Awakening to What Is, Sailor Bob

[Guest guest]

Question: My teacher recommends sitting practice to get beyond

conditioning and the deliberate cultivation of love and compassion.

What do you think about that?

 

Bob: What conditioning is there if you don't think about it?

 

Q: There is no conditioning.

 

Bob: Right. So you don't have to go sitting and looking anywhere to

get rid of your conditioning. It can be gone in that instant. And

trying to cultivate compassion or love or anything else means there

is an entity trying to do it. You will find that that natural love,

which is there when you're in the moment, expresses itself quite

naturally and effortlessly without any trying. The very trying stops

it. And if your teacher is teaching you that, then he is keeping you

on the path. Do that if you feel like it, but I am saying that you

can be free right now, immediately.

 

Q: But not all of us are at that awareness, or that knowing.

 

Bob: What else are you then?

 

Q: Well you are explaining what divine beings we are, but not

everyone is cultivating the path of truth, although we have it within us.

 

Bob: It is not within us, you are within that. You are that no matter

how you are appearing, whether you believe it or not or whether you

know it or not. In essence you still are that, but if the energy of

belief is going into something that is telling you, 'you are not',

that's the very thing that keeps you there (conceptually). The energy

of belief goes into that, and the belief is a reference point. You

have to do away with all of your beliefs because they are reference

points. And belief is never the actuality. Even the subtle beliefs —

drop them. Stay with the actuality that you can't escape from and

that will reveal... Little insights will come up and little

revelations will come up and show you the lot.

------------------------------Q: Despite the

recognition I have that I am this unchanging

awareness, there is always the feeling that I don't quite get it.

What is that?

 

Bob: Well, you can't get it because you are it. You understand that?

 

Q: Yes.

 

Bob: Well, drop the 'trying to get it' and just be that. Stop the

search. Just be with what is. And watch it and know it. It will reveal itself to

you.

------------------------------Q: When the mind

stops fixating can we say there is a clarity of

being?

 

Bob: Yes, you could say there was clarity there and there might be a

long period of silence. Then again there might (equally) be chatter.

Whereas before, the chatter would go on, starting with some 'story'

and it would build up and build up. And with the building up, the

emotions of stress and anxiety get more and more intense and then the

chatter could go on for two or three hours. When you quietly see and

realize what's going on, you may wonder " What was that all about? " In

quietly seeing it, it has no longer a sense of 'building up' or a

fixating on it - from which it can build up. So when people say that

they are looking for the silence or the stillness, it doesn't matter

here whether or not there is silence - there may be long periods of

it. At other 'times' there may be chatter. It really doesn't matter.

 

They are both experiences and I am the experience-ing. Just like I am

the seeing. I am this immediate experience-ing.

------------------------------Question: There

is a whole lot of pre-programmed responses to a

particular event. It is just like going from one to another. That is

what it seems like to me, in reference to me, it is just a whole lot

of habits.

 

Bob: That is why I say at the start, sit with that ordinary

wakefulness. It is there, it is immediate, it is there with you right

now, without any conceptualization on it. Just pure ordinary, common

place everyday awareness.

What happens is that we try to grasp it with the mind - instead of

simply sitting with it. Realization starts to form that everything

happens in awareness. Any responses will happen by themselves. It is

effortless just like the breathing, digestion and even the thinking.

But the condition comes up that 'I am thinking this' - in that we

have created a 'thinker' which we believe to be 'me' which is another

thought. The thought 'I am' that has been 'built on' with past

memories, conditioning and experiences - has formed a mental pattern

or picture of it, but it has not got any power whatsoever.

What you call a deconstruction is just a 'seeing through'. There are

still going to be patterns of energy. There will still be thoughts.

But instead of translating it from the point of view of the 'me', of

past memory - the responses will come up of themselves from that

intelligence.

 

The intelligence can't do anything by itself - but the response or

the urge (or whatever is there) is then translated by the mind.

 

Q: So intelligence can't do anything of itself?

 

Bob: No, it is pure intelligence energy. It never changes. It changes

only seemingly so. It would not be reality if it changed. The whole

manifestation appears to be in these patterns. Nothing really has

ever happened.

 

Let's take the mirage as an example. There appears to be water in the

mirage, is that right? Now can that water in the mirage wet your

shoes - or can you step into it? It can't do anything. Why? Because

it never really existed. It only appears to be so. It never ever was

water and never will be.

So it is the same with this. This vibrates into different patterns

and the mind translates it into good - bad or this or that is going

to happen or whatever. All are thoughts, ideas or images. But That is

still the same - it is still only energy.

 

Q: Can you have a functioning memory with a mind?

 

Bob: What we call 'the mind' is the thinking process but there is no

thinker in it. It is all just happening from that pure intelligence.

Is there a 'thinker'?

 

Q: Apparently there isn't.

 

Bob: Well have a look and see. (Don't take my word for it.) The

thinker is the thought 'I think' isn't it! If that thought 'I think'

is not there and the 'thinking this and that' is not there - what is

happening?

 

Q: I am not sure, it is just conceptual.

 

Bob: Just thinking - thoughts are coming up, isn't it? What we call

thinking is coming up on that awareness. Just the same as you

are 'seeing' right now. Before you say 'I see' - the seeing is

happening. So the thought 'I see' is just translating the seeing. So

that is the purpose of the so called mind - to translate what is

appearing and disappearing. It is just another appearance itself. And

it disappears itself also, the same as those thoughts disappear.

 

Thoughts are a subtle stage of energy. The spoken is less subtle.

Word is a vibration and it all is a movement of energy.

 

Q: So all that is appearing is that awareness?

 

Bob: Yes, and if it is understood and seen as that - is there going

to be any involvment in what it is 'appearing as' too much? Naturally

there is a movement, a functioning going on but knowing that it is

only That - is it going to be a big deal? Just the same as waking

from the dream. Is it a big deal anymore? Naturally you still get

caught in what the mind is telling you for awhile but it has no

independent nature or substance - so it won't last.

 

Q: I remember you asked me a long time ago, in terms of feeling

isolated, whether I could isolate myself from the air. At the time I

thought, well what has that got to do with it? But I see its relevance now.

 

Bob: The hearing of these things resonates and they do come up when

necessary. You can't possibly be separate. You can't get away from

it - ever. There is no 'time' to get away from it in. No 'where' to

get to and it is timeless. " I had it the other day and I lost it " -

such statements are laughable. In seeing that - and knowing that -

you see the big joke of it all. It is like a fish going around looking for water

 

more: http://members.cox.net/jgreven/

 

~~~~~~~

Era