Selling Water by the River

[Guest guest]

Selections from the Talks of Adyashanti

 

In my experience, everyone will say they want to discover the Truth,

right up until they realize that the Truth will rob them of their

deepest held ideas, beliefs, hopes, and dreams. The freedom of

enlightenment means much more than theexperience of love and peace.

It means discovering a Truth that will turn your view of self and

life upside-down. For one who is truly ready, this will be

unimaginably liberating. But for one who is still clinging in any

way, this will be extremely challenging indeed. How does one know if

they are ready? One is ready when they are willing to be absolutely

consumed, when they are willing to be fuel for a fire without end.

 

If you start playing the game of being an "enlightened

somebody," the true teacher is going to call you on it.

He or she is going to expose you, and that exposure is going to hurt.

Because the ego will be there, standing in the light of Truth,

exposed and humiliated.

Of course, the ego will cry "foul!" It will claim that the

teacher made a mistake and begin to justify itself in an effort to

put its protective clothing back on. It will begin to spin

justifications with incredible subtlety and deceptiveness. This is

where real spiritual sadhana (practice) begins. This is where it all

becomes very "real" and the student discovers whether he or she

truly wants to be free, or merely wants to remain as a false,

separate, and self-justifying ego. This crossroad inevitably comes

and is always challenging. It separates the true seeker from the

false one.

The true seeker will be willing to bare the Grace of humility,

whereas the false seeker will run from it. Thus begins the true path

to enlightenment, granted only to those willing to be nobody.

Discovering your"nobodyness" opens the door to awakening as

beingness, and beyond that to the Source of all beingness.

 

Do not think that enlightenment is going to make you special,

it's not. If you feel special in any way, then enlightenment has not

occurred. I meet a lot of people who think they are enlightened and

awake simply because they have had a very moving spiritual

experience. They wear their enlightenment on their sleeve like a

badge of honor. They sit among friends and talk about how awake they

are while sipping coffee at a cafe. The funny thing about

enlightenment is that when it is authentic, there is no one to claim

it. Enlightenment is very ordinary; it is nothing special. Rather

than making you more special, it is going to make you less special.

It plants you right in the center of a wonderful humility and

innocence. Everyone else may or may not call you enlightened, but

when you are enlightened the whole notion of enlightenment and

someone who is enlightened is a big joke. I use the word

enlightenment all the time; not to point you toward

it but to point you beyond it. Do not get stuck in enlightenment.

 

Ego is the movement of the mind toward objects of perception,

in the form of grasping; and, away from objects, in the form of

aversion. This fundamentally is all the ego is. This movement of

grasping and aversion gives rise to a sense of a separate "me," and

in turn the sense of "me" strengthens itself this way. It is this

continuous loop of causation that tricks consciousness into a trance

of identification. Identification with what? Identification with the

continuous loop of suffering. After all, who is suffering? The "me"

is suffering.

And "who" is this me? It is nothing more than a sense of self caused

byidentification with grasping and aversion. You see, it's all a

creation of the mind, an endless movie, a terrible dream. Don't try

to change the dream, because trying to change it is just another

movement in the dream. Look at the dream. Be aware of the dream. That

awareness is It. Become more interested in the awareness of the dream

than in the dream itself. What is that awareness? Who is that

awareness? Don't go spouting out an answer, just be the answer. Be It.

 

Enlightenment means the end of all division. It is not simply

having an occasional experience of unity beyond all division, it is

actually being undivided. This is what nonduality truly means.

It means there is just One Self, without a difference or gap between

the profound revelation of Oneness and the way it is perceived and

lived every moment of life. Nonduality means that the inner

revelation and the outer expression of the personality are one and

the same. So few seem to be interested in the greater implication

contained within profound spiritual experiences, because it is the

contemplation of these implications which quickly brings to

awareness the inner divisions existing within most seekers.

 

Spiritual people can be some of the most violent people you

will ever meet. Mostly, they are violent to themselves. They

violently try to control their minds, their emotions, and their

bodies. They become upset with themselves and beat themselves up for

not rising up to the conditioned mind's idea of what it believes

enlightenment to be. No one ever became free through such violence.

Why is it that so few people are truly free? Because they try to

conform to ideas, concepts, and beliefs in their heads. They try to

concentrate their way to heaven. But Freedom is about the natural

state, the spontaneous and un-self-conscious expression of beingness.

If you want to find it, see that the very idea of

"a someone who is in control" is a concept

created by the mind.

Take one step backward into the unknown.

 

There is nothing more insidiously destructive to the

attainment of liberation than self-doubt and cynicism.

Doubt is a movement of the conditioned mind that always

claims that "it's not possible ... that freedom is not possible for

me."

Doubt always knows; it "knows" that nothing is possible.

And in this knowing, doubt robs you of the

possibility of anything truly new or transformative from

happening. Furthermore, doubt is always accompanied by a pervasive

cynicism that unconsciously puts a negative spin on whatever it

touches.

Cynicism is a world view which protects the ego from scrutiny

by maintaining a negative stance in relationship to what it does

not know, does not want to know, or cannot know. Many spiritual

seekers have no idea how cynical and doubt-laden they actually are.

It is this blindness and denial of the presence of doubt and cynicism

thatmakes the birth of a profound trust impossible. A trust

without which final liberation will always remain simply a dream.

 

All fear comes from thought in the form of memory (past) or

projection (future). Thought creates time: past, present, and future.

So fear exists and comes from the perceived existence of time. To be

free of fear is to be free of time. Since time is a creation of

thought, to be free of fear you must be free of thought.

Consequently, it is important to awaken and experience your

Self outside of thought, existing as eternity.

So question all notions of yourself that are creations of

thought and of time -- of past, present, and future.

Experience your eternalness, your holiness,

your awakeness until you are convinced

that you are never subject to the movement of thought, of

fear, or of time. To be free of fear is to be full of Love.

 

Many spiritual seekers get "stuck" in emptiness, in the

absolute, in transcendence. They cling to bliss, or peace, or

indifference.

When the self-centered motivation for living disappears, many

seekers become indifferent. They see the perfection of all existence

and find no reason for doing anything, including caring for

themselves or others. I call this "taking a false refuge." It is a

very subtle egoic trap;

it's a fixation in the absolute and all unconscious form of

attachment that masquerades as liberation. It can be very difficult

to wake someone up from this deceptive fixation because they

literally have no motivation to let go of it. Stuck in a form of

divine indifference, such people believe they have reached the top of

the mountain when actually they are hiding out halfway up its slope.

 

Enlightenment does not mean one should disappear into the

realm of transcendence. To be fixated in the absolute is simply the

polar opposite of being fixated in the relative. With the dawning of

true enlightenment, there is a tremendous birthing of impersonal

Love and wisdom that never fixates in any realm of experience. To

awaken to the absolute view is profound and transformative, but to

awaken from all fixed points of view is the birth of true nonduality.

If emptiness cannot dance, it is not true Emptiness. If moonlight

does not flood the empty night sky and reflect in every drop of

water, on every blade of grass, then you are only looking at your own

empty dream. I say, Wake up! Then, your heart will be flooded with a

Love that you cannot contain.

 

Maybe I can point you to the great Reality within you. Maybe

you will awaken to the direct experience of Self-realization. Maybe

you will catch the fire of transmission. But there is one thing that

no one can give you: the honesty and integrity that alone will bring

youcompletely to the other shore. No one can give you the

strength of character necessary for profound spiritual experience to

become the catalyst for the evolutionary transformation

called "enlightenment."

Only you can find that passion within that burns with an

integrity that will not settle for anything less than the Truth.

 

Enlightenment has nothing to do with states of consciousness.

Whether you are in ego consciousness or unity consciousness is

not really the point. I have met many people who have easy access

to advanced states of consciousness. Though for some people this

may come very easily, I also noticed that many of these people are

no freer than anyone else. If you don't believe that the ego can

exist in very advanced states of consciousness, think again. The

point isn't the state of consciousness, even very advanced ones, but

an awake mystery that is the Source of all states of consciousness.

It is even the Source of presence and beingness. It is beyond all

perception and all experience. I call it "awakeness." To find out

that you are empty of emptiness is to die into an aware mystery,

which is the Source of all existence. It just so happens that that

mystery is in love with all of its manifestation and non-

manifestation. You find your Self by stepping back out of yourself.

 

Ramana Maharshi's gift to the world was not that he realized

the Self. Many people have had a deep realization of the Self.

Ramana's real gift was that he embodied that realization so

thoroughly. It is one thing to realize the Self; it is something else

altogether to embody that realization to the extent that there is no

gap between inner revelation and its outer expression. Many have

glimpsed the realization of Oneness; few consistently express that

realization through their humanness. It is one thing to touch a flame

and know it is hot, but quite another to jump into that flame and be

consumed by it.

 

 

LoveAlways,

 

Mazie & b