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Since late 2016, I have done most of my postings in the Center for Insight.

The Nature of Contemplation

Contemplation is the art of holding a word or phrase patiently in the silence and stillness of awareness until it begins to disclose deeper and deeper meanings and understandings.- (Quotation from Adyashanti)

The Nature of Meditation

Meditation appears in consciousness spontaneously when awareness is not being manipulated or controlled....In True Meditation all objects (thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, etc.) are left to their natural functioning....As you gently relax into awareness, the mind's compulsive contraction around objects will fade....An attitude of open receptivity, free of any goal or anticipation, will faciliate the presence of silence and stillness to be revealed as your natural condition....Awareness returns to its natural condition of "conscious being," absolute unmanifest potential - the silent abyss beyond all knowing.  -- (Quotation from Adyashanti)

Non-duality

There is only awareness, from moment to moment.  If an object is seen from this perspective, then we can say that this object is real.  There is nothing wrong with objects, as long as we understand their true nature, as long as we understand them to be mere appearances on a background of  awareness.  They don't have any reality of their own.  That is what is meant by non-duality.  -- (Quotation from Francis Lucille)

Surrendering to Who You Are

Can "presence" be thought?  This question, in effect, crumbles the neat patterns of the mind.  It causes a dropping, a release, and relief from the huge illusory world of thought. The balancing and re-balancing and re-forming and re-inventing of what you call "me" is only a thought, with another thought processed on top of that, and then another thought.  The moment of recognizing what cannot be thought is the moment of recognizing who you are.  It is a moment of the mind's surrender to silence....In an instant of recognizing the silence that is always here, you recognize your true face....

Then you can address the challenges of life, of bodily pain, emotional turmoil, or mental confusion, with greater clarity and insight, because you no longer identify those states with who you are....You are existence itself.  Existence is consciousness, which is alive , and in love with itself....The ever-present possibility in any moment is to wake up to the truth of yourself as consciousness.  That waking up occurs in the mind's surrender to silence.  -- (Quotes from Gangaji)

The Causes of Psychological Conflict and Suffering

...if we trace back the causes of all psychological conflict and suffering to their essential origin, we always end up with the core belief in the existence of a separate entity endowed with freewill, choice, freedom, etc., moving in a world of time and space.  Just as the belief in and , more importantly, the feeling of being a separate entity in a separate, outside world is the single fundamental cause for psychological conflict and suffering, so the experiential understanding of the true nature of our identity is its remedy....If we make a deep exploration of our true nature we find that peace, happiness and love are inherent in it.  In fact they are not inherent in it.  Rather, they are the names we give awareness when it recognizes itself. -- (Quotation from Rupert Spira)

Your True Autonomy

...a good spiritual teaching helps you to hone in on your own truth - to become quiet and to listen deeply and openly enough so that you can literally begin to feel the way life is informing you.  That's your inner wisdom.  That's your inner teacher, and it's the beginning of standing in your true autonomy.  -- (Quotation from Adyashanti)

Standing As Presence

If we truly take our stand as presence, the belief in the reality of a person, object, or the world gradually, or, in rare cases, instantaneously, dissolves.  We find ourselves spontaneously, effortlessly  and peacefully at the heart of experience and the activities of the mind and body naturally express this stance. -- (Quotation from Rupert Spira)

Opening To Awareness

...by relinquishing our need and desire to control, explain, and believe the way that our minds talk to us about what was and what is, we find a capacity to open to a new state of consciousness.  At first, it's experienced as a state of stillness, the foretaste of awakened consciousness, where a presence begins to reveal itself.  If you allow yourself to relax into this stillness, this silence, you start to witness this presence arise.  It may seem like a subtle thing at first, but what's actually happening is that you're beginning to access a whole new state of consciousness - one that is quite immense. By giving your attention to it, by becoming aware of this inner presence and stillness, even in the midst of activity, you make yourself more and more available to the dawning of this vast expanse where you can awaken out of the belief and experience of separation.  You realize yourself to be a deep well of awareness - an inner expanse that's always there.  You just have to open to it. -- (Quotation from Adyashanti)

Being Oneself

...out of the substance of the universal, a personal arises.  I have the universal in me, it is my very soul, my very substance, but I am a person.  And that is the miracle.  This is the mystery - that the true person includes the universal, includes the divine.  The building blocks of the true person are the universal, the divine substance.  God creates you fresh in every moment.  There is a new birth in that - God gives birth.  Without this experience, you will always feel incomplete.  It is for the birth and for the growth of this person, the personal being, the personal essence, often referred to as the "Pearl beyond Price," that everything else exists.  This is the key, the entry into all the mysteries, and it to all the celebrations of existence. To be oneself means to be the synthesis of all that exists as you; to be you.  You are the fruit of the universe. -- (Quotation from A.H. Almaas)

Giving Up Resistance

Meditation isn't a closing off from life or our surroundings as many people perceive it to be.  But what it does involve is a giving up of our resistance to life.  There is a difference.  And from this constant state of meditation, where we stop resisting, suffering naturally comes to an end, and we discover new and creative ways of addressing the challenges of life. -- (Quotation from Adyashanti)

Realization of Oneness

You cannot feel someone else's Being except through you own.  This is the beginning of the realization of oneness, which is love.  At the deepest level of Being, you are one with all that is. --(Quotation from Eckhart Tolle)

The Essence of Your Being

As your mind becomes silent, an inner door is opened, allowing an infinite and eternal silence to emerge. This infinite and eternal silence is the very essence of your Being. It is your true nature. It is the essence of all existence. It is the eternal silent presence of pure consciousness. It is the 'I AM' of you. It is that dimension of you that exists in this moment and only this moment. -- (Quotation from Leonard Jacobson)

What We Are

...we are at heart a "vibrational pattern comprised of many interacting and resonating frequencies."...we - like things in a holographic universe - are ultimately a frequency phenomenon which our mind converts into various holographic forms....our consciousness is contained, not in the brain, but in a plasmic holographic energy field that both permeates and surrounds the physical body. -- (Quotation from Michael Talbot)

The Role of A Teacher or Guide

The liberating truth is not static; it is alive.  It cannot be put into concepts and be understood by the mind.  What you are is the beyond - awake and present, here and now already.  I am simply helping you to feel and realize that.

A New World

The Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) adopted a vision of spiritual as well as material evolution, and pointed toward a transformation of humanity, bringing about "divine life on earth."  The Jesuit biologist Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) thought that the entire evolutionary process was moving toward an end point of "maximun organized complexity," which he called the Omega point.  The Omega point was the attractor of the entire cosmic evolutionary process, and through it consciousness would be transformed....Philosophers like Teilhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobindo point to new possibilities that go beyond the speculations of scientists by seeing consciousness as central to the evolutionary process. -- (Quotation from Rupert Sheldrake)

The Perennial Philosophy

One, Spirit exists. Two, Spirit is found within. Three, most of us don't realize this Spirit within, however, because we are living in a world of sin, separation, and duality -- that is, we are living in a fallen or illusory state. Four, there is a way out of this fallen state of sin and illusion, there is a Path to our liberation. Five, if we follow this Path to its conclusion, the result is a Rebirth or Enlightenment, a direct experience of Spirit within, a Supreme Liberation, which -- six -- marks the end of sin and suffering, and which --seven--issues in social action of mercy and compassion on behalf of all sentient beings. -- (Quotation from Ken Wilber)

Regaining Your Essence

...any deep loss is an opportunity to grow, to understand more about yourself, to experience holes that you believe can only be filled by someone else....People don't know that the hole, the sense of deficiency, is a symptom of a loss of something deeper -- the loss of Essence, which can be regained.  They think the hole, the deficiency, is how they really are at the deepest level, and that there is nothing beyond it....People will do anything to not feel the hole.  But...when we stop defending against feeling a hole, the actual experience is not painful.  We simply experience empty space, the feeling that there is nothing there.  Not a threatening nothingness, but a spaciousness, an allowing.  This spaciousness allows Essence to emerge, and it is Essence and only Essence that can eliminate the hole, that deficiency, from the inside.  -- (Quotation from A.H. Almaas)

Contemplative Reading

According to Thomas Merton, "Reading becomes contemplative when, instead of reasoning, we abandon the sequence of the author's thoughts in order not only to follow our thoughts, but to rise above thought and penetrate into the mystery of truth which is experienced intuitively as present and actual."

Trusting Your Essence

Most of you still don’t trust your essence. Most of you don’t believe it will be enough to take care of you. You don’t believe it is what you really need. You don’t believe it is what really knows.... Jesus said, “Leave your parents and follow me.” That’s what he meant.... Jesus had nothing against mothers and fathers. Jesus meant you should listen to the teachings present in your essence rather than listening to your superego. - (Quotation from A.H. Almaas)

The Great Within

"The more deeply I go into myself, the more I am not myself,and yet this is the very heart of me. Here I find my own inner workings functioning of themselves, spontaneously, like the rotation of the heavenly bodies and the drifting of the clouds. Strange and foreign as this aspect of myself at first seems to be, I soon realize that it is me, and much more me than my superfical ego. This is not fatalism or determinism, because here is no longer anyone being pushed around or determined, there is nothing that this deep "I" is not doing. -- (Quotation from Alan Watts)

Your Natural State

Let's close our eyes and be open to the possibility that there's no one there, that there's simply awareness - silent, still, impersonal awareness -and whatever seems to be happening is arising in that. Just be the watcher...

Let your questions fall away and stop trying to work anything out. Drop everything, including the person who's been sitting on your shoulder and passing judgment on your life. Let there be no boundaries, just space... You are the stillness; you are the silence in which everything arises. -- (Quotation from Tony Parsons)

Beyond Your Thinking Mind

Since resistance is inseparable from the mind, relinquishment of resistance - surrender - is the end of the mind as your master, the impostor pretending to be "you", the false god.  All judgment and all negativity dissolve.  The realm of Being, which has been obscured by the mind, then opens up. Suddenly, a great stillness arises within you, an unfanthomable sense of peace. And within that peace, there is great joy.  And within that joy, there is love.  And at the innermost core, there is the sacred, the immeasurable, That which cannot be named. -- (Quotation from Eckhart Tolle)

Beyond Religion

Former Episcopal Bishop John Spong, in his new book, "Eternal Life: A New Vision", makes some interesting comments about religion. He sees religion as a stage which must be transcended.

"Our ultimate destiny was never to be religious human beings, as we once thought; it was simply to be fully and totally human. Religion, that activity to which we once entrusted our destiny, is now revealed only as a stage of life that had to be transcended before we could discover our destiny. Humanity is not alone, as we once thought, separated from God and thus in need of rescue. We are increasingly aware that we are part of what God is and we are at one with all that God is. Suddenly it made sense to me that the ancient name of God found in the Hebrew scriptures was part of the verb 'to be'. God, the great 'I Am', blends with the 'I am' affirmations that each of us must make on our journey into self-understanding....For God is ultimately one, and that means that each of us is part of that oneness."