THE "ROOM" OF PURE AWARENESS

Pascal said that all man's unhappiness is due to his inability to sit in a room alone with himself.  That room is not really a physical room that he speaks of.  It is the "room" of the Self at the Heart of Consciousness when consciousness becomes fully aware of itself as Consciousness.  This is pure Awareness and this is what we eternally are.  This is the clarity of the Seer.

The Heart of the Self

The Self that I am abides as the silent stillness at the heart of Consciousness.

MEDITATIVE CONSCIOUSNESS

Mind sees time as becoming.  Consciousness sees time as Eternal being.

MEDITATION

In the end, not to mention the beginning, what is meditation really about.  In short and right to the point: meditation is about being happy.  It is about living life as happily as possible.  Meditation at its heart is not a method, a practice nor even a goal to be achieved.  

In the living of one's life, meditation has two sides: firstly, just being happy and doing whatever one does in that mode of being, but, without having to have any sense of being special or having any special significance in one's life or as one's self.  There is no fruit, reward or any further self-aggrandizement one needs.  Just being happy in whatever one is doing because one's being is of the very nature of happiness.  There's no reason or cause that justifies being happy or makes me happy.  

But, secondly if one is in fact not happy and finds oneself lacking, then the other side of meditation becomes present: that is, we inquire into the lack of happiness and who it is that lacks happiness, peace, love, freedom?  Am I the unhappiness or the one who is aware of this unhappiness but is not reducible to it?

My first meditation teacher, Swami Rama, founder of the Himalayan Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy, said in his dying moments:  "Be happy!" according to reports I heard.  There was no profound wisdom or lengthy pontifications.  Just "Be happy!" 

Actually that's a tall order, is it not?  What if you're not really happy, or, at least not happy most of the time nor especially all the time?

The first point to note is not to make the mistake of trying to be sure one has the right method or even the right teacher let alone the right philosophy.  Be where you are because you are there.  You can't argue with reality.  If you are not happy, then there is only one choice to make  in the midst of one moving in the current of one's life:  one must inquire, investigate.  That is one begins--whether you want to or like it or not-- the critically reflective process of asking: Why am I not happy?  Now this question may take many forms.  What one is essentially inquiring into no matter what the form of the question asked is:  What is missing?  What is lacking?  Or, who is this person or being who is not enough? Am I the one that is lacking the nature and essence of happiness, the finality and fulfillment of life? 

In short, who am I?  Am I lack?  Or am I that One which by nature is separate and sufficiently distant from the being of lack to see that I am not of the nature of lack but of the nature of Awareness. 

When awareness becomes aware of itself and one abides in knowledge of oneSelf as the presence of Self-Awareness then the Eternality of happiness, love, peace and freedom shine through as one's own true Self.

So, when I become aware of my unhappiness or "lack," I can wake up to the fact that I am also aware of this awareness of unhappiness.  To be present and aware of That Awareness is to allow one's true Nature to shine through in the very presence of the minds attention to "unhappiness," the illusion that something is missing.

In fact nothing is missing.  It is all here, now.  Either to the happiness which one is or the way of inquiry which leads full circle back to the Truth of one's Being.

REVELATION AND REVOLUTION (Part 2)

There is a dialectical relationship between revelation and revolution.  Revelation may well be seen as an inner breakthrough that enables or makes inevitable withdrawal from the world.  The revolutionary seems to be engaged only in the affairs of the world at the expense of his/her inner life.  But these overly simplistic formulas presuppose a duality of revelation and revolution, the mutually exclusive opposition of a political life of struggle for power in the world as opposed to a religious or spiritual life of struggle for inner peace.  

Both are abstract conceptualizations, not to mention false.  Those afraid of the trauma of revelation resort to over-commitment to revolution.  In like manner those afraid of the trauma of revolution revert to the hopes of revelation.  The hysterical mind reverts to neither but becomes frenetically unconscious in the world of the "normal."  The healthy mind stays conscious to the normal abnormality of everyday existence.  It stays vigilant to the seductions of reification, everyday idolatry and the frustrations of enervating relativisms.  That is, it stays alive to creative action, the inevitability of pain in the world and the power of Real Subjectivity, that is, one's own freedom.  As Jesus said, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."  It is this "truth" which is spirit and which he said will be "with us" after his death.  

So the dialectic of revelation and revolution is life in the Spirit bearing the burden of truth.  Moreover this Spirit is the place of Love, the place where two or more meet "in his name," that is, in the name of the Word that creates all or any possible New Beginning: "In the beginning was the Word.....;" that is, the Word of the Spirit as Truth 'opens up the realm of the invisible and immaterial as opposed to the material present of the apparently given reality.  

What revelatory, revolutonary Love is here is a love that opens up a love of the world as allowing the world its freedom to be other than it is, better than it is, new and unburdened by the idolatry of hopeless givenness, irrefutable "factuality," death as a function of the mythology of this as the 'best of all possible worlds.'

REVELATION AND REVOLUTION

The truth of a revolution unfolds in the reality of the day after.  The false revolution unravels and regresses to the worst of the past.  The true revolution begins to materialize the ideals that were fought for.  

The true revelation also begins on the day after to permeate and integrate with life in the world, a world now lived from the perspective of the revelation, in the name of the revelation.

PEACE OF MIND AND TRUTH

Peace of mind starts when "thinking-mind" stops.  There's nothing wrong with thinking as such.  I teach philosophy, or at least try.  But we think only when true mind is operative, the mind that has entered into communion with Being and the Real.  

False mind, thinking-mind, attempts to master Being in its own interest as the instrument of ego.  It attempts to use the Real for itself or to create its own reality.  Peace of mind as  "true mind" is the "peace that passeth all understanding."  It is the source of knowledge of the world that serves the good of the whole.  

When the mind is at peace, only then does it really become interested in truth.  Only then can it, can I, truly think about the truth of that which it thinks.  False mind leads us around an endless labyrinth of agonizing ruminations that approximate what hell must be like.  

Peaceful mind is really the pure consciousness of absolute Awareness.  Whereas this Awareness is invisible it has no phenomenal qualities.  Awareness does have qualities, but transcendental qualities:  truth, beauty, freedom, happiness, peace.  It is through these qualities that the world shows up as God intends it to be.

A LIFE OF MEDITATION

Living a life of meditation doesn't mean that one sits in lotus posture twice a day for 20 minutes with eyes closed silently chanting a mantra.  Of course you may do that if you choose, whether as part of your "meditative" life or even the whole of it if that's the way you see it.  Nothing wrong with that.  

The way I see it is that the meditative life means to live life itself meditatively.  Nor does this, however, mean that we go about our daily affairs in a certain psychological state of consciousness called "meditation."  It means having become aware of the absoluteness of Awareness that makes possible all consciousness, manifest and unmanifest, intentional and non-intentional.  It is this certainty and security of Self as such absolute Awareness that is "the stranger who has always loved you" as Rumi puts it poetically.  It is living knowing you are loved by that "Stranger," perhaps God, that has always loved you.  It is excursion, the journey outward away from home, searching; it is the return home to that place we never really left but "know it for the first time."

So to awaken to absolute Awareness is to find the Source of that happiness that enables being able to participate in a life of love with all people.  This is the meditative life.  Sitting in silence is beautiful.  Living in the silent peace of the self that accompanies all experience of the world is heavenly.  This Self of absolute Awareness remains untouched, even in forgetfulness, always yet returning to the Self, the self-same Eternal.

THE WAY BEYOND TIME (Part 2)

When in love and out of love we see the world as 'innocent' what do we mean?  This can only mean that within the transcendence which is love, in which we do not enter into the struggle for power, to be right, to win, to acquire, etc., the hopeless ignorance of mankind shows itself.  This vision is what Jesus saw and what he meant when he said, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." 

 It was a plea of compassion for the condition of mankind.  We are not in control and the entire drama is quite sad, if not tragic, that we act with such arrogance and self-assuredness, yet are quietly desperate, in the dark and at the mercy of an overdetermined world.  All that is left is forgiveness and transcendence while beholding the blessed beauty of it all.  

Is not the "action" of the likes of Ramana Maharshi, who sat in satsang on his couch in southern India and walked the hills of Arunachala far more the answer to it all than all the intellectual, political and military aggression that presumes to act but reactively regresses behind the growing wall of ignorance.

THE WAY BEYOND TIME

Time is the body, concretely speaking.  No time, then no purpose.  All is pure presence.  All that is, here and now as its own self, is love.  When I love, the past is gone; the future doesn't occur.  I see it all as lovely, beautiful and innocent. 

THE DIVINE ORDER (Beyond Mahatma Gandhi, Part 2)

When an evil is seen as a necessity because it is construed as the order of things created by God, then God's "order" is seen only in given actualities and not in divine possibilities.  When Gandhi justifies the existence of the Caste System as that which is ordained by God he commits a violence which his own ideology of non-violence would disavow.  God is used all too often to justify violence, privilege and personal or cultural perspective, relativisms which justify all kinds of injustices.  We should all revisit Plato's dialogue, the Euthyphro, in which Socrates asks the famous question:  "Does God say something is good because it is good or is it good only because God says it's good?"

BEYOND MAHATMA GANDHI (Part 1)

Gandhi once said that "the only evil in the world is that running around in our own hearts and that's exactly where the battle should be fought."  That may well part of the truth.  But the greater truth is that those who see evil in the world and do nothing about it in the world create an even greater evil.  Of course Gandhi did act in the world.  But to do something about evil in your heart is all well and good but to also deal with it in the world is quite better.  The proviso, however, which makes all the difference and prevents descent into self-righteousness is that the action in the world as well as that in our hearts be done with love.

THE WAY OF STILLNESS AND KNOWLEDGE

The one Old Testament verse which most everyone knows, especially meditators, is Psalm 46: 10.  It may well be best translated as "Be still and know that I am God."  Variations on this translation may however be instructive, especially to meditators.

Another translation says, "Let be, be still and know that I am God.  So possibly the 'being still' does not fare well unless one can first let be, let well enough alone or surrender the illusion that the changes one fantasizes are really at all in your grasp let alone your control.

"That's enough. Now know that I am God."  This version implies that after having tried and accepting that enough is enough, you've done your best, then one can stay in the now of pure presence and see that which does not change and does not need changing.

Several other versions suggest that God makes wars cease or that we should stop fight.  In the end each war stops; so why do we endlessly start them again.  Possibly we have not taken the next step when peace prevails to realize that in the heart of peace lay the Divine.

The God's Word Bible asks "Let go of your concerns; then you will know I am God.  So here the secret lay in letting go of concerns, that is, all the worry that experience shows amounts to next to nothing.  However such "stopping" as the Buddha suggests, is the condition of such transcendental knowledge.

The International Standard Version says "Be in awe and know that I am God."  Here such knowledge is not ordinary cognitive insight.  It is the illumination of truth that arises in the awesome vision of the Divine.

One translation adds the other side of stillness: "Stand silent and know that I am God."  Silence is a well known meditative practice.  However it is not the absence of sound or noise; it is the background permanence against which all sound can occur.  It is the locus of rest, of immanent peace.

Or, "Attention all and see the marvels of God."  As Einstein said, "Either nothing is a miracle or everything is a miracle.  Let me say, I'd rather go with everything is a miracle.  After all, as Leibniz first suggests, "Why is there anything at all rather than nothing at all?"  In fact is it not all a miracle?  Paying attention is not a matter of being fully conscious to one's experience.  Attention is appreciation of the miracle and marvel of it all.  One might insist that a person can't live in such a state of marvel or awe.  But then is the living without such awe really any life whatsoever? Without knowing the marvel of it all, are we not really just technically sophisticated animals wallowing in the "flesh failures."

"Cease striving and know that I am God."  Another task, another goal, another project, another distraction, getting more, doing more, trying more:  all rather exhausting, isn't it?  Do you really want any of the things you desire?  What more is there to really do, especially when it all returns undone?

Lastly, if we invoke the teachings not only of the Bible but of Ramana Maharshi, then we know that the "I AM" means "I am that I am," as God names himself before Moses in the Book of Genesis.  So what we have in full is this:  Be still and know that the I am that I am is God.  That is that within which we find ourselves in our being, in the infinite enclosure of consciousness, is the the divine self of God.  That Light, the self-reflection of consciousness, within which all that is can occur, is God.  And it is that Light, the Light of lights, which is in itself still, silent, fully attentive and finally and fully in awe, marveling at the impossible manifestation that is, the miracle that we are.

HEALING THE QUANTUM BODY

The quantum shift in healing is no longer a focus on the body as material body.  It is a focus on the body as energy consciousness.

TIME and ETERNITY

Patience lay on the continuum of eternality.  Impatience throws us into the clutches of time and the forces of the stories we live in the world.  Patience moves us toward the timelessness and experience of eternality, being eternal in the world yet not being of the world.

THESE TIMES WON'T LAST FOREVER

No, these times won't last forever.  But time is death, dancing with birth, giving song to life eternal.

JESUS AND ONE-REALITY-CONSCIOUSNESS

Jesus says that "one must be in the world but not of the world."  He is not invoking the irreducible duality of immanent and transcendent world.  Jesus is really saying that the "All" is the One.  The One shows up as "world" but not for the world.  This does not mean that there is no distinction between 'in' and 'of' the world.  There obviously is a radical difference but primarily from the standpoint of not "seeing" the difference.  The Oneness which occurs shows up as "world" which is no longer owned by the world.  World now occurs within the One.

When one truly sees the distinction, then one sees and finds oneSelf as one with oneself in the world.  This is because the real distinction gives one one's true self.  Then and only then is there someone who can actually and really be in the world. 

The "self" as atomized, alienated individual, one thing among many mere things, disappears when one's Self "lights up" as the world.  In fact one is only fully "in" the world when one is not of it and oneSelf is both fully Lived and but also fully "disappears" to oneSelf as such when in the world.  So one never negates nor annhilates the presence of the world.  One can be at play in the world and know one is playing, thus enjoying, appreciating and loving.

The world always is and yet we do not find our selves being of it only as in it.  But we find ourselves in being in it when it shows up in and for that Self that is not of it.  This one is the One of the conscious, living being of the only reality which is always also transcending itself.  

This Self's true "in-ness" is not in-itself as a thing in the world but in the "beyond" of itself.  This Self is aware and is Awareness in such a way that it finds reality within the presence of things but not itSelf being one "of" those things.  It's reality is in the eternal becoming of itself through the ""Truth" that will set you free" as Jesus puts it in the Gospel of John.

All the above is further summed up when Jesus says, "I am in my Father and you are in me and I am in you."  So Jesus finds his true Self in the absolute reality of the Godhead.  Yet we are also of that Godhead in that we are in Jesus.  We come to know this truth and its freedom when we discover as St. Paul did that "it is not "I" that lives but Jesus that lives in me."  So when we discover and know the transcendental Self embodied as Jesus, we will know that we are not in the world but, in truth and reality, in God.  To know that "in-ness" is to light up the world in that we, like Jesus, become the way, the truth and the Light.  We can now know all things for what they are and what they are not.

INVESTED INTEREST

The true Self is found -- or, let be-- when one is more interested in nothing than in any one thing, or things, in particular.  However, being interested in nothing really means everything but without being driven by a desire that wants to use one's interest to satisfy that desire and establish an ego identity.  True interest isn't the return on investment but the investment itself. 

FEELING AND EMOTION

Feeling is you running your energy.  Emotionality is your energy running you.

CHRISTIANITY AND MEDITATION: Part III

The entire Christian message of the Bible is summed up in this quote from, Psalm 46: 10 in the Old Testament:  "Be still and know that I am God."  Understanding this, however, requires some insight into God's response to Moses in the Old Testament, Book of Exodus 3:14, when Moses asks God who he should tell the people he is speaking to.  God says, "Tell them, 'I am that I am' " has spoken. God says, "I AM" has sent you to the Israelites.  This is God's name.  He says it will be his name forever and this is how he is to be addressed.  

This "stillness: that presumably we can "know," that enables knowledge of God, is also claimed by Jesus when he says in the Gospel of John 8:31, "...you will know the truth and the truth will set you free."  Then at the end of chapter 8 Jesus says to the Pharisees, "truly I say to you before Abraham was I am."  Of course they stoned him.  Why?  

Because Jesus who, you recall, says he is in us, that is, he is us, precedes all time.  "He," that is, the "I AM" that he is, precedes all time even the historical time of the advent of the people of Israel marked with their founding Father, Abraham.  Jesus, like God, is saying that the "I AM" that he is, is the Eternal 'I AM.'  Jesus is also saying I am that "I AM."  Jesus is either the Messiah, the one announcing the Kingdom of God on earth; or, he is a fraud.  But he also has claimed the identity of God, Himself and you/me.  He brings God down to earth; and man up to God. 

Jesus is claiming to be the transcendent.  He is declaring his oneness with God and yet his oneness with us.  As the 23rd Psalm declares "he restoreth our souls...and we shall dwell in the House of the Lord forever."  That is the "I AM," that you and I are, in Jesus Name, is the House of God, the Eternal Self which we are aware of as the "I AM that I am."  

This is Ramana Maharshi's pure Self-Awareness.  We just have to accept it as the gift that it is.  It is "Given" and we either accept it or struggle to understand it; or doubt it; or try to prove it; or earn it; or try to deserve it.  

Why not just accept it, appreciate it, be thankful, grateful and therefore full or that Grace.  Then we are free, for we are the truth itself that sets us free.

BEYOND WATERED-DOWN MEDITATION PRACTICE

True meditation begins in earnest when the unconscious is contacted.  All else is relaxation exercise and ersatz spirituality.  Transcendence of the unconscious determination of life is enlightenment.  Then meditation is unnecessary.

TURN AROUND AND LOOK AT ME

The Self's "perception" of itself is Love.  

CHRISTIANITY AND MEDITATION: Part II

Meditation, then, is communion with the truth of the spirit.  When Jesus says that we will see him he means that we will see the way, the truth and the life which he himself claims to be.  We will enter into and become one with that Light of lights.  The way, truth and life will be our own as the Light of lights, that is, the Consciousness or Awareness that is the true Self. 

John's Gospel proclaims that the world can't see him nor know this truth from its vantage point.  On the path of meditation, the way of meditation, one abides in that vantage point beyond the world while being able to be "in" the world.  And yet, as Jesus points out, one need not be "of" the world.  Nor does one need to abide in the state of bliss, of Ananda.  One knows it.  We know the Christ within us, the Christ which brings us to oneness with God.  Jesus himself points to this special "knowledge" when in John's Gospel he says, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."  It is herein that we step out of ego consciousness as one's self and find ourselves in that Awareness, that transcendental knowledge behind which no mental consciousness can go.  

Such awareness, Self-Awareness, is absolute transcendence.  It is the untranscendable vantage point of all vantage points, the perspective beyond context and point of view. All phenomena of world, mind, body, emotions and willfulness pass through the Self in their impermanence as mere phenomena through the living eternal presence of the silent, still knowing Self.  The self-love felt here is the presence of God, the peace that passeth all understanding, yet a knowledge not to be transcended, yet accompanied by the beauty, joy, freedom and final fulfilment, the promised salvation. Here now in your very presence.

CHRISTIANITY AND MEDITATION, Part I

Meditation is fundamental and essential to Christianity.  In Christianity sin means to "miss the mark."  That is, to sin means that one is not aligned with the intentions of God for your life.  All too often sin is interpreted as moral failure.  But one doesn't sin because one fails or transgresses morally; one fails morally because one first sins.  But what is sin?

If sin means 'missing the mark', this means that one has fallen off the path of living according to one's faith, belief and commitment.  In the Kath-Upanishad it asserts that "the path to salvation is narrow and as difficult to walk as the razor's edge."  The same is surely true in Christianity although sometimes Christians seem to understand it to be a kind of "comfortable Christianity" in which a quick repetition of a confessional acceptance of Christ as your Lord and Savor is sufficient.  I suspect this isn't the case.  It is well necessary but not sufficient.

It seems to me that the God of Love requires a communion with the truth of that love and a oneness with Divine Being.  In short it invites one to be in communion with that Love itself as one's very own being and way of being-in-the-world.  The place of meditation is to establish and maintain this communion.   After all, in the Gospel of St. John, chapter 14: 19, John writes, the "spirit of His Truth" will help and guide us. Here John refers to the Holy Spirit as our Advocate.  It continues: 
"The world cannot accept him (the spirit of the truth of the Christ), because it neither sees him nor knows him.  But you know him for he lives with you and will be in you.  I will not leave you as orphans.  I will come to you.  Before long the world will not see me but you will see me.  Because I live you also will live.  On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me and I am in you."

In that last line of quotation from John, he punctuates the Oneness of the Father Divine, Jesus as the Christ who is one with God and in us,and finally, you and me who are in Christ.  This "trinity" is fundamental.  It is here that meditation is that practice of communion in which one realizes this Oneness with Christ and God.  Any prayer which addresses God or petitions God must come from this place.  It is meditation that brings us to that place, the place in which God may be authentically addressed and listened to in prayer.  Finally in that "communion" of meditation, prayer and meditation become one.  Father, Christ and Disciple are united in the Holy Spirit of Godhead.  One abides in meditation and one's life becomes a living prayer.

Meditation, Religion and Philosophy

Religion is the way of love and faith.  Philosophy is the way of reason and truth.  Meditation is the way of love and truth through experience of the mystery.

AT PLAY IN THE FIELDS OF THE LORD

When one forces, strains or tries hard, efforting to achieve, change or avoid something, it's likely that the ego-self, the ego-judge, has taken over.  It is propelled by that voice that says "should" or "should not."  That part of ourselves that is unaccepting and sees lack in the self, drives us onward without ever being really fulfilled.  Why?  Because it runs anxiously from pain, fear, doubt and guilt, rather than passionately toward anything  real, anything that actually resides within the truth of the self.  

Rather than allowing ourselves to be playfully aligned with the intentions of god, the universe or authentic desire for the joy of the dance, this "ego-judge" coerces a painful, strident effort that destroys the joy of the journey.  Rather than first feeling our desires and what we love to do and be, we strive to find something that will give us love.  Rather than starting with love's direction, we calculate what will make us loving and loveable and try to effect it from without.  

But when we honor the simple honesty of the immanent feeling of life itself, then we find that love of self that opens to the beauty of it all.  Abiding in the heart, the feeling of life itself, the  way that we can effortlessly walk blossoms in its truth.  The ego-self wants the best for us but has been taught not to trust.  It must be asked, "What do you really want for yourself, when the fear, belief in lack and emotionalities of all sorts are put in abeyance, and the heart is allowed to feel, speak and act?"  When one lets go of the reproach of the world, the mind and the emotions, what do you really want?  Go there.  Let what you know be there.

TWO REALMS, ONE REALITY: THE SELF

In our experience there are two realms or dimensions of experience, phenomena and awareness.  A phenomenon is anything that appears in awareness.  It may be stuff of the material world, mind stuff or emotion.  Nevertheless it is all phenomena, appearances within the realm of conscious awareness.  The second realm or dimension is awareness itself.  I am awareness essentially.  Of course I am also of the nature of the stuff of the phenomenal dimension but only insofar as it appears as a function of awareness.  When I show up as awareness, then the world appears.  We may assume or believe that the world is there no matter what, that is, whether awareness or consciousness is present or not.  But that the world is there may be a given.  What the world is depends upon awareness. My awareness is also the phenomenal and therefore Reality itSelf. In that fact it follows that I am that Real and that the unity of the two realms is the Self.  Therefore rest and abide in the pure awareness of  one's true Self.

FAITH

Faith in its truth is a matter of trusting mySelf as much as I trust God.

GOOD HEALTH & TRUE SELF

How is it that good health and true self are related?  Both, interestingly if not remarkably enough, conceal themselves from awareness when they are fully and really what they are, one's modes of being robustly alive in the world.  When health and self are absent from awareness as a concern that requires attention, then you know that you are fully present in the now, at one with the world.

FREEDOM AND ENLIGHTENMENT

Happiness is freedom in the world.

Joy is freedom from the world.

Bliss is freedom beyond the world.

Enlightenment is neither freedom from nor freedom toward anything.  It is the non-conditional, non-relational, indeterminable, undefinable existence of Self as itself, unique, absolute.  It is the Infinite One unlimited and transcendent of all freedoms, that which gives freedom its own quality of freedom.

CREATING DUALITY, LACK AND SUFFERING

If there is no "real" outside the self, then everything is within everything immanently.  There is no two, only one.  The "real" and we ourselves can't help but be here now at least without extraordinary effort to escape it.  

Everything is here/now.  Everything is for the first time.  Some reality may appear to be on the outside, or an absolute transcendence.  Or I may appear to be on the outside looking in at others living the good life; or, the love, joy and peace may appear to be beyond my present being or reality; or, transcendence, spirit or divinity may appear to be other than my very own true nature.  But how such self-deception of ourselves by ourselves?

The duality and consequent lack occurs as such only because I create it in an imaginary act to be so and then suffer this imaginary creation as my own deficit.  I then feel that I am missing something of importance and, yes, I suffer.  

I let what appears in imagination be thought as real.  Isn't it odd:  an imagined reality thought to be real and that thought believed in as real.  So these unexperienced thoughts which don't occur in relation to real experience become more real as a mental construct than what appears in my actual experience here and now. 

If joy, peace and love are imagined to be outside me in some other person, conditions or state of being, then how I create my suffering now can't be understood and dissolved.  If, however, I let myself experience what I am experiencing as the only reality, then and only then can I move beyond suffering.  

Suffering arises in escaping the now whether in pursuing pleasures or escaping pains.  This is where apparent separation arises.  If I do manage to escape the now through drugs, daydreaming, striving for some imagined goal, etc., it is only an escape to that fantasy that soon ends like an afternoon movie from which we must leave and walk out of into the harshness of daylight.  Of course  daylight really isn't harsh unless we avoid it in favor of "artificial light."  In like manner, when the movie and drama of the mind is preferred over the experience of life in the world, then life too becomes harsh like the daylight when the movie lets out.  So relish it all, here and now as one's own true self, the pain, the pleasure and of course the remainder of life which is the all:  thus no duality, no lack, no suffering.

THERE IS NO OTHER

All the universe is "one hand clapping."

Thinking about meditation

Meditation is interiority without walls.

Thought expressing the spirit

It's not thought as such that needs to be "stopped" but the thinking which in its substance stops the freedom, spontaneity, courage, creativity and autonomy of thought.  That is, do I have thoughts that I can think through and question or do thoughts have me?  Are they my thoughts or thoughts that control or dominate me?

Beyond being and beings

The true, the good and the real are one and the same, the One, the beautiful One.

Returning to the heart of human existence

Meditation is not about the romanticized mystery of mysticism.  It is about returning to and abiding in the "irreducible core that constitutes the human itself."  So meditation is not a confinement of consciousness in itself.  It is an awakening to itself as that very irreducible heart of living being.

Through a glass but darkly

Ego is the Self seen through the sickness of the mind.

The Way of Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a way of creating a non-relationship with the things of the mind and ego.

FEELING GOOD

The essence of Self-awareness is feeling.  We might call it self-affection rather than self-consciousness.  Self-affection does not mean that one simply has affection for oneself like a warm emotional sensation.  But it means that one feels oneself as the essence of life, the source as Life itself.  Whether I am eternal is one question which may well be debated.  But whether Life is eternal cannot be debated.  Life in this sense is however conscious.  It is fully present to what is present and what is present is made present by this consciousness.  Such consciousness as Life-source, Life itself is also an eternal stillness, silence and utter inexorable simplicity.  It does nothing but is ground of creation of all things.  If such living consciousness does not "show up," so to speak, nothing shows up.  And in that case the question of whether matter and reality exists prior to and independent of consciousness is irrelevant and meaningless.  To "know" who one is, then, is to feel the very Heart of one's being as Eternal Life.  Jesus illustrates and says much the same.  It feels good and is good.  One cannot help but love it, that is, love one's feeling of Self, of Existence of Eternal Life.  Feeling oneself as the Life within is the fulfillment of meditation.

The Evolved Habit of Objectification

When consciousness releases its attraction to the objects of the world and turns inward, it sees itself in its own source.  Here consciousness sees its essential Self and knows itself for the first time.  Consciousness becomes Self-consciousness or Awareness.  The question as to who I am is answered. This Heart of Awareness is the Sat-chit-ananda of Hindu philosophy.  This essence, this Cave of the Heart, is the very Being of Bliss Consciousness.  Yet often one presumably turns inward and sees nothing, feels no bliss, no Oneness nor anything remotely like the beautiful harmony of the All, of Life, of just Being itself.  Why?

 When consciousness turns inward it is likely to continue its habit, long evolved and conditioned, to objectify and seek consciousness as it seeks things in the world, as if it is external and independent of itself.  In short, we leave the self out of the equation of Self-consciousness.  We "think" we are looking inward, immanently, but are merely thinking consciousness as an object of thought rather than as our own self-aware Self.  When consciousness moves immanently inward it transcends objectification, that is, seeing as if things are separate and essentially unrelated to the Self.  But when such consciousness sees only what it is accustomed to seeing, namely what it thinks it should see, it alienates itself from itself and is disappointed because of the blisslessness of the experience.  When the self sees within but in the form of the ego that wants to have its cake and eat it too,  ego-consciousness continues to objectify and externalize itself as a thing, idea or mere expectation.  It remains unfulfilled for it has left itself out in turning inward.  Why?  For fear of not being in control of its world as a lifeless thing that it can manipulate, use, dispose of and thus continue to be the desirous self of craving, addiction, force and violence.  When the self sees itself as Seer, all else occurs within it and the holiness of the whole appears, appears as Oneself.  When the self egotistically imagines its true self as a new experience that it can have and yet be its old self without the suffering, it deludes itself and disappoints itself in its search.  Then the search itself appears to be false, a waste of time, pie-in-the-sky spiritualist fantasy.  Such an ego, such a false self, never knows itself nor feels the creation which is its own world.  It sees itself in a mirror only as reflection never seeing that the mirror is really point back to the self that it already is and knows, except for the false consciousness that sees objects where there is really life creating itself.  False consciousness is the victim of a false idea of self projected as something to be had rather than felt and lived as its own being and creation. 

How can we place ourselves outside ourselves and still know our self?  Who would be doing the knowing?  It is that knower that we need to feel consciously within ourselves not as object nor even as subject but as a Self that is free of all determinants and creates what it is and its world can be.

Adieu Desire!

I no longer desire my desire.  The desire that does arise in my body still has its objects.  Yet my Self is no longer identified with the desire.  Consequently, I feel no need to move toward attaching to those objects.  I feel no need to seek out a lasting fulfillment in pursuing those objects.  The desire is passed over in forgetting or released from the body in one way or another.  If I did pursue those objects whether sexual or gustatory, nothing would be gained, nothing realized, nothing actualized. But the precious eternal moment of the present would be lost.  Freedom of the self would be lost.  These objects could give me nothing that I do not already have, that I cannot already find in my just being.  Desire is here fulfilled, transformed into joy and peace. ... My more cynical friends say I'm just getting old.