Enlightenment Quotes

[SoonHei]

It’s not all in your head. It’s all in your heart. It’s all in your feet. It’s all in your hips. It’s all in your shoulders. It’s all in your breath. It’s all in your body. Anything unattended to, unresolved, unhealed, and unprocessed lives in your tissues, your cells, your musculature. It may be manifest in your stinking thinking, but it doesn’t begin there. The mind does not source itself—the body does. The trick is to not try to shift the thinking from within the mind itself. You can’t. You may be able to subdue it there, but you won’t be able to resolve it. Because the troubling thoughts are merely a symptom of the deeper issues. They are a reflection of our emotional holdings and constricted musculature. They emanate from the fleshy trauma tunnels that we dug in order to survive this world. Many of us sit in the waiting room of awakening for decades, waiting impatiently for our new birth. And it never arrives, because we are looking for it where it isn’t—within the mind, itself. Babies aren’t born that way. You have to go down into the depths of the body to bring a new birth to life. Down, down, down…. into the alchemical chambers of new thought—YOUR MAGNIFICENT BODY. This is where we are born again.

~JEFF BROWN

[Rasheed]

On 11/27/2019 at 6:50 PM, SoonHei said:

" The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory.
Why going anywhere?
Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out.
The dream is not your problem.
Your problem is, that you like one part of your dream and not another.
Love all or none of it and stop complaining.
When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs to be done."

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj ~

Profound.

[Ananta]

[Shin]

The first time you remember this in your direct experience, is when crying in public becomes a non issue ?

 

[SoonHei]

You're only fooling yourself. You must try your best to let go of this world, if you want to make spiritual progress. By letting go of this world I don't mean you have to go live in a cave and ignore everybody, I mean mentally. This all begins mentally. You have to mentally make the correction within yourself. As an example: You go to a school room and you look through the window in a school and you see a teacher adding on the blackboard, two times two is five. That's the wrong answer. You have no right to go into the school and beat up the teacher. I guess that's what they do now. You can go to the teacher and become angry at the teacher and scream at her and say, "Look what you're writing down, two times two is five, this is wrong!" Of course in her words, she is just trying to show the class. You really don't know what's going on, you're seeing a partial picture and you're judging by the partial picture. But your duty is to make the correction mentally. You see the difference? Mentally you're saying to yourself, "Two times two is four, not five!" And once you're made the correction you're finished with it. That is how you should live in this world. When you see disharmony, man's inhumanity to man, wars, all the nonsensical things going on in this world, you mentally change it, by knowing the truth about these things.

The truth is there is only Brahman, there is only the absolute reality and you are that absolute reality. There is only the one and you are that one. As you begin to do this day after day, make mental corrections, the day comes when you no longer have to do this, for you now live in a higher consciousness, where there is no disharmony, no confusion, no chaos. You have lifted yourself up to a higher plateau. Even when I say there is no confusion, no chaos, no disharmony, I'm not saying it will stop being like that in this world. This world will never change, this world is the world that we see. This world goes through certain universal karma and it has absolutely nothing to do with you. This is why you learn to leave the world alone. You learn to leave people alone. You learn to leave yourself alone. It all starts within yourself. If you're not satisfied with yourself, if you do not love yourself, how can you possibly love other people? Or be satisfied with other people? You will always find fault. That fault comes from a deep dissatisfaction, probably since you were a kid. How do you remedy this? By staying the mind on God, on Brahman, on consciousness. How do you do this? By inquiring, "To whom does this come? Who sees these things? Where do these things come from? Where does everything come from? Where do I come from? Where does the sky come from? Where do the trees come from?" 

If you do this often enough, you will be taking a step backward from this creation. You will become the screen, the screen of life, on which these images project themselves. But you always remember that you are the screen and you're not the images. You will be able to observe the images and smile. You'll see all the images fighting with each other, shooting each other, killing each other, being happy sometimes, being sad sometimes, going through all kinds of experiences. But you will smile and you will not identify with these things anymore. You have risen. You have risen to that place where there is only the screen. The screen in this instance is boundless space. Boundless space when you look all around you, you see air. It's nice to see the air, and you say this in the air. But it goes further than air, it's boundless space. Boundless space is the screen of life, consciousness. And everything that you see with your eyes or with your senses is a superimposition on boundless space. In other words boundless space is like the book without the print. When the print is on the book you forget about the boundless space you forget about the white pages in the book. You now focus on the images which is the print. The print is not reality, the print is an effect. Reality are the white pages or the boundless space or the screen. You must ponder these things day and night. 

When you ask yourself, "Who am I?" The picture of boundless space will come into your vision, the screen. And one day you will discover that you're not this world at all, for this world does not exist at all. It never existed it has no validity. Where did it come from? How did it begin if it just appeared like a dream? In the dream you don't have a beginning, the world just begins at any place, any spot. The dream just is, there is no beginning to a dream. And so it is, there is no beginning to this world. This world has no beginning it never began. It came out of you because you are consciousness. You are pure awareness. Anything that exists came out of you so-to-speak. When you begin to inquire, "Who am I?" you're pulling it back in. The more you inquire, "Who am I?" The more you pull the whole universe back in within yourself. You are the one. There is noone but you.So you can see how foolish it is to become angry over something, to judge something, to think something is good, something is bad, something is right, something is wrong. You are supposedly truth students. Students of the highest truth. You can never get anywhere by judging this world, by coming to conclusions, by taking sides, by feeling angry. All it does is keep you back into humanhood, pushes you back into humanhood, thousands of years back. 

Yet, sooner or later you will find yourself. We're all hell bound for heaven, so-to-speak. But take a look at what you do with your life everyday. Catch yourself, watch yourself. You have to become very diligent. Watch your thoughts everyday. Watch your actions, observe yourself in action, observe what you do. Observe what is important to you. Where your mind is most of the time. Are you feeling sorry for yourself? Do you feel depressed, discouraged about something? How can you? When you realize that you are a God, how can a God become discouraged or disappointed? You must always look at yourself as a God. You're not a human being with problems. It's not really you. You are Brahman, nirvana, sat-chit-ananda. You have to feel this in your bones. You must keep going deeper and deeper and deeper. Never let a day go by that you do not think about these things. There is an adage, if you think about God, God will think about you. This is true, if you think about reality, reality will think of you. But if you sink to the lower depths of society and think about all confusion and nonsense what do you expect? That'll think of you. That will become your teacher and guru. It's your choice. This is the only freedom you've got remember, everything else is preordained. Everything else has been mapped out.

If you would only be aware of this why would you worry about anything? And realize everything is karmic that you see. Under the laws of Ishvara, the God of karma, there is really nothing wrong and nothing right. Things are just the way they're supposed to be. Now can you see what I mean when I say, "All is well and everything is unfolding as it should?" Everything is in its right place just the way it's supposed to be. There is no mistakes. If you don't like the way things are then go have a talk with Ishvara, tell Ishvara your troubles. But when you start to flow with the universe instead of fighting it, not trying to change things to make them your way, you will find that all is well. Very well indeed. So the only freedom you've got is to make a choice. Whom shall I follow this day, God or mammon? Who the heck is mammon? You have this choice to go toward freedom or go in the other direction. This is the only freedom we've got. We have no other freedom. So be happy.

Robert Adams, T227: “Who Am I?"

[SoonHei]

[SoonHei]

What these words attempt to point at is not a what.  So they don't really point at it.

[SoonHei]

He spent years perfecting his hairstyle only to discover it was a wig.

[SoonHei]

He spent years perfecting his hairstyle only to discover it was a wig.

WHAT IS THE POINT OF WITNESSING/OBSERVING? 

The point of just witnessing the coming and going of thoughts without identifying with them, which includes not identifying with the thought of the “thinker,” you’ll begin to notice with an increased clarity of consciousness that things are just happening. 

There is no one doing anything as the universe moves as an indivisible whole. Even the twitch of a finger is the movement of the entire universe. 

Only when we identify with the mind and the body do we misinterpret it as an individual object (mind-body) doing things and using effort. The body seems to exert and burn energy and you, as Awareness, are the witness of it but if you are identifying with the mind-body the mind projects sensations and thoughts as “I feel like I need a rest from my work because I’ve worked so hard.” This mental conditioning is strongly reinforced in the world but the world is a projection of the mind itself so of course it reinforces this ego illusion of their being an individual with a body and mind and Awareness gets entangled with giving constant attention to this mind-body persona that doesn’t know it’s essence and takes credit for what it has nothing to do with as that phantom entity of phenomena has no independent reality, it’s an absolute illusion confined to the imagination born of ignorance. 

When attention is turned inward the mind gradually becomes quiescent, attention ceases to be attention because there has to appear to be something “other” than Awareness for Awareness to pay attention to. So when attention is turned inwards it ceases being attention and seemingly becomes what it really is, Pure Awareness. This is where Self-realization happens. Not that the Self isn’t already and always realized, it is, you know you exist. You don’t think you exist, you don’t believe you exist, it’s self-evident that you exist. 

Self-realization is the falling away of ignorance. Ignorance is born from consciousness identifying with apparent objects. Ignorance is what dies, not the even the body dies, it just dissolves gradually breaking down back into the five elements, disappearing back into it’s source from which it appears. Ignorance itself is annihilated because once it’s seen for what it is one doesn’t ever fall back into ignorance. Not that ignorance is bad or wrong, it plays its role in the perfection of the game consciousness plays on behalf of Self which reflects in the light Pure Awareness that the Absolute is alone the Supreme Reality. 

Objects are not just tangible, but also intangible, like thoughts. Notice how thoughts appear to you. Thoughts have form, a subtle form. They may appear to you in words imagined in the mind or in images that also appear in the mind. These are still objects with only an apparent existence because in reality they are not the forms that they only appear to be.

Witnessing comes naturally, as seeing is being. It’s not something you have to concentrate on doing. It takes no effort at all. The idea that observing thoughts is hard to do is exactly that, only a thought. This too is witnessed even if one is so entangled with identifying with the mind-body Awareness remains entirely free of what is being witnessed, consciousness entangled with the mind-body believing itself to be the mind-body and thinking the mind-body is what is consciously aware and this delusion is what creates the illusion of Awareness being obstructed, finite, and limited which can never be true. It can only be dreamed to be relatively true. 

It only seems hard when you’re still identifying with the thoughts as if you are thinker, but once you realize “this isn’t easy” is only a thought, as well as the “thinker” is also a thought, it becomes clear there is no one thinking thoughts they are just happening. As the ignorance subsides the realization dawns in the glory of Pure Awareness through the source Pure Knowing (Universal Consciousness with no abstract mind) that witnessing happens quite effortlessly too. So too, making of the mind quiescent just happens with ease by grace alone when there’s no individual “you” trying to control the mind and there’s just the happening of observing it. 

Just like you would observe a bird flying in the sky, you wouldn’t identify the bird as “my bird.” You wouldn’t try to make the make the bird stop doing what it appears to be doing. To detach from identifying with the mind to observe it is the same, there’s no one there trying to control the thoughts to silence the mind or even allow the witnessing to happen. There’s no one doing the “allowing” of the observing of thoughts coming and going, it’s always already happening. Its the ignorance that there is a thinker who controls the mind and can make it silent that makes it seem as if there is a Doer, and the illusion of a free will agent persists only because of this ignorance and the realization of the spontaneous effortless happening seems like nonsense to the mind and it will continue contriving stories about cause-and-effect because to the mind there must be a Doer somewhere that it can then identify with by constructing an image and regulating this imagined entity to the mind being its creator, the mind being its source to reinforce the mind’s desire to prove itself having an independent reality it doesn’t really have. 

Witnessing is not something you have to do, it doesn’t require effort, so it’s neither hard or easy, it just happens naturally. You can observe the mind and make it quiescent during any activity. You don’t have to be sitting under a tree somewhere in a lotus position to meditate on the Self as the Self. There’s no individual meditating. The mind and body do not meditate, it’s the Self that meditates on the Self, and the mind-body is merely witnessed which is why when we mediate the mind-body disappears and only the Self remains until Awareness is pointed outward and seemingly becomes attention again and the mind, body, and world appears once more until Awareness loses interest in the mind and all interest points back to whom does all this appear to be appearing to? The love of Self draws the Self back into itself that the mind, body, and world disappear once and for all and only the Self as it eternally is will remain. It doesn’t mean the appearance disappears but it’s no longer seen through the mind, as separate apparent objects with mistaken independent realities. As the ignorance, which births the mind, unravels the concepts are deconstructed in full awareness and knowingness. The Pure Knowing of Consciousness, or Knowledge Of Self, was never fooled nor intimidated by the mind. All the mind’s imagined illusions will be cleared away and known until they merge completely back into the one Consciousness which projected them through the mind and they are forgotten as only Self will be known. The “world” will be known not as other than the Self but known as only the reflective surface of the Self, not two, not one, but indivisibly self contained without any edges as there is no room in the infinite for the finite to have ever truly been, it was only dreamed through ignorance, the play of consciousness. 

Your infinite beingness has never been limited and so the functionality of the witnessing in Awareness is just part of your nature. It happens all by itself without you having to do anything. You’re always witnessing without “doing” it. It has nothing to do with the body sitting or laying somewhere still and quiet. Once you realize this then you’ll know what you have never not known as Consciousness, as the ignorance of believing yourself to be an individual will no longer obscure and veil this eternal knowing that originates in the Self. Then you will naturally meditate even during the activities of the body until the body you once dreamed and limited yourself to and separated yourself from your true infinite beingness merges back into the Self. You’ll know the appearance of the universe to be like the clothes of your true body which is Pure Awareness. 

What’s the point of witnessing? The witnessing as well as all that seems to be witnessed is the pointer pointing you back to who you eternally are Being which you have never not been. 

You are the point.

-iZuhm Tha Infinite

[SoonHei]

LETTING GO ISN’T SOMETHING “I” DO BUT JUST SOMETHING THAT APPEARS TO NATURALLY HAPPEN

Letting go is often implied to be something we can do when one is experiencing circumstances that bother us. Letting go, however, isn’t something we do, nor is it done just when something seems to bother us. In fact, letting go is meditation of the Self on the Self by observing the non-self. 

It’s not just a letting go of things that seem to bother “us” but also the letting go of what doesn’t bother you as well. Letting go of even that which you seem to enjoy. Letting go of the experiences and the experiencer altogether. It’s the letting go of the person. Letting go of the “you” that is only a self-image in the mind, this separate self individual that doesn’t have an independent reality and is entirely relative to thoughts. 

This is liberation, this is true meditation. 

The person who doesn’t even exist isn’t who meditates. Just observe the one who appears to have cravings but do not identify with the mind’s creating yet another image of identity in the thoughts of “I am not the person but the observer observing the person,” or “I am now this witness witnessing the individual.” 

Notice how all desires always arise with this individual who appears in the mind as the I-thought. If you observe this supposed entity that really isn’t any entity at all and don’t identify with it then the “letting go” just happens effortlessly and spontaneously. If you abide here in this function of detached witnessing the desire/craving will subside and disappear on its own. Only the natural bliss of being will remain which desires only seem to veil and make seem like a temporary transient experience that really isn’t temporary, transient, nor experience. It just is. 

There is no Doer who can make the craving come or go away. There is no Doer that can do “letting go.” There is no Doer that can make change of the wanted or unwanted feeling or do the allowing of a negative feeling. It just happens, and if you abide in the witnessing non-identity you’ll soon realize there is no Doer. What appears to be happening just appears to be happening to absolutely no one.

 

-iZuhm

[SoonHei]

If you were spontaneous and live in the eternal present, the eternal now, forget about the past, don't worry about the future but live in this particular second, in this second there are no problems. If you can only stay in this split second, noone is hungry, noone is ill, noone is in need, noone is suffering. As you begin to stay in that split second, this split second expands into a minute, into two minutes, into ten minutes and as you abide in it, it turns into eternity. You are always in that split second where nothing is happening. Where no thing is taking place. That split second is bliss, pure intelligence, absolute reality and you are that.

[…]

It begins when you get up in the morning. You observe the I. You watch yourself thinking I got up, I just woke up. But now here's the catch, do not allow the I to go any further. As soon as you watch yourself saying, "I just woke up." Try to catch yourself and ask yourself the question, "Who is the I that just woke up?" For in that split second prior to awakening you were in bliss, no thoughts. But as soon as you begin to think of the I, the world comes into play. In that split second before I came along you were awake. Yet there was no world, there were no people, there was no universe, there were no problems. In that split second.

But as soon as you began to think of I your troubles began. Because you're thinking about the day, I'm hungry, I have to take a shower. I have to get dressed and I begins to do its mischief. That is why it's very important to observe the I coming out. If you can really observe it you will see that the I is coming out of your spiritual heart on the right side of your chest. But a funny thing will happen. As you observe it, it will go back, isn't that interesting? As you observe the I or as you question it, "Where did the I come from?" It will stop. It will stop its procedure, it will stop its journey to the brain where you become body conscious. All these things happen in a split second.

So you have to be aware, you have to be alert, you have to watch for it. I admit it takes some effort in the beginning but it's well worth it. Think about this again. Just before you awaken to the I, you are already awake in that split second. In that split second there is no world but you are awake, you are conscious, you're totally happy, you're totally self-realized in that split second. But then the I begins its journey from the heart to the brain. Now if you can observe the I and question its authority, it will lose its momentum and slow down. And begin to return to the heart. If you can get it to return to the heart, you will be conscious but you will be liberated. You will go about your business like you always do.

You will take your shower, you will eat your breakfast, it will all happen spontaneously. There will be no thoughts. The only experience you will have is total bliss. Total happiness, total joy and yet your body will go about it's business. It can happen all at once or it can take time. But it's worth the

effort, isn't it? Even if it takes you a lifetime, at least you will be free at that time. What is more important than this? Can anything be more important than this? This guarantees that you do not return to this earth. It guarantees that while you are alive in your body, so-to-speak, you will be a jivan-mukta, self-realized in the body. This is your only salvation. But you've got to do it.

These teachings used to be handed out by the Rishis from mouth to mouth to explain it. It is most difficult to comprehend the books. Even though some of them are very clear ...

(tape break then Robert continues)

... something within that knows what to do to make it happen. But if you try to understand with your brain, with your head, you will forget. And when tomorrow morning comes you will get up and your I will take over immediately. You will say I'm late for work, I'm in a hurry, I'm this and I'm that and you will forget everything we're talking about this evening. But if you are listening with your heart, when tomorrow morning comes you will spontaneously be able to catch yourself.

I will repeat again how to do this. When you first open your eyes, in that split second you are conscious. The I has not risen yet, but remember it's all happening in a second. So you've got to be aware, you've got to be awake, intelligent. Watch and you will notice that the I begins very faintly and becomes stronger. You can shout out, "Who are you?" That's the same as saying, "Who am I?" Who gave you permission to awaken? Observe, watch. The I will begin to lose momentum. The I will become weaker and weaker. The way it usually happens with people, with most people, is they're able to catch it for maybe a few seconds and then the I will take over completely. Do not be disappointed, that is the worst thing you can do.

It has taken most people years, centuries perhaps to go all the way. Be happy with what you've got. But as you begin to do this practice diligently, everyday, that split second where you observe the I, will expand into a full second, into two seconds, into three seconds. In other words for those three seconds you will be self-realized to an extent. You will be conscious, period. You will not be conscious of this or that, you will be conscious. And you will feel something you never felt before, a joy. You will know you're on the right track. Then when the I takes over completely you can get up and go about your business and ask yourself, "Who am I? What is the source of the I?" During the day as the thoughts come to you, be receptive, be alert, question, "To whom do these thoughts come?" They come to me, "Who's me? Who am I? What is the source of the I?" Practice that all day.

[…]

May you all experience bliss and your true Self.

Robert Adams, T63: How Bad Do You Want To Awaken?

[SoonHei]

Try to remember that I'm not speaking from a book I read, or what somebody else told me. This has been my direct experience. There is no world. There never was a world. And there never will be a world. All of the psychotherapy you go through, all of the karma you go through, all of the perverse situations in life you go through, they do not exist. They never have existed and they never will exist. Yet the mirage is so strong that you're sitting here believing you are the body. No matter how many times I tell you, you are not the body, you are not the mind, you are not the doer, you always identify with yourself as the body. You can tell you're doing that because you're always thinking about your self. When you're taking a walk, what do you think about? Yourself. True? Whatever you're doing, you're thinking about yourself. You may get lost sometimes when you're watching TV, going to a movie, participating in a sport, but that doesn't last. When the movie is over, when the sport is over, when what you've really got involved in is over, you're back to thinking about yourself. As long as you think about yourself as the body, you have to suffer. You have to go through experiences in life.

That's what this world is all about, for the deluded person. Experience after experience after experience. There's no end to it, until the day comes when you get good and tired of the whole thing. This is why some people really have to have the rug pulled from under them before they come around to this way of thinking. For as long as they are leading a mediocre life, they don't have that many bad things happening in their life, they seem to be satisfied, and they keep searching for better humanhood, not realizing that for every backward there's a forward. For every up there is a down. You have to experience all kinds of things when you identify with the body-mind phenomenon. Therefore you should do the best you can to transcend that kind of thinking. And you do that by catching your thoughts. Catch yourself thinking about yourself, about your problems, about your family, about your needs, about something being wrong somewhere, about your doubts, your suspicions, your apprehensions. You have to realize that it doesn't matter what you're going through, physically, mentally, economically. Those things are all incidental.

Robert Adams

[Ananta]

[Shin]

 

Heaven is not even close to how you will feel ?

[Shin]

[SoonHei]

Silence is meditation without mental activity. The inner silence is self-surrender and that means living without the sense of the ego. Silence comes into being when the individual is completely free from ego, when he surrenders himself totally to the Lord.

•

A devotee asked Ramana Maharshi: "Why do we need to meditate? I say it is "my mind" - then should it not listen to me and meditate by itself when I tell it to? Why does it keep running outside all the time?" Ramana Maharshi kept silent at that time. At about the same time, a squirrel had given birth in the ashram, and unfortunately a few days later the mother squirrel got eaten by a cat. Ramana Maharishi took the job of taking care of the baby squirrels. He kept them inside a cage that was kept in the mediation hall. After a few days when everyone was sitting in the meditation hall, the same cat came inside. It so happened that the baby squirrels rushed out of the cage at the same time. Ramana Maharishi got up hurriedly, caught all the baby squirrels one by one and put them back in the cage and locked the door firmly shut. He then turned to the devotee that had asked the above question and calmly said - "These poor little squirrels do not have the maturity to know the dangers of the outside world, that if it goes out, the cat will make a meal of them. When they get that maturity, they will go hide inside by themselves. Until they get the maturity, we have to keep putting them inside. It is the same thing with our mind. Our mind does not know that if it goes to the outside world, there is nothing but suffering. It keeps running out in ignorance. When it gets the maturity, it will go inside by itself. Until then, it is our job to put it inside with effort - which we do in meditation.

Ramana Maharshi
 

_____________________________________

Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9% of everything you think and of everything you do, is for yourself - and there isn't one. 

Wei Wu Wei
 

[SoonHei]

I laugh when I think how I once sought paradise as a realm outside of the world of birth. It is right in the world of birth and death that the miraculous truth is revealed. But this is not the laughter of someone who suddenly acquires a great fortune; neither is it the laughter of one who has won a victory. It is, rather, the laughter of one who; after having painfully searched for something for a long time, finds it one morning in the pocket of his coat. 

Thich Nhat Hanh
 

[SoonHei]

 

Robert Adams: You've got to do what you've got to do. But I'm speaking of the highest teaching. Where everything is taken care of. Look at Ramana again as an example. When he was a boy, he would have been dead, if it weren't for this mysterious power to take care of him. He just went into the jungle, went into a cave and sat there. He didn't know where his food was going to come from. He didn't even think about it, how he was going to take care of himself. It didn't enter his mind. He just sat motionless, for days, until a woman came up the hill and started to feed him.

Student: But he was more or less born enlightened and we're just struggling. 

R.A.: Well I'm just speaking of the highest ideal. What I'm trying to tell you is that if you have trust and faith, there is a mysterious power that will take care of you and supply all you need.

[SoonHei]

There are two ways of understanding an experience. The first is to compare it with the memories of other experiences, and so to name and define it. This is to interpret it in accordance with the dead and the past. The second is to be aware of it as it is, as when, in the intensity of joy, we forget past and future, let the present be all, and thus do not even stop to think, “I am happy.

Alan Watts

[Bill W]