N-lightenment

Something in you already knows.

Freedom

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bird-cage2To erase all concepts from the mind is to see life fresh, new, alive and unlimited. The great bliss, freedom, peace and love that arise naturally and effortlessly as soon as we do this shows that it was never more than these concepts that kept us from realizing the miracle of life as it is.

We may feel that we are prisoners of our conditioned minds. But this has never been so. We’ve been sitting in a cage of our own making, but the door has always been wide open. We could always step outside at any time. How about now?

We can use spiritual practices like Self-Inquiry to free ourselves from addiction to the limiting and distorting concepts that have ruled our lives. We may have build a foundation of these limiting concepts, but that doesn’t mean they are as solid as we think. Simply questioning them reveals their fragile and insubstantial nature. When looked at clearly, they crumble.

You’ll find many practices on this website that will help you step out of this limiting conceptual prison and realize the great freedom you already have.

Spiritual Attention Deficit Disorder (SADD)

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pay-attentionWhy attention is THE single most important factor in your awakening and remaining awake.

If your attention remains focused on awake consciousness, then you remain always awake. It’s as simple as that. This is what it means to be awake. Your attention is no longer distracted by thoughts, feelings, situations and events. Although you are always aware of them and everything else that is happening, you are never pulled away from the greater reality, which is always here.

Most people, after they first become aware of their thoughts as separate from who they are, believe it is their thoughts that keep them trapped in illusion and suffering. But this is not true. It is not the thoughts themselves, but the attention focused on the thoughts that creates all this suffering. The thoughts themselves are completely harmless. Remove your attention from them and they seem to disappear into the background.

Test this out in your own life.

Retreats

This is what happens when you go on an extended spiritual retreat for a week or longer. If it is only for a week, you may spend the first few days with your attention still being distracted by your thoughts. There will be some time when your attention is focused on the deeper truth and experience of awake consciousness, but your attention is easily distracted by your thoughts, as this is your conditioned habit. After three days or so, your attention remains more and more on awake consciousness, the experience of great peace, love, oneness, happiness without cause. Finally toward the end of the retreat your attention remains mostly on awake consciousness.

And then the retreat is over. You go home. You return to your “normal” life. The distractions begin again quickly. Within a day or two the wonderful experience of profound peace, love and joy seem to fade away. All that has really happened is that your attention has been distracted and you have allowed this to happen. You allow it because you have been conditioned to do exactly this.

This profound freedom, peace, love and happiness you experienced on the retreat is actually always here. It never actually needed a retreat. It just needed you to shift your attention to what is always here. And the retreat helped you do this. It helped you focus your attention on something that is truer than all the distractions. But you’re used to focusing your attention on the distractions. You’ve been trained to keep the focus of your attention away from Truth and onto anything but Truth.

Satsang

Satsang is the same thing. Satsang is “living in truth” or “being in good company”. So during these few hours, we return our focus to what has always been here. And this feels wonderful. For some the mind is still distracting our attention. But the environment of Satsang is so focused and the energy of awake consciousness is so strong that it pulls the attention of most of us back to it even if it occasionally drifts away.

The more time we spend with our attention fully on awake consciousness, fully on presence, fully in Truth, the easier it is for us to keep our attention here.

For information about Satsang with a Living Awake Group click here: Living Awake Groups

For more information about Satsang and spiritual energy transmission: Satsang – Living in Truth

Ongoing Persistent Attention on Awake Consciousness

Eventually we learn to do this all the time in every situation. Even in the most strenuous physical exertion we can keep our attention in this spacious awareness that includes everything while still being aware of the body and its exertion. We don’t lose anything by doing this. It actually makes athletic performance far more efficient. It’s sometimes referred to as “being in the flow”. If our attention is limited to the body and thoughts about this exertion, we become overly self-conscious and have less strength, flexibility, power and stamina. Our physical activity becomes just as limited just as our attention is.

Meditation

Meditation is not so much a vehicle for awakening as it is a practice for disciplining our attention. Most of us are slaves to our attention. It controls us rather than the other way around. This means we have become slaves to our thoughts and feelings. We have very undisciplined minds. What is called Attention Deficit Disorder is far more widespread than thought. For many of us meditation may be our first experience with true mental discipline. We received some training in school to keep our minds focused on the task at hand. But as long as we’re not studying for an exam or engrossed in a movie, our thoughts are running all over the place and our attention is running right after them. Meditation is the beginning of removing the majority of our attention from our thoughts and allowing it to rest in a much broader and less limited field of attention. The more we do this, the more disciplined our minds become and the better we feel. Eventually we are no longer controlled by our thoughts at all. We realize a freedom that has always been here, but through our limited attention we were unaware of.

For more information about various meditation techniques, click here.
Basic Meditation
Effortless Meditation
Advanced Meditation – the Gap

The Value of Attention

There are times when we do want our attention to be limited to a very narrow focus, at least for a moment. If we suddenly step on a nail and it goes through our foot, the sudden pain pulls our full attention toward our foot and we do what is necessary. If a truck coming toward us suddenly veers into our lane, we immediately focus our attention on this and take the appropriate action until the danger has passed. While our attention is focused on these things, the freedom, peace, love and happiness that is always here doesn’t disappear. It’s only that our attention for a moment moves instantly to something else. This is appropriate, good and necessary. But this is a momentary movement of attention. If we keep our attention on the accident we just avoided and play it over and over in our minds, this is completely unnecessary and keeps us locked in a dream world of thoughts.

Spiritual Teachers

Some spiritual teachers exude a very powerful energetic transmission. It seems to radiate from them. Many spiritual teachers have clever and interesting things to say. But with certain teachers it doesn’t matter what they say. They can remain completely quiet. Still this powerful energy is felt and affects many people. It is helpful to be in the presence of such teachers. The force of their attention riveted on Truth pulls everyone’s attention to this same Truth in themselves.

Often when we experience such teachers, our attention remains on our True Being for a period of time, but just as in retreats, our attention is soon distracted by the many other things going on in our life, especially our thoughts.

Short Moments Repeated Often

One way to deal with this Spiritual Attention Deficit Disorder (SADD) is to repeatedly throughout the day remind ourselves of Truth, to return to this experience of expansiveness, freedom, peace, love, joy, to ignore our thoughts and simply be present to the greater awareness of what is without making any judgments or having any opinions about it. Even if we return to Truth for only a few moments before being distracted by our thoughts again, eventually the moments in Truth will grow. We are overcoming a lifetime habit of living in illusion. And this habit has been supported and reinforced by everyone we know. Don’t be hard on yourself. Every moment of Truth is a good moment. We can learn to turn our attention toward Truth in every situation. And we can learn, eventually, to keep it here. Let it begin with short moments. This is how we overcome Spiritual Attention Deficit Disorder one short step at a time.

Any time and in any way we return to moments of Truth helps us. Whether this is on retreat, in meditation, in Satsang with an awake teacher, reading spiritual books, or watching videos, every moment is helpful. The longer we remain in each moment of Truth and the more this is repeated, the more our attention shifts from illusion to Truth. Eventually illusion no longer interests us. It no longer grabs our attention and our attention remains in Truth.

This is how we wake up.

Awakening Experiences

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It’s interesting to see what the experiences of others is. And perhaps you can see what is common to all of them. Please understand that you will have your own experience. Everyone’s conditioning has this same commonality and is also completely unique. So your experience of awakening will also be unique. What is common to all these experiences as well as what you will experience is the end of ego, self-identification. But it will happen to you in your own completely unique and beautiful way, like the blooming of a flower in Springtime.

 

The Embodied Divine

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meeting-pointThere is a junction where the un-manifest meets the manifest, where the formless meets form. It is like the meeting point of ocean and wave. In this meeting point the un-manifest becomes manifest, the formless becomes form, the ocean takes the form of a wave and the Divine is embodied.

And you are that meeting point, that channel for the embodied Divine. Not only you, but everything you see, hear, taste and touch. It is all an expression of the formless in form, an expression of the Divine in matter.

Suchness

In Zen, we use the word Suchness to describe this meeting point. When we see a person or object, we see both the form and the formless it is an expression of and cannot exist without. We see both the manifest and the un-manifest, both the material and the Divine. In this way everything is seen as essentially One. There is no separation anywhere. No manifest form can exist without the un-manifest it is an expression of. When we truly realize this deep in our own experience as both manifest and un-manifest, we are free from the conditioned concepts of this and that or this versus that. Nothing appears as separate and independent any longer. Our own identity is no longer separate and independent. It includes all that exists, both form and formless, both manifest and un-manifest, both material and Divine.

In this way, we are free to see life as it is without limiting it to concepts or beliefs. How can you describe this? How can you contain this in any thought or concept? It is unlimited, infinite, beyond all thoughts of space or time.

A Concept To Free You From Other Concepts

This meeting point is also a concept used here to free you from the other concepts that are limiting you. The manifest and un-manifest, form and formless, material and Divine have never been separate so there is really no meeting point between two separate things. There is just what is. And what is is beyond description or any concept.

In this moment, you are both manifest and un-manifest, both form and formless, both material and Divine. You are both the wave and the ocean.

Shifting Attention

Through most of our lives our attention was directed exclusively to form alone. And I include thoughts and feelings as form. Our attention rarely, if ever, strayed to the formless which is always here and which no form could exist without, just as no wave could exist without the ocean. As we begin to awaken, our attention begins to include the formless. At first this may happen with sudden flashes of realization. In Zen, we call these moments Satori, or clear seeing. As this happens more frequently and for longer periods of time, our attention begins to rest as much on the formless as it does on form. Eventually we realize that there has never been any separation between form and formless. They have always been One, just as the wave has never been separate from the ocean.

All form arises from the formless. All that is manifest arises from the un-manifest. All that is material arises from the Divine and can never be separate from it. All that is manifest has the nature to be constantly changing, a dynamic expression of the un-manifest. Only the un-manifest in its un-manifest state can be said to be unchanging as it has not yet manifest to change. Manifest and un-manifest inter-are. They are One. When we talk about Oneness or nonduality, this is what we mean. Nowhere in all existence can anything stand by itself alone.

If you are able in meditation to surrender your attention to form and relax back into the formless, to surrender all concepts and thoughts, to enjoy this vast infinite spaciousness, you cannot help but experience the oneness of form and formless. All separation dissolves. If you are fully present, you cannot help but notice this dynamic play of form ceaselessly arising from and returning to the formless.

Here you truly experience the absolute and undeniable perfection of all life.

The Body

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the body

What is the body made of? If we look carefully, we can see it is made of only four elements: earth, air, fire and water.

Earth is the body’s bones, skin, teeth. Fire is the heat generated in all living bodies. Water is in our flowing blood and in every cell. The body is mostly water. And air is not only the exchange of oxygen necessary for the life of our cells, but also the vast space between molecules that is true of all physical matter. Earth, air, fire and water.

When you sit silently in nature, these four elements of the body become very clear. This body is not separate from the earth it sits on. Without this earth element, it could not exist. This body is not separate from the sun that shines on it. Without the sun, this body could not exist. This body cannot be separate from water or air. Without these the body also could not exist. If you removed even one of these elements, the body could not be here.

What Is This Thing Called A Body?

If you too can see this clearly, then answer me this. What is this thing you call “my body”? Is it a separate, independent thing, separate from the rest of life? How can it be? Without the earth, the sun, water and air, it cannot exist for even a single moment. So it is not separate and independent from these things. How about parents? Could this body exist if your parents had never met? And, you know, this chain of ancestors goes back a very long ways, even before the human species existed. Could this body exist without even a single one of those ancient ancestors meeting? So this body cannot really be separate and independent from any of them.

If you look carefully you cannot find any evidence at all that this body is separate and independent from anything else. Don’t take my word for it. Try it and see for yourself. Let me know if you find any evidence of this body’s separate and independent self-nature. I’m very interested in hearing what you discover.

This is all very clear, is it not? It’s quite obvious. Perhaps you have not looked at your body in this way before. You may perceive the body as separate, independent and unique. You may call it “my body” as if it really were separate from all the other bodies, from all your ancestors, from earth, air, heat and water. This experience of a separate, independent body is part of our conditioning. It is also why we feel that we are a separate, independent self separated from the rest of life. But, if we look carefully, we can see that there is no evidence for this. The evidence is, in fact, just the opposite. There is no separate, independent body, just as there is no separate, independent self.

The Fifth Element

There is a fifth element we haven’t mentioned yet. This element may not yet be so obvious. It is what animates the body, giving it what we call life. And it is also the substance of all life, including earth, air, fire and water. We have many names for this fifth element, which is not really an element at all. Some call it Spirit, Consciousness, God, the Formless, the Un-manifest, Emptiness, etc. But no name can really describe what this is. It cannot be seen and yet it is very much here. In deep silence, when you are really paying attention, when you are really listening, perhaps you can feel it. Nothing that exists is ever separate from this.

Oneness

Oneness or non-duality are not really concepts at all. They are, instead, the end of concepts. They are simply freedom from the conditioned concepts of separation and independence. If you look carefully and pay attention, it is clear that separation and independence cannot exist – not in a body and not in a self. That we experience life as separate and independent is only the result of our conditioned thoughts. It is much like a sleeping dream. When we wake up, we realize this has never been true.

Oneness

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You can’t attain Oneness.

You simply surrender twoness.

And that is Oneness.