Each of the below aphorisms point towards the dimension of Truth.
The dimension of Divine Love.
Now….take a deep breath!
Adopt a meditative attitude!
Yeah?
Read each one slowly. And then …again.
Let it penetrate your consciousness.
Breathe…
When ready move to the next one!
How did you ever forget?
Up or down
In or out
However your mind may move
You are the Eternal Stillness
Parent or child
Friend or foe
Boss or subordinate
Teacher or student
Whoever you may be in the moment
You are always the Buddha
Anxious or calm
Angry or kind
Positive or negative
Arrogant or humble
However your heart expresses itself
You are held tightly, inseparably by the God of Love
No act can take your Freedom away. You are of the Great Spirit. Always have been, Always will be.
Moment by moment be certain of this!
You are supported by the Divine!
The State of Divine Love
When the One Light of Consciousness recognises its own Nothingness, The Absolute and yet The Absolute doesn’t negate the One Light, this is the embodied state of Divine Love
The Ultimate Home of all Souls
The manifestation is an impulse of Consciousness and Consciousness itself an impulse of The Absolute
This impulse is Divine Love
Divine Love is the ultimate non-duality, the union of the 0 and 1
Every prostration, every asana, every mantra, every breath, every inquiry, every true spiritual concept only brings us home to our Essence, Divine Love
There is no distance between teachers who recommend strenuous effort and those who say no practice is needed. They are both pointing to the paradox that is Divine Love. We need to do nothing for us to embody it, it is Who We Are!
And yet in its moment by moment remembrance we are fully nourished and fulfilled by It.
Arguments about the sudden or gradual path to realisation only exists in a conflicted mind. Divinity is ever present and Absolute. Its remembrance is sudden, gradual, both and yet neither … An unconflicted reality.
To the world its a daily routine. For me it is benediction. The morning walk in the neighbourhood park. The dense foliage. The scent of the eucalyptus from the adjoining forest. Squirrels scurrying around. Mynas singing. Coucals. Parrots. Barbetts. Tiny birds of various hues jumping from flower to flower. Their long beaks luxuriating in divine nectar.
My mind disintegrates.
All identities with it. My body becomes another fixture in this playground of the Lord. Paradise regained. Such benediction. Such bliss.
Abundant in Divine Love
If you tell yourself that people don’t care, you will put that energy into the world and then easily find evidence to back it up. If you tell yourself you will never experience love, you will create mental barriers and then subconsciously repel it.
Tell yourself a different story:
Divine Love is omnipresent, there’s way more than we need to go around, You deserve it, and it is coming to you every day.
The entire evolution is a manifestation of the Eternal Knower, the subject Essence Me. It exists in every life-form at varying degrees of complexity.
The evolution into higher and higher species and more complex and sophisticated neurobiological systems is a function of the Knowers need for greater and greater degrees of self expression. The desire to express its perfection in ways that reflect it more wholly….
The knower is a foundational force that arose from the universal unborn, The Absolute, in order for the self expression of that unborn magnanimity.
And the neurobiological advancement through the eons is the increasing self awareness of the unborn and the spontaneous need to express that own advancement…
Stop looking for love in the future…
More than what you need is right Here!
No, don’t move away.
Stay!
It is HERE!
There is no gap between what is called the Spiritual and the Material. For the Divine, it is ALL Divine. Only the ego segregates
Scientific principles make spirituality more robust and spiritual understanding makes science more moral and wise
The truth lies in Silence…Everything else is a step away from Truth
Humility is total inner surrender to the Divine!
What can remove you from Grace? Every thought, emotion, sensation and experience arises from the ground of Unconditional, Divine Love. Even the critical mind that deems something to be holy or unholy arises from this very space.
All you have to do, my Love, is point your mind to this understanding again and again.
And simply rest in the present moment.
The words of the greatest masters are like puddles of rain water when compared to the Oceanic Love that rests in the center your True Heart
All is forgiven. All is forgiven. All is forgiven.
And the forgiver is for given too. Truth only sees itself.
Divine Love dissolves all sin and all repentance.
Sometimes you are a god. Sometimes a demon. Sometimes just human.
You Are Always The Buddha
The journey to spiritual completion may be long for some. But the moment we recall our Divine Essence, with the fullness of our being, we are Complete.
Traditions fight against traditions. Religions against religions. Spiritual paths against other paths. For this Nacheez, they all help him surrender to Divine Love.
There is no better or worse teachings. The teaching that brings the Seeker into Presence is the best teaching for him or her.
No mud no lotus
No lotus no mud
How long will you be a dependent?
Truth needs no pillar to support it
See This and Be Free!
Spirituality is neither simple nor complex. Neither effort nor understanding. The remembrance of what IS is beyond effort, beyond process.
Spirituality is the space within which Divine Love recalls it’s own Eternal Perfection
How do you know there is something called a mind?
No matter what tradition you practice in or if you have no practice at all,
No matter what faith you may hold dear or if you have no faith at all,
No matter what path you traverse on or if you are lost and have no path
You are always coming home to Divine Love!
If we are truly honest as a race, we will deeply accept that this pandemic has thrown so much out of the window. So many things that were inalienable and essential, seem so unimportant and frivolous.
May we all use these days of uncertainty to put down the baggage our over-developed, over-stimulated, over-identified egos.
And to simply acknowledge the helpless vulnerability that we so desperately avoid with the armor of our opinions, our purposes, our toys and our spiritualities.
From this shared vulnerability, may great beauty and love arise.
When we stop filtering through the mind’s eye…. Life is seen to be pure potentiality. An emptiness from which any attribute, any situation can arise. Non-judgmentally. This pure potentiality can definitely be called Love. No other word describes it better.
And so as we deeply touch and taste the teachings of the different masters, as the path unfolds, we really begin to understand the difference between a Rumi, a Buddha, a Shankara and a Bodhidharma for instance. They are talking of the one truth but the lens is different. And the dimensional reality they are abiding in may be different.
Love and oneness is the experience of an awakened heart…. but an awakened mind will use a different language focused around awareness and an awakened gut will talk primarily of stillness.
When integrated, Divine Love becomes a pure potentiality…. from which “manifest” differently depending on what we engage with
Dearest, slow down and start clearing your identities.
Come into Silence.
Simply meditate sequentially on the 3 stages of Divine Love, the subconscious energies will release.
The tears of emotional intensity, of spiritual understanding are of innocence. Their shadow is the manipulator, a spiritual ego. See both sides and be free… peaceful, balanced…. Quietly in Love with the Divine!
For the spiritually mature, there is no spiritual value in anything that can be articulated or outwardly expressed.
Silent Abidance is the beginning and end of all Sadhana.
The body of enlightenment never gets touched…. it is not affected by judgement, from self or other. Neither is it affected by extreme negativity. It rests in silence… a dispassionate, impartial and constant companion to the movement of the psyche.
Just as spirituality is needed for the soul, exercise and treatment for the body, therapy may be needed for the mind of some. This is not in conflict with the path of Divine Love.
On this path, we are pragmatic about the value of different modalities. And humbly accept the healing they bring in order to deepen our experience of the Divine.
No gap between Consciousness, Energy and Matter. This is the next level of understanding. This is not theoretical. It has to become your living reality.
Abide only in your soul nature.
Ignore that which moves and focus on the still.
The chakras are concepts that only apply to Body-Mind. A system for the soul to work on the energetic purification of that which was born. They aren’t Real in the ultimate sense.
However, our experience of ” Conscious Existence” or “Am-ness” in each of the 3 states is undeniable. These are self evident even when we are absorbed in chakra work.
And hence only these states may be called True!
Don’t use borrowed, mind stuff. Discover anew.
A lot of practice is about sitting silently and observing without jumping to conclusions. Genuine insight takes time.
So let us simply note the tendency to obsessively worry. Let us note the energy of worry. And the component parts… thoughts, emotions, energies and sensations.
And choose to step away from it.
Into Presence.
Useless worry makes us less efficient and ineffective at the time action is needed. And lets just make that choice again and again whenever we can…
Jivas are different and have different levels of baggage. But it is wisdom to not get carried away by spiritual energies and to stay grounded.
Not just wise but also better appreciated by Spirit or the Divine Lover.
The life of a committed sadhaka progresses depending on the Divine Will. All control, all doership is surrendered. This is true for everyone. But for the true sadhak, this is a very visceral reality
Earth and heaven are complementary and need to be embodied fully.
Half-assing it only leaves disassociated and flaky spiritualists.
Like Ramakrishna said, you have to want truth like a drowning man wants air. Thats the only way to make spiritual progress. Else it is easy to get trapped in spiritual mind games. And that is the paradox… Total Inner Silence (no thoughts and no distracting emotions) is our natural state. But to decondition the mind takes serious effort since we have been brainwashed since childhood that thinking gives us control over life.
The spiritual path brings great rest, wisdom and love into our lives. This is undeniable.
What is also important is processing our pain and the eventual acceptance of life, suffering and death…in their full mystery
Dont be in a hurry to understand and express what you are going through. Human depth comes quietly from staying with experience. Not trying to be clever about it or using concepts to explain things away.
Concept cannot touch the reality of pain.
Concepts are nice to have but it is much better to grow beyond them.
True compassion is being able to hold space in ones own heart for life’s movement. And allowing it to express as it sees fit.
Every human goes through grief, through the loss of a loved one at some stage. When we grow through it, we learn compassion. For our own frailty. And the frailty of others.
However rough and tough people seem on the outside, it is very often a self-protection mechanism.
So the truly strong learn how to see the Oneness through negativity, anger and pain.
There is no concrete line between what is you and what is other!
Till you get this its tough to heal deeply.
But the problem with it is as long there is a strong sense of Me-ness… an ego identity… there will always remain a tendency to blame … or look for things coming from outside.
A temporary path may need to be walked upon, just to help us understand the things that don’t work.
To bring us back to our true path, the Path of Divine Love!
Its a slow path. One can say going from one mistake to another…. till we stop trying and just surrender to no-concept…. empty potentiality…. The moment by moment arising of external and internal events.
Do not try to talk about it… you will get trapped.
This teaching is not coming from a position of authority…. it is coming from a place of repeated failure, deep surrender, a humble humour about the inevitability of life…. a place of Unconditional Love.
Like Trungpa Rinpoche said, “Enlightenment is the ego’s greatest disappointment!”
I am not interested in spiritual ego games. Have no interest in saving the world or helping the suffering or the poor or any other messiah complex… the world is perfectly balanced as it is.
If compassion arises in the moment, I am happy to serve it!
Find out. What is this “I” that is having a crisis? Not too seriously. Spend some days in meditative contemplation looking for this I.
There is No hurry to progress i.e. answer the questions.
Just daily, diligent investigative practice… contemplation (eyes open) and meditation (eyes closed).
Like a good spiritual scientist.
Trust is established slowly
Devotion deepens
Till one day all that is left is Divine Love!
About Labels and Concepts
Spiritual seeking is not a hierarchy superior action. Just recognize that, as you are today, this is something you need to do. Like some people have to butcher animals, some people have to commit crimes, some have to do puja and some have to meditate.
It is neither good nor bad. Neither holy nor unholy.
It is just what you need to do. Choicelessly!
Its your life…got to either meditate it out of the way or live it out of the way.
We are coming home….. to silence and to rest in the noumenon…. at different speeds.
The Noumenon
When we withdraw our attention from objects i.e phenomena, and rest in the space of silent detachment… we can say we have come back to the Noumenon.
It needs a degree of meditative experience to “know” it. Here the knowing is not of the mind but of the soul. A different kind of knowing.
The movement from Presence into Absence!
It is a sign of spiritual maturity to be able to do it. Cos there is a deep understanding of who one is and where our true home is.
The Beloved are now those who walk the path. Affection remains for those we share space with, for family.
But the Beloved are those who have come into true humility.
Don’t struggle so much to understand or connect! All this effort is a mind game. Focus on the breath and focus on your yoga and focus on your job.
Stay present and stay quiet with head bent down.
You are supported and everything will come to you in time.
“A seeker’s inner preparation is called his capacity and receptivity. He who has capacity is ready to choose God as his very own. He feels that there is nothing on earth that he can call his own except God, so therefore he chooses God. But he who has receptivity is chosen by God Himself; he is chosen by God as God’s very own. Inside his receptivity, God is constantly playing His cosmic Game. So we can safely say that capacity is the first giant step toward God-realisation and receptivity is the second and last giant step toward God-realisation. When a seeker is on the verge of illumination, he achieves boundless bliss. At that time, bliss is not a vague idea but a living reality. Either when he is on the verge of illumination, or right after his illumination takes place, the seeker will be inundated with infinite bliss in his entire being” – Sri Chinmoy
Whether it was Buddhism or Advaita or Zen or Christianity… it started with a single teaching and lasted for millenia.
Because they took their time to come out in the open and express their truth.
Letting it slow cook inside for decades and decades….becoming more and more refined. Sublime. Effective.
Let the I disappear and just be the whole. The I is a construct. An obstruction to the total experience of empty fullness.
There is a natural progression in the 3 stages… for groundedness, safety and completion purposes. But they are all independent and a person may complete one or two but not all three.
It is good to remember that 99% of the population have arrived at none of the milestones. (Pulled 99% out of thin air. But should be indicative. )
Self realisation is embodied. Enlightenment is freed from the body. To walk with enlightenment needs embodiment. Else one ends up having flighty experiences, flaky insights and delusions of grandeur!
The ones who I am close to become close not because they need me. But cos they choose this path… they see something that is worth dedicating themselves to.
Something with integrity and honesty.
I would rather you be committed to your soul. Everything else will come into line. Habits and preferences and core patterns will automatically change in order to make you serve the truth.
You are held in the arms of the Absolute, Rash. Safely enclosed in the bosom of peace and restful silence.
Among all disturbances, isolate the awareness and silence and rest in them. Fall back into your central soul nature and pull attention away from the temporary. Your soul is the ground of safety from all psychological and energetic disturbances.
The student has to hold on to the personalised teachings. The guru will automatically let it go. Because the teachings come for the student. Sometimes some karma is transferred to the guru and that needs processing.
I have no doubt about to whom my allegiance is!
Dont blame it on the world. Your need for acceptance.
What remains constant is unchanged since eternity!
Dont deny your past. Move beyond it at your pace.
At the time of the realisation, the realisation is Undeniable Truth.
But … There will be times when this is seen to be totally false and that there is only the universal movement in which “you” don’t exist at all … And this body-mind thingy is just moving along with this movement.
Like a leaf blowing in the wind!
A hedonistic mind works on fulfilling the movement of desire. An ascetic mind focuses on watching and controlling the movement of desire. The ascetic shadow comes into conflict with the hedonist and the hedonistic shadow enters into conflict with the ascetic.
Similarly conflicting desires compete for fulfillment. Conflicting desires arise from a conflicted mind. Desire isn’t the problem… the inner conflict is. When we reconcile the shadows and disintegrated mind in the ground of pure consciousness, we flow with life, at peace … this is Meditation.
Enlightened Action happens… Non-judgmentally! Even the inner struggle has space to play itself out
Its no coincidence that non-meditators enter after a while. They reflect and trigger us in ways that show us what it is we need to work on and what we have been spiritually bypassing.
Also, learning Compassion for those who don’t have the luxury of meditative respite is really difficult.
Why the fuck does anything exist at all? Why would that perfectly self-content being manifest it’s glory? It didn’t need to to, you know?!
One word… LOVE !
Forgiveness
Like everything else forgiveness is a practice.
By practicing forgiveness, we don’t dishonor our feelings. We acknowledge and aid them in raising their vibration.
We simply choose a higher truth…. a nobler, stronger self than our past self.
And slowly the reality of who we are changes.
The pure state of awareness is everyones natural state. In me its true and in you its true.
Where is the distance between you and me in the pure state? Only an idea can introduce that separation.
Let that idea go and be One!
What relationship do the enlightened have with their own body/mind?
The body/mind of the realized is an object appearing in the Conscious Beingness of the Realised man!
His relationship to it is one of compassion, just like his relationship to the rest of the world.
He treats his body/mind with the same respect and love he accords to any other living being. Human or otherwise.
Total vulnerability is most attractive to the Divine. It allows for seeds of awakening to be sown in the psyche.
And yet, it’s the one thing we shy away from. We resist surrender with all our might.
But when we do choose the greater wisdom over our small mind and its preferences… Life awakens within us.
Showing us its full glory!
How much of our time is spent doing things that don’t nourish us? That don’t add the kind of value we treasure.
And we do these things because of social imperative, unknown inherited fears or some false sense of responsibility.
When we stop and carefully take stock of our lives, how we spend our time versus what we truly value, it often marks the beginning of our journey back to our selves!
What is spiritual awakening?
When an individual gets direct experience of the pristine space beyond mind…Where a vast silence reigns…It marks the birth of the Soul.
Awakening happens when this Soul consciousness begins to take over the mind and its understanding of the nature of reality.
Devotion to the path/teacher, dedicated effort and vulnerability are prerequisites!
To become fully Available to life as it arises in the moment. This is the culmination of the path.
While this may sound easy, it is not. For our response to stimuli to be unaffected by our conditioning and our biological impulses, take a lot of practice and reorientation.
But it is seen that the more Available one is, the more Alive and Spacious one is!
Children follow their heart!
The mature manage their heart!
The wise break open their heart…Till it has no boundaries!
What remains? When all identities…parent, child, student, worker, friend, lover, spouse, seeker…have been seen through?
When all instincts…Survival, sexual, will, passion, purpose, creativity, knowledge and growth, fame and recognition, validation and approval…have been exhausted!
That which remains is the Primordial Experiencer of all the above…. Your Divine Self! Why wait … Choose it now!
The more we struggle with our thoughts, emotions, anxieties, responsibilities and relationships the more entangled we get in the web of suffering!
To find peace and contentment, first stop struggling. Stop feeding the debating, arguing, blaming and fault finding mind!
Listen to it…Equanimously, compassionately… Like you would to a child! Then breathe deeply… And with the exhale let go of the struggle. Repeat!
From an experiential perspective, that which gives validity to the universe, the everyday reality and the inner world of the humans is our Consciousness/Awareness.
This cannot be debated.
Without It, there would be no experiential reality.
And yet, most of us rarely turn our attention back towards that which powers our life.
When we do, however, we begin to regain what has been lost.
Our True Self!
To find infinite beauty in every little thing is the calling of the Seeker.
And when the boundaries that cage us in shallow individuality are broken, this World of Infinite Beauty opens up to us.
And every little thing becomes fresh and alive…
Because we have been reborn!
Truth is who you are. The awareness upon which all this vexation, materialism and agitation arises.
There is a moment by moment choice we make on what we want to focus on. That choice determines where we go in life.
Peace and rest come when we choose the still background awareness repeatedly. Daily.
By asking oneself who one is every time agitation or ignorant thought arises and then choosing to identify with awareness as the Primordial Self…
Choosing Universality rather than Individuality.
As I walked to the park this morning…
As I walked to the park this morning…I saw a ragpicker girl, hardly 15 with a dirty jute bag in one hand and an even dirtier, wailing 3 month old in the other.
I smiled with my heart and instinctively approached to acknowledge the child.
And to show the girl she was not invisible and she mattered… Very much.
She returned this gesture with a look of deep suspicion, anger, and fear.
She was threatened by me. I regretted my impulsiveness but also knew my gesture came from a place of wanting to touch her with kindness.
What have we done to this child? Ignored, abandoned and relegated her and her baby into an invisible sideshow of the mainstream.
Shame on me and my insular, self-centred mind.
I find myself helpless again.
We all need respite sometimes.
We all feel the need to be released from the constant pressure to be a success against performance metrics that are not our own.
We all need the time to find a way of living that fulfils us and makes us happy to wake up to another day.
The greatest secret shared widely since time immemorial is that infinite respite and freedom exists within you, at this very moment.
The country and culture a person is born into cannot contain the Natural Freedom that is inherent to a human being.
For the essence of humanity is Freedom. Freedom of choice and freedom of expression.
To try and curtail this essential freedom, is to try to hold a Dragon within a cage of dogma meant for parrots.
Dogma might work for parrots, Dragons fly Free!
My mind cannot comprehend what I truly am. It borrows language to name this experience of silent consciousness.
Brahman, Shiva, Christ Consciousness, Krishna Consciousness, Tathagatha, Nirodha Sampatti, Nibbana, Buddha Mind, Universal Consciousness, Divine Love…
so on and so forth.
And yet none of these can touch the Truth and Immediacy of the Nameless Omnipresence!
Please take time everyday, just for a few minutes…
To step outside of yourself and the world you have created.
Your family, job, lifestyle, habits, diet, self image, relationships, fears and desires, deeply embedded ideas about who you are…
Take time to step outside of these. And look at this world of yours!
Does it nourish you? Are there things you wish to change?
You are free to change that which isn’t working. This is your fundamental right.
Close your eyes, and just notice.
Quickly, before your mind starts to move.
There is a dark silent awareness here. It existed before you became an Ego with a name and opinions.
This Silence has answers your mind does not.
Stay there and rest for a while. Maybe it will grace you with its favour!
As I let go of the body and enter deep samadhi,
All there is, is the light of the beloved.
Am I this light or am I just a me?
To be fully and effortlessly aware of that which is in front of us, eyes closed, or open, this is mediation!
Without recoursing to concept or fantasy, without getting lost in thinking and with an attitude of open, gentle curiosity…
Just be aware. Sit without agenda and without a clock.
This is how we transform from being an ego mind into Primordial Awareness!
May St.Valentine make this, the truest of all loves manifest widely and touch all those who need it, crave it.
Let those who are in deep despair of the meaningless of this world and the cruelty of humans become aware of the endless source of Love, the essence of life.
May this Essence Love bring respite, light and joy to these souls. May this be so.
Draw attention back to its source.
And there You are!
Can you see, my love, that this urge to just act, to prove yourself, to become something other than who you already are,
to possess, to dominate, to command respect…all of this…comes from a place of deep conditioned insecurity?
You are Perfect! Know this without doubt. And then move from this place.
You will no longer need validation from any source!
If one arrives at Inner Peace, and yet does not share its luxury with another, then this Peace is misused.
Without Love, Inner Peace is meaningless.
The approach to life of a mind that is immersed in its own unbound universality is very different from that of a mind that believes itself to be physically, culturally and ideologically bound.
The latter makes decisions within a smaller framework and arrives at solutions that solve the immediate needs of It and what it considers to be Its own.
The former thinks for All because it has no boundary between itself and the other.
In your Silent Presence,
I rest in awe of your magnificence,
Till I Am dissolves, and all is You.
As it always has been, is and will be!
I sit. I notice. Breath. Sensations. Thoughts. Juicy. Inviting. Triggering emotion.
I smile. I relax. Maybe I get lost.
Maybe I am focused. It’s okay.
I am beyond lost and focused.
I smile.
If you believe that you are the box, how will you ever get outside of it?!
Old Roshi has only one agenda. To remind you…
You are Not the Box
You are Not the Box
You are Not the Box!
Come Home, Darling, to Original Good!
Every true spiritual school needs to be Seeker-centric.
The culture of Guru/teacher-centric schools takes away from the primary focus of spirituality…Your inner journey!
Having an ideal or a role model is always helpful. But devotion should not become blind.
The teacher is simply a reminder of one’s own true potential. Your Divinity!
Nothing more, nothing less!
To free our world, from the tyranny of its own making…
from the tyranny of inner conflict that gets manifested as outer chaos…
This is the calling of the Seeker.
To call it noble would be to marginalise its urgency.
It may determine our very sanity, our very survival.
To know precisely when, how and why attention lost its ground and escaped into object identification is the mark of an expert meditator.
He knows how to bring it back to its home in Presence, even during intense interaction.
The sage can do this too but often does not care because he is totally assured…that every form of attention is an expression of the Divine Self!
The transition from a child into an adult individual necessitates the understanding, accepting and letting go of the impact of the parent, society and the teacher!
Similarly, the transition into Truth necessitates understanding, accepting and letting go of our own self!
This is the path to freedom.
For decades now, I have struggled with various autoimmune and inflammatory disorders that used to control the quality of my life. These still appear and influence my lifestyle.
However, ever since the Eternal graced this unworthy fool with its presence, these issues simply don’t have the strength to pull me into suffering.
Even intense physical sensations cannot distract for too long from the Eternal Perfection!
That which is of the body stays with the body and does not create a sense of separate self.
A silent stream of blissful light runs through my center, and sweeps away all traces of this world.
Nothing remains anymore, not even the label Divine.
For that which makes the most natural into something extraordinary…special…is no longer in this house!
No more waves, only the The Ocean is!
Good morning! It’s the beginning of a lovely day…notice!
Breath is even and calm…notice!
You are here…words are presenting themselves in awareness and your mind is interpreting them…notice!
It feels really okay to just be here with these words…notice!
Mind may or may not have another agenda…notice!
That’s okay…can’t take away the fact that it’s a lovely day and you are here…notice!
So let us simply note the tendency to obsessively worry. Let us note the energy of worry.
And the component parts… thoughts, emotions, energies and sensations.
And choose to step away from it. Into Presence.
Useless worry makes us less efficient and ineffective at the time action is needed.
And lets just make that choice again and again whenever we can.
Every master since the beginning of time has known beyond doubt that their Essence is your Essence! No separation.
Only as long as we doubt do we need a path and practice.
When the Essence is seen to have always been the Primary Self, that which upon doubt appears, paths and practices are seen for what they are…
Just the bridge that brought us back to the place we never left!
A gentle causeless joy permeates my being! A silly smile adorns my face!
Life falling in love with itself all over again!
Unearned blessings arise when total devotion is uncomplainingly sustained through difficult external circumstances!
And even that is only a lesson for children! For without an Other, devotion is nothing but an uncompromising love for my highest Self!
Master – Boy, do you know what wisdom is?
Boy – No master, I do not!
Master – Wise Answer!!!
– from “The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao”
There is only One thing you have ever experienced in all of your life and only one thing you will ever experience in the rest of your life…
Your own mind!
Those who truly understand the import of this will achieve Buddha-hood in a flash!
No other mahavakya needed!
On the journey to Realisation, the component of mind easiest to work with is thought. As it is constantly visible and available for analysis and re-framing.
Things get tougher when it comes to emotional attachments. They are more integral to the psyche and tougher to unroot.
And it becomes significantly tougher when it comes to behaviours and neurological patterns that we have learned to associate with Primal Instincts… Survival of the Ego.
This is where the Teacher becomes invaluable.
I sit here waiting for something that’s important to me. I feel a mild palpitation in my chest.
I want to label it. Mild nervous anxiety.
But instead I close my eyes and breath into that area.
It’s pressure in the center of my chest. Waves rising up into the headspace like a gentle invite to wallow in it.
I smile at my nervous system and direct my mind back to breathing and feeling sensations.
I am fully available to life as this happens.
Materialists of various hues search for that elusive “zone” of peak performance sometimes going to extreme lengths to get there.
That place where the mind is silent… quiescent… and there is perfect unity with the object of attention… that place where “flow” is optimal.
Sportspersons, artists, chefs/bakers, scientists, trekkers etc etc.
The Realized never leave the zone. Even in their darkest moments.
The True Self hides itself within the Silly!
In this Eternal game of Hide and Seek… the master, he who has sought and found, can only introduce you to your Highest!
But it is You, that has to cut through the Camouflage of Silliness!
Find your center. And you will find the center of the world and every other being!
Barriers erased. Integrity restored. Balance Reestablished!
To seek perfection in the external is a fool’s errand.
To know perfection by embodying the Eternal.
This is the way of the Wise!
Under the angry wound of disappointment, there is always sad vulnerability.
And beneath this is Love!
If your spirituality doesn’t destroy your spirituality, then your spirituality isn’t spirituality.
Its just another ego trip!
Choose to be Free!
To step outside the box of ones life, even for a moment, is to step into one’s unbound nature.
When we step back and look at ourself and our life as an object in our own consciousness,
we are unwittingly making the entirety of existence into just another object in Consciousness.
In that one moment…You and I are Free!
When we look at the increasingly hostile environment around us today,
we realise that a lot of the disenfranchised are being made to believe that to be born in a particular nation or into a particular
religion makes one superior to another born into different conditions and that the other is an intruder upon “my land” and “my way of life”.
This kind of Tribal ideology panders to the lowest in the human.
Spirituality talks to the highest in us and gives birth to the noblest of qualities, Universality!
Taking a position in and as Primal Awareness from relatively early in the journey, allows the seeker to lessen the impact of these fundamental changes and transitions upon the psyche.
The ground of Awareness is always available and provides a safe landing pad to the psyche when core changes occur.
The help of a community, a higher conceptual system and/or a teacher can be quite useful during these times. (Dhamma, Sangha, Buddha)
Every person we have ever come across in our lives becomes an image in our mind. A projection. The longer the association, the stronger the image.
When we attain freedom for and from our mind, we release not only ourselves but also every single person we have ever met from the cage of our projections too.
Enlightenment may be realised Individually but it is our World that is Freed.
The ability of any one person to conceptualise and objectify their own life, their world is directly proportional to their self-awareness.
The more we practice looking at ourselves, the more is extricated from the subconscious and into the conscious mind.
This form of practice is called Effortless Effort! Since force won’t get you there.
It needs the right guidance, the right technique and compassion.
It is only in Stillness can we “begin” to understand the experiential difference between embodied presence (i.e, the self) and Pure awareness!
In the former, the individual is seen as real or existent.
Whereas in the latter, the individual is seen to be a composite of ever morphing, transient emotions, thoughts and sensations.
Nothing real!
This morning I woke up to thoughts carrying old resentment, ill- will, misplaced anger for being wronged and a tendency to only look at the negative aspects of certain people.
Things I thought I had long let go off. Maybe the health retreat and water fast have brought up deeply held insecurities.
I will work on this. What would you like to work on?
Negative or positive thoughts in themselves don’t make a difference.
They are an appearance that flash across the mindscape and disappear if we don’t engage with them.
However, if they point to deeply held wounds that influence our view of life and our behaviour, then they control us.
I choose to be led by Universal Love, rather than be controlled by old wounds.
And so I investigate, uncover and heal them!
The Individual and the Universal are not two.
When we deeply understand our self, we understand the world.
When we truly accept our self as is, we accept the world as is!
When we start to see Love as the Essence of our being, we realise that Love is at the core of the Universe.
Divine Love – a nameless driver behind existence.
I sometimes really wonder, how many of you already have the earned + inherited financial stability needed to do only what you really want to do and nothing else?
How many of you already have all the support you need from spouse and parents? But never entered that discussion because of misplaced sense of individuality and/or insecurity?
I truly wonder… how much comfort will be enough? Before you give your everything for that which matters!
The cascading effect of a single bad decision should not ever be underestimated by a seeker.
Especially, when we are fluctuating between abiding in our higher self and being pulled back into old patterns.
A single compromise with the mind can take months to get clear of and to come back to the bliss of pure abidance.
This is why the path can be very challenging.
To be free from things, one must be free from the value one places upon things. To be good is not better than being bad.
To be healthy is not better than being unhealthy. To be healthy is a thing. To be unhealthy is a thing. A good thought is a thing. A bad thought is also a thing.
A thing is a thing. One thing is no better than another thing.
To move between things without judgement and craving, this is Freedom!
For a lot of us there is a constant “what next” running subconsciously. This constant call to action takes away from our ability to truly experience the present moment, the current action.
The sympathetic nervous system remains activated and geared for the next thing. Splitting us between the present and the future.
To simply bring attention to this spoken or unspoken voice, is the first step to Self Acceptance.
Self acceptance is total acceptance of the moment and of ourselves as we are now.
Acknowledgment that this self is perfect!
Grounded spirituality rarely recommends the giving up of relations and possessions except to the rarest of souls! And even to such souls, only as an interim measure.
But it instead recommends the giving up of Your Attachment to them! That is, the ego identification with them. By deeply seeing their transient and superficial value!
A body, by nature, has its boundaries!
A mind, by nature, has none!
What artificial boundaries have you imposed on this naturally free, space like mind?
Attachment to gender, race, nationality, culture, religion, education, knowledge, profession, wealth, possession, relations, intelligence, personality, achievement, purpose, ideology, spirituality… only makes you smaller!
They only compromise your borderless spaciousness! Your unlimited potential!
LET GO!!
Intimacy…
Beyond Religion.
Beyond Nationality.
Beyond Gender.
Beyond Profession.
Beyond Social Status.
Beyond Species.
It’s all that matters!