Principle 3

3 - When we shift attention from experience to the spacious consciousness that knows, wisdom arises.

'What could it mean to be beyond right and wrong, beyond good and bad? Wouldn't that just lead to chaos? What would be the principle upon which human beings lived? What would keep us from acting in unkind and hurtful ways? But of course, those kinds of questions come from the limitations of egoic consciousness, which is an expression of relativity. Egoic consciousness can't even imagine another state. All it can do is project its own understanding of another state, but it can never actually attain it. Spiritual awakening isn't for our egos. Its for our deeper, inner nature. Its for the source and substance of what we really are. ...

'Very few people understand what true nonseperation is, but this is the invitation that's offered to us in any moment: that who we are is everything and nothing, and far beyond them both. The Heaven we've been looking for is here now, that very place that we've been looking from. Of course the mind will say, "It can't be! What about all the pain and sorrow and suffering?" The dualistic mind deeply wants, and it deeply believes, that ultimate reality has to be something other that this, but of course, if its all one, then its all one, and it includes everything. It is not necessary that we continue to experience suffering, despair, and conflict. These things are merely the product of a state of confusion, of being identified with a very small piece of the mind.

'So its not necessarily a fact that life is destined to include suffering, strife, and sorrow, but neither is life made to be perfect and absolutely heavenly, because neither one of those are the truth. What's real is beyond them both. And when you begin to feel or even get a sense of what I'm pointi8ng to here, you might start to get a whole different view of the life of this moment. But you don't need to run away from anything, because there's nowhere to go. Here is the only place there is. Here is a wider vision, of our unborn, undying nature, of our essence and source as pure spirit. And here it opens even more, and goes beyond the greatest heaven we've ever experienced. It opens into the dazzling dark, into the greatest mystery of being, where the mind will always be bewildered.

'This may sound far off for some people, a place unattainable, a state made available only for the few, but I can assure you that it doesn't require you to change or to become different at all to know this firsthand. It only requires a willingness to stop. The more we stop and the more we let go, the more our consciousness naturally opens. ... ' - Adyashanti writes in his book 'Falling Into Grace'.

Even though he was not directly discussing this principle, I think it beautifully illustrates the point. When we shift our attention from experience (meaning human experience, or the human condition- looking at what we know to be 'real' and 'true' or day to day, our seperations and frustrations) to shift then to the spacious consciousness (the 'heaven on earth', the truth beyond our egoic 'knowledge' the purity of what and who we are, the 'heaven' and 'hell' alive and present all around us, within us, in the sky above and the water below, the truth in the fish and bird and all the life around us in the present moment, in the past and the future yet to come- the peace and clarity of our true divinity, of all that is divine in everything we 'like' and 'dislike', everything that is 'good' and 'bad') to take all this into the consciousness that knows (when we truly are Awake and its clear that everything is pure, and there is no more suffering) this is the ultimate wisdom that will arise.

When we shift attention from experience to the spacious consciousness that knows, wisdom arises.

posted from Bloggeroid

The Secret to Non-Suffering!

Jack Kornfield writes : 'It is not given to us to know how our life will affect the world. What IS given to us is to tend the intentions of our heart and to plant seeds with our deeds. Do not doubt that your good actions will bear fruit, and that change for the better can be born from your life.'

This is not to be confused with thinking about outcome or control. Its about having faith that the actions we take will handle themselves, without our constant manipulation. As is written in the Bhagavad Gita - 'to act well without attachment to the fruits of your actions.'

You've heard me write before about letting go and nonattachment. On the small scale we practice letting go in the moment, letting go of harsh thoughts, or anxieties in situations such as getting cut off on the highway or misplacing our wallet when in a checkout line. On the small scale of nonattachment we practice freeing ourselves from our ego dettaching ourselves from our possessions, realizing that the objects we own are not us, that if something breaks or is stolen or lost, that we ourselves are still intact. So how than do we apply these concepts and practices to the large scale? (Well one 'large' vs 'small' scale is all an illusion, its really all the same, every small thing we do is large, and every large thing we do is small, but for the sake of trying to illustrate a point, I will break things apart as 'large' and 'small' in this post.)

Adyashanti writes- 'The great spiritual teacher Krishnamurti once said, "When you teach a child that a bird is named 'bird', the child will never see the bird again." What they'll see is the word "bird". That's what they'll see and feel, and when they look up in the sky and see that strange, winged being take flight, they'll forget that what is actually there is a great mystery. They'll forget that the thing flying through the sky is beyond all words, that it's an expression of the immensity of life. It's actually an extraordinary and wonderous thing that flies through the sky. But soon as we name it, we think we know what it is. We see "bird", and we almost discount it. A "bird", "cat", "dog", "human", "cup", "chair", "house", "forest" - all of these things have been given names, and all of these things lose some of their natural aliveness once we name them. Of course we need to learn these names and form concepts around them, but if we start to believe that these names and all of the concepts we form around them are real, then we've begun the journey of becoming entrance by the world of ideas.'

Jack Kornfield firther writes - 'Freedom from views is like a cleaning of the glass, a breath of fresh air. Zen master Shunryu Suzuki calls this open-mindedness "beginner's mind". Listen to Rachel Carson, the great naturalist, as she evokes it: "A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over all the children, I should ask her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life."
'When we are free from views, we are willing to learn. What we know for sure in this great turning universe is actually very limited. Seung Sahn, a Korean Zen master, tells us to value this "dont-know mind". He would ask his students questions such as "What is love? What is conciousness? Where did your life come from? What is going to happen tomorrow?" Each time, the students would answer, "I don't know". "Good", Seung Sahn replied. "Keep this 'dont-know mind'. It is an open mind, a clear mind".'

And my favorite Dove chocolate wrapper quote, 'Marcel Proust-"The voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes, but in having new eyes".'

The 'large scale' example of letting go and nonattachment is letting go of the illusion that we have any control over anything outside of our actions in this life. We must learn to not be attached to any outcome 'good' or 'bad'. True satisfaction, and utter peace is knowing we have no control, and being ok with that truth.

'It is not given to us to know how our life will affect the world. What IS given to us is to tend the intention of our heart and to plant beautiful seeds with our deeds. Do not doubt that your good actions will bear fruit, and that change for the better can be born from your life.'

posted from Bloggeroid

Boy Meets World

Many of you 90s kids may recall the popular TGIF series Boy Meets World. In one episode in season 6 Cory Matthews (the lead character) finds himself haunted with these reacurring nightmares of him killing his bestfriend (Shawn Hunter). He becomes so destressed, that as always he turns to his mentor Mr Feeny (his 6th grase teacher that became so popular to the show he ended up being the boys principle and history teacher in highschool and later a professor at his college). Anyways, Mr Feeny simply advised young Mr Matthews to stay asleep, finish the dream, and only rhen will he be able to find out what it means and gain peace. So the end of the episode was his dream playing out where he sends all the supporting characters to their deaths down an empty elevator shaft, leaving him and his girlfriend since the second grade, soon to be wife, Tapanga. He sees her in his dream dressed in her wedding dress, they have a sweet talk, and it turns out it was a dream about cold feet and wedding jitters, that he was afraid he would be killing his social life. I can not recall, either dream Tapanga or real life Tapanga helped him see that he would not lose anything in marriage, that he would be gaining more in top of what he already has.

The reason I bring up this lengthy example, is because I am noticing a common theme in all my yoga and meditation books. They all highlight how in our modern lives and cultures, we shy away from and avoid, loath and fear anything 'dark', anything in our lives that hurt or upset us. Through yoga and meditation we learn to be like Cory and 'finish the nightmare'. Instead of shunning or negative thoughts, feelings, memories, we learn to focus in on them, experience them, and discover the truth behind them.

For light example this time =) a student might 'shit down' and feel emparassed or defeated if a teacher comes over to them to make an adjustment. If we follow that feeling, we can see that we don't fear adjustment, nor our teacher, the underlying fear is of public embarrasment, judgement, disapproval. If we go deeper than that we will see that its really a fear of the past. Something happened sometime ago in our lives where a family member, or school mate, teacher, co worker, someone had us feel put down, and made 'small'. Going even deeper than that, we find this past humiliation haunts us because of our fear of being not enough, and not being accepted.

Now if we can get to the bottom of our fears, instead of getting all 'huffy' and shying away from them and blocking them out, but really getting to the root, it will no longer be something that controls us. Now depending on whatever it is we find, either we can over come it, or accept what we have discovered as being a part of us, and learning to be at peace with it or in some cases loving it, like Finding Nemo's little fin *^_^* .

You are all brave, and strong, I encourage you to explore your 'dark' by turning on the light.

~Namaste

posted from Bloggeroid