ACFIP Newsletter

Issue 45 - Date June 2015
Quarterly Newsletter of the Australian Centre for Inner Peace

* Who Do We Forgive? - Michael Dawson

* Now That’s Zen Part 2of 2 - Interview with Adyashanti

* Awakening Story - Amoda Maa Jeevan

* Nisargadatta Maharaj - Silence Quotes

* A Fully Realized Human Life - Jan Frazier

Who Do We Forgive? - Michael Dawson

from
Forgiveness:
A Path to Inner Peace

Inspired by A Course in Miracles
by

Perhaps it will be helpful to remember that no one can be angry at a fact. It is always an interpretation that gives rise to negative emotions, regardless of their seeming justification by what appears as facts.

A Course in Miracles M-17.4

(See Appendix One for an explanation of page and line references to A Course in Miracles.)

Forgiveness of Ourselves or Others?

Who needs to be forgiven? This is a fundamental question. Many of us believe we need to strive to forgive the wrongs that seem to have been done to us. We feel victimised by the seemingly unfair actions of others and believe our anger towards them is justified. But is it always the others who need to be forgiven, or could it maybe be ourselves? Do we have to remain victims or is there another way?
The personal tension created by holding grievances against another is unpleasant. We may feel we are in the right, but at great personal cost to our own peace of mind. To alleviate such tension we might choose to 'forgive’ the other person; although in our opinion they have committed a wrong, we decide to overlook it. We would, however, love to hear them apologise, proving their guilt and our innocence. But an apology may not be forthcoming; indeed the person with whom we hold our grievance may now have died.
We tell our friends we have forgiven our enemy; we are prepared to forget and get on with life. But have we really returned our mind to a state of peace, or is there lurking an ongoing disquiet about this episode? Do we carry on and forget the incident only to find that past pain is still there just waiting to be triggered by events similar to the one we have just ‘forgiven’? Has our forgiveness worked? Has the willingness to put all this behind us and to overlook the sins of the other actually resolved anything?
Our cultural and religious upbringing generally decrees what is right and what is wrong behaviour. If someone acts towards us with 'wrong' behaviour, we are usually taught that our anger is justified; the other person should apologise and change his or her behaviour. If they conform to our expectations, we are then open to ‘forgiving’ them, but not otherwise.
The quotation at the start of this chapter reminds us that we never get angry over a fact: it’s our interpretation of the fact that can give rise to anger. Forgiveness tells us we can always choose our reaction to any situation.

Consider the following story:
Imagine you are at a party with three friends. Let’s call them John, Peter, and Mary. The topic of conversation gets around to a recent news story about the rise in obesity in the United Kingdom population and its effect on the National Health Service. It was clear from the article that diseases related to obesity were costing the NHS millions of pounds each year. The writer of the article felt it was unfair how the sector of the population that was not obese had to carry the financial penalty for those who are. One of his suggestions was that the obese should pay a contribution towards their treatment if they suffered from an obesity-related illness.
John, who is somewhat overweight, feels this is an outrageous suggestion, clearly lacking in compassion for the plight of the obese. Peter, who keeps trim with regular workouts in the gym, thinks it an excellent suggestion; he is happy this issue has been raised in the national press, feeling it is high time something is done about it. This obvious clash of opinions soon provokes fierce discussion between the two men. Mary has stood by, quietly listening. Although being a bit overweight herself, she cannot muster any interest in this debate; her mind is more focused on the evening ahead.

In the above story, we can see how one event or stimulus – in this case the newspaper report – produced three entirely different responses. John was angry, Peter happy, and Mary indifferent. Each person chose his or her own response to the facts in the article.
No stimulus has any inherent power to create a certain response in all people. We ourselves always choose how we react in any given situation; there is nothing in this world that has the power to take our peace away. Yes, certain events can lead us to experience physical pain, but even in these events it is our personal choice whether to get upset about it or not.
I remember watching a dramatised documentary about a white fur trapper working within the Arctic Circle who became good friends with an Eskimo family. This Eskimo tribe had a particular custom, which was to share everything they possessed (including their wives) with close friends. One day the husband announced to the fur trapper that he would be very happy if he were to sleep with his wife. He added that it would also make his wife very happy; this was not a custom imposed upon the women, but something they happily agreed to. The fur trapper was shocked and declined their offer. His reaction upset the family deeply.
In one scene, the distressed wife asked the fur trapper why he had refused her: was it that she was ugly? Neither the husband nor the wife could understand why a close friend would not want to share their life. Contrast this response to what we might normally expect here in the West if a husband came home and found his wife in bed with his best friend! The typical response would be strong negative feelings such as anger, fear, outrage, and betrayal: an example of one stimulus causing opposite reactions. It follows that an event in itself cannot provoke an automatic response; it is always we who choose the response to any situation. This choice of response lies at the heart of forgiveness.

Forgiveness Exercise
For this exercise you will need a sheet of paper and a pen. Divide the sheet into two columns by drawing a line down the middle, and then put a line across the top for two headings, as shown in figure 1.1.

Think of someone you know very well, someone for whom you can list both likes and dislikes. This could be a parent, partner, lover, sister, brother, boss, or friend.

Now write the name of the person you have chosen as part of the following heading in the top left-hand box on your page:
The qualities I like about …name… are:

In the top right hand box, write:
The qualities I dislike about …name… are:

Now write at least four or five qualities you like about this person and four or five you dislike about them in the respective columns.
[If you find you are struggling to get four or five likes and dislikes, add another name to the top boxes and simply continue adding to your lists. The more you write in your columns the more you may learn.]

Spend a few minutes with this exercise and only when you are finished continue reading.

Please do not read any further until you have completed your lists, or you will lessen the impact of this exercise!

Now go back to the top of your lists, cross out the name/s on each side, and
insert your own name instead.

The lists now read as the qualities you like and dislike in yourself. Strange? But true! If you did not possess these qualities yourself, to some degree or another, you would not see them in others.

You may find it difficult to accept some of these qualities depending on the image you have of yourself. For instance, if you have low self-esteem you may find it impossible to believe that all these good qualities are within you. Maybe you find it embarrassing when people appreciate you and will deftly switch the topic of conversation if someone says something complimentary. (If this sounds like you, you can be sure there is hidden guilt waiting to be forgiven. But don’t despair, later on we will look at exercises that can be of help in this process )
In the same way, the negative attributes you see in the other person must also be in yourself; otherwise, you would not be upset about them. Of course, it’s possible to recognise character faults in another without having them yourself. However, in this exercise you need to list the things that really upset you about the other person. If something someone else does upsets you, this is the red flag that is showing you what is unforgiven in yourself.
For most of us, a recognition that something we dislike in someone else is actually something we also possess will be actively resisted, because in our minds we feel sure of two things:
The other person has these particular negative attributes.
and
We want them to change these behaviours to ones we prefer.

That they have these negative attributes may or may not be true, but that is not important. What is important is that on some level you know that what you accuse them of is a reflection of something within you. Take jealousy as an example. Maybe your partner is jealous of your friends and this may mirror your jealousy of those who are wealthier than you. These are simply two different expressions of the same thing.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet II.ii.259

Typically, our conditioning tells us jealousy is wrong, it's bad, and we should not be jealous. Taking on this value judgement, we feel guilty and ashamed and may pretend we do not suffer from it. Or if we do admit we are jealous, then we’ll pacify ourselves that it’s only ‘just a little’. But we know this is not really true, and don't want to face the fact. Consequently, when we see this fault in another we are uncomfortably reminded how – to some degree – we suffer from the same 'sin'.
When biologists want to understand the life and behaviour of some recently discovered animal species they need to do their work with non-judgemental awareness. Whilst watching the new species they may observe all manner of behaviour, including much that is brutal. For instance, perhaps the male of the species has to be prevented by the female from fighting or devouring their offspring. If biologists become upset and judgemental about the observed animal behaviour, they have lost the required detachment to actually record what is happening and may be tempted to analyse or explain behaviour from a human point of view.
In the same way, as we judge the facts of our nature we lose the ability to really see what is happening. We may become preoccupied with guilt at what we observe rather than working with acceptance and self-forgiveness. Instead, we quickly try to sweep it all under the carpet where we desperately hope it will be forgotten.
If we uncover the uncomfortable facts of our nature and resist labeling them as ‘bad’, we do have an opportunity to heal them. Fortunately, opportunities are presented to us daily as we come into contact with people and events that trigger what we have tried to lock away in our unconscious. The people we meet are our potential saviours, showing us – sometimes time and time again – what we have tried to bury in our minds.
Should you observe in another a particular negative behaviour that you either do not possess, or do possess but have forgiven in yourself, then you would not respond with upset, but rather with non-judgemental compassion for the other person. You would simply know that their negative behaviour is caused by fear and that they are doing their best to cope with something they find difficult; their behaviour would not be perceived as an attack upon you, but as a call for your help. They would be allowed to be, and you would be happy and willing to help if asked.
If you extend forgiveness to others, you automatically extend this forgiveness to yourself, too. What you give to others – whether in love or hate – you also give to yourself. Why? Because our actions reinforce the thoughts in our mind. If we act lovingly, we are reminding and reinforcing in ourselves that we are loving. Similarly, to attack another increases the hate and therefore guilt in our mind.
The behaviours in the 'dislike' column may not apply to you in an obvious, direct way. Maybe you listed anger, yet you never get angry with the person whose name you mentioned initially, nor do you consider yourself characteristically 'angry'. But what if you do carry suppressed anger that makes you feel ashamed, and this is what you are being reminded of? Rather than directly expressing your anger back to them, you may withdraw and act remote around this person.
Perhaps you dislike a person drinking alcohol because you virtually never drink. Try to look at your thoughts and feelings when you are in the company of this person. Why does it bother you so that they drink? Are they perhaps drinking to escape from the pain in their life? Do you also seek to escape from the pain in your life but use other means, such as overeating, or excessive viewing of TV or browsing of the Internet?
Take a few minutes to look again at your ‘negative’ column on the list you made earlier.
Do you feel there is some truth in what it says about you? Our egos hate this type of exposure! We prefer to deny what is in our subconscious and project it out onto the world instead. Rather than look at ourselves, we blame everyone else: our mother, father, partner, employer, the government, this dictator, that religion, and so on. To start the process of forgiveness we need to take responsibility for what is in our own minds, and in the next chapter we will explore more fully our ego’s story of denial and projection.

In every situation in which we lose our peace, we have found a reflection of what is unhealed, what we have not forgiven ourselves for. We all walk around in a hall of mirrors, the world constantly reflecting back what is in our minds. When we are upset the world becomes a messenger, drawing our attention to what we have tried to ignore or even failed to recognise. Instead of killing the messenger, we now have an opportunity to work with forgiveness – of ourselves.
You may agree with some or all of what you’ve read so far, but may have serious reservations about whether this applies to events on the world stage such as war and genocide, murder and rape. How can we forgive such atrocities? This is an important question and will be explored more fully in the next chapter.
I will end this introduction with a letter I received from a friend; it illustrates well the fact that we don’t have to change other people to feel at peace around them.

I built up a strong hate relationship with the man who owns the town’s hardware store. I often had to go in there and found him the rudest, most overbearing rip-off merchant I'd ever met. After eight months or so, I vowed never to go there again, though it meant a lot of trouble for me. I also decided to put anyone else off going there.
One day, I urgently needed photocopying done of some children's sanctuary songs for a group the next day. Songs like ‘The more we are together’, ‘You are beautiful’, etc. Of course, he has the only photocopier in town so I went in hoping to slip down to his photocopy room and do it myself but, instead, he came with me and proceeded to do the photocopying. As he did, he got interested in the songs and asked me how they went.
I very reluctantly began to sing these very spiritual songs. He joined in, in a gorgeous baritone, rich and full. I think we sang our way through every song! This transformed everything. I didn't intend to 'forgive', we just joined, and it happened. His voice was so beautiful that I was transfixed and the ridiculousness of the situation appealed to my nature.
I adore the man now and see so many sides of him that were invisible before. Although I still end up buying three things I don't need whenever I go into his shop, I can admire the fact that he is the only thriving business in the village.
I feel so much joy when I remember this incident. I think it should be on a film. Importantly to me, he didn't change at all; he didn't have to. I wish I could do this as easily with all the other people who annoy me!
Krissy,
New Zealand

CHAPTER SUMMARY

•   Facts are neutral.
•   No event in the world produces the same response in everyone.
•   We always choose our reactions to situations.
•   What upsets us about others reflects what is unforgiven in ourselves.

_____________________________________________________

Now That’s Zen Part 2 of 2 - Interview with Adyashanti

Reproduced with permission from:

http://www.buddhistgeeks.com

I’m Not Babysitting Your Ego

Episode Description:
We finish up our discussion with spiritual teacher Adyashanti, focusing on several topics relevant to contemporary seekers. We start off by exploring his thoughts on questions of power & hierarchy in the student-teacher relationship. Adya’s approach is to put power back on the student, encouraging them to be their own inner authority from the beginning.
We also explore a type of writing meditative inquiry practice that Adyashanti has done, and which he teaches others. He explores how this type of inquiry can be used in conjunction with silent meditation practice to eliminate roadblocks on the spiritual path.

This is part 2 of a two-part series. Listen to part 1, Now That’s Zen.

Transcript:
Vince: Another topic, and one that’s just really alive in a lot of practitioners conversations and their minds is this whole question around power and hierarchy when it comes to the student-teacher relationship.
Adyashanti: Yeah.
Vince: And I was recently on Zen Sesshin and there was a very clear hierarchy between the teacher and us. And I really saw the potential there for both abuse and for people’s issues around power coming up. And then I also saw the potential that differential created to sort of get over my ego tendencies and step to a place of mystery and not knowing and challenging myself in a positive, healthy way that I normally maybe wouldn’t do on my own.
And so it seemed really clear that there were some potentially positive things from this and then some potentially down sides from this. And it seems clear that we are not going the way of Eastern cultures that had these really clear authoritarian power structures in place. And I was wondering in your own teaching, how the relationship between yourself and your students, of power and hierarchy, how you have dealt with that over time, and where it’s at that now?
Adyashanti: Ok, well it’s evolved over time. And most of the evolution has been just for a practical reason, more that for a strategic reason. By that I mean, when the numbers of students get to a certain place, I simply could no longer have these more of these sort of closer, real personal relationships with my students. So I just didn’t have the time to do. Its one thing when I had 30 people at a retreat, but when I have 350, you can’t see everybody in private. You can’t even see a small portion of them.
But outside of that, my own sense of it is, at least as a teacher, I think that every teacher-student relation you walk into, there is some sort of agreement you are making. You may be making it unconsciously, but you are making it, nonetheless. Like you said, if you go to a traditional setup and a Zen situation, there’s an unspoken agreement that the teacher is the final authority, and the teachers way is the way. You are meant to kind of lower your ego, right, in the presence of that. And that has a lot of potentially positive aspects to it, because it does challenge your ego kind of very quickly right? Your ego realizes that it’s not in control of the situation.
Vince: Yeah.
Adyashanti: That’s probably the most useful thing about a more authoritarian traditional kind of teacher-student relationship is that the ego doesn’t really get to play its games. If it’s done right. I think, you know, and everyone can draw their own conclusions about what the potential drawbacks are, but I think we know that any kind of power has, unless one is really conscious, it has a potentially corruptive quality to it. Unless you are really on top of things.
For me, the unspoken agreement that I have with people basically, and I tell this to people all the time, and I say basically you’re the authority. Which is my way of saying you have to take responsibility for yourself right at the beginning. I am not really here to baby sit anybody. I am not here to play the role of a traditional authoritarian figure. Even though it may look that way, because I’m sitting up on a stage for instance, and just the set up has the look of a certain power structure. But internally, I am always trying to put responsibility back onto people, back onto themselves. And I even tell people, “Look, if you are looking for somebody to babysit your ego all the time, then you are with the wrong teacher. I am not here to do that. That is not what I am here to do.” Which is a different kind of agreement, right? It’s a different way of going about it. People that are really going to benefit from the way I teach, are going to be people that are self motivated spiritually, and they are sort of willing to take on responsibility for themselves without this sort of grabbing that from an egoic perspective.
You are quite right that no matter what kind of teacher-student relationship, no matter what the set up is, they all have their pluses and minuses, they all have their strong points, and they all have their weaknesses. There is no way to set it up… everything in life has strong points and weaknesses. I don’t look at teacher-relationships as there’s one right way to do it. There’s many ways to do it. And I just happen to do it, you know, the way I do, which reflects the way I was, I think, when I entered spirituality.
I saw my own spiritual teacher as a coach, you might say. You know, because I came through, a lot of my young life, I was a very, very highly competitive endurance athlete and I wanted to be as good as I could be and so I went and talked to my coach. And he said, here’s how to do it. But I knew my coach couldn’t go out there and train for me. He couldn’t do it. Nor did I ask my coach to be a God figure for me.
Vince: Right.
Adyashanti: So I’ve always seen, even when I was a student, I saw my teacher, kind of, a bit without thinking about it at the time, but a bit more like a coach. Like just tell me the right way to do this. And then I have to go out and do it. And I think that’s, kind of, how I still do things to this day.
Vince: Yeah.
Adyashanti: I don’t want to be someone’s God. I don’t want to be someone’s, sort of, final authority figure. You know, I tell people all the time, “Look, you’ve got to come in the door with your own inner integrity, because I’m not going to really be able to give it to you. You’ve got have that for yourself. You’ll either delude, or not delude yourself, for yourself. It’s your responsibility ultimately.” And to say that, really, up front, is a very different power dynamic.
Vince: Nice, and it sounds like you keep going back to that and reminding people of that. And that’s, kind of, the pointer you have.
Adyashanti: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s the pointer that I have. I try to emphasize to people that they do have the capacity too. I think one of the mistakes people make when they go to spiritual teachers is, they think: because I’m not enlightened, I’ve got to leave my good sense at the door. And I tell people, look, it’s just the opposite. If you want this enlightenment thing, you can’t get to it by riding the coattails on some enlightened person. It doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to verify everything for yourself in your own experience. You don’t actually have the luxury of believing in anything. Believing in what I say, just because I say it. Or believing in anybody, including the Buddha–just believing it because he said itbecause that has no transformative value. You have to go inside and find out for yourself in your own experience. Prove it true or false for yourself. So that, right there, is a very different relationship with spirituality. I think, in one sense, it’s inherently more challenging.
Vince: Yeah. Absolutely. It sounds similar to… I was listening to a teacher of mine talk on the seven factors of awakening, this was Jack Kornfield. And he said, oh, and the eighth factor is common sense. [Laughs] And it sounds similar to what you’re saying. That there’s a sense of not leaving behind just the basic intelligence because it’s the spiritual path that that’s somehow different.
Adyashanti: Yeah. The job of a spiritual teacher in one part is to help people hone in on what’s really true inside of themselves, including, just their ordinary good sense. To help them hone in, like, what is it? Because it can be hard not to delude yourself, right? And that’s part of a teachers task, is to help people distinguish between what’s true inside and what’s not true inside. To help show them the ways people can delude themselves, and the ways you can actually be clear.
When the spiritual teacher doesn’t try to take responsibility for that themselves, or take it away from their students, I think the students actually… they find the capacity within themselves, or they don’t. And they go and find a different type of spiritual teacher. Because, like I said, just because I do it the way I do it, I have nothing in me that thinks it’s inherently the better way, or the way anybody else should do it. It’s just, this is the way I do it. If it works for you, great. If it doesn’t, that’s okay too, you’ll go somewhere else where it does work for you.
Vince: So, one really interesting practice, that I saw you suggest to people, or that you did yourself, was practice of this, kind of, writing inquiry. Taking an inquiry question and really using, like, a journal to go into the question, and write only the answers that feel authentically true. To not write anything that’s just bullshit, so to speak.
Adyashanti: Exactly
Vince: And I was wondering if you could share a little bit about that practice and how you came up with it. It sounds like a really relevant practice, for some reason, to me, to a western audience. And I don’t know if that was intentional or not?
Adyashanti: Well, you know, it’s just what I did when I was a student. I mean, I didn’t start out doing it. But I just started… I used to kind of do some journaling and that can be clarifying because, if you write something down, it’s like you get your thoughts on a piece of paper and they stop jumping around all over the place. You stop thinking in circular patterns if you write it down because it’s very obvious when you’re thinking in circular patterns.
So, I found it useful to write down certain thoughts. And then later, I thought, “Okay, now, what if I took whatever the question I had. One time, let’s say, for instance, I had a question, ‘What is surrender really? What is it really? What do I know about this?’” And I thought, “Okay. What if I was going to tell somebody what true surrender was?” And so I started to sit down and write what that was. Because I think we are all better at communicating when we’re trying to communicate to somebody else rather than communicate to ourselves. Does that make sense?
Vince: Yeah, absolutely.
Adyashanti: If you try to explain something to a friend, it’s easier to explain to them, then often it is to explain to yourself. So, I would sort of start writing as if I was writing for somebody else to make something clear for somebody else. And what I would do is I would refuse to write anything that I didn’t know was really true. That’s where it changed from journaling into what I call a meditative inquiry.
Journaling is just kind of getting your thoughts out. This was only putting the thoughts down that I saw to be really absolutely true. And I would find that when I would start to write in this way, that I could literally get halfway through a sentence. In the middle of the sentence, I’d go, “Okay, that’s the last word that I know to be true.” And I would just stop there. And I would refuse to write anything more until I could find out what was true. And sometime I would sit there for 15 minutes before, maybe, two words would come that were really true. I’d write those two words and then I wouldn’t write anything else until it was true. So, it was a very concentrated, challenging way to write because it was, in its way, meditative. It was to write in this way isn’t just to spew out one’s thoughts, it’s really more a product of deep listening inside, than it is deep thinking inside.
I just found it to be extraordinarily useful for me. And I did quite a bit of that for quite a while. And I found that I could get through sort of these spiritual roadblocks that I used to bump into, I could find insights through this process that might take me much, much, much longer than simply meditating, even though I did a lot of meditation at that time as well. I found, though, to combine the two of sort of some way to actively inquire, and a meditation where you just sort of let go and relax, those two really provided a really powerful dynamic, kind of like a yin and a yang thing. And I found, as a teacher, if people are just meditating, there’s often not that catalyst, that spark that will spark awakening or deep insight. They make it into deep meditative states of absorption but spiritual awakening isn’t to get into a deep state of absorption, it’s a state of “ah, ha.” And so I think the inquiry part adds energy. It adds a catalyst. It kind of keeps whatever is unresolved in you very much at the forefront of your consciousness. And so it adds a real dynamic to it. And so I found it really useful for myself. And I, at times, suggest that other people might want to do their own version of the same thing, especially if they’re working with something they’re really stuck on. Some patterns, they just can’t see through, some repetitive thing they know they have to have a deeper insight into but they just can’t seem to find it. I’ll often say, “Well. Sit down and communicate the answer to your question but don’t write anything unless you know it’s totally true.” That’s how I came up with it. And that’s how sometimes I have people utilize it. Because if you do it right, you spend much more time sitting in silence than you do actually writing.
Vince: Yeah, it sounds like it.
Adyashanti: You know, because how much can anybody write that they know is absolutely true? It might take you a couple hours to get a half a sentence outYou know? . [Laughs] But if we’re talking about what’s really true, and we’re talking about spirituality, then those are the things we want to really find out about ourselves. What do we know that’s really true, as opposed to all the nonsense that we imagine we know is true? And that’s what I found the process of this sort of, type of inquiry through writing really did.
It’s not so much–the valuable part was not only what I found, but was really also that it showed me what I didn’t know, which is really valuable. It’s extraordinarily important. It’s kind of like a spring-cleaning, you know? You just dust out your consciousness–you go, “Wow, 99% of the things that I think I know, when I really examine them honestly…” You’re all of a sudden not so sure if it’s really true or not. And it’s really valuable to empty out the mind in that way, and to empty out the old belief system.
Vince: Yeah, it sounds sort of similar to that whole Zen idea of Great Doubt, of building up the sense of not knowing.
Adyashanti: Exactly. Exactly. Or like the Korean Zen teacher used to say, “don’t-know mind.” But you can be sitting there trying to be in don’t-know mind, but you might not even know what don’t-know mind means. You know what I mean? Just because someone says it doesn’t know what it means. But when you really start to look, you really say, “Gosh, I actually don’t know anything.” Now that’s don’t-know mind. Does that make sense?
Vince: Yeah–no, no, it doesn’t. [Laughs]
Adyashanti: Where this really started for me was a very, very sort of eye-opening and in some ways sobering, chilling moment, after a Sesshin that I sat, on the retreat. I was sitting there, and at the end of it, people were having breakfast after it was over, and talking, and I heard a group of old-time students who’d been at this, like, 20, 30—a couple of them—40 years. They were talking, and they were all talking about how when they were young, they remembered getting involved in Buddhism, and they wanted enlightenment and to awaken, and now that they’d been doing it for 30 or 40 years they’d kind of just let go of that. They hadn’t really found out what that was, but they’d found—they kind of found peace with not finding out what this enlightenment thing was about. So they had a peace about that. And they actually did have a peace about that. You know, like, well maybe it’s not going to happen but it’s okay. And I could see, for them, it was okay. And that it was okay. But for me, at 23 years old, and I suddenly look over and I go, “That could be me in 40 years.” I could be sitting there saying, “Well, the enlightenment thing didn’t really work out, but, you know, I’m really at peace with that.” And something about me, at 23 years old–I literally had to bite my bottom lip. I literally dug my teeth into my bottom lip, otherwise I just would have screamed out this huge, “No!” Like, it cannot end that way, that’s what I thought. That can’t happen. That’s not acceptable. It was fine for them, so it wasn’t a judgment for them. But for me, it scared the hell out of me. And that’s the day when I thought, “Okay, that’s it.” I realized I was on my own. Because I realized you can’t just follow the tradition, because it might not work out. Just doing what you’re told because someone says that’s the way to do it, and that’s the way they’ve always done it–I thought, “Okay, I don’t have that luxury. I’ve got to prove everything true or false for myself, and it’s up to me.”
And I didn’t leave my teachers, and I didn’t leave my tradition, and I didn’t stop meditating–I didn’t stop doing any of that, but the internal relationship shifted. And what I was really confronted with, is I thought, “Not only do I not know what enlightenment is, I don’t even know if there’s such a thing. Maybe we’re all just deluding ourselves. Maybe this is just a pipe dream.” But you see, up till that point, I couldn’t even ask myself that question. I couldn’t even admit that maybe it was just a pipe dream. It was too frightening. But as soon as I could admit that, it sort of frightened me into a clarity. I thought, “Well I have to find out then, don’t I?” And I don’t know if you can sense it, but there was a real aloneness in it. There was a very stark energy to it. That, ok I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to find this out for myself.
And I look back many, many years later, and I look at that moment as probably one of the most significant moments in my whole spiritual seeking days. Because it was the day that I stopped accepting anything simply because somebody said it, including the Buddha. And I looked back and I go that was the most important thing I ever did. I didn’t throw out what anybody said. But I realized that until I proved it to be true in myself, I don’t actually know if it’s true or not. Now when you do that, you feel very, very alone. You feel like there is very little to grab hold of. Because there’s almost nothing that you actually know, for certain. And so it kind of scares you into a clarity, you might say. [Laughs]
Vince: Nice. It sounds like that really connects both to the writing inquiry and the energy behind that. And also, when we were talking about the student-teacher relationship, that’s what you keep pointing people back in themselves, is to find out for themselves.
Adyashanti: Yeah.
Vince: It sounds like it’s been a major theme in your own experience and in the way that you work with people.
Adyashanti: Sure, I think for all of us, however we teach, it kind of reflects ourselves, and what we did. And that’s the way I teach too. And sometimes that works for people. I have told other people the same story when I have taught several times. And some people are kind of inspired by it and other people get so darned spooked, that they just get despondent. Like oh god, you’re right, I don’t know anything. How can I do that and they get overwhelmed by it. So it can have, like everything, it’s a double-edged sword, right?
But, in the end, I see this as the hallmark. I mean I always like to point out back and look, this is what the Buddha did. This is what got the Buddha under the Bodhi Tree. He went to all the teachers, he went to all the teachings. He went through the whole circuit of the day. He became an ascetic. He did everything he was supposed to do. And at the end of the day, it didn’t quite work out for him. So there he is in a totally catch-22 situation. He can’t keep doing what he has done. He can’t keep doing what everyone else is doing. It hasn’t worked. But he can’t just walk away from it either because he can never forget about it. He has to find this answer. So he eventually finds himself under this tree all by himself, nobody else. Him and him alone. And he has to come to his own realization for himself. And I think that, there is a sort of a motif in this.
You see it through history, Jesus the way. I always remind people Jesus was an extraordinary person but Jesus was not a Christian. Jesus came from Judaism, but he was someone who found his own insight in it, you see? He stepped out of the mold, and found something extraordinary. Buddha stepped out of the mold and found something extraordinary.

So I am always suggesting to everyone, from the very beginning, from step one, go ahead and step out of the mold. You are going to have to do it sooner or later. You may end up being still your dharma, your karma may still be, to be a very traditional Buddhist, or a traditional Christian or a traditional Jew, and that’s fine if that’s sort of what your dharma is. But I think a lot of people don’t even want to question it.

Fear & not knowing-surrender - Amoda Maa Jeevan

I saw that I wanted to be free of the story of “me” and I was willing to give up my need for love, relationship, happiness, enlightenment—and even the need for any certainty—for this that I could not name. I had no idea how to do this. There was no teacher, no road map, no instruction manual, and no imagination of what I was falling in to. But I trusted the gentle yet insistent impulse to be still and to stop running away, to not follow—as I had done a million times before—the familiar contortions of my mind, and to meet directly in naked awareness the most primal of fears: annihilation. I opened to not-knowingness and allowed myself to die into this. And in this dying, all notions of self dissolved into emptiness. I suppose I expected a kind of cold no-thingness, but instead an incredible joy arose. Without labeling it or packaging it or re-investing any identity in it, the emptiness revealed a luminosity of being. It had always been here, and, contrary to appearances, I had never been separate from this.
From that moment on, I became a lover of what is, unafraid to get right up close and intimate with whatever appears in my experience. My suffering became my doorway to freedom. This freedom now looks nothing like I had imagined it to be. I’m often asked: “How is your life different after awakening?” I can only say that life goes on as it always has. It is utterly unchanged, and yet, in meeting everything as it is, everything has changed.
Today, 10 years later, the waves of phenomenal existence called “my story” continue. Sometimes the sea is stormy; sometimes it is as calm as a millpond. Sometimes there is pain, hardship, and unpleasant emotions. There is an exquisite sensitivity to every nuance of movement, and yet nothing touches the pristine silence at the core of it all. The radiant jewel that is this silence continues to illuminate those places in my body-mind vehicle that are still holding ancient patterns that do not serve the bigger picture of love. It’s an on-going demolition project in which everything that is not true is destroyed. It happens effortlessly and there’s nothing I have to do to make it happen. It is ordinary and it is graceful.
I do not know what awakening will look like in you. All I know is that this awakening hinges on your genuine desire for awakening. If it is to flower in you, you must truly want liberation from everything that is false in you, you must want to give yourself totally to the inquiry into what is true beyond all inherited concepts, ideas, and beliefs. When the flame of this desire becomes an untamable fire, it flips a switch inside of you and the direction of your destiny is irrevocably altered. It’s like turning on the light only to discover that you are this light. This in itself is extra-ordinary. Even though you may have heard the words a thousand times, nothing can prepare you for the naked reality that is revealed. And yet the living experience of this revelation is very ordinary: you have simply re-discovered the innocent wholeness of your essential nature. It’s the you that never was and never will be separate from anything at all. This discovery is the end of suffering and the beginning of freedom.

http://www.AmodaMaaJeevan.com
http://www.facebook.com/AmodaMaaJeevan

Reprinted with permission from OneTheMagazine.com.

Awakening in the Dream

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from A Course in Miracles:

The holy instant (spiritual awakening) is the result of your determination to be holy. It is the answer. The desire and the willingness to let it come precede its coming. You prepare your mind for it only to the extent of recognizing that you want it above all else.

Love waits on welcome, not on time, and the real world is but your welcome of what always was.

Release is given you the instant you desire it.

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Silence – Quotes From Nisargadatta Maharaj “I Am That"

“Whatever you may have to do, watch your mind. Also you must have moments of complete inner peace and quiet, when your mind is absolutely still. If you miss it, you miss the entire thing. If you do not, the silence of the mind will dissolve and absorb all else.”

“It has nothing to do with effort. Just turn away, look between the thoughts, rather than at the thoughts. When you happen to walk in a crowd, you do not fight every man you meet, you just find your way between. When you fight, you invite a fight. But when you do not resist, you meet no resistance. When you refuse to play the game, you are out of it.”

“No particular thought can be mind’s natural state, only silence. Not the idea of silence, but silence itself. When the mind is in its natural state, it reverts to silence spontaneously after every experience, or, rather, every experience happens against the background of silence.”

“To go beyond the mind, you must be silent and quiet. Peace and silence, silence and peace – this is the way beyond. Stop asking questions.”

“These moments of inner quiet will burn out all obstacles without fail. Don’t doubt its efficacy. Try it. Silence is the main factor. In peace and silence you grow. In peace and silence, the skin of the “I” dissolves and the inner and the outer become one.”

“Your hope lies in keeping silent in your mind and quiet in your heart. Realized people are very quiet. You must realize yourself as the immovable behind and beyond the movable, the silent witness of all that happens.”

“When the mind is kept away from its preoccupations, it becomes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it, you find that it is permeated with a light and a love you have never known; and yet you recognise it at once as your own nature. Once you have passed through this experience, you will never be the same man again; the unruly mind may break its peace and obliterate its vision; but its bound to return, provided the effort is sustained; until the day when all bonds are broken delusions and attachments end and life becomes supremely concentrated in the present.”

“Look at your mind dispassionately; this is enough to calm it. When it is quiet, you can go beyond it. Do not keep it busy all the time. stop it – and just be. If you give it a rest, it will settle down and recover its purity and strength. Constant thinking makes it decay.”

“A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part.”

“Pay no attention [to your thoughts]. Don’t fight them. Just do nothing about them, let them be, whatever they are. Your very fighting them gives them life. just disregard. Look through.”

“As long as you are a beginner certain formalised meditations, or prayers may be good for you. But for a seeker for reality there is only one meditation – the rigorous refusal to harbour thoughts. To be free from thoughts is itself meditation … You begin by letting thoughts flow and watching them. The very observation slows down the mind till it stops altogether. Once the mind is quiet, keep it quiet. Don’t get bored with peace, be in it, go deeper into it … Watch your thoughts and watch yourself watching the thoughts. The state of freedom from all thoughts will happen suddenly and by the bliss of it you shall recognise it.”

“The silence is one and without it the words could not have been heard. It is always there – at the back of the words. Shift your attention from the words to silence and you will hear it.”

“To see reality is as simple as to see one’s face in a mirror. Only the mirror must be clear and true. A quiet mind, undistorted by desires and fears, free from ideas and opinions, clear on all levels, is needed to reflect the reality. Be clear and quiet – alert and detached, all else will happen by itself.”

“This attitude of silent observation is the very foundation of yoga.”

“When the mind is quiet it reflects reality. When it is motionless through and through, it dissolves and only reality remains.”

“You need not worry about your worries. Just be. Do not try to be quiet; do not make being quiet into a task to be performed. Don’t be restless about being quiet, miserable about being happy. Just be aware that you are and remain aware – don’t say: “yes, I am; what next?” There is no next in “I am”. it is a timeless state.”

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A Fully Realized Human Life - Jan Frazier

Reprinted with permission from Jan Frazier
http://janfrazierteachings.com/teachings/

Prior to awakening, love is tainted. It has a quality of self-centeredness: loving this person or thing does what for me?

....When a person wakes up, love is free to be completely itself.  No longer is the object of affection looked to for fulfillment.  Fear and clutching are nowhere in the picture.  And so the heart is free to open, to take moisture into all its dry places.  There is no sense of other to awakeness, no other to distinguish from self, and so love is indiscriminate.  Compassion is without limit, without strain.  Love in no way can diminish or tax.

....Your sense of who you are and what your life is about has opened, softened.  A lot that used to matter is no longer absorbing.  You move through things (all things) with a light-hearted ease.  You can feel how struggle, the urge to make something happen — a whole life’s worth of effort — has drained right out of you, as if you’ve sprung a leak.

...Children know something about this.....  They may think they once had it, but then lost it.  Or they may think they imagined it, that they dreamed the whole thing up to give themselves some kind of comfort, a respite from the daily, the difficult.  But no, that isn’t quite what’s going on.

They didn’t dream it up. It’s real. It’s the most real thing there is. And it didn’t go away.

An awake person has a capacity for fun and pleasure that greatly exceeds what was possible before.  Before, when the mind was so much in charge of the inner world, when guilt and agenda and worry held sway, day to day, hour upon hour, even in the hours of sleep, seldom was it possible to yield utterly to delight for long at a time.  To rejoice for rejoicing’s own sake.  To laugh like a banshee, be again a child, unselfconscious, unrestrained.  To make love, to be made love to, with abandon, with no fear of vulnerability, of risk.  To enjoy food, drink, dancing, a book that entirely consumes you late into the night.  To wake in utter luxury, the pleasure of reassembling consciousness into an actual person.

The mind is a very different organ after awakening.  Before, it is a tyrant in ceaseless motion, an unbridled stallion.  It is your master, dragging you into neighborhoods you’d never willingly frequent.  The mind dishes up an unceasing supply of beliefs and opinions, hands you vivid memories as if they were actually real right now, seduces you into believing dreamed-up futures.  It saturates you in bias, in inner commentary that loops back in on itself over and over, as if the thing had never been said inside your head all those other times.

But after awakening, the mind finally, blessedly, gets to be enjoyed.  To be used right for the first time in all the years it’s been riding around inside the cranium.

...Once you’re awake, if you don’t need your mind at any given moment, you can turn it off!  Just like a flashlight or a blender.  Turn it clean off, and it won’t start up on its own.  It won’t try to keep talking while you’re trying to go to sleep.  It will not cause you pain.

Awakeness is friendly with reality.  So the world will go on being its same self, including you with your mortal life, but you will present a very soft and yielding surface to whatever comes.  Roll with the punches, so to speak.  Not fight it and thereby cause yourself to suffer.  And you will never blame life or the world anymore for anything.  You just won’t.

You’ll have so much energy freed up that you once spent (that you wasted) on complaining and worrying and hoping and obsessing and clinging — so much unburdened, creative energy — that you’ll embrace your life and occupy the beloved world and its humanity in such a way that you’ll feel yourself come fully into your own, into what it is to be absolutely alive, free, showing up.  Filling your skin in an unbridled way that just wasn’t possible before.

Oh, the time just after awakening, before all this unfolding and fulfillment comes, you’ll mostly be stunned by the sudden cession of pain.  You’ll just feel so good, so relieved, that for a time you may just sit around a lot giggling, staring off into space, focused on feeling your innards, radically revised as they now are.  You might be disoriented.  You might need a lot of extra rest for a while, and probably it would be best — until you get your sea legs beneath you — not to take on any new projects or attempt to operate any heavy machinery.  It takes some getting used to.

But after a while you’ll stretch yourself, get up, and start to walk around in your brand-new life.  Do a little loving.  Have a little fun.  Invent a little something with your shiny new mind.  You’ll see.  Look in the mirror at who you have become.  You’ll hardly believe your eyes:  finally, a real human being, come entirely to life.

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Forthcoming Workshops on A Course in Miracles

For up to date information on my workshops go to http://www.acfip.org/fws.html

Germany 2015 Dates

Bonn 2015

6-7 June, 2015

10.00am to 6.000pm

Living the Guided Life

A Course in Miracles workshop.

This day my mind is quiet, to receive the Thoughts You offer me. And I accept what comes from You, instead of from myself. I do not know the way to You. But You are wholly certain. Father, guide Your Son along the quiet path that leads to You. Let my forgiveness be complete, and let the memory of You return to me.

A Course in Miracles. Lesson 291

The Course states that if we do not have inner peace and joy 24 hours a day we know nothing. Although we may be competent in using the mind to live adequately in daily practical life, we need to realise its limitations and open ourselves to hearing a wisdom beyond the mind - what the Course calls the Holy Spirit, the Voice for God. This Voice can be heard in many ways - an inner knowing, words, a felt sense, etc.

We play our part by realising we do not know the way to peace and are willing to be guided and allow our mind to become quieter through forgiveness.

The workshop will explore what the Holy Spirit is, how to hear Its voice, how to tell the difference between the ego's voice and the Holy Spirit's, resistance to guidance, true prayer, the ladder of prayer and attaining a quiet mind.

Exercises will be given to help quiet the mind and open it to spirit's guidance.

No previous knowledge of A Course in Miracles required.

An Evening Introductory Talk - Fri 5th June 2015

7.30pm to 9.30pm

Contact:

Albert-Schweitzer-Haus

Beethovenallee 16

Bonn 53173

tel: 0228 - 36 47 37

http://www.albert-schweitzer-haus-bonn.de

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Freiburg 2015

June 12 6pm to 9pm

June 13 10.00am to 6.00pm

June 14 10.00am to 5.00pm

Living the Guided Life

A Course in Miracles workshop.

A Course in Miracles. Lesson 291

We play our part by realising we do not know the way to peace and are willing to be guided and allow our mind to become quieter through forgiveness.

Exercises will be given to help quiet the mind and open it to spirit's guidance.

No previous knowledge of A Course in Miracles required.

Contact:

Margarete Sennekamp

Winterhaldenweg 4,

79856 Hinterzarten,

Tel./Fax: 07652-917530

email: M.Sennekamp@t-online.de

www.Sophia-Institut.de

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