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Post by laughter on Mar 7, 2014 9:15:31 GMT -5
The conditioned mind is always taking on God's job, wondering what people are doing and why they do it. But that is none of your business, none of your concern. You can just start walking through life with this natural openness to what is and be that way under all conditions at all times.
chap 7 para 16
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Post by laughter on Mar 9, 2014 12:15:21 GMT -5
These are not ideals I speak about, not goals or potentials. This openness is actually the core of who everybody is. Stop waiting to let go of everything, and then your true nature is realized. When it is realized, then live it. When the living of it happens, life happens spontaneously. Then finally, for once in our lives, we can say with honesty and integrity that it is the most amazing mystery. It is unfathomable. You cannot know it. You can only be it, either consciously or unconsciously. But to be it consciously is a whole lot easier than to be it unconsciously. Realize yourself and be free.
chap 7, para 21
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Post by laughter on Mar 13, 2014 16:22:53 GMT -5
If you have been in meditation groups, you have probably experienced a manufactured silence. It's the kind of silence that comes from the manipulation of mind. That's a false silence because it's manufactured, controlled. Real silence has nothing to do with any kind of control or manipulation of yourself or your experience.
chap 8 para 1
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Post by laughter on Mar 13, 2014 16:26:16 GMT -5
We are surrounded by coarse consciousness. ... From this course state of consciousness, silence is seen to be an object. Quietness is something that seems to happen to you. But that is not real silence. Real silence is your true nature.
...
Stop thinking of silence as a lack of noise -- mental noise, emotional noise, or the external noise around you. As long as you see silence as something objective, something that is not you but might come to you like an emotional experience, you are chasing your own projected idea.
chap 8 para's 2-4
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Post by laughter on Mar 16, 2014 9:57:00 GMT -5
As long as you think quiet is in opposition to noise, that's not the true quiet. When you are in true quiet, you realize that when you hear a jackhammer, that's the quietness-- it's just taken some form. True quiet is absolutely inclusive. It goes beyond all dualistic ideas of what quiet is. When we come into stillness, we find that stillness is not separate from motion or movemnt. After you meditate, if you get up and start to go about your day thinking, "Why can't I keep this amazing stillness?" it's because you've experienced the controlled stillness, not the natural and uncontrolled stillness. As you relax back into true stillness, when your body gets up to move, the stillness itself is moving.
chap 8 para 10
By its very nature, this state has to be something that is effortless.
chap 8 para 7
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Post by laughter on Mar 29, 2014 15:38:14 GMT -5
... you realize you cannot avoid any part of your experience. If you are looking for quietness to help avoid some feeling, then you are not going to experience the real quietness. ... you cannot avoid any part of experience.
...
There are many stories or spiritual myths that are created and continue to be perpetuated that portray this coming back to our true nature as a battleground, as if there is something about you that doesn't want to return to itself. Whether this is called the ego, or the me or the mind that doesn't really want to be quiet, spiritual people can buy into this myth that there is something about them that doesn't want to wake up and that there has to be some struggle. When you are really quiet, you can see that this is total nonsense. ... As soon as you involve yourself in the seeker's struggle, you've already lost the war.
...
You'll see from the silence that every way the mind moves is just a movement of thought that has no reality to it and becomes real only if you believe it.
...
As soon as you want something from the silence, you are moved outside of silence again.
Silence reveals itself only to itself. Only when we enter as nothing and stay as nothing, will silence open its secret.
... Silence is the ultimate and best teacher, because in silence is the neverending welcoming to do that which our human heart truly desires, which is to always be with our knees on the floor, always be in that sort of devotion to Truth.
,,,
With any other teaching or teacher, we find we can get up. We can think, "Oh, I heard Adya said dah-dah-day, at it sounds good," and we find ourselves lifting up off the floor of surrender.
chap 8, excerpts from para's 12-17
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Post by laughter on May 1, 2014 17:02:33 GMT -5
Consciousness comes into manifestation, which is not a problem, but then it tries to become self-aware. In the process of becoming self-aware, it almost always makes what you could call a mistake. ... Consciousness loses itself in what it created and identifies itself with that creation. This blip is called the human condition.
When consciousness forgets itself, it can make all sorts of mistakes. The first mistake that it almost always makes is to identify itself with whatever it created -- in this case, a human being. ... it creates all sorts of confusion because that identity isn't true. Anything that's not true quite naturally leads to suffering, and the only reason there is suffering or conflict is ignorance. The identity, at its inception, is a very innocent mistake. It starts out incredibly innocent, but like a lot of things that start out innocent, when it gets farther down the line, the consequences don't seem so innocent.
chapter 9, parts of para's 2 and 3
Spiritually, the human condition is a natural part of the evolution of consciousness trying to become conscious through a form. It takes itself to be the form rather than the source of the form. When it makes this misidentification, it suffers under the tremendous illusion of separation. Hence comes the isolation that most human beings feel in their hearts, no matter how many people are around them, no matter how much they're loved. They have to feel alone because they're quite sure that they're different and separate from everybody else.
chapter 9 para 5
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Post by laughter on May 20, 2014 14:19:51 GMT -5
Part of the maturation is to realize that you don't just give up the negative perceptions, you give up the positive ones, too. You give up the whole framework that was used to tell you who and what you are. Then you realize this body-mind experiences whatever it experiences, and you are the conscious space for it to have all those experiences. It truly doesn't matter what the experience is. It just so happens that the more you do this, the body-mind tends to reflect this wisdom by feeling really good. But even when it feels very good and blissful, you can still fall into the seduction of identifying with those nice emotions. As soon as you get seduced and think that those emotions tell you anything about yourself, it's just a matter of time before you'll be caught in separation again.
chap 9, para 38
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Post by silver on Sept 13, 2014 15:30:38 GMT -5
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Post by silver on Sept 14, 2014 18:33:55 GMT -5
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Post by silver on Sept 14, 2014 20:31:13 GMT -5
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Post by silver on Sept 14, 2014 21:25:27 GMT -5
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Post by silver on Sept 16, 2014 18:33:44 GMT -5
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Post by laughter on Oct 20, 2014 5:34:36 GMT -5
This is similar to what consciousness does. It projects this thing called a human being and gets so enamored with its creation that it loses itself in it.
Chapter 9, para 31
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Post by laughter on Oct 21, 2014 20:14:03 GMT -5
Part of not getting caught in illusion is to give up referencing the way we think and feel. A big part of wisdom is to give up referencing the positive thoughts and feelings. We're more than willing to give up the negatives. But when we run into bliss, ecstasy, the joy and release of true revelation, and all the emotions that we consider spiritual, we tell ourselves:
"That's me. How do I know that's me? It must be me because I feel very good. I feel bliss and extasy and joy. That's how I know who I am, what I am, and that I am safe."
But you're still buying into sense perception. If you buy into sense perceptions to tell you who you are, it's just a matter of time until the senses show their other face, which is the negative side, and you'll say, "O my gosh, I'm trapped."
Part of the maturation is to realize that you don't just give up the negative perceptions, you give up the positive ones, too. You give up the whole framework that was used to tell you who and what you are. Then you realize this body-mind experiences what-ever it experiences...
Chapter 9, "Consciousness", para's 37, 38
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