Personal control & responsibility

What is wrong in letting go the illusion of
personal control and personal responsibility?
Both are in the mind only. Of course, as long
as you imagine yourself to be in control, you
should also imagine yourself to be responsible.
One implies the other.



- Nisargadatta Maharaj, "I Am That"

Along the Way, January 28th 2008


The surest sign of spiritual progress

is a total lack of concern about progress. There is an utter absence of anxiety about anything like liberation and a sort of hollowness in one's being, a kind of looseness and involuntary surrender to whatever might happen.



- Ramesh S. Balsekar
"A Net of Jewels"

Along the Way, January 23rd 2008

Mobius strip

We think we are separate from the world...that we have what is inside
us and what is outside us, but in reality we are akin to a mobius
strip. Because we have not realized the "twist", we do not recognize
that there is no outside. There really no separation, which would
require a barrier with more than one side. Nonduality is the idea that
there is no other and the mobius strip is something with no other
side.

- Eric Putkonen
Podcast: http://www.awaken2life.org/audio/oom_ep10_011908.mp3
Website: http://www.awaken2life.org
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The present moment

It is not the present which is fleeting past us with sickening speed. The present moment is indeed eternal. It is our imperfect perception that creates the horizontal succession in time. Sequential duration is a consequence of the single-track verbalization of our split-mind, which does not grasp the outer world instantaneously but interprets it perversely by extracting bits and pieces and calling them things and events.

- Ramesh Balseker
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The mind can't fathom

that there can be a true intelligence,
a  transcendent intelligence,
that isn't the product and outcome of  
thought and conceptual understanding.  

It can't fathom that there could be wisdom that's not
going to come at you in the form of thoughts,
in the form of acquired and accumulated knowledge.  

The true spiritual urge or yearning is always an invitation beyond the mind.
That's why it's always been said that if you go to God, you  go naked or you don't go at all.
It's the same for everybody. You go in free of your accumulated knowledge,
or you are forever unable to enter.  

So an intelligent mind realizes its own limitation,
and it's a beautiful thing when it does.  

When you stop holding on to all of the knowledge,
then you start to enter a different state of being.
You start to move into a different dimension.
You move into a dimension where experience inside
gets very quiet.  

The mind may still be there chatting in the background,
or it might not,
but consciousness is no longer bothering itself with the mind.  
You don't need to stop it. Your awareness just goes
right past that wall of knowledge and moves into a very quiet state.  

In this quietness, you realize that you don't know
anything simply because you aren't looking back to the mind
for its acquired knowledge.
This quietness is a mystery to the mind.
It is something unknown.
As you go into depth, you literally go into
a deeper experience of what seems to be a great mystery.  

Now the mind might come in and want to know
what's going on and start to define everything,
but that's not going to bring any more depth.
The mystery just keeps opening to itself if you let it -
if you let go of control.

As acquired knowledge is left behind,
what is found is that you have left your
familiar sense of self behind.
That self only existed in the accumulation of knowledge and experience.  

Something very interesting happens when you leave it all behind,  
because you are literally leaving your memory behind.  

You leave behind who you thought you were,
whoever you thought your parents were,
and everything else you thought and believed.
Yesterday is gone.  

Then a very interesting thing starts to be noticed:
you can leave all of that behind and still you are -
you are right here and right  now.
So what you are becomes even more mysterious.  

- Adyashanti
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There are no conditions to fulfil

There is nothing to be done, nothing to be given up. 
Just look and remember, whatever you 
perceive is not you, nor yours. It is there
in the field of consciousness, but you are
not the field and its contents, nor even
the knower of the field. It is your idea
that you have to do things that entangles you
in the results of your efforts - the motive, 
the desire, the failure to achieve, the sense
of frustration - all this holds you back.
Simply look at whatever happens and know 
that you are beyond it.



- Nisargadatta Maharaja "I Am That"
Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Acorn Press, 1973

Along the Way January 11th, 2008

You Are Not a Single YOU

You're a common rhyme-word now,
dependent on some other for your emotional force,
but real life will come.

As when a baby stops nursing and grows interested
in solid food. As when seeds break open in the ground
and act differently.

There is a hidden love-center
in human beings that you will discover and savor
and nourish yourself with. That will be your food.

There's a way of going that's like the stars.
No,
even freer than they are, completely unconditioned,
unlocated, unpathed. A journey without a sky!

You came from Non-existence into being.
How did that happen? Tell me about it!
You were a little drunk when you arrived,
so you can't remember exactly?

I'll give you
some secret hints. Let your mind go, and be mindful.
Close your ears, and listen.

But maybe I shouldn't tell,
if you're not ripe. You're still in early Spring.
July hasn't happened yet in you.
This world is a tree,
and we are green, half-ripe fruit on it.
We hold tight to the limbs, because we know
we're not ready to be taken into the palace.

When we mature and sweeten,
we'll feel ashamed
at having clung so clingingly.
To hold fast
is a sure sign of unripeness.
To drink and enjoy
blood is fine for an embryo.

More needs to be said on this, but the Holy Spirit
will tell it to you when I'm not here.

*You'll* tell it
to *yourself*. Not I, or some other "I," You
who are Me!
As when you fall asleep and go
from the presence of your self to the Presence
of your Self. You hear That One and you think,
"Someone must have communicated telepathically
in my sleep."
You are not a single You,
good Friend, you are a Sky and an Ocean,
a tremendous YHUUUUUU, a nine hundred times huge
drowning place for all your hundreds of you's.

What are these terms *wakefulness* and *sleep*?
Don't answer. Let God answer.
Don't speak, so the Speakers can.
Not a word, so Sun-Light can say
what has never been in a book, or said.
Don't try to put it into words,
and the Spirit will do that through you,
in spite of you,
beside you,
among you.
Stop swimming so hard,
and climb in the boat with Noah.

- Rumi, (Mathnawi, III, 1283-1307)

'This Longing' Versions by Coleman Barks/John Moyes
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In the end, when truth is seen

and its relativities are transcended,
there is only this:
nonduality, nonorigination, and noncausality.

- Paul Brunton, Notebooks
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