Simple is Best - Directness is an unwanted 'gift'.
The directness of 'pointing' to what is true - is usually unwanted, like a very practical gift on Christmas day. - The excitement of fancy, useless gifts is so much more attractive - but the fascination with them fades pretty quickly.
Simple is always best and many words do not necessarily make it easier and many books are published about all this. – Has any of it really helped?
How many hundreds of dollars have been spent on spiritual books that end up on a bookshelf gathering dust?
New Age Self Help books are a category that has a huge 'turn over' each year - a big profit for the publishers, the bookstores and the distributors - with a trickle back to the authors - the readers are short changed and the therapy goes on and on because the roots of belief are not cut through in the immediacy of Knowing Presence.
Most of that published stuff is band aid psychotherapy for dummies and focuses on the extra 'special personality' of the Teacher.
Endless concepts going around and around - hundreds and hundreds of teachers and groups - decades of it - is the world getting to be a better place?
The simplicity of what is true is always and ever available to each and every one of us - it stares us in the face everyday but we don't see it - we prefer fancy concepts and a spiritual life style with all the beads and bangles, chanting and yoga postures.
Are they anything more than delay tactics?
Avoiding what is obvious?
The absolute truth of existence is right here, right now - it does NOT depend on anything WHATSOEVER, least of all a concept.You cannot negate 'the fact of your own being' and THAT is the only fact that you can be absolutely sure of - That is what Bob Adamson pointed out to me some years ago - and I found out for myself that he is absolutely correct.
So direct - so obvious: It is so direct and so simple that the mind can't appreciate it because of its own complex nature of dividing and naming.
But KNOWING is in BEING and it is that immediacy that resonates with the clear pointing (which is of the same source KNOWING in BEING).Knowing in theory is just concept and story.
Well, to express it any clearer than that is near impossible and 'who' wants to know?
The mind, it seems, wants more and more information and its habitual 'bias' is not interested in simplicity because it is too sharp and cutting to the core for it's biased view.
So, much is written about it all - and if one is not 'on the ball' (as a writer or as a reader) it usually slides into complexities via the dualistic nature of language and words etc.
Basically it is very simple: -
We look for a conceptual matrix that will match up with reality and then we want to claim it for 'ME'.
Speaking in the usual relative terms, the flourishing concept that pervades the minds of most seekers is the concept that revolves around a ‘someone’ who is GOING to get something more than they already have.
That is the first step away from reality – but only for the mind.
Those who promise such an 'event' are just a part of the story – the seductive story about time and a special ‘event’ called ‘Awakening’ and then later they throw in another concept just to keep you on board the ship of fools and that concept is called ‘The final delivery’.
Final Understanding?
There is NOTHING final about it – The Non Dual has no beginning and no end – it is infinity itself. - Those who promote such concepts are teasing you with the old 'carrot before the donkey' trick.
They never GOT IT themselves!
(It is the easiest thing in the world to pretend that I have what everyone is looking for - but it is a lie and what is real - what this KNOWING reality IS, when discovered to be what I am, THAT cannot consciously lead anyone astray with concepts about 'how special I AM'. - The immediate taste of any such indulgence is bitter sweet and is cut off without delay - and that is why I know that these 'special teachers' are more or less complete frauds)
There own indulgence is just another story - a bullshit story, to be blunt and direct.
Ask them 'who is this one who got it?'
The concept of separation is obvious and the game of teacher-pupil is ridiculous and dualistic and in what we call Non Duality it does not need to be anything more than a brief appearance, while the message is delivered. - The delivery of the message evaporates the concept of separation and the teacher and pupil vanish- because they were only an appearance anyway.
That may be too much to take in, while the concepts of being a seeker are still floating around in the mind.
A Blunt Fact:
There never was and never will be anyone that ‘gets it’.
As long as a belief in that story remains active in the mind, you will go on searching to no avail and miss the simplicity of presence awareness.
Those that indulge in fantasy, they indulge your mind in a fancy belief that they ‘got it’ -
But the reality is that ‘they’ themselves are nothing but ‘another story’.
They appear to depend on all those complex student 'relationships' to keep their own concept of being an 'awakened one' alive in their own minds.
When all stories are vanquished, seen through or simply concluded or fade away – the ‘activity of knowing’ remains as (or is found to be) the underlying ‘ground’, which IS pristinely present – untouched and uncontaminated – and it is (was) present before the story started, during the whole apparent ‘duration’ of the story and AS the empty space of KNOWING that is revealed at the end of every story.
In the 'lasting presence' of ‘THIS ever present moment of realizing’ – this realization that I am this naked awareness, then the mind can be free to do what it likes and the energy of belief does not flow into the content of mind (in the old way) – so everything remains as it is – it is known to be 'all of the appearance' - every speck of what is known is an appearance in this space of knowing that I AM.
The sense of presence which we name as the 'I AM' is nothing but THIS wordless reality - presence awareness - non conceptual - non dual and it IS Oneness itself - and even the concept of ONE is not really present in it.
Looking back into so-called ‘time’, one sees and KNOWS that it was only the immediacy of presence taking the form of being the ‘energy of belief’ that flows into all those (past impressions) habitual concepts – it is THIS immediacy that makes them seem so real and substantial – and the ‘hidden’ lynch pin to it all, is the reference point ‘ME’.
And you never were that me, ever.
Beyond:
Beyond all that, this naked awareness is totally available right here and right now, without any need for any thought or any 'doing' whatsoever.
Drop all concepts and in one instant one has gone beyond the mind and all its content.
THIS profundity, THIS directness of self realization remains out of reach for those that refuse to drop their concepts.
- Fear is often the inhibitor.
- What am I if not this idea I have about myself?
Priceless:
The direct and immediate taste of being this naked awareness is priceless.
It is not for sale and it cannot be given to you by anyone, no matter how much you are willing to pay and no matter how profoundly spiritual the one who promises such nonsense appears to be.This directness, which is prior to thought, is what you ARE.
How strange it is that we need to be introduced to it - only because we have been ignoring it.
How difficult is it to be yourself?
Email to Gilbert -
I am writing to make a connection and also for any guidance you can send my way.
I am currently enjoying two of your CDs and your book 'Everything is Clear and Obvious'.
It seems that thoughts explain thoughts explain thoughts...but, there is no reality to the content but rather a belief in what is "thought".
Feelings and perceptions seem more real just as they are prior to labeling.
It appears that I am doing life as a human and that there is some distance from being an 'I' and 'not an I' - but that is not complete - perhaps, this too is only a believed thought.
As far as inquiry - I see that without thoughts, perceptions, feelings there is nothing - and, that none of this can exist without the background of awareness - This may all be mental and not clear seeing - but it resonates as true and exactly right.
I look forward to hearing from you. - Thank you – S - USA.
Gilbert Replies: Where this immediate 'seeing' (knowing) is happening, all is clear and empty - THAT is what you are - All the rest is concepts, ideas, images etc.
What you say in your email is reasonable and correct.
The mind is all we have, when it comes to putting things into words – in translating whatever the experience is.
The mind translates the experience-ING, which is always the primary movement.
The movement is the experiencing - at least you cannot separate these two aspects of presence. The mind usually translates it into what ‘has been known’, from the past.
That is, it translates it into ‘what WAS’ – which is only a concept from a dead past, so ‘what is’ seemingly becomes ‘what was’ in the instant of conceptualization – and belief in that re-presentation is what seemingly causes the problem.
In the apparent ‘life time’, many things are absorbed into the Knowing Essence of what you are.
In other words we learn stuff - and that ‘knowledge’ is spontaneously available, mostly without going looking for it, without 'thinking it out' - then there may be a laborious thinking process, which seems like a getting bogged down and that seemingly obscures direct cognition - but this sense of identification is only for the believed in entity, which has no substance at all - it is only belief.
All this is ordinary or should I say it has taken on a sense of the usual for me, not ME an entity - which is this apparent separate individual that the habitual thought tells me that I am.
Teaching:
In respect of there being a teaching, all I can say is that Bob pointed out many things and I kept coming back for more, because it resonated somewhere in me, and it sank in - then in my own direct experiencing, I saw what he was pointing out – many things were seen to be true in what he was saying – AND in that experiencing, which is and was void of any doubt, that direct experiencing was known to be 'my own' direct knowing - no longer mere theory or hearsay.
When ‘enough’ of this direct experiencing had taken place, it dawned on me, I discovered that I was no longer subjected to what the mind had been doing for so long - I was not IN IT any longer – I was and I remain right now, out of it - and there is no desire to go back into it and I also know it is impossible to go back into it, because it was only ever an appearance IN what I am.
And even though there can appear to be moments of being in it again, they do not last - and there is no lasting drama perpetuated internally - that is a vast difference to how things were - for how I sense(d) myself in this presence that I am – commonly called ‘me’.
One could say that this teaching is 'through negation', a seeming negation of what is not BY seeing what is - and in seeing what is not - which is the seeing of what has no foundation - except belief. - Remove the belief and what is left? - Presence - naked and vividly obvious.
Simple:
It is very simple - and yet so many pass over the pointers again and again - not realizing their potency. – They take delivery of all manner of troublesome concepts about themselves and they consistently ignore the profound ‘pointers’ that herald a freedom beyond description - that is a mystery. - So much seeking and NO finding - because they are looking in the WRONG place.
In my own case, I guess I was deadly serious about coming into a new understanding - and it was that intention that took me back to look more closely at it all - in a manner of speaking. Language does not lend itself well to discussing what is called Non Duality.
Well I trust this is something for you to read and contemplate.
I am pleased you are getting some 'value' from the CD's and the book - I think much of the potency that stuck me has been conveyed in them - and it appears to work for a few.
What needs to be realized is that you are already what you seek - in the right company that may reveal itself more potently.
Further more, one could say that it is all-real – and it is all-unreal.
What you are is reality. – There is no other reality than THIS reality right now – and reality is not what the mind translates it into – concepts etc.
What you ‘think’ you are is and can only be a concept and the fact is that there never was anyone that had an independent thought – and every thought appears out of the same source, instantly and spontaneously – (do you imagine that you choose your own thoughts?)
They appear instantly as 'unmediated phenomena' and THAT is what everything IS - in the appearance.
The concept, word or label is just a pattern taken from the past and placed on the present - it is not presence, except as presence as a concept, word or as a label – and they are not (ever) what they re-presents.
That is even logical (but rather an annoying fact for an intellectual).
What you are is non-conceptual - vibrant and living – Life itself.
All the rest is concepts.
Stay present as THAT Reality - and SEE that there is no choice in it and that it is not a 'doing' -you are THAT already and KNOW that it remains untouched.
Warm regards - gilbert
Too many words for something so simple - What is it all pointing to? - THAT Space of KNOWING that you already ARE.
Got it?
I should point out that many of the 'pointers' used here have come from my own profound 'hearing' of what Bob Adamson pointed out to me.
They are not empty words, as such.
I know the truth of them and I have made them my own - the direct experiencing of their profundity cannot be separated from what I am - There is a solid respect for the 'messenger' (Bob).
If someone pulls your head out of a bucket of mud and then gives you 'clear clean water' to clean yourself up with - a natural respect and gratefulness will surely be there for that one.
Read Bob's website - a do what I did - SEE through the whole thing.
Look into this thing with a keen interest - you will not regret it - I can assure you of that.
Simple is always best and many words do not necessarily make it easier and many books are published about all this. – Has any of it really helped?
How many hundreds of dollars have been spent on spiritual books that end up on a bookshelf gathering dust?
New Age Self Help books are a category that has a huge 'turn over' each year - a big profit for the publishers, the bookstores and the distributors - with a trickle back to the authors - the readers are short changed and the therapy goes on and on because the roots of belief are not cut through in the immediacy of Knowing Presence.
Most of that published stuff is band aid psychotherapy for dummies and focuses on the extra 'special personality' of the Teacher.
Endless concepts going around and around - hundreds and hundreds of teachers and groups - decades of it - is the world getting to be a better place?
The simplicity of what is true is always and ever available to each and every one of us - it stares us in the face everyday but we don't see it - we prefer fancy concepts and a spiritual life style with all the beads and bangles, chanting and yoga postures.
Are they anything more than delay tactics?
Avoiding what is obvious?
The absolute truth of existence is right here, right now - it does NOT depend on anything WHATSOEVER, least of all a concept.You cannot negate 'the fact of your own being' and THAT is the only fact that you can be absolutely sure of - That is what Bob Adamson pointed out to me some years ago - and I found out for myself that he is absolutely correct.
So direct - so obvious: It is so direct and so simple that the mind can't appreciate it because of its own complex nature of dividing and naming.
But KNOWING is in BEING and it is that immediacy that resonates with the clear pointing (which is of the same source KNOWING in BEING).Knowing in theory is just concept and story.
Well, to express it any clearer than that is near impossible and 'who' wants to know?
The mind, it seems, wants more and more information and its habitual 'bias' is not interested in simplicity because it is too sharp and cutting to the core for it's biased view.
So, much is written about it all - and if one is not 'on the ball' (as a writer or as a reader) it usually slides into complexities via the dualistic nature of language and words etc.
Basically it is very simple: -
We look for a conceptual matrix that will match up with reality and then we want to claim it for 'ME'.
Speaking in the usual relative terms, the flourishing concept that pervades the minds of most seekers is the concept that revolves around a ‘someone’ who is GOING to get something more than they already have.
That is the first step away from reality – but only for the mind.
Those who promise such an 'event' are just a part of the story – the seductive story about time and a special ‘event’ called ‘Awakening’ and then later they throw in another concept just to keep you on board the ship of fools and that concept is called ‘The final delivery’.
Final Understanding?
There is NOTHING final about it – The Non Dual has no beginning and no end – it is infinity itself. - Those who promote such concepts are teasing you with the old 'carrot before the donkey' trick.
They never GOT IT themselves!
(It is the easiest thing in the world to pretend that I have what everyone is looking for - but it is a lie and what is real - what this KNOWING reality IS, when discovered to be what I am, THAT cannot consciously lead anyone astray with concepts about 'how special I AM'. - The immediate taste of any such indulgence is bitter sweet and is cut off without delay - and that is why I know that these 'special teachers' are more or less complete frauds)
There own indulgence is just another story - a bullshit story, to be blunt and direct.
Ask them 'who is this one who got it?'
The concept of separation is obvious and the game of teacher-pupil is ridiculous and dualistic and in what we call Non Duality it does not need to be anything more than a brief appearance, while the message is delivered. - The delivery of the message evaporates the concept of separation and the teacher and pupil vanish- because they were only an appearance anyway.
That may be too much to take in, while the concepts of being a seeker are still floating around in the mind.
A Blunt Fact:
There never was and never will be anyone that ‘gets it’.
As long as a belief in that story remains active in the mind, you will go on searching to no avail and miss the simplicity of presence awareness.
Those that indulge in fantasy, they indulge your mind in a fancy belief that they ‘got it’ -
But the reality is that ‘they’ themselves are nothing but ‘another story’.
They appear to depend on all those complex student 'relationships' to keep their own concept of being an 'awakened one' alive in their own minds.
When all stories are vanquished, seen through or simply concluded or fade away – the ‘activity of knowing’ remains as (or is found to be) the underlying ‘ground’, which IS pristinely present – untouched and uncontaminated – and it is (was) present before the story started, during the whole apparent ‘duration’ of the story and AS the empty space of KNOWING that is revealed at the end of every story.
In the 'lasting presence' of ‘THIS ever present moment of realizing’ – this realization that I am this naked awareness, then the mind can be free to do what it likes and the energy of belief does not flow into the content of mind (in the old way) – so everything remains as it is – it is known to be 'all of the appearance' - every speck of what is known is an appearance in this space of knowing that I AM.
The sense of presence which we name as the 'I AM' is nothing but THIS wordless reality - presence awareness - non conceptual - non dual and it IS Oneness itself - and even the concept of ONE is not really present in it.
Looking back into so-called ‘time’, one sees and KNOWS that it was only the immediacy of presence taking the form of being the ‘energy of belief’ that flows into all those (past impressions) habitual concepts – it is THIS immediacy that makes them seem so real and substantial – and the ‘hidden’ lynch pin to it all, is the reference point ‘ME’.
And you never were that me, ever.
Beyond:
Beyond all that, this naked awareness is totally available right here and right now, without any need for any thought or any 'doing' whatsoever.
Drop all concepts and in one instant one has gone beyond the mind and all its content.
THIS profundity, THIS directness of self realization remains out of reach for those that refuse to drop their concepts.
- Fear is often the inhibitor.
- What am I if not this idea I have about myself?
Priceless:
The direct and immediate taste of being this naked awareness is priceless.
It is not for sale and it cannot be given to you by anyone, no matter how much you are willing to pay and no matter how profoundly spiritual the one who promises such nonsense appears to be.This directness, which is prior to thought, is what you ARE.
How strange it is that we need to be introduced to it - only because we have been ignoring it.
How difficult is it to be yourself?
Email to Gilbert -
I am writing to make a connection and also for any guidance you can send my way.
I am currently enjoying two of your CDs and your book 'Everything is Clear and Obvious'.
It seems that thoughts explain thoughts explain thoughts...but, there is no reality to the content but rather a belief in what is "thought".
Feelings and perceptions seem more real just as they are prior to labeling.
It appears that I am doing life as a human and that there is some distance from being an 'I' and 'not an I' - but that is not complete - perhaps, this too is only a believed thought.
As far as inquiry - I see that without thoughts, perceptions, feelings there is nothing - and, that none of this can exist without the background of awareness - This may all be mental and not clear seeing - but it resonates as true and exactly right.
I look forward to hearing from you. - Thank you – S - USA.
Gilbert Replies: Where this immediate 'seeing' (knowing) is happening, all is clear and empty - THAT is what you are - All the rest is concepts, ideas, images etc.
What you say in your email is reasonable and correct.
The mind is all we have, when it comes to putting things into words – in translating whatever the experience is.
The mind translates the experience-ING, which is always the primary movement.
The movement is the experiencing - at least you cannot separate these two aspects of presence. The mind usually translates it into what ‘has been known’, from the past.
That is, it translates it into ‘what WAS’ – which is only a concept from a dead past, so ‘what is’ seemingly becomes ‘what was’ in the instant of conceptualization – and belief in that re-presentation is what seemingly causes the problem.
In the apparent ‘life time’, many things are absorbed into the Knowing Essence of what you are.
In other words we learn stuff - and that ‘knowledge’ is spontaneously available, mostly without going looking for it, without 'thinking it out' - then there may be a laborious thinking process, which seems like a getting bogged down and that seemingly obscures direct cognition - but this sense of identification is only for the believed in entity, which has no substance at all - it is only belief.
All this is ordinary or should I say it has taken on a sense of the usual for me, not ME an entity - which is this apparent separate individual that the habitual thought tells me that I am.
Teaching:
In respect of there being a teaching, all I can say is that Bob pointed out many things and I kept coming back for more, because it resonated somewhere in me, and it sank in - then in my own direct experiencing, I saw what he was pointing out – many things were seen to be true in what he was saying – AND in that experiencing, which is and was void of any doubt, that direct experiencing was known to be 'my own' direct knowing - no longer mere theory or hearsay.
When ‘enough’ of this direct experiencing had taken place, it dawned on me, I discovered that I was no longer subjected to what the mind had been doing for so long - I was not IN IT any longer – I was and I remain right now, out of it - and there is no desire to go back into it and I also know it is impossible to go back into it, because it was only ever an appearance IN what I am.
And even though there can appear to be moments of being in it again, they do not last - and there is no lasting drama perpetuated internally - that is a vast difference to how things were - for how I sense(d) myself in this presence that I am – commonly called ‘me’.
One could say that this teaching is 'through negation', a seeming negation of what is not BY seeing what is - and in seeing what is not - which is the seeing of what has no foundation - except belief. - Remove the belief and what is left? - Presence - naked and vividly obvious.
Simple:
It is very simple - and yet so many pass over the pointers again and again - not realizing their potency. – They take delivery of all manner of troublesome concepts about themselves and they consistently ignore the profound ‘pointers’ that herald a freedom beyond description - that is a mystery. - So much seeking and NO finding - because they are looking in the WRONG place.
In my own case, I guess I was deadly serious about coming into a new understanding - and it was that intention that took me back to look more closely at it all - in a manner of speaking. Language does not lend itself well to discussing what is called Non Duality.
Well I trust this is something for you to read and contemplate.
I am pleased you are getting some 'value' from the CD's and the book - I think much of the potency that stuck me has been conveyed in them - and it appears to work for a few.
What needs to be realized is that you are already what you seek - in the right company that may reveal itself more potently.
Further more, one could say that it is all-real – and it is all-unreal.
What you are is reality. – There is no other reality than THIS reality right now – and reality is not what the mind translates it into – concepts etc.
What you ‘think’ you are is and can only be a concept and the fact is that there never was anyone that had an independent thought – and every thought appears out of the same source, instantly and spontaneously – (do you imagine that you choose your own thoughts?)
They appear instantly as 'unmediated phenomena' and THAT is what everything IS - in the appearance.
The concept, word or label is just a pattern taken from the past and placed on the present - it is not presence, except as presence as a concept, word or as a label – and they are not (ever) what they re-presents.
That is even logical (but rather an annoying fact for an intellectual).
What you are is non-conceptual - vibrant and living – Life itself.
All the rest is concepts.
Stay present as THAT Reality - and SEE that there is no choice in it and that it is not a 'doing' -you are THAT already and KNOW that it remains untouched.
Warm regards - gilbert
Too many words for something so simple - What is it all pointing to? - THAT Space of KNOWING that you already ARE.
Got it?
I should point out that many of the 'pointers' used here have come from my own profound 'hearing' of what Bob Adamson pointed out to me.
They are not empty words, as such.
I know the truth of them and I have made them my own - the direct experiencing of their profundity cannot be separated from what I am - There is a solid respect for the 'messenger' (Bob).
If someone pulls your head out of a bucket of mud and then gives you 'clear clean water' to clean yourself up with - a natural respect and gratefulness will surely be there for that one.
Read Bob's website - a do what I did - SEE through the whole thing.
Look into this thing with a keen interest - you will not regret it - I can assure you of that.
posted by Gilbert Schultz at Friday, August 31, 2007
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