Part I - Right Now! In This Moment How to read Right Now!

In This Moment: The Truth of this work is best realized by experiencing it on a daily basis over a period of time. We therefore recommend that you read Right Now daily for a mi nimum of 21 days, in a contemplative manner, allowing its essence to radiate thr oughout your awareness. Right Now! In this moment, Who are You? Not who you think you are; not your name; not your gender; and certainly not your beliefs, concepts or convictions, but who are YOU? As children, or even teens, we may ask ourselves this question. But soon we are told who we are. We are indoctrinated into a field of isolation by havin g our Who-ness defined and categorized. We forget the Who we are as it is cloude d by misconceptions, desires, ideas, mythologies, and individuality. But who is it that rests prior to all ideas, all thoughts, prior even to the senses? Within your mind, you may have so many thoughts. They run through your m ind, seemingly appearing out of nowhere to tell you what you think and what to b elieve. But where do they come from. Are you really thinking or are you being t hought? All of these thoughts simply arise in the mind and we hear them, see the m, are aware of them. But who is aware of them? If within your mind you create a picture, an image of something, anythin g, such as a tree, a cat, a house - that image appears within the mind, but who is seeing that image? That hearer of thoughts, that seer of images - that is You. It is the Wi tness, the Consciousness, the Pure Awareness. You are NOT beliefs. And nearly everything you believe you are is a beli ef, a concept. All of your ideas about the nature of the world, your likes and d islikes, who you are, what God is, what political or religious system is best, w hat life is meant for, why your life is a success or a failure - all of these ar e ideas. They are not and never have been who you are. They are sheets of colore d gel laid upon the light of pure consciousness. They make you believe that you are happy or sad, good or bad, fortunate or unfortunate. But you are never any of these things. Who You are is Free. Who You are is Absolute. Who You are is a drop of the consciousness that is the Infinite Consciousness of all existence o r what some might call God. Yes, you are That which alone exists, from which ev erything arises, and into which everything returns. But you focus on the flotsam and jetsam that float on the surface of the ocean, rather than recognizing you are the ocean itself. Perhaps you even seek to know the truth, to end suffering and realize Enlightenm ent. Enlightenment is another concept. It is the opposite of bondage or unenlig htened and exists in the realm of duality, of opposites, in the land of the frui t of the knowledge of good and evil. They are names only that we have created t o manage within an unknown territory. That's fine, but you are not the territory . You are You, and that has never been bound and will never be enlightened. It always is as it is, pure consciousness. ____________________

Right Now! In this moment, Where are You? Not where your body is or even where you are within your body. But that consciousness, that awareness, that witness which is experiencing these words, t houghts and images arising in your mind. Where is that witness? That is you. Whe re are You? If you really search, without concepts, you will not find it. Who is searching? The seeker is seeking itself! How absurd! But you are convinced t hat you are not you and therefore seeking something else somewhere else. But the real you is not locatable in space and time. All you can say is "I am Here". Bu t that 'here' has no location. It is only a knowing that there is existence hap pening somewhere in a 'here-ness' that is no (or all) space. When you speak of "I", who are you referring to? "I am unhappy" "I am confused" "I am a seeker of Truth" None of these is true. They are identifications with ideas, feelings and concep ts, but they are not who you are. It would be better to say: "I am awareness and unhappiness is arising within that awareness." "I am awareness and am identifying with confusion that is arising within the min d within that awareness." "I am awareness and am identifying with a belief that I am not already perfect a nd looking for something else that may arise somewhere else that will make my mi nd perfect" ____________________

Right Now! In this moment... Let go of all beliefs. Separate yourself from your Body/Mind and rest as Pure Awareness. Don't try to stop your mind. Don't try and do anything. It is all the trying and sear ching and sweating yourself into a frenzy that makes you unhappy. Let go of all of it. Rest in Pure Awareness, right now, in this moment, and confusion is gone, sorrow is gone, bondage is gone, fear is gone, limitation is gone. Yes, the min d may say something. Thoughts may arise. But you are not the thoughts. You are n ot the feelings. You are Pure Awareness. You are free from all concepts. Are you looking for spiritual experiences? You are not the experiences. Experiences are phenomena. Phenomena come and go, but you are always the witnes s to all experiences and all phenomena. Do you want to see God? The experience o f seeing God may come and go but you are always the witness to all experiences a nd phenomena. That Witness state, that Absolute Pure Consciousness is itself non -different from whatever you might conceive of as God. Do not underestimate this . Do not evaluate it at all. Give up all evaluation, all judgment, all intellect ualizing and reside in the peace of who you are. Are you seeking Awakening? As long as you are seeking you will never fi nd. You cannot be a seeker and a finder at the same time. You must give up your seeking. You must give up your striving. You must give up all that which is the very nature of your mind and intellect. What is prior to that? It is only Pure C onsciousness without an object. It cannot be known or grasped for it is the Know er, the Knowing. Let go of all concepts and simply rest in that.

Who you think you are is concepts. It is your personal mythology in whic h you are the Hero/ine. But that is a story based on a supposed individual that doesn't exist, like a reflection in the mirror. It is an appearance only. A case of mistaken identity. Don't be fooled any longer. It is like watching a movie and thinking that you are the main star. But it is just light on a screen that g ives an appearance of people and personalities. Recognize the projector, which i s the pure light of consciousness itself. Only then can you be content and free from all of your desires and anxieties (which are also only an illusion). ____________________ Right Now! In this moment, Realize... All of this is one thing only. It is the light of consciousness playing in infinite variety. In India, they call this Lila, the play of God. God is one without a second. That means that there isn't anything after God (Brahman, the Divine, Spiritual Source - na mes don't matter). It's not that no one is as good as God or as powerful as God, or second runner up to God. There isn't anything except God. How could there be ? All life comes from Life. All existence comes from Existence. Everything or a nything that is, comes from what IS. So whatever you are seeing, feeling, think ing, experiencing...whatever is seeing, feeling, thinking, experiencing...and th e acts themselves of seeing, feeling, thinking or experiencing...All of that is the One, the Divine, the Sacred Source, God. Just as you can see that everythin g on the Earth is simply earth or transformed earth - the hills, the valleys, th e mountains, the trees, the flowers, the animals and the people - so see the All that is seemingly transformed into multifarious forms. What is that All? It cannot be named. It is beyond all names and all co ncepts. It is emptiness and absolute fullness. It is the beginning, the middle and the end. You can name it whatever you like, but you run the risk of limiti ng it in your mind and creating a conception to fit your needs. Then you will h ave put it into the tiny box of your mind in an attempt to grasp what is ungrasp able. Do not try to use names and forms but dive into that which is unknowable. Slip gently into the abyss, which is beyond the mind's tiny grasp. Many call it God. And God is as good a name as any other, but you must give up all your concepts of 'God' in order to realize that. Whatever concepts you have about God, Goddess, Christ, Buddha, Brahman, Emptiness, Fullness, must be given up, in this moment, to fully recognize the Truth. For how can you expe rience what is true if you are holding on to your own expectations of Reality? First let go of your own knowing, and then dive deeply into the abyss of unknowi ng. ____________________ Right Now! In this moment, Know that all is Perfect Everything is perfect exactly as it is in this moment. There is nothing that needs to be changed, nothing to be healed, for everything is exactly as it should be. How could anything be different? Do you doubt that Divinity is taking place in the All One Thing in this very moment? Psychics, healers, classes, se minars, gurus, masters, will not make You or the moment any more perfect. So sto p seeking. Be the Perfection that You already are. You are Perfection personifie d. You are Peace personified. You are Love personified. There is nothing to add or subtract.

When you recognize that you are Absolute Consciousness, you will see tha t there is nothing else. There is no good and no bad, and that everyone and eve rything is a manifestation of That. It is all Absolute Consciousness, perfectly manifesting itself in the great drama of cosmic creation. Whatever arises is s imply more of that. Thoughts, emotions, feelings are all part of that. Experienc e them without judgment, without desire to maintain them or an aversion to them. See with the eye of equality that all is that. In the beginning, it may not seem easy. There may be frustration, confus ion, and helplessness. But recognize that these things are simply arising. They are not You. You are the Witness of these arisings. Simply inquire into Who Yo u are, and with anything that arises, do not identify. Simply come back to the i nquiry of Who is witnessing this experience. Even if there is extreme bliss, who is experiencing it? If there is powerful energy arising, who is experiencing i t? If there are visions of sublime Deities, who is experiencing it? Bliss may co me and go, energy may come and go, visions may come and go, but You are always h ere, right now, in this moment, eternally. That is what is permanent. That is w hat is real. All else is phenomenal and changing. Rest in That and you are eternally free. Right Now! In This Moment!

Part II - Searching After Truth Being More Spiritual Often we hear from someone how they wish to be more spiritual. It usuall y sounds something like, "I really want to be more spiritual. I should meditate more, or chant more, or read more, or do more service or worship more, or do mor e yoga, or I should quit watching TV, or quit smoking, or quit drinking, or...." There is always the idea that by adding something to oneself it will make them more spiritual. Or it will make them feel more spiritual. Or, it will make ot hers see them as more spiritual. And generally this is a very sincere desire. People feel that there is something lacking in their lives. They know that there is more to life than making a living, eating, sleeping, and getting little temp orary pleasures from this or that. They want real substance, and they know that substance comes from something greater than themselves - love, community, God, s pirituality, meaning. But how do you get this? How do you become more spiritual ? The difficulty is in thinking that one can become more spiritual! It is like a man saying I want to be manlier or a woman saying I want to be more woman ly, or a human saying they want to be more human. Being a man is intrinsic to m en. Being a woman is intrinsic to women. Being a human is intrinsic to a human. Being spiritual is intrinsic to everyone. Who and what you are is spiritual. W hat are you going to add to yourself to be more a man, more a woman, more a huma n, or more spiritual? Anything that you add will simply make you less of, or det ract from the intrinsic nature. It is like adding red paint and artificial rose perfume to a rose to make it more rose-like. These will only cover what is alr eady perfect. If you wish to fully appreciate the beauty of a rose, don't try t o add to the rose. Remove that which obscures the pure vision of the rose and k eeps you from experiencing it in its perfect roseness. Similarly, if you want t o purely experience your own spiritual nature, you must subtract, not add. How can you add to what is already perfect? It is simply a matter of recognition, o f stopping the search for something to add to make you more, better, greater.

But this, in itself, can be the most difficult task for it means letting go in every way. Say you have an old chair you have found, and it has layers o f old and chipping paint. You can just add something, paint over the old paint, in an effort to make it perfect. But the real beauty comes from stripping away a ll the old paint until you have only the pure wooden chair and you can appreciat e the perfect symmetry and simplicity of the wood. What we see as imperfect in ourselves is not our intrinsic nature. It is what we ourselves have added or lay ered on to our pure being. By adding more beliefs in the name of religiosity or spirituality, we are only furthering ourselves from the pure, simple, symmetry of our inherent Being. So the key is not in adding, but in subtracting. It is easy to add. It is also easy to continue on exactly as we are. It is more diffi cult to subtract, because for most people subtracting feels very much like dying . We are maintained by our belief systems. They make up who and what we are, or rather what we think we are. We have built our own reality based on our princip les of what is good and bad and right and wrong, and have factored out our real spiritual nature in the equation. The world then is made up of dualities a whol e universe created as a means to give one some standing in what would otherwise be empty space. Because if you subtract all your beliefs, all your ideas of goo d and bad, all of your dualities, everything you hold on to as what you are and what the world is, what are you left with? Nothing. You, as who you thought you were, is dead. If you are no longer a man or a woman, a spiritual person, a do ctor, car mechanic, a loner, a people person, an intellectual, or slower learner , a Canadian, a music buff, a mother or father, a sister or brother, a human, an angel, a child of the universe, a... any possible definition you can apply, the n what is left. Only "I", without definition, without location, without any par ameters, or limits. Suddenly there is nothing to strive for, nothing to fear, n othing to be joyful about and nothing to grieve. And then you recognize that th is is your True Self. This is your spiritual Self. This is being more spiritual . It is beyond material, which means outside of all concepts bound by time and s pace. There is no longer even a past or a future, but only an eternal Now and a n unlimited Here. ALL IS GOD When one dives deep into consciousness, what do you find? At first, all seems dark and empty. We are so used to putting our attention on and faith in the mind, our thoughts, our senses and the world, that we would not know what to do if they no longer existed. And yet, how are we assured of the reality of th is world in which we put so much faith? What makes it real? How do we know that it is the concrete, tangible thing that we make it out to be? The truth is that it may not be as certain as we think. Many scientists and the new quantum physics are exploring realms that were once only found in t he mystical writings of the East. They are considering the possibility that all this is but vibration. They have recognized that atoms are vast universes of e mpty space, and that the only tangible parts, the electrons, protons, and neutro ns, are really nothing but vibrational nodes, in an ocean of similar material. And that these atoms, dancing around the universe, are all sharing atomic partic les with each other, so that the boundaries of one to another, and thus with eac h "individual" thing in the universe becomes extremely blurred - blurred to the point of extinction. So what the universe tells us through the scientists, and through the ancient mystics, is that there is only One thing. That one thing is doing it all. It is the background, foreground, and the dance itself. So what is this one thing? I like to call it God. Now the difficulty with names is that they are immediately inaccurate. The moment you name something, you have taken away any reality it had and put a label upon it, which makes it a concept. We allow ourselves to define the entir e universe with names, and thus lose our ability to directly experience it. Thi

s is especially true with all of the experiences that we have within ourselves. We have stopped feeling anything that arises, and have instead replaced the ini tial signs of something with a name that allows us to stop it in its tracks. Em otions are a perfect example of this. Try to describe fear, what it really is, and you'll get more labels like afraid, excited, goose bumps, etc. The moment an y particular energy arises within us, we have a box that we put that feeling int o that has a label - fear, anger, guilt, sadness, happiness, hunger, and so on. Almost no one stops to actually experience the physical feelings, the thought p atterns, energetic pulses, and other signs that arise throughout the day. The m oment they come up, they go into a box called fear, happy, pain, and sorrow. In the end all we get is a box called "I'm fine." What has happened is that we have developed a duality based judgement of good an d bad. We assume, because of our belief systems, most of which have been foiste d upon us, that certain things are good and others are bad. And we have this gi gantic spectrum which goes from really, really good, and includes things like Go d, saints, heaven, bliss, love and enlightenment, to really, really bad like Sat an, demons, hell, agony, hate and delusion. But all this is the knowledge of go od and evil. Remember the Bible story. What was it that forced Adam and Eve from the Paradise of the Garden of Eden? It was that they tasted from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It was not the tree of good and evil, but t he tree of knowledge of good and evil. Prior to tasting that fruit, they had no concepts of some things being good and others being evil. Everything was of Pa radise. Everything was of God. They had no reason to doubt the serpent. He was also one of God's creatures. But they ate of this fruit, and began to distingui sh duality. When you distinguish duality, you are forced to make judgements that thi s is good, and this is bad. We do it every day, practically every moment. Even now you may be evaluating what you are reading as being good or bad. But when you stop distinguishing any duality - when you see everything and experience eve rything, including yourself as Divine, then their ceases to be judgement. Life becomes a great dance. There is only the Absolute. All is One. All is Truth. Al l is God. But we must not think of God as that great white-bearded man sitting on His throne in Heaven, judging your every action as good and bad. This is our ow n projection of God. This is our own judgement of ourselves creating a picture o f God as a Being of ultimate love and ultimate anger, rewarding us when we are g ood and punishing us when we are bad. We must let go of our concepts that hold us to our own ideal of what Reality is. As long as we have concepts, ideas, belief systems, we are boxed into ou r own existence. We have allowed our beliefs to create who we are. We have allo wed words and language to define us. You must fully experience that you are not a man or woman. You are not a human being. You are life itself. And life is God . You are the awareness which sees all, and yet makes no judgement. The mind m akes judgements. The mind compartmentalizes everything, putting it in boxes. Th e mind separates Reality into pieces, and then decides which are right and wrong , good and bad. When the mind of another seems to have developed different beli efs and concepts than yours, they become wrong. They become the enemy. You see it as your duty to correct them or punish them, or avoid them. If you think you are liberal and open minded, then you decide you will listen with an open mind. But still you are evaluating according to your own beliefs. Or some people acce pt everything that anyone says, immediately reforming their own beliefs to whate ver is the new fashion, the new trend, the new age fad. But you should accept o r reject nothing. It is the accepting and rejecting of things which makes you un happy. It is the accepting and rejection of ideas that makes you bound. If you

truly wish to be free, you must stop this judgemental accepting and rejecting. Just stop! You must do it right now, in the moment. The truth is, if you are seeing some things as good and others as bad, o r accepting some while rejecting others, you are accepting, and simultaneously, rejecting God, the Absolute. Because as we have already said, there is only one thing. What is happening is all the Absolute. It is all God. Even if you take a very anthropomorphic view of God as an individual person, scriptures say that in the beginning there was only God, and God created the universes. So from what d id He create them? From Himself. Some say the universes are the energies of God , like the sunlight from the sun. But that is also non-different. The energy and energetic are one. They cannot be separated. You cannot take heat or light from fire. Fire IS heat and light. All that arises from God IS God. Bliss of Non-Being You are the Bliss of Non-Being... You do not exist as you. This is the truth. You have a conception of who and what you are that is an imagination or dream. The truth of who you are is i nfinitely more profound, yet is only accessed by letting go of all ideas of who you are now - ALL of them. And the conceptions and ideas themselves are nearly infinite in their number and subtletly. This is what makes Awakening so difficul t. As long as you have any idea or mental conception of who you are, you are yo urself holding the pattern in the field of consciousness that maintains that bel ief existence. And if you try to let go of the beliefs one by one, you will fir st find that they are infinite, and secondly that the very idea of someone letti ng go of their beliefs becomes a very strong new identification that oversees al l of the other beliefs. You have superimposed layers of personal beliefs over what is in fact consciousn ess alone. It has nothing to do with a personal entity. And yet, we literally f ight to maintain the very individual existence which is the cause of our bondage and suffering. But the truth is that we do not exist as an individual any more than a m irage in the desert has water. It is due to a combination of circumstances only. Apparently objective experiences arise and we create a subjective entity to who m they are arising. Then we build a whole set of ideologies and conceptions aro und that apparent subjectivity, based on this primordial misconception, create a universe of duality which is especially attracted to the concepts of right and wrong, and our suffering is confirmed and assured. We must be able to see that the very root cause of suffering and pain ar e our insistence on maintaining ideologies centered on an individuality that doe sn't exist. We are exactly like a ball of twine. If you unravel the twine to get to whatever is inside, you only end up with a pile of twine and empty space. Wh en you unravel the ideas and beliefs that hold 'you' together, all that remains is empty space. There is no 'you' in the way that you think. So the preeminent question arises, "Who are you?" Until you can serious ly begin to ask this question of yourself and delve into the depths of conscious ness, honestly and courageously abandoning all that is not you, there will conti nue to be an apparent entity suffering the 'slings and arrows of outrageous misf ortune'. You are the Bliss of Non-Being... However, you immerse yourself in your desires of selfishness. You identi fy with the river of thoughts and desires that arise in the ocean of consciousne ss. All desires are selfish. Your actions are based on desires that you think w ill make You happy. They are selfish. Even if you are trying to save the world, you do so out of selfishness. Even if you are feeding the hungry, clothing the p

oor, or worshipping God, you are doing it because you think that it is 'right' t o do so and it makes you happy to think that you are 'right'. Even those seeking enlightenment, freedom, salvation, liberation, are doing so because it is 'righ t'. They seek to end suffering, to attain eternal bliss, to be free from death a nd bondage. Surely these are noble causes, honorable beliefs, but they are still based on a person desiring something. They are the apparent effect of an appare nt ego, struggling in an apparent world, attempting to gain apparent happiness, to counteract apparent suffering. Guess What? It's all an illusion - the ego, th e world, the suffering, the happiness. It is all a dream state, being dreamed in a cosmic dream. When you abandon the body/mind, what is left? When you give up all identification, what remains? It is only I Am, without any identification. I t is the I Am that becomes identified. So first revert to the I Am without ident ification. Dwell in that and see where it comes from. From what does I Am arise . Even the I Am has no location. It is not located within space and time. You c annot find it's beginning or end. It is only consciousness without objects. It i s the infinite subjective state without a sense of other. Remove all else and d well in that. Do not think about it, but simply reside in that absolute conscio usness. As one sinks deeper (surrenders) into that pure awareness, even the sens e of I Am begins to dissolve, for even it is a part of the dream. There is only empty awareness of non-being. It is pure existence, awareness and, yes, bliss. This is the state which you actually are, always have been and always will be. You are the bliss of non-being... But if all of this is non-being, from what does it arise? There is no a nswer in words to that question for all questions and answers arise from duality . But rest for a moment in non-duality and what occurs? There is a spontaneous a rising to experience. The bliss of non-being is the spontaneous arising of 'That ' to experience 'Itself'. In Sanskrit, the Absolute is termed Sat-Chit-Ananda or Existence-Awarene ss-Bliss. These are non dual expressions of a singularity. Just as heat and ligh t are non dual aspects of fire - you cannot seperate heat and light from fire so existence, awareness and bliss cannot be separated from the Absolute. They ar e three aspects of the same singularity. They are not linear or causal in any wa y, but a simultaneous expression. For the Absolute is existence eternal. It is B eing-ness or That which Is. And in its Beingness, awareness Is, for awareness is a symptom of existence. But awareness alone is pure subjectivity only and must by its nature be aware of an object, so expresses Itself as multiplicity in orde r to experience Ananda or Bliss. So what Is, all that is, for no other reason than the necessity to Be an d expand, is Bliss. It is what Is. It is Awareness. It is Bliss. Every moment , every day, every thing, from the most 'Holy' to the most 'wretched' is the Bli ss of the Absolute, expressing Itself infinitely as you, me, the universe, and a ll of this one thing. But when you create personhood when you make a someone sep arate, create 'a' being separate from the One Beingness, conjure up a someone to try and experience that bliss, you separate yourself from the very Bliss that y ou already are. Like a spark leaving the fire to experience the heat of the flam es, you lose your innate bliss in a vain journey away from your Self. You are the Bliss of Non-Being... And when you are ready to give up your separateness, to abandon the vain and continuous searching for happiness, to free yourself from the limitation of personhood that appear to bind you, then you can again experience the bliss of non-being. Doorway to Heaven What is our definition of Heaven, the Absolute, or Enlightenment? What does that look like for you? What is it according to the saints of the world wh

o have realized Truth? Everyone assumes that they know the truth that it automat ically corresponds to what they believe it to be, as if the fact that they belie ve it makes it a certainty. Obviously, this has been the cause of religious war s throughout the centuries. Now, of course, we are in a more enlightened state and we recognize that all of the worlds religions hold some portion of truth. It would be politicall y incorrect to suggest that one belief system was more true than any other. And since we are broad minded and open to all of them, certainly we are more fully conversant with the ultimate truth. Now we are enlightened in the great mysteri es of spirit. We see that truth is like a great diamond with many facets. We und erstand and accept that there is one truth with many paths to reach it, and we h onor each path and the people who choose to accept it. But the path is not the goal, and while there are many paths that lead t o that enlightened state, what does it look like once you get there? And if we don't know what it looks like when we get there, how do we even know that the pa th we are on will ultimately arrive at where we want to go? The difficulty is compounded by the fact that the enlightened state has been characterized as beyond definition, unspeakable, un-nameable, unknowable an d beyond thought, beyond concepts and beyond mind. So any definition or name th at we attribute to it is simply that - a name, not 'It'. This leads the aspiran t, almost by necessity, to explore what is not 'It' in hopes of finding 'It'. S ince we are, to a great extent, motivated by, influenced by, and limited by our own conceptions of the Absolute, we will study and aspire for those things which match our conception of what 'It' is, too often in a vain search, waiting for a n experience which will prove to us that we have reached the 'unknowable', 'unde scribable' 'It'. The situation is very much like an analogy that was recently shared with me. If you had two doorways, a doorway to heaven and a doorway to a lecture ab out heaven, you would find the vast majority of people lined up before the doorw ay to the lecture about heaven. Often we aren't as interested in experiencing t he divine as we are in being able to 'know' about it, talk about it, and impress people with our astounding depth of information about it. And what if you cou ld actually open the doors and look in? In the doorway to the lecture about hea ven, you would find a room full of beautiful people, drinking organic tea, talki ng about Gods & Goddesses, doing energy work, singing songs, meditating together , discussing the pros and cons of various paths and spiritual techniques general ly having a great time. On the other hand, when you opened the door to heaven, standing outside and peering in, you would see nothing. It would appear empty, d ark, unattractive - because through that door there is nothing for the mind to k now, nothing for the body to experience, no concepts or beliefs to grasp and cer tainly nothing that would 'attract' our mind, unless annihilation was attractive . For to enter into the absolute is to be totally beyond the mind and ego. But the good news is that there is nowhere to go, no doorway to step thr ough, in fact, no pathway to follow. You, who you really are, is already That. For you are pure awareness, being-ness. You are what precedes mind, beliefs, co ncepts, ideas, hopes, struggles, body and ego. You do not need to find heaven. Y ou are heaven. Seeking a Path In this day and age, knowledge of spiritual practices has become common, so much so that by simply plugging into the internet, one can access some of th e most secret, ancient, and esoteric spiritual practices. Often these are practi ces, mantras, and rituals that were handed from teacher to disciple in strictest confidence, preceded by preparatory rites and given only with understanding and agreement to never reveal them. Now you can find them in about 2 minutes on th

e world wide web. This has been both a great boon, and a curse. It has been a boon, becaus e it reveals for the first time the depth of commonality between the world's rel igions and philosophies. It allows us to explore in greater detail the richness of spiritual teachings that were unavailable to a world without airplanes or int ernet. And in a time and culture when the village priest, guru or shaman is not quite as readily available, we can still find the teachings we seek. But there is a down side. One of the primary things that has been taken from us with this wealth of knowledge is the simplicity of knowingness. Our life has been turned topsy turvy with choice. Where we once knew where our destiny l ay, what our path was, and what was required of us to gain the graces of the div ine and enter into our conceived heaven, now we flounder in an ocean of choices. We painstakingly search through the plethora of spiritual options, dabbling in a little of this, trying a little of that. Our desperate hope being that we wil l find the perfect path, a saving grace that will fulfill all our material and s piritual desires, and conform with our own conceptions of the Truth. But this too reveals to us that there must be something wrong if we need to choose one religion or path over another, assuming the correctness of one an d the imperfections of another. Perhaps all of them fall short of the mark, the glory of God, the unnameable absolute. Perhaps it is our very search for an answ er outside of ourselves that must be questioned. Perhaps not knowing is a blessi ng after all. For what is it that we can fully rely on? What can we know for certain? Any opinion that we maintain can always be refuted by someone else. Any set of rules, ideas, techniques, philosophies, theories, vows, ethics, will always clas h with that of another. Our existence in the world is always accompanied by pola rities of opposites, especially when it comes to beliefs. But again, what can we know for sure? Even the existence of anything out side of ourselves can not be ascertained. God, heaven, hell, truth - are not pro vable to oneself from an outside source. In fact, the existence of the world its elf, as a tangible reality, is unproveable. For instance, you could be dreaming at this moment. Few people are able to distinquish dream from reality while in a dream. Or perhaps your whole worldly existence is some kind of a projection as if a movie, like if you were merely a brain in a belljar somewhere. Even many sc ientists suggest that this so-called reality may be much more spacial illusion t han hard fact, and that we may be more floating in an ocean of nothingness, incl uding our own bodies, than a concrete realm. But the world is filled with such ideas, many ancient and many new, but the truth, such as it is, can only be found in one place. It is the only thing t hat can be taken as a certainty. It is the one thing that everyone shares in com mon. That is the fact of their own existence as awareness. Each person knows tha t they are. They have always known that they are. Each persons experience of the mselves as existing has remained constant for as long as they can remember. Cert ainly the ideas they hold, the goals they strive for, even the complexity of the ir thoughts has changed, but the fact of their very existence is a constant that is never questioned. It is the questioning of this existence that must take pla ce. It is the only thing that we can really be sure of, and it must be investiga ted thoroughly and continuously. What is the method for this inquiry? One must investigate as to what is this 'I'. Prior to everything is the simple sense of existing as 'I'. But what is it? Where is it? When and where does it begin and end. Remember here, you're not seeking your ideas and thoughts, but that I-ness which witnesses all thought s. What some might call 'I Am' the simple, pure awareness which witnesses and pe

rceives all. Delve into this! Rest in this! And you will find the only true pat h which means anything - your Self! Truth Beyond Belief A Subjective Inquiry into Life Belief. Everything we do is based on it. In fact, everything we say, t hink, or feel is centered around our own belief system. But what is belief? The first definition given in Webster's is: " a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing." Okay, it's a state of mind, or worse yet, a habit of the mind. I believe it's a nice day. I belie ve in the inherent goodness of people. I believe in God. I believe that people should be kind to each other. I believe that chocolate is better than vanilla. I believe that early to bed and early to rise make a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. I believe that hush puppies are ugly shoes. I believe that the movie Ga ndhi is more spiritual than Ferris Beuller's Day Off. I believe that for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows. Big deal. Every single one of these a nd the literally millions of other beliefs I hold as a habit in my mind can be d irectly refuted by someone, probably many people. Their logic, reasoning or emo tional appeal regarding their beliefs may or may not be better than mine. Howev er, their beliefs are also nothing more than a state, or habit of mind. Now what about religion? (You may substitute faith, philosophy, ideal li festyle, etc.) All great religions (etc.) are based in Truth. However, they a re practiced as a belief. Let me say that again. All great religions are based in Truth but are practiced from belief. Truth and belief are not the same th ing. The Truth is absolutely beyond beliefs. Even if the beliefs correspond t o the Truth, the belief is but a dim reflection of the Truth. For instance, th e Tao Te Ching says (more or less) "The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao." The Bhagavad Gita tells us that, "There is a banyan tree with its roo ts up and branches down. The real form of this tree cannot be perceived in thi s world." In other words, this is the world of misperception, and as long as w e exist within this world we are bound to persist, as a habit of mind, in the re alm of misperceptions and concepts. The mind is like a lens through which the light of Truth may shine. The more colored gels and filters there are over that lens, the more tainted is the light that shines through. Now what happens in the mind is similar. It is filled with concept gels and belief filters that obs truct the direct flow of light. Worse yet, the mind itself is an obstruction to direct experience of Truth as it must perceive Truth as an objective thing. I 'm told God is in Heaven. Sounds good to me, and I take it as a belief. Howeve r, each word is a concept to me, not Truth. I have a concept about God. God is the creator, therefore He must be real old. God is everywhere. Everything is God. God is in your heart.. Even more concepts about God. Now where is Heaven ? It's up there. It's everywhere. It's where you make it. It's where dreams come true. Heaven is within. More concepts. Where is within? What is in? For that matter, what is "is"? Every word is a concept. It is a symbol or rep resentation for what, in fact, is. There is a very distinct differentiation be tween an object, its name, and our mental image of that. And the mind, by natur e, is objective. That is, it sees and describes objects apart from itself and t herefore cannot in actuality, in Truth, experience that object as it is, in a su bjective way. An objective experience is indirect. A subjective experience is d irect. Let's give an analogy. I can describe to you what it is like to ride in a sports car. I can describe it in such detail that you can practically feel t he wind in your hair, smell the upholstery, experience the vibration of the tire s against the road. All concept. Thought patterns in your mind simulating Truth . Objective experience. Or I could put you in a sports car, give you the keys and say, "have at it," and let you directly experience those things. Subjectiv e experience. In Truth, that so called subjective experience is also an objecti ve experience, because it is taken in through our senses and mind which are them selves barriers to the direct experience, and thus we perceive ourselves driving the car objectively. But this is just an analogy. How about another? This i

s more along the lines of a direct experience. I can either hand you an orange and say, "smell it, feel it, eat it," which is an indirect experience, objective , or I can say, "be this orange. Directly experience it." Now this is a subjec tive experience, if you can do it. Actually, even the word experience throws u s off because it implies a subject/object relationship. Someone or something i s experiencing someone or something else. So - be an orange. Truth is the same way. I can tell you what I believe Truth is, what God is, what the world is. I can quote from great authorities and from scriptures around the world. I can present evidence with startling logic and reasoning, un til you too are absolutely convinced and ready to give your life for my cause, b ut it will only be a belief, a concept, an objective perception or misperception of the Truth. I may or may not have experienced the Truth, but no matter how many people I convince through non direct means, they will be experiencing belie fs, not truths. Now what has generally happened in the past is that someone has experien ced the Truth. The Truth, being outside of the confining world of language, is self evident to that individual, however it must be communicated, and for the mo st part is communicated in words. Occasionally, someone will communicate in a d ifferent way, such as Buddha holding up a flower or Jesus feeding the multitude. But for the most part what we get is words. We grab onto those words and hold on for dear life. Like trying to grab the reflection of the moon in a pond, it "ain't" the real thing. Truth, however, is available to us. It is as close to us as our breath or our heart beat. It is the very fabric of life. But, unless you directly exp erience this (be the orange) it is just another concept, a belief. There are m ethods for directly experiencing Truth, and many of the better religions and phi losophies have those methods built within them, although they are often lost wit hin the dogmas, concepts and personality cultism. The problem is that many of t hese methods are themselves indirect, unclear, and often very, very slow, taking maybe years, decades or lifetimes to achieve the goal. There actually is a me thod by which one can directly experience the Truth, Self, Enlightenment, God, t he Kingdom of Heaven within, the Christ Consciousness, whatever you want to term it, in a very short time, in fact a matter of two or three days. It's called ClearPoint and it incorporates a powerful technology of lectures, instructions an d primarily, direct inquiry to take you beyond beliefs, beyond concepts and misp erceptions. It is a quantum shift in consciousness to a direct, subjective expe rience of Truth. Truth beyond belief! Part III Spiritual Sharings Emptiness & Fullness Sunyata neti neti asti purvata iti iti asti "Emptiness is 'not this not this' Fullness is 'this this." There is a certain discernment of emptiness and fullness in the living awareness of "That." Nisargadatta Maharaja said it as, "When I see that I am nothing it is wisdom and when I see that I am everything, that is love, and between these two I flow." It is the same with neti neti (not this, not this) and iti iti (this,this). In the beginning the path of knowledge, jnani's approach is neti neti - I am not th is, I am not that, as he gradually brings himself to the recognition of what rem ains - the Self which is permanent and ever present and which is experienced dir ectly as emptiness in relation to what was before. This is wisdom. The recognit ion of the emptiness of being and all that arises within that. The true bhakta or devotee works from the apparently other direction, seeing 'it i iti', this is God and this too is God, gradually enlarging the circle to the r

ecognition that indeed All is God, All is the Fullness of the Divine, and nothin g is excluded from that, including oneself. Once either of these paths is followed to its source and recognized, the opposit e is obvious and apparent. There is no distinction. Emptiness is Fullness. Fulln ess is Emptiness. In this there is complete Peace. Comparisons I was recently reading some material from a friend's website about what he is do ing in South America - his adventures, realizations, insights, thoughts, etc. an d sometimes it seems that others are doing much while we are doing little. Altho ugh we are all expressions/expansions of the Absolute, still there is a tendency to compare with "others" in what one is doing, who one appears to be, their 'su ccesse', etc. It brings to mind how, in relationship to the Absolute, and knowin g that we are 'one thing' going on, how is one to relate to the apparent 'others ' and one's 'own' life. The reality is that the pure "I" has no control over th e 'life' that one is living. All of this takes place as nature weaves itself aut omatically according to the three modes. And yet, that part of us which appears to make choices, to act in the world, must appear to choose the higher principle s. While giving up what would be 'selfish' desires, including the desire for enl ightenment or awakening, one must act in such a way as to encourage the awakenin g of others. This is the true Bodhisattva vow. Rather than the idea of continui ng in suffering and putting off one's own enlightenment until all others are enl ightened, put off any thought of your own enlightenment, while working for the e nlightenment of all sentient beings. This in itself is enlightenment, or more ac curately, living in enlightened & awakened presence. When we are free of all des ires of the mind, we live in Presence, in the Absolute, in the Divine. Pure pres ence of Being, free from even concepts of I and others, but only being and expr essing Divinity is the Fire of the Absolute which dissolves all egoistic tendenc ies. Don't think "I" and enlightenment is. Seek for enlightenment, and you are automa tically in bondage. Be in the Present Moment and recognize the Absolute. There i s no one there to be enlightened or in bondage. Live in the past or future and y ou continue to chase dreams in a dream world. Certainty and Doubt Everything in the universe is a concept on the level of the mind. Whenever we n ame anything, label it, we have removed it from the unity of reality and placed it into a conceptual box, whether it is things, thoughts, or emotions. We call i t tree, or person, or anger, or good or bad. Beyond thought, the substratum in w hich thought arises, is "that". Unfortunately, the moment you name it you also c onceptualize it, whether you call it God, That, the Absolute, Presence. However, certain concepts are useful to point the way, including God, Presence, Absolute , and so on. They hint at that un-nameable pure awareness. Enlightenment and bo ndage are also useful concepts. Not that we become addicted to the concepts. Not that we create elaborate stories about what it means to be enlightened or bound . Because then both remain in duality and enlightenment is only another concept - not a reality. True enlightenment is beyond the dualistic concepts of enlight enment and bondage, nirvana and illusion. However, maintaining the mindset of en lightenment; by recognizing that enlightenment is the already, ever present awar eness, prior to concepts, keeps us focused on that pure awareness. Similarly ce rtainty and doubt are concepts which can be beneficial or have adverse affects. The certainty of Awareness, of Presence, of Enlightenment assists us, again, in the recognition of that ever present state. However, doubt is one of the greate st enemies, for even if we have tasted that reality, glimpsed pure awareness, do ubt arises and tells us that it is not that. Doubt takes many forms, but primari ly it manifests as Enlightenment being something far away, only for great saints , that can never be achieved by the likes of me, or there must be more than this peace, this presence, this love I experience right now. It maintains Enlightenm

ent as an object to be attained by a worthy subject. It says that I have not yet searched hard enough, have not suffered enough, have not fasted and meditated e nough. But doubt is another concept. It is an illusion. Where does doubt arise? To whom does doubt arise? Doubt, along with all thoughts, arise IN awareness. Yo u are that awareness, right now, eternally, in this and every moment. Be aware o f the awareness. Keep coming back to the fire of this awareness whenever any tho ught (especially doubt) arises. By the continuous returning to pure awareness it self, then doubts too will be burnt in this fire and only pure awareness ever re mains. Why am I unhappy? Question: Why am I unhappy? Answer: You are unhappy because you want. Desire is the cause of all unhappiness . You desire some thing that you do not have. You desire to be rid of some thing or circumstance that you do have. You even desire to be free from unhappiness a nd desire to be enlightened. You may even desire to be free of the desire for en lightenment, understanding that this too is a desire of the ego. But it is this very craving, this desiring that makes you unhappy. The happiness that you do ha ve comes when there is no desire. In the moment that a desire is fulfilled, for that moment there is no longing and you are happy. But is it the fulfillment of the desire that brought happiness? No. No thing or person brings you happiness. It is not a commodity that you trade, or a magic dust that covers the things you get. In the moment of fulfilling a desire, nothing is wanted. For that moment y ou are at peace, and the innate happiness that you are is simply recognized. But very quickly, the mind arises to want something more, something different, some thing better, and again the happiness, the peace seems to be gone. In reality, i t is still there. It is always there because it is who you are. It is simply obs cured by the desires, the attachments and aversions, like so many clouds that ob scure the infinite vastness of the sky. But stop for a moment your desires. Sim ply recognize that these desires arise in awareness and that awareness is what y ou are. This awareness has no desires or aversions. Desires and aversions arise in this awareness. Everything arises in this awareness. Rest in this awareness and you are eternally happy. What Are You Searching For? What is it that you are searching for? What is it that you really want? Is ther e something, some one thing, that will finally and completely fulfill your deepe st need, your hunger, the feeling that there is something more? A feeling that s omething is not quite right, and you just can't put your finger on it, no matter how many things and interests you pursue, no matter how much knowledge you gain ? There is a popular Indian story of 10 men who have just crossed the river and wa nt to be sure that they are all still there. So one man counts each of the othe r men, and counts only 9. So another man also counts each man, but also forgets himself and counts only to 9. Similarly each man, counting each of the others but forgetting himself, counts up to nine. "Where is the tenth man," they each cry. "Which of us has been lost to the river?" Finally, another man comes, and counting each of them in turn, shows them that they are all there - that none h as been lost - and that each simply forgot to look to their own selves. This is the teacher who says, what is it that you are counting on the outside? W hat is it that you are putting your faith in? You keep counting everything aroun d you as something that will make you happy, but you are forgetting the counter - the Self, your Self. What is that? Who is that? Inquire into that 'I' and fin d out who and what it is. Everything else is secondary to that. This is the fee ling that something is not quite right, that some thing is missing in your life. It is missing Self. You have gotten lost in the movie, in the dream, and forgot

ten that you are the watcher of it, the witness, the awareness itself. All of t he world, the phenomena, the thoughts, ideas and feelings, all arise in this awa reness which YOU ARE. Recognize the inconceivable and infinite nature of awaren ess itself. Don't define it, grasp after it, try to find pleasure in it or the things that appear in it. Simply recognize the awareness itself and that you are That. In this is infinite peace and in this everything is found to be PERFECT. What is Awareness? The question really should be, "what is NOT awareness?" Awareness cannot really be defined, for as soon as you try to define it, you limit it. Awareness really is the answer to the question rather than the question itself. When you stop i n all striving, look at your thoughts, your feelings, everything - simply notici ng all - where does it arise? It arises in your awareness. You are aware of the se things. So when you stop and ask who is aware, you find nothing more than the awareness itself. That awareness is you. But you have identified with everyth ing that arises IN the awareness, including the body and especially the mind. Yo u have assumed that because you are aware of this body, aware of these thoughts, ideas, feelings, and emotions, that they are you. You have assumed that there i s a boundary around you that includes awareness, mind body, THEN boundary and th e rest of the world. Inside the boundary is you and outside that is not you. B ut recognize that there is no such boundary. No such distinction. You are aware of your mind, your body, whatever your body is touching, the room the body is in , the sounds and sights around. All of these things are equally happening IN aw areness. You are aware of the mind, the body, the building, the world. You are t he awareness itself. When you dream, the entire world within your dream is your own projection. Few p eople will deny this. You create that world in your dream - your dream body, th e dream thoughts, the dream world, the dream people. All of it is created in you r dream awareness. Your 'waking' state is simply another form of dream. All of the experiences are simply more projections of the awareness you are, right now in this moment. If you let go of what arises in the awareness and recognize the awareness itself, something miraculous happens. You find that awareness is unbou nded. It has no location. It has no time. It is infinite and that all that arise s in awareness IS awareness. It is all time and space and beyond all time and s pace. It is pure being, awareness and bliss. It is supreme peace, and it reaches everywhere. So stop looking for fulfillment somewhere else. Stop searching for anything other than what is always present, right here, right now. Recognize th e awareness that you are. Dive deeply into the awareness itself. And not just wi th eyes closed in meditation, but whatever you are doing, at every moment. Dont create a duality of meditating/not meditating, in here/out there. Recognize that awareness is eternally present. It is Presence itself, and you are that! From Yoga Vasishta rama svatmavicaro'yam ko'ham syamitirupakah citadurdrumavijasya dahne dahnassmrt ah "Oh Rama, this inquiry, "Who Am I?" is the quest of the Self and is said to be t he fire that burns up the seed of the poisonous tree of conceptual thought." Yog a Vasishta Ramayana This quote encapsulates what is ClearPoint self inquiry. As one inquires into t he 'I', and recognizes awareness, the Self, it is this fire of Awareness which b urns away mind, concepts, and karma itself. As a stick is used to stir the emb ers of a fire and is itself burned away, similary, the mind, or the concept of ' I', as it inquires into Self, into the source of all, into pure awareness, is bu rned away by the fire of this awareness. One moves past conceptualizations. On e directly experiences the field of unicity or pure being or God. No longer are their questions, as they too are conceptual thought. It is the place where all

questions are answered, not necessarily in the way one might imagine, but in ab solute and total satisfaction. Otherwise, one set of answers too often generate s another set of questions, and the questioning and answering goes on ad infinit um. Thus it is the poisonous tree of conceptual thought. But when the mind is q uiescent in pure awareness, the very seed of this tree is burned up. All questio ns are answered and one is free - free from suffering and duality. Abhyaasa and Vairagyam In Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, yoga and enlightenment, there are tw o terms which are found in many texts relating to the path of awakening. They ar e abhyaasa and vairagya. Abhyaasa literally means practice, habituation or vigi liance of awareness. Presently we are habituated to our own concepts and belief s. In fact, Websters dictionary defines a belief as a habit of the mind. We iden tify with our particular belief structures out of habit. We become them. We are these beliefs, as far as we are concerned. But we need to release ourselves from these beliefs if we want to recognize Truth. We must systematically let go of t hese beliefs as we recognize them arising. We do this by focusing on the Self, t he Absolute, by asking this question, Who am I?" and deeply exploring the Realit y behind this so-called I. The constant remembrance or habituation of this prac tice is called abhyaasa. We maintain a vigilance of awareness on this I-ness. But our attention will stray. We will re-identify with our mind, our beliefs and ideas, which will again carry us away into various stories about our life. The recognition of being non-vigilant, of not contemplating the Self is vairagyam. Vairagyam means dispassion. It is a recognition that you are, in the moment, n ot being vigilant in your awareness. In the moment of recognition that you are n ot contemplating the Self, you simply notice that, and bring your attention back to the "I". The yoga sutras define vairagyam as 'the declaration of mastery ov er the thirsting for those things seen and heard.' In other words, the mind has a tendency to return to hankering over things it has experienced in the past, or that it wants in the future. They are not things in the present moment. When th ese desires arise, you simply recognize them, recognize them that your vigilance of awareness has slipped, and bring yourself back to the recognition of the "I" that is aware, or to Awareness itself - back to abhyaasa, or habituation to Sel f. As Ramana Maharshi put it, "If the time spent thinking about objects not th e Self, were spent on inquiring into the Self, Self realization would occur in a very short time." When you recognize you are thinking about objects not the Se lf, you practice vairagya, dispassion, letting go, and return to abhyaasa, habit uation, inquiring into the Self, and Self realization occurs in a very short tim e. Beliefs - A Function of Duality Question: Why are( all?) beliefs a function of duality? Do all beliefs come from the ego? All beliefs are a function of the mind. In fact, even Websters defines a belief as a habit of the mind. Obviously a habit has no reality on its own. It is a co nstruct. Some beliefs may mimic reality, just like the image of you in a photo l ooks like you, but is not you. A belief in the Absolute, for instance, may conv ince you to seek for it, but the belief is different than the direct experience of it. Ego, mind and thoughts are essentially synonomous. The ego, in Sanskrit Ahamkara - "I maker", is essentially the cumulation of all thoughts and beliefs about what "I" is -man, body, mind, thoughts, doctor, spiritual, soul, energy... But all words, are just words, and all words are the realm of the mind, and th e realm of duality. What is up and down, you and me, but something that is dist inquished by the mind. Like Hellen Keller said, 'The moment I got the word 'wat er' the world came into existence.' Without the words which make up the beliefs , which make the distinctions between the dualities, there are no dualities. Th ere is only awareness and everything that arises in awareness - which without wo

rds, is also only awareness. The Remedy for Suffering Every day, in fact, every moment, we must ask ourselves this question, Am I happ y? Am I at peace? Am I blissful? If the answer is no, then we must ask ourselves why? Why am I suffering? What is causing the suffering? There is only one answer to this question. The answer is always desire. We are d esiring for something to be different than it is. We are desiring to have someth ing which we presently do not have, or we desire something that we have to go aw ay. We desire that the people, things, and circumstances in our environment (or awareness) should be a certain way, and not be some other way. In other words, w e wish to be the supreme controller. We wish, as conditioned entities, to usurp the position of the Absolute, assuming that our mental concepts and ideas of how the universe should be around us are superior to the reality provided by the Ab solute. We are so dedicated to this idea of controlling, to changing everyone an d everything around us, that we create whole philosophies around it, with the in tention of making us powerful controllers, the masters of our destiny, the ruler s of our fates. All this, in spite of the fact that we can't even control our b asic emotions, eradicate a common cold, or eliminate the most basic needs of the body like eating or going to the bathroom. All of this results in nearly six bi llion people trying to manipulate the universe to their favor, each attempting t o lord it over the wishes and desires of the other billions of people, (along wi th the trillions of other living entities and the physical universe itself). This is the definition of illusion - to accept an unreality for a reality. In Sa nskrit, it is called Maya, literally that which is not, and one of the prerequis ites for awakening from the illusion is the ability to discriminate what is real from what is unreal. However, to find the source of unreality is relatively easy, because all of the unrealities, the stories, the cooncepts, ideas, and beliefs are predicated on a single unreality - that I exist as an individual person, separate and distinct f rom all else. This is a habit, a conditioning of the mind. It is the ego, which in Sanskrit is called ahamkara or 'I maker'. It is only this false I which suffe rs. It is made up of these concepts and beliefs that life should be a certain wa y. It is trained and conditioned by our parents, teachers, friends and society, others who are conditioned, into accepting a system of rights and wrongs, goods and bads and then filters everything through these concepts. Suffering is a resu lt of judging experience through these filters. Whatever happens in life gets ev aluated as to whether it fits into your concepts of good or bad. If it fits, it is good. If it doesn't, it is bad. If you get enough people with the same idea o f good together, you have a political party, or perhaps a religion. We are right and they are wrong. But all of this is predicated on this single notion that I am right, and this arises around the root mistake that 'I' is a separate entity. So the remedy to suffering is to first investigate into what is this 'I'. Explo re it. Disect it. Pull it apart and see what it is and if it even really exists. What you will find is that this "I" is only made up of the concepts, and what s ees or experiences the concepts, but is itself free from all concepts and limita tions, is the awareness. And this awareness is itself eternally free, eternally limitless, and eternally peaceful. This is the remedy to all suffering. Slaying Doubt with Knowledge In the Gita, Krishna tells us "There is nothing in this world as purifying as kn owledge. The one perfect in yoga in time realizes himself, in the Self. One who is faithful and devoted, who withdraws from the senses attains this knowledge, and having attained knowledge attains the supreme peace. The ignorant, without faith, and doubting the self are destroyed. For one who doubts there is not thi s world, nor the next, nor happiness. Therefore, slaying this doubt, born of ig

norance, with the sword of knowledge, and resting in the heart (of awareness) re sort to yoga (union) and arise!" Gita 4.38,39,40,42 Knowledge is the supreme purifier. It is through knowledge that all impurities a re burned, for knowledge is the fire of awareness. First comes faith. In all en deavors, spiritual or material, comes faith in the process, faith in the outcome . One would not begin any endeavor without faith that the desired outcome will b e acheived. So one begins the process with faith, and then follows it through w ith devotion, determination, steadfast resolution. Then one controls, or withdra ws the senses. In the spiritual quest, the question is 'Who am I?' As one reco gnizes that they are not the senses, not the mind, they withdraw from the outwar d senses and question more deeply within - 'What is this I?' Through this proce ss, or non process, one recognizes what is and has always been present - the pur e awareness of being. Recognizing this, and resting ever deeper in this, one ac hieves the supreme peace. However, for one who does not have 1. the initial fai th, or 2. the steadfast determination to do it, or 3. does not get past the mind or senses, then, due to either pre-existing doubts, or doubts arising, they wil l never achieve happiness - not in material existence, spiritual existence, anyw here. Their life consists of confusion, suspicions, and fears. So therefore Kri shna says, 'Resting in the heart, having cut this doubt with the sword of knowle dge, be situated in union with the self and arise." So as one questions more and more deeply into who they are, doubts will begin (or continue) to arise - "Why am I doing this? What good is it? The moments of peace are fleeting. Perhaps I haven't realized anything. Am I just wasting my time? Perhaps there is some be tter teaching/teacher somewhere else. Perhaps if I just read one more book or at tend one more lecture." Thus the doubts arise to pull us away from the heart, a way from awareness, away from knowledge. But taking the sword of knowledge, or b y resting in the awareness, we can see these doubts as what they are - simply do ubts, simply thoughts that arise, without meaning and without power. Holding str ong to the determination of resting in the heart in awareness, the doubts are sl ain by the purity of awareness itself - the sword of knowledge. Then arise! Aris e to your pure Self, to your pure Being, to your Divinity! This is the promise of Krishna and all the saints. The Paradox of Spiritual Desire Where does the desire for awakening come from? The recognition of the potential for spiritual awakening comes from Spirit itself, or from the Absolute. You are that which is Absolute, which is perfect Being, Pure Awareness, Absolute Bliss. However, due to identification with mind, conformity to the concepts about ones elf, one fails to recognize that which Is. This creates a great schism. On the one hand, because you are the Absolute, you are Divine, you recognize that behin d all the muck and confusion that you are infinite being, awareness and happines s. However, because you are identifying with that which is temporary, you feel inadequate to what you know you really are. And the risk of letting go of all t he little stuff, the temporary identifications, the false 'I', terrifies us. Lik e Nelson Mandella said, "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our dee pest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." Why does this scare us? Beca use it means giving up the little self. It means abandoning all of the rights an d wrongs that we have so carefully held to which we think give our lives meaning . However, in the midst of all of this, by some unfathomable grace, arises a gl impse of the recognition that we are greater than all this - that we may indeed be divine. This recognition arises in the mind as an idea and a desire. The ide a is that somehow 'I' have fallen from grace, from something bigger and better, and the desire says that 'I' should (or MUST) find a way back to that. Then one begins the process of 'spiritual searching'. You look for a religion that fits your idea of what God or the Absolute looks like. You settle upon a teaching tha t conforms with your own personal belief structure about your own goodness or ba dness. You make progress on your path based on how well you conform to the new t eachings you have accepted.

You have only jumped from the frying pan into the fire. You now have a whole ne w set of concepts that, in your mind, are MORE important because they deal with the most important questions of existence: Who am I? What is God? How do I get t here? What actions should I perform? Who is spiritual and who is not? All of th ese concepts are still based on the idea that 'I' am somehow flawed. 'I' am impe rfect. 'I' MUST do something to regain my divine status. But friends, the only thing one must do is to STOP. Stop searching! Stop struggling! Stop fighting wi th everything. RECOGNIZE what is always and already present. Recognize what is t his awareness. Recognize that this awareness has no boundaries. Recognize that y ou are infinite and that all thoughts, all ideas, the mind, the body, the very w orld, all arise within your awareness. Be Who You Are! Be Happy! Fate VS. Free Will The question of free will versus fate is one that is ever being asked. But this very question is only the tip of a very large iceberg of another question - Are we autonomous individuals, the creations of some greater, more powerful intellig ence, or is our individuality an illusion? And with that question arises a strea m of other questions like - 'If we were created, by whom?' 'What is the purpose of this creation?' 'Are we co-creators?' and 'If this individuality is an illus ion, why does it seem so real?' 'If individuality doesn't exist, what am I?' 'Ho w do I negate this sense of individuality?' 'Who created this sense of individua lity?' And a million more questions just like this one. First, if these are the kinds of questions that arise for you, consider yourself lucky, because for many millions of people, such questions never arise. The Git a tells us that out of thousands of people, one may be interested in Truth, and of thousands of people interested in Truth, one may actually look for it, and of thousands of those who look, one may find it. So, be glad and take to the task wholeheartedly. But who will take to this task? By stating that one should seek for Truth, am I suggesting that there IS individuality - an individual person who should seek pe rfection? Or that there is an individual who should seek to obliterate their ow n individual identity to recognize their Absolute nature? See how quickly the q uestions arise. Everyone wants answers to questions. They want to have their fea rs removed. They want to KNOW! Once they know, they can be the knowers! They wi ll 'know' Truth. But Truth is never had in such ways. One of the few things that nearly every religion has had in common is the ideal of surrender. To whom, to what, or how one surrenders may differ. The terminolog y varies. But always is the idea of letting go, surrendering, accepting things a s they are. The paradox is that one must become a searcher, must seek after Trut h, must strive hard, and then, one must surrender, let go, stop searching, and s imply accept. Surrender to the Absolute - Rest in Divine Nature! Recognize that pure awareness of being that has always, already been present. There is nothing to search for outside of what is already present. So the answer to the question, is there free will or is there fate is - YES! If you accept that there is individuality, or even if it appears to you that there is individuality and free will, then you must strive for that which is the high est ideal. And striving for this purity, this perfection, you will ultimately c ome to the highest ideal - surrender, letting go, accepting the Divinity that is Everything. Then the searching stops and you have come full circle. For indeed, doesn't the circle suggest a more positive spiritual model than a straight line - with Evil at one end and Good at the other? Does not an all inclusive circle, with no boundary, no limits, only infinite Absolute Divinity more perfectly sug gest the absolute Wholeness of God? Recognize your Self as that Wholeness and qu estions cease, free will ceases, fate ceases and you rest in what is! Any quest ions?

Fighting the Ego In any great endeavor, for every great accomplishment, in the winning of every w ar, there must always be an enemy. It is the nature of duality, the nature of th e game, that for every good guy there must be a bad guy. It gives you a reason o r an excuse for why things aren't perfect. It allows you to be a victim to the s trength of the great enemy who is always undermining your endeavors. The game of spirituality is no different. I am trying to go to Heaven, to serve Allah, to find my Self, to recognize the Absolute, or to rest in Pure Awareness. But there is always an enemy to this end. Depending on the road we take, we na me this enemy Satan, or Maya, or the Temptor, or illusion, or duality, or ego. W e are always personifying our enemy, labeling it or creating a god out of it. Th e bigger the enemy, the greater we become by conquering it. We perceive that if we, too, can conquer the enemy, then we also will become one of the great saints of all time who has overcome the ferocious enemy SATAN, or MAYA, or EGO!! And if we can't, we have an excuse as to our failure. My teacher used to say, "If yo u want to hunt, try for rhinoceros. If you want to thieve, go for the government reserve. If you fail, everyone will say it couldn't be done, and if you succeed , everyone will say, How Great!" But what is the enemy? Where is it? Who is it? In the advaitic approach, people call it 'ego', the false self, the illusory 'I'. They say it can't be conquered , or it pops up, or it hides itself, or they can't seem to conquer it. But the v ery name should give you a clue. It is the FALSE self, the ILLUSORY 'I'. It does n't exist. It is an idea only. You can't fight an enemy that doesn't exist. It is only a label, a concept. Ego is an idea. And WHO is doing the fighting?? That which claims to fight the ego is itself the ego. Is it a double agent, a spy, who has snuck into the ranks of the good guy? No! The whole fight is an illusion. And illusion doesn't mean another enemy. It means that which doesn't exist. So, all of this fighting is a self created fight of one concept against another - an illusion fighting an illusion. Ramana Maharshi used to describe it as the policeman mind trying to catch the robber mi nd. Once it is caught, both policeman and robber disappear. Why, because they n ever really existed. They were both illusory creations of mind itself. And where is all of this happening? The whole game of good and bad is happening in Awareness. Just like when you watch a movie, the good guys and the bad guys do not really exist but are only a play of light on the movie screen, so are th e good thoughts and bad thoughts of the spiritual fight simply a projection in A wareness. Again, this is why the Sanskrit word 'Lila' is so nice. Lila means Div ine Play. Both the good and the bad are Awareness only. It is a divine play. It is One thing appearing to be duality, multiplicity. It is all Lila. So where has the enemy gone. Does it bow its head in submission and move to the rear? No. It is seen through. It is exposed. When light shines into the shadows, they simply disappear, for they were only the absence of light. Ego is less tha n that. It is only a label, much like we draw an imaginary line on the ground an d say this part is MY country and that part is YOUR country. There is no line. T here is no border. It was all imagination. It is only a pretending game. So stop pretending! Recognize that all is God, all is Lila, all is Divine, all is Aware ness, all is Brahman, all is the Absolute, all is THAT, all is THIS. (Just be ca reful of what you 'label' it.) We have seen the 'Enemy', and IT doesn't exist! Who Am I? To fully understand the nature of Self Inquiry, what it is, and why it is so imp

ortant, we must begin at the beginning. What can we know for certain? What realities can we be sure of. We are told a wi de variety of things regarding life, existence, God, mind, body, birth, death, s pirituality, right, wrong, happiness, heaven, hell, bondage, freedom. Informatio n and ideas bombard us from every direction, and if we open our mouths to ask a question, immediately everyone has an answer. A thousand answers from a thousand sources, and though they may repeat, overlap, or coincide in certain areas, in essence they are all different. We are forced into making choices? The difficul ty is compounded if we are really wanting to know Truth, if we are seeking ultim ate answers. The answers that we accept, the path we choose may mean our ultimat e liberation, freedom, eternal bliss in heaven, or our eternal damnation, bondag e, ignorance, and destruction. I must choose! My very life, my existence, my ve ry soul depends on it! It is a great wonder that more people don't go totally i nsane in the search for truth. But there is an escape valve which actually helps to relieve the pressure, or so me of the pressure of so many choices. That is that aspect of ego or intellect w hich makes me certain that I am right, or what I choose is right, and everything else is wrong. So I make a choice and decide that THIS path is the right one. I may even give some of the others the benefit of the doubt and say that it, too, is partially right, but still, my path is a little better. I must do this to ma intain my sanity, otherwise I will be eternally second guessing, "Is this really the best path, or should I be following that one over there?" But which one is true? It still remains that there is EITHER a hierarchy of phil osophies and truths, some being more thorough and at a higher level, OR only one philosophy is correct and the others are wrong, OR all of them are correct, OR all of them are wrong, OR they all share some kernal of truth in common, OR some other mixture of the above. And understand here that we're not speaking of jus t two or three major religions, but thousands and millions of religious ideals a nd philosophies, as well as social, policial, scientific, economic, historical, theological, archeological, etc.etc.etc. viewpoints. The result is billions upon billions of concepts all clamoring for acceptance like so many political candid ates seeking your vote. But what do we know? What is for certain? What aspects of life can we take as g uaranteed? To keep this short we'll skip down to the basic assumptions - That y ou exist, in a body, in a world. But, when you dream, you also exist in a body i n a world. But what happens in that world doesn't correlate with what happens in this. So that is either a separate body and a separate world, or it is a projec tion in your mind. Therefore, we can't verify the existence of that world, and hence we also can't verify the existence of this world and body. They may just a s easily be projections of the mind, or something illusory. What it really come s down to, the only thing you can be relatively certain of, is that you exist. E verything else may be illusion, projection, quantum vibrations, temporal/spatial anamolies, etc. BUT, the one thing which seems to be unmistakable is that there is a someone or something observing all of this. There is a something which we have termed "I" which is the witness of everything - the mind and thoughts, the emotions and feelings, the experiences that arise through the mind and the five senses, everything. And what is this "I"? This is the key to what self inquiry is about. It stops with the assumptions and blind acceptance of concepts - good or bad - and simply inquires into what is this I-ness, this witness, this awareness that exists pri or to mind, prior to senses, prior to all ideas and beliefs. Letting go of all e lse and diving into this awareness is asking the primordial question, "Who am I? " And the answer must be directly experienced, not accepted from someone else o r concocted by the mind. Any explanation in words, like mind, soul, spirit, or e go are all only more concepts. Release all concepts, all thoughts, and simply re

st in this Awareness, this "I"ness, and directly experience what it is, where it is, even if it is. Explore what it is to be Awareness, without name or form, wi thout boundaries and perfect peace. Let go into this, right now, and eternally. Awareness is Everything Awareness is everything and everything is awareness. There is nothing, absolute ly nothing, outside of awareness. When you recognize that you are this awarenes s, this is Self Realization. Typically people are caught in the assumption that their awareness is situated w ithin their body, within their head or heart. But when you look at what awarenes s is, when you remove your attention from everything that is IN awareness to the awareness ITself, you leave the concepts and rest in the natural state. Ask yourself, "Is awareness in the body, or is the body in awareness?" Another way to say this is "are you aware of your body?" If you are aware of your body, then your body is IN your awareness. If awareness was in the body, you would b e aware of the nature of the body - a wet, organic mass with muscle, blood vesse ls, etc. But the body is in your awareness, as is everything else. People live in the assumption that awareness is confined by the body - that ther e is awareness and then mind and then body. Then you stop and the outside world begins. "I am awareness, mind, body and the universe is everything outside of th at." But the body, the mind, the universe, all arise in awareness. The awarene ss is not in the body, not in the mind, not in the universe. The body, mind and universe arise in awareness. You are aware of the body. You are aware of the m ind. You are aware of the universe. You are aware of your concepts. You are th e awareness. Try to find something outside of the awareness. Anything outside of awareness, you are aware of, so it really isn't outside of awareness. There is nothing that arises that does not arise in your awareness. So what is this a wareness? This is the question. When you ask the question, "Who am I?" and rem ove any concepts, all that is left is the awareness, an empty space within which everything arises. When you can rest in this naked awareness, pure awareness, what you find is the scriptures definition of the Absolute, or God: One is fully satisfied... There are no desires... One is outside of time and space... There are no questions (and therefore all questions are answered)... There is a recognition that one is not only the awareness but everything that ar ises in the awareness, and therefore everything - i.e. one with everything... Everything is Absolute fullness AND emptiness... Everything is perfect and complete EXACTLY as it is... But ultimately what one finds is one's Self, and within that is everything and n o longer a searching or a searcher! Enlightement is Ever Present Whenever anyone says that something is ever present, you get the impression that it is available any time - past, present or future. But ever present means just that - ever in the present. Both past and future and concepts. There has neve r been a past or a future. Can you identify when the past was, or when the futur e will be? If you insist that you remember past events, that you have memories in the past, or plans for the future, when do those occur? Always in the presen t. Any memories you have of the past, you have in the present. Any plans you ma ke for the 'future' you make in the present. No one has ever experienced the pa st or future. The only thing that is available to us is NOW. And yet people co

ntinually try to live in the past and future. Most of their lives are dedicated to living in the past and future. Many emotions are connected with stories about the past or future. People are co ncerned with how something in the past affected how they are today or will be to morrow. They are very concerned with how something today will affect them in the future, based on the fears of what happened in the past. They are ever dragging the events of the past and pushing them into the future to try to create a pres ent. But ultimately, they completely overlook the glory and beauty of the presen t moment, so engaged in all of the past-ing and future-ing. Fear, guilt, sorrow , greed, jealousy, all are connected with these stories around the past and futu re. But if in the moment, right now, you just stop and feel the moment, experience w hat is happening in the moment, be totally overcome by the moment, prior to sto ries, ideas, or thoughts of past and future, you will find that you are already happy, that you are totally peaceful, that there is no concern for the past or f uture, and that in the present moment itself, you are totally perfect. You, that which is aware, that which exists, is ever in the moment. In fact, past and fut ure only arise IN you. You are the background upon which past and future are bas ed. Without you, there is no past or future. The mind creates a distinction call ed past and one called future. But look carefully. You have always and eternall y existed in the perfect and present moment, even now, right now in this moment. Enlightenment is fully surrendering into that ever present moment. Thy Will Be Done Many times we have talked about the term 'surrender' and what it means. But how do we know if we are ourselves recognizing the reality of surrender. I say 'reco gnizing' since surrendering, in the realm of awareness, is more of a recognition than a 'doing'. There is a wonderful saying that says, "The best way to make G od laugh is to make plans." Douglas Harding, a seer in England, gives a wonderful description of the attitud es about Will in his book, 'Look for Yourself'. Writing about positive thinking , and the popular movement of controlling or 'co-creating' our universe, he desc ribes the three basic ways in which people approach Will. They are: 1. My will be done - I hope 2. My will be done - I insist 3. Thy will be done - I know The average individual has the attitude that they have very little control, but still they make plans and basically hope for the best while expecting the worst. They perform their various duties, attempting to get ahead, to some how find h appiness, peace, and success, and hoping that somehow, sometime, some thing, wil l come to a positive fruition. The second type of person, a vast majority in the new age groups have some small sense of the power they possess and insist that the world turns around them and they will indeed create the universe they want. They have positive affirmation s and various forms of magic to try to effectively shape the outcome of all of their movements to fulfill their desires. They insist that happiness, peace, po wer, success, prosperity, will be theirs! However, you will notice that the peo ple that have the most prosperity in these groups are the ones who teach it and charge large amounts to others to learn it. Although that's not even always tru e. Some years back there was an editor of a local alternative newspaper who qui t, in large part, because he was tired of teachers of prosperity workshops who c ouldn't pay for their advertisements, and time management workshops who couldn't get their ads in on time.

One difficulty with this type of attitude is that when you do make all this effo rt and fail, who do you blame? Either the technique, figuring it was worthless i n the first place, and go to find another way to control the universe. Or your self, so that now you have added shame, guilt, and worthlessness on top of your desires to control the universe. Or you blame God, for being in competition wit h you in the first place for control of the universe. The last attitude, 'Thy will be done - I know' is about surrender. It's not abo ut stopping all movement. That is not possible. The body/mind will continue to make action - eating, sleeping, working, seeking to maintain its survival throug h these and other methods. The action is not the problem. It is the attachment or identification with being the doer of these actions. A simple clue to the fa ct that you are not the doer is to wiggle your finger. Okay, now who's doing th at? No doubt you will say 'I am'. But I have not found one person who can tell me HOW they are doing it. Certainly people will explain the physiological, musc ular and neurological process that is happening, but not one has been able to sa y they are aware of making the process happen. Simply a thought arises "move the finger" and then the finger moves. Did you plan for everything that has happen ed to you during every moment of every day of the 'x' number of years since your birth. If not, who did? The truth is that we are not the doers, but the witne sses of the doing. When we plan events and they happen, we think, "how powerful I am." Of course, if we plan them and they fail, then suddenly some one is to blame. And consciously or unconsciously, it's usually ourselves and/or God. But what if we let the mind do its mind thing, the body do its body thing and Go d do the God thing, and we, that is the vast awareness, eternal seer, be as it i s - ever peaceful, satisfied in every moment, eternally happy, and infinitely bo undless, observing what has always, and will always, happen - the infinite dance of life. Then there is nothing to want, nothing to regret, nothing to strive fo r, nothing to push away. Everything is perfect and complete, as it is, has been, and ever will be. Removing Ignorance IS Enlightenment Enlightenment! The very word conjures up a vast array of images, from hoary sage s, naked mendicants, and bright faced robe-clad monks, to sweet Indian ladies, r oly-poly Buddhas, and even a few plain, old Westerners. But despite the fact tha t so many pictures come up, our concept of Enlightenment remains, deep down, "No t me, not this time, not this life, it's too big, I'm not good enough!" But the truth is that the only thing that stands in the way of Enlightenment is ignoran ce. And not ignorance as in 'you're stupid', but ignorance as in a lack of knowl edge. For instance, when you were a child, you did not have names for anything . You simply experienced everything. Each thing was then pointed out and named. "What's that?" "That's a tree." "What's that?" "That's a car." "What's that?" "That's a dog." Your ignorance was replaced by proper, though conceptual knowle dge of a thing. But what if someone had pointed at the car and said 'dog', and p ointed at the tree and said 'car', etc. Then your ignorance would not be based only on lack of knowledge but on misconceptional knowledge. You had been given t he wrong information and assumed it was true. Similarly, Enlightenment, as most people understand it, is also a misconception. It is a misconception based on t he larger misconception of who one truly is. So when people start seeking Enligh tenment, from the very beginning they are too often looking for the wrong thing or in the wrong direction. It's as if someone says "Go feed the dog" and you dum p Kibbles on the Buick. To a large extent, this can be turned around by simply gaining correct understanding which dispels the misconceptions, and shown what t he Truth is. But the nature of misconceptions is that we base our reality on the m. Our existence as independent entities is founded upon our misconceptions. We are unwilling to give them up without a fight. "If I stop giving Kibbles to the dog (Buick), it will die! " Or they check with their 'inner guides'. "My inner guides tell me that I should continue to feed the dog (Buick) Kibbles." But th

e dog, the Buick, the Kibbles are all conceptions. Enlightenment is a concept. Y ou are a concept, or who you think you are is. To find out who you really are, t o directly experience who you truly are, the first and most important thing is t o give up all of your concepts of who you think you are. You must be freed from all of your misconceptions to recognize Truth. In fact, when you remove all unreality, what you have left is Reality. And when you have released all misconce ptions about who you are, let go of who you're not, what is left is That which y ou are! The difficulty is that we believe our survival is based on who we think we are, and that if we give that up we'll die. Guess what, you will. But only to ignorance. And you'll be reborn to Truth. The Hub of a Wheel Imagine, a wheel lying on its side, much like an old wagon wheel, with spokes go ing out from the hub to the rim. In the center of that hub is the empty space in which the axle would go. But in this case we'll leave it empty - just empty spa ce. Now the human condition is very much like this wagon wheel. It is revolving aro und and around, the spokes going by, the world turning, so to speak. In the cen ter is that empty space of the hub, not moving at all. In fact, the empty space is what the entire wheel is placed in. It is simply that the hub defines a litt le piece of that empty space as 'hubness'. But in actuality, the 'hub' space is no different than the space beyond the outer rim of the wheel, OR the space that the wheel itself occupies. When asked to inquire into who they are, many people assume that they are their mind and thoughts, the ideas they possess of themselves. But in reality, those t houghts appear in the space. Who you are is the empty space that observes the mi nd. But so closely aligned to you is the mind (like the inner ring of the hub to the inner space) that you assume you are this inner ring, always right there, c onstantly turning, defining your boundaries. But recognize, where are these thou ghts coming from. Can you consciously control them all. Most of them simply appe ar. A thought pops up - zing, and you assume you thought it. Really it just appe ared and you only observed it. Zing - another one goes by. Zing - and another, l ike the spokes on the wheel. But the thoughts simply arise in this empty space. When you inquire further into 'Who am I?' prior to the thoughts, you realize th at you are this empty space that the thoughts arise in, and that this empty spac e (or awareness) has no boundaries, no limits, no defining principles accept its infinite expansive openness to whatever arises within it. It is exactly like t he space within which the wheel sits. The space is totally open to the wheel, wh ich then turns around the space in the center of the wheel, which the wheel itse lf defined. But the space is not the wheel. The wheel is in the space. Similarly , the thoughts, the body, even the entire universe, are all sitting in the space (or awareness) that you are. The space (awareness) itself is never judgemental, unhappy, sick, or bound. It is eternally open, free, peaceful, and unlimited. Don't be defined by what appears in your awareness, or what appears to define y our space! You are eternally free, unbound, expansive, and peaceful. Recognize t hat! A Response to a Letter Aja: On the way to work this morning the thought arose - It's the mind/ego which desi res enlightenment. Huh..... so, how does this work.......no one home to want e nlightenment except the mind/ego which isn't really "ME" anyway. So I'm confused. What is it I'm suppose to get? Does that make a ny sense? Love, N.

 Dear N. It makes perfect sense, and is a wonderful understanding of the paradox. Who, in deed, wants enlightenment? The Self? The Self is already the Self. It is perfe ct, complete, without desire, free, limitless. The Self can never want enlighten ment, because it is already that which we define as enlightened. However, the Self, which is the eternal seer of all, sees the mind/ego and ident ifies with it, due to the conditioning of the mind/ego. Does the mind/ego want enlightenment? Yes. When all other methods of achieving h appiness fail - money, fame, success, prestige, power, sex, relationships, healt hy body and mind - when all of these are experienced, and still there is sufferi ng, or when it is recognized through intelligent reasoning that none of these wi ll ultimate remove all suffering, then the mind/ego looks for something else to achieve its end. Eventually, through grace, it hears that enlightenment, nirvana , God consciousness will relieve all suffering and bring one ultimate peace and happiness. Also, because Self is always present, is always who you are, Self sh ines through, and in moments of quiet and stillness, we may briefly glimpse or r ecognize that Self, and recognize that it is our true home. So the mind/ego begi ns the search for enlightenment. The quest for enlightenment begins as an outside search. One seeks out teachers, books, teachings, religions, which will bring the Truth. And one begins to accu mulate more and more 'knowledge' about the Self and enlightenment. But all this knowledge is only more concepts in the mind/ego, and often becomes even more of a hindrance to understanding the Self. It is like adding more garbage, cleaner garbage if you will, onto the pre-existing pile of garbage. Or like white-washi ng a dilapidated building in hopes of bringing it to its pristine state. This ne w 'knowledge' is then held onto tightly as a belief system about Truth. And it i s held in the mind/ego. It is held by the very thing which obscures the Self. Th e Yoga Sutras tell us "yogas cittavritti nirodhah", that is: unity is achieved b y the elimination of modifications in awareness. The mind/ego IS the modificati ons in Awareness. The very ego which thinks it wants enlightenment is what obscu res recognition of the Self. This is why we continually come back to the Self to resting in Awareness, or Ramana would say, inquiring into the 'I'. By inquiri ng into this 'I', we are brought to rest in the Self itself, the source of who w e are. It is the letting go of all ideas and beliefs and even the desire for enl ightenment that arises in the mind and coming to rest in the source of it all, t he Self, the primordial Awareness, Pure Being. In that there is peace, an end to all illusion, confusion and questions. No Right or Wrong What if there was no right or wrong? What if all our ideas about what is good an d bad were false? If every notion of how things ought to be, how the world shoul d be, were simply in our imagination? What if every conception we held about ho w people should be, how they should act, and what they should do was completely inconsequential? Well, the reality is just that! No matter what you believe, it is those very ideas and beiefs that shape who you think you are, that are also limiting your true experience of who you really ar e. You are effected by your beliefs and those of the people around you. Most p eople have heard about the experiments of telling a teacher that the worst stude nts were the best and the best are the worst. The results were that the teacher treated the bad students as if they were good students and the good students as if they were bad. And in the end the students reacted to how they were treated - the good students became bad and the bad students became good. Similarly, we are totally effected by the beliefs around us, and the beliefs that we put on ou

rselves. The biggest belief that we put on ourselves, and that we let others pu t on us, is that we are limited, that we are bound, that we are in ignorance, an d that we are suffering. We take these identifications without truly questionin g them. The biggest problem with this, particularly when it comes to the spirit ual truth, is that we are told we are in illusion, we are bound, and therefore m ust seek freedom. But what is this freedom we must seek? In order to find it, the first thing we do is begin to accumulate more information, through books, te achers and religions. We sort through this information, gathering additional i deas and beliefs, until we find the belief system that best fits our own belief system, that best fits into our own conceptions of what is right and wrong, good and bad. It doesn't make it true, it just makes it right in our mind. Remember , there is a huge gulf between what is true and what is right. Believing in som ething doesn't make it true. Everyone in the world believes in a million differ ent things about the world, God, religion, and themselves. Their entire existenc e is based on these beliefs. But it is the beliefs that keep them from recognizi ng what is the Real, the True, the Eternal. Even for a moment, if you can suspe nd all beliefs, all concepts, and simply experience that which precedes all beli ef, what you find is awareness. What is before mind is that which is aware of mi nd, and that is nothing but pure awareness. This is what Ramana called ' I-I' or some call the 'I AM'. But really it is pure awareness of absolute Being! And wh en you dive into that, rest deeply in that, surrender to that, you find that you are already what you have always been seeking - unlimited being, peace, and hap piness. And it is beyond belief, beyond right and wrong, and beyond good and bad . It is that unlimited presence within which all these ideas arise.

Mastery versus Enlightenment A situation I have seen repeatedly in this journey, are the concepts of mastery and enlightenment and the inability to distinguish the difference. In Sanskrit, enlightenment is referred to as j-ana, knowledge or mukti, freedom or brahmaj-a na, knowledge of the Absolute. Whereas mastery is called siddha perfected or on e who possesses powers, siddhis. Enlightenment or awakening is about understanding who you are, the real you, rig ht now in the moment, prior to mind. What are you? Where are you? What is this a wareness that we refer to as I? It is the realization of the Self, Pure Being, Unlimited Awareness. This has nothing to do with what the body does or can or cannot do, because awareness is what is aware OF the body and OF the mind. It is beyond body and mind and is eternally who you are. Mastery is about powers - reading minds, manifesting things, walking on water, h ealing, raising the dead, changing the world reality in some way. In essence, it is about having power. It is entirely about the body and mind and ends when the body/mind collapses. There are enlightened beings who have NO powers, other than the great power to k now themselves. There are 'Masters' who don't have any idea of who they are, and are as blind as the next person in real spiritual understanding. And there are Enlightened beings who also have mastery. So everyday people experience those glimpses of who they are. They may even have deep direct experiences of Pure Being and Absolute Self. But, because they hol d on to old belief systems of what enlightenment is, they deny the experience, o r grasp it as a historical experience in the past, rather than continuing to div e into Pure Being, Pure Awareness in each moment. If they have a lasting experie

nce, they still tend to deny it because they can't walk on water, heal the sick, or know what's happening on other planets. "I must not be a Master yet, becaus e I'm still who I was!" That's the point! You are always who you are, and aware ness never changes - only what arises IN awareness. The awareness itself is per manent, unlimited and ever present. Mastery is impermanent, limited, and tempor ary. A further note: As one dives deeply into awareness, into enlightenment, powers m ay or may not present themselves according to the past karma of the person, but it has no effect on the enlightenment itself! And once one is enlightened, the desire for powers are no longer important. They may come or not, it doesn't mat ter. One striving for powers, however, is increasing the effects of karma, and i s actually less likely to gain enlightenment, because they are still involved in the ego, the false sense of self seeking power. However, they may, as time goe s on, see that powers really don't have any appeal, see that the mind and strivi ng is the cause of their bondage and also experience enlightenment. A wonderful prayer in Sanskrit says: asato ma sad gamaya, tamaso ma jyotirgamaya, mrtyor ma'mrtam gamaya om shantih shantih shantih Lead me from the unreal to the real (or from untruth to truth), from darkness to light, from death to immortality. om peace, peace, peace. Commitment to Enlightenment "Very few people want to get enlightened. Maybe that's something in the evoluti onary process of humanityI have no idea. I don't know whether people these days want to be more or less enlightened than they did 2,000 years ago. But it's abso lutely true that we want to know about things. And we don't want to know about n ot knowing. Very few people want to know about that." Helen Tworkov What Is Enlightenment? (Fall/Winter 1998) We came across this quote in Utne Reader, and thought it an odd quote for such a magazine. After all, here is the readership of people who really WANT to know, want to be abreast of the lastest ideas and literature, want to be forward think ing. And yet where does this stand in the scope of enlightenment? We have often made the analogy of the two doorways. What if you had one doorway to enlightenment and a second doorway to the lecture hall of enlightenment. The truth is you would have a long line before the door to the lecture hall. Now, if you could open the doors and look in, or peek through the window, this would co nfirm it even more. Through the door to the lecture hall you would find many ha ppy people. They would be talking and having tea, sharing ideas about what enlig htenment is and isn't, listening to top rated and top paid authors and lecturers about the nature of love, beauty, truth and enlightenment, sharing organic cook ies, maybe checking out who looks like a prospective spiritual life partner, and so on. What a great time! What a beautiful experience! When, however, you peeked into the door to enlightenment itself, you would strai n your eyes, looking for some glimmer of light, hoping to catch a ray of that il lustrious beatitude that would be rushing out from the depths of enlightenment. But all you would see is inky darkness, a black hole into nothingness, a vastnes s so great you couldn't even begin to fathom it. The result? Nearly everyone qu ietly closes the door and goes back over to the lecture hall to enjoy a blissful group hug. Don't get me wrong. I am not against groups. In fact, I am a strong proponent of community. Positive community gives the loving support each human requires to g row in the world. But we are talking about the concepts of enlightenment versus

enlightenment itself, and the depth of intention needed to dive deeply into the enlightened state of being. Enlightenment is not something that is achieved in one's spare time while pursui ng other, more important interests. Oh, it can be recognized instantly. We have guided many into the state of pure awareness within an hour in our Enlightenment Encounter sessions. But to permanently rest there takes intention. One must liv e, eat, breathe, sleep this intention. Their whole being must be dedicated to it . They must die for it. Why? Because enlightenment is what is prior to all ideas and beliefs, particularly the concepts of who you are. When Ramana Maharshi bec ame enlightened, he did die to it. He was willing to let go of life itself, the body, the mind, the senses, the concepts, and simply experience That which does not die. This is why the door to enlightenment shows only darkness. Our mind, o ur senses, our body can only experience objects. Enlightenment is not an object. In an experience there is a subject (an I) experiencing something which is obje ct (not I). But enlightenment, awakening, self realization, is not about seeing, tasting, or feeling the absolute. Enlightenment is recognizing the absolute tha t you already are. So as Helen Tworkov has stated, it's about NOT knowing! It's about not perceiving. It is the direct recognition of That which knows, That whi ch perceives, that which is awareness itself. It is the Self in Self realization . But in order to recognize that, one must give up the looking outside, and comm it to resting in that, leaping into their death in that. We invite you to make t hat leap! Whenever you're ready. Self Observes Emotion Very, very often, the issue of emotions comes up for those wishing to be awake. People want to know how to deal with anger, or fear, or grief, etc. The first di fficulty is that the very labeling of these emotions tends to trap them, restric t them, make them more solid within the mind, and therefore something that must be dealt with. They become the enemy; something bad that we must somehow elimina te. Let me bring up the weather one more time. The sunshine and the rain are si mply two aspects of the same weather. They come and go daily (sometimes numerous changes daily here in Oregon). One can spend their time as a meteorologist stud ying the various changes in weather, what can be done about them, how to stop th em; what their usefulness is; the directions they take. But ultimately, the weat her - sun and rain - will continue unaffected by you, and you can choose to cont inue, unaffected by it. Similarly, one can be an emotionologist, a lover of emot ions - affected by some positively, and others adversely; judging whether they a re good or bad, and how to overcome them. The solution is simply to observe these things like anything else. Remember, it is the naming of things which has helped to create the duality in the first plac e. As soon as you call them emotions, you have created one box. Then you go on to define them further as sadness, fear, happiness, grief, and you have created another subdivision. Then you label them as good, bad, indifferent, and place th em into another category. And ultimately, you identify and attach yourself to t hese labels. You are the observer of all. You are the Awareness in which everything arises. Y ou are the substratum upon which the entire universe flows. When any emotion ari ses, just as any thought or feeling arises, you do not need to evaluate or label it. You simply observe what is arising. When you observe only, not repressing i t, nor acting it out, but only observe its arising, it allows it to move freely. When you label it, confine it by definition, hold on to it to deal with it, it' s like trying to trap a rolling ball with a fence. It bounces around like crazy while you watch it, hoping it will find the one little exit hole you have provid ed. Instead, when you find yourself entrapped by the movements of emotions (or thoughts or feelings), simply ask, "To whom are these arising?" The phenomena of

the universe are infinite. One can be enamored by any or all of them. In fact, this is most often how people define themselves and others - by the phenomena th ey are infatuated with: He's into politics; she's into spirituality; I'm into ga rdening; they are into emotions. But Self realization is not about any phenomen a, but about the observer of ALL phenomena, the Self. The Self is prior to, beyo nd and transcendental to all phenomena. So come back to the Self, back to the So urce, back to Home. To Whom? Self Realization is exactly that: realization of the Self. It is the recognition of that which we are at the very deepest level, at the core of our Being. We ar e not seeking something outside our self. It is not discovering something new or adding anything new. It is the recognition of who we are right now, in this per fect moment. But we have the nature of wanting to know. We want to gain information. We assum e that we can gain information about the Self; somehow study the Self and analyz e the Self. This would require that the Self be something other than who you are . To study something, it must be an object. You (the subject) studies the Self ( the object). But the object of study in this case IS the subject. The subject ca nnot study the subject. The subject can only BE the subject. So what is the subject. The subject (Self) is that which sees, hears, experienc es. It is not the seen, nor the heard, nor the experienced. One can not experien ce the Self in a subject/object manner. As the seer, what arises is seen BY the Self. It arises to the Self. Even the most subtle of thoughts, sensations, vis ions, etc. are all experienced by the Self. When you have a thought, who hears i t? When you have a feeling in the body, who feels it? When an emotion arises, w ho experiences it? The answer is always the Self. Self inquiry is the recognition of that who - the who that is hts, feelings, and emotions. That which is the experiencer of senses. This Self can never be known or grasped by the mind, nd arises TO the Self. The Self is aware OF the mind. So the he Self, and thus rest in Self-ness. prior to all thoug the objects of the for indeed, the mi Self can only BE t

When you remove all objects from the Self; cut away all that is not the Self, wh at you are ultimately left with is that which is aware of all. Thus the Self is the Awareness itself. It is that which is aware of body, mind, world, etc. Self inquiry is then the subtle distinguishing between what is awareness and what ari ses in awareness. So if we want to rest in Self, we intend to be or rest as awar eness. When something arises, if we begin to form an identification or attachmen t to it, we first inquire, "Am I this phenomena, or am I AWARE of it?" If we are aware of it, then the next question is, "To whom is it arising?" The answer mus t always be that it arises to the Self, to this awareness. Everything arises to this Self, to this Awareness - EVERYTHING! And contemplating the things that ari se in awareness - whether good or bad, spiritual or evil, heavenly or hellish, i nternal or external - have never brought anyone to Self realization. It is only by resting as that which is Aware OF good/bad, dark/light, and so forth, that on e comes to rest as the Self, Awareness Itself. Then one recognizes that Self is boundless, peaceful, free from suffering and blissful. It is obvious, simple, an d has always been present. But we were so enamored and captivated by what appear ed in and to Awareness, that we completely ignored THAT in which these thing ari se, or TO WHOM they arise. So whatever is arising, ask, "To Whom do these arise? " and you will find the Self. Reminders of Awareness The search for Self Realization is the search for Self, and this search is being

made by the Self. The Self is seeking itself. The irony is hilarious if you thi nk about it, and yet can be extremely frustrating when one feels bombarded by an xiety, suffering and even frustration. Frustrated by frustration. It becomes an evil circle. Suffering due to suffering. Anxious because you want to end anxiety . Angry that you can't break free of anger. Yet all of these emotions are simply appearing in awareness. You need only shift your perspective and drop the ident ification and attachment. And ultimately ask - To whom is this arising? The mom ent this question is asked, immediately the arrow points back toward the Self. O ne may not have instantaneous realization, but awareness is now shifting, away f rom the object and back to the subject, back to Self. It doesn't mean it won't e ncounter something on the way. If you are away from your home and you decide to return there, turning around and heading in that direction doesn't mean you nec essarily are home. You may walk past many things along the way, but ultimately y ou get home. You are heading in the right direction. With inquiring into who yo u are, you are directing the mind back to its home, its source. And this inquiry can instantly bring you back to home. However, you may continue to be aware of more internalized things 'along the way'. Just know that you are still pointing in the direction of home and whatever arises inquire to whom it is arising. But suppose that everytime you are walking home, you become distracted by the th ings around you - the buildings, trees, flowers, people, shops - and you complet ely forget where you were intending to go and wander off to sit in the park or d o a little shopping. Suddenly you remember, "Hey, I was trying to get home!" So you turn toward your home, and continue your journey, only to be distracted a m inute later by an adorable little puppy, whom you decide needs to play in the pa rk with you. Again you remember your home, and you're off again for another 10 seconds until you see that lovely blouse in the store window. So this is how it is, constantly distracted by the senses, by the mind, even by the body. It sometimes seems that we take one step forward and two steps backwar d. It is even more awkward that what we most often are distracted by are things we consider 'negative' such as fear, anger, and worry. In fact, we seem to enjoy what we call 'positive' distractions while being annoyed at the 'negative' ones . So the first rule is to see all distractions for what they are...distractions arising in awareness. They are something which causes us to forget our journey home. Wouldn't it be nice if all along the path, wherever you walked, there were little signs posted that read "Are you still on your way home?" Or perhaps sim ply a sign that said "Home", so that the moment you began to go off on some tang ent you would immediately recognize it. Unfortunately there are no such signs. But this is the point of practice. Curren tly we are habituated to our patterns. Changing those patterns takes effort, min dful repetition, creating new patterns. Traditionally, one simply lived with the guru. This was the constant signpost. For the guru was constantly saying with w ords or behavior, "Stop! Look within! What is reality?". But without the constan t reminders of the teacher, we must be our own reminder. We must hold the path o urselves. The first thing necessary is absolute firm conviction and determinatio n. What is it we really want? Do we really want to get home? Do we truly want to be free? Is Absolute Peace what we are about? Are we commited to putting an en d to suffering once and for all? If so, then the rest will begin to take care of itself. By fanning the flames of desire for Awakening, that very desire itself will begin to show up everywhere. Everything you see or experience will bring yo u back to the fact that "This will not bring me happiness. This is a temporary d istraction to keep me from home." But in case this is not enough, you can litera lly put up sign posts that will begin the new habit process. Little signs everyw here you commonly are - the bathroom, the kitchen, your work, your car, your bed room. They can say "To Whom does this arise?" or "Home" or "Who am I?" I used to simply write the letter "I" on my hand, so that I rarely went but a few minut es without seeing it and remembering to inquire into the Self. Many people wear digital watches now which can be set to chime on the hour. Every time it chimes

remember why you set it, and take a moment to come back to the Self, to inquire into the Self. Read some holy book every morning and night, ancient or modern, that will create the focus of your awareness. Download 'Right Now in this Mome nt' from our website. Read it every day to bring your awareness back. Worship Go d within yourself. Meditate on the Guru. Repeat, "Who am I?" Ultimately there ar e many, many methods. The Vishnu Purana tells us to: 'Always remember the Absolute (God/Self) and Never forget it. All other rules a nd regulations are the servants of these two.' So no matter what the practice, i ts purpose is the same, to keep us in constant remembrance and focus on the Self . The more you do it, the more it will become habit and the more spontaneous it will become, and soon it will be recognized more and more naturally. As Ramana M aharshi said, "If the time spent thinking about objects NOT the Self were spent inquiring into the Self, Self realization would be achieved in a very short time ." So find or create the signposts that work for you. Be dedicated to home and y ou will get there. More on Self Inquiry Self Inquiry is the method for recognizing who or what one is. It is not a thera py but a method for uncovering that which has always been present - that which w e point to when we say "I". This is not the body or the mind, but that which exp eriences the body, mind, thoughts and emotions. It is that which is awareness. It is the unlimited, free, Self. Ramana Maharshi, along the lines of the ancient Upanisads of India, recommended the inquiry "Who am I?" It is the most natural of questions which nearly everyone has asked themselves at one time or another, but unfortunately abandons when they are given a reasonable and logical explanat ion by someone else who also doesn't have a clue as to who they are. That couple d with the natural inclination to identify with the body and mind gives rise to lifetimes of suffering based on these identifications with the objects of awaren ess, namely body, mind, world, etc. Ramana Maharshi was asked the question, How long should Self Inquiry be continue d? Ramana replied - "As nquiry 'Who am I' is nd there in the very contemplation of the e would do." long as there are impressions of objects in the mind, the i required. As thoughts arise they should be destroyed then a place of their origin, through inquiry. If one resorted to Self unintermittently, until the Self was gained, that alon

So what does this mean, the 'impression of objects'? Every moment there are num erous things happening in awareness. Many of them go by unnoticed. They make no impression. We have no opinion about it. We have not even a concept about it. We don't even name it in our mind. Millions of things happen every day in our awar eness which never cause even a stir in the mind. But other things, other happeni ngs create a very deep and lasting impression on us - for good or bad. We evalua te them and hold on to them. We make them mean something. We cause this impress ion. It fits into and enhances the patterns of thought which are already there. These cause deeper and deeper grooves, feeding our karma, so to speak, our previ ous actions, which cause further reactions. An analogy may serve to demonstrate. if one runs a stick through wet cement, con tinuously following the same pattern, as that cement dries, it creates a very pe rmanent groove, a specific pattern that will be there for years, perhaps centuri es. A similar groove through dirt will be obliterated or diminished with a good rain. A stick run through sand makes a groove that is washed away instantly with the next wave, and when water is divided by a stick, it closes as the stick pas ses. The stick through water or air leaves no impression whatsoever. It is as i f the denser a material is, the more deeply and permanently an impression is mad e. The more subtle and fluid a material, the less resistance, the less impressio n! The sage recognizes that not only is he not dense, he is not there! There i

s nothing to make an impression upon. The Self is always the observer. The impre ssions are only held in the mind, and we are not the mind. The mind arises in aw areness. When a thought arises, the inquiry 'who am I?' destroys it before it ca n make any impression, because the focus changes from the object of awareness to the subject which is awareness itself! It is the substratum, the background in which all objects arise. So how is self inquiry alone sufficient? First, it brings one to the Self, to a wareness. One is no longer identified with the objects of awareness. They are no longer the doer of actions; actions are simply observed without attachment. Alt hough it is said that every action has an equal reaction, it is as if the identi fication with action causes it to be an action within the beholder's mind. One w ho rests in awareness, who recognizes Self, understands that they are not these actions. They are NOT the doer of actions which are simply being carried out by the laws of nature. By not putting any energy into these spontaneous happenings, it doesn't create reactions or deepen present patterns. This is what karma is. The word karma simply means action and refers to these patterns of energy which are held by attachment to them. This is why it is said that the sage continues t o live according to their parabdha karma, that is action that is already fructif ying. New actions/karmas/patterns are killed before they come to this point of f ructifying, but old patterns will simply follow their natural tendency until com plete, and even then, often to a lesser degree because there is no identificatio n with them. Thus, gradually, the Self, the Seer becomes more deeply established in infinite awareness without the karms or patterns that were previously identi fied with and which thus obscured that pure awareness. Everything is Right Where You Are The moment one hears anything about awakening, about enlightenment, even the abo ve statement, the immediate response is generally - Yes, I know this, but when w ill I find it? When will I experience it? There are so many myths about enlightenment, the greatest being that there is so mething to be achieved! (Immediately, the mind says -Yes, I know that there is n othing to be achieved, BUT when will I achieve it.) Enlightenment is right now, right in the moment, but each person has their own Y eahbut (Abbot) or Yeahbutess of the Monastery of the Mind. Whatever is said abou t Truth the Yeahbut jumps in and declares - (WAIT! It's not so simple! It is cer tainly much more complicated that this!!!) But Truth is never far away. Truth is not to be achieved. Truth is not to be str uggled after. It is to be recognized in the moment. It is why so many teachers a dvocate - STOP! Stop the doing. Stop the seeking. Stop the trying. Stop the doub ting. Stop the techniques. STOP! And recognize what is already present. If a do ubt comes in STOP again. The teachings have always said - BE Here Now - not DO Here Now - or Be There Later. Right now, in this moment, in this space, free fr om mind, free from doubts, free from illusion, there is infinite peace, infinite Being, infinite freedom. You are this, you Know this, but the yeahbut or yeahbu tess mind arises -(it can't be this easy, there must be something else. The scri ptures say that it means this or that will happen) Here's a non-doing for you. Forget everything. Imagine that you have amnesia. Yo u have simply woken up in this moment and you have NO past and NO future. In thi s moment, and for all eternity you simply exist. You have no concepts whatsoever of who you are, what you are, what you should have done or should do. None of i t. You have no concepts about enlightenment. There are no scriptures, no great t eachers, only you! You don't know about being a human, even the distinction of y ou or me. No one to say -Yeah But...! What is left? Only pure awareness, the S EEing, the BEing. This is an idea of that 'stopping'. Rest in that. There is n

ot even a subject or object. There is just infinite here-ness, absolute now-ness . Nothing to look for. Nothing to leave behind. Total surrender to the moment. (The voice creeps in- Yeahbut! - Don't identify with it.) All of these doubts come from past and future - something you heard in the past or some expectation of the future. Drop them. Come back to THIS moment, free from concepts. When you truly have amnesia, assuming you still have language skills, the foremo st question that pops into your head is Who Am I? You're not so concerned with e verything else, with the world, or what you should do, but only in truly knowin g who you are. You've suddenly woken up and don't have a clue. All other problem s are gone. All doubts and fears are gone. Only the one overwhelming question Who am I? - haunts you at every moment. Don't lose this opportunity to recogniz e who you are. This life is exceptionally precious. Every moment is a miracle. T he world will take care of itself. You find out who you are. Right Now! Nothing else is of any consequence compared to Truth, and the Truth WILL set you free. A Story Once Upon a Time, there was an imaginary child of parents who had never been con ceived. He lived in the village called NoPlace that would never be built, with a ll the simple townsfolk that dreamed that they existed. One day, like every oth er day, (and for no particular reason at all) "The Empty Village Society" told him that he was a human, and that now he must do the things that humans must do. He went to school, where they explained what he was. He got a job, where they told him what to do. He had a family, that proved he existed. And he went to the "Belief Center" where they told him the beginning and end of all things. And ea ch and every apparent day, he would arise from nowhere and nothing and seek to fulfill the illusionary pleasures and avoid the conceptual sufferings that guara nteed him a happy (though non-existent) life. This went on for many randomly con ceived periods of time until another human (it certainly looked like a human) ca me into his awareness. For all impractical purposes, this new human looked like all the other humans, but somehow he 'felt' different. "Who are you?" the imaginary child asked the new human. "Very good question," said the new human, "One that very few people ask themselv es! Who are you?" "I am human," said the imaginary child, "which is why I never ask this question, because as you can see I know full well who I am." "But HOW do you know?" asked the new human, who smiled a very special smile and laughed a special laugh. "Well, the elders in the Empty Village Society and the Bishops of the Belief Cen ter have explained it all quite clearly, and now I know without any doubts," sai d the imaginary child, pondering in his mind that couldn't be found. "And who told them?" asked the new human, who was obviously quite serious about all this question stuff. "Why, the previous elders and bishops, who heard it from their previous elders a nd bishops, going way, way back to nothing anywhere," said the imaginary child s cratching a head that really wasn't there. "And you have never questioned or doubted?" asked the new human. "Well, once I had a doubt and so for a while I joined "The New Belief Center" an d everyone was happy and sang. But nothing still happened, so I quit," said the imaginary child, with sadness arising in awareness. "And what was the desire that you wanted fulfilled?" asked the new human, who wo

uldn't stop with his silly questions. "I wanted 'The Goal' which is certainly what everyone in NoPlace also desires," said the imaginary child, who was beginning to feel a little strange and confuse d even thinking about such things, and who suddenly knew what the next question was. "And..." prodded the new human, who recognized that the imaginary child was begi nning to see a new direction. "I have no idea what the goal is. I have no idea who I am, and I am totally conf used about my existence," conceded the imaginary child, who was suddenly feeling strangely peaceful not existing at all, which had always been the case. "So now tell me who you are." asked the new human, who appeared even more please d than the imaginary child felt. "I simply am, and yet I am not," said the imaginary child, who for the first tim e in non-existence was feeling very real, yet totally not there. "I have ever be en and yet never existed. I am freedom itself, infinite and beyond any space or any time. I would fall at your feet if you had any." "And now you Know that which no one knows. Now you Are that which no one sees, y et is what every one Is. This is the Goal that can not be achieved for it is eve r before any searching. Now, just be and be happy!" and with that the new human danced away. Surrendering to Divine Will Without a doubt, the hardest thing one will ever do is to surrender to Divine Wi ll, to be open, to let go, to fully give oneself up to that which is arising in the moment. And it is made no less difficult by the fact that it is happening ag ain and again and again. The beauty of the spiritual path is that it is instanta neous. The moment one turns to the Divine, or stops and recognizes awareness, or surrenders to the Absolute, there it is, offering itself, ever present. But tha t's not the end of the story! Immediately, the mind again rears its head and one is back to the old way of life, the old patterns. The tendency is to make the recognition of the Absolute into an experience. "I h ad it once. It was great! Okay, back to the daily task at hand and my old famil iar things." This is fine, but not if one is dedicated to Truth. Dedication to Truth means that one gives every moment over to that. It becomes a life of discr imination - what is real and what is not; what is permanent and what is not. Thi s is why the Upanisads call it 'the razor's edge'. It is the fine line of discri mination at every moment - surrendering at each moment, until finally there is n othing left to surrender and no one to surrender. There is a total merging of wi ll, of being into the Absolute. But until that has happened, if one is dedicated to Truth, there is more to be done. Get it! This is the great paradox. Doing ' something' to give up the will to do something. As long as there is an individu al, then there is someone to do something, and the something that an individual should do is strive for perfection. The only perfection there is, is to surrende r to Divine Will, be open to Perfect Awareness. If desires other than Truth are arising, and we are deeply affected by those desires, we can be pretty sure that there's more surrendering to be done. So the process is instantaneous and ongoing. The Divine, the Absolute is ever pr esent. It is what is. It can be recognized instantly. But then it must continuou sly be recognized. And in order for that to happen, one must give up their conce pts. Truth and concepts can never reside together. Someone recently asked me if the teaching of Truth in the West couldn't differ from the East. Yes, the outwar

d things can be different. The appearance may be different. Techniques and appro aches may be different. But what will never change, anywhere or at any time, is the fact that holding on to beliefs and ideas of how things should be and surren dering to Truth will ALWAYS be diametrically opposed. One cannot simultaneously hold on AND let go. To the extent that one is holding on, to that same level the y are NOT letting go. At the very least, one must see through their patterns and beliefs and recognize that they are utterly meaningless, and that Divine Will, the Absolute, Pure Awareness is still and eternally present. Behind everything, in each moment, is the Divine. And it is only in recognizing That, totally surre ndering to That, opening to That perfect, infinite Being, that we can truly be h appy, truly be free. And until we recognize that the Absolute is beyond space an d time, it will continue to be a surrendering at this moment, and this moment, a nd this moment.... The Silence of the Mind What is it that obscures our Pure Awareness? What is the cause of pain and sorro w? What is the source of our bondage and limitation? Due to what does fear aris e? What is it that impedes our freedom, our joy, our peace? In all cases it is m ind! It is the mind, the thoughts, and even more importantly, our identification with them that obscures our recognition of Natural Being, Pure Awareness. But b reaking that identification is not easy. We can choose to not identify. But even the thoughts that we use to not identify create new identifications. It is like yelling at yourself for being too noisy. It only perpetuates the syndrome. The pure mind is the silent mind. However, it is natural to identify with what a rises in the mind. If you are looking at an empty sky and a bird flies in, immed iately the awareness is captivated by this new thing that arises. Even when the mind is empty, and for a moment there is stillness and peace, the next moment a thought-bird flies in and we identify with it. Even if the thought is "Wow, this is really peaceful! Boy, now I'm in bliss," these too must be transcendended, r ecognized and gone beyond. However, when the thought is a desire, a longing, an aversion, a frustration - then the identification usually holds until we think w e have resolution. Even the frustrated longing for peace, for bliss, for liberat ion, is identified with, and is itself the obscuring factor. Very often, it is advocated to simply stop, and this is indeed the best remedy. Simply stop all trying. Stop all attachments. Stop all identification. Stop the restless mind and simply rest in the infinite awareness of being. But for many this is like telling them to stop existing, or to stop breathing. It is inconcei vable. Indeed it is beyond conception or mental understanding to stop the mind. For this reason, there have been a wide variety of techniques developed over the centuries to concentrate and purify the mind. All of them can be beneficial. Bu t one must choose according to one's own temperament. When Sri Ramana Maharshi w as asked which method was best he said: "There are many methods. You may practice Self enquiry, asking yourself 'who am I?'; or if that does not appeal to you, you may meditate on 'I am Brahman', or s ome other theme; or you may concentrate on an incantation or do invocation. The object in every case is to make the mind one-pointed, to concentrate it on one t hought and thereby exclude the many other thoughts. If we do this, the one thoug ht also eventually goes and the mind is extinguished at its source." (The Teaching of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi-In His Own Words - edited by Arthu r Osborne) So no matter what the method used, if one is not able to simply stop and rest in awareness, to dive deeply into Silent Being, then a method can be beneficial. O ne should not simply throw out all methods because they are a "doing", and yet c ontinue to be plagued by thoughts and desires. Much of our thoughts and desires and personality are based on habits. Take all these habits and replace them with

the one habit of a technqique to concentrate, purify and silence the rascal min d. Make this your meditation. Take it with you at every moment. The mind jumps u p all the time. Have your method always at hand. It is not to be something that you can only do sitting down while meditating or in your temple room. The mind d oesn't wait for you to go to a special place or to close your eyes. The mind is always and constantly making stupid suggestions. So either rest in Silent Pure A wareness or bring all those diverse thoughts into a single one - a single enquir y - a single technique. Then eventually, this one technique will also naturally be burned in the fire of Divine Awareness, and the Pure Silent Mind of Awareness will be recognized as merging into the Absolute. Sacred Song I wanted to speak a little about one of the earliest sacred songs I learned. It is actually a very simple song, and yet profound in its meaning. Simply living t he message of this song, no matter what arises, could be the answer you're looki ng for. The song goes like this: Row, row, row your boat, Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream. So the first message this song gives is to row your boat. Self effort is require d. The boat needs direction. But it is very quickly explained that this should b e done 'gently'. There should not be extensive pushing or pulling, or fighting w ith the waters. No, you must gently row your boat - a slight tug of the oar here , and dipping it there, simply to keep it on track and not crash into the rocks or end up on the side of the river. Just gently guide it, sweetly, smoothly, dow n the stream. In yoga terms, this is yatnah, endeavor, or abhyasah, practice. Y ou row your boat. The Gita has another definition which is karma yoga. Simply yo u perform your actions, but without ANY attachment to the results. Don't worry a bout the outcome, you ultimately have no control over that. You can only gently row. Where the stream takes you is up to the stream. You cannot force the stream to take a different route than the one that it has been running for years. So r ow your boat, but don't be attached. Even to the boat, for it must eventually be given up as well. The next line, gives a stronger indication of how all is to be done, or in what frame of mind - Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. In the scriptures it says y ou should repeat something 3 times in order for it to make an impression and be remembered. Here it is repeated the mandatory 3, and once more just for good mea sure. Don't struggle. Don't fight. Don't push. Don't desire. Have no aversions. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. This has often been repeated by others as we ll. Meher Baba said, "Don't worry, be happy!", which was repeated in a recent so ng. Astavakra Samhita, a wonderful advaitic text, has as the last two words in a whole series of verses, "sukhi bhava", Be Happy! An often quoted Vedic prayer says - "Lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu" - May the whole world be happy! This i s a very important instruction, especially for the many on the spiritual path wh o find the whole thing torturous and difficult and extremely serious. Merrily, m errily, merrily, merrily - Be happy! So how does one remain happy and free from worry? The last line gives us the ans wer to it all - Life is but a dream. It is only a dream. What does this mean? Ma ny major philosophies, including Advaita, and schools of Buddhism, Vaishnavism a nd others, proclaim that this is all a dream - a dream of the self, a dream of B uddha, a dream of Visnu, a dream of God, but a dream. It has no substance in the way that we think. When we are awake, we know that the dream we had while sleep ing was insubstantial. It had no substance. Even though there were so many peopl e and things happening in it, when we awoke, we realized it meant nothing. It wa

s only a dream. Similarly, when we awaken from the dream of illusion, we see tha t this so-called reality of wakefulness, is also a dream. It is inconsequential. It is illusory. It is a projection of the Absolute that simply arises in awaren ess. It is a dream. The advaitic scriptures even describe that state of awakenin g where the world is begun to be recognized as a dream. So how can one put so mu ch emphasis on the importance of things which happen in a dream? If you are trul y aware of the fact that your entire life is but a dream, how can you get wrappe d up in whether THIS happens or THAT happens. It's inconsequential! Just gently row your boat down the stream, and in the end, you'll wake up, and see that it w as all only a dream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. Abandon Citta For those who study yoga, particularly Astanga Yoga, or the eightfold yoga of Pa tanjali, there is a well known aphorism. It is the second line of his Yoga Sutra s and sums up the essence of yoga. It states: yogascittavrittinirodhah. It is tr aditionally broken down as follows - yoga is cittavrittinirodhah or union (yoga) is the stopping or elimination (nirodhah) of modifications or movements (vritti ) in the mind or consciousness (citta) - Thus "Union is the elimination of movem ent in the mind" And thus many individuals are seeking to eliminate the thought s within the mind. They wish to keep the mind intact, to continue to hold on to the source of the problems, but not have problems appear in it. In other words, they wish to keep the culprit, but have him change his ways, or to continue to h old on to a snake, but hope that it won't bite you. It is possible to do this. In fact, much of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali then go on to explain how to contr ol the mind, what the vrittis are, the types of vrittis, etc. The problem is, that even if you can control the mind for 1000 years, it is stil l a mind. A snake, no matter how long it has been tamed and treated sweetly, may still turn around and bite you. But there is another way to interpret this sutr a - Union (yoga) is the elimination/destruction (nirodhah) of the existence of m ind (cittavritti). The difference being that you are not trying to eliminate ind ividual thoughts in the mind, but eliminating the entire mind itself. The word C itta generally means the thoughts, thinking, desire, the mind. Vritti is Being, abiding, a state, action, movement. So cittavritti can be translated as the very existence of the mind, of thoughts. Eliminate it. Imagine you have a huge tree, and you want to cut it down, to eliminate it. You can try to cut it down one leaf, twig, and branch at a time, which is a very fru strating and often futile experience, OR you can simply cut the entire tree down with one quick cut of the trunk. Problem solved. So you can try to eliminate p ieces of the mind, but mind is limitless. As many thoughts as you throw out or c ontrol, that many more come rushing in. So what is the mind, this citta? Mind itself is an illusion. A mirage in a des ert may seem as big as the desert itself. The entire desert becomes one great ex panse of water, although the spot where you are standing is clearly only sand. B ut off in the distance and forever is the illusion of water. Mind is only a proj ection of Self. It is the illusion of misidentification. The mind itself appears to create the multiplicity of itself. But it is all one stuff, one mind stuff, and that one mindstuff is the arising of a perception in the Absolute Non-Dualit y. The Yoga Vasistha says to abandon the citta completely. Don't try to hold on to the good parts and eliminate the bad. Abandon the entire thing. OR recognize that ALL of it is the Absolute. You can abandon the idea of the mirage in the d esert, or recognize that all of the mirage is ONLY desert arising as the illusio n of water. Our very belief in the mind as a separate entity from the absolute is only a habit. The very definition of a belief, according to Websters dictiona ry is - a state or habit of mind. So the belief in existence of the mind is only a habit of the mind. So only the mind believes in itself! You have only identif ied with the mind arising and its belief in itself. You are not the mind. You ar

e AWARE of the mind. The thoughts, the desires, the ideas, all of them arise in awareness. You (subject) are not the thoughts, desires, ideas (all objects). You are that inifinite Awareness in which they arise. So abandon citta or mind. Eit her abandon it as a separate thing which causes problems, OR abandon the idea of it being a separate thing from the Absolute. In other words, abandon mind or ab andon the concept of mind. In either case, then you can rest as what you eternal ly are - free, infinite, and unbound. What is this Advaita, anyway? The term Advaita has become very popular over the last couple of years. In fact, it has practically become the new fad of the late 90's. Many of those who were deeply into crystals, channeling, UFOlogy, and the rest, have now joined togethe r under the banner of Advaita. But as Advaita, itself, points out, what is chang ing and temporary is not the Real. Will this enthusiasm for Advaita follow the s ame fate as channeling? Are the thousands of Advaitic devotees who are presently attending Satsangs all around the world, truly dedicated to complete realizatio n of Self? Will they continue to attend Satsangs week after week for 2, 5, 10, 2 0 years? Or will they, when something new comes along which promises eternal hap piness, shake the dirt from their sandals and follow this new path? First of all, what is Advaita? The term itself literally means non-dual, and imp lies that the eternal, unchanging nature of all things is just that - nondual. B ut what are the implications of that, AND what of the apparent dual nature that seems to persist? In reality, to call a school of thought Advaita is similar to calling it Christian or Buddhist. There is a basic concept which is understood, but numerous modifications of that depending on the school. For instance, withi n Christianity you have Catholicism, Russian and Greek Orthodox, Presbyterianism , Methodist, Baptist, Church of England, and the differences in doctrine can be extreme. Similarly, in Buddhism, you have Vajrayana, Hinayana, Zen, Chan, and mo re. Advaita is no different. There are a vast number of schools of Advaita. Mos t common is the Kevala Advaita school of Shankaracarya, which teaches absolute n on-dualism. But then you have Vishishta Advaita of Ramanuja teaching qualified n on-dualism. Similarly, their are the Vishuddha Advaita school, the Dvaita-Advait a school, and more. Then you have prominent teachings like Ashtanga Yoga of Pata -jali, which according to Georg Feuerstein, really falls under the classificatio n of Dvaita, or dualism, along with much of the rest of Hindu thought. And each of these schools of thought, which were propounded by a particular teacher, hav e been commented upon, dissected, and elaborated by followers and detractors ali ke. Even the successive followers of any teacher will generally disagree with so me point or other. So in the end you get numerous teachings, all of which disagr ee. The very tradition of Advaita, non-dualism, is itself, seen in great duality . This is the great difficulty with words. The moment you call it something, you h ave labeled it. The moment you have labeled it, you have put it into a box, conf ined it, stopped its organic nature, if you will. It is the inherent nature of mind to grasp onto something, to understand it, dissect it, pull it apart. In ge neral, it is the true nature of Advaita to put it all back together. When you ar e told that everything is one, the initial reaction is, Yes, but my experience i s NOT one. But the distinction is in words and relativity only. What is the dist inction between waves and water? What is the distinction between up and down? I am often reminded of the words of Helen Keller, who, deaf and blind, had no expe rience of words or concepts, and had to be taught words for everything. She late r stated that the moment she understood the word water (her first word) the worl d came into existence. Imagine no concepts. You wouldn't have a you and a me. Th ere would be no good or bad, hot or cold, up or down. There would only be what i s happening in the moment. There would be no past or future. There would only be now. There would be no heaven or hell, no bondage or liberation. There would on ly be This. But word by word, the individual is created by this accumulation of

concepts. Where is the individual outside of the concepts? Even the concept of Advaita presents this difficulty, because it is a concept in opposition to Dvait a, duality. One suggests the possibility of two. Nothing is in opposition to Eve rything. Absolute suggests its opposites of imperfect, incomplete, finite. God s uggests not-God. But what is it that is prior to concepts, prior to words? We are not asking anyone to accept a new philosophy or new belief system. Rather we suggest that each one explore that which everyone has in common. Everyone re cognizes that they exist. They call themselves I. I, in duality, is the subject which is in opposition to the object. The object is everything and anything tha t is experienced - the world, the body, the thoughts, the feelings, emotions, ev erything. So if you are none of those things, what are you? This is Self inquiry . It doesn't matter if you call it advaita, dvaita, Zen or Frank. We are not loo king for names, but the recognition of that which is always present, no matter w hat arises in it or to it. But don't expect to find a 'thing'. Don't expect to f ind something different or unknown. You are that which is always present. Rather than focusing on what arises to that, inquire into what it is that those things arise to. That is the Self. Find the self and then see if it needs to have any 'isms' put on it. See if that is one or two or many. Don't take anyone's word fo r it. You are that Self, that I. Recognize it! Demystifying the Mystical It is important to put awareness of the mystical into a proper context. Our tend ency has been to make the recognition of the absolute as something unattainable, or only attainable through incredible austerity or by some magical grace. There are so many concepts about enlightenment that it has become difficult to separa te what is absolute truth from relative truth. Nearly every religion or enlightenment teaching is based on the direct experienc e some person has had. That direct experience is absolute truth. But that experi ence is then explained in relative terms and with relative methods of obtaining it. Along with that comes a variety of other relative truths, explaining the nat ure of the universe, our creation, our destruction, what is good, bad, and so fo rth. These are all relative truths. But the greatest obstructions are the concep ts that enlightenment is something far off, or difficult - that it is somehow me ant only for special people, and that most of us are not 'good' enough to be awa ke. For the most part, the only thing that we are, that stands in the way of aw akening, is too busy. We are too busy looking for happiness; too busy looking fo r fun; too busy worrying about things; too busy desiring things; too busy making noise; too busy being self absorbed. We are all running around looking for some thing to fulfill the emptiness that we feel. But that emptiness is us. We are tr ying to put meaning on things that ultimately have no meaning. All of the bigger , better, more things that we think will fulfill us are empty. Even the concept of enlightenment becomes something bigger, better, more. We make it into somethi ng special, something unusual, something that only the great can achieve. We thi nk that if we can achieve enlightenment, then we will also be better, more speci al, than all of those stupid people who can't or haven't achieved enlightenment. It is as foolish as thinking you are better because you have a body. Why not t hink you are better because you have no body? No one who ever achieved enlighten ment thought they were better than others. If anything, they were humbled by the ir own non-existence in the immensity of the simplicity and obviousness of what was always ever present, and only overlooked. Who you are is always who you are! Are you suddenly amazed when the clouds dispe rse and you are left seeing only pure expansive sky? (Well, maybe here in Portla nd.) The moment one can simply be quiet, relax and let go of all thought, let g o of the body, stop looking, and just totally BE, that's it! You don't have to e xplain it. You don't have to define it. You stop, relax, rest in that, and you a re that infinite expanse of consciousness, within which, everything else arises

- your mind, your body, your feelings, the world - everything. But if even for a moment, you actually begin to expand into that pure awareness, you jump back ou t and begin to define it, explain it, put it into a box. Infinite space trapped in a little box pretty much loses it's glory, doesn't it. So the moment you try to define the infinite consciousness that you are, by stuffing it into the box of the mind, it loses what it is. What need do we have to define it? It is ordi nary and it is extraordinary. People want to define what it is; what this unive rse it; how everything came into being. It's simply what is. It can never be und erstood by the mind. Only concepts are held in the mind, not truth. Every day, t housands of babies are born, and every time it is a miracle. Who can really expl ain where this life comes from. If you try to define it, explain it scientifical ly, analyze it, you do begin to see some mystery, some magic in it. It is beyond comprehension. And yet it happens thousands of times each day. You don't even h ave to be special to have a baby. Poor people, rich people, smart people, stupid people, they all have babies. They all create miracles. And yet, the mystery an d miracle of being infinite consciousness, which everyone has always been, becom es something special. It is not. It is who you are. Close your eyes, relax, find that thing called "I" which is not the body or the mind, and see what it is and where it is. And what you find is that you are already infinite, peaceful, awa re, perfect, and the light of consciousness itself. Nothing mysterious, nothing magical, just the simplicity of being who you are - absolute, infinite conscious ness. Hey, simple! Desire and Action How much of your life is ruled by what you want right now? How often are you ou t of THIS moment, and in a future moment based on what you do not have at the pr esent moment and assume that you need? Most people's lives are based not on who and what they are in this moment, but on what they wish to become in a future ti me. And this is based on the idea that who they are in this moment, is somehow i mperfect and incomplete. What could anyone possibly gain in a future moment that would make them more perfect than they are at this moment. Perhaps they can ful fill some desire, but will that actually make you more than you are right now ? It will change your circumstances. It will change your environment. It will chan ge what you are aware of, but will it change YOU? No! Who you are has always be en consistent. Who you are is ever the same. It has nothing to do with the circ umstances around you or what is happening to you. That YOU is always a constant. It has never been affected by any circumstances. Look at your own life and se e if, from moment to moment, there is something that you are trying to change to somehow make it better or more. And if so, is it simply because it arises, OR i s it because you somehow feel there is something lacking in your life? How long can you sit without desire? And when a desire arises, what do you do wi th it? Remember, a desire is anything that arises suggesting that you change wh at is in the present, including to stop inquiring, to get up and do something el se, to find a better way, to do something more or less spiritual, to do anything at all. What if you simply sit, being aware of whatever arises without any jud gement or reaction at all? At every moment, there are millions of things arisin g in our awareness - lungs breathing, heart beating, sun shining, rain falling, insects buzzing, others moving - yet we easily let these things pass without any reaction. But the moment some desire arises, we assume we must act on it from a state of imperfection. That is we see the desire as arising because something else must be better than it is now, rather than the desire arises simply because the desire arises. In the laws of karma and of physics (greatly simplified), every action has an eq ual and opposite reaction. Every movement is connected to other movements in an intricate web. But where are you in this? Are you actually acting, or are you ob serving the actions of your body, mind and feelings? When you recognize that yo u are the infinite observer, untouched by all actions, you are free - free from

karma, free from action and reaction. But when you identify as the 'doer' then y ou bounce along with every movement. You are pulled into the sphere of activiti es like being pulled down with a sinking ship. When you watch a movie, you recog nize that you are not the characters in the movie. They are moving according to a predetermined script. If you are too swept away by the movie, you begin to ide ntify with it and suffer and enjoy with the characters, even though you are simp ly the observer. You are also only the observer of life around you, life that i ncludes the body, mind, and emotions that arise in awareness. When you observe them without judgement or reaction, you are not affected by what arises. But whe n you identify with the actions of the body and mind, assuming that you ARE that body or mind, then you are pulled into the active/reactive chain of events, eve n though you are still just observing! It is the identification with events tha t causes temporary joys or sorrows. So how to disidentify? Recognize who you tru ly are, prior to mind. Inquire into what this "I" is that we call ourselves. Dis cover that you are consciousness, the consciousness that observes all, and it is beyond definitions or limitations. Consciousness is always free and infinite. It is only habit that causes it to identify with body, mind or world. Dive deep ly into the pure recognition of Self, of consciousness, and you will know that y ou are free, now and forever. Do You Want to Be a 'ME' or Do You Want to Be Free? There is a great paradox in this thing called the spiritual search. In the beg inning, it is generally through wisdom that one comes to the path of searching f or truth. Very often, that wisdom comes in the form, as it did with Buddha, of r ecognizing that there is suffering. One sees, first hand, that there is pain in the world, either one's own or others, and this prompts the search for an end to the suffering. What is somewhat amazing is that it takes so long, because this recognition of s uffering is really the recognition of duality. Until one isolates suffering as an independent thing, there is also not it's opposite - not suffering, or freedo m from suffering. It is the establishment of the recognition of suffering that creates the duality called suffering/not suffering. And then the search is on t o find the end to the suffering, which was only just created with the recognitio n of suffering. If we could just let go of our concept of suffering, we would r ecognize what is beyond suffering/not suffering. It's a little like jumping int o a freezing lake on a warm day, and then rather than simply hopping out, swimmi ng around to find a warm spot within the cold water. A little, but not much. The real problem is that there is a 'me' that recognizes the suffering or not su ffering. In other words, the problem is not so much the cold water or the hot s un but rather that which experiences both of them and then makes an evaluation. It is the observer that creates the duality of good, pleasureable, warm or bad, suffering, cold. By themselves they are just water and sunshine. And beyond th at they are simply one reality glimmering. So let's examine what happens: 1. A body goes into water, 2. The temperature differential between body and water creates a reaction, 3. This reaction is 'observed' by a 'something' or a 'me', 4. The mind, remembering warmth and evaluating the temperature differentiation b etween water and body and judging it as 'cold' or 'suffering', seeks its opposit e in order to protect the body. So the problem begins in #3. What is this 'me' that evaluates and judges? What i s this 'I' that creates a duality out of one thing and thereby enjoys or suffers the results of 'it's' actions? The truly amazing thing is that when you actua lly begin to search for this 'me', it is not to be found. If we analyze what w e are, and assume that what is observed is always different from the observer (s

ubject/object), then the body, observed, is not the 'me'; the mind or thoughts, which are observed, is not the 'me'; the memories, observed (or remembered) are not the 'me'; the judgement and evaluation, which is observed, is also not the ' me'; even the space within with it happens, which is observed, is not the 'me'. Even if you look, you can observe a certain observer, which is also, then, not the 'me'. So what is this all important 'me'? As the old saying goes, if you r emove all other possibilities, then what remains, no matter how unlikely, is the answer. The answer is nothing. Or everything. When you eliminate everything e lse as the 'me' what you end up with is simply awareness. And when you try to l ocate 'me' you find it has no location, or all locations. So now restate the th e numbered statements above, but leave out #3: 1. A body goes into water, 2. The temperature differential between body and water creates a reaction, 4. The mind, remembering warmth and evaluating the temperature differentiation b etween water and body and judging it as 'cold' or 'suffering', seeks its opposit e in order to protect the body. When you take out the 'me' everything goes on as normal, but without an individu al to enjoy or suffer. Where this becomes complicated is when this alleged 'me' identifies with the body and with the mind and all the happenings 'around' it, and then seeks to control these happenings in order to fortify and strengthen th is idea of 'me'. Now we get into the realm not just of warm versus cold, but ev ery aspect of human relations. This 'me' has needs, wants, desires. It seeks to be a somebody. It wants to emphasize it's specialness. If it is on the 'materia l' path, it seeks to be the best - wealthy, beautiful, powerful, famous. If it i s on the spiritual path, it seeks to be Enlightened, Awakened, a Master, honored and revered for it's great spiritual wisdom, or it's incredible humility, subse rvience, and devotion. Or, if it can't reach it in any of those ways, it may se ek to be pitied for it's inability to achieve it's goals in the face of overwhel ming odds. All this coming from a 'me' that is nebulous at best. What people really want is to be free. People speak of peace of mind. It is thi s mind which is identified with that creates the duality which is the cause of t he suffering. It is identification and attachment to the mind (and body) and wit h the various concepts and beliefs which it holds, forming the 'me' which is the boundary to freedom. Imagine standing in a small fenced area, and wishing for your freedom. The only thing between you and the vastness of freedom is this fen ce. There is not even a guard or sentry on this fence, yet it is all that keeps you from infinite freedom. This fence is the mind. And this fence isn't even co mplete. There are gaping holes in this fence which we don't see because we are so enamored with the structure of the fence. It is like a picket fence with a h uge space between each picket. Yet because when you take it all together it has a sense of solidity, we don't see that the structure is barely there. Or, as y ou walk closer to the fence, you find that it is only a tiny fence and you can e asily step over it. In other words, the bondage is self created. It is the iden tification with the fence, the mind, that creates it. And this, because the min d is the boundary of that 'me'. So we can either choose to be a 'me' a captured entity within the confines of our own mind, making us somehow different and alw ays seeking to be something special, or we can be free, at any moment. Happiness & Distress, Good & Evil "Seeing repeatedly, in all states, at all times, that happiness and distress are inconstant and changing, I renounce good and evil and live happily." Astavakra Samhita The web of concepts which we weave is indeed intricate and complex. First, we n ame everything, giving it a label with which we can conveniently place it into o ur world view. Next we label the label, or in other words, we evaluate that labe

l in terms of a fundamental duality. The first duality is that the naming creat es objects. The creation of an object requires a subject to experience the objec t. So we now have a subject experiencing, and object experienced and then an ac t of experiencing between the two. Where there was one, there became two and f inally three - seer/seeing/seen; doer/doing/deed. But we haven't gone far enou gh yet. Next we put every subject, object and verb on a great individualized sca le of good and evil. Onto this scale, everything falls. It may be on the farth est edge of the good side and become righteous, sacred, holy, or fall far to the opposite extreme and become evil, profane, defiled. Certain things become rela tively neutral, like eating, unless you eat too much, too little, or the wrong t hing. I call it an individualized scale because it varies with every "individu al". Each mind evaluates things differently, again from the extremes of one wor shipping God and another worshipping the Devil, to the mild argument over which is better, white or dark chocolate, or whether chocolate should be eaten at all. But you can see that all of these disagreements and all happiness and distress, are based upon this great scale of good and bad. In each moment, we evaluate the moment, what is happening in the moment, and even the experiencer of the moment , as good or bad. Our happiness and distress is then evaluated according to tha t judgement of good and bad: The sun is shining; that is good; we are happy. It is rainy and cold; that is bad; we are unhappy. Someone pays us a compliment; they and we are good; we are happy. Someone criticizes us; they and/or we are bad; we are unhappy. But remove the evaluating or judging from the equation and it all changes: The sun is shining; it is as it is; I am at peace. It is rainy and cold; it is as it is; I am at peace. Someone pays us a compliment; it is as it is; I am at peace. Someone criticizes us; it is as it is; I am at peace. In the Biblical Garden of Eden, it was eating the fruit from the tree of knowled ge of good and evil that caused the expulsion from Paradise. To know good and evil is to begin to judge and evaluate, to forever lose peace and the natural jo y of being. Even in this story, God told Adam and Eve, "Enjoy! Be happy! Try ev erything! Experience this divine life! Oh, but don't begin to judge. Don't eval uate. Don't make some of My creation good and some evil. It is all Divine Creat ion. Enjoy it all. Oh and one more thing: If you do eat from the tree of knowle dge of good and evil, on that day, you will certainly die!" Thanks for the war ning. It is this constant judging that kills us, robs us of our peace, and saps our wi ll to live. It is not by striving to make things better, bigger, or more that w e will regain our peace, but by recognizing it is the very evaluation of things, wanting something different than it is, not enjoying the natural bliss of this amazing moment that that causes the inconstancy of happiness and distress in eac h moment. So thus: "Seeing repeatedly, in all states, at all times, that happiness and distress are inconstant and changing, I renounce good and evil and live happily."

I am not I It is my intention to permanently uncover the direct awareness that I am not I. This is a phrase that we have been using in our weekly satsangs. Logically, it a ppears to make little sense. And initially, what sense it makes negates the poss ibility of there being someone who can have a desire for enlightenment. But the

horrible truth is that very few want enlightenment. They don't really want fre edom or happiness. What they want is a stronger position in the world, and when all else fails to fully satisfy their cravings, then enlightenment becomes the next rung up the ladder of success. Certainly, that enlightened, wakeful, bliss ful state will finally fulfill all MY desires! If I attain enlightenment then I will have achieved perfection. I have only one thing to say to that. It will never, ever happen! Even the most rudimentary knowledge of what enlightenment is tells us that this so called sta te will not fulfill desires, but rather is itself beyond all desires. That is, until all desires - big ones, little ones, gross ones, subtle ones - are no lon ger given power, are no longer identified with, the already existing state of pu re awareness will never be recognized. This is in part because the sense of bei ng an individual who has desires is itself the illusion that maintains the bonda ge to the illusion. By inquiring into the 'I' that apparently has desires, one finds that there is no specific thing called 'I'. By discovering that 'I' am no t 'I', there is then nothing for the desires to be identified with. How can som ething that doesn't exist be ruled by desires? How can something that doesn't e xist want to be bigger, better, richer, stronger, healthier, more famous, more h umble, more spiritual, more enlightened, more anything. It doesn't equate. Another word for enlightenment, nirvana, says it all. The word literally means ' blown out'. That is the individuality is extinguished into the Absolute. No more 'me'. What is left is exactly what was there before, but without an 'I' to ide ntify with it. Everything is exactly as it was, but now it is all simply one bea utiful thing arising in awareness. No more need to be anything other than what is already happening. No need to be anything at all. Only the perfection of the Absolute dancing its awesome dance.

Subtle Bondage of the "I" On the day that Ramana Maharshi left home to reside at Arunachala, he left a no te for his family: "I have, in search of my Father and in obedience to his command, started from he re. THIS is only embarking on a virtuous enterprise. Therefore none need griev e over THIS affair. To trace THIS out, no money need be spent. Thus, __ __ __ __ __ " Even at that time, we might say he was confronted by the difficulties of languag e. Although he started the note with the pronoun "I", he quickly changed to "Th is". The very nature of the awakened state that was realized was that there is no individual "I". He could only refer to it as "This". Now, it can be argued that he meant the first "I" as the Self and the word "this" as the body, but th e Self would have no reason to search for a father, as it is one with the Absolu te. And at the end of the letter, he writes "thus" and then only a series of da shes, for there is no name appropriate for what he has discovered. The important point is that recognition of the lack of an "I". Unfortunately language does not conveniently give us any option to the word "I", and although there may have been some glimpse or recognition of that Absolute r eality, the problem occurs when we think that there is an "I" that is having an experience. Old habits die hard, and the tendendy to identify Self with body an d mind dies particularly hard. But Self Inquiry is based on rooting out that "I". Remember that "I" is only a word. It is a word that we have utilized to point toward that which is aware. However, when you search for this "I", when you inquire into it, the result is t hat there is no "I" present other than awareness, consciousness. And this consci

ousness has no location, no boundaries. Consciousness is aware OF the body, the mind, the world, and what arises IN consciousness is nothing but consciousness. All boundaries are only created by the mind. The recognition of pure awarene ss comes spontaneously when there is no identification with "I". However, the m oment there is some glimpse, the "I" pops up its head again and says, "I had an experience. How do 'I' keep this experience? How did 'I' lose this experience?" Then it goes into various strategies and techniques to regain the experience, all based on the notion that some finite "I" had an experience that it wishes t o hold on to. The remedy? First, the deep and consistent inquiry into the "I". Ramana and ot hers have summed it up as the question "Who am I?" The purpose of this questio n is not to uncover some deeply hidden 'real I', or to negotiate some kind of pe ace treaty with the self. It is not meant to get a better psychological underst anding of who we are and how to deal with, control, or manipulate our material s urroundings. The sole purpose of the question is to recognize, upon inquiry, th at there is no "I". That the ignorance of bondage is simply the habit of misid entification. Notice, however, that the first questions that pop into the mind are also constr ucted around this notion of "I": "Then what do "I" do? What happens when "I" lose it. It's fine when "I'm" in meditation, but what about when "I" have bad things happen to "me" in "my" day to day life? What about the problems "I" have with...? How will "I" function in the world? Won't "I" just sit and do nothi ng? All of these questions and the myriad others bring back the notion or habit of " I". We are not destroying or changing anything. The "I" doesn't go away. The "I" never existed! The fears that often arise are based on the idea that "I" wi ll die into the Absolute. There is no "I" to die. It is only a habit. It is an identification with something in consciousness, like thinking you ARE your car. If you break that habit, nothing changes. The car still works. But you are f ree from your identification with it. The body and mind will continue to go on if you break the identification with them, but now you will be free from them. So the question returns - "What do "I" do?" The only thing there is to do is in quire into this "I". When something arises that you are identifying with - a pr oblem, an emotion, a situation - inquire: To whom is this arising? What is this "I" that is identifying? If this is continued, quickly it is recognized that there is no "I". Even this inquiry is based on the mind. The very question "Who am I?" arises as thoughts in the mind. However, Ramana compares the question to a stirring stic k for the fire. With the help of the fire stick, all the other branches and pie ces of wood are pushed into the fire. In the end, this last stick is also throw n into the fire, no longer needed. However, as long as there is some sense of i ndividuality, a notion that there is a thing called "I" who is enjoying or suffe ring, then this question remains useful. When the final stick is thrown into t he fire, all that is left is consciousness...freedom. The Search for Understanding Why are we here? This is one of the most fundamental questions that humans ask themselves. Who are we, what is this reality, and why are we here? They are all bundled together into one great quest for understanding. And yet in this searc h for understanding, we are given innumerable beliefs. We are offered a wide var iety of concepts from which to choose - religious, political, philosophical. And we will tend to accept or reject these various viewpoints. But we accept and re ject based on what? We filter these ideas through our own accumulated belief sy stems; what we have accepted or rejected in the past. We have, for the most part

unknowingly, accepted certain beliefs, about who we are and what the world is. Then when we try to answer other questions like why we are here, we filter the a nswers we receive through the subtle notions we are already holding. The real search for understanding includes a close examination of what is actual ly true and what is a belief to the deepest levels of our being, including our v ery own existence and if we exist at all. It may seem an obvious truth that we e xist, and yet how do we know? And in this existence, we assume that there are s ome things that are us and some that are not - in other words 'we' are a subject and 'other things' are objects. But if we want to begin to analyze what we are and are not, we must continue on this subject/object path. We want to separate everything that we are aware OF from that 'I' which is aware of it. I am I am I am I am What aware of the world so I must be separate from the world. aware of my body, so I must be separate from my body. aware of my mind, so I must be separate from my mind. aware of my emotions, so I must be separate from my emotions. does that leave you with?

But on the other hand, can you find a separation between that subject and object ? In other words, is there a distinct boundary between the observer and that whi ch is observed? In that case: I am aware of my emotions, so I must be my emotions. I am aware of my mind, so I must be my mind. I am aware of my body, so I must be my body. I am aware of the world so I must be the world. Now where are you? The difficulty is that which we call the mind wants to hold on to one view or th e other. It wants to discriminate that THIS is the correct view and THAT is the incorrect view. In the end, we simply end up with more beliefs, and ultimately it is these beliefs that bind and define US, not the other way around. It is onl y through exposing and disentangling ourselves from these beliefs, all of them, that we can truly find freedom.