the New Testament that has something in it that Jesus supposedly said. Then compare that to the number of quoted passages from the Hebrew Bible and St. Paul. You will be astounded! St. Paul and the Prophets win by a landslide. Yes, I did this experiment personally years ago. I was shocked. They never, ever quote The Sermon on the Mount in fundamentalist Christian churches.

And so I have adopted a very dishonest method of “scholarship” when it comes to the Buddha and Jesus: I look for the common threads in them that fit with contemporary “enlightened guys” and keep that and discard the rest. As a matter of fact, that’s how I approach all spiritual literature. I only look for the common thread. I’m only really interested in what I find in common between Zen, Advaita, Buddhism, mystical Christianity, channeled material, etc. And then I compare it with my experience. The thread of commonality seems to be what matters and what helps with my personal experience always as the final arbiter.

I know, I would never make a good scholar. But good scholarship has nothing to do with awakening. At least, it hasn’t done me a damn bit of good.

So, for the most part, I much prefer to read enlightenment literature that was actually written down and transmitted fairly intact. There is so much rich, wonderful stuff from Zen and Advaita that I don’t have much need for the old Buddhist texts. I’d much rather read Nisargadatta Maharaj.

I know many people don’t care for Advaita, but I find the best spiritual writings in people who are labelled Advaita. Not that these writings necessarily came out of that school of thought, but their teachings are so similar to true Advaita that they are usually pigeon-holed there. That’s the story with Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta. And even Adyashanti.

I have to admit that most of what passes for Advaita these days is like Zen: pure crap. Both schools of thought get too hung up on the nothing part of awakening. That’s why Nisargadatta is so cool: in his talks, he made it clear that nondual (which is what Advaita means) means NON-DUAL, as in not 2. There isn’t nothingness or everything. There isn’t all and nothing. There’s just One. You look at it one way, and you find nothing. Absolutely nothing. And then you open your eyes, and you see a rich world of form. And the everything that you see is filled with the nothing that you see. And out of the nothing arises form. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.

Now don’t get me wrong: there are some wonderful Buddhist texts to read. The Dhammapada is excellent, and whoever said those words knew up from down. But on the whole, I don’t have much time for all the -ism that arose around a quite awake guy who might have been called Siddhartha and we now know as The Buddha.

If We Are All One, Then Who the Hell Are You?

Tom Stine — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:32:47 +0000

credit:
h.koppdelaney

A big theme in spirituality: we’re all one! No matter what the flavor of spiritual discussion, you’ll bump into something about oneness. And you know, if you are going to believe in something, you might as well believe in oneness. It’s a pretty good concept, as concepts go.

But if we are all one, then who are you? I mean that literally. If there is just The One, as in One Spirit or One Consciousness, no second, no sense of two-ness (that’s what nonduality means, by the way), then is there any sense in which I can talk about a “you” that is not me?

I do see other bodies walking around the world. I talk to other bodies. I have interactions with other bodies. But who is the “you” with whom I am interacting? If there is only One, then you are me. Your consciousness is my consciousness. Your Self is my Self. We are the same. I can even go so far as to say that your thoughts arise from the same place mine do, your body arises from the same place mine does, everything about “you” is the same as “me.” Whatever it is that I am, you are, too.

One means One. I like to call this “radical oneness.” It isn’t a bunch of individuals joined in some collective consciousness or collective state. We aren’t all one in just some special sense. We are One. Same, same, same.

The only question that really matters, then, is if you know this Oneness, through and through, bones to bones. Not think it. Not believe it. But know it. Do you? If not, keep going. You will. It is inevitable because it is the Truth.

Namaste.

P.S. I guess a blog without comments isn’t much of a blog. Feel free to leave your comments below.

Takuin’s Answer to: What Is Enlightenment?

Tom Stine — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:00:29 +0000

credit:
Jowo Sakyamuni 觉沃釋迦牟尼

My friend Takuin Minamoto recently answered this question on his blog, and I was thrilled by his response. Takuin defined enlightenment as follows:

Enlightenment is limitless expansion within a limited field.

I love this definition because Takuin masterfully dropped all the centuries of spiritual baggage attached to this one simple word and took it directly to the heart of the matter. As he further explained, the limited field he is referring to is the world we find ourselves living in, the experiences that pass through our awareness moment to moment. It is a limited field, isn’t it? While it arises from the infinite, in and of itself it will always be contained, confined, bounded, limited. No question, our world is a limited field.

But enlightenment is the infinite, the limitless, expanding through the world of limitation. When we awaken, one of the first things we know is that what we thought we were isn’t. We get a taste for the aspects of limitlessness: nothingness and everything-ness. We know ourselves to be limitless, empty of all form and yet all form. Beyond, within, a part of and not a part of.

And as this limitlessness expands through the point in the limited field that we refer to as you, interesting and miraculous things begin to happen. As the false identity is shed, what is left in its place is nothing but this limitless expansion.

As a businessman once said, “Good ideas are borrowed, the best ideas are stolen.” Well, this is one case where I will merely borrow the best. My hat is off to Takuin for his excellent definition of enlightenment.

Takuin has comments ongoing on this post, so feel free to leave comments for him. I think I’ll open comments here, too, so I can see what’s on your mind. Namaste.

Before Enlightenment: Embodiment

Tom Stine — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:22:08 +0000

A reader sent me the following email:

What I’m wondering is in the phrase, “…after enlightment, chop wood, carry water”. The thing is, I’ve lost my zest for my career which I must recapture in order to find work (was laid-off) and to pay my mortgage. In the absolute, I understand there’s no one here. In the relative, I need to find the energy, but I’m no longer interested in the Game–the whole illusion thing. What to do?

I love this question and the entire subject it represents. It gets right to the heart of the seeming paradox between awakening/enlightenment and the world we find ourselves in. What to do about this paradox?

Awakening to the truth of what we are, that there is no separate self, no “me,” is to barely scratch the surface of what enlightenment truly is. Enlightenment includes in it a process that is often termed “embodiment” because it is a process of the awakened realization penetrating all of the body-mind and undoing all remaining traces of identity. This embodiment results in what I often call a “house cleaning” of the body-mind. All beliefs are undone, thoughts and feelings become transformed, and the mind drifts into the background of experience.

Sometimes an awakening is full and complete, and then with it goes all sense of identity as a self. But these full and complete, total awakenings are rare. Typically, most of us experience an initial awakening to the truth, but then discover that we still feel like a “me” even though we’ve seen, truly seen, that we are not. And so, now we get to deal with all kinds of mental-emotional “stuff” that will be (often) slowly be seen through piece by piece. It can be a difficult time, but also immensely enjoyable.

Embodiment is a major part of the state I have been referring to as half-awake. It is the post initial awakening, pre full “enlightenment” state. These are somewhat arbitrary distinctions I’m making, and there really aren’t such things as these states. But, well, there sort of are. I’ll use these terms as if they mean something simply because it helps to make some distinctions that will be helpful to most people.

So, with that overview, let me look at my reader’s question more clearly. Let me start with “after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” Quite simply, this old Zen saying is clear: after enlightenment. Until embodiment has occurred, after enlightenment is not the state “you” are in. If my reader has had a true, real awakening to the truth of his being (”there’s no one here”), then the thing to do at this point is to work through the embodiment process.

I would contend that the very situation he finds himself in, laid off with a need for a job and very real financial obligations, is exactly what embodiment is all about. You see, what we are, as Nisargadatta called it “The Supreme Reality,” is not content to simply wake-up and sit in a cave staring at “its” navel. It is All of Life, everything in existence, including jobs, bodies, careers, mortgages, houses, dollar bills, etc. It is everything. It has manifested itself as all of form. Including, as my reader puts it, “the Game-the whole illusion thing.” The Supreme Reality has manifested itself as the Game of Human Life, and it is going to play it to the fullest!

Therefore, what I would suggest to my reader, and to everyone, is play the Game of Human Life as best you can. Not the way you did ten years ago, not the way you did before you realized a bit of the truth of your being, but instead from that realization. Instead of having as your motivation for playing the Game the usual motivations such as money, sex, fame, all those things, you now have a much more interesting motivation for playing the Game of Human Life. And the new motivation is freedom. Freedom from all that seemed to keep you stuck in the belief in limitation. You now seek nothing less that the limitlessness that you are.

Everything in your world becomes about freedom, about being free of all the beliefs, fears, etc, that drive the body-mind. You use things like finding a job, paying a mortgage, having a relationship, etc, as a way to discover freedom. You spend some time taking a good hard look at the contents of your consciousness. You see through illusion after illusion after illusion. You develop a relentless drive to be free, to see everything for what it truly is: the divine, the Supreme Reality manifest. You know everything as you. Not think it, not believe it, but know it, truly, wonderfully know it. That’s enlightenment.

And in the process of doing all the above, you gain a love for the Game of Human Life. It may be, in one sense, illusory, but it is the only game in town! It is Your Game, too. What you are is the creator of this odd game, and why on earth wouldn’t you want to play it? It’s your game!

I’ll write some more at a later date about embodiment and “how to do it,” as if there really is such a thing as a prescription for embodiment. There isn’t, but there are some things worth doing. In the meantime, get a book by Byron Katie and do some digging into your beliefs. It will help. Namaste.

credit: Wonderlane

The Infinite Nature of the Infinite

Tom Stine — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:03:58 +0000

credit:
jimkster

What does it mean to be infinite? The answer seems obvious, straight out of high school math: infinite means without limits. We could even say something like “it goes on forever.” Okay, that’s infinite.

But does that have any meaning for us? Spirit, God, the Divine, Consciousness, these are often called “the infinite.” If any of these words have some relationship to what we really are, then that would make what I am and what you are infinite.

But still, the question is begging to be answered: does this have any meaning for us? I would say yes, it certainly does. In a very real sense, I am infinite. And anything that seems to be finite, or not-infinite, would therefore be a false appearance. Because all that I am is infinite.

Infinite. Everything. Everywhere. Without limit.

Therefore:

I extend in all directions.

I have no boundaries.

I have no end point.

I contain everything. And more.

All things are what I am.

There is no limit to me, no end.

All past, all future, Now, these are a within me because I extend forever.

If this body dies, a new one will follow.

If this planet dies, a new one will follow.

If this galaxy is consumed by a black hole, a new galaxy will be born.

If this universe collapses, a new one will expand.

If awareness ceases, a new awareness will arise.

I would suggest that you take a look at something “finite.” If you look closely, you will find that everything in your life that seems to be a problem is a perfect example of a finite thing. If you look even more closely, really look, you will start to see the infinite in your problem. If what you see is not infinite, then it is a false appearance. Behind the seemingly finite is the infinite.

Pick something in your life with which you struggle. It could be money, relationships, health, your job, you name it. Just pick something. Sit for 10 minutes with it. Look at all the ways this thing you are struggling with seems to be composed of limits, of boundaries, of edges, of blocks to clarity. Really look! Now feel into it. Feel the edges, the limits, the aspects of it that say “impossible” or “can’t” or “shouldn’t.” Now look past these limits to the infinite beyond. There, you see it? Yes.

This, then, is the infinite nature of everything. Namaste.

Levels of Control

Tom Stine — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:00:06 +0000

credit: extremeezine

Previously I’ve written about the lack of real control that we have in our lives (see No Control, No Control, No Control and Who Is in Control? and many others). To properly discuss control, however, requires a bit more to be said on the subject than I’ve said in the past. In this article I’m going to attempt to provide some clarity on a somewhat confusing topic.

I think control is confusing and also quite problematic for most people because of the essential issue confronting everyone (and by everyone I mean everyone, not just spiritual seekers). That essential issue is the answer to the question, “What are you?” That’s the key to the whole control question. If you are convinced that you are the little human body with a little human brain, then I think I can safely say that you have virtually no control over your life.

I say virtually no control because there is no doubt that the human mind has some sort of influence on how the body functions and moves through life, so there is a semblance of control. But even then, this influence is nothing more than that: influence. But control? Forget about it! The amount of control that the human mind has over the events, actions, decisions and details of a human life is laughable at best.

I know that many of you have watched The Secret. For that matter, you’ve grown up in a either a western or a westernized culture with it’s emphasis on self-determination, hard work, and “going for broke.” You’ve been taught over and over again that if you simple dig in and try harder, exercise your will, your inner strength, etc., you can make anything happen. But I’m sorry to tell you that every bit of that is a farce, a deception, a belief system that has no resemblance to actual experience.

First of all, you have no control over your thoughts. You can’t decide what you are going to think. If you will sit for even a moment and watch, your thoughts simply arise and then fade of their own accord. They are based upon your experience, your conditioning, the sum total of your life. Even better, notice how irrelevant they are 99% of the time to what you are experiencing right now.

At this moment, you are reading this article on control. If you pause, close your eyes, and watch your thoughts for a few minutes, notice what will come: the guy you met last weekend at a party, the bill that is due next week, the dog you saw running on the beach, the fact that it is 0 degrees outside (although it is toasty warm inside). But none of that is what is happening right here and right now. Thoughts arise, thoughts fade, and there really is no controlling what you are going to be thinking from moment to moment.

Secondly, let’s get real for a moment: even if you could control your thoughts, do you honestly think that your mind can manipulate external reality and cause new cars, new houses, new jobs and new women (and/or men) to enter your life? Just because you “held a thought” in your awareness for a few minutes each day? Now don’t misunderstand, I’m talking about “your mind”, that little hunk of energy that contains the thoughts specific to the body called Tom or Bob or Sue or Helen, the thoughts that are tied to the brain and nervous system of that body. Does that have control over new houses, new cars, etc.? Influence, sure, but control? Control? Real honest to God control? Okay, didn’t think so.

As an aside: I know that I’m not going to make a lot of spiritual and new-age people happy with the above. Oh, well. Someday I’ll write more about the effect of mind on experience. There certainly is some sort of process going on, something that sort of looks like the mind giving rise to our experience, something that seems like a “Law of Attraction” or something similar. But the key point above is this: that little bit of energy you call “my mind” isn’t the force driving your life and experience. My advice: give up trying to manipulate Life and to attract goodies into your experience. It isn’t going to work the way the Secret folks would have you believe.

Okay, so at the level of the seeming separate human being, governed by his thoughts and residing in a body with a brain and nervous system, there is no control over life. It is a fantasy at best. But, thank God for you and me, that little human body and brain has nothing to do with what you really are. What you are is none of that. The human body and brain are contained within what you are. That human body and brain are simply part of your experience in the manifest world.

So, what are you? You are Life itself. We use many fancy words in spirituality to attempt to describe what you are, words like Consciousness, Life, God, Awareness, Awakeness, The Now, Presence, Brahman, you name it. All just words attempting to get a grip on what it is that you are. But they point to something far larger, far more immense, and most assuredly more powerful than the mere human being you have come to think you are.

Let me bring back a diagram I used in a previous post:

What’s looking out of your eyes, what you really, truly are is the Void at the top of the diagram. You are the very source of awareness and consciousness, and as these you experience a Universe or maybe even many universes. All that you see, all that you hear, all that you taste and touch and smell, all this arises out of what you truly are. Everything in the manifest world, everything around you, is you!

So, from the only level that really matters, the level of Consciousness, of Life, it is quite pointless to discuss control. In a certain sense, you could say that you have complete and total control over everything. But that isn’t really the right way to phrase it, because that implies that there even is such a thing as control. Control is just an idea, a concept, that minds create. But in the reality of what you are, there is nothing to control.

Look at the dictionary definition of the word control:

Control: to exercise restraint or direction over; dominate; command.

The very word control implies manipulation, an attempt to change things so that they will be “better” in some sense. But look at the reality of life: everything, everything, everything is Life, is coming out of the unmanifest, the state of pure potential, spirit. It is all arising not by accident, not by some grand cosmic mistake. It is arising from the very substance of what life is. How can there be a mistake anywhere? How can there be a single, solitary thing that Life wants to change right now within its creation? Or to ask it another way, what would God want to change in His creation at this particular moment?

All is as it is. Right now. Perfect. Whole. Complete. Part of awakening is the recognition of this unalterable fact. The very idea of awakening would indicate that this recognition is so. You are awakening to what you are. You are coming into a full, complete understanding of what you are and everything else is. You see everyone and everything as this whole, full and complete.

And finally, I think that many people get the notion that somehow there will be some sort of perfected, absolute, ultimate blissful state at the end of the spiritual path, a state where nothing changes. Well, it may or may not end up being blissful, but it will certainly not be unchanging. While everything may be perfect right now, that doesn’t mean it won’t change into yet another form of perfection. Change is what makes us believe there is time, for change is always occurring. Always change.

There is a much better way to live life. I will write more about this topic later, but suffice it to say it involves that interesting word flow. Spiritual people are always paying lip service to the notion of “going with the flow,” but wanting to control is the exact opposite. There is a movement to life, a flow, and if you relax into it, cooperate with it, this flow can flower and blossom in your experience. It’s called miraculous for a very good reason!

So drop trying to control what you never could and never will control. You’ll be infinitely happier for doing so.

Emptiness, Everything and Quantum Mechanics

Tom Stine — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:08:21 +0000

credit: µµ

I have a good friend who often debates with me the seemingly separate experiences of “emptiness” and “everything” that arise as a part of awakening. I often take the emptiness side of the debate, as the awakening I experienced was very much one of emptiness as all sense of what I am, a “me,” a self, an “I” as an individual completely vanished. I spent a delightful 24 hours with not one shred of identity. “I” was as empty as can be.

My friend, on the other hand, got the “everything” part first. You see, awakening seems to have two aspects to it, if we can call them that, an emptiness aspect and an everything aspect. Someone who has fully realized the truth of their being knows themselves to be absolutely empty, nothing, no self, no “I” anywhere and, at the same time, everything in existence. That’s the full realization.

Recently, my friend sent me an email in which he said:

“I had my first direct experience of emptiness yesterday during an hour long
meditation. It was a shock. Still processing it.”

The discussion that follows is based on my reply to him with some additional thoughts:

Be careful with emptiness! I say that half-jokingly, but the old Zen guys used to warn about “getting drunk on emptiness.” I know exactly what they mean. I can “dive” into the emptiness at times and appear to be completely free of everything. It can be a bit intoxicating and also quite liberating. And when I come out of the emptiness? Ah, now that’s what’s curious! I’m not quite as free somehow and often seem to get a touch lost back in the mind. However, every time I spend a little bit of time in emptiness, the “problems” I have get lighter and lighter and the freedom deeper and deeper. Someday all that is going to cease.

One of the first real tastes I had of everything occurred when I was sitting one day and really looked at some things around me and recognized that the emptiness was in everything I was looking at. Then it hit me: everything I see IS emptiness. And then I got a taste of everything. A week later, I did a little more of that, and then I knew that I was the tree I was looking at, and I could literally feel the tree. “We” were nothing and everything at the same time.

That said, something I heard Adyashanti say once, and Nisargadatta used to talk about often, may be the resolution to our debate about emptiness and everything. Nisargadatta would talk about being “beyond” both emptiness and everything. Beyond all hint of manifestation. Beyond all opposites. While he would EXPERIENCE everything and nothing, he knew that what he was, in fact, was beyond even that. He would say that what he was contained everything and nothing.

Adyashanti calls this The Void. He says there’s absolutely nothing he can really say about it except maybe to say that everything, including emptiness, arises out of the Void. If you can say anything about it, it would be that The Void is pure potential. And even that isn’t it. It isn’t a state, it isn’t anything. Yet, it is what we all are and everything is.

I’ve been intrigued lately by a retired physicist, Amit Goswami, who wrote one of the most popular textbooks on quantum mechanics (for physicists, that is, so he is the real deal when it comes to science). He was in “What the Bleep.” I’ve tried reading one of his books, but he isn’t the best writer. He’s too scattered, and he really doesn’t get the extent to which the idea of “consciousness” goes. But, that said, he’s still worth reading, and he helped me construct a model of how the manifest arises. It goes something like this:

Before I go further, please note: the above diagram is a MODEL of how the apparent world might work, not Reality. It is something to play with, something for the mind to have fun with as it tries to make sense of what it will never make sense of. If it helps, great. But never, ever take things like the above as the Truth. They aren’t. That said….

The cool thing Goswami did for me was help me see where consciousness fit into the picture of how the physical world works. The key is that awareness or consciousness doesn’t arise out of the physical world, but is the generator of the physical world. I knew that from my spiritual experiences, but I was having some cognitive dissonance from all the science and psychology I had learned in the past. Now I get it. One small belief change and it all seems to work.

What’s really amazing is how the manifest world, beginning with the notion of Everything and through quantum particles, atoms and the visible world arises and subsides quite spontaneously and frequently in and out of consciousness and the Zero Point Field. Real, observable quantum particles arise and collapse back into this ground state. All of our seeming physical universe is a continuous play in and out of consciousness. Needless to say, I will have a lot more to say about these ideas in the future.

The Zero Point Field is a very interesting concept. I had heard of it, but I thought that some New Agey people had taken an idea in physics and distorted it and came up with a goofy explanation of all the woo-woo stuff out there. However, if you read the actual physics, the Zero Point Field is a very solid concept in the world of quantum physics. It is a massive, infinite background “field” of “energy” (neither term really means anything, but that’s a different story) out of which literally every aspect of physics arises. It is so fundamental that every physics equation written ignores it because they can’t do anything with it. From what I can tell from the physics, and interfacing it with the spiritual, the Zero Point Field is the first manifestation of Consciousness. Or, who knows, maybe they are co-equal. Hard to say. But fun to play with. Nonetheless, there really is an interface between the spiritual and the manifest world, and it is right there at the boundary of consciousness and this field of energy. How cool is that?

Namaste.

There Is Nothing to Forgive

Tom Stine — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 04:01:53 +0000

credit:
Katie Tegtmeyer

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

Daphne Lim: The Gift of Forgiveness
Albert Foong (The Urbanmonk): Our Innate Innocence – Reflections on Forgiveness
Takuin Minamoto: The Wound of Forgiveness
Davidya: Deep Forgiveness

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.

Fortnightly Tweets for 2009-10-25

Tom Stine — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:50:00 +0000

Money quote: “For $10,000 you could hire a coach AND a therapist for a year who will give you INDIVIDUALIZED therapy and coaching.” #
Money quote #2: “Nothing replaces individual prayer, meditation and your personal connection with God on a daily basis.” That is soooo true. #
The more I read about most main stream spiritual teachers the more I think I must be nuts to be doing spiritual teaching! I guess I am nuts! #
blah blah blah blah blah blah enlightenment blah blah blah blah…. if it weren’t so damn funny, it would be pathetically sad. #
Assertions are usually wrong and denials, right. -Nisargadatta Maharaj #
Only by denying can one live. Assertion is bondage. Nisargadatta #
To question and deny is necessary. It is the essence of revolt and without revolt there can be no freedom. -Nisargadatta Maharaj #

Fortnightly Tweets for 2009-10-11

Tom Stine — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:50:00 +0000

Is there such a thing as enlightenment? The skeptic says “no!” But if you are enlightened, you’ll say “no” too. #
Of course, I guess I should ask, who’s the one that is enlightened? Ah, so obvious! No one to be enlightened. #
Reminds me of Sailor Bob: “the only difference between an awake one and one who isn’t is that the awake one knows there is NO difference.” #
Clarity. Always clarity. When in doubt, sit, wait for clarity. To quote Valentine Michael Smith: “Waiting is.” #
Wifi at 29,000 ft. Now you can tweet 6 miles high. Too bad, huh? LOL #
I have a friend who thinks that awakening INCREASES the personality and the EGO. What say you Twitter-ites? You can already guess my views. #
RT @Takuin “To live is to suffer” — Buddha “To think is to suffer” — Takuin #
RT @guruphiliac I’ve found that some folks seem to carry a certain, hard-to-pinpoint comfort with their discourse that says “veracity” to me #

Fortnightly Tweets for 2009-09-27

Tom Stine — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 04:50:00 +0000

No “I” no problems. No “me” no problems. #
Just think: every problem you’ve every had is GONE when you drop this silly belief called “me”. #
If there’s no “me” then there’s no “you.” And vice versa. #
Who has a monopoly on Truth? No one. Ultimately you have nowhere to turn but to your Self. You have to find the answers within YOU! #

Fortnightly Tweets for 2009-09-13

Tom Stine — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 04:50:00 +0000

Is it just me or do most spiritual teachers and writers seem to be lacking a sense of humor? Good God, lighten up! #
“Tom, what’s the purpose of having friends and family?” That one is easy: entertainment! #
One thought believed separates Heaven and Hell. And any thought will do. — Adyashanti.
And that one thought can be “I’m enlightened.” #
Or “I’m NOT enlightened.” #
Some books are much better when listened to as opposed to being read. A New Earth is one of them. Eckhart is beautiful to hear. #
No matter what I write down, it isn’t true. No matter what I think, it isn’t true. Or feel. Nothing!!! Woohoo!!! #
Now I know why the Buddha said: “I’m on to you house builder. You will build no more houses here!” #
I can’t stop you from believing in falsehood. But you can stop believing it now! #
Are you waiting to cross the “enlightenment” finish line? Good luck, because you never will. There is no finish line! #

Fortnightly Tweets for 2009-08-30

Tom Stine — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 04:50:00 +0000

What if everything you have turns out to be nothing? Oops! Oh, well, you can have more fun when you realize it’s nothing. #
Can spirituality make your life better? Yeah, sure it can. That’s what the experts say, right? Jesus’ life sure turned out great. #
What happens when you point that alive, awake Presence at a “problem” you have? Try it. You’ll be pleasantly surprised. #
What if you discovered that the person you’ve been your whole life really is just a character you’ve been pretending to be? Hollywood is me! #

Fortnightly Tweets for 2009-08-16

Tom Stine — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 04:50:00 +0000

Every time you say “I am this” or “I am that,” about whom are you talking? I WHO? Seriously, where is this “I” you are so convinced of? #
Go through everything around and say, “this is what I am.” Do it for everything. Then recognize that they are all nothing, too. Like you. #
What is awakening? What is enlightenment? We do our best to describe the impossible to describe. Oh, well. At least you can have fun trying. #

Fortnightly Tweets for 2009-08-02

Tom Stine — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 04:50:00 +0000

Give up making decisions. Let Life and your intuition show you what to do. They are always right on the money. #
My friend Takuin nailed awakening with a story from Michael Caine: http://bit.ly/fChhs #
Listen to people. They spin the most incredible tales about why their lives suck. But listen closely. Those are YOUR tales of woe. Total BS. #

Fortnightly Tweets for 2009-07-19

Tom Stine — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 04:50:00 +0000

Being. Without anyone “doing” the being. #
There is no “me-ness” in what I am. #
Who? Who? Who? It’s the only question you need explore. Who is at the core, the very core, of everything that happens. Everything. Who! #
You have no identity. It isn’t that you have the wrong idea of who you are, it’s that you have ANY idea of who you are. You ARE. Period. #

Fortnightly Tweets for 2009-07-05

Tom Stine — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:50:00 +0000

Another day, another nobody. #
Look around and simply remind yourself: I’m looking at nothing. Literally. I suspect your “practice” will take a nice forward leap. #
Whatever will shake you loose and wake you up is just what you will get. This week prayer, next week meditation, and after that? A six pack? #
Anything to avoid the Void. #
Everywhere you turn, it’s the Void. Every time you look inside, you are confronted with Nothingness. Will you look, really look at it? Good! #
Life wants you to fully live. But it might have to wear you down a bit to get you to let go enough to really live. #
Emptiness, nothingness, the Void is your salvation. Who could have guessed that NOTHING could be so liberating? #
In the midst of fireworks, Silence. #

Fortnightly Tweets for 2009-06-21

Tom Stine — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 04:50:00 +0000

Anything in life can and will disappoint you as long as you look for things to please you. Quit looking outside yourself for happiness. #
Twitter makes even idiots sound like spiritual savants. Including yours truly! #
I still like being forced to be succinct. In the world of spirituality, brevity is a rarity! Anything beyond “All is One” is just noise. #
Death. Can you accept the death of your “self” or someone else’s “self.” You better! Cause it’s going to happen. #
After decades of believing that some people had the truth and others didn’t, how nice to discover that everyone has it. A gift that was! #
Everything, everything, I mean EVERYTHING we were told about spirituality was wrong. Oh my God! Literally. #
Have you noticed what Puritans most spiritual people are? Sheesh. #
What if you woke up one morning and had NO identity. You were 100% no one, nobody, nothing. All you could really say was “I exist.” Bingo! #

Fortnightly Tweets for 2009-06-07

Tom Stine — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 04:50:00 +0000

Adya likes to say that the hardest thing for a human being to do is: do one simple thing consistently. Like sitting! LOL #
When I say sit, I mean SIT. Not meditate like the Buddhists mean. Just SIT. Let things be. Let life be exactly as it is. Just sit. Sit. #
Try sitting. Go on. It is perversely simple. Amazingly beautiful. Peaceful. Joyous. And hard as hell to do. And yet, I do it. Weird. #
It’s all about identity. Everything. #
While much abused, the movie analogy for awakening and life is really a good one. We are but characters in a film. Wearing borrowed clothes #
I travel a lot. I’m not sure why. Anything my mind tells me about why isn’t true. Better to notice that this body is 1000 miles from home. #
Don’t you get it? Everything is allowed! Everything. Forget all that spiritual crap you’ve heard. Nothing is off limits to the One. #
And yet, the One always seems to move in the direction of what we can only call “goodness.” Maybe we should say Love. And so it goes. #
I love reading what others have to say about life and how the world works. Why? Because ALL of it is a wild ass guess. Even what I write! #

Fortnightly Tweets for 2009-05-24

Tom Stine — Mon, 25 May 2009 04:50:00 +0000

We seek. But do we find? If we are honest we say no. We never find what we are looking for. Why bother seeking? Because we have no choice. #
What is enlightened? What a term! I wish I had a dollar for every enlightened person who isn’t. I’d be rich! #
Do you need awakening? I think yes, at least to wake up to the truth. Maybe not full awakening, but knowing a bit of truth is very helpful. #
Nothing you do will cause you to wake up. The only thing you can “do” is let awakening happen. It’s a not-doing. #
Without your thoughts about someone, they can end-up being pretty spectacular. Even when they aren’t. #
Awareness rocks! #

… Related posts:

Weekly Tweets for 2009-05-11

Tom Stine — Tue, 12 May 2009 04:50:00 +0000

Ben Franklin said that sitting is essential to life. Sitting and letting awareness be. Okay, Ben didn’t really say that. But he should have! #
You know the awareness that “you” have of everything that happens? What if THAT is what you are? What would you do with that knowledge? Hmm. #
Right now, are YOU aware? Or is awareness just happening? #
Most of what you seek, most of what you do, is part of the “trap” you are caught in. Probably all of it is the trap. Get out of the trap! #
What if the entire spiritual journey was a waste of time? What if all you needed to “do” was to sit and rest as the awareness that you are? #
Most days it probably seems as if the world is INSANE! What if it is? What if it is insane when seen through the the mind? #
What if that insanity that you see isn’t really true? What if everything you see and is merely interpreted by the mind? What then? #
What then? Easy: don’t believe your mind. And when in doubt, don’t believe your mind!–Adyashanti #
Look around. All you see is emptiness. Just emptiness. But it isn’t what you think emptiness is. Find out. You’ll be amazed! #
Investigate emptiness. Look at it. Sit with it. Let IT reveal itself to you. Who knew it was so full, so rich. It’s the fire within. #
Relax. It is so good just to be alive! Just to be. Feel the aliveness around you. Awakeness everywhere. My God! It’s beautiful. Really. #
I agree with my friend Takuin: what YOU want is irrelevant. Show me this YOU that wants anything. Find it! Go on, look for it. Surprise! #
What do you hope to get from gurus? What do they have to give? No matter, won’t you still have to sit in silence to know the gift? Yes! #
Until you wake up, the Universe will beat you over the head with a sledgehammer until you GET IT. Right now, my head hurts! #
More beer? It won’t help. You can do your best to drown out Life, but it won’t work. Silence is LOUD. Can’t you hear it?! It’s calling now!! #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-04

Tom Stine — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:11:00 +0000

Pizza. You do know that awakening might change your perception of life, but it doesn’t change life? Pizza is still pizza. And it is good! #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-04-27

Tom Stine — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 21:11:00 +0000

Do you want to know everything there is to know about awakening? Watch a French waiter open a bottle of wine. THAT’S AWAKENING! #
Awakening is about LIFE! FUCKING LIFE! Do you get it? LIFE! Oh my God, how did I miss this for so long?! Thank God for the French! #
When you sit down at a table in Paris, you OWN that table. For a country of atheists, the French GET awakening! #
Does anyone who is awake ever apologize? #
Seriously, why would you ever be sorry for anything? Everything is perfect as it is. No regrets, no disagreements with life. #
I’m rocketing across France on Thalys. Belgium then Amsterdam next. What the human mind can create is astounding. #
But in the end, we move through life like this train through France. Just spectators on the way. #
Bikes. Everywhere bikes in Amsterdam. Why are they rushing around? Why? There’s no hurry. None. #
KLM is a great airline. And what does this have to do with awakening? Nothing. Duh! #
I spent 8 hours sitting on a plane. Perfect for sitting in silence. I sat. I wrote. Ahh. #
Now I’m sitting Chicago. Nothing is silent. But SILENCE is everywhere. Every word is silence. Lovely! #
Planes are great places for sitting. Like being in a prison cell. But with no food. But still a great place to know what you are. #

Dorothy’s Not in Kansas Right Now

Tom Stine — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:16:06 +0000

credit: Il Genesio

Okay, in truth, Tom is not in Missouri right now, but it just didn’t have that lovely allusion to one of my favorite movies, the Wizard of Oz. I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I was growing up, one of the television networks (hey, we only had 3) would show the Wizard of Oz once each year, always on a Sunday night. Man, I was GLUED to that TV for the whole thing. I love it, I was mesmerized by it. I mean, how on earth did they get the world to go from black and white to color and then back again? Too wild.

Okay, the Wizard of Oz has nothing to do with the purpose of this post, but so what? Does anything have ANYTHING to do with anything else? Or, put another way, everything has everything to do with everything! Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out later.

So, I’m wrapping up a month in Paris, France, this week. I arrived on March 28, and I leave on Saturday. I fly home from Amsterdam, so this weekend I get to enjoy the wonderful hospitality of the Dutch. But for the past almost four weeks, Paris has been my home.

I LOVE PARIS. I really, really do. Someday, I’m not sure when or how, I will live here part of the year. You see, it’s the language that really gets me. I absolutely love the French language. I can’t get tired of hearing it spoken. I speak it a bit myself, not that well, but I spent the last 3 weeks going to a language school each morning trying to improve my French.

I shared with my newsletter readers that, according to two psychics, I was one of Napoleon’s generals in a past life, so maybe that explains my love of French. Who knows? But here I am.

An obvious question that I’m sure I’ll be asked is, “What did you learn while in Paris?” So, let me provide a few completely spontaneous observations:

*Travel can be very, very good for bringing up any issues you have been trying to ignore or were not aware of. Paris has been excellent in that regard. So, get on a plane and put yourself in a more stressful environment and see what happens. I live in the country of Missouri, so life in Paris is definitely bringing up some good stuff. Who knew it was there?

*Parisians are obsessed with shoes. If any of you reading this blog live in Paris, you will know immediately what I mean. It is the most incredible thing to see sitting at a café. 2 million people live within the walls of Paris, and there are 1.5 million different pairs of shoes. The rest are Converse hightops.

*You can eat raw hamburger and not die. Now, maybe you can’t in the USA, I get that. But here, even cooked hamburger is mostly raw. As is steak, duck and eggs. You know, I think I actually prefer meat that way. Even though this is my 6th trip to Paris, I still have to adjust to the food. It is amazingly good. I think you can probably live on bread, eggs, salade, raw meat, coffee and wine.

*Walking is good for the spirit and body. I feel better in a pedestrian culture. In the USA, we walk only to get in and out of our cars. You can go an entire day, traveling 50 miles around town, and walk maybe 100 yards. In Paris, 3-5 km is not a big deal. Now, given that you get to walk 3-5 km per day, why in God’s name do Les Parisiens where incredibly uncomfortable shoes? Only me and German and Austrian tourists are wearing hiking shoes (American tourists where New Balance running shoes and flip flops).

*The best ice cream in the world is on Ile Saint-Louis in Paris. Berthillon.

*People are the same wherever you go. I know that, but it is really fun to see it right in front of your eyes. The young French women doing their thing. Different language, same flirtatious behavior. Old couples walking arm in arm. Men doing their macho act to impress women. Rude and not so rude waiters. Friendly store owners. People rushing to get from point A to point B. Life is life. Every where you go.

*And all the while, no matter where or when or under what circumstances, Life is still calling to you. You can hear it in the sound of scooter racing down the street, a child laughing, the clink of two wine glasses. Always calling you. One Life. One.

Be well. Time to hit a café. Namaste.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-04-20

Tom Stine — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:11:00 +0000

Suffering. Did the Buddha get it right? It sure seems like he did. Inherent in all attachment and aversion is suffering. It’s so obvious. #
Susan Boyle ROCKS http://tinyurl.com/c49rgl #
Why does Susan Boyle move us? Because she touches something in us? No, because she IS you and she IS me. One, one, one. We are Susan Boyle. #
Life is a movement of arising from nothing. Then falling back to nothing. I am the arising and the falling and the nothing and the life. #
The “answer” is always in the question “Who?” Ramana always would say to people, “Find out who wants to know.” Who has the question? #
All my life I’ve felt this strong desire to express myself. To talk. To tell you something. The funny thing is: who’s doing the talking? #
I sit at a café and watch the people walk by. Who are they? What are they thinking? They are me. Could they be thinking what I’m thinking? #