“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
― Rumi
Concepts can be very useful, especially if they don't turn into beliefs
This FREE RANGE EGOS website is full of concepts, and this, in spite of the fact that, as many meditation adepts, visionaries, poets and quantum physicists have noted, genuine awakening is non-conceptual. Yet, good concepts can help to prepare the mind for what is beyond conceptualization.
The best conceptual thought can do is to function somewhat like training wheels on our exploratory bicycle; training wheels that fall away as we approach the realization that we are what we seek. The key is awareness, the very awareness now reading these words. This entire site is devoted to seeing more clearly what we mean by that one word. A good starting question might be, 'How much intelligence can we ascribe to that which is aware of thinking?'
-- Colin Yardley, July 2015
"No one has ever found awareness." -- Jackson Peterson, Dzogchen teacher
"Apparently there are not many people who have an awareness that includes awareness as something to be aware of." -- David Bohm, Physicist
Space Substantial
I can and do change matter-stuff all the time. I put on different clothes to go to a party. I trade in an old car for a new one. I paint the bedroom with EMF blocking iron oxide.
On the other hand, I grew up fearing spiders and here I am a mature adult and I still fear them. From my father I got many wonderful things, but I also got the idea that ‘life’s a bitch and then you die.’ From time to time I still catch myself believing that is so. I have always tended to feel self-conscious and insecure around women. I still do. (continue)
On the other hand, I grew up fearing spiders and here I am a mature adult and I still fear them. From my father I got many wonderful things, but I also got the idea that ‘life’s a bitch and then you die.’ From time to time I still catch myself believing that is so. I have always tended to feel self-conscious and insecure around women. I still do. (continue)
atheism: denial of a mirage
Einstein once noted that "the universe is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." The great genius seemed to intuit something profound about a correlation between existence and appearance.
The word 'existence' comes from the Latin 'ex sistere' which means 'to stand forth; to stand forth out of'... out of what? Out of the realm of Being perhaps, way out here in the imaginally created realm of becoming, a.k.a. the realm of appearance; the mirage domain of time-space experience. In this context, it would be silly to declare that God exists. Only appearances stand forth out of Being. Only appearances can be said to ex-ist.
The relative world of becoming, where we can be said to exist, only seems to be real. This make the relative world completely safe to awaken FROM, as it is safe to awaken from nightly dreams, free of anxiety about whether or not other persons in our dream survived the 'radical' event of awakening.
However, if you share REAL LOVE with others in the waking dream, all bets are off. The unbound rose of eternity blooms even in the midst of impermanence.
The word 'existence' comes from the Latin 'ex sistere' which means 'to stand forth; to stand forth out of'... out of what? Out of the realm of Being perhaps, way out here in the imaginally created realm of becoming, a.k.a. the realm of appearance; the mirage domain of time-space experience. In this context, it would be silly to declare that God exists. Only appearances stand forth out of Being. Only appearances can be said to ex-ist.
The relative world of becoming, where we can be said to exist, only seems to be real. This make the relative world completely safe to awaken FROM, as it is safe to awaken from nightly dreams, free of anxiety about whether or not other persons in our dream survived the 'radical' event of awakening.
However, if you share REAL LOVE with others in the waking dream, all bets are off. The unbound rose of eternity blooms even in the midst of impermanence.
Maha Maya Kinetic
Human mothers give birth to babies who grow up and become the gnarly, problematical swarm we call 'society.' What if -- and this is a stretch, but doggone if it doesn't feel true -- what if there is another Mother, a really big One who is all Verb and no Noun, who gives birth to form altogether; not just to cogitating anthropoid meat, but to ALL FORM, gross physical to quantum gravitational to subtle visionary... (continue)
out in the rain of grace without an umbrella
At the core of Eckhart Tolle's vision, a simple message coheres, one that we can access by learning to see through the conceptual mind in addition to using it to figure things out. Philosophical discourse labors to bridge the gap between thinking and awareness of thinking. Yet, this bridging, Tolle argues, has less to do with thinking more clever thoughts than with abiding as effortless awareness which notices everything, including our own concepts.
Once manifest, even our grandest philosophical concepts are but objects perceived by awareness. We proliferate concepts, seldom apprehending how such activity makes it ever more likely to conflate complexity with clarity. Many of us become Emerson's 'knowledgable idiots' mistaking 'foolish consistencies' for conceptual coherence. We are like spiders spinning webs that we take to be the binders that hold all our really important stuff together.
Yet, in truth, notes Tolle, awareness is beyond both the web builder and the web. Awareness notices thinking, feeling and perceiving as well as the objects with which those activities connect. Yet, awareness itself is never one of those objects.
One cannot look for that which is doing the looking.
In a sense, awareness is pure verb, a no-thing without which there is no cognizance of things at all. This unlocatable awareness is vastly more profound than any object we can point a finger at, even really big ones like angels and gods.
There is nothing about this foundational Awareness that relates to solipsistic fantasies of omniscience. The solipsist assumption that only one's own mind can be said, for certain, to exist is a particularly pathetic form of the attempt to play God. Awareness generates neither concepts, belief systems nor even preferences. It just is. It outshines willful efforts at egoic control and yet is the only true capital any one of us has. Everything that appears unto awareness is, as the Buddha noted, phenomenal and impermanent; a source of suffering when clung to or identified with; a source of novelty and wonder to one who is awake as that naked awareness with respect to which all phenomena, including thoughts and feelings, come and go.
Forgive me if I'm making this awareness sound like something unimaginably difficult to grasp. It is always present. It is so pure and subtle notes the sage Nisagadatta, "that it can see light." Ponder that for a moment. Light is the most blindingly brilliant thing we can behold and yet, even light is only an object of which awareness is aware. We might be close to unraveling these extraordinary lines by Blake, "God appears and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day."
We can't know awareness, yet nothing can be known without it. It is even aware of unconsciousness when we sleep. Always here, always unknowable, ever fresh and dynamic as the very Presence of both presence and absence. Okay, I'll give up trying to describe it now.
Perhaps a Zen story....
An elderly Zen adept was purchasing flax seeds at a market when a student spotted him and, seizing his chance to approach the sage, asked him to reveal the deep meaning of awareness. The Zen master replied, "This flax weighs three pounds."
Once manifest, even our grandest philosophical concepts are but objects perceived by awareness. We proliferate concepts, seldom apprehending how such activity makes it ever more likely to conflate complexity with clarity. Many of us become Emerson's 'knowledgable idiots' mistaking 'foolish consistencies' for conceptual coherence. We are like spiders spinning webs that we take to be the binders that hold all our really important stuff together.
Yet, in truth, notes Tolle, awareness is beyond both the web builder and the web. Awareness notices thinking, feeling and perceiving as well as the objects with which those activities connect. Yet, awareness itself is never one of those objects.
One cannot look for that which is doing the looking.
In a sense, awareness is pure verb, a no-thing without which there is no cognizance of things at all. This unlocatable awareness is vastly more profound than any object we can point a finger at, even really big ones like angels and gods.
There is nothing about this foundational Awareness that relates to solipsistic fantasies of omniscience. The solipsist assumption that only one's own mind can be said, for certain, to exist is a particularly pathetic form of the attempt to play God. Awareness generates neither concepts, belief systems nor even preferences. It just is. It outshines willful efforts at egoic control and yet is the only true capital any one of us has. Everything that appears unto awareness is, as the Buddha noted, phenomenal and impermanent; a source of suffering when clung to or identified with; a source of novelty and wonder to one who is awake as that naked awareness with respect to which all phenomena, including thoughts and feelings, come and go.
Forgive me if I'm making this awareness sound like something unimaginably difficult to grasp. It is always present. It is so pure and subtle notes the sage Nisagadatta, "that it can see light." Ponder that for a moment. Light is the most blindingly brilliant thing we can behold and yet, even light is only an object of which awareness is aware. We might be close to unraveling these extraordinary lines by Blake, "God appears and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day."
We can't know awareness, yet nothing can be known without it. It is even aware of unconsciousness when we sleep. Always here, always unknowable, ever fresh and dynamic as the very Presence of both presence and absence. Okay, I'll give up trying to describe it now.
Perhaps a Zen story....
An elderly Zen adept was purchasing flax seeds at a market when a student spotted him and, seizing his chance to approach the sage, asked him to reveal the deep meaning of awareness. The Zen master replied, "This flax weighs three pounds."
Making Light of Experience
Maya Place or Yours?
Most of us are familiar with the Asian concept of Maya, a word often translated into English as "illusion" in line with the Hindu notion that whatever is impermanent is essentially unreal compared to the transcendent Sat-Chit-Ananda, a.k.a., timeless, unchanging Truth-Consciousness-Bliss. (continue)
the greater the resistance to movement
the less conscious the state
Have you noticed? Our waking state seems to be the state that most wears us out. We must sleep to recoup sufficient energy to reenter it... (continue)
In a conventional sense, there are stages to meditation, as there are stages to the growth and development of all living things from amoeba to man. From a deeper/higher perspective, there are no stages.
Everything that arises subsides, comprising modifications of energies that do not touch the awareness that beholds the domains of process through our living vehicles.
It's not easy to get this, because it's too direct, too non-conceptual. Given our language mediated entanglement in the flow of appearances, we struggle with direct perception and direct engagement. Employing language to mend conceptual delusions and dualistic thought is a bit like using an axe to stitch up a ripped sweater.
'Just stop!' said my teacher. 'Imagine that a big hand reaches into your brain and plucks out all your concepts. What's left is IT -- present, poetic, loving, wise, compassionate, spontaneous -- devoid of any attempt to own or control the unfathomable gift we all share... which IT is.'
Horton Views a Who?
Why is it that every time spiritual aspirants seek out a genuine sage like Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi or Punjaji and ask for pointers, these sages almost always reply with some variation of 'Who is asking for pointers?'… 'Who wants to know?"… "Who is experiencing bondage?'… etc. Ramana gave the same meditation instruction to many, many people… Inquire 'Who am I?'… Who is asking… who is inquiring… who is looking for 'I'? Ramana and the other sages all knew that the seeker will never find this 'I' and, paradoxically, wonderfully, this undiscoverable 'I' is who you really are. You can't see it. You can only Be it. In truth you always are it, no matter how convincingly the mind tells you that you're just a lonely bag of debt ridden meat or an almost perfect yogi.
The Things We Do For Love
When pundits asked the Buddha concerning their punditudinal (sic) theories about the meaning of life, the Buddha said their theories were a thimble trying to hold the ocean and that they would be much better served simply by being kind to one another. Is it possible that all suffering in the world is a failure of love on our part? Blake wrote, "The bat that flits at close of eve/Has left the mind that won't believe." From what mind do hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes flit? Sorry, terribly silly question. It's just that, closely examined, the Butterfly Effect seems to include Inner Monarchs as well.
An Indian Sage Beyond Reckoning
Diving into the texts of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is a totally fab experience of looming ego death and increasing clarity, reawakened wonder and freedom from oodles of spiritual counterfeit that smokescreen a simple truth none may own, manipulate or turn into a profitable franchise.
M.C. ESCHER'S SWANS
In foreshortened notation, a few key Nisargadattian pointers:
- Awakening is more about relaxing into What Is than it is about achievement. To attempt to achieve what we already are is to enter prison in search of freedom.
Being and Non-Being belong to the realm over which essential I AM consciousness presides. You are NOT that consciousness. It is visited upon you.
Everything you can point to, including consciousness, you are not!
- You are prior to consciousness, eternally so. You have to be. Otherwise, you could not even notice the coming and going of consciousness and the infinite things/objects of which consciousness is aware.
- No one wants to notice or accept this truth of our core nature, because we are all totally infatuated with I AM Beingness. Since our core nature is beyond Being and non-being, it is itself non-experiential. We do not know that we exist until consciousness appears and does its level best to convince us that we are a SOMEBODY.
- Problem is, somebodies, like consciousness itself, appear and disappear, i.e., they are born and they die.
- The one unto whom birth and death appear to happen is the one you truly are.
- That one, prior to consciousness, is indescribable and unknowable. It is so subtle and so pure that it can see light.
- That's right, it can see light!
- Imagine.
Relativity is Relative
"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the “universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness." -- Albert Einstein
The world is full of smart Sheldon Cooper guys and girls who think that the domain of physics is only and exclusively the 'out there' of empirical fixation. The beyond-smart ones, like Albert E., apperceive that experience is post-logical and supra-mathematical. This vision enfolds empiricism in more inclusive orders that fulfill its entelechies in the very act of transcending them.
The world is full of smart Sheldon Cooper guys and girls who think that the domain of physics is only and exclusively the 'out there' of empirical fixation. The beyond-smart ones, like Albert E., apperceive that experience is post-logical and supra-mathematical. This vision enfolds empiricism in more inclusive orders that fulfill its entelechies in the very act of transcending them.
Innocence is not Wishful Thinking
"When you make a wish, you have to say
it out loud so the air hears it and makes it
come true." -- G.G. Age 5
it out loud so the air hears it and makes it
come true." -- G.G. Age 5
Atheists, like religious zealots, invariably think God is an object (an imaginary one) and, of course, such a One does not exist -- neither the supposed Real One nor the imaginary One. The distinction to be made here is both simple and subtle. Even typing the word 'God' produces an objectification that misleads. God, like Awareness, is not an object. All objects are not other than awareness. The hardness of a rock is a quality of awareness. Qualia matter as much as quantum and neither is merely matter in the end.
and one moment of your heart breaking and opening in love is worth far more than all these words that doink against the shining mirror of truth like rubber tipped arrows.
All material on this website, with the obvious exception of quotations, copyright Colin Yardley (c) Yardley Communications 2016.
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