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Ariel Interviewed by Scott Kiloby

The other day Scott Kiloby and I sat down together and had a conversation about enlightenment.

The full 45 minute conversation is available in MP3 hotness here.

I was gonna relisten to it to give you guys a bulleted list of topics that we discuss and be all cliff notesy, but I’m growing somewhat fond of doing nothing.

Try meditation: it’s better then sitting around doing nothing.

- Nicholas Powiull

Anyways, check out the interview! –> Click here to listen <–

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Like me, Scott also does YouTube videos talking about awakening. One cool project he’s putting together is a compilation of audio talks with various teachers, writers, and friends who are also into non-duality. You can check ‘em out by going to www.kiloby.com and clicking on “The KiloLogues.”

Alan Watts on the Journey of Life

It’s so easy to get caught in the trap of thinking that what I want in life is somewhere in the future, isn’t it? We hear the suggestion to be in the now, yet it often still feels like when things are different in the future, they’ll be better, or if things were more like they were in the past, things would be better.

Time really flies, and when we forget about the present moment, we miss the whole point of life: living and experiencing life itself!

Here’s a hilariously wonderful video by Alan Watts talking about life as if it were a musical performance.

This moment. Right now. This is it. This is why we’re here.

Everything is here and now. There’s nowhere else to go!

What song are you singing?

What’s your dance?

Bringing Heaven Down To Earth

Heaven is not just some place that we go after we die, somehow separate from earth. Heaven is simply a particular level of consciousness. We can bring Heaven down to earth by raising our level of consciousness to the point where we realize that Heaven is already here in this moment.

“The Kingdom of God is at hand!”

Change Thine Frequency

The reason Heaven wasn’t being perceived or experienced before was that we were vibrating at a lower frequency. In the same way that we can change what channel a TV is set to by changing the frequency it’s tuned to, we can change what frequency we’re attuned to and shift to a different level of reality as well.

“My Father’s house has many mansions.”

When you die and you go “up to heaven,” it’s not that you literally go up vertically into space. (Afterall, everything is Here and Now.) You do go up, but you go up in your frequency, in your vibration, in your level of consciousness as you drop all that heavy earthly ego baggage.

You can do this very same thing while still alive here on earth. You just get enlightened. It’s just a matter of letting go of all the lower vibing stuff so that you naturally and automatically rise up higher and higher.

This is something you do within yourself. You raise your own personal level of consciousness. The external world is basically just a reflection of your own internal state of being. Thus you must go within to do the work in order to see it reflected back to you in the world.

“The Kingdom of God is within you.”

Walk the Walk

It’s not about changing the world itself directly, but changing yourself. Yet by changing yourself, you change the world. You bring Heaven down through you.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

No one else can do this for you. It’s like when you are miserable even though everyone around you is happy: You’re still gonna experience miserableness. If everyone around you is manifesting heaven on earth, if you’re creating hell for yourself, you will only experience hell. Thus if you want to experience Heaven, YOU must manifest it for yourself.

For some examples of people actively bringing heaven down to earth, check out this forum post by CaterpillarWoman as well as this forum post by Katrina as they share their own personal experiences.

You could even say we’re creating Heaven in the forums, a vibrational heaven which we can model and take back out into the “real world.”

The Statement: You Are Already Enlightened

A wonderful analogy I heard from David Hawkins is that finding enlightenment is like finding the light of the sun. The egoic veils of separation are like clouds covering the sun.

Your role as a spiritual student is not to make the sun happen or achieve the sun shining, but to remove all the clouds that are preventing you from experiencing what’s been happening all along: a shining sun.

In the video above, I talk about the statement, “You are already enlightened” based on this idea, mentioning how the work to be done is removing the barriers and obstacles standing in the way of truth and love.

(I shaved off my beard the other day to see what it’d look like, so you guys get to see my face now.)

Guru SwamiG has released a video explaining that statement as well, bringing up some additional important points regarding the end of suffering.

Watching a Separate Self Be Created

Photo courtesy & © Gary Crabbe / Enlightened Images; used with permission.

Now as you guys probably know, my awakening is occurring with many glimpses and whatnot. There’s a whole bunch of non-abiding awakenings. For a while my mind said it was b/c I kept doing something wrong.. yet I’m starting to see what a tremendous gift this is.

For example, in an post that forum member Lee started on Transparency, I shared how my sense of transparency was temporary. Lee has shared her abiding experience as well, and I invite you to check out her explanation too.

The cool thing about these repeated non-abiding awakenings is that without a sense of false self, I get to watch it try to be created again and again and see exactly how the “me” gets hooked right back into existence.

It’s literally getting watch creation happen right before my eyes.

It’s like watching a sports play on instant replay again and again and seeing what I missed the first couple of times.

Read More …

I Thought I Knew What Unconditional Love Was…

So in my previous post, I mentioned the willingness to cry, and today actually brought me to tears… tears of joy.

I was walking around the mall today feeling incredibly vulnerable. Just open and unprotected, willing to live without the protective walls around my heart, without trying to cover myself up with a fake “ideal” happy face or anything. Just being totally authentic and vulnerable.

As my friend Davidya perfectly describes it, it’s the feeling of the crusts of the heart falling away.

Divine Love

This Love that is revealed, this unconditional love, it’s literally not human. It’s not an emotion. It’s more spirit than anything, totally impersonal. They call it Christ Love, Divine Love… I feel my presence literally more as love and light than as dense physicality, my whole body just glowing and radiating light. (I was always wondering why people kept talking about “love and light.” Now I know… That statement is now finally grounded in experience for me and so it doesn’t sound as “airy fairy” anymore…)

It’s like you look and you see ONLY Love. The mind may look at people and see man or woman, attractive or unattractive, but none of that is really focused upon or even all that relevant. Instead there’s just this deepening on love from within. This love doesn’t take into account any conditions whatsoever or any ideas about a person. It just loves without condition.

Read More …

Sitting in the Eye of the Storm

Enderts Beach at Dusk, Redwood National Park, by Daniel Ewert

So there’s times when you feel your creative mojo flowin’ and it feels like it’s on like Donkey Kong. It’s those times that I feel most tuned in and connected.

Then there’s times when it feels like there’s a storm brewing within. The ego’s flailing and there’s clouds covering my light. It is in times like these that I simply pull back in and sit still, knowing that any fear-based actions I take will likely create some negative results that I’ll have to undo later. So I simply be still, let go of all resistance, and just allow everything to be as it is.

Looking at the frequency of my posts lately, you can probably guess which state I’m currently experiencing.

Does the sky need to run for cover, when it rains?

-Gangaji

(My experience of this I’ve been posting a bit about in the forums.)

There is literally nowhere to run. It is all here. There is only Here.

No matter where you go, there you are.

-Yogi Berra

These turbulent times have repeatedly shown themselves to be precursors to some of my greatest awakenings. At this point, there’s nothing to do but simply sit still and allow everything to be, allowing everything to happen in its own perfect time.

There’s a willingness to die, a willingness to cry, and a willingness to be obliterated.

Om Namaha Shivaya

How Do I Love Myself?

One of the deepest human desires is the desire to be loved.

So how do we get to be loved? How do we love ourselves?

There are many wonderful strategies and techniques, many ways of expressing or giving love to ourselves. They can be very effective and powerful and play a significant part in positively transforming our lives.

Yet what is the “me” we are trying to love in the first place? Is there really a separate self who is separate from love that needs to be loved?