Awakening

The ‘Born-Apparent’ Nisargadatta

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Hello Friends,

Here is another small sequence of comments, should it be of some interest.

Comments in response to a YouTube audio with quotes from Nisargadatta:

Dietrich
The ‘born apparent’ cannot be led to its True Unborn Self. However, the recognition of the True Unborn Self reveals that the born is only apparent and therefore is not. Something that is not will never see what is.

daisilui
Dietrich, The ‘born apparent’, let’s call it the body-mind is the starting point that believes it can do something to arrive at the Self. Whether led by grace or by own persistence [or both], it must start from somewhere to get nowhere and to disappear at arrival in the realisation that it never actually moved. The mind is the only tool that leads one to the realisation that it doesn’t exist.

Dietrich
The term ‘mind’ is a broad term. The ‘born apparent’ is a specific application of mental activity that miraculously convinces awareness to believe that it is a separate entity. That believed-in, fake, separate entity is unable to see that it does not exist, that it is imagination only. The questioning of this belief is a mental act, guided by intuition. Thoughts can point in the right direction but the waking up from the illusion is a non-mental realisation. The same applies to creation as a whole. It does not exist; it only appears to exist. It only seems real to the believed-in ‘born apparent’. Both are unreal. They continue as Lila (light-hearted play) once Maya has been exposed as being an appearance only without any independent substance.

Do Something!

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Doing is going on. Spiritual paths usually encourage personal development. That’s doing something to get somewhere. That’s what society understands since every conventional step in a lifestream focuses almost exclusively on a better tomorrow. So what’s wrong with that?

This ‘better-tomorrow’ drive can include the idea that tomorrow is the time to wake up to the boundless energy that’s closer than any thought about it.

It may feel like a disappointment to the ethically conditioned mind that the focus on personal development can keep us identified within the boundaries of time.

The point is that doing happens anyway in all areas of living. Personal development may happen anyway, practising a musical instrument may happen, improving a health condition may happen, financial issues may be tackled etc.

It would be a mistake to think that doing stops. Thinking, doing, expressing, creating, improving, are natural movements in time and will continue to be enjoyed.

The keyword is ‘natural.’ By that, I mean that these doings will happen naturally. Our almost compulsory, mental focus on the belief that something depends on a better tomorrow is the trap.

In reality, everything depends on the timeless energy that is present in every move. If our beliefs focus with priority on ‘moving to a better tomorrow’ then stress will replace naturalness, and with that stress comes the worry about tomorrow. At the same time, worry distracts from the only reliable fulfilment there is, namely the ever-fresh boundless presence of our true nature that is closer than our next thought about it.

Good musicians express that timeless presence, they don’t worry about the next note. Even when practising a scale to improve the skill level, the exercises can be done playfully, without worry about the outcome. The outcome will present itself anyway. In fact, efficiency increases when there is no worry since worry consumes a lot of energy.

On a global scale, suffering is caused by the effects of worry and self-concern.

The last point is that this self-concern will come up again and again as long as there is a disregarding of our true nature, a conceptless presence that can’t be measured, and that is closer… than the next thought about it. 

Is Awakening a Process?

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Today I was thinking about the question if awakening is a process or not. Awakening reveals timelessness, with no beginning and no end. And it reveals that this is what we are.

Some people sense this fact and others don’t. Some get frequently a taste of it in varying degrees of clarity, depending the degree of identification with a conceptual, separate entity. ‘Process’ is not applicable to the term ‘awakening’ itself, only to the reducing degrees of identification with a limited, apparently separate me.

If the identification drops suddenly, then the process is instant. In most cases, clarity and frequency of ‘no identification’ increases over apparent time until it is seen to be totally normal.

Natalie’s less than romantic description of enlightened awareness

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The1stDukeDroklar:
An enlightened person lives a much less selfish life and helps others while the unenlightened remain part of the problem. You cannot equate the two states as equal.

Dietrich:
 This is one of the toughest issues for minds. Separating beliefs usually value virtue over vice. These beliefs are also inbuilt into the way the relative world is set up, and therefore these values have their place. From the innocent point of being, no value judgment is possible. Actions from this vantage point of no-thingness are spontaneously marked by the absence of concern for mental, self-image related satisfaction as there is no identification with any self-image. You would probably call it ‘ego-less’ acting.

Statement: There is nothing you can do to realise reality because there is no one

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When hearing such a statement, it can trigger four types of responses:

1. Positive, such as ‘Wonderful!’
2. Negative, such as ‘Terrible,’ ‘Hopeless,’ ‘Depressing!’
3. First negative, then positive.
4. Rejecting, such as ‘I don’t believe this!’

1. A positive reaction is naturally triggered if there is a seeing that everything that appears is the expression of one intelligence-presence-energy.

2. A negative reaction is understandably triggered if there is an identification and sense of separation.
What a dreadful situation this must be: There is the sense of imprisonment, and I am told that I can’t do anything about it, no matter how hard I try.
I’d say that such a response is natural, like the first response, because the nature of life is fullness. A sense of lack will naturally trigger a yearning for fullness.
This natural yearning is, in a sense, interfered with, when the above statement is believed in, from the perspective of an assumed separate entity. That interference can be perceived as being inappropriate as it may take away any hope. Nothing can be done by me, all I can ‘do’ is wait, and I may continue thinking: ‘Even this waiting is too much doing because it perpetuates the sense that a will outside of myself has control, and it will decide when I am destined to wake up.’

Such a train of though may take the mind to its limits, because mental activity is so used to finding solutions in many areas of daily life, and it is used to hope for a better future. That habit of ‘being in charge for a better future’ is now rendered impotent as far as waking up is concerned.

Following is my opinion regarding the statement’s usefulness or lack of usefulness: It will either be useful or it will be useless in regards to waking up.

It is useless if the listener loses interest in the subject of realizing reality.

3. It is useful if the listener keeps inquiring – this is the third type of response -, even if this inquiry is reduced to looking at the situation as it has been presented. Let’s assume that I consider that the statement may be true.  This does not mean that I stop looking at the fact that this statement may be true. The very looking at this statement and its possible relevance may reveal what I have been yearning for. That initially disappointing statement that ‘I can’t do anything,’ when looked at, can cause a mental relaxation that may turn out to create the ‘condition’, yes, condition, that facilitates the seeing of what has always been the case, the timeless presence that is. The looking at this statement could be classified as a ‘meditation;’ and therefore, it could be classified as a ‘method.’ I am fully aware that the presenters of such a statement avoid the label ‘method,’ as it could fuel the greed towards an outcome in the future, and this would distort this method and make it a useless imitation of itself!

4. Rejecting such a statement will lead the listener to investigate other avenues, some of which may also carry the opportunity to waking up. We could state that all useful methods do not contain hope for a better future. Hope for a better future is, however, the incentive for most people to look for methods to start with, useless ones and useful ones. As mentioned earlier,  useful methods do not deal with any imagined past or future, they always deal with facts. Looking at facts has never interfered with waking up. In coming posts I will look at a range of such useful methods. Hope for a better future is totally understandable and the resulting motivation to look for useful methods is equally understandable. This motivation does not need to be killed. As soon as a useful method is found and applied, this motivation will come to an end during the application. It may arise again during daily life and fade again during meditation. By alternating between these two instances, the timeless presence is bound to emerge more and more, and consequently the illusion of a separate identity is more consistently exposed.

Questions from Fred C.

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The following was posted by Fred C:

There are a lot more ‘dodgy’ concepts put out by non-dual ‘communicators’ that need clarifying too:

1. There is nothing you can do to realise reality because there is no one.

2. It is hopeless. Life is utterly meaningless

3. “i am not a teacher because I can’t teach you to be who you already are”

4. There is nothing you can do because awakening is uncaused (but at the same time there is an admittance that liberation is gradual, as if there really is a cause and effect path- or a someone who traverses it)

5. “Realisation is the realisation that there is no I” — what so realised beings only go around always noticing that there is no I anymore and that’s all there is to it?

6. Compassion is not required and a hangover from old spiritual teachings that don’t work 7. Wisdom is not needed in the modern non-dual communication as there is no one to be wise.

8. ALL there is is THIS

9. There is Nothing, period!

10. Liberation doesn’t make you a better or wiser person, you can still be a horrible, nasty, small minded person who causes harm to others and be liberated.

11. It has got nothing to do with thoughts and thinking but energy. Energy is contracted in the body and this is the cause of a me that feels small and restricted. 12. The energy needs to shift from contracted to uncontracted for awakening to occur.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV55MRhw6R0

Non-Resistance

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Seeing the self-evident presence of Being can occur without looking for it, but for the vast majority of people there has been interest in the subject of awakening and liberation before awakening happens.

In many cases there have been glimpses or phases of awakening, alternating with reappearances of the suffering ego. The best way to handle these phases of ‘ignorance’ is not to resist these. This approach is still associated with a ‘me’ that tries not to resist ‘what happens,’ but this genuine willingness of the imagined me to give way to life’s movements as they present themselves can weaken the tendency to contract in the face of ‘what is happening.’ Even contractions are seen as ‘what is happening,’ and in this way the contractions are not fueled by the resistance towards contractions.

As humans, we are conditioned to look for pleasure and to avoid suffering. Neither of these approaches make us see what is already here. To reject pleasures and to want suffering is a ‘religious’ perversion. It is based on the idea that it is virtuous to suffer. It is totally unnatural.

Non-resistance causes the reappearances of the ‘ego’ to weaken. Non-resistance is happening just by seeing whatever comes up, without diverting from it by imagining a preferred future or by comparing a current sensation with any other (preferred or avoided) sensations that may be stored in the memory bank.