Tag Archives: belief

don’t be fooled. stand your ground

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Pema Deane. What a light she is! This piece was posted on her blog – The Vibrant Heart – with the title Stand Your Ground. I’ve included the sentence “Don’t be fooled” in my title because my experience emphasises how pointless it is to try to stand my ground unless I’m deeply cognisant of the fact that an erroneous belief – as Pema reminds us – is constantly trying to fool us into believing we are separate from the “ground of Self, of Presence, of Light.”

stand your ground - Pema Deane

 

Scenes and circumstances continue to play out in front of us, their one seeming objective being to convince us there is something wrong with us – that we are unlovable or we lack, that the love is over there, not here.

Don’t be fooled. Stand your ground. It is time to blow this whole, bad dream apart. Recognize whatever you’re seeing and reacting to is coming straight out of your mind, a mind that believes it is separate and whose only function is to keep that belief alive.

The scenes are a set-up. They are out to suck you into misery and to prove to you you are NOT the incredible Beauty that You are. You made it all up. This recognition is your lifeline. It is your point of authority over this dream of pain.

I am not denying the incredible amount of self-nursing, holding and releasing of pain that has happened over many years but when you have reached the point of being able to simply witness the shenanigans of ego, it is to honor that with all your heart. And it is a wonderful thing. You have endured countless lifetimes to come to this point.

So stand your ground. The ground of Self, of Presence, of Light. And let the movie show of separation roll on by. It has no power to touch YOU. Ever.

– Pema Deane

The Vibrant Heart

 

kitchen sink epiphany

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In her book When Fear Falls Away Jan Frazier gives us a privileged, intimate view of her mundane daily experiences in the light of her awakening. This little extract is from a piece she wrote titled “A Visceral Experience of Immortality: April 22.” In it, she is happily doing the dishes when she suddenly understands something “fundamental about existence”; a long-held idea moves from the concept compartment and becomes an experienced reality.

It brought to mind the words my mother uttered (shortly after she announced she was “going to die now”) as I leaned over her, whispering my thanks for being the perfect mother and friend to me:

But I always will be – it never ends!

–

kitchen sink epiphany

I was standing at the sink doing the dishes, chanting, looking out the window. The kitchen sink is turning out to be the place where great realisations seem to happen. I love to chant, and I love to look out the window at the green world, where at a moment’s notice a creature might amble into the yard, its feet quick over the new grass, the sniffing nose collecting data, gathering intelligence of possible danger, possible food. I love the window. Do I love washing dishes? Well, I do. It is what gives me an excuse to look out the window and chant.

So I was doing that this morning, happy as could be. Tingly with happiness. (I get like this a lot.) I was feeling a really sustained surge of delight at simply being alive. The world outside the window pouring into my eyes, my nostrils, every possible portal – and I felt myself pouring out into the world. And I thought how great it is to be conscious, to be alive. I said to myself, I’m so glad to be alive. Consciousness is a total gas. I just want this to go on and on.

And that’s when I realised it. Viscerally, I mean, for the first time in my life. Oh my God, it IS going to go on. Forever. THIS is what keeps steady, this very sensation – even past death. I won’t have to do without, ever.

I have believed this for a long time, belief being a thing that lives in the mind. I have had the idea of immortality, of continuity between physical life and post-physical life. But that moment in front of the sink, experiencing the very body of continuity, I realised something: I only thought I got it before, the idea of consciousness being eternal. But I never really got it before, not until right this second.

I couldn’t get over it. I never have to stop! Body or not. This will be my experience, clear past death – which will be a little road bump, if I even notice it.

– Jan Frazier

When Fear Falls Away: The Story of a Sudden Awakening

If you enjoy Jan’s writing, you might be interested in another excerpt (on undivided perception) I posted over on the awakened eye:

I’ve lost track of which is which

Photo credit: katherinecollette.com

nothing ever dies but a dream

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I’m celebrating an anniversary this morning. Three years ago the dream had a daughter holding her beloved mother as she breathed the breath that would never return.

I’m also celebrating because, for the first time in those three years, the pain has vanished. The passage of time is a great healer, as is the time spent silently aware-ing on the zafu.  But I also honor the beloved mentors who have appeared in the story, their healing tools in hand. They are many, but I particularly want to thank: A kind, wise Lama, who sent me away on a retreat to find “the mother” I mourned. And a dear, dear woman whose energy healing (EFT) triggered the release of volumes of stories held in this body’s cellular vaults. And – Byron Katie. The work of the Work leaves no lie uncovered, and o-m-g some monster furphies were happily beavering away in this wee dream called ‘me’. One of them, running below the limn of  consciousness in spite of intellectual clarity about and acceptance of impermanence and the impossibility of independent self-hood, was a subtle and sneaky belief in death.

Nothing was ever born but a dream.
Nothing ever dies but a dream.

Reality is the always-stable, never-disappointing base of experience.
When I look at what really is, I can’t find a me.
As I have no identity, there’s no one to resist death.
Death is everything that has been dreamed,
including the dream of myself,
so at every moment I die of what has been
and am continually born as awareness in the moment,
and I die of that, and am born in it again.
The thought of death excites me.
Everyone loves a good novel and looks forward to how it will end.
It’s not personal.
After the death of the body, what identification will the mind take on?
The dream is over, I was perfection,
I could not have had a better life.
And whatever I am is born in this moment
as everything good that has ever lived.
~ Byron Katie

One dream ends. And here’s the beauty of it – this unlit light | reality | primordial awareness – abides, even as new dreams appear.

And I can hear her l a u g h t e r . . .

Gladness! Gratitude! Grace!

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it’s totally beyond me…

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Sitting this morning at summer’s window
wondering
what quirk of destiny’s unfolding
led
to the conviction of separation in
a human mind

How is it possible to so thoroughly
believe
in something (a solid independent ‘me’)
that has never been able to be proven
to exist?

How is it possible to turn this
phantom
into a seeker who desperately
desires
to be free of itself and its stories? (huh?)

How is it possible to
avoid
the in-your-face obvious and
inescapable
truth
that the present presents with
every nano-second of aliveness?

How could anything so
simple
available
uncomplicated
and unavoidable
turn into a mystery, a concept
that would fuel galaxies of
religious and philosophical
thought-worlds?

It’s totally beyond me…

(literally and figuratively)

But it’s bloody marvelous all the same.

.

~ miriam louisa

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looking at life without looking for a way out

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53

this is what I found out, not from a book or a teacher,
but from looking at life without looking for a way out:

the root of all ‘evil’ and of all tragedy and of all pain
is the belief in a solid, separate

‘me’

that
believes
in victims and victimizers;

that
believes
what happens should not happen;

that
believes
there is a ‘me’ to suffer;

that
believes
that a way must be found to avoid such suffering

the extent to which this might seem callous and cold
is the extent of one’s addiction to belief in
self-as-body
self-as-idea
self as something – anything

but please, don’t believe me for one minute

please look for yourself

.

~ miriam louisa

echoes from emptiness

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Truth: it’s got us by the short curlies

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Awakening is a space that opens in you.
If that space is infinitely open, then Truth can reveal itself continuously,
in a way that is always somewhat unexpected.
~ Adyashanti

Understatement of the century, says I with a droll grin.  Who’d have expected Truth to turn up as just exactly this?  Who’d have expected Truth to turn up as just exactly what is, here and now?  Who’d have expected that Truth would be ceaselessly waiting for me without expectations?  Or conditions?  Or qualifiers?

Who’d have expected that someone as crazy, mixed-up, diseased, addicted, selfish, ancient, depressed, deluded, ego-consumed, unworthy, ____  (insert pet beat-up label) as this creature called me would turn out to be Truth in apparent disguise?

Who’d have expected Truth to be naked and silent after all the years of assuming It would come blazing and whistling and shouting hallelujah?  Who’d have expected It would be so intimate that separation is impossible?  Escape impossible?  (It’s got us by the short curlies dear hearts, whether we like it or not.)

Who’d have expected that the only thing apparently standing between me and Truth was my belief in the myth of separation?

~ miriam louisa

free will and hash browns

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The notion of free will is such a hot potato*. It scalds the hands as it’s juggled around mind-space. Yet when it’s at home in its spacious place it makes delicious eating!

You don’t actually need science or experiments, philosophy or religion (although their conclusions can be fascinating) to find out for yourself all you need to know about the dynamic called free will or volition. The process couldn’t be simpler. It’s as easy as ABC, but not necessarily in that order.

Let’s take B first and let it stand for body. Let’s be very careful: can I honestly say that as a body I have any kind of free will? If I did, would I choose to fall down steps, get sick, be ugly, be fat, go bald, be hungry, grow old, die?

Let’s take C next and let it stand for cerebral activity. Mind: thinking, feeling, perceiving and all that stuff. Can I say that I have control over the things that happen in my mental world? If I did, would I choose to repeat unwanted thoughts endlessly, to have nightmares, to fixate on past events, to grieve, to compare myself unfavorably with others, to suffer?

If I’m convinced I’m a body and a mind it hardly seems sensible to claim free will for myself – it’s both masochistic and illogical. Yet if I can’t find my free will in them, where will I find it?

I will have to look elsewhere. This implies finding out exactly where ‘I’ am located. For some reason this prospect is frighteningly uncomfortable for many. The potato is burning their hands so they drop it and turn away from the inquiry. Which is a pity because clarity is only a question away, and Life is begging its asking.

It’s this: I have the feeling of autonomy. I feel as though I make choices. I feel responsible for the things I do, from picking up my cup of tea to abandoning my college course. Yet my experience refutes this. I cannot find volition in my body or my mind, which indicates that I am not my body or my mind. So what am I?

Sitting with this question and ticking off the what-I-am-not boxes unpicks the problem. Why is this so difficult? Wouldn’t you think any intelligent human being would leap at the chance to find out what they actually ARE?

There’s a story. It’s called ‘me.’ It’s scared. It knows it’s only a thought-up story and that if thoughts get looked at too closely it will be exposed. It’s afraid of extinction. Ticking off the I-am-not-the-story box takes some doing for most folk. I suggest ticking it off just to see what might happen – with an eraser handy. What happens? The eraser isn’t needed, for when you tick off the I-am-not-the-story box, you notice that there’s still something present that is aware of what’s happening – and weirdly enough, it feels just like dear old You.

Which brings us to A. A is for Awareness. Awareness is what’s left after all the boxes in one’s entire repertoire of imaginings have been ticked off and there are no options left. No way out. The ‘I’ sense is home in spacious Aware-ing and the potato is a gourmet delight. Down it goes, never again to whet mind’s appetite.

The View opens up, vast and free. Awareness reigns as the sole player in the Game. What does that mean? It means … you’re IT. Awareness is free to do and be and know and experience whatever it wishes, and it does, as You. You are its built-in modus operandi.

You, aka Awareness, are free to believe that you are a body/mind with volition. You are free to believe that you are an autonomous, separate entity. Or an awakened one. Or a striving-to-be-enlightened one. No worries! You as Awareness are also free to be a hot potato, to juggle them or to eat them boiled, mashed or hashed. How awesome is that?

You, as Awareness, are free will in eternal flow and flux.

– miriam louisa

*Hot potato? – If English isn’t your first language you might not know that this is a term for a very contentious and often non-negotiable idea or issue. I know, it’s weird, but no doubt all languages have a term for the ‘no-go’ areas of belief and fixation.