“True, absolute silence and true, absolute love
are not different.
Absolute silent awareness overflows with simple, fulfilled absolute love.
Objects – people, nature, emotions – may or may not appear. Objects are not
needed and they are welcomed.
The joy of this full silence is uncaused and unlimited.
Always here, always discovering itself.
It is the treasure, and it is hidden only when we refuse to keep quiet and find
out who we are.”
gangaji.org
Che Lalbin
gangaji.org
The Mother of All Habits
Nirmala:
Someone emailed me describing their long lasting struggle to come to terms with their suffering. They finally asked, “I want to let go. But how when all the how’s are useless?!!”
Here is my reply:
Suffering is simply the effort to change, fix or keep our experience. And this is suffering since it creates a gap between what is and what we are paying attention to. Our attention, or really our love, is flowing to an idea in our mind about what should be happening instead of what is happening. And this gap can be very uncomfortable. In fact it is the source of all of our discomfort and pain. Sensation by itself is not painful. It is only when we think about or tell a story about how we want to change, fix or keep the sensation that it becomes painful…..
fortsättningen
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Who awakens?
Consciousness wakes up to itself.
That is who you are.
It may not be who you think you are. We have objectified ourselves as this particular body, or the sensations that go through the body, or our emotions, or our history. But those are all objects in our minds. They are thoughts, concepts.
True awakening is the recognition that those objects are made of nothing, no substance. And yet they are never separate from the subjective, endless consciousness that one is.
So, who awakens? You awaken! And you are already awake as consciousness. That is the paradox.
However it is spoken of, the truth cannot be caught in a concept. But it can be realized, and that is who you are.
gangaji.org
Be Still and Know
Imagine perceiving the world through Stillness. It’s like God looking at his/her/its creation . Ohhhh . Beautiful! And you see there’s a goodness present that pervades the entire Universe.
What is that Presence? — it’s your Presence. There isn’t the Presence of God and you. There’s only Presence. It’s arising from within you.
And so you know at first hand, not as a belief, that there’s a goodness that pervades the entire Universe, a benevolence. And you know it, not as something external to you, but as your very essence. That means that’s who you are.
You are that power, that goodness, that aliveness, that Stillness. beyond that temporary form in which you appear for a flash … a brief time … and then it’s gone. And that’s the deeper meaning of the Old Testament saying, ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ That I am and God are one.
From a recorded talk by Eckhart Tolle in Portland, Oregon ~ 23 May 2000.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Surrender to yourself as Life
It is my intention that we discover what is the same in each of us. It is my intention that that be discovered in a way that nothing can dislodge it. No amount of trouble, no amount of disease, no amount of pain can dislodge this deeper peace, this surrender to yourself as Life.
Just take a moment. Life. You don’t have to know anything else. You don’t have to know any metaphysics. You don’t even have to know the words. Just stop for a moment. Life. Whether it’s a good life, a bad life, a successful life, or a failure of a life. Life. Just the wonder of that can obliterate all of the dishonoring of it. In an instant. This instant.
I bow to you as myself in That, and I receive you as myself, and meet you as a deeper investigation of That.
You need not wait to be what you are.
It is the clinging to the false that makes the true so difficult to see. Once you understand that the false needs time and what needs time is false, you are nearer the Reality, which is timeless, ever in the now. Eternity in time is mere repetitiveness, like the movement of a clock. It flows from the past into the future endlessly, as empty perpetuity.
Reality is what makes the present so vital, so different from the past and future, which are merely mental. If you need time to achieve something, it must be false.
The real is always with you; you need not wait to be what you are. Only you must not allow your mind to go out of yourself in search. When you want something, ask yourself: do I really need it? and if the answer is not, then just drop it.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
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The spaciousness of silent, aware consciousness
Each of us has times in our lives that are really good and times that are really bad. And each of us has at the core that which is before time, that is free of good and bad, and shines through it without having to suffer.
At the core, in silence, is the omnipresent awareness that has never been born and can never die, that is free and conscious. Somehow in the mystery of the divine play of consciousness we appear in bodies. And then these bodies disappear or events happen to them which toss them around or glorify them or deflate them. But always there is this spaciousness of silent, aware consciousness.
Every thing is an opportunity to more deeply, more freshly, more immediately discover this silence.
gangaji.org
***
Choose silence, and love is apparent
When we choose silence, we choose to give up the reasons not to love, which are the reasons for going to war, or continuing war, or separating, or being a victim, or being right. In a moment of silence, in a moment of no thought, no mind, we choose to give those up. This is what my teacher invited me to.
Just choose silence. Don’t even choose love. Choose silence, and love is apparent. If we choose love we already have an idea of what love is.
But if you choose silence, that is the end of ideas. You are willing to have no idea, to see what is present when there is no idea, past, present, future. No idea of love, no idea of truth, no idea of you, no idea of me. Love is apparent.
Gangaji
You think you need your thoughts and feelings to function. You think they are you.
But you don’t need them, and they aren’t you. They are part of the conditioned, false self that you think of yourself as, but they aren’t what is alive in you and living this life and experiencing this moment.
What is experiencing this moment, including what is aware of contraction over identification with thought, is who you are. It is very silent, though, unlike the egoic mind, which chatters away constantly. The real you is the Silent Experiencer who is alive and having the experience the false self is creating.
Gina Lake
