To Notice is to Make Conscious

Objects and non-objects can be noticed. To notice a non-object is to notice the noticing itself.

To notice a non-object is to notice the motionless space in which everything exists. Context and content are an inseparble balance.

Obsession with objects is the inevitable result of not noticing the non-object realm of spacious being.

Noticing is different from acquiring.

Noticing refers to what is already here.

Acquiring refers to what is lacking and therefore sought.

Noticing is an openness to what had previously been unseen.

The wealth of space in this moment can be noticed and made conscious.

In the flood of present wealth, the old compulsion to acquire loosens its grip.

All of a sudden

"...all of a sudden the heightened awareness popped in that I'm not a something; I'm emptiness looking out of this form."

Mukti

~
http://www.adyashanti.org/index.php?file=mukti_teachings                                                                    

The Claiming Reflex

Watching satsangs with Paul Hedderman on ustream and reading the wonderful wealth of communications here on the internet, there is a noticing of something that has previously been unnoticed.

At lightning speed, there is an automatic claiming mechanism for feelings and thoughts that arise.  The possessive personal pronoun "my" is inserted into every arising, and this creates the illusion of egoic identity.  The feeling of anger arises and it is immediately clutched onto with the possessive identification of the thought "I am angry."  It seems too obvious to question that this anger, misery, excitement, whatever, is happening to "me."

Looking closely reveals that the "my" is tacked on after the thought or feeling arises.  It's not really "my" thought or feeling, it's just thoughts and feelings.  It's unbelievable what a difference there is between "I am miserable" and "sensations of misery are present here."  Without the automatic, unconscious ownership of mind stuff, it becomes quite benign.

The ownership reflex happens so quickly here that it can't be stopped - but that is actually not a problem. What is so astonishing is the simple seeing of this whole process!  Now that the seeing is happening, it is simple, effortless, and unstoppable.  The ownership or claiming reflex doesn't even need to be stopped-- because in just seeing this process occurring as it occurs- the gig is up! For example, as I'm typing these words, the claiming-reflex may come up. What this looks like in this instant is  maybe the ego wanting to claim this note as having something interesting to say....so, okay claiming reflex--- claim away- churn up the usual brew of guilty pride and painful doubt- go right ahead and have a party! It's not a problem, it's just a magic trick, a sleight of hand where the grasping reflex of ownership applied to thoughts and feelings creates the illusion of a personal entity.  Watch the whole spectacle- and remain unfooled by it.

Ramana Maharshi said if you are standing on a train there is no point in carrying your luggage on your head. Put your luggage down and let the train carry the load, for the train is carrying the luggage whether you set it down or burden yourself with carrying it. In claiming to carry the luggage myself I may feel very important as an exhausted and dutiful burden-carrier (my whole personal history, etc.).  I may love making myself miserable by carrying all this mind-stuff. But the fact is that the train-- life- is really carrying what is.

Carrying the luggage is to clamp onto every thought and feeling and experience as more evidence of "me."  Putting the luggage down is to see that there is no "my" story- there are only stories- arisings and passings in awareness.  Even when that automatic claw machine of possessiveness claims this experience as "mine", it can be seen for what it is (i.e. as not mine, not evidence of a personal entity), and no longer cause distress.  The neuroses, the conditioned patterns of mind, the reactivity, are still here, but they are no longer a huge burden called "me and my life"- they are just part of the dance, and "I" am no longer possessed by them...

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Gratitude to Paul Hedderman, satsang can be watched at this link: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/9143973

Sound and Light

Years ago I came across two sentences and they have never left me:

"The spiritual journey," says Thomas Keating, "is not a career or success story. It is a series of  humiliations of the false self that becomes more and more profound."

The world stood on its head.  For decades I had been seeking accumulation and self-enhancement when in fact all along the deeper longing was for the very opposite: diminution of that heavy burden of an imaginary ego-self .



This morning I was watching a video of Dr.Vijai Shankar  in which he asks, "What is thought?"

               I paused to consider this.

Thought is a word, he observes.

And what is a word?

               Again, I stopped to wonder what a word actually is.

A word is a sound.

              Thought is essentially a sound vibration, whether it is uttered out loud or not.

Mind is thought.

Thought is sound.

Mind is sound.  It is a vibration, a pattern, an appearance.


There is sound (mind) and light (awareness).

There is sound and light, there is mind and awareness: these are the two indivisible dimensions or aspects of reality.

Sound is form, light is formless, and they are one.

There is sound and the light of consciousness that is aware of sound. 

Sound and light occupy the same space and are inseparable.


For much of my life attention has been circumscribed to the thought-trance, hypnotized by the sound of the mind.

Yet the light bathes everything and it has always been free.

This light feels like home, and it does not make a sound.  The light loves sound without needing to make a single sound itself.


~
Gratitude to Thomas Keating, quote is from his book
http://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/site/PageServer
Gratitude to Dr. Vijai Shankar
http://www.nevernothere.com/dr-vijai-shankar
Gratitude for photo: http://www.coosacreek.org/way/?m=200910

What is here.

Listening to the sound of the dishwasher and looking at the cat napping on the blue chair, something is suddenly clear (it becomes visible as if  floating up to the surface of water).  It is this:  The mind will never be able to tell me who I am.  I've searched long and hard in the mind to discover my identity and it is not there.  I won't find myself in any thought or story or experience, not even in the experience or story of awakening, enlightenment, or self-realization.  Identifying with mind-objects (i.e. seeking my identity in objects such as thoughts, stories, experiences) is the basic confusion that I have suffered from. It's the basic confusion we all suffer from.

Even though I am myself always (it cannot be otherwise), there can be a sense of not knowing who I am, of being strangely lost and disconnected from the reality of my being.  Of being out of touch with what is most vital and real within me.

There is a longing to know directly who I am apart from any mental ideas.

What I want is some kind of fundamental, conscious contact with the being, the actuality of the life that I am in this moment.

What is prior to any mental idea of who I am?  What is here in the absence of thought?  What am I apart from ego, apart from any personal history? What is here right now?



The awareness or being that everything shows up in is prior to any appearance.

In seeing this, sensing this, there is a plunge into immediacy, a wake-up slap of reality.

Attention had been locked on the clouds (thoughts, appearances) and now opens to the sky (presence/essence).

This sky of awareness or presence is here at all times; inseparable from the experiences that arise but not confined to them.

I am in no way separate from my experience, but my experiences are not who I am. There is great freedom in this fact.  The sky is not confined by the clouds within it, and no human being is defined by thought.

The sky is not diminished when the clouds dissolve. If anything, the sky is even more present, or more apparent, when there are no clouds. A sky naked of clouds is not less of a sky. Without all the buzz of experience and thought, what I am is not diminished, but unveiled or more readily apparent. Without a big pile of accomplishments and failures and ideas and experiences (without all these clouds in the sky), the true essence of the reality that I am- the sky of awareness- is more readily apparent.  The very things I sought to define myself did just the opposite: they obscured "my" reality- the wide open sky.  All the things I thought defined me were more like a mask that alienated me from my reality.

What I want to know is not so much what I am but that I am.  I want to feel/sense/know my reality, that indeed I am very much alive, aware, in this instant, un-separated from life itself.

I am.

I am!

What could be more astonishing than the am-ness of anything at all, the am-ness that is typing these words, reading these words, the am-ness that is ubiquitous in the single sky that is everything?

There is a sensing/feeling/knowing that I am.  I can't wrap it up in a neat little mental package, but I can be what I am- effortlessly, unceasingly, like the space of the sky.

The joy of being is something real and present and accessible, and it is more satisfying than any passing experience.  Why pine after a cloud when the wealth of the sky is here?

What I want, it turns out, is what I've got:  Life.  Life as it is in this moment.


Not a single movement of the mind is needed to be what I am.

Not a single thing needs to be different in order for me to be fully who I am.  There is no circumstance that can block the fullness of being.

The dishwasher is quiet and the cat is still napping on the blue chair.  The presence that is here is alive and a great wave of benevolence moves through.  Thank you for being here and sharing this space.


~
Gratitude to Annette Nibley for pointing out that "without a single movement of the mind" being is known. Annette's extremely lucid writing can be accessed here:  http://www.whatneverchanges.com/

Thanks also to the video of Stuart Schwartz on Never Not Here TV, which powerfully points attention to the obvious. Video can be accessed here:  http://www.nevernothere.com/stuart-schwartz

"No need for concern"

"What is being spoken of here is not any kind of freedom or emancipation in the life of the character- rather it's about this that already is, regardless of any circumstances.  No need for concern then about whether there's an 'I' or not, nor for whether any process is underway, finished or not even started.  Your true nature is always Being, and the play will take its own course."

(Nathan Gill, Being, p. 95)

There's a relaxing that occurs when I read these words.  All the endless attempts to improve life are abandoned, and it is clear that life needs no improvement.  There is still a natural flow towards the good, towards "improvement", but it is not fueled by notions of deficit.

If you are not used to reading books on nonduality, the word "character" in the context of the above passage refers to the limited personal sense of self as a separated mind/body.  There is more to us than the "character,"  there is more to any human being than meets the eye.

"No need for concern" does not mean apathy but equanimity, which is lack of excessive anxiety over the ever-changing circumstances of life.  The presence of awareness is something real and alive as the "container" of all the changing content of each moment.  The presence of awareness itself is the heart of being alive, and it is inherently peaceful.

The image is from Flickr.  Gratitude to Nathan Gill, here is a link to his website:http://www.nathangill.com/

Gratitude to Jan Frazier for her writing about the "container" and the contents in her essay Remembering to Notice, available here:http://www.janfrazierteachings.com/blog/?p=1981#more-1981

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Awareness held hostage

This morning I am struck by some words from Huang Po:

"There is only one reality, neither to be realized nor attained.  To say 'I am able to realize something' or 'I am able to attain something' is to place yourself among the arrogant.  The men who flapped their garments and left the meeting as mentioned in the Lotus Sutra were just such people.  (These people THOUGHT they had understood and were smugly self-satisfied.)  Therefore the Buddha said:  'I truly obtained nothing from Enlightenment.'  There is just a mysterious tacit understanding and no more."

This knocks the wind out of my seeking- it is recognized as a self-fueled obsession that enhances the false notion of separate self-hood, digging deeper the pit of suffering and delusion.

Freedom from the obsession with grasping opens awareness to what is already here.

This breath.

This silence, permeating all the noise, all the thoughts.

Awareness had been held hostage to ideas of more, to ideas of getting free, ideas of being a better me, a happier me, an enlightened me.

The hostage is no longer held hostage when these ideas lose their allure... their falsity is recognized.  No ransom to be gained, the 'kidnapper' (believed delusions) lets the 'hostage' (awareness) go.

It's an ordinary day.  Sunday mass at 11:30, and then all five of us will go see the new movie, Karate Kid.

Awareness opens outside of the mind and into the fullness of no-thing.  Awareness is untethered from the torture machine of external seeking as the futility of the machine is recognized.

Freedom from seeking doesn't mean stagnation.  It means movement toward goals is unhindered by anxiety.

THIS floods awareness, this life in this moment.

May we all enjoy the abundance of no-mind.  The vastness and real-ness of nonverbal consciousness is here, free for the noticing, whenever attention opens wider than the TV-in-the-head.


(Note: Gratitude to Jan Frazier, author of When Fear Falls Away, for the phrase "awareness held hostage." Here is a link for Jan's website:http://www.janfrazierteachings.com/. The essays on Jan's website are highly recommended.)
(Quote is from The Zen Teaching of Huang Po, translated by John Blofield, p. 45.)
(Gratitude for image available at this link: tomsteel.wordpress.com/ post dated Feb 13, 2008)

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Awareness doesn't say a thing.

Every day I wake up in the middle of the same old mind-clutter:  should do this, should do that, don't want to do this, don't want to do that (exercise, diet, clean house, give non-stop unconditional love and attention to everyone, save the world, conserve energy, recycle, etc.).

The mental landscape reconstitutes daily.

Fighting it is the trap of becoming more entangled in it.

Let it be.   Let the mind machine do what it does, which is to play out endless internal conflicts.

Yet the magic of awareness is here all the time.   Awareness doesn't say a thing.   It sees, sees, sees.  It is the rays of light that shine away the mind-fog.


~

Clarity

   "Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone. "  (Alan Watts)

   "The most significant thing that can happen to a human being [is] the separation process of thinking and awareness."    (Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 261-2)

    Muddy water is cleared by leaving it alone. Awareness is separated from thought by leaving thought alone.

    Whenever there is awareness of a thought, there is a separation between that thought and awareness.  This separation is clarity,  it is freedom from entanglement in thought.

     The separation process between thinking and awareness occurs when the muddy waters of the mind are left alone.  Simple rest clears the water.

    Water is always equally clear, whether mud particles are dispersed in it or settled at the bottom.  Awareness is always clear, whether it is filled with thought or whether thought is absent.

    However, when water and mud particles are mixed together, the clarity of the water is obscured.  When water and mud particles are separated, the clarity of water is easier to see.  There is no fundamental change, but the clear water that was always there is more evident when the mud particles settle to the bottom and are separated from the water.  Similarly, the clarity of awareness is unobscured when the mind is left alone and the process of separation between thought and awareness is allowed to occur.

    Why is the separation process of thinking and awareness the most significant thing that can happen to a human being?

    Our true nature as awareness is unrecognized when it is mixed up with thinking.  When the two are separated the clarity that has always been present shines forth unobscured.  There is recognition of essence.

   There is an art to leaving muddy water alone, to not resisting what is.  There is an art to true resting and non-interference.  Leaving things alone, letting thoughts settle down, requires a high-frequency energy of alertness.  Leaving things alone doesn't mean inactivity; it means yielding to the life flow instead of resisting it.

   Leaving muddy water alone means giving up the fight against what is.

   There is a natural attraction to the ease and effortlessness in which freedom is recognized and the sense of being a separate self dissolves.

    We are all one with the unfolding of reality in this instant, every instant, whether we are consciously aware of this fact or not.  We can't do it wrong.  Only thought says we can be wrong.

    In the ease of leaving thought alone, in the ease of not arguing with thought, there is the clearing of  muddy water and there is a separation of awareness from thinking. There is a separation of identity from the thought stream.  In this separation is the clarity of freedom, the freedom that has always been here and is now enjoyed.

~





   

Touching peace

     This morning some words from Thich Nhat Hanh have expanded my awareness outside of the usual house of thought into new spaces.

     "Peace is all around us-  in the world and in nature-  and within us-  in our bodies and our spirits.  Once we learn to touch this peace, we will be healed and transformed.  It is not a matter of faith; it is a matter of practice."
    (from Be Still and Know, p. 54)

     I take a few minutes to let these words sink in.  We can learn to touch peace!  That in itself is an amazing fact. What better way to employ the human capacity to learn?  Now I am gently dislodging my attention from the usual gallop of thought in the head, and letting it touch the peace in the cloud floating outside the window. Awareness likes to touch this peace.  Now I am letting awareness touch the breath as it moves into the body.  Awareness is breathing peace.  As awareness touches the peace without and within, healing and transformation occur spontaneously. Still touching peace, I move forward into this day.

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Bad day

Actually, the day is the day, and, like all days, it's a miracle beyond description; however, my mood is moderately miserable. Funny how I tend to blame my mood on the day, when it's not the day's fault.

Moods appear, and it could become a full-time job analyzing them and tracing the intricate strands of causation for every mood that arises. I've certainly spent plenty of time trying to figure out why I get in bad moods occasionally. What thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, hormones, conditioning, circumstances, etc. could be causing the miserable mood?

I begin to realize that excessive analysis of feelings is a tactic to avoid them. And tactics to avoid feelings are a kind of procrastination.

Feelings can't be escaped, only felt. What feels feelings? Awareness. Silent, nonjudgmental, awareness. The silence within me feels my feelings and is not repelled by them in the least. In this silence which could be called love the feelings are embraced. And in the embrace the feelings relax. And in the relaxation the feelings may or may not dissolve. And the energy of flux continues fluxing through the silent space of this moment, as appearances appear and disappear, and moods morph into an endless parade of colors.

I argued with my nine year-old son because he hadn't taken a shower when I wanted him to take a shower. A blister of painful thoughts burst, "Colleen, you should be a better parent. You should be able to have your child take a shower without a lot of drama." I argued with people I love and said things I wish I had not said.

I notice that nearly every speck of my conscious attention collapses down into the tiny space of a few painful thoughts. This shriveling of the vast field of awareness down into such a small space is painful, like trying to compress an ocean into a thimble.

In the midst of my miserable mood, what washes up on the shore? Some words from a kind and wonderful mentor to me, Stephan Bodian, found in his book Wake Up Now. I'd like to share them with you.

"As you relax and let everything be just as it is, the tendency for awareness to fixate on objects naturally relaxes as well, and awareness spontaneously becomes aware of itself. True meditation is a kind of homecoming- you recognize the place immediately, and every cell and fiber of your being lets go and relaxes in relief."

Surprise! There is enough room here for my miserable mood, there is enough room in this world for all the miserable moods that arise in all of us...I am grateful for the room that is available for all that arises. I don't have to be spiritual and perfect. I can be ego-identified and miserable and deluded. Nothing that appears is exiled, and I don't have to pretend to be anything.

"The doors of perception"

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."
William Blake

Have you ever disappeared effortlessly, with the same kind of effortlessness with which we slip off the cliff-edge of waking consciousness into sleep each night? This miraculous disappearance of ourselves in which everything gleams with infinite newness happens when we're not trying to make it happen.

Tony Parsons says that what we long for above all else and what we fear above all else is the same thing: the disappearance of ourselves. Whether we are conscious of it or not, on some level we long for freedom from the confinement of a narrow and ultimately illusory sense of self, and at the same time we cling ferociously to this sense of self. Now that is the pungent spice of life: our greatest desire and our greatest terror are one and the same! This ambivalence causes inner friction. Seeing that we fear and desire the same thing evokes within me a sense of compassion for our crazy spinning minds on this crazy spinning planet.

When we disappear the doors of perception are cleansed and the awareness "behind the eyes" recognizes its continuity with the infinite being it gazes upon.

Nothing really disappears, there is just a break in the fixation of attention on the self-image. There is just a gap between thoughts.

The moment attention drops the self-image, there is no self-image. That is the disappearance of the illusory sense of self, and that is all there is to freedom.

The doors of perception are cleansed of anyone looking through them. As no one or pure presence or Self looks through the doors of perception there is only infinity seeing infinity. The weightlessness of awareness is inherently blissful and it is our essence.

Transparency

I chanced across these words today:

"When the eye finds nothing to see, that no-thingness is perceived as space. When the ear finds nothing to hear, that no-thingness is perceived as stillness. When the senses, which are designed to perceive form, meet an absence of form, the formless consciousness that lies behind perception and makes all perception, all experience, possible, is no longer obscured by form." Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 218

I've read these three sentences several times, with long pauses in between, and every time new layers of meaning float up. In a way the senses seem like openings that become wadded up with the "stuffing" of sensory stimuli that actually blocks or distracts from a deeper perception. This is quite a flip-flop from my normal way of thinking: seeing and blindness have reversed places.

But more to the point and what really interests me, is this question: What is there to be aware of when there is nothing to be aware of; that is, when the slate is wiped clean, so to speak, and there is nothing plugging up the nervous system- no sensations or thoughts- then what is there left to be aware of? This is a hypothetical question, because as long as we're alive there are some sensations and/or thoughts present in every waking moment. But what is there to be aware of in those moments of profound, alert, quiescence when there are almost no thoughts or sensations present? Franklin Merrell-Wolff talks about attention-without-an-object, and this interests me.

When there's nothing to be aware of, then awareness is aware of itself. Awakeness is awake to the fact that it is awake. It sounds a bit garbled but to me it's the most beautiful thing in the world- it's the cosmos becoming awake to itself through this human consciousness that I am. There is a boundless transparency to this consciousness awake to itself, and it is possible to rest in this transparency.

(Gratitude for image above, from  coachaljohnson.wordpress.com/.../

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