In my reality, there is no 'fastest this' or 'fastest that'. Ever heard of the tortoise and the hare? There is a unique way that works for each of us.

Take for example "I am that I am". Some would say a great wisdom and potentially it works for some. However, from my perspective at least, "I am" can be the final - and greatest - hurdle before enlightenment.

To be in true enlightenment is to be coming from the place of pure presence. It is that which precedes "I am". And even once creation happens, to stay in the place of enlightenment is still to know oneself as the source from which "I am" is happening. To me, "I am" becomes "there is". I see lots of "there is" without identifying with any of it.

It is not peace, it is not love, it is not bliss, it is that which precedes all of these things. After which, there is....

Chris

How do I know what you mean? :S
I guess we all experience it from time to time...

Nowadays I find this state a bit confusing, as if the mind is still not so 'friends' with it: I have both this "there is", but also "I am", still.

About 'fast'. I remember this one... wanting to go fast. When I heard: listen, it might take you years to get there (this one is already funny, to get where? ), I felt WHAAAAT???!!!! It is frustrating!!!! I don't want years, I want 'tomorrow', no, 'today'!

But many years have passed since then... without me even noticing, and if I ask why, then the answer is because I was too busy with what I was doing: digging into myself to find out who I am and what it all is about!

And now it seems that these years, and even lifetimes, look like one tiny flash in an eternity of just one moment experienced in presence...

Oooo, this one is good for wisdom landing sharing

Hi Yulia,

You say...

"I have both this "there is", but also "I am", still."

And this is the divine paradox of truly living. There is presence, the source from which all arises, and you are that (except I can't say "that" because that is to limit what "that" is, which is beyond such limitation).

And yet something arises moment by moment which you are. Except you aren't "that" because you are constantly changing. There's a feeling of something which is constantly evolving and changing.

Except that is when ego wants to own "that" - like "I am that I am". I know people use the term to mean all things but so often when I hear it, what I really hear is the excitement - and with that the ownership - of being. True being is beyond any such ownership.

You say...

"And now it seems that these years, and even lifetimes, look like one tiny flash in an eternity of just one moment experienced in presence...

EXACTLY my friend! When you truly touch presence, "if only I'd done it that way", "if only I hadn't done this" or "why did it take me so long?" simply vanish like the bursting bubble that time really is. Then a split second no longer matters nor a trillion years. The efforting and the struggle of not finding vanish.

Chris

I felt to start challenging some of the quotes that began this thread. They were a touch presented as if they were absolute truth

So to begin with...

"When the mind is quiet, all is Self."
- Papaji

But is not the mind also self? And only an ego tries to still the mind. I say let mind flow and discover self through the mind also.

"When mind moves the world arises, so be still, throw away everything, and be free.
- Papaji

To me, true freedom is serenity within the storm not freedom from it. And the risk of throwing everything away is to throw the baby out with the bath water. From my perspective, it is better to find what is real and align with that.

"The enlightened man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real, so he escapes the suffering."
- The Buddha

But if he acts as if it is not real, then not only does he loose the suffering, but also the magical beauty of life, for you cannot know hot without cold. I can only truly know non-attachment if I have first allowed myself to dive into the deep end of the swirling torrent and found that absolute freedom which is not torn apart by it (personally I can't believe the Buddha said this).

"When you come to know yourselves, then it will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father."
- Jesus

I'd say the Bible/the quotations of Jesus, were often uncomfortable with the whole notion of ourselves as God. In other words that we are BOTH the 'father' and the son AT THE SAME TIME.

"Your most important objective must be realizing the Self. If you have not done this, you will spend your time in ignorance and illusion."
- Sri Annamalai Swami

Whose objective is that exactly? Who is it that is trying and efforting? To me, self happens when there is natural alignment with what is arising. Then there is no objective at all. Just the continual experience.

"The happiness you are seeking is not to be found in the flow of life, but in your attitude to life"
- Ramesh Balsekar

I agree and disagree. I find my attitude shapes the flow but then the happiness of my attitude is experience within the flow.

"Thoughts are the enemy of happiness! Happiness reigns when thoughts subside! In fact, thoughts are the veil that covers over the happiness; when this veil is removed, happiness is revealed."
- Sri Sadhu Om

Oh please. Come on. Let's get real. I have some great thoughts and love every moment of them! Time to get off the guru pedestal. It's beginning to crumble.

Chris

I have a question arising now: is there a difference between ego and mind?

Can it be that the mind is still running some confusions, and somewhat affects the feelings/experience, while in the feeling itself I am not clinging on to the experience and feeling ready to adapt to whatever is coming next?

It sounds really confusing, but if you know what I mean: there is presence already in all circumstances, but the mind still judging/trying to sort out/label/build stories, etc...

I just had a 'hint': is this the experience of the shadow? That is trying to have things certain way, like I still care, but in the background I as if 'don't care anymore'. So the mind serves this shadow still...?

So hard to put into words... )

I feel I am again in this funny: why am I experiencing those?? I haven't even transfigured yet!!! hahaha The mind, ha?

I am 'pleasantly' overwhelmed by your last comment Chris, with quotes. It is just the kind of 'sayings' I was 'saying' lately on the Russian net

Everything you wrote, I wrote in Russian during this last week... maybe in some other formulation, but the same 'idea'.

And about this one:

"The enlightened man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real, so he escapes the suffering."
- The Buddha

----But if he acts as if it is not real, then not only does he loose the suffering, but also the magical beauty of it. I can only truly know non-attachment if I have first allowed myself to dive into the deep end of the swirling torrent and found that which is not torn apart by it (personally I can't believe the Buddha said this).----

I just wrote a comment about it today, called: "Getting lost in the drama for what?". Coincidence?

"Thoughts are the enemy of happiness! Happiness reigns when thoughts subside! In fact, thoughts are the veil that covers over the happiness; when this veil is removed, happiness is revealed."
- Sri Sadhu Om

Here I feel that it is not the thoughts, but thinking can interfere with pure experience, i.e. trying to understand it with the mind and not just feel. But the thoughts arising or what I call 'landing', are not an 'enemy' at all, to me.

The other thing is that I feel to say is that who said I am supposed to be happy all the time?... I am definitely not after happiness here, and even if you might say I am after something, then the most fitting word would be 'experience' and freedom to experience fully, without restricting and clinging... And even that is not precise, since I don't really want it, it is just a yearning, a potential...

And the word enemy itself: I don't feel there is such thing, and my personal experience is that at least retrospectively, all those 'obstacles', 'enemies', 'interferences' I've encountered were extremely helpful pointers for me and I don't see how I would get to where I am now without them. So is it really the enemy or just some side-effect of the spiritual identity?

Hi Yulia,

You ask...

"It sounds really confusing, but if you know what I mean: there is presence already in all circumstances, but the mind still judging/trying to sort out/label/build stories, etc..."

When I experienced this, I let the mind run its course. I allowed the judgments to happen. I didn't deny them. In so doing, I was taken into the experience of why I was judging. Then I was able to let go naturally of the judgment.

What I found in its place was a true discernment. Which although I wasn't attached to, helped me shape the moment authentically.

So let's say I notice something about someone, something that 'I don't like'. The not liking takes me into a bit of a whirlpool of negative energy but I let that happen. I spin around until I discover that actually, what I'm really seeing, is an aspect of me that I don't like.

Then I explore what that is and why I dislike it. I find a truth in in it and let the negative energy dissolve. Then I can confront the engagements with that person without judgment. I am still discerning though. I still see the truth as it presents itself, but as the engagement unfolds, I find I don't get stuck in the mud with them anymore. The situation becomes much more fluid. I also find that they are more likely to change too.

So if whirlpools of the mind arise, rather than trying to negate them, I find that if I go into them, I can unravel the truth within. That way mind becomes a willing tool of the soul.

Chris

Pilate asked Jesus "What is truth ''(John 18.38) and decided to wash his hands with it.

What is truth? A supreme reality,having ultimate meaning ?We often hear The truth will set you free..... But what is truth really ? What do we mean when we speak of truth ?

What's right for you ? If so might anything go ? Relative, no right or wrongness, forever creating and shattering in the moment.Beliefs, practices, morals etc all seem valid within ones set of ''truths'' . Yet really we are our own dice not seeing our own spots....and coming from our own filters or purposes. So, I am really asking the question is there really absolute truth ? Just versions of a particular ''truth'' form a particular perception...

To me truth is interesting in the light that people take their PERCEPTION of truth to be absolute, and this has caused so many wars between mankind,as Gustave Flaubert quoted ''There is no truth only perception''....

So how does one find absolute, unchanging complete truth? How does the mind,the intellect thoughts find it all out ?? If everything is relative,i.e personal opinions,perceptions then there does not seem to BE an absolute truth and hence all of life is relative casual and not complete.......

This is hard for a religious longing of an ABSOLUTE TRUTH. Yet still I ask is there absoluteness??? Or versions of it? Creating and slipping away into the flux of change, into a vastness of ocean ,lost through the changes of time and space??

Here are some quotes
- Is it that we are all so personal that what I see, what you see, is the only truth? That my opinion and your opinion are the only facts we have? That is what the question implies; that everything is relative; goodness is relative, evil is relative, love is relative. If everything is relative (that is, not the whole complete, truth) then our actions, our affections, our personal relationships are relative, they can be ended whenever we like, whenever they do not please us
Jiddu Krishnamurti

For the discovery of truth there is no path. You must enter the uncharted sea. Krishnamurti

First of all, to understand truth you must stand alone, entirely and wholly alone. No Master, no teacher, no guru, no system, no self-discipline will ever lift for you the veil which conceals wisdom. Wisdom is the understanding of enduring values and the living of those values. No one can lead you to wisdom. Krishnamurti

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

.Truth is more in the process than in the result.
Jiddu Krishnamurti: The Little Book on Living

There is no truth.There is only truth within each moment Ramana Maharshi

All great truths begin as blasphemies George Bernard Shaw

Truth, like gold is to be obtained by its growth but by washing away from it all that is not gold .
Leo Tolstoy

Truth only reveals itself when it gives up all preconcieved ideas Shoseki

The eyes sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend Robertson Davies

If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite .
William Blake (The Marriage of heaven and Hell)

No two people see the external world in the same way.To every separate person a thing is what he thinks it is - in other words, not a thing, but a think. Penelope Fitzgerald

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but having new eyes
Marcel Proust

And finally

"There is no God, higher than truth" Mahatma Gandhi

to me...

And it is not constant. The only constant thing about it is that I am constantly ready to find out some new truth every moment.

The thing about the truth is just like you're saying, Teresa, that people get attached to it, and think that it is their opinion forever...

And still, while being open to a new truth to come and be aware that it is only my perception, I can only say "it is truth" about something that feels true to me NOW, and say "this feels untrue to me" NOW about something that feels untrue, and about that I am certain.

Just like I won't deny I am typing now. This is true to me. So somebody else will come and tell me that in his truth I am dancing, so I will say: I am typing!!! THIS is my truth... I won't say you're probably right, then I am lying to myself, to what I really feel now, what my experience is now. So to me, in these situations the invitation to get deeper into the exploration of my truth and 'stand behind it', Ray 1 like thing, a purposeful energy that is expressing what it is expressing now.

In any case, anybody that challenges my truth is a mirror to me, and I will relate to it as such... it is not important to me that anybody accepts or agrees, allows me, etc etc But I will definitely say what my truth is... if it feels right. 'Warning', the absolutist!

Hi,

I have been a big fan of Advaita once - especially Nisargadatta and Ramana. "I AM THAT" was one of my favourite books at the time.

While I still really like Ramana, I must say that I now find the teachings of Papaji (especially) and Nisargadatta quite limited and in many points even belive them to be counter-productive to spiritual growth in some cases.

The way Advaita is presented today seems to be a total confusion of awakening with enlightenment and it seems many people totally distort the teachings with the mind. I would say it can be very good for Awakening (Gateway 1), but then become very limiting. Then it can again become helpful later on, when one has the capacity to actually relate to it in a meaningful way. (Gateway 4)

Also in my observation there is such a thing as an "enlightned mind". Energetically it is a partly awakened third-eye (in the middle of the head) without heart and lower chakras opened. I can see that in the energies of many contemporary Advaita-Teachers and I sense it with some of the old ones.
This kind of awkening leads to a stabilized state of dissociated presence, wich is totally not integrated and is based to a good deal in denial and dissociation. I feel there may be a confusion between a very refined observer and the "Seer" or "Pure Awareness".

From my persepective today I can say that I belive Advaita can be quite misleading. It is a very profound teaching (at least as presented by the old sages like Ramana), but can easily be mistaken if you have no actual experience of the Absolute and try to dissolve the realtive reality by means of the mind.

And especially Papaji and his notion of sudden enlightenment is hard for me to even take serious. (not to speak of the many 3rd generation imitators that have come from his Satsangs).

It may seem quite arrogant to speak in such a way of Gurus held in such high admiration by many, but I really belive Advaita to be a trap for many seekers, because of the confusion of Awakening with Enlightenment and a denial of the path.

(I have written about that here http://www.openhandweb.org/electromagnetic_component_awakening#comment-6888)

That being said, the quotes are of course nice. Still I can't help but I sense a slight need to "dissolve stuff" in the collection.

David

I agree with you whole-heatedly David. I definitely see a confusion happening between "Gateway 1 Awakening" and Enlightenment.

Certainly for me, I experienced a persistent blissful state for quite some time having awakened. I was able to let go, find non-attachment and dissolve all resistance to what was going on around me. It was amazing, frequently very amusing, blissful and at the same time, I felt great compassion for others not in that state. But there was definitely a degree of unseen avoidance of true heart-felt feelings going on.

As you so accurately put it David, there was more an intellectual enlightenment happening with just a degree of heart integration.

It wasn't until I dived head-long into the swirling torrent of emotion, subconscious thought and karma that I began to discover what my soul was really all about and indeed, that Enlightenment was to be 'had' through everything: to be fully experiencing and yet still present as the non-attached Seer.

Since then, I've experienced many people who've come through some of the eastern 'non-dual' approaches and discovered it only took them so far. After a while, something is missing. The soul starts to speak and one can only deny it for so long. Then must follow the long path of true heart integration.

In my reality, there simply are no sudden Enlightenments. We can accelerate the path by having a good understanding and surrender to it, but there are definitely no short cuts.

Chris

On the background of my experience, each shift brought me to something I couldn't even expect.

What are people after exactly?
Why do they think they want to get 'there'?
What do they think they'll find there?

And I am not surprised, I must say, once tasted the non-identified presence experience, I once and for all stopped wondering why people get stuck somewhere around awakening and don't go further. Who can blame them?!
It totally makes sense people will not want it, to me.

I don't remember wanting to get somewhere got me there ever on my path. It works in everyday life, but not in spirituality, it seems. It was more about the inability to bear the current state of constriction. For me the driving force was and is mainly 'getting free', but not as a goal, but as a moment-to-moment 'release' of constrictions and restrictions, again unintentional.

Also it's just funny: it looks like running after one's own tail, it's a loop. As long as you are running, the tail is running away from you. C'est ridicule!

It can work so far, but then it's just a trap... When you're looking on the tail, you don't see anything else... Maybe there's some other way? And all is needed is to stop and do nothing for a change?

One of the friends once told me:

"Break through the known! In spirituality boxes don't work. You are trying to get yourself into some box, but it's too tight for you in your next state. Break through that box! Open your mind. You'll know what to do..."

Thank you, Jacky

Hi, this is my first post by the way

This is interesting to me because yesterday I was looking at the clouds and I saw a turtle riding in a race car. I guess this meant to me if there was any way to get to a certain point from which you are yearning to reach, it would be with patience.

But I have been wondering lately, do we really need to be anywhere else than where we are right now? That yearning for something else, what does it mean. I thought we are supposed to be right where we are right now, and we are, but Its very challenging, and I have that feeling of wanting to get to the other side where the grass is greener, because absolutely everything is coming up for me right now. Then why did I see that I wonder. hmmmm.

I hear "do not run to get there", and yet I pretend to slow down so that I can still get there right away.

hmmm

Hi Cody,

Yes fascinating indeed

I'd say you're encountering the paradox of life itself - something which I often observe is misunderstood (in my reality) in 'spiritual circles'. There's the talk of 'non-duality', everything is okay and there is nowhere to get to.

In a way, I'd say this is true - at the absolute level where all is one. Yet this oneness could not be experienced at all unless there is a "this" and a "that". It could not be experienced if there were not different flows of awareness.

So absoluteness notionally separates into consciousness - awareness - flows of energy - which flow through you and I as the soul.

Moving into enlightenment is all about holding this paradox within. We are everything/nothing - pure presence - AND AT THE SAME TIME we are a unique expression of that presence.

I'd say what you're feeling is the natural arising of the "Ray 1" (of the seven rays of consciousness). These arise as pure presence separates into form. The ray 1 is the 'warrior' energy of will to experience ever finer and higher states of oneness. It's the driving force in all of us.

Yet we need to learn to balance the driving force with the softness of the feminine too - so that they masculine doesn't focus too much and go out of control.

So I'd say you need to drive your racing car with the softness and elegance of a turtle!

Chris

Ah I see, like a separate connectedness, all at different levels and combining into one.

That balance makes a lot more sense to me now.

I wonder, are the seven rays of consciousness you speak of the same as consciousness experienced with the chakra centers?