The Witness

Let go of control

2009-02-12T12:38:00.000-08:00

Each moment is another chance to let go of control. Life can be really and truly simple if we don't fight it. Ripe seekers understand that existance cannot be fully entered with ego in hand; thus they let go of control and allow the flow of life to live them. They live less from the mind and more from the heart.

One Man Show

2009-01-17T12:25:00.000-08:00

Consciousness has produced this play.
Consciousness has written the script.

Consciousness is playing all the characters.

And Consciousness is witnessing the play.

It's a one man show.

Fire of Now

2008-12-14T14:30:00.000-08:00

Growth rarely happens just by reading books or listening to teachers.

It requires immersion in the fire of Now. ( Maitreya Ishwara )

Be!

2008-11-06T06:49:00.000-08:00

Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
Be.

Come To Your Senses

2008-11-02T14:31:00.000-08:00

There is only one Truth
and as you go looking for it
through a forest of seeking
be careful lest you bump into a tree.
That lump on your head
May remind you that
everything is God.

You are like a forest dweller
Looking for the forest.
What am I to do?

Listen friend
Each crackling leaf beneath your feet
is a personal invitation
to come to your senses.

Has it ever occurred to you
that you are seeking God
with His eyes? (Adyashanti)

Eternity

2008-09-18T16:09:00.000-07:00

One instant is eternity,

eternity is in the now;

When you see through this one instant,

you see through the one who sees. ( Wu-Men )

Here and Now

2008-08-25T13:57:00.000-07:00

Life is only this place,

this time

and these people right

here and Now.

Being the Present Moment

2008-07-07T12:56:00.000-07:00

Everything that happens in the present moment is necessary.
The crux of man’s dilemma lies in the concept of time. While chasing his mythical happiness of the future, man has no time to enjoy the present moment. And actually there is no such thing as the present because by the time one thinks of it, it has already become the past. Therefore, what is vital is not thinking about the present but actually being that present moment – and that is nothing other than enlightenment.
In order to understand this strange, unknown, starkly inevitable thing called death we must first understand life. What we must find out is what we are now. To die now to every moment and every experience is the death that is ETERNITY ITSELF. (RAMESH S . BALSEKAR)

The Now

2008-06-30T04:08:00.000-07:00

Focus your attention on the Now

and tell me what problem

you have at this moment. ( Eckhart Tolle )

Pure Presence

2008-05-31T04:03:00.000-07:00

The Self doesn't live forever in time,

it lives in the timeless present prior to time,

prior to history, change, succession.

The Self is present as Pure Presence,

not as everlasting duration,

a rather horrible notion.

Grace

2008-04-08T22:42:00.000-07:00

Grace happens when you accept. Struggle happens when you reject or resist. Grace is natural. Struggle is unnatrual. Grace is effortless. Struggle takes great effort. Struggle means that you get in the way. Grace means that you stay out of the way.

Conscious Oneness

2008-03-28T23:46:00.000-07:00

When the thunder roars, do you not hear your Self? When the lightning cracks, do you not see your Self? When clouds float quietly across the sky, is this not your very own limitless Being, waving back at you?

When I look for myself I find only the world as it is occuring, Herenow. No separation between subject and object other than what mind imposes. Samsara is the delusion that Nirvana is to be obtained. We are, and that is all.

Be Present!

2008-02-22T23:38:00.000-08:00

Whenever you notice that some form of negativity has arisen within you, look on it not as a failure, but as a helpful signal that is telling you: "Wake up. Get out of your mind. Be present." - Eckhart Tolle

Be Free!

2008-01-03T13:40:00.000-08:00

You have projected onto yourself
a world of your own imagination,
based on memories, on desires and fears,
and you have imprisoned yourself in it.
Break the spell and be free.

Just keep Quiet

2007-12-13T19:38:00.000-08:00

You are the unchangeable Awareness in which all activity takes place.
Always rest in peace.
You are eternal Being, unbounded and undivided.
Just keep Quiet.
All is well.
Keep Quiet Here and Now.
You are Happiness, you are Peace, you are Freedom.
Do not entertain any notions that you are in trouble.
Be kind to yourself.
Open to your Heart and simply Be. - Papaji

Meditation

2007-11-19T14:29:00.000-08:00

Meditation means awareness. Whatsoever you do with awareness is meditation. Action is not the question, but the quality that you bring to your action. Walking can be a meditation if you walk alertly. Sitting can be a meditation if you sit alertly. Listening to the birds can be a meditation if you listen with awareness. Just listening to the inner noise of your mind can be a meditation if you remain alert and watchful. The whole point is: one should not move in sleep. Then whatsoever you do is meditation.

Compassion

2007-11-17T02:05:00.000-08:00

There's no joy like this!

2007-11-16T23:46:00.001-08:00

For me, the purpose (or meaning, if you like) of life is to shift one's centre of gravity from who I thought I was to Who I AM. `Seeing' is important only as a means to this End - which is to be the Absolute Mystery, to know oneself as Absolutely Incomprehensible. There's no joy like this! - Douglas Harding

Underneath the layers of conditioning...

2007-11-15T23:34:00.000-08:00

Once all of our conditioning is stripped away,
the true self is as clear as the brilliant sun.
Underneath the layers and layers of conditioning
accumulated over the course of a lifetime is a Buddha
whose light shines throughout the whole universe.
Inside the ego shell of conditioning,
a glimmer of that light is actually
what brings us to practice to begin with.
It is the bodhicitta, the bodhi mind,
the mind that says it does't make sense
that there should be all this pain and suffering,
or that it should be so difficult to just be ourselves
the way a tree can just be a tree or a dog can just be a dog.
We humans seem to have a complicated time
with just simply being human. We fight with each other,
kill each other; we bang heads all the time,
even with the ones we love.

Inner Stillness

2007-11-14T13:56:00.000-08:00

When you lose touch with inner stillness,
you lose touch with yourself.
When you lose touch with yourself,
you lose yourself in the world.
Your innermost sense of self,
of who you are, is inseparable from stillness.
This is the I Am that is deeper than name and form.

The ego

2007-11-13T15:13:00.000-08:00

The ego is human;
egolessness is divine.
The ego is hell;
egolessness is paradise.

Mind Divides

2007-11-12T12:46:00.000-08:00

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim
or a Christian or a European, or anything else,
you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent?
Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind.
When you separate yourself by belief,
by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.
So a man who is trying to understand violence
does not belong to any country, to any religion,
to any political party or partial system;
he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind. ( J. Krishnamurti )

Is God Real?

2007-11-11T14:03:00.000-08:00

Is God Real? Since the question came up,
let's briefly go into it.
When it comes to spiritual realities,
the fact that when you are
in a meditative state of oneness,
a G-spot might light up
(or whatever brain correlate is being tracked),
says absolutely nothing about
the ontological status of the referent in that state.
Any G-spot activity in the brain
is the correlate of a meditative state, not its content.
When I look at an apple, an area in my brain
associated with its perception lights up,
but we do not therefore assume that
the apple exists only in the brain.
So why sould we assume that
God exists only in the brain because the same thing happens? ( Ken Wilber )

Thought & consciousness

2007-11-10T13:45:00.000-08:00

Thinking and consciousness
are not synonymous.
Thinking is only a small
aspect of consciousness.
Thought cannot exist
without consciousness,
but consciousness does not need thought.

You Are The Sky

2007-11-09T22:07:00.000-08:00

You are the sky.
The clouds are what happens,
what comes and goes.

A metaphor for practising with thoughts
which is sometimes used which describes
the process of practicing with them as follows:

Thoughts are like clouds moving across the sky.
You are the sky and the thoughts are just a movement,
like clouds. Don’t move attention towards them or away from them.

But there is something very important
that is being left out.
The metaphor implies a “watcher” of the clouds
and unless this “watcher” is also released,
we have not begun to practise with
the mechanisms of self-image that give rise to patterns of contraction.

We need to attend to thoughts like the sky attends to clouds,
not like someone sitting on the ground looking up at the clouds.

Awareness is non-dual

2007-11-08T07:32:00.000-08:00

Awareness cannot exist with duality, and mind cannot exist without duality. Awareness is non-dual, and mind is dual.So just watch. I don't teach you any solutions. I teach you the solution:
Just get back a little and watch.Create a distance between you and your mind. ~ Osho

Freedom

2007-11-07T13:51:00.000-08:00

When each thought absorbs your attention completely,
it means you identify with the voice in your head.
Thought then becomes invested with a sense of self.
This is the ego, a mind-made "me."
That mentally constructed self
feels incomplete and precarious.
That’s why fearing and wanting are
its predominant emotions and motivating forces.
When you recognize that there is a voice
in your head that pretends to be you
and never stops speaking,
you are awakening out of
your unconscious identification
with the stream of thinking.
When you notice that voice,
you realize that who you are
is not the voice — the thinker — but
the one who is aware of it.
Knowing yourself as the awareness
behind the voice is freedom.

Beyond The Mind

2007-11-06T14:02:00.000-08:00

All the things that truly matter
— beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace —
arise from beyond the mind.

Waking up

2007-11-05T14:01:00.000-08:00

If you wake up one morning
realising that you do not know anything,
then you are awake.
If you still think you know something,
then you are still asleep.
If you are still trying to know,
you are still trying to control.
If you are still trying to control,
then you still think something can ‘go wrong’.
If you still think something can go wrong,
then you are not in touch with the source.
If you are not in touch with the source,
then you live in fear.
You are living in the fear that you have created,
and that you are trying to get away from. ~ ( Paul Lowe )

To be Ordinary

2007-11-04T13:44:00.000-08:00

Drop the idea of being Extraordinary!
It’s keeping you mediocre.
To be Ordinary is the most
extraordinary thing in the world.
The Ordinary person has light in his eyes…
he has become extraordinary,
but he has no idea of it.

What is Awareness?

2007-11-03T19:30:00.000-07:00

Ask yourself - 'What is awareness?'

"Become conscious of your consciousness. And in that very becoming, in that very silence - when you are only conscious of your consciousness and not of any other content - no thought, no desire, no dream - you are just conscious of your being conscious, the mirror is reflecting itself and nothing else... in that moment, something immensly miraculous happens. You become aware of the divine, you become aware of the essential core of your being." Osho

Ken Wilber

2007-11-02T15:17:00.000-07:00

Human beings are born and begin their evolution
through the great spiral of consciousness,
moving from archaic to magic to mythic to rational
to perhaps integral, and from there perhaps
into genuinely transpersonal domains.
But for every person that moves into
integral or higher, dozens are born
into the archaic.

Being & Becoming

2007-11-01T16:43:00.000-07:00

All the Buddhas of all the ages,
have been telling you a very simple fact:
Be -- don't try to become.
Within these two words, be and becoming,
your whole life is contained.
Being is enlightenment,
becoming is ignorance.

Internal & external

2007-10-31T06:01:00.000-07:00

Internal and external are ultimately one.
When you no longer perceive the world as hostile,
there is no more fear, and when there is no more fear,
you think, speak and act differently.
Love and compassion arise,
and they affect the world.

Eckhart Tolle

2007-10-30T22:48:00.000-07:00

The habitual and reactive “no” strengthens the ego. “Yes” weakens it. Your form identity, the ego, cannot survive surrender.
~
“Doing one thing at a time” is how one Zen Master defined the essence of Zen.
Doing one thing at a time means to be total in what you do, to give it your complete attention. This is surrendered action - empowered action.
~
Surrender is surrender to this moment, not to a story through which you interpret this moment and then try to resign yourself to it.
For instance, you may have a disability and can't walk anymore. The condition is as it is.
Perhaps your mind is now creating a story that says, “This is what my life has come to. I have ended up in a wheelchair. Life has treated me harshly and unfairly. I don't deserve this.”
Can you accept the isness of this moment and not confuse it with a story the mind has created around it?

Wake up!

2007-10-30T19:56:00.001-07:00

It is mind that is your sleep. You are sleeping either in the past or in the future. Both are ways of sleeping.When I say, "Wake up!" again and again, when Buddha says, "Wake up!" a simple phenomenon is indicated. Come to the present.
Osho

The Now

2007-10-29T05:33:00.000-07:00

A great deal of what people say,
think, or do is actually motivate by fear,
which of course is always linked with having
your focus on the future and being
out of touch with the Now.
As there are no problems in the Now,
there is no fear either. ~ ( Eckhart Tolle)

Who am I ?

2007-10-28T09:25:00.000-07:00

What a liberation to realize that
the "voice in my head" is not who I am.
Who am I then?
The one who sees that.

Aware of Your Own Awareness

2007-10-27T15:02:00.000-07:00

The only way out of ignorance
and out of this dark night of the soul,
is to be aware of your own being,
aware of your own awareness.
In that moment when you are
aware of your own awareness,
everything stops, time stops.
Suddenly you are beyond time
and beyond space, and a door opens
which makes you part of the whole.

Your nature is the buddha

2007-10-26T15:08:00.000-07:00

To find a buddha all you have to do is see your nature.
Your nature is the buddha.
And the buddha is the person who's free:
free of plans, free of cares.
If you don't see your nature
and run around all day looking somewhere else,
you'll never find a buddha.
The truth is, there's nothing to find.
But to reach such an understanding
you need a teacher and you need to struggle
to make yourself understand. . . .
If you don't find a teacher soon,
you'll live this life in vain.
It's true, you have the buddha-nature.
But without the help of a teacher you'll never know it.
Only one person in a million becomes enlightened
without a teacher's help.
If, though, by the conjunction of conditions,
someone understands what the Buddha meant,
that person doesn't need a teacher.
Such a person has a natural awareness superior to anything taught.
But unless you're so blessed,
study hard, and by means of instruction you'll understand. ~ ( Bodhidharma)

Awareness

2007-10-25T15:39:00.000-07:00

The world is not the problem,The problem
is your unawareness. Renounce your
unawareness, don't be bothered with
renouncing the world. What can the world
do to you? The basic thing is your
meditativeness. Your awareness.

Ignorance

2007-10-24T20:35:00.000-07:00

To realize that our knowledge is ignorance,
This is a noble insight.
To regard our ignorance as knowledge,
This is mental sickness.
Only when we are sick of the sickness
Shall we cease to be sick.
The Sage is not sick,
being sick of sickness;
This is the secret of health. - Lao Tzu

Rumi

2007-10-23T14:48:00.000-07:00

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meaness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whomever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Silence

2007-10-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

Silence is Golden; it has divine power and immense energy. Try to pay more attention to the silence than to the sounds. Paying attention to outer silence creates inner silence: the mind becomes still. Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables the sound tobe. It is an intrinsic but unmanifested part of every sound, every musical note, every song, and every word. The unmanifested is present in this world as silence. All you have to do is pay attention to it. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Ego

2007-10-22T22:52:00.000-07:00

The ego isn't wrong; it's just unconscious. When you observe the ego in yourself, you are beginning to go beyond it. Don't take the ego too seriously. When you detect egoic behavior in yourself, smile. At times you may even laugh. How could humanity have been taken in by this for so long? Above all, know that the ego isn't personal. It isn't who you are. If you consider the ego to be your personal problem, that's just more ego. ~ eckhart Tolle

I AM

2007-10-21T20:27:00.000-07:00

Who am I?
...a Label?
a Form? a ...
Then what?
LISTEN carefully:
I AM!
But Beyond any intellectual concepts,
Far away from any Crap philosophies.
And 'you' can not know Me if you are a mind-beggar!
I AM!
B E Y O N D
...but, AM I ...One?
AM I ...two?
AM I ...Many?
AM I ...None ?
I AM.
Absolute, ...Here & Now!
...but, I AM ...Not ...a "What".
I AM ...Not ...a "how".
I AM ...Not ...a "how many".
I AM ...Not ...a "who".
I AM ...and ...that is ... IT.
Anything else, ...IS NOT ...Me!

Loneliness & Aloneness

2007-10-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

Loneliness is where
you are missing the other.
Aloneness is when
you are finding yourself.

Belief & Trust

2007-10-19T08:23:00.000-07:00

Belief is like plastic flowers, which look like
flowers from far away.
Trust is real rose.
It has roots, and roots go deep into your heart
and into your being.

The Mind

2007-10-18T21:50:00.000-07:00

The mind is given to you,
you are not given to the mind. [Yogi Bhajan]

Zen Teaching

2007-10-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

All you who seek the Way
Please,
Do not waste this moment Now.

The way to freedom

2007-10-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

There are no rules for living, because you are unique. Find your truth in each moment and dare to live it.That is the way to freedom.

The real rose

2007-10-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

Belief is like plastic flowers, which look like flowers from far away.Trust is real rose. It has roots, and roots go deep into your heart and into your being.

Osho

2007-10-16T10:21:00.000-07:00

When you feel expansion of your consciousness, that is the most ecstatic experience possible, because suddenly you are the whole universe. Stars are within you. The sun rises within you and sets within you. The earth moves within you. The flowers blossom within you.

Leela

2007-10-15T12:28:00.000-07:00

No-existence is the source of life. God is all that exists in all realms. Your separation is a play of God. Soon you will remember and laugh.

A primary hypothesis to verify

2007-10-15T12:24:00.000-07:00

Accept the challenge to become a seeker of truth with a primary hypothesis to verify : Consciousness is all there is and I am part of that.

Contrast

2007-10-14T12:18:00.000-07:00

Your reunion in the ecstasy of enlightenment requires a context of separation and suffering to add the necessary contrast to your soul's journey of evolution. Contrast is vital for a good story and God is the ultimate storyteller. Maitreya Ishwara

Waking Up - It's Not What You Think

2007-10-14T12:12:00.000-07:00

Throughout history, traditions have evolved to asist the experience of awakening. Yet rarely do people wake up as a result of techniques. You cannot do anything to attain this state. Yet something, beyond the mind, is possible. Paul Lowe

At this moment

2007-10-13T11:43:00.000-07:00

Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment. Eckhart Tolle