always awake | this unlit light

Sages have often spoken of the necessity of bringing an urgency to our inquiry into the Real – as though we were literally on fire with earnestness. The insinuation is that many inquire from mere intellectual curiosity, or an appetite for philosophical entertainment. Sometimes spiritual seeking becomes a type of insatiable addiction; Trungpa cautioned about that, Krishnamurti too. Dorothy Hunt’s words remind me of the compassionate severity of their words. What drives our inquiry? To what degree are we ready to “get Real”?

This Unlit Light - How serious is your inquiry?

How deeply do you want to go in your spiritual life? Are you satisfied with a glimpse now and then of your true nature? A retreat now and then to remind you of the power of Silence? An intellectual knowing of a path, a teaching, or a memory of a past awakened moment – then it’s back to “life as usual”?

How much do you want to live from truth rather than think about it? How much do you want to open your heart and let its love and compassion flow to yourself and to a suffering world? How much energy do you expend trying to “pull the weeds” of your suspected egoic deficiencies, or holding onto the “flowers” of lovely, desired experiences rather than returning to the Ground from which the seeing and being of all moments spring?

What do we DO to keep alive our remembering?

We stop relying on memory of the known, and return again and again to being awake NOW, opening to the moment as it is now, paying attention to the undivided Ground more than weeds or flowers, and being willing to see more and more deeply the subtle ways our conditioned mind attaches, sometimes with great emotion, to its belief in a separate “self.”

Our home ground, our source, is always available. We do not have to import it. We do not create it, and we cannot hold onto it. It is present in every experience. It is in the smile on your face, the frustration of a mind that cannot “get” what it is seeking. It is here now in the taste of morning tea, the challenging boss at work, the beauty of a sunset. It is here seeing, awaring, loving, being all moments, all experiences. As you no doubt have discovered, it is easy to remain awake in heaven. But what is awake is awake in the hellish moments as well. And beyond any experience, there is our true source, “making everything shine.”

In reality there is only the source, dark in itself, making everything shine.
Unperceived, it causes perception. Unfelt, it causes feeling.
Unthinkable, it causes thought.
Non-being gives birth to being.
It is the immovable background of motion.

Once you are there, you are at home everywhere.

–Nisargadatta Maharaj

Also see:

2016 – what I wish for you

continuous awakening – Dorothy Hunt

Dorothy’s words were originally posted at Science and Nonduality – gratitude!

Image source: the incomparable Bob O’Hearn

You are already awake. And by you I don’t mean you as the imaginary separate individual. I mean you as everything–you as this awake space that’s here right now, that is everything and no-thing.

I mean the seeing, breathing, awaring being that is already awake, already complete–always complete, always awake.

And everything is it, everything, everything! The sunlight, the birds, the leaves, the traffic, the thoughts, the mental movies, the headaches, the episodes of acid indigestion.

Everything is this one undivided, awake, alive–what? I could put some word on it–beingness, emptiness, presence, God, the Self, oneness, boundlessness. Those are just words and each of those words is it. Every word is it. Everything is it.

And there’s no possibility of being separate from it or losing it or not having it yet, or not quite getting it, because there’s no one apart from it to get it or to lose it or to find it or to have it.

And the thought, “I’m not quite there yet,” is only a thought. And that thought is it too, playfully expressing itself as that funny little thought and the melodrama that thought creates, because apparently whatever this is, this awake emptiness or whatever you want to call it, apparently it enjoys melodramas. It loves playing.

~ Joan Tollifson

Source – Joan’s website: http://www.joantollifson.com/writing5.html

this unlit light

Tag Archives: always awake

are you on fire?

In reality there is only the source, dark in itself, making everything shine.
Unperceived, it causes perception. Unfelt, it causes feeling.
Unthinkable, it causes thought.
Non-being gives birth to being.
It is the immovable background of motion.

Once you are there, you are at home everywhere.

–Nisargadatta Maharaj

everything is it, everything!

In reality there is only the source, dark in itself, making everything shine. Unperceived, it causes perception. Unfelt, it causes feeling. Unthinkable, it causes thought. Non-being gives birth to being. It is the immovable background of motion.

Once you are there, you are at home everywhere.

–Nisargadatta Maharaj

Thanks for sharing!

Like this:

Thanks for sharing!

Like this:

In reality there is only the source, dark in itself, making everything shine.
Unperceived, it causes perception. Unfelt, it causes feeling.
Unthinkable, it causes thought.
Non-being gives birth to being.
It is the immovable background of motion.