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Post by laughter on Oct 29, 2014 0:18:10 GMT -5
As the seeker dissolves, then peace is born, and there is stillness. This is not a quality of stillness that has any dependence on an emotional state. At the moment when the seeker starts to dissolve and there is just peace, then the pendulum might swing into a high spiritual state or into a very ordinary state, or even into an unpleasant state, and the peace itself remains completely independent of those states. This is the dawning of the realization that only from the place where the seeker is dissolving can freedom happen because there is no longer any movement toward or away from experience.
The nature of experience is that it changes or undulates like the waves on the ocean. It's supposed to be doing that. Identity starts to shift from "me", the seeker, chasing some particular experience, to just this. Just this. The center is always right here. The center always was right here. It's just the seeker that insisted the center could be in the spiritual high experience. But as the seeker dissolves, then right here is where every instant is the center. It's motionless right here. And you can be having a very ordinary, a very unhappy, or a very extraordinary emotional and psychological experience, and still the center is right here. And only from here does it begin to dawn that everything is an expression of the center. Everything. There is no experience that is more the truth than any other experience, because in the center of it all, there is no seeker. Right here, there is nothing. All is One.
You will discover there is no little "me" in the center occupying the space. Without this me in the center, there is nobody to judge whether a given experience is the right experience or whether it is spiritual. Do you get it? This is it! When my teacher banged his stick on the ground, he showed that everything was arising out of the center where nothing is.
From para's 14 - 16, Chapter 13 "Spiritual Addiction"
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Post by laughter on Oct 30, 2014 12:36:36 GMT -5
The merging experience is very pleasant and very beautiful, and you may or may not ever have it. If you have a particular type of body-mind, you might experience having it every five minutes. If you are another type of body-mind, you might have it every five lifetimes. If means nothing whether or not this happens or how often. I have met many people who can merge at the drop of a hat, and they are about as free as a dog chasing its tail in a cage. Merging has nothing to do with being free or actually having any idea what Oneness really is. Oneness simply means that everything is the One. Everything is That, and everything always was That. When there is a very deep knowing that everything is One, then the movement of the me trying to find a past experience ceases. Movement is cut off. Seeking is cut off. The seeker is cut off. Realization cuts evyerthing off all at once. Every experience that you will ever have is the One, whether that experience is merging or having to go to the bathroom. Even when ti's beating a stick on the floor and saying, "This is it, This is the Buddha. Thi is enlightened mind. It doesn't get more enlightened that this!" It is all God.
para 11, chapter 13, "Spiritual Addiction".
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Post by laughter on Nov 4, 2014 12:37:12 GMT -5
S: Does letting go happen when we die?
Adya: No, not at all. You can have physical death and still maintain a desire for control right through two hundred thousand lifetimes.
S: So is letting go of the existential grip a physical thing?
Adya: The existential grip is felt physically, but it's much deeper than physical. As an example, imagine that you had an absolutely convincing experience that you, as you think of yourself currently, were going to totally survive when your body died. This wouldn't be a belief, it wouldn't be hope, it wouldn't be faith -- you just knew one hundred percent. Would you be very afraid of your body falling away and dying?
S: No.
Ayda: I think most human beings are not really afraid of their physical death because, if they had the conviction that they don't die, they wouldn't care about their body dying. What they are afraid of in dying is not that "my body dies", but that "I die".
S: Me as I know myself.
Adya: Yes, "I" die. And if I didn't think I would die, I wouldn't care if my body died. But the fact is that the one who is afraid of death is the one who is holding on. The me I know myself as, my personality, is toast. It's gone. But it's an entirely illusionary death because the me is just a collection of familiar thoughts. But if I am identified with it, it doesn't feel like an illusionary death at all, does it?
S: So, would it then happen over time?
Adya: It happens when time runs out. It can happen over time. It can be very sudden or it can also be very gradual. There is only one rule: there aren't any rules about how one unfolds.
S: Should we just stop asking questions?
Adya: No, that will not work either. That's too much control.
S: But when you start asking questions, you are trying to control something.
Adya: Yes. But if you stop yourself from asking questions, you are trying to control, too. The best thing that human beings can do for themselves is to always be absolutely, totally, and completely coming from an honesty with themselves, a total internal integrity. If there is a question that's very important, deep, and very realy for you, ask it. Do you see what I mean? It's more important to hold with the integrity of what is within you than to sell it out for an idea. That holding of integrity is what takes people completely into truth. Not many people will do this. They are all measuring what is inside of them with a concept coming from the outside. If you take what I said tonight to mean that all questions are forms of control, which is true, and therefore you stop asking questions, that would be a rotten thing to do because then you would just be controlling int he opposite direction.
S: Does the questioning part ultimately cease?
Adya: Yes. That's the whole point. The questioning part ceases when the questioner ceases. Everything the questioner asks is a means of tightening the grip.
S: To defend itself?
Adya: Right. Even when this grip is asking for release and for surrender, it's still trying to control. It's saying, "I want surrender now." So one's own deepest integrity is the most important thing. My teacher used to say something that was very simple, but very profound, "Only the phonies doesn't get enlightened".
para's 26-44, Chapter 15 "Control"
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Post by laughter on Nov 14, 2014 19:48:07 GMT -5
Everybody transmits his or her own realization, like a radio broadcast signal, twenty-four hours a day. And everybody receives it. When you realize that your true nature is already free, that it is inherently empty of image, and that it is pure spirit and presence, you will see that it is what everybody else is. Without even thinking about it, you will transmit this. If you think everybody is separate, you will send out that signal, no matter what you do.
para 14, chap 17, "Compassion"
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Post by laughter on Nov 19, 2014 8:11:46 GMT -5
I have discovered that most of the people who are seeking enlightenment or liberation have no idea what it is. ... really don't have any idea of what they are after.
This came as a bit of a shock to me when I started to ask people what it is they think enlightenment is. The most honest would usually kind of scratch their heads as it suddenly would dawn on them, "I really don't know. I'm not really sure." And those who weren't quite capable of mustering that much authenticity would usually spit out what somebody else had said, such as, "Well, it's union with the divine." Other people would come up with their own ideas. In modern vernacular, we call those fantasies. "When enlightenment happens it's going to be ..." fill in the blank. Usually the expectation is that it's going to be something like an infinitely extended orgasm.
from para's 1 and 2, chapter 19, "Enlightenment"
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Post by laughter on Nov 23, 2014 7:02:00 GMT -5
When you get a little spiritual experience, it's very easy to subtly one-up someone who you think doesn't have the same experience. As soon as you do this, there is not a real meeting. So how can you meet the unconsciousness in a way that's innocent, where instead of one-upping somebody, you meet eye to eye? We can learn about dharmic relationship by listening to the birds outside, by observing the quality of our listening, the quality of the embrace of the sound, the way that we let the sound in and let ourselves be touched by it. By simply doing this, we become more conscious. We can learn more about dharmic relationship in this than in a hundred books.
When I used to do retreats at Sonoma Zen Center, where it was very quiet, we'd be up at 4:30 a.m. to start sitting. It was beautiful and peaceful that time of the morning. The sun was just starting to light up the air before it would come up on the horizon, and there was the amazing experience of just feeling the whole world waking up, your whole self waking. It felt wonderful. About 6:30 every morning, across the street from the Zen temple, the neighbors woke up. The neighbors had a different idea of how to get ready for the day. So at 6:30 every morning they played Led Zeppelin in full volume. This is when dharmic relationship can be learned. It is easy to stay conscious to the birds, to the pleasantness, to the beautiful manifestation of the Divine, to your own true self -- until Jimmy Page starts striking the first power chords. And there it is. There is the invitation. "What is that? And what's my relationship with that?"
para's 16 and 17, chapter 21, "Dharmic Relationship"
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Post by laughter on Nov 26, 2014 16:25:20 GMT -5
When you enter the stillness of the eternal now by letting go of the fictional me, you see that reality, enlightenment, or God is like a flame. It's alive, ever moving, ever dancing -- the flame is always here. But the flame is impermanent. There is nothing about a flame that is permanent, static or stable. If it were, it would be dead. Reality is alive, ever on the move, like a flame that leaps up from a log into the air. Truth is a continuous movement. This movement, this aliveness of truth, is constant. It never ceases. It is timeless. Impermanence is the only continuous thing, the only permanent thing.
para 15, chap 22 "The Eternal Now"
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Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2014 17:16:06 GMT -5
"Look at the implications of the awareness that there is no other. When you wake up, you wake up out of this "me and you." If you realise what that means, it just takes your breath away. If there is no other, there is no personal relationship. The whole problem with any relationship has to do with one or both people not taking seriously that there is no other. There is no one to get anything from, no one to change, no one to need or to fulfil a need - all of that is a dream. This is how challenging it gets when you do not just seek after a spiritual experience, but endeavour to understand what is inherent in the experience."
chapter 20 "Implications"
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Post by laughter on Aug 22, 2015 6:46:33 GMT -5
It's as if everything that's happening in a human being, especially a human being who is interested in being spiritual, gets used as proof of the existence of an ego that must be annihilated. And yet nobody can find it. I have yet to have somebody show me the ego. I've seen lots of thoughts, feelings, and emotions. I've watched expressions of anger, joy, depression and bliss, but I have yet to have one person present me with the ego.
Many people present me with an assumption that because all these things exist, there must be a fall guy, somebody or something in themselves to blame. That's the common understanding about ego. But that is not ego. Things are sometimes as simple as they appear. Sometimes a thought is just a thought, a feeling only a feeling, and an action just an action, with no ego in it. Now the ego that exists, if there is any ego at all, is the thought that ego is there. But there is no evidence whatsoever for this ego's existence. Everything is just arising spontaneously, and if there is any ego at all, it is just this particular movement of mind that says, "It's mine".
Now usually this thought, "It's mine," follows the arising of a thought or emotion. It might be, "I feel confusion -- it's mine," or "I feel jealous -- it's mine", or in response to whatever other experience is arising, "It belongs to me". One thinks there was ego present, and it caused this thought or feeling or confusion. Yet every time we go directly back to find the ego, we find that it was not there prior to thought but followed afterward. It's an interpretation of an event, of a given thought or emotions. It is the after-the-fact assumption that "it's mine." Ego is also the after-the-fact interpretation that says, "It's not mine," the rejection of a thought or feeling. It is easy to see that such a position implies that there is somebody there who it doesn't belong to. That's the world of duality. It's my though, my confusion, or whatever it is, or it's not my thought, not my confusion, not mine. Both of these are movements or interpretations of what is. Ego is only this interpretation, this movement of mind, ansd that is why nobody can find it. It's like a ghost. It's just a particularly conditioned movement of mind.
From "Emptiness Dancing", Chapter 11 "Ego", para's 3-5
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