Let me respectfully remind you:
Life and death are of supreme importance.
Time swiftly passes by… and opportunity is lost.
Each of us should strive to awaken.
Awaken.
Take heed.
Do not squander your life.
Humanity has descended deep into the material realm putting its roots into the mental and physical layers of our being. As Carl Jung said, “To touch heaven one’s roots must reach into hell.” Out of the furnace of Babylon comes transformation, transfiguration and new human potential.
The Eastern traditions say that the lotus of awakening grows out of the mud of samsara; out of suffering.
Christianity describes the fall in the garden of Eden. In esoteric terms this is the creation of a sense of individual self or personal will that is separate from God’s will. Along with this separate self is the coming into being of an external world of thought; the world of form that seems separate from this limited self. The character or the ego is made of patterns of pursuing or wanting things in that external thought-projected world. The external things that we crave are the fruits of the tree of knowledge of good and evil or the tree of duality.
You could say that original sin is the desires of egoic or dualistic consciousness.
This is maya, the situation that humanity now finds itself in.
Going after the external fruit means to miss the mark, to miss the now.
Historically there have been occasional rare awakenings, rare flowerings of human consciousness. The saints, the yogis, sages, and wisdom keepers. But humanity now has a unique opportunity to make this journey as a collective, en mass; to envision and co-create shared new realities as we rediscover the higher worlds and wake up from the collective dream of the limited self.
Most humans are currently living almost entirely identified with the gross physical and mental layers of their being, not even aware that the higher levels exist. Most people do not know or suspect that there are spiritual capacities latent within the self-structure waiting to be activated. By realizing these capacities, we connect to subtler and subtler levels of existence, while at the same time making the self-structure permeable to our true nature; disidentifying from all levels of mind or maya.
If we examine the spiritual traditions that have existed throughout history, we find that the great sages, mystics and seers describe a continuum of existence. The ancient Vedic teachings described five koshas or sheaths of the soul, extending from the gross physical and mental realm, which is the conditioned world in which most people live today, to the subtle realms which include the energetic, astral and higher mind realms, the archetypal templates of existence. And finally to the causal realm where there’s no thought or sensation.
The realization of primordial awareness, the awakening of god-consciousness within the soul, dispels the illusion of all of these realms- all layers of maya.
The ancient traditions contain numerous conceptual and language frameworks that point to this continuum from gross to subtle to causal. Whether it is the chakra system or kosha system of the Vedic traditions or the dantiens of Taoism, all levels within the field of change are maya; the spiral that obscures our true nature yet is the very expression of life itself. It is through the spiral of life that we experience human life. When all levels of maya are realized to be empty of self what is possible is an unfathomable non-duality or mystical union beyond all language, which includes yet transcends all of the other levels.
Henry David Thoreau famously said that most people lead lives of quiet desperation. They go to their graves with their song still inside of them. Their desperation comes from an endless searching outside of themselves. The pursuit of ‘things’; money, power, relationships, approval from others. The root of suffering lies in one’s mental attachment to things, not in the things themselves. It doesn’t matter what you have, what matters is your attachment to what you have. We form attachments at the sensory level through neuroplasticity. Wherever attention is placed neurons fire and wire together creating a program in the mind; a tendency towards pattern which is what the mind itself is. When we have any unconscious tendency or life pattern, we are not actually addicted to the things themselves. We are not addicted to drugs, alcohol, sex, food or media but to the sensations that they produce within us.
We become free by observing the somatic field directly; the field of changing phenomena at the root level of awareness. We remain equanimous without reacting or judging any sensation as good or bad. To become free we learn how these attachments are formed by bringing consciousness to the subtle inner world. We start to observe mental and sensory phenomena as a field of change, rather than getting attached to the thoughts and sensations which bring about identification and the very creation of the world of form. This field of change is also called “prana” or “inner energy”; the feeling of inner aliveness.
The shift to a new Earth is a shift out of materialism. What we are witnessing is a release of the old paradigms, and the pathological egoic agenda to endlessly acquire more.
What you are seeing around you right now may seem like darkness. It may seem like madness. Actually this is what awakening looks like on planet Earth. You are witnessing the dismantling of the old patterns. Many people are disillusioned with the current political, social, economic and religious systems. They no longer trust the egoic agendas of the media industries and so-called spiritual systems. They don’t trust the medical establishment or the government. People are disillusioned. This dispelling of illusion is a necessary part of seeing the truth; a coming face to face with the spiritual sickness that is inherent in this time we are living in, and for coming out of egoic consciousness. By egoic consciousness I mean the patterns of craving and aversion that operate unconsciously; the collective samskaras or conditioned patterns which create the conditions of maya- the identification with our characters, or with social groups, or anything we define ourselves by, with the various personas and archetypes we are playing out in this lifetime.
The self-structure is an interface with the world- we don’t want to get rid of that interface or destroy it. The path is about disidentifying from it so that our sense of I or the sense of existence is not tied to a limited form. So that we don’t suffer when the world of form changes. The human path is a journey from pre-egoic existence which is the merged oneness that we experienced when we were a baby, with our mother, to the creation of a person. We grow, we create a character. This is a necessary part of our evolution. In order to bring about self-consciousness; to bring about a sense of self or “I”. We are actually in an adolescent stage of our development. We’re in an ego identified stage. But the next step beyond self-consciousness is to realize transpersonal levels of self. To realize shared levels of consciousness; various levels of Logos or higher mind. You could say levels of soul, if you prefer that language. Our sphere of compassion expands. This is an expansion through love.
From the perspective of the old pattern, the egoic consciousness, this dismantling is something fearful. There’s going to be confusion and pain, if you’re clinging to the old patterns. Those awakening will actually be perceived as a threat. Awakening will be seen as a crisis because it is the dismantling of what is known. Right now we are like caterpillars in the cocoon as it undergoes metamorphosis. There’s a point in the transformation where the caterpillar is neither a caterpillar nor a butterfly. At this point to the one undergoing the metamorphosis, to the old self, it may seem that all is lost. But it’s merely part of the process.
Faith is a surrender to the evolutionary impulse; a deep knowing that we are moving towards Source. The collective delusion, what the ancient spiritual teachers called maya, is tied to our collective attachment to old patterns. It’s tied to human hubris; the belief that we know where we’re going, what we’re doing, and who we are.
The French painter Paul Gauguin is famous for a painting which he entitled “Where do we come from, what are we, and where are we going?” These three questions require a humility. To find out what we are to find out the truth we first have to acknowledge that we don’t have the truth. We don’t have the answer, if we want to find the answer. There must be a genuine willingness to explore and to look at ourselves. Like Dante’s pilgrim in the “Divine Comedy” one begins the journey to know oneself in a darkened wood, astray, recognizing that we are lost.
In the ancient Vedic traditions the dimensions of being and becoming were represented by Shiva and Shakti. The archetypal feminine the downward current or current of manifestation is represented by Shakti. By the downward pointing triangle which points toward involution of spirit into the world of form. Shiva represents the upward current; the current of liberation. The upward pointing triangle pointing toward pure awareness without any qualities; evolution beyond the world of form, or the transcendent. So long as we are operating within the dualistic world, identified with the limited mind, these two currents comprise the pathless path. We are working within the current of manifestation and the current of liberation, doing and non-doing, inhabiting both the time bound and the timeless. When these two dimensions are married in divine union, realized as one, it is Samadhi.
When in union they represent the balance and coexistence of these two dimensions, like the star of David or the anahata symbol which is the ancient symbol representing the spiritual heart, the unstruck sound, the transcendent source of the primordial aum that is dancing the universe into being. It is said that in samadhi you will hear the celestial music of existence, Musica universalis, or the flute of Krishna or what Pythagoras called the “music of the spheres.”
Of course these are all metaphors for something that awakens within the depths of your being, something beyond the limited mind and senses. There are spiritual systems that focus on the subtle body using practices such as observing the breath, sensations working with chi or prana. Working with techniques practices and processes that can be learned with the conditioned mind. Everything that directly employs and engages the limited mind in order to realize Samadhi is part of the “via positiva” This is what we call the Shakti path. And there are spiritual systems which are about transcending the manifested world, which we call the Shiva path or the “via negativa”. We come to realize that which we are beyond name and form by letting go of all that we are not.
The way to Samadhi has been given many names such as meditation, self-inquiry or prayer. Most people who practice these things today are practicing some technique, but the ancient form of meditation that leads to Samadhi is actually not an activity. It is not something that you do or practice, but it is actually the cessation of the meditator, the seeker or the doer. True meditation is union with what IS, and it only begins to happen when the ego fails in its attempt to meditate, and realizes its own limitations. The ego, the YOU that you think you are, must necessarily fail in all attempts to meditate for true meditation to come about. The closer we come to the truth, the closer we come to Samadhi, the less doing there is, the less technique there is. The techniques are all part of the past. We drop the doing and the doer. We drop the seeking and the seeker, to come to the unconditioned present. Some teachers over emphasize techniques, while some undervalue them. It’s important to understand that the technique is a stepping stone. We don’t want to abandon the technique, but we don’t cling to it.
The time-tested way to realize Samadhi is through long periods of spiritual practice. Whether you call that practice meditation, self-inquiry or prayer, there is a truth that one has to awaken to. The yogi and sage Patanjali who compiled the yoga sutras 2500 years ago, taught that the entire endeavor of yoga is aimed at the cessation of the whirlpool of the mind. You could say it is the cessation of karma; the cessation of deep unconscious patterns that govern one’s life. These conditioned patterns were called the vritti’s in Sanskrit.
Likewise the Zen master Dogen said that meditation is the dropping off of mind and body. In Buddhism it is Nirvana or Nirodha; it’s the cessation of the fluctuations of the limited egoic mind which bring about the identification with a limited sense of self. In Christianity we find the same perennial teaching but expressed through a very different metaphor, using the language that was common at that time in history. To realize Samadhi in Christian terms is to attain the Kingdom of God through the forgiveness of sins, by realizing Christ. The word sin in Hebrew means literally to “miss the mark”; it means to miss the present moment; to pursue happiness in the objects of the external world rather than realizing the source of true fulfillment.
To come into the now, to the present moment is to learn to surrender the preferences of the conditioned mind. To burn up opposing states by remaining non-reactive to anything that is appearing within the field of change. To meditate is to burn up the conditioned self, or you could say to free energy from the conditioned self. This truth is found in the Gospel of Thomas which says “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
A mountain may be accessible by many paths. One can go straight towards the summit, or sometimes it may be better to take a spiral route. But at the summit the view is always the same, no matter which path you take. Humans have created thousands of meditation techniques throughout the millennia, not to mention countless yoga postures, asanas, specialized breathing or pranayama, and every conceivable variety of ritual or practice.
If meditation is simply a cessation or a stopping, if it’s simply coming to stillness, then why do we need so many techniques to achieve it? Why can’t we just sit and wait for our mud to settle, as they teach in Zen? The truth is we can just stop. We can surrender the activities of our character, however as Einstein said “although reality is merely an illusion, it is a persistent one.”
It is this persistence of the illusion that makes it necessary for most people to penetrate into the unconscious mind. To stay awake we have to purify the avatar of its samskaras, of its karma or its programming, so that the unconscious aspects of self are no longer driving the show. When I say “purify” I don’t mean that the avatar is somehow bad or negative. I simply mean that it is possible to disidentify a sense of self from it, and the disidentification process is what we call “purification” or “cleaning”. I’m cleaning my Self of myself. Our sadhana is to unite all aspects of our self so that we are not divided. We penetrate into the unconscious by creating conditions of no escape for the ego. Whether this is through long periods of meditation or self-inquiry, through intensive yoga, qi kung, prayer or breath work, or fasting or chanting, or by taking entheogens which open us to the unconscious depths of the mind, we will naturally be drawn to different practices, techniques and tools at different times on our path.
Whatever the practice or technique is, the purification will happen as long as we are cultivating presence and equanimity. Being here in the now as well as surrendered to what is then we continue to unbind the karmic knots that create identification with our avatar.
We let go of judging any sensation or thought as good or bad, always going deeper into the sensory field. Always perceiving subtler and subtler phenomena, becoming so conscious of what is arising that there is a merging with the meditation object. We become the breath. We become the yoga posture. We become the chant. We become the avatar. In each case merging with the pranic field in what is called Savikalpa Samadhi, or Samprajnada Samadhi, which is “Samadhi with a seed”; a seed of pattern a seed of form. A seed of conditioned mind activity; of karmic activity. So long as there is a seed of attachment, of unconscious mind activity, of separation between the inner and outer worlds, then the final goal will not be reached. Savikalpa Samadhi is a preliminary Samadhi, also called “jhana” (Pali) or “dhyana” (Sanskrit). It is a burning up of karma within the self-structure; an energetic preparation of the vessel for the awakening of one’s true nature, which is realized through non-doing; through a cessation of mind activity.
Your mind is like a pond, and your thoughts are like waves or ripples upon that pond.
To make a pond become still, what can you do?
Anything you do will stir up more waves. You can’t smooth it out or make it be still.
The pond only comes to stillness when you have let go of all effort, all striving, all movement. Realizing the natural state is not something that you do. It is a recognition of what you are beyond the movement of the mind and senses. Who is moving the mind? Recognize “who” is choosing. It is only the mind itself that chooses. It is only the mind itself that moves.
It is only the mind itself that wants to try to still the mind.
Upon hearing these words the limited mind will likely be disoriented, wondering, “What do I do?” Just allow that disorientation. Become aware of the True Self. Become aware of awareness, conscious of consciousness.
Stay with “it” until it alone becomes your reality.
At the beginning when you try to observe awareness you will see only the false self, only the movements of the mind.
When I say “Be aware of the true self”, it is not a turning, it is not a movement. It is not like pointing a camera at a new object, but rather it is a giving up or a cessation of the interest or attachment to the movements of the mind.
There are two main knots that bind us into identification with the false self: The body wants comfort, and the mind wants to know. The body is attached to sensations of pleasure and avoidance of pain. All sadhana or spiritual practice that leads to Samadhi fundamentally involves two things: First, letting go of the duality of comfort and discomfort, and second, entering into a “don’t know mind.” Deep inner surrender, energetic surrender, and being thoughtlessly present, choicelessly aware.
Socrates was considered the wisest person of his time. He’s famous for the maxim, “I only know that i don’t know.” This is the Socratic paradox. Adopting a “don’t know mind”, a not knowing mind, is the gateway to Samadhi.
Wait. Be still without hope, without thought, because hope would be based on some idea, and would be keeping energy flowing into the conditioned mind.
T.S. Eliot wrote, “I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought.”
The moment you have a hope, a motive or a thought, is the moment that you are again caught in the conditioned mind. In the Divine Comedy, Dante wrote of an inscription at the entrance to hell: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
It is actually a very practical instruction. It would make a great reminder if it were posted on the doorway of every meditation center, ashram, church or temple. Whatever your hope is, it is based on past conditioning. Hope is a kind of knowing that keeps the ego structure searching, seeking and doing. When we engage in our sadhana, our spiritual practice that leads to Samadhi, then we must abandon all hope, all projections into the future, accepting that we don’t even know what to hope for. This is a humbling for the ego. When we abandon hope we also abandon fear. Hope and fear are the mind’s projection into the future; the inner wiring that binds us to identification. Hope is craving, fear is aversion. If we remain in the now experiencing this moment as it is, then where is hope or fear? Our spiritual work is to excavate and unbind the knots that tie us to identification with our character. We move beyond comfort and discomfort, entering into the cloud of unknowing. We can do this both through formal practices and in day-to-day life.
To meditate, to know yourself, is to burn in the now.
To burn up your patterns, your preferences.
Αnd it is not something separate from your life. To be able to drop your patterns, your reactions and your judgments while you’re in the midst of them, to drop the fight, is the deepest practice. This is the only fight that you win by giving up, by surrendering, by dying on the battlefield. Willingly climbing onto the cross.
Some people are ready for the highest teachings on meditation and self-inquiry; the simple and clear truth. They will hear the dharma and will understand immediately. These people are like wood that has been well seasoned, and they are ready to burn themselves up. They just need the spark. Other people seem to require more preparation. They’re like wet wood and they need some time to dry out before they ignite. They need techniques, practices to loosen the bonds of the self-structure to become free of samskaras. Or at least they believe that this is the case, and the belief makes it so.
Practices and techniques are like stepping stones; like using a thorn to remove a thorn, or a pattern to remove a pattern. Spiritual practices such as reciting words, practicing a discipline or anything learned, is simply imitation. It’s something repetitive and conditioned. Because all techniques are conditioned patterns within the mind, the practice itself will never lead beyond the mind, to Samadhi. You will remain in the pattern in a robotic, repetitive state. One must hold on to the technique loosely, allowing inner energy to flow freely. When you become absorbed in inner energy, then the conditioned doing is dropped.
The conditioned doing, the unconscious programming was formed due to incomplete experiences. Whenever we have an incomplete experience, it creates an impression in the mind. It creates a little program in the unconscious. This programming or conditioning can come from traumas, or simply experiences that we have turned away from, because they were too painful (or grasped at because they were pleasurable). Our self-structure is made up of a legion of little programs which come into being because of incomplete experiences. These memory imprints are not only stored in the brain, but within the energetic systems of the body; throughout the nervous system, the fascia, and many networks of nadis or meridians. These programs take energy to run. If energy is trapped in the unconscious, then it’s like leaving apps open on your phone draining your battery. Our sadhana is like learning to close the apps on our phone.
To become free we bring consciousness to the subtle sensations; to the field of changing phenomena or energy within us without reacting to any thought or feeling that arises. By dropping the preferences of the ego structure moving beyond comfort and discomfort.
Everything in the external world is pointing us in the wrong direction. Society tells us to numb our pain, to seek comfort. The way in is the way out, the way out is the way in. We need to turn toward our pain. We become free of samskaras by having a complete experience. By feeling it without reacting. By burning in it. We have a complete experience of the feeling without the emotion.
Emotions are reactions. They are feelings that are intertwined with thoughts. We drop the thinking component and stay with the raw feeling, the raw sensation. It has been said that the path to liberation is not about feeling better, but about getting better at feeling. The ultimate examples of this are Jesus on the cross or the Buddha’s meditation that led to his enlightenment.
It is facing one’s greatest pain, one’s greatest fears, dropping the concepts, the knowing, and the judgments of good or bad.
Awakening is merely the beginning step in an accelerated process of inner development; of growing the inner lotus; of becoming a living bridge; of purifying the human vessel to house divine consciousness.
Energy is like the Rosetta stone for spiritual practices. if you understand how energy works you understand the usefulness of the practice. Every technique or practice is interrupting the pattern of YOU. You are using a conditioned pattern to interrupt conditioned patterns. You must be willing to let go of the technique once it has served its purpose, otherwise you will just create an identity around it, and a new spiritualized self-structure.
To reach the deeper stages of meditation we must let go of everything we think we know about meditation. The ancient terms for meditation, “jhana”, “dhyana”, zen or chan, refer to a sort of inner dissolving; a kind of meditative absorption; a transformation or inner purification of egoic conditioning.
The ancient meaning of the word “jhana” is related to the pali word “jhapeti” which means “to burn up”. Tt is a burning up of defilements, of sin or samskaras. It’s a burning up of identification with the false self, a burning up of delusion, a burning up of all preferences out of which the ego construct is made, and a release and coming forth of inner energy. One becomes equanimous with what is, surrendered to what is, attentive to what is.
Awakening to our true nature can happen gradually through these stages of jhana, as the identification with various processes of conditioned mind is dropped. Or awakening can happen instantly. This is called “satori” in Zen.
The most pure teaching is transmitted in silence, but with the world such as it is today, very few will understand or be drawn into the source of that silence.
There’s a famous teaching by Gautama Buddha called “the flower sermon”. The sermon is the origin of Buddhist meditation. You could say it’s the origin of Zen. Zen is about direct transmission of the truth. In the flower sermon the Buddha simply held up a white flower. He was in unmediated presence with the flower, abiding in his true nature. That was the whole teaching. Rather than giving a long satsang or teaching with words, he just let the students sit with the flower for the entire time. Only one student received the transmission. Only one student got it. To receive such a subtle transmission requires a subtle mind.
The greatest truth is transmitted in silence. How can we receive this transmission of Buddha mind? How can we receive what we already have, what we already are?
Primordial awareness is everywhere, when we have eyes to see, and nowhere in particular. Upon awakening the truth is so simple to see that you don’t need the mind. The mind is searching and seeking. When that movement is given up, when that movement is burned up, the truth remains.
You already are that which you’re looking for, but you’re identified with the false self.
Notice the flower and notice who or what is observing the flower. What is separating the observer and the observed? Meditation or jhana is to be present here and now without the mediation of images in the mind, ideas and concepts. If awareness is absolutely present so that there’s no more knowing, even in the unconscious, then there’s no more observer and observed. There’s no more relationship between you and any “thing”. There’s no more flower and separate observer. It is only the limited mind that sees things. The activity of the limited mind is the creation of things; the creation of the experience of time and space; the creation of duality, of experience and experiencer.
It is possible to wake up here and now to a profound dimension of stillness beyond the mind, not pushing away the mind, but letting it be exactly as it is. Yet not getting caught in the mind.
Don’t try to analyze these words. These are not concepts. If presence has realized itself upon hearing these pointers, don’t let the mind get involved. As soon as you receive the transmission turn off this video, and abide in awareness as awareness.
Silence is the greatest teaching, the purest teaching. The next best teaching is pointing directly at the unfathomable. This next teaching has had many names throughout history. It is pointing toward the transcendent self or pure consciousness. In Buddhism it is called “Prajna Paramita” which means the ultimate knowledge or perfect wisdom, which is distinguished from ordinary knowledge or conditioned knowledge. It is what is realized through the eighth limb of yoga described by Patanjali. In Shaivism this awakening could be described as oneness with Ishvara or Shiva, which are names for absolute consciousness.
In Western mystical traditions the terms henosis or apophaticism have been used to refer to union with the One. Plotinus said that the one transcends all beings, but is imminent within them.
In Tibetan Dzogchen it is described as the natural, primordial state of being. They use the word Rigpa to refer to the ground of existence.
In Sufism it is the “secret of secrets” realized through “fana”, which is annihilation or learning to die before you die.
In Mahamudra it is the great seal, or the great imprint, the realization of the natural state; primordial awareness, emptiness, absolute, clear and transparent, without root.
Do not listen to these words with the mind but recognize within the depths of consciousness that to which they point.
The truth of who or what you are, the truth that transcends the limited mind cannot be seen by means of the limited mind. The still point cannot be reached by means of movement.
If you want to realize the still point beyond thinking let go of all interest in thoughts and sensations, all preferences, all phenomena generated by the mind and senses, and rest in naked awareness.
Thoughts and sensations are a field of constantly changing phenomena. What is unchanging is the awareness of that field of change. We are usually so caught up in the field of change fixated on its objects, that we ignore awareness. To realize Samadhi we stop chasing anything in the field of change; any thought and we rest as awareness. Stop reacting to thoughts and sensations. All suffering is due to our believing our thoughts.
Notice the mind’s habit of judging or labeling any thought or sensation is good or bad. We allow every thought and sensation to be as it is. We don’t push away anything, and yet we don’t get ensnared in thoughts, or hooked by their content. In this way we approach the absolute by the negative path, the via negativa. Whatever is arising we realize “not this, not that, not this, not that”. Through the via negativa, one realizes everything that is arising is not you. Tou realize that you are nothing; the wisdom of no self.
Through the via positiva one realizes everything that is arising IS you. This is love; an energetic connection or merging. Both truths exist simultaneously.
Form is exactly emptiness, emptiness is exactly form.
There’s a saying in Zen: at the beginning of the path, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. After some realization, mountains are no longer mountains, and rivers are no longer rivers, but when the final truth is revealed, mountains and rivers ARE. What has changed on this journey? The mountain and the river remain as they always have been. What has dropped away is your idea of the mountain and the river. What has dropped away is the whirlpool of the mind that mediates, that creates the illusion of separation between you and the world.
To realize Samadhi is not to achieve some extraordinary state. Nor is it about staying in the ordinary state of mind. Only the limited mind or egoic mind discriminates ordinary and extraordinary.
Turiya the stateless state, sometimes called the fourth state. It is non-dual reality. It is transcendent and imminent within. It is the ground of existence, the fountain of all truth. Your effort to achieve some state is a movement of the mind. To realize the ground of existence is not to transcend the physical and abide in the subtle realm or the causal realm. All of these dimensions of yourself exist simultaneously. Gross, subtle and causal exist here and now. It is only the limited mind itself that creates the division.
To realize Samadhi is not to try to achieve something. It is a giving up of all interest in thoughts while remaining fully alert, fully conscious, fully awake, without reacting, without doing; without moving the mind without suppressing the mind.
To be aware, to be fully attentive to what is happening, without the mediation of egoic conditioning, without concepts, without controlling, manipulating, or distortion, without the filtering of the limited mind, it is to be present without choosing. Present without choosing, and therefore without a chooser.
You could call this a mirror mind; a beginner’s mind without memory or past. An open or transparent mind. You make every moment new.
Every time that the mind moves unconsciously, even the tiniest movement, it is due to the filtering through the conditioning of the limited self-structure. Whenever the mind moves unconsciously it is due to some unsatisfactoriness, which is called dukkha in the ancient traditions. How do I let go of dukkha? How do I let go of all unsatisfactoriness? Listen closely. To the limited mind there’s a paradox. The limited egoic mind hears the question and wants to know how to do it, but that limited mind can’t do it. The limited mind will always fail in any attempts to realize Samadhi It must fail.
The limited mind does not awaken.
Primordial awareness wakes up from its identification with the limited mind.
The limited mind will always fail in any attempt to realize stillness, because the mind is movement.
The mind itself IS movement, and this movement creates the experience of time and space, creates separation. It is an endless process of doing.
On the Pathless Path we awaken from identifying with the character that is doing, to recognizing the dimension of Being.
In Samadhi the separation between doing and being drops away. The separation is simply another mind process. When there’s no thinking within the conditioned egoic structure then there’s no problem.
The you that you think you are is a process; a constant movement of egoic thought; a collection of patterns and preferences. That YOU has to die. The pathological pattern of YOU has to end for Samadhi to be realized. Let that sink in.
[Asatoma Sat Gamaya (Sanskrit) “Lead me from the untruth to the Truth.” Tamaso Ma Jyotir Gamaya “Lead me from darkness to light.”]
To awaken is to see the nature of human suffering, of the human condition. It’s the recognition of WHO or WHAT suffers.
There’s no technique for realizing primordial awareness. No process that can be learned. No formula that can be practiced.
What I’m getting at can be received in an instant, in a flash. It is precisely the dropping of all formulas, all knowing, and all doing, all egoic agendas that creates the optimal conditions for primordial consciousness to awaken.
If I try to tell you how to be aware then you’ll be paying attention to my words or doing something that I told you, rather than being aware of what’s actually happening in the now. You have to become so conscious of what is, so intimate with existence that there’s no preference, no self or “I” in it. You inhabit or merge consciousness into what’s happening. When egoic activity is dropped, you become that which is arising. Actually that’s not true. More correctly it’s the illusion of separation that falls away. The truth is we were never actually separate.
Spiritual teachers have given the instruction to reach Samadhi, “Be still and know.” Be still and know the true Self, primordial awareness beyond name and form. Be still and know that you are God, the true Self, Buddha nature.
What exactly do they mean? What is it that becomes still?
Obviously no one’s physical body can become absolutely still existing within time and space, because timespace itself is movement. Timespace is mind. The universe is big mind or logos. The first hermetic principle is that “The all is mind, the universe is mental.” If the universe is mind and mind is movement, how can I be still and know? How can you be still on a globe spinning a thousand miles per hour around its axis, spinning 67 000 miles per hour around the sun, moving 500 000 miles per hour around the galaxy, and millions more through the universe? Your heart is beating, cells are moving inside, food digesting, the brain producing brain waves. Your blood is pumping, energy is moving. How can we be still? When the spiritual masters say “be still and know” they must be talking about something else, something beyond time and space, something beyond the physical and mental.
What is meant by stillness is something that we have no word for in our modern language system. The Sanskrit language, the language of the yogis, has more precise terms which point to the non-dual. The term “shunyata” is often translated as voidness, stillness or emptiness. Stillness is maybe the closest English word, but it is inadequate to describe something that is not of this dualistic world. What is actually realized is the primordial consciousness which is beyond stillness and movement. Beyond time. It is eternal, the ground of your being, the essential nature of reality that does not change. Actually it is beyond change and the changeless. When our true nature is realized it becomes obvious that silence and noise are a duality created by the mind.
Stillness and movement are a duality created by the mind. Everything is already inherent within that primordial stillness. The movement of the world is identical to stillness. Be still and know, be in motion and know. It is all emptiness dancing. This is not something philosophical but an entirely different way of interfacing with the world. Actually it’s about dropping the interface. Dropping the reducing valve which is the self-structure, and experiencing your true nature unmediated by the limited mind. The so-called outer world is transcended by realizing stillness, which when realized includes that which it transcends.
If you think you understand Samadhi after watching this film then you’ve missed what’s being said. It would be like mistaking the menu for the meal. To taste the truth takes a true willingness to see the patterns of the self-structure that you refer to as you. It requires a deep excavation, deep surgery on the mind and freeing of samskaras. A deep dismantling, a deep humbling of the self-structure. To realize Samadhi one surrenders to the soul’s longing for union. You must want to realize the One Source more than anything in the matrix of the mind- more than anything in the external world. External pursuits will seem hollow and meaningless. True meditation true self-inquiry is coming into the now where everything is experienced. Everything is revealed. Everything arises and passes away within a field of equanimity and love.
Until the eternal is realized one must work patiently and persistently, wholeheartedly, with humility burning up your patterns, your preferences, your conditioning. One can’t make awakening happen using the conditioned mind. It happens seemingly by accident, but by practicing presence it makes us accident prone.
The final words of Socrates before he was executed were a warning to the world. He said we owe a great debt to Asclepius. Pay it and don’t forget. Asclepius was the god of healing and you may be familiar with the Asclepius staff which is a rod entwined with a serpent. It represents healing energy; inner energy that is alive, free from conditioning, free to move of its own intelligence, as opposed to the energy of the dualistic mind. In the early centuries BCE the Asclepius symbol was emblazoned on some of the first money coins mass-produced in ancient Greece and Rome, and it has morphed into what we call the dollar sign today. It is an ancient reminder, hidden in plain view. A reminder that an exchange of money is an exchange of energy. Christ consciousness or buddha nature is supported by the feminine principle, by Great Mother, by the Nagas, the Serpent Wisdom. This wisdom teaches us to purify the inner temple, to purify ourselves of ego. The feminine principle has had countless names throughout history: Gaia, Shakti Sophia, Logos, Mahalakshmi, Parvati, Durga, Isis, Mary, the spiral of life. This living energy of the higher mind is the innate intelligence of the universe. This nature wisdom has been systematically suppressed, demonized, exploited, and controlled throughout the last millennia.
In order to free energy from the unconscious definitions that we hold, we must unbind the knots that create identification with the ego structure. Letting go of grasping at comfort letting go of knowing.
Right now at this time in history, at this time within yourself, the debt that Socrates is speaking of, is coming due both individually and collectively. There is only one currency with which you can pay this debt. You must pay with yourself.
When we free our inner energy our inner aliveness from its prison in pathological thought structures it becomes free to connect us with higher levels of mind. Energy is what connects us all. Another name for this energy is love. All true spiritual masters say that love is the true religion. Love is the religion of the future. It cannot be institutionalized, systematized, or conditioned. Love is inseparable from the realization of the one primordial consciousness. To love is to be ONE WITH.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you
Don’t go back to sleep
You must ask for what you really want
Don’t go back to sleep
People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch
The door is round and open …
Don’t go back to sleep.
