Hi Ravi, Linda, Bowes, Rob, Bindell, Peter, Fred

[Guest guest]

Dear Ravi:

 

I enjoyed reading about your breakthroughs.

Thank you for Sharing them.

 

Dear Linda: I enjoyed reading your post.

I liked this part:

 

“I came to Michael's Awareness Watching Awareness

method by a different means:

 

Asking myself for a long time,

what were the one or two things

that I absolutely had to achieve in this life,

without which,

nothing else would mean anything.

 

The answers arose:

To live in my Heart.

To discover the Real meaning of Love.”

 

Whenever a description of the Self

would include the word “Love”

that always helped motivate me to practice.

The Self is Infinite-Eternal-Awareness-Love-Bliss.

Five words pointing towards one awareness.

That love-bliss-awareness never has

and never will know any suffering or sorrow.

 

On an ocean of Love-Awareness-Bliss

there are billions of waves.

Almost all of those waves are always looking outward

and believe they are separate from the Ocean

and are afraid of the Ocean.

 

Very rarely, one of those waves will dive deep

and discover there are no waves,

there is only the Ocean of Love-Awareness-Bliss.

 

Here are some “love” quotes I like:

 

This is from Sri Ramana Anubhuti,

where Sri Muruganar describes his liberation:

 

48. Transporting me into a realm of pure Bliss,

 

the vision of the authentic Self

 

expanded within my Heart

 

and I attained the state of Grace

 

whose essence is Love.

 

Then, in the state of Holy Silence,

 

bliss and Love merged together into realization

 

of the one True Reality.

 

Quotes by Sri Ramana Maharshi:

 

1209. When, the dense darkness of ignorance is gone,

 

the Heart’s wide open firmament is filled

 

with serene, clear, bright peace,

 

and an inner fount of love springs up,

 

which is true devotion,

 

the pure auspiciousness of Self-Awareness.

 

974. Unbroken Self-Awareness

 

is the true bright path of devotion or love.

 

Knowledge of our inherent nature,

 

as indivisible supreme Bliss,

 

wells up as love.

 

1077. To those who dwell within the Heart,

 

loving the Self-Awareness,

 

bliss comes surging up,

 

mounting ever higher,

 

as love, Self, grace, Awareness, peace and liberation.

 

Bliss is the real nature of the Self-Awareness.

 

1093. “That Heart which truly knows

 

the Self-Awareness,

 

is full of love whence supreme Bliss wells up forever.

 

There, desire and its shadow, sorrow, have no place.

 

Such a life, whose nature is pure,

 

flows serenely calm from Being.”

 

“If you thus reject everything,

 

what remains is the Self alone.

 

That is real love.

 

One who knows the secret of that love

 

finds the world itself full of universal love.

 

The experience of not forgetting consciousness, alone,

 

is the state of devotion

 

which is the relationship of unfading real love,

 

because the real knowledge of Self,

 

which shines as the undivided supreme bliss itself,

 

surges up as the nature of love.

 

Only if one knows the truth of love,

 

which is the real nature of Self,

 

will the strong entangled knot of life be untied.

 

Only if one attains the height of love

 

will liberation be attained.

 

Such is the heart of all religions.

 

The experience of Self is only love,

 

which is seeing only love,

 

hearing only love,

 

feeling only love,

 

tasting only love

 

and smelling only love,

 

which is bliss.”

 

The other part of your post, which was

what is it that one absolutely has to achieve

in this life reminds me of the awakening of

the extremely intense desire for freedom.

 

Ramana said one’s eagerness has to be equal

to that of someone being kept under water,

trying to rise to the surface for air.

The awakening of the

extremely intense desire for freedom is like that.

Everything changes after

the extremely intense desire for freedom arises.

 

The extremely intense desire for freedom

demands that no detours be taken.

 

Always nice to hear from you Linda.

 

Michael Bowes:

 

I enjoyed reading your post.

Nice to hear from the Guy

on the other side of the Colorado River.

 

Both the old and new websites are indeed worthwhile

for those people who got something out of them.

For some people they are a great help,

and I also enjoy reading their accounts.

 

When you say lets don’t quibble over words,

Sri Ramana also gave almost endless warnings

against that.

I love your question:

 

“Have you found your own heart?”

 

Dear Rob:

 

I loved reading your post.

Something else about Wolff I wanted to tell you.

In his book(s) he said that

the details of what lead to his experiences

were beyond the scope of the book.

That lead me to wondering since the practice

instructions or steps have been left out of the book,

then where can they be found?

 

So for years I had a notion or fantasy

that maybe I would write to his relative,

the one who spends her summers in Lone Pine and

winters in Arizona,

and ask “since Wolff says

that it goes beyond the scope of the book

to give the complete details

of how to arrive at the experience,

where can the details be found? In one of the tapes?

If so which one? Or in a book or booklet?”

I never followed through with that

and then the Awareness watching awareness discovery

came and the AWA practice took care of everything.

But it was a fun fantasy while it lasted.

I notice that now there is another web site,

the new one being for the Wolff fellowship.

 

I noticed there is something new on the

 

http://www.realization.org web site.

 

I was thinking you were getting even lazier than I am

updating my site,

until I saw the new Samadhi/Sankara article.

 

I think the person who originally designed

Jay Mazzo’s web site:

 

http://personal.riverusers.com/~innerguide/index.htm

 

did some posting on the Realization.org web site.

It seems a number of people interested in SivaBalaYogi

were also interested in the Realization.org web site.

I no longer have Jay’s messages on the

Direct Path Links Directory web site,

but I enjoyed his meditation messages in the past:

 

http://personal.riverusers.com/~innerguide/meditationindex.html

 

http://uarelove1.tripod.com/MEDITATION.htm

 

I think Jay lives in Arizona.

 

I have no idea why NY is called the Big Apple.

 

Dear Michael Bindell:

 

I don’t know what you mean by this:

 

“reading your posting in the list I read that you

still have on your old group the "Sayings of Ramana"

complete and in English.”

 

However, regarding your question about the possibility

of downloading the complete work of Garland,

yes I think it is possible. David Godman has The

Garland of Guru’s Sayings (Guru Vachaka Kovai)

divided into many links. There are six links below:

 

This is the introduction:

 

http://www.davidgodman.org/rteach/gvk_intro.shtml

 

The verses 1-501 are split into 4 PDF documents:

 

1. Guru Vachaka Kovai 1-153 (Verses 1 through 153):

 

http://www.davidgodman.org/rteach/GVK1-153.pdf

 

2. Guru Vachaka Kovai 154-265 (Verses 154 through 265)

 

 

http://www.davidgodman.org/rteach/GVK154-265.pdf

 

3. Guru Vachaka Kovai 266-383 (Verses 266 through 383)

 

 

http://www.davidgodman.org/rteach/GVK266-383.pdf

 

4. Guru Vachaka Kovai 384-501 (Verses 384 through 501)

 

 

http://www.davidgodman.org/rteach/GVK384-501.pdf

 

Guru Vachaka Kovai Part II

 

5. Guru Vachaka Kovai 502-877 (Verses 502 through 877)

 

 

http://www.davidgodman.org/rteach/GVK502-877.pdf

 

Guru Vachaka Kovai Part III

 

6. Guru Vachaka Kovai 878-1254

(Verses 878 through 1254):

 

http://www.davidgodman.org/rteach/GVK878-1254.pdf

 

The above links are from this web site:

 

http://www.davidgodman.org

 

“As far as your posting is concerned I agree

completely with the capacity of the Ego - which i call

"the trickster" Of course - sorry to state this fact -

nearly nobody is ready to letting go ego because who

dares to giving up everything? Who is ready to letting

go completely.....”

 

Yes Michael Bindell. When you combine those,

the fact that the ego is a trickster

and the fact that almost no human is

ready or willing to give it up,

one can see why the ego generates so many tricks

to keep its illusion in place.

People even form spiritual groups

to help each other to preserve the ego illusion

while pretending to be for the purpose of ending it.

The fact that there is so little open discussion of

the ego’s preservation strategies and how to end them,

gives a clue to the ego’s great success.

 

Dear Peter:

 

“Dear Michael, Do you have a link to an index page for

all your different links? Or have I missed it?”

 

This is the link:

 

http://uarelove1.tripod.com/FIVE_SAGES.htm

 

“Just read "Sri Ramana Experience (Anubuti)" by Sri

Muruganar, which you gave a link for,

Gosh! Can't find any words to describe the impact.

best wishes, Peter”

 

Yes, I feel the same way about Sri Muruganar’s

description of his liberation.

It was one of the things that motivated me

to practice AWA.

Like Linda talked about something

that one must attain.

That description of Muruganar’s liberation

was a big help in being able to

see that which is essential to be.

 

Dear Fred:

 

I also like the phrase:

 

“Awareness watching itself”.

 

There are so many different ways that I have described

it at this link:

 

http://uarelove1.tripod.com/AWA_INSTRUCTIONS1.htm

 

and that Sri Ramana Maharshi has described it

at these two links:

 

http://uarelove1.tripod.com/TURNING_INWARD.htm

 

http://uarelove1.tripod.com/world.htm

 

and that Sri Sadhu Om has described

it at these two links:

 

http://uarelove1.tripod.com/OM7.htm

 

http://uarelove1.tripod.com/INQUIRY_8.htm

 

and that Sri Annamalai Swami, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

and Sri Muruganar have described it at this link:

 

http://uarelove1.tripod.com/CHANGE.htm

 

With all those different ways of describing

the most Direct means to

bringing the ego illusion to an end,

there is no valid reason for anyone to get hung up on

one particular way of describing it.

 

If anyone does not like one particular way of

describing the most direct practice,

the thing to do is to move on to another description

in the above links,

until they find a description that works well for them

in actual practice.

 

Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Muruganar, Sri Sadhu Om,

Sri Annamalai Swami, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj and I

are not asking anyone to do something impossible

in the teachings found in the above links.

It is in fact quite easy once

the extremely intense desire for liberation arises.

Because then the ego's objections come to an end.

 

Take care,

 

with Love,

 

Michael L.