While faith has a political dimension Party politics is deeply divisive The faithful of whatever stripe Must cleanse their hearts of such division Individually we must include the ‘other’ Warts and all If our hearts are filled with self-righteousness And moral certainty Of the kind that condemns the other That abandons the other As fallen And unworthy Of love…
If there is to be a global awakening then awakening itself needs to be democratised. Meaning everyone needs to recognise that FREEDOM IS FOR THEM, FREEDOM IS FOR ALL. Individuals of all shapes and sizes, in all walks of life are waking up, are discovering their true nature in an abiding way. And whether we have to reject the…
It’s true that we have be willing to stand behind our truth as we see it, to defend, to justify, to explain. But also more importantly we need to learn to change our minds, to let go of our blind loyalties to people, ideas, views, and positions as we go along, and keep doing it. We need to be…
There's grief in awakening. Grief at the loss of autonomy, grief at the loss of purpose and meaning. Grief at the loss of knowing and certainty, however deluded they were. There's grief over losing one's power, and one's familiar identity. There's so much loss in awakening. When it dawns that there's nothing we can keep, nothing can be retained…
Sometimes I think this is a twisted culture where it’s so hard to be who and what we are, express ourselves naturally with our community. Instead we’re trained to take our essence and modify it and package it so we can sell it to each other. It’s not so easy to share our gifts and talents freely in natural…
One field of consciousness appearing as everything. As a seeker I was always sensitive to spiritual 'presence'. I noticed it in groups of TM meditators, watching Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on videos, yagyas, and the darshan of sages I met, even in certain places such as Arunachala. The energy was there, call it what you will; Shakti, presence, transmission. Back…
Q: I've been in nonduality for a over year now and my expectations were that I'd be done with old patterns and conditioning. But after a year I seem to be faced with the same conditioning that caused me suffering, although it's less and I'm not attached to it. With awakening there's been a purification and expansion of the…
What are we but a self-knowing energetic field of consciousness? And what is nature of energy if not a quality(s) of consciousness? Self-examining our nature, that is, exploring consciousness with consciousness naturally results in the discovery of our formless nature. When we settle in to the direct observation of our essential subjectivity we find that we don't find any…
Our trouble starts when we privilege thinking over direct experience. When this becomes an ingrained habit of relating to the world and ourselves even the suggestion to drop out of the mind and into the non-conceptual being can be violently resisted. But for the sake of our peace and freedom we must learn to let go. Attachment to views,…
In my last post I said that that when it came down to it most people didn’t actually want to wake up. Someone asked for my thoughts on why that might be the case. This was my reply... In terms of why most people don't really want awakening/liberation, I'd say that this freedom requires (and is) a willingness to…
Sometimes it seems there’s a whole generation of people who are perpetually triggered and always tense. They live in a state of constant reactivity. They’ll often report the reasons are things like systemic injustice, racism, sexism, etc. And so their anger and agitation is justified. Maybe so. As a generation Millennials (and Gen-Z) are not unique in their exposure…
Awakened mind is the impersonal sentience and not the contents of awareness. Even the sense ‘I am’ is known by this awareness. But who can say how this thing works? Getting into a technical analysis of the structure of consciousness and the nature of awakening becomes an exercise of intellect, and therefore true enough on that level but not…
Is nondual spirituality nihilistic? Desirelessness, powerlessness, emptiness. Sacrifice, surrender, formlessness. Are these more fundamental than, say: fullness, all-possibilities, bountifulness, unboundedness, bliss? It’s all well and good focusing on the qualities of mind required for the apprehension of silence. But this emptiness is full, this fullness is empty. All around me I see fullness, I see rich intelligence and abundance…
When the awakened view dawns it becomes apparent that everything we experience points to it, and always did. It’s the recognition that each moment is a Dharma Gate, the opportunity to realize the nature of what-is and it becomes fascinating and fun to see how the consideration of any given domain or field of knowledge offers an opening to…
Many of our words and concepts, we think we know what they mean, when often our understanding hangs short of the great depths of being that we miss. Our recognition stalls at the conceptual and clings there instead of plunging into the open experiential oneness that upholds and contains all. So words like ‘love’ can be like objects,…
How much of our time do we spend bracing ourselves against the possibility of someone else's reactivity? When we fear to break a rule or make a mistake, how often is that apprehension based on the anticipation of having to deal with someone's anger, sadness, or disappointment? Bumping into people's reactive emotions is unpleasant and depending on how much…
I'll show you the Way but will you follow? The Way is no wayThe Way is silence and surrenderThe Way is no effortThe Way is ‘stop!’The Way is just thisThe Way is no more seeking Can you see the Way?Can you accept the Way?Or will you reject it? Wherever you plant your foot is the WayWherever your eye lands…
Spiritual awakening is a bit like the creative process, because when you engage in meditation or introspection or inquiry, if you're motivated by money or getting you want or anything like that it pollutes the process. It's more important to be open and to play and be curious, to be intuitive and fearless rather than be wondering what you're…
The ego constricts around a more-or-less fixed mode of being. So when the ego is transcended and the constrictions are released, then the manifest being reorients to a more natural, unconstrained mode. And we don’t have any real idea what that might look like. During the ego’s reign fundamental embodied modes of intelligence may well have been completely subsumed,…
In the age of the Internet the possibilities are endless. So how does this apply to Enlightenment and Self-Realization? What does it take to wake up? #BootstrappingEnlightenment – Take advantage of what you've got, don't focus on what you haven't. It's all here for you. Ask us questions in the comments down below... Transcription: Okay, so I have this…
The teachings of nonduality can sometimes seem to be somewhat abstract, or removed from one’s lived experience, or even rejecting of it. It may be that these teachings, being so uncompromising about the causes of suffering and its remedies, seem to disregard the human-ness of life in favour of a cold, relentless discrimination. But the truth is that the process…
The impulse to spiritual practice is the impulse to awaken so even if practice is wrong or poor or difficult or ineffectual it's never misguided, and in the worst cases it can be redirected or transformed to better express the core impulse. All the prayers and mantras and chants are well and good but the urge to practice goes…
I was sitting outside a café with friend some time ago, and we were talking about ‘consensus reality’ as he put it. He was wishing that he could be free of its influence. I sympathised with his POV but pointed out that we aren’t actually bound by it, and it’s enough to recognise one’s existence as prior to the…
True humility comes when you run out of strategies and realise that you're powerless Surrender comes as a result of this It's something that happens not something 'you' do This is the difference between prescription and description in spiritual teachings The seeker hears prescription Because it can only understand what it hears in terms of itself It's personal It's…
The dichotomy dissolves Of subject and object Spiritual knowledge goes Spiritual persona goes Just this Whatever is happening Is it Doubt Is it Mental discussions About how this can’t be it Is it You can’t turn anywhere Touch anything Hear anything Feel, taste Without it being it There’s nothing that isn’t it And there’s nothing that can happen That…
What magic comes from Silence? All of it Can’t you see it all comes from Nothing? I’m a voice crying out from the wilderness “It doesn’t matter!” None of it matters Perhaps What matters Is that we suffer Or that suffering is Can be What do we do with that? What can we do? More questions Find the one who asks…
I don’t really notice much Outside Because everything that happens Happens in me Of me The flowers bloom In me The wind blows In me The hills roll and rise In me Like my bones And my blood And my breath All in me As if my body Were the universe itself And my breath The wind And the stars Rejoice in my body –…
The process (of awakening) requires us to face the most profound fear of our own annihilation or destitution To face that fear and continue is the challenge of awakening In the end there’s nothing we can do We either come to the edge and let go or we don’t Rather, it will happen or it won’t There is an…
This is new It’s all new Memory serves up similar visions That give the impression That you’ve seen it before That you know this But it’s all fresh So stay awake You don’t know what’s coming The bleeding edge Face first into the ocean spray of existence The sharp breeze Wake up! The hum of Being Alive, alive This is no…
If you’re serious about self-discovery, if you’re serious about the truth, then you have to be willing to give up everything you think you know. You have to be willing to question and look at every assumption and become like a clean slate. Because untruth and suffering hides under the rocks of unexplored assumptions. Here the most important thing…
Nothing exists in isolation So many conditions that we take for granted For any single thing to occur The existence of a universe is required And everything that ever was Funny that So stay out of it You’re doing less than you imagine Nothing at all in fact What a beautiful day Of course the universe doesn’t exist That’s…
Drop it all Leave it all alone And if you’re still having trouble It means you’ve picked it up again Simple? Yes it is Do I need to elaborate? After that is there any more to say? Is that the final answer? The only instruction? Maybe Any more would be just to assuage doubts Like, “Yes, drop *everything*” “Even…
It’s often the case that nondual understanding in the dualistic mind is the product of ‘secondary mind’, the logical, analytical mind, and not a wisdom emanation from Pure Mind. True wisdom is born directly from Self-nature without reference to understanding. It’s the difference between knowledge born of Self-recognition, and the cogitations of the functional mind and it’s rationalistic outputs.…
If we stop giving the mind attentional objects then it will tend to settle into its own non-conceptual, silent nature. It’s simply a case of remaining in an open and non-grasping posture. The mind wants to settle, remaining always in a state of engagement is exhausting. Openness and non-grasping are a relief. But there are a couple of ways…
I’ve been concerned with identity politics and PC culture lately. I don’t quite know why, maybe it’s that I’m seeing in the outside world, in groups, the same kind of dynamics of fear, control, and suppression that the ego uses on a personal level. I’ve been noticing that my attention has been liberated from the narrow introspective view that…
Is there evidence for the existence of an outside/objective world separate and independent from the awareness in which it appears? We can see that the awareness itself is malleable to an (presumably) infinite degree. Or not. Are there limits to the plasticity of relative arising? Is there a higher and lower limit, a range of phenomenality? Is there a…
If we saw the world at different scales we’d have quite a different experience and conception of reality. If we saw it at the atomic scale there’d be a lot of empty space and atoms but no material objects as such. Looking beyond atoms we’d see vibrations of the underlying field. Layers.. People at levels of consciousness report similar…
To awaken you have to be ready. But there’s nothing you can do to make yourself ready, because you’re not doing anything, because the you you think you are doesn’t exist. So it’ll happen when it happens. Not a moment too soon, not a moment too late. So do or don’t do, it’s all as it should be. This…
What is Enlightenment, Moksha, Buddhahood, Liberation? It’s the obliteration of the Ten Fetters, the complete dissolution of the occluding mental densities that give rise to avidya. It’s the destruction of the ‘thicket of views’ that confuses and confounds the realization of Self and of life in the Natural State. It is ‘what remains’ when the cloud of unknowing passes.…
Beginner’s Mind is very helpful in Self-inquiry. What that means is you let go of all of your concepts, all of your learning, everything you think you know – just drop it for now. Put it in your pocket, tuck it away and come at the observation and inquiry with a fresh, open, empty mind. In this way you…
What is This? Who am I? What am I? What kind of answers am I looking for? What could satisfy? Questions are beautiful, more illuminating than answers. Questions stop the mind. So if I told you “you are consciousness”, would that help? Would you be satisfied? Would your suffering diminish at all with that piece of information? Perhaps you…
The seemingly simple task of describing a path from ‘a’ to ‘be’ unravels the very notions that uphold the conditioned view. It’s impossible to find a starting point, there’s no beginning. It seems like a cliché but it’s true, any given point is arbitrary, no ‘event’ is original, always there is a preceding moment. So where could I begin…
Your life is not your responsibility, you’re not doing it, you’re not ‘living’ your life, if anything life is living you. It’s important to recognize this. The burden of activity is not yours. Doership is a concept that has been imposed on the uncaused nature of life. Even the notion of a cosmic, supreme doer is an imposition. We…
That we believe ourselves to be a person is completely taken for granted. We don’t even think to look into this, to question its veracity. We’ve been conditioned to stop short in our curiosity about our nature. Go all the way. Use your discrimination and intelligence to fathom what’s true. I can set you down the right track, many…
Trust, rest, all is well. You are home, always. This is it, believe it or not. Hope is for fools. Running, chasing, holding, grasping, needing, wanting. This is it, be here now. Let the hope fall away, need be gone, cherish what is, here, this. Simple, silence, source. Time? Gone too. Space? Just this, no inner, no outer, no…
Have a practice. Take time out each and every day to sit in the cave of your interior and wait and watch. This is where the dragons are and this is where the gold is. It is the cave of the unknown and that is the place of fear. It takes courage to enter and to face whatever comes.…
Why do we practice, why do we seek? Is it to attain or achieve some conceptual goal we call Enlightenment? Or is it to recognise that in every moment of our existence we are inescapably aware, we are here, we exist? In fact we are awareness itself, we only have to look right now to see the fact of…
The problem of human suffering is the problem of misapprehension. Our ideas about the nature of the world are at odds with the reality of it. The key mistake is that we take ourselves to be separate individuals existing in an objective world. We believe that our sense of I-ness originates in the physical body and in that body…
The recognition of our nature as non-conceptual awareness — spiritual awakening — is relatively simple. But the consequences of this recognition typically have challenging implications for our human-ness, conditioned as it is around the ego-belief. Awakening is rarely the end of the story. A reconstruction of the lived experience and outward expression in light of the newly acknowledged awareness-identity is inevitable, but it…
There’s nothing to do Nothing to think Nothing to drop Nothing to see Nothing to follow There’s no plan No strategy There’s nothing to believe Nothing to hold on to And nothing to let go of There’s nothing to hope for No future to come No past to understand There’s no right And no wrong No bad And no…
My only aim is to help you recognise yourself as boundless, ever-present awareness right here and now, and to recognise your essential wholeness and completeness. Your true nature is easeful, lack-free Being; freedom and peace is who and what you are. Your awareness-nature is where you’re looking from, feeling from, sensing from. Look for yourself, identify yourSelf this very…