Leo Hartong - Awakening to the Dream

Excerpt from chapter 21
Awakening to the Dream

    Lucid dreaming is a term that refers to waking up inside a dream, realizing it is a dream, and then continuing the dream with this understanding. Seeing through the illusion of separation could be termed lucid living, as it is not you waking up from the dream of life, but the impersonal awakening to the dream of life. From which point could an illusion see through itself as an illusion? What could an assumed doer do to become a non-doer? What thought could take the thinker beyond thinking? The answer is nothing and none. Like Rumi said,

        "Whoever brought me here
        will have to take me home."

              This "coming home" reveals the illusory nature of the ego, the world, time and space. All this does not disappear in a blast of white light, but what does disappear is the sense of separation that constitutes the ego illusion. Although it may put a glint in "your" eye as "you" delight in this cosmic illusion, there will be actually no you to delight in it, no you to see it, and no you to get it. The play, including your role in it, continues with the altered perspective of knowing, delighting, and seeing, without an individual claiming these as personal activities or achievements. What is left is that which appears as you and everything-your true Self, which is already and always awake to the dream of life.
              This realization happens by itself. No new knowledge is acquired, but old assumptions fall away. No effort in the world can make you what you already and actually are. The truth behind ego is a no-thing-ness too close for investigation, since it is the very source from which the attempt to investigate arises. Seeing this makes it clear that the activating agent in all your actions is not a fictional "me," but the universal energy, or one's true Self. The belief in a "me," as well as the seeking for enlightenment, is seen through by no-one as nothing but the playful activity of this primal activating energy. The cosmic joke in the journey of the seeker is that the energy that fuels the seeking is precisely what is being sought. In Zen this is called "riding an ox in search of an ox." Wei Wu Wei compared it to looking for your spectacles, not realizing that they are on your nose and, were you not looking through them, you wouldn't be able to see what you are looking for.
              IT awakens to itself or, more to the point, IT is Awakeness itself. It is the light in which all apparent opposites reveal their interdependence and ultimate One-ness; it is the clarity in which the illusion of separation dissolves. The witness and that which is witnessed merge into witnessing, while the illusion of past and future dissolves into the clarity of timeless presence. As It Is, life has no meaning beyond itself. It is always at the point of completion and, simultaneously, as fresh as the morning dew at the dawn of creation.

http://www.awakeningtothedream.com/

Nisargadatta Maharaj - Absolute truth.

photo Gregory Colbert

Somebody, anybody, will tell you that you are pure consciousness, not a body-mind. Accept it as a possibility and investigate earnestly. You may discover that it is so, that you are not a person bound in space and time. Think of the difference it would make!

The personality (vyakti) is but a product of imagination. The self (vyakta) is the victim of this imagination. It is the taking yourself to be what you are not that binds you. The person cannot be said to exist on its own rights; it is the self that believes there is a person and is conscious of being it.

Your own self is your ultimate teacher (sadguru). The outer teacher (guru) is merely a milestone. It is only your inner teacher that will walk with you to the goal, for it is the goal.

You can observe the observation, but not the observer. You know you are the ultimate observer by direct insight, not by a logical process based on observation. You are what you are, but you know what you are not. The self is known as being, the not-self is known as transient. But in reality all is in the mind. The observed, observation and observer are mental constructs. The self alone is.

The self is universal and its aims are universal. There is nothing personal about the self.

I am not an object in Consciousness but its source, its Witness, pure shapeless Awareness.

You are and I am. But only as points in consciousness; we are nothing apart from consciousness.

You are not the body. You are the immensity and infinity of consciousness.

The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness. To know the source is to be the source. When you realize that you are not the person, but the pure and calm witness, and that fearless awareness is your very being, you are the being. It is the source, the inexhaustible Possibility.

Discard all you are not and go ever deeper. Just as a man digging a well discards what is not water, until he reaches the water-bearing strata, so must you discard what is not your own, till nothing is left which you can disown. You will find that what is left is nothing which the mind can hook on to. You are not even a human being. You just are - a point of awareness, co-extensive with time and space and beyond both, the ultimate cause, itself uncaused. If you ask me “Who are you?”, my answer would be: “Nothing in particular. Yet, I am.”

I am not my body, nor do I need it. I am the witness only. I have no shape of my own. You are so accustomed to think of yourself as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousness as having bodies. Once you realize that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether.

Do realize that it is not you who moves from dream to dream, but the dreams flow before you, and you are the immutable witness. No happening affects your real being - that is the absolute truth.

Sri Aurobindo - Oneness in Ecstasy

"The general power of Delight is love and the special mould which the joy of love takes is the vision of beauty. The God-lover is the universal lover and he embraces the All-blissful and All-beautiful. When universal love has seized on his heart, it is the decisive sign that the Divine has taken possession of him; and when he has the vision of the All-beautiful everywhere and can feel at all times the bliss of his embrace, that is the decisive sign that he has taken possession of the Divine. Union is the consummation of love, but it is this mutual possession that gives it at once the acme and the largest reach of its intensity. It is the foundation of oneness in ecstasy."

Randall Friend - Intelligent emptiness

photo Elena Bovo

Every experience, no matter how mundane or spiritual, is just a vibration. A pattern. It's equal to all other experiences, vibrations, patterns. Equal in value, equal in distance, equal in existence. The experience, the vibration, the pattern doesn't take place "in the world" - it "takes place" in Consciousness.
The "brownness" of rock is not a property of rock, it's a property of "mind" or Consciousness. The "tree which falls in the forest" doesn't make a sound unless there are ears to hear, in other words - Consciousness. From this perspective the shock wave disturbs the air - the waves hit the ear drums - the vibration of the ear drums are translated by nerves and the "sound" is a product of Consciousness, not something which "exists" "out there" independent of Consciousness, independent of ears, independent of an observer.
You are the intelligent emptiness which is the capacity, source and expression of all that is, right now. The actuality and the evidence/experience are exactly the same thing. This realization naturally removes all conditions on experience and thought. Everything is left as it is, nothing has changed yet everything is known for what it is.
Self-realization is knowing reality for what it is, not what it is imagined or believed to be. It is not reaching or achieving something new but only in BEING what you already ARE, knowingly.

https://www.facebook.com/randallfriend1?fref=ts

http://avastu0.blogspot.gr/

Don Miguel Ruiz - One living being

Picture Jacolloy

One day, as he slept in a cave,
he dreamed that he saw his own body sleeping.
He came out of the cave on the night of a new moon.
The sky was clear, and he could see millions of stars.
Then something happened inside of him that transformed his life forever.
He looked at his hands, he felt his body, and he heard his own voice say.

“I am made of light, I am made of stars.”

He looked at the stars again, and he realized that it’s not the stars
that create the light, but rather the light that creates the stars.

“Everything is made of light,” he said, “and the space in-between isn’t empty.”

And he knew that everything that exists is one living being,
and that light is the messenger of life,
because it is alive and contains all information.

http://www.miguelruiz.com/

Tony Parsons - No me No you

There is no me and no you, no seeker,
no enlightenment, no disciple and no guru.
There is no better or worse, no path
or purpose, and nothing that has to be achieved.
All appearance is source.
All that apparently manifests in the hypnotic
dream of separation – the world, the life story,
the search for home – is one appearing as two,
the nothing appearing as everything,
the absolute appearing as the particular.

http://www.theopensecret.com/

Chuang Tzu - “No-Self” is “True-Self”

“The person in whom Tao acts without impediment
harms no other being by their actions
yet they do not know themselves to be “kind”, to be “gentle”… .
(They) do not bother with their own interests and do not despise others who do.
They do not struggle to make money and does not make a virtue of poverty.
They go their way without relying on others
and do not pride themselves on walking alone.
While they do not follow the crowd they won’t complain of those who do.
Rank and reward make no appeal to them; disgrace and shame do not deter them.
They are not always looking for right and wrong, always deciding “Yes” or “No.”
The ancients said, therefore:
The person of Tao remains unknown. Perfect virtue produces nothing.
“No-Self” is “True-Self”. And the greatest person is Nobody.”

 

 

 

Arjuna Ardagh - The Mutuality Of Wakefulness

Art Kopp Delaney

I am not a guru.
I have no interest in Gurus
I am not interested at all.
I am passionately interested in
mutuality in wakefulness...
That we can sit together as friends,
you and I,
and lay all our cards on the table.
I'm sure you have your difficulties in life;
you have your emotions...
People have difficulties with money,
relationships and health.
I've got the same stuff too.
And all of that is floating
In the great mystery.
We share it all.
I know many of the contemporary teachers,
having become a kind of teacher myself,
having been asked by Papaji
to represent the truth.
I would never have done this
if he hadn't insisted.
But he did.
So now I get to know other people who teach,
both on his behalf, and others.
And everyone is the same, I tell you.
It may look different
because when someone's sitting giving Satsang
they don't always talk a lot
about their own life;
they talk the truth.
But I tell you,
scratch into the surface;
get to know people behind the scenes.
Everyone is the same.
Look at relationships,
everybody goes through the same stuff.
When there's not enough money,
everyone lives through the same concerns.
When the body gets sick,
everybody has the same kind of experience.
It's called being a human being.
There's nothing wrong with it.
Common to all this sea of humanity,
there is something underneath,
waiting,
which is who you are already,
who we all already are.
It doesn't require achieving anything
or changing your relationship to anything.
Papaji has been my sweetheart.
He is the one who blew the whistle
on the whole game.
But then he had the grace
and the compassion
to let me see him as a human being.
I lived for a period in his house;
I had breakfast with him in the morning.
I went to see him in Satsang.
Then we'd go back and have lunch,
and I realized this guy had every emotion
that I didn't accept in myself,
and more than that.
Every thought,
every kind of prejudice
that I thought was so terrible
in myself,
he demonstrated it to me too.
But what I noticed about him was...
the tendency to make it wrong
never arose in him.
So if anger came in him,
whoosh!
It would come,
pass through;
and it would disappear
and leave no trace.
This ended up being the greatest teaching.
I have had so many teachers,
so many great enlightened ones,
sitting on a podium,
with cameras pointing,
doing that whole guru number.
And what did that create in me?
Separation.
Then I met him.
Many people wanted to create
a mega-guru situation for him too.
He refused until the last short period.
Fifty years he refused.
He was simple, ordinary.
Such compassion in that...
because it bursts all your expectations.
In his profound ordinariness,
in his getting upset with things.
I realized that his being awake
has nothing to do
with which kind of emotions arise
or which kind of thoughts come.
It only has to do with
leaving it all alone,
letting it be in its natural simplicity.
Although many people were shocked
by how ordinary he let himself be,
if you could really relax into seeing it,
it would be more liberating
than any other teaching could be.
Because finally his ordinariness,
his ordinary humanity
was the greatest teaching.
Leave yourself alone.
When you can let your teacher
be ordinary and have bad moods,
you can let yourself be ordinary
and have bad moods too.
This letting yourself be
Allows you to relax into
Simple sanity. 

   

 http://arjunaardagh.com/

https://www.youtube.com/user/LivingEssence9q 

Guru Nanak - Countless

"Endless are the harmonies played by the minstrels; the players prepare endless tunes and measures to sing to Thee, 0 bountiful Creator. Thy Light is within the beings and the beings are all within thy Light…countless are the countries, earths and spheres. Millions assign to Him ever new names, 0 Nanak."


"There are millions of nether regions and skies above skies;
Man has wandered endlessly in His search:
The Vedas also say the same.
The Muslim books speak of eighteen thousand universes,
but it is the same Power that sustains them all:
If it could be accounted for, an account of it would have
been recorded. All attempts at description are in vain;
O Nanak, admit His greatness;
He alone knows Himself.”


"Countless the Indras, countless the suns and moons,
and countless the earthly and stellar regions;
Countless the Siddhas, the Buddhas, the Naths, and countless
the gods and goddesses.
Countless the Danus and the Sages, and countless
the bejewelled oceans.
Countless the sources of creation, countless the harmonies,
countless those that listen unto them,
And countless the devotees of the Word,
Endless and unending, O Nanak! this Realm.”

— From Kirpal Singh’s translation of the Jap Ji, the Morning Prayer of Guru Nanak:

http://www.ruhanisatsangusa.org/jj/japji.htm