The other day my friend and I were cracking up at fact that various words can be both good or bad, valid or invalid, true or untrue depending on how they’re used…

“I’m nothing! I’m nobody!” To an ego, this sucks. You may hear someone say this when they’re beating up on themselves. At the same time, you may hear someone who’s discovered the no-thingness within and found there is no “someone” who has a body, mind, personality, etc. Rather than it being an expression of restriction and low self-esteem, it’s an expression of pure freedom from form!

“I can’t do it!” In the personal power and self-development community, this is seen to be negative. It’s all about embracing what’s possible and believing in yourself because, afterall, you can do anything you set your mind to. On the flipside, you’ve got the aspect of surrender and the recognition that there’s some things you can’t accomplish. If anything, you give up trying and fall into the recognition of what can’t be accomplished because it’s already here. A quick example would be like after a magician saws a woman in half, how do you put her back together? The answer is you can’t. Why? Because she was never separate in the first place! There was only the appearance of the woman being sawed in half that the talented magician created, but even if you bring in the world’s greatest surgeons and doctors, they can’t do anything to put the woman back together again. It’s not that they’re incapable or not good enough. It’s simply that the separation never happened in the first place and in the discovery of the truth of this statement, both the so-called problem of the woman being cut and half and the apparently necessary solution of putting her back together again are no longer needed! You can’t put her back together again what was never actually separate, although you can certainly create the appearance of that and thus experience it as if it were real!

“I don’t know anything!” To the mind which may often be working with the idea that there’s certain things you definitely DO know, like your name, gender, that the earth is round, that fire can burn you, that an egg and a sperm coming together can lead to babies, and so on.. and yet deeper than that there’s an emptiness that’s discovered whereby you find out that you actually don’t know anything for sure! Not really! It’s all made up, a world of appearances, and just a story that’s being told. How do you know for sure that everything you’ve been taught isn’t just a made-up fiction? You don’t know anything for sure, and then at the same time, it is discovered that by letting go of knowing anything in the mind, you actually know much more than you think you know by accessing some deeper inner wisdom. You know everything you need to know when you need to know it, even though you don’t know anything. Somehow this seems to be true for all of us. It’s just a question of whether or not we have discovered it yet.

“It’s all an illusion!” At first we may think that our physical world is really real. Then we may get into physics, metaphysics, or spirituality and learn that the world is all just a bunch of atoms and molecules made up of energy and the appearance of the world is literally created by our thoughts. It’s just a movie being witnessed in awareness. And then the whole discussion of reality vs. illusion, relative vs. the absolute.. that whole game starts running and we buy into one notion or the other, until even the difference between reality and illusion or relative and absolute starts to disintegrate… It leaves you nowhere to stand. Reality vs. illusion, THAT starts to fall apart. What’s the difference between a dream and reality? It’s not that you’re confusing the two and thinking that your mental dream IS reality. It’s simply that there’s seen to be no separation. Look at your hand made up of many molecules. One hand, zillions of parts. Which is the illusion? The one or the many? Both? Neither? Sure we can say “this is of the mind” and “that is beyond the mind,” and yet even that starts to blank out on its own.

“We are all one. We’re all connected!” From a place of oneness, the idea of being connected itself doesn’t even make any sense. How can there be connection if there is ONLY ONE? There are SO many ways of seeing how the one can manifest itself, so many valid experiences… Separation, multiple parts that effect each other via cause and effect, multiple parts that are connected via infinite threads, infinite expressions all arising in one locationless location, just ONE without another, nothing to be anything and a total zeroing out of all of life…

Giving the Mind Nowhere to Rest

What seems to start happening is that while we used to be searching for this to be truth vs. that, we paradoxically discover that everything is a manifestation of truth and nothing is truth. No longer can we say any experience is invalid. All of it is valid. All meaning is valid and yet life is totally meaningless. Every experience is embraced by the one and none of it is rejected even though rejection happens. Who am I? Not this, not that, and yet both this and that. and beyond this and that entirely and yet imminently right here.

We start falling into a space where nothing is valid, nothing is invalid, everything is valid, and everything is invalid.

Every answer is right. No answer is right.

From here, where are we gonna go? What are we gonna do? Where can the mind rest when everything it thinks is seen to be both valid and invalid simultaneously and no matter what it thinks, it can no longer satisfy itself by boxing a collection of ideas up and calling it “my truth,” “my beliefs,” “my religion,” “my philosophy,” and so on? Even “all ideas and no ideas” is an idea itself that is seen to be part of that same predicament, like a snake eating its own tail.

If anything, there’s just a complete validation/invalidation of the mind to where everything/nothing is it. Every thought and no thought is IT. Both sides of the paradoxical puzzle are seen while the puzzle has no sides.

The Self is beyond knowledge and ignorance.

-Ramana Maharshi

No conclusion and no thought can bring you to Self-realization. Who you are is not found in that world, and yet you are present there too…

Just Being Present, Without Needing to Access the Mind

Truth is a pathless land. Man cannot come to it through any organisation, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection.

-J. Krishnamurti

Though observation and NOT through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Observation keeps you right here. Analysis and dissection keep you spinning around in search for an answer. At best the analysis implodes upon itself, leaving you nowhere with nothing to grasp at. Just a simple being here. Just being. The search, if it has been truly effective, has shown you that the search can never lead you where you want and so you give up the search and rest here. In this resting the discovery can be made of what’s truly HERE.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

-T.S. Elliot

Reader Question:

Dear Ariel,

Ultimately, are we all “one” or are we separated individual consciousnesses?  Will we still be feeling the difference and separation between “me” and “you” ?

Thanks,

TSS

Ariel’s Response:

Great question, no?

When we begin looking into the nature of awareness, it seems like there’s “my awareness” and “your awareness.” There’s that which is looking “through my eyes” and that which is looking “through your eyes.” They have access to different perspectives, different thoughts, and different experiences. We often experience them as tied to the unique attributes of each person (my awareness is over here looking at you over there, where your awareness is over there looking at me over here).

Yet are they really one? If they are, why don’t we experience a unity between the infinite individual awarenesses? This idea of one universal awareness isn’t what is experienced from behind the veil. Separation is the norm, but what’s really going on on “the other side of the veil?”

Self-inquiry

Well, let’s start with a quick exercise…

Point to yourself.. Go ahead and do it.

Where did you point?

Many people point to their heart/chest and others may point to their head/mind.

Where did you point? Take note.

Is there a little “someone” in there that you’re pointing to? When you say “My name is so-and-so,” to what is that name pointing to? A little “me” inside your chest or head, perhaps? If you feel in, where does it feel like you are located? Centered?

In the world of separation we experience a world of “me” and others, me and you, me and God, me and earth, me and heaven. I want to get into heaven. I want to be at one with God. I want to be close to you or far away from you.

Where is this “me” that lives in relationship to everything else?

When we look within, we can find a body, thoughts, a history, a sense of awareness, feelings, brains and bones… but where is the “me” within all of this?

It turns out that the felt sense “me” is nothing more than a feeling created from a thought believed. As we do the inquiry, we keep failing at our attempts to find out who is here, who is doing any of this. Who is in control? Who does my name point to? Who has free will? Who is inquiring? Who is aware of inquiry happening?

As we continue inquiring, more and more of the places for “me” to hide is brought into awareness, such as in thought, in emotion, in feeling, in time and space, in accomplishments, in identities, in the identification process, as that which experiences, controls, or decides, etc. until there is basically nowhere else to rest. It is then discovered there is no me and there never was. Just a feeling of me, a thought of me, a sense of me.

Who you are is not who you think you are. Who you think you are is not what wakes up and becomes enlightened. In awakening, who you are wakes up from who you think you are.

Life Without the Sense of Separate Self

Somehow, without a me, there also is no you. Not really. There is no world. There is no God. There is no other. There is nothing. Nothing at all. It was all just mental concepts, ideas, beliefs, and notions. Total collapse of everything because we see through the “me.” There is just what is, without a name. Pure being, pure existence, pure life.

As there is a settling into “no-me’ness” and nothingness, eventually for whatever reason, there may be a sort of cosmic explosion where the entire world is seen to be simply continuous arisings of consciousness within consciousness. Consciousness is all, but “I” am nowhere to be found. Everywhere the world is, there I am. I am nothing and I am everything, and there is no one to claim ownership for this sense of existence/life/being. Just pure aliveness being alive.

Jeff Foster published a book with a hilariously accurate title, An Extraordinary Absence: Liberation in the Midst of a Very Ordinary Life. A very ordinary life, and yet the me I thought I was is nowhere to be found!

In this space, nothing is personal, yet everything is incredibly intimate for there is no separation happening, no distance between things, even though the eyes may still register things going from here to there.

There is still the ability to see chair and floor and cloud and Ariel’s body and Billy Bob’s hat, sure, but this is all seen secondarily. What stands at the forefront is the ineffable, the unspeakable, the singular ONE beyond name and form. We still use words like you and me because they are quite useful in practical conversation and day-to-day life, but we use those words very lightly, with a sort of laughing wink, knowing that we are just playing with form, like a child sculpting a sand castle. It’s made up, it’s play, it’s a game that lives in our imaginations.

We can still individuate, but we don’t separate.

Note how thoughout history, many awakened people have referred to various things like God and humans, the Father who art in Heaven, Shiva and Shakti, the mother who rears the ten thousand creatures, various planes of consciousness or dimensions of reality, and yet they never claim that anything is separate or apart from its source. Oneness and individuation are both still apparent, but individuation is a lighthearted secondary to Oneness.

Ultimately there is just awareness, without a “me” or a “you” apart from the thoughts of me and you arising within awareness. Although it may look like my awareness or your awareness on the surface, it is clearly seen that there is ONLY awareness, one without a second. Everything is seen to somehow be a manifestation of awareness. There is no one to claim ownership of awareness since the thought, feeling, and subsequent feeling of ownership are simply optional experiences of awareness itself within awareness, not something other than awareness or separate from awareness.

There is still the recognition that in the same way that awareness experiences itself bit by bit (yet also paradoxically all at once since there is no time), there is also the recognition that awareness itself has an infinite number of perspectives, an infinite number of ways of experiencing itself, and this infinity can be experienced without going into the world of separation.

Separation and infinity, it turns out, are not the same thing, and need not be always experienced simultaneously. The Infinite/One are always present, HereNow, but separation is just an optional experience. All waves exist, but none are separate from the ocean. They ARE a surface-level temporary appearance of the ocean itself.

A Dialogue on this Topic

Here’s a wonderful clip from a talk about the Journey After Awakening with Adyashanti and Loch Kelly. In this clip, they talk about some of the post-awakening experiences, transformations, and unfoldings:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dthmW6ffxAI

But don’t try to make the experiences and realizations out to be the point. Those come on their own as the underlying illusions are cleared out. To clear out the illusions, focus on finding the self. Does it feel like there is a self present? If so, where? To whom? Who is experiencing it? And who is experiencing that? What is the “I” we refer to when we talk about ourselves? Find that out and all the enlightenment stuff seems to take care of itself on its own accord.

If you want to find God, then as the saying goes, know thyself.

Bringing Heaven Down to Earth. A famous statement.

From the perspective of duality, they are seen to be two different places, two different locations.

If we begin exploring metaphysics, we may learn about vibration and learn that what we call heaven may simply be a different vibrational frequency, perhaps a different state of consciousness. Thus the goal is to raise our vibrations or raise our level of consciousness. Perhaps we channel down higher vibrational energy, we do what we can to raise our own individual frequencies, or we raise the earth’s energy getting it higher and higher, closer to that which we envision to be heaven. Lots of different ways to play and love.

Yet there comes a time when, perhaps when the vibration gets high enough, I dunno.. not to sure about the metaphysical explanation here, but it is seen so clearly that there is no difference between heaven and earth, not even a vibrational difference. NONE. The two are one.

Heaven and earth. Not two, not two. As Jesus said, The Kingdom of God is at hand. It’s here! It’s here! (Turns out the guy was onto something…)

Byron Katie once brought up an amazing point. She asked what it would be like if you actually went “from earth to heaven” and took all your suffering ego-based thoughts with you. Would you even experience heaven at all or would you continue to experience only the product of your unquestioned thoughts?

The veil of separation makes it seem like heaven is somewhere else, somewhere other than LITERALLY RIGHT HERE AND NOW and so we go out seeking something, somewhere, wherever it is. Clearly if I’m not experiencing it then it must mean that it’s not here…

Instead of seeking something else somewhere, we can question our thoughts, explore our perceptions, look within. Do the spiritual work as suggested. As the distorting glasses are recognized and taken off, we see THIS MOMENT clearly as it IS, not as we *think* it is, but as it ACTUALLY is. BIG difference…

It’s not a mental seeing.

Clear Seeing

There is purity and there is distortion. The task is not to find something which is not here, but to clear ourselves of distortion, misunderstanding, false notions, and limited ideas.

Strip away and let go of all that leads to suffering, separation, and misunderstanding, and see what remains.

Pure. Natural. Radiant. Exquisite. Beyond All Words. Living as every word. Giving birth to all thought. The mother of all creation. The scent of a flower. The coo of a baby. The fart of that same baby. Everything. All of it.

The very light that spins all of existence into manifestation. Right here. Right here.

Our true home we never left, except for in our imaginations.

Is it a lucid dream? A dream without a dreamer. An experience without an experiencer.

An understanding of the great Unknown. The clear recognition that there’s nothing to know, only a pure being of that which you innately are.

The poetry of creation, the sounds of silence, the writings of no one, the laughter of the one.

Om.

Everything and Nothing.. not two.

Nothingness

Some spiritual practices really emphasize nothingness. Emptiness. Formlessness. Silence. The Uncreated. The Unmanifested.

Seeing this, we may go into meditation and do our best to detach from life, detach from our emotions, detach from our experiences, and recognize who we are independent of all circumstance.

There are also many losses that can be experienced.. loss of attachment, loss of desire, even loss of self! This may also be reflected “externally” (heh) in the world as loss of physical posessions, relationships, and so on.

Deep within we go, deeper and deeper, falling into the abyss of nothingness/nowhere, until it is seen that there is no one to fall, no one to surrender, and that the nothingness, the experience of nothingness, and the no one experiencing the nothingness are all one and the same.

Into the nothingness, nothing collapses, and explosion of everythingness happens. Silently, form, color, shape, fullness, love, creation, action, doing, celebration, dance, music, fullness, abundance, infinity… all are seen to BE the nothingness.

Non-dual

Everything and nothing are one and the same. Emptiness is form. Form is emptiness.

The ascetic who has little to no posessions is seen to be the same as the materialist who has lots of stuff. They are the same, identically one and the same. There is only one.

No understanding to be grasped. Nothing to understand. Beyond all understanding and yet imminitely present.

Everything and nothing, not two, not two.

Formlessness and form, not two, not two.

Manifest and Unmanifest, not two, not two.

Seeker and mystic, not two, not two.

Just the stripping away of all, without time and space, expressing itself as all of time and space.

Uncreated, uncaused, already existent, and active within consciousness now. The pure silent glow of the Divine, radiating as All That Is.

Here. Now. Always, in All Ways.

Here we are, experiencing the One in all its infinite manifestations. What’s this like? What’s that like?

Here’s a wonderful video that Matt Kahn recently published, talking about experiencing the fullness of life.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUiEJDJLkhY

So people say things like “The Future is Now” or “The Past and Future are Illusions” or “The Now Moment is the only moment that exists.” And yet this can still seem kinda out there, y’know? It doesn’t really make sense. While we may say those things and hear others say it, it may not fully resonate with the very core of our being, in every fiber of our body. There may still be an element of “I understand that you’re saying that everything exists now, but I’m still experiencing past and future!”

Instead of trying to see timelessness from the perspective of time, let’s see how timelessness sees time. Let’s see if we can bring some clarity to the idea that “Everything Exists Now.”

Okay so.. everything exists now, yes, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to experience everything simultaneously RIGHT NOW.  That would be overwhelming! Was there ever a time in your life where it felt like too much was going on and you wanted to just run away and escape the madness? There’s really only so much that we can handle all at once, practically speaking.

If were to experience the hunger of every starving child that’s ever lived, the extreme ecstasy of every being in all universes throughout all times, every emotion every person has ever experienced in every life they’ve ever experienced, quite honestly I think we’d explode.

Limiting the Totality

So, every experience is available Now. All potentials exist literally literally literally right here right now. Every manifest reality is like an individual string on a guitar. Strum a different string and you get a different note, a different sound, a different reality. All strings exist right here. The plucking of them is (haha) right at our fingertips!

Scientists did a study and I forget the exact numbers so I’m going go totally make them up for the sake of this example. Basically they found that there are like 2,000,000 signals that our brains receive as input in every moment. Sound, color, texture, shape, thought, heartbeat, thought, the light in the distance, the faint hum of the air conditioner or computer, the feeling of your clothing against your back… lots and lots and lots of signals, but because it’d be too much to experience all at once and it’d be hard to really savor any particular experience if we were consciously aware of everything all at once, our brains are designed to limit the totality. This limitation isn’t bad. It isn’t wrong. It isn’t a mistake. It’s just something that gives us a discreet experience. How could you really enjoy your favorite food if you were simultaneously experiencing every other experience of your life!?

Time is another such limitation that the mind places upon itself… but it doesn’t have to.

Expanding Beyond Limitation

You see, all possibilities and all experiences exist right now, but we create for ourselves a sort of filter in order to experience one facet of the totality at a time.

As awareness expands beyond the limitations of space and time, there is the possibility to experience multiple spaces or times at once, kinda like we have the ability to experience one hand at a time or both hands simultaneously.

You may have heard stories of masters who were able to be in two places at once, called bilocation, or psychics who can “see into the future” or access akashic records and see “what happened in the past.”

All that is really happening is people are not imposing upon their own consciousness the typical limitations of time and space and so the natural expanded awareness experiences are possible. All past and future is available now and that’s why we can access it. All locations exist right here and that’s why things like teleportation and bilocation are possible.

Yes everything exists here. Yes everything exists now. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to experience it all at once, even though it’s all experienced in the Now.

All In The Now, but not Right Now

Have you noticed that there is only really ever one moment that we actually experience “in real life”? This one moment is called NOW. What we’re experiencing is happening NOW. What happened in the past, we experienced it in the NOW. What will happen in the future, it will arise in the NOW.

The illusion is that there are many individual moments of time, and we travel from one moment to the next, but that’s just part of the limitation imposed by the veil of separation. We don’t actually go from one now moment to the next. It doesn’t actually work that way although it may certainly be experienced that way from behind the veil. Certainly.

There is only one timeless moment, and all that arises can only arise NOW. There is literally no other possibility.

Manifesting In the Future

There’s a reason that people who teach affirmations and who understand the nature of creation talk about visualizing things as already being manifested, as already existing. The reason is that this is actually in alignment with how things actually are.

In fact the fastest way to manifest things “in the future” is to activate that energy NOW by seeing it as already existing NOW, in the only place it can ever exist.

In our imaginations, in our minds, in made-up fantasy-land we experience past and future, but even those experiences can only ever arise in the NOW. Have you ever had an experience that didn’t happen in this NOW moment?

Notice right now that this moment itself isn’t changing. It isn’t going anywhere. There is content and there is context. The content of the moment constantly changes, but there is an indescribable emptiness called This Moment in which all happenings arise, and this is more like the context. It’s like a spacious formless qualityless container that creates a space for all events to come and go. The content of the moment is born and dies, comes and goes, but the unchanging Now moment itself is simply here, unaffected by all that changes within it. It doesn’t exist in any location. In fact locations themselves are also something that are seen to arise In The Now.

Can you see that? Can you feel it?

It is readily available, immediately accessible. It is silence. It is awareness. It is emptiness. It is this moment.

What we call the future is simply another potential experience that may or may not arise in this Now moment, right here.

Sitting in your chair, notice that this whole world is passing before your eyes, but you, as conscious awareness, the witness, the observer, you aren’t going anywhere. This moment is here, and here we are watching the whole dance of creation happening right before our very eyes.

Even time itself, the rotating hands of the clock, the succession of digits on a watch, those too are appearances arising within this unchanging empty Now moment.

Coming Back to Now

The Now Moment is not just one particular set of events and circumstances. In fact no events or circumstances define it. It allows for all events and circumstances to come and go, without holding onto or pushing away any event. It is simply an empty space allowing for events to unfold. The entire spectrum of emotions and historical events… all happening right here, right now, in this one singular moment, even though we may not be experiencing the living expression of it as these words are being read.

What we call the passing of time, it’s happening right now, and yet we’re not going anywhere!

In this space, witnessing, awareness, emptiness, presence, being… these all come to the forefront. All the changing stuff is secondary, like a song you’re listening to or a show you’re watching. It’s all changing yet this whole time we are Here, we are Now. Awareness is Aware, unchanged and unaffected.

All possibilities are arising in this One Singular Moment, and yet we still experience them individually.

The experience of time passing alongside the unfoldment of events is optional. Without the guitar string called “the passing of time” plucked, events still happen, sure. Songs still play. Conversations still unfold. The sun still rises and sets. There’s simply no time that’s experienced for all that to happen. Just supreme presence in this moment as it all unfolds, going nowhere, taking no time, and all happening right here.

When we believe our thoughts, then perhaps out a love for truth or a sincere desire to finally end our suffering, we can begin inquiring into our own thoughts. Byron Katie offers a wonderful method.

Is this thought true?
Do we know absolutely for sure that it is true?
How do we feel when we believe this thought?
Who would we be without this thought?
Is the opposite thought as true as or perhaps more true than the original thought?

As we systematically begin letting go of untruths and misunderstandings, more and more we begin to discover ourselves to be not our thoughts, but actually this empty, spacious, expansive, boundless, and inherently free awareness.

That which is aware of these words. That which is aware of what it feels like to be a separate person who believes their thoughts and then inquires about their thoughts. Not some conceptual mysterious invisible Infinite Self thingy that we have to go find, but just this awareness that’s so clearly right HERE!

As awareness, somehow there is love, adoration, affection, and overflowing appreciation for all that is witnessed, and oddly enough, somehow that which is witnessed is not felt to be separate from or other than awareness. Freedom as awareness, with nothing to grab onto, not even a spiritual nondual idea or belief system to call the truth. Nothing to grab onto. Just being what you naturally are…

The gift of Truth, it is then discovered, is not contained in a mental conceptual encapsulation of some ideas or collection of thoughts that are “the right answer,” but in the living conscious realization of what you truly are.

This is the end of the search and perhaps the beginning of truly living. This is the revelation of the Divine equally in every ordinary and extraordinary moment. The two are one and the same. Summiting a mountain or sipping a cup of tea, both are seen to be ordinary and extraordinary. All is radiantly alive, and this aliveness is what you are, seeing yourself in and as All That Is.

Infinite Love and Joyous Freedom beyond the mind, as awareness, here and now.

Noticing all the various spiritual points of view like the absolute and the relative, the individual, the one, the infinite, and so on.. we may find that these actually wind up being ways to divide up ISness, pure being. In this video, we explore this topic as we point towards what IS behind all these ways of speaking about what is:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGLIuVQaiNM

So one of my favorite topics currently is the unfoldment of the awakening process, the signposts and markers along the way as the whole “me” identity falls away. Given that more and more people are awakening, this provides us with a deeper recognition of how the human ego based in separation has been constructed in the mind (the fall of man), as well as the undoing of all that (awakening). We get to see it happen again and again, more and more, from a variety of perspectives. The following is a post by Tom Thompson. He published this on facebook and many of the spiritual traps he pointed out cracked me up. Been there, done that, basically… (By the way, Hotei is the Laughing Buddha or the Fat Buddha. You know.. the one you’ll often see in Chinese restaurants. ) With Tom’s permission, I am sharing his essay here with you guys.

Realization is sudden. The fruit ripens slowly, but falls suddenly and without return.

-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Hotei Has Returned to the Market Place

This essay is in response to many discussions I have had with students over the years. Its purpose is to help clarify certain aspects of the awakening process. In this essay, I am not going to be overly concerned with the politically correct semantics of “enlightenment” or “advaita,” but simply point out some things that may be useful to know about.

As awakening happens, there seem to be several stages that many people go through. These stages can be a little confusing because they are not delineated anywhere on the maps of our day-to-day consensus reality, nor on most religious or spiritual maps. Please remember, these guidelines are descriptions of what may happen, not prescriptions for what must happen. The process is different for everyone.

THE RELATIVE

The first stage is the apparent separation between “me” and “everyone and everything else.” We click into this stage around two or three years old. In this stage, we become very aware of the phenomena and people out there at the other end of our senses. We learn that the way to survive and thrive in this world of appearance is through the effective control and manipulation of the “me-in-here” and the “everything else-out-there.” For instance, we may be taught that life is easier if we have a pleasing personality so we learn to smile a lot and say please and thank you. We notice this usually has a positive effect on “them-out-there.”

We are taught that life works better if we do things like get good grades, empty the garbage, work hard, remember appointments, follow through, make money, and have all of the right thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are considered “good,” “healthy,” and “successful” by our society. We learn to “fit in” with the rest of herd and follow the consensus map of reality without ever really questioning it. Questioning the accepted maps of reality tends to confuse and upset the herd as they believe their maps are reality.

In a nutshell, we learn to manipulate “in here” and “out there” to conform with what we have been conditioned to “believe” is best. We discover there are lots of things “in here” and “out there” to manipulate, control, and keep track of. And they all seem to keep changing all of the time, no matter what we do! This is due to the relative and transitory nature of phenomenal reality. It is hard to keep all of our ducks lined up in a row. Reality just continues to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, whether we think it should or not!

It is important to realize that almost everything that falls in the categories of religion, spirituality, psychology, metaphysics, and philosophy is in this stage of separation. When you enter a religious/spiritual/psychological belief system, you are being taught to translate and manipulate your experience, inwardly and outwardly, according to the system’s map. All maps are an overlay on reality. As Alfred Korzybski pointed out, “The map is not the territory.”

THE ABSOLUTE

If one pursues a spiritual/religious path and learns to translate and manipulate the mystical process well enough, or sometimes quite by accident or grace, one may fall into the Absolute. In the unqualified Absolute all separation, and thus all phenomenal existence, disappears. There is only the unborn — vast, timeless, deathless, and free. If there were still a separate someone able to talk or think about it, they would say in amazement, as great realizers have, “From the first, not a thing is!” or, “Nothing has ever happened!” or, “There is only vast emptiness, no holiness about it!” But since there is no “one” and no “thing,” nothing is said or expounded. There is only vast emptiness, still and silent. And herein lies the peace of God! No spiritual teachers or preachers saying anything! Thank you, Jesus!

Once the initial terror of self dissolving into Nothingness wears off, this stage is quite addicting. It is a great hiding place. The bliss and peace of absolute samadhi seems infinite. It is like deep sleep wide awake. The relative world is an old dream that never happened. In some systems, this stage may be mistaken for enlightenment, but it is really just a half-baked state. The trouble with the Absolute is it is relative experience. But it sure can knock your socks off!

THE RELATIVE IN THE ABSOLUTE

Sooner or later, if the human instrument continues to live, there is a coming out of the Absolute as this merging is actually just a relative experience. The upside of this experience is that free awareness may now be recognized as always already being present. This is good! The downside is that the “enlightenment” experience can easily be hijacked by the conceptual mind, and an “enlightened ego” is born. Not so good. This is where spiritual aspirants often become spiritual teachers, leap on their high horses and ride off in all directions proclaiming, “There is no one! Just One! And I am That!” And this is true. Sort of. Side ways. But not if you think about it or believe it.

Inspired to share their “enlightenment” with others, “No One” now changes their name from “Suzy” to “Ma Avidayananda,” starts having satsang, sits up front in the guru seat, and always has a dedicated student scurry off to pick up the big fat “donations” check at the end of their “I Am, There Is No Me” retreat.

The trouble with the bliss of samadhi is that eventually you have to go to the bathroom, eat breakfast, change the baby, or yell at the neighbors to shut up their stupid barking dog! That darn Relative has such poor boundaries! It just keeps intruding on the bliss of our enlightened state. If the whole universe would just realize how enlightened we are, it might start behaving appropriately. This can be a difficult time as something truly profound has obviously happened to us, but the universe doesn’t seem to care or notice. Enlightened egos just hate this! They can’t get any respect.

What often does begin to happen in this stage is that awareness becomes increasingly aware of itself as the ground of being and becomes less involved in seeking any identity in phenomenal reality. The drive to control and manipulate both ourselves and others begins to shift and fall away. It becomes more and more apparent, even to an ego, that “I” am not the doer, “I” am being “done.” Things happen, including “me.”

THE ABSOLUTE IN THE RELATIVE

Do shadows exist? Of course they do. I can see one very clearly right at this moment. There it is! Shadows appear in all different shapes, sizes, and shades. Without a doubt, shadows do exists!

And so do you!

But shadows do not exist by themselves. There are no independent shadows. They are totally dependent on something else for their existence. A shadow is a shadow of something else. Without that something else, shadows don’t exist. A shadow has no separate and independent existence. And neither do you. A shadow is totally dependent on something else for its existence. And so are you.

You, as a separate and independent entity, do not exist.

You! You are being used! You are being used by the infinite creative intelligence of the universe as the interdependent go-between of the Relative and Absolute! You are the timeless, nondimensional point where the Absolute expresses the Relative and the Relative returns to the Absolute. Behind you, vast emptiness. In front of you, the ten thousand things. No boundary, except you. Without you, nothing exists!

No wonder you are so confused and dysfunctional! Just like Alice, in ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND:
“WHO ARE YOU?” said the caterpillar. (This is the ultimate spiritual question!)

… Alice replied, rather shyly, “ I-I hardly know, Sir, just at present — at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.”

“What do you mean by that?” said the caterpillar, sternly. “Explain yourself!”

“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.”

Yes, Alice, we do see.

An apparent “someone” in the apparent “Absolute in the Relative” knows exactly how Alice feels! “I can’t explain myself because I’m not myself” is the truth. It is in this stage that friends and family may become very concerned about you. Things that may have been of profound interest to you throughout your life may lose all significance. You are no longer trying to find yourself or any meaning and significance in the transitory dance of the phenomenal world. You may suddenly leave a long relationship that has never really worked. You may drop out of a successful career. A doctor may suddenly become a gardener. A lawyer may open a bed and breakfast. If you have been a spiritual or religious person all your life, seeking suddenly stops. You stop going to church, reading books, running off to retreats, or attending the guru of the month club.

You are losing your human form as consensus reality no longer defines you. You are no longer identified with beliefs or maps. Conceptual reality is clearly seen for what it is — a bunch of concepts with no basis in reality. Thought seems to happen less and less as there is no longer a separate “me” story to prop up with obsessive thinking. There is just present awareness, this as it is. Life lives you as it always has.

This is where “compassionate folly” may begin to happen. Be very clear that the “compassionate folly” is not something someone does or practices as an elite “enlightened one.” It is not a position one takes in life. It is something that spontaneously arises when all of one’s interest in what human beings do or believe to avoid the void falls away. There is then no longer any identification with most of the “doings” or “beliefs” of humans beings, as they are seen to be based on a false assumption. Yet at the same time, the love and compassion for humans seems to increase as there is no longer any sense of fear or separation. This means joyful participation with other humans may continue (although not always) without there being any identification or involvement in whatever they are doing or believing to avoid the void. So you may go out to play golf with your friends even though you couldn’t care less if you ever saw another golf club in your life. You may enjoy the game more than ever, but it is not because of golf, it is because you are “being” with your friends. The context of doing is being.

Friends and family may start to say things like, “Something has happened to you. You’ve changed. You are just not yourself anymore.”

No kidding.

They’re right.

You’re not yourself anymore.

HOTEI HAS RETURNED TO THE MARKETPLACE

There is the simplicity of being- this as it is.

The knot of resistance dissolves.

A deep surrender or relaxing into life happens.

A deep acceptance of and openness to all people and situations occurs.

If fear arises, fear arises. If laughter happens, laughter happens. Get up, go to work. Eat lunch. Enjoy the weather.

Everything happens by itself.

The play of compassionate folly arises spontaneously.

Relative and Absolute — what? Where?

Wisdom, compassion, and skillful action arise spontaneously from the ground of being.

There is only this now.

The search has ended.

The seeker is gone.

Hotei has returned to the marketplace, laughing himself silly, pointing to the hazy moon of enlightenment.

What else could he possibly do?

Where else could he possibly be?

Originally written and published by Tom Thompson, http://www.theawakenedheartcenter.com

Time for a speedlinks post, a collection of awesome content from around the web to share with you guys.

Differences between Oneness / Enlightenement and Neo-Advaita / Non-Duality by Sage Sarojini. She recently published an extraordinarily helpful article detailing the differences between Oneness and Enlightenment. I know I myself have gotten tripped up on many of these points and it is so helpful to have someone point you beyond.

The Feeling that Nothing is Happening as described by Michael Brown, author of The Presence Process. This article was shared by Roger Gietzen, one of our forum posters and it details an excellent process to help us go beyond just using “The Secret” to manifest stuff as if that will ultimately fulfill us and guides us to coming back home towards the no-thingness within.

What Is Enlightenment? Blogger Tom Stine recently elaborated on Takuin’s answer to this very question, leading to a wonderful discussion.

Where the Hell is Matt? Matt has been an inspiration to me, taking off to go travel the world and dance in front of cool places all across the globe. It wasn’t until after he published his first youtube video that he got sponsored by Stride Gum and got funded to continue traveling the world and doing more of what he loved, having fun and helping make others smile in the process. If he can take off and go live the life he loves without knowing ahead of time how the universe will support him, why can’t we? His second video is amazing as well.

The Next Top Spiritual Author Many of you reading this blog are also spiritual messengers. To you have a book within you or already written, ready to be shared with the world? Here’s a course where you can work with some well-known authors like Arielle Ford and Marianne Williamson as well as the CEO of Hampton Roads Publishing Company, the original publishers of the book series Conversations with God. There is a competition where the winner gets a publishing deal and a lot of guidance and support in the publishing arena. Everyone that signs up, regardless of how well they do in the competition, will free guidance, support, and how-tos on how to write a book, present sample chapters to publishers, get published, and so on. There’s only about a week left to register so if you feel called to write a book, and especially if you’re started getting synchronicities and inner nudges here and there like me, this one would be worth checking out.

Inspire Me Today Every day, listen to another amazing person answer the question, “If today were my last day on Earth and I could share 500 words of brilliance with the world, here are the important things I’d want to pass along to others…”

TUT Daily Emails Speaking of inspirational and fun daily message type stuff, check out the TUT daily emails. Mike Dooley, one of the featured speakers in “The Secret,” writes as “The Universe” as he continues to send out amazing content with such a fun and jovial voice, you can’t help but smile at the degree to which he plays and enjoys life. Truly a standout!

Got any more awesome content to share with us? Videos, articles, blog posts, etc.? Share them with us in the comments!

Okay, so let’s get into the nitty gritty of awakening for a bit. To be honest, there’s been quite a bit of struggle arising here, wanting desperately to return to the experience of wholeness, of unity, of the lack of lack, of the conscious recognition of what I am. One of the main issues about the human condition is the sense of lack within. We can talk about that void that people try to fill with food, sex, experiences, physical possessions, and so on. On a deep deep level, it feels like something’s missing and people will do whatever it takes to fill that void. From the perception of a separate self, I myself am not sufficient and thus I need something other than me to fill this gaping hole within me… but nothing I get is ever sufficient. If it does feel sufficient, it’s only temporary. Like a drug addict, I always need another fix. I always need more…

Now there’s a really weird experience that can arise after an initial non-abiding awakening. Basically what happens is that you KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that the egoic self is not you, that your thoughts have no reality, and that there is literally no such thing as a separate self, and yet simultaneously for some reason you continue to believe in and experience a separate self. You experience living life as a “me.” It can create a tremendous amount of conflict within, as if something has gone terribly wrong. You believe something and don’t believe something simultaneously. It’s really crazy to really experience both at the same time…

Disidentification

I took a drive down to downtown Denver today to check out the flagship REI store in all its multi-story glory. There was traffic along the highway and I spontaneously found myself falling into a sort of driving meditation. Basically just relaxing into the moment. Suddenly and without warning, it was as if there was a silent balloon bursting within me and there was a sort of separation (too strong of a word.. more like complete and total disidentification) with the body. I just looked down at my arms holding the steering wheel and was stunned to see in perfect clarity that this body that was driving here was literally NOT ME… at ALL. It was just some sort of suit to use to move around with. This body has more in common with the car that was being driven than with who I am. The body is a vehicle.

Then the line of statements naturally arose, “I’m not this body. I’m not anything here that is happening. I’m not any of these passing thoughts or feelings that arising now. What am I?”

Awareness turned back around on itself and it was stunningly clear that there was NO ONE HERE to be aware.

“Ohhh shit” was my response. Pure emptiness was then recognized to be what I truly was. Emptiness is literally no one. No thing. Yet somehow this pure emptiness is aware. Inexplicably. It’s like recognizing that infinite empty space is aware. It is conscious. There’s nothing there and yet it is aware.

Being

Eckhart Tolle talks about our true nature being “pure being.” Isness. Existence. The word “being” is easily misunderstood so I’m gonna get a little nitpicky here because the misunderstanding of this word has led to both delusion and confusion here. When we refer to being, we are not talking about a being. It’s not a spiritual being, as opposed to another type of being, not a human being or a living being or a dead being, not this being as opposed to that being. Just being. One without a second.

We are not conscious beings, as if there are more than one of us. You are not “a conscious being.” Neither am I. There is only being. What you are inside is literally emptiness. No-thingness. Spaciousness.

Separation, Only In Imagination

Have you ever noticed how someone can say something and our minds will spin an entire story filled with drama and fanfare about how rude they were and how wrong they were and how on-and-on-and-on… and yet they were being totally nice! It’s like we misinterpreted them and thus experience them as if they were being mean. We experience something that literally isn’t true and never happened, except for in the presence of our own imaginations. This is the same thing about experiencing ourselves as a separate self. We think we really are a person. I have “my body” and “my ideas” and “my history” and “my life.” There is the experience of a separate self in our imaginations, but there really isn’t one.

Now I know this isn’t what human minds are typically designed to understand. We are taught to “be somebody,” to be rich or famous or a doctor or a teacher or whatever else… be something. Yet what if the reality was that you are not a something at all? What if the very creation of a “someone” in itself creates a “something else” that exists in relationship to “me”? Instant duality.

Awake and Asleep

It seems that the main difference between the asleep state and the awake state is one of identification. Asleep there is identification with something that awareness is aware of. It’s like watching a movie on TV and literally thinking you ARE what you’re looking at. You watch your thoughts going by and think that you ARE your thoughts. You look at your body and think that you ARE your body. Awake, there is just the effortless passing of all form in front of the screen of consciousness. You are the nameless, formless, emptiness that gives rise to all form and yet is not separate from all manifestation. You create it all, and yet paradoxically there is no “you” present to be a creator or do the creating. It all simply arises.

There seems to be a process of awakening which involves all the letting go, surrender, and spiritual work and practices that we can do. It’s the game of the doer. The process takes time. Then there is the actual instantaneous flipping or awakening, the shift from delusion to Reality. The awakening itself takes no time.

After going through this experience, I put Adyashanti’s program The End of Your World back in the CD player and started listening through it again. As always, it is so perfect. It really gets to the heart of the non-abiding awakening process and explores many of the more subtle issues and confusions that arise. Again, highly highly recommended for anyone going through the non-abiding awakening process.

Facing Inner “Stuff”

One thing he talks about is the willingness to face anything and everything that creates any anger, resentment, resistance, or inner conflict of any kind. It’s like a willingness to face yourself, or at least what you perceive to be the resistant aspects of yourself. This is one of the biggest parts of my own process right now. I’m finding myself facing lifelong insecurities and fears. What if I wind up homeless? Well I am now. What if I don’t know what to do with my life? Well I have no clue now. What about facing the aspects of myself that have caused problems in intimate relationships? I’m facing those too. Yes there is fear within me, but I’m not afraid of having the fear. Fear yes, but not the fear of fear. This seems to be the big key. There’s an understanding about the nature of fear, of emotion in general, and a willingness to face it. What I’m fearing manifests. What I desire manifests. Everything within me is really showing up in the world. One thing that I’m finding is that those things that I fear really aren’t so bad. It’s almost like our fears are little kittens with the roar of a tiger. They seem terrible before we actually face them.

So saying all this, I don’t want to separate out the living of everyday life from one’s spiritual awakening, as if one’s spirituality had to be separated into a neat little box. Like “I’ll be spiritual when I go meditate in my quiet room, but the rest of my life is separate from my spirituality.” No, no. They really seem to go hand-in-hand.

Is it necessary to go out and physically do all the stuff you’re afraid of? *shrugs* I dunno. This is simply the way much of this experience is playing out here. It’s going out and really putting some of my deepest unconscious beliefs to the test and giving the ego nothing to hold onto. Stuff that I’ve resisted for years, here it is and so what? It’s no big deal. It’s not in alignment with how things actually work anyways. I can let that go. It’s clearly not true and I have no reason whatsoever to buy into those beliefs anymore.

The Doer and the Self

and so there seems to be this Ariel guy here, living his life, doing all the stuff he does, surrendering or resisting, and yet having no control whatsoever over his awakening, as if he was the one who would awaken. Ariel can’t awaken. He is just a mental collection of ideas and physical matter and emotions and.. stuff. He is an abstract concept, but he isn’t real. He has no real existence. He is part of the spinning world of name and form existing only in the mind of consciousness.

Then there is this emptiness that doesn’t actually do anything. The conscious recognition of emptiness by emptiness. The recognition of the Self recognizing the Self that we call awakening, there doesn’t seem to be any real trigger to it. There is literally no control of it. It literally feels like an on/off switch that is switching by itself.

The following quote just passed by on facebook and it feels so fitting right now:

Realise that the conceptual thinker and conceptual thoughts seemingly obscure the non-conceptual natural state. Pause a thought even for an instant and the natural state is fully evident. STOP and SEE. In the seeing, pure awareness gets used to itself…

-Sailor Bob

The bit about pure awareness getting used to itself, this seems to be SO key. It’s about getting used to being no one, just spacious emptiness awareness. It is unborn and uncreated. It has no face. Rather than the world of name and form and thought and physicality basically pulling consciousness in to a sense of contraction and identification which is the hallmark of the asleep state, there is a sort of getting used to being pure awareness, of being the no thing that simply is.