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Post by laughter on Jan 24, 2014 22:36:43 GMT -5
This is the quote thread for the Emptiness Dancing impromptu book club. Anyone is welcome to the club at any time! Any quote from Adyashanti is welcome. I'll be putting up some quotes from the book in chapter order, but there's no structure to this thread other than it will be limited to Adyashanti quotes. Please see the parallel discussions here.
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Post by laughter on Jan 24, 2014 23:11:54 GMT -5
On his description of "awakening":
"I didn't tell my teacher anything about the experience for about three months because it seemed pointless. Why would anyone need to know this?"
Chapter 2 para 15.
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Post by laughter on Jan 24, 2014 23:18:07 GMT -5
When we really start to take a look at who we think we are, we become very grace prone. We start to see that while we may have various thoughts, beliefs, and identities, they do not individually or collectively tell us who we are. A mystery presents itself: we realize that when we really look at ourselves clearly and carefully, it is actually astounding how completely we humans define ourselves by the content of our minds, feelings and history. May forms of spirituality try to get rid of thoughts, feelings and memories -- to make the mind blank, as if that were a desirable or spiritual state. But to have the mind blank is not necessarily wise. Instead, it is more helpful to see through thoughts and to recognize that a thought is just a thought, a belief a memory. Then we can stop binding consciousness or spirit to our thoughts and mental states.
chapter 1, para 16
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Post by glimmer on Jan 25, 2014 4:18:28 GMT -5
What is so beautiful about awakening is that when you are no longer functioning through your conditioning, then the sense of "me" who was living that life is no longer there. Most people are familiar with a sense of a me living this life. But when this is seen through, the experience is that what really runs and operates this life is love, and this same love is in everybody all the time. When it is working its way through your personal stuff, it gets dissipated, but it is still there. Nobody owns this love. Everybody is essentially the manifestation of this love.
Chapter 1 para 20
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Post by silver on Jan 25, 2014 16:07:29 GMT -5
Silence (Chapter 8)
The waves of mind demand so much of Silence. But She does not talk back does not give answers nor arguments. She is the hidden author of every thought every feeling every moment.
Silence.
She speaks only one word. And that word is this very existence. No name you give Her touches Her captures Her. No understanding can embrace Her.
Mind throws itself at Silence demanding to be let in. But no mind can enter into Her radiant darkness Her pure and smiling nothingness.
The mind hurls itself into sacred questions. But Silence remains unmoved by the tantrum She asks only for nothing.
Nothing.
But you won't give it to Her because it is the last coin in your pocket. And you would rather give her your demands than your sacred and empty hands.
...........~o~
Everything leaps out in celebration of mystery, but only nothing enters the sacred source, the silent substance. Only nothing gets touched and becomes sacred, realizes its own divinity, realizes what it is without the aid of a single thought. Silence is my secret. Not hidden. Not hidden.
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Post by laughter on Jan 25, 2014 20:37:59 GMT -5
After experiencing the "nice moment," you then reconstitute your familiar sense of identity. But actually these opportunities are like little peepholes through which the truth is experienced. If you start to watch for them, you will notice them. All of a sudden the mind will stop thinking of its story. You might notice that your separate identity or sense of a me just took a break, and whatever you truly are didn't disappear.
chapter 1, para 22
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Post by silver on Jan 25, 2014 20:55:57 GMT -5
excerpt(s) from chapter 8, pages 48 and 49<>>
I could manufacture beautiful states, terrible states, concentrated states, and all sorts of states; but there was only one state that was totally natural and absolutely effortless. In that state, I found access to the deepest Self, which is freedom.
By its very nature, this state has to be something that is effortless. It has to be something that does not require maintenance. A quiet mind that is arrived at by concentration ends up being a dull mind, not a free mind.
...
Half of the practice of spiritual inquiry is to take you to silence instantly. When you inquire "Who am I?" if you are honest, you'll notice that it takes you right back to silence instantly. The brain doesn't have the answer, so all of a sudden there is silence. The question is meant to take you to that state of silence that is not manufactured, where thinking or searching for the right emotional experience fails.
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Post by laughter on Jan 27, 2014 14:03:27 GMT -5
there's one thing that can get through the eye of the smallest possible needle. Space, your own nothingness, can get right through into heaven. None of us can take one shred of a self-centered identity with us.
...
We recognize that formless spirit is the essence, the animated presence of everything.
chapter 1, para's 24 and 25
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Post by laughter on Jan 27, 2014 14:12:22 GMT -5
With that first step, when I realized that what was looking through my eyes and senses was awakeness or spirit rather than conditioning or memory, I saw that the same spirit was actually looking through all the other pairs of eyes.
...
It is paradoxical that the more this spirit or consciousness starts to taste itself, not as a thought or idea or belief, but as just a simple presence of awakeness, the more this awakeness is reflected everywhere. The more we wake up oout of bodies and minds and identities, the more we see that bodies and minds are actually just manifestations of that same spirit, that same presence.
chapter 1 para's 18 and 19
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Post by laughter on Jan 30, 2014 10:18:49 GMT -5
Awakeness is to have no script, to know that ultimately a script is just a script, and a story is just a story.
chapter 2 para 11
What a hideous dream it was -- thinking those things were necessary to make me happy.
chapter 2 para 18
When you come to satsang to have association with Truth, you are willing to ask, "Who am I?" or "What am I?" without any script or role, without the story about who you are and what you are, releasing the script of what you think your life is about. Every sense of identity has its script.
...
We each have a specific role and our stories about that role. But our roles and stories are not what we are.
chapter 2 para 2
The beautiful thing about satsang is that it's an opportunity to wake up from the story of you. When you start to realize what Truth is, you recognize that Truth is not an abstraction, it is not out there at a distance from you, and it is not something to learn tomorrow. You discover that Truth is who you are without your story or script, right now.
The real blessing of this meeting is the opportunity to be stopped right now, not tomorrow. Awakening to the truth of your being won't be attained in the future. Awakening is a radical shift in identity.
chapter 2 para's 3 and 4
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Post by laughter on Feb 1, 2014 13:06:30 GMT -5
When the little me starts to realize why it is here in satsang, it thinks, "This can't be a place for me. I thought I had come here to gain an advantage, but there is none." It's a revolutionary idea for any of us to go anywhere or do anything where we wouldn't be gaining an advantage. It's not that there is anything wrong with getting an advantage at times. But in satsang, what we come to see is that our happiness and freedom have nothing to do with gaining any sort of advantage. Instead, they have everything to do with allowing ourselves to experience in this moment what it's like to be completely disarmed of our strategy. That includes our strategy to be rid of strategy. This is an opportunity to stop all strategies of becoming.
chap 2 para 5
So then you start to let go even more, to be disarmed from engaging in the more subtle game of thinking you are an actor behind the role. You start to see that it is just another narrative. If you truly look, there is the wonderful chance to be fully disarmed because you will not find an actor, or anyone at all.
chap 2 para 8
What you are without your role is often assumed to be hidden somewhere.
...
Looking for the enlightened self is just another role, another script. It's part of the spiritual seeker's script. If you drop that script -- now what are you?
chap 2 para 10
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Post by laughter on Feb 2, 2014 12:58:22 GMT -5
Some human beings find it easier to be open minded and some find it easier to be open hearted but to really be here now is to be both. When you are open, you do not filter the experience nor do you barricade yourself. You do not try to defend yourself, but you open up to the mystery by questioning what you believe.
When you give yourself this amazing gift of not trying to find yourself within some particular concept or feeling, then the openness expands until your identity becomes more and more the openness itself, rather than some point of reference in the mind called a belief or a particular feeling in the body. The point is not to get rid of thoughts or feelings, but just not to feel located inside of them.
chap 3, para's 1 and 2
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Post by laughter on Feb 4, 2014 12:06:45 GMT -5
Open mind, open heart. Realize that there isn't somebody in there to protect. ... The only reason you ever thought that you needed protection was because of a very innocent misunderstanding. This happened because when you were given a concept of yourself in very early childhood, you also received a kit with which to build walls that would protect this concept. ... Whether you cling to a self-image as a good person or as an inadequate person, the kit of identity is used to protect that image.
This is very innocent. It happens without your knowing that it's happening. It continues until you realize that inherent in this holding of "me" as a self-image in the mind and body is the belief that you need protection. You can't have one without the other. They come in the same box.
When you drop your protection, the truth comes in and takes away the self-image.
chap 3 para's 8-10
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Post by laughter on Feb 8, 2014 12:01:30 GMT -5
Another aspect of openness is intimacy. The quickest access to Truth, and also to beauty, is when you are totally intimate with all of experience, the inner and the outer, even if the experieince isn't "good". When you are being intimate with the whole of experience, the divided mind has to let go of whatever its project is at the momment. In this intimacy, one becomes very open and discovers a vastness. Whether the qualities of the experience are unpleasant or beautiful, as soon as you are intimate with the whole of experience, there is openness.
chap 3 para 16
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Post by laughter on Feb 9, 2014 9:09:02 GMT -5
Most people find the rational thought process takes them to an edge, and instead of stopping, they take a 90-degree right turn or left turn and start moving along the edge, thinking horizontally, pulling in more facts and experiences and memories. This is called a waste of time. The only use of thought that has power is a rational process that goes right to the edge of thought, and then stops. It lets something else deliver whatever needs to be delivered
chap 3 para 18
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