Just because you have labelled something with a name and defined it does not mean that you know it.
See through this illusion and be free from this false knowledge.
Then you can truly say in wonder, "All I know is that I know nothing". Then you are truly 'wonder-ful'.
To create a different reality, you must first let go of your idea of reality.
You must be willing to see that your idea of reality is just an idea, not reality.
During a coaching conversation, the lesser the value of the coach's past, the higher is the level at which they are coaching.
At the highest level, the coach would be metaphorically dead to their past conditioning.
They will be pure consciousness, awakening themselves in another.
"How am I experiencing my life right here, right now?" is the only thing to reflect on in preparation for the next year.
Because when the 'next year' comes, it doesn't come to you as next year. It comes to you inevitably as 'right here, right now' - you just conceptually update the label you've placed on the here and now.
Truth shines forth in the heart of a person when even the very desire for Truth has been dropped.
Being desireless - not wanting anything other than what already is - even for a single moment, is extremely powerful.
The ignorant person thinks that God is behind all action.
The smart person thinks that they personally are behind all their action.
The wise know themselves to be God in dynamic inaction.
Real independence is non-dual independence: The independence of the constancy of your Being-Consciousness irrespective of the changing world of experience.
Every other form of independence is a concept, a mere thought-construct, an illusion.
To the enlightened, two things happen:
The illusion of the self falls apart, only the reality of the Self remains.
The reality of the world falls apart, only the illusion of the world remains.
Not knowing the reality of the Self, the world appears as real, and it's affairs as important.
Renouncing this field of momentary enjoyment, the one true enjoyer is revealed.
Perceive the light of all lights in the midst of darkness.
Perceive the silence in the midst of noise.
Perceive the stillness and inaction in the midst of vigorous action.
There is one fundamental Truth.
As the seen, we call it Existence.
As the seer, we call it Consciousness.
As the felt, we call it Bliss.
As the shared, we call it Love.
And this is not apart from you. This is not a part of you. This is You.
I'm a visitor to this place. There are a variety of stays but no semblance of home wherever I go.
But I'm at home in myself. And so I'm at home wherever I am.
The attempt to suppress your mind does not suppress the mind, it activates it. In the very act of controlling the mind, the mind is out of control. To reap the benefits of meditation, stop playing this silly game of meditation and acknowledge who you really are.
Why do you control your thoughts and withdraw your senses? They shine only because you shine on them. Why are you afraid of the puppets you make out of your own playdough? Know yourself and attain fearlessness.
Mental wellbeing is not something to be achieved, because it is our default state. We are born mentally healthy.
The opposite of mental health is stress,
anxiety, depression and these are achieved by ignorantly using our ability to think and feel in detrimental ways. The moment you see how you're doing this, you're immediately back in mental health.
Our mind creates all suffering, and fools
itself by projecting the cause onto something external. Then it plays by trying to change that external cause, which was never a cause in the first place.
In seeing through this trick, the gates to
wellbeing are opened.
Nothing matters. And that's the good news.
All your worries, judgements, ambitions - they don't matter any more than you make them matter.
Never were you at the mercy of these figments of your imagination. You are free as it is.
Ask yourself:
From where is this unchanging and timeless sense of being arising in a changing body and mind?
To what is it pointing to?
Do not wait to cross the endless ocean of challenges and setbacks, for it is endless.
Burn the ocean right where you are with the inextinguishable fire of self-knowledge, for that is the only way out.
That you are whole and complete is not an empowering idea to
entertain.
It is an existential fact to real-ize and acknowledge.
No matter where you are in life, there is always a path of least resistance available for you.
But that path only opens up as you drop your resistance to the flow of life.
As long as you haven't realized your Self, ignore what you think - for your thoughts do not tell you the Truth, they only distort it.
Once you have realized your Self, indulge in them if you so wish, for they are nothing but playful delusion.
Whether your experiences appear to you as real or as illusory, they are still an appearance.
In seeing this is clear perception.
Believing in an unreal identity, the world appears real and imposing.
Being as your real identity, the world appears as a game to play and a play to watch.
Between these two, every human's life progresses.
If you are frustrated, you will find your work to be frustrating. If you are happy, you will find happiness in your work. If you are bitter, you will find bitterness in your relationships. If you are loving, you will find your relationships to be full of love.
You, and not your circumstances, are the source of all your feelings. Everything you experience is only an expression of your state of being reflected back at you.
The basic difference is this:
Empowerment: You are amazing because no one is 'you'.
Enlightenment: You are amazing because everyone is 'You'.
Sharpness of intellect leads to subtle arrogance which shrouds the correct
understanding of reality.
Only when it is tempered with love, it penetrates through its own veils and makes the breakthrough for self realisation.
To know requires a knower and a known. Let go even of the ego of intellectual knowledge, and be that which it points to.
Then alone comes true understanding, and with it, the gifts of fearlessness and unconditional love.
Just as the unmoving vast sky holds the space for all clouds playful and scary, the unmoving background of experiences playful and scary is me - untouched and unlimited by my very nature.
Realize such and be free.
If one hasn't learned how to be absolutely alone and still be contented and happy and loving, then one hasn't really learned what it takes to be in a happy and contented and loving relationship either.
If you can stay in real solitude - not merely unmoved by the external world, not even with your own thoughts and feelings.
But beyond the influence of any distractions of the internal world too, in the form of
loneliness, despair, restless desire, ambition, arrogance and pride - then you have achieved mastery over yourself.
Once you have reached this, once you have seen who you are deep inside, both these worlds become
puppets in your play.
Repetition of the word 'Silence' won't get you any closer to silence. It is when the word ends, that the experience of silence begins. Such is the fate of all affirmations.
Similarly, anything that you can think about the highest Truth is not the highest Truth. It is when thought has played its play and ceased, that realization happens.
The highest freedom is not financial or cultural. It is the freedom of Mind.
It is yours right here, right now. Once you get this, all other freedoms will follow, if you so wish.
Ask for freedom and you will get the Truth.
Ask for Truth and you will get freedom.
Either way, have the boldness to persist in asking.
Being nothing is an expression of wisdom.
Being everything is an expression of love.
Since 'nothing' is everything, there is no real wisdom without love.
The journey to becoming what you really seek, is not a journey in space or time.
It is simply a journey from not knowing to knowing. Wherever you are, there is the Truth.
Transformation is as simple and instantaneous as opening your eyes.
The sun is already shining bright. All you need is a willingness to open your eyes and see.
But for that, you first need to know that you have eyes, that they are closed, that there is a way of opening them.
The highest state of mind is a state of no mind.
The highest state of being is being nothing.
The mind in ignorance conjures up names and forms and sees a limited reality.
The mind illumined by insight drops all its
fancies and looks at the limitless reality as it is: as its own self.
That your mind creates your experience of reality does not imply that you need to think positively.
On the contrary, it points to the fact that
everything you experience tells you more about how your mind works than about how the world works.
When you truly love, you let go. You're unattached to what another does.
Because love in its true essence is an expression of your being. You're so full of love that you give it to another unconditionally.
This love demands nothing in return.
It is always the being that
expresses itself in the doing.
Your state of being determines what you do and how you do it.
Call it the Truth Absolute, or call it the impersonal
Principles behind life.
Call it God or call it Soul.
Call it Consciousness or call it Existence.
It is the most obvious thing in your experience. It is closer to you than anything else that you can think of.
It is your own self.
Yet, because it is so close, you overlook it.
So valuable you are, that you lend value to everything else in this world.
So powerful you are, that in you every other power manifests.
You are conditioned to think that in order to gain
something, you have to do something.
But the real Truth is gained by being, not by doing.
Perform as many feats as would satisfy your mind - be it feats of intellectual analysis, or feats of focus and breath control.
It is only when you stop them all that you will get to what you are seeking.
Whenever a culture, be it in the form of a small group or the entire world, is very sure of its ideas of right and wrong - in other words - its judgements of good and bad, the downfall of civilization begins, be it in an organization or a nation.
Separation is a joke that you will laugh at when you reach union within.
Conflict in any relationship, at it's root, happens simply because as human beings we think differently, and we haven't learned how to not take our thoughts so seriously.
That laughter is the sweetest where the mind laughs at its own folly.
The solution to the storms in your mind is not suppression of the mind.
The solution is realising that storms only occur on the surface, and that calmer waters are always available in the depths.
Reason alone shows the way to the truth beyond.
And when you reach, you will find love.
It is only in ignorance that one attempts to control the mind through meditation.
True meditation is the complete immersion of the mind in what is, in a way that there is no mind separate from this is-ness.
To the mind that is afraid of the mirage in the sand, the eyes need to be closed.
But the mind that sees only the sand in the mirage keeps the eyes open to wonder in the here and now.
The more I engage in it, the more it seems that the whole process of living, just as in art, is an act of patient surrender.
Yet, when the 'I' disappears, there's no one to surrender and no one to surrender to.
Removing the ignorance of the mind,
Embracing the insight into the Truth,
Steadying the light of that realization.
This is the Pranayama of the wise.
Nor torturing the nose and controlling the breath.
The highest truth cannot be directly articulated, but it can be pointed at, for it is within perception - It is the one really perceiving.
The truth is best expressed as the silence in which all words appear. As the formless from which all forms arise. As the subject in whose light all objects play.
It is none other than You when your idea of who you are is transcended.
To appreciate absolutely everything and everyone, without the need to possess any of them.
To experience life without the compulsive need to exercise control over all of it.
To smile at the unknown in awe and wonder.
These are gifts of the higher states of mind - your own mind.
Where is anxiety?
Where is fear?
Where is insecurity?
Are they not in your mind?
Realize your true nature to be ever immune to the fancies of the mind. Put all your focus into realizing this and live free.
All of us are seeking escape.
Escape from feelings of discontentment, from sorrow, hatred, loneliness and boredom.
Only, we get fooled into thinking the answer is in changing something outside of us, instead of in contentment, in joy, love, acceptance and wonder.
Positive thinking is not going to help you with anything.
Transcending beyond the duality of positive and negative thought is going to set you free.
The world of myriad things manifests within your light.
And in the myriad forms, your light alone gets reflected.
You, my friend, are that light.
The wise one tears apart the veils of unreality and knows God first hand using his innate abilities, while the lover pleases and prays for release.
Yet, at the moment of enlightenment, the wise gets infused with unconditional love, and the lover with eternal knowledge.
You are limitless, all loving and all inclusive by your very nature.
It is your ego which wants to set boundaries to protect itself, and trades love for the poor substitute of respect.
The moment we see that we live in a world of ideas and concepts that we have created, we open the possibility of waking up to our true nature beyond all conditioning.
When you wake up to who you really are and realise your full glory, everything including simply sitting still becomes an act of romance with the manifest world.
That shining, everything else shines. That you are.
If only we cared less about the rules we are making up in our heads, and more about each other, our experience of living would be far more richer.
Just as when a child goofs around, a mother feels amusement or irritation depending on her own state of mind,
So does one according to their own state-of-mind feel blessed or disturbed when appreciation is expressed unto them in various ways.
Do not make the mistake of looking at yourself as a helpless being.
At the core of your very experience is the limitless potential of the entire universe.
Realize this within you.
There's more to you than you can possibly think of.
Everything that you truly desire, you already are.
Realize this and live free.
You will master your experience when you master your mind.
You will master your mind when you realise that there's more to you than is apparent to your mind.
You create all your problems through thought, and then attempt to solve them with additonal thought.
Identify this cycle. Step beyond it. Create consciously.
To connect with another, connect with yourself.
To understand another, understand yourself.
To truly know another, know your true self.
Entertain all your thoughts, and you will end up in sorrow.
Be entertained by them, and you will find yourself in joy.
What are 3 beliefs you hold about how the world works?
Here are mine:
1) I am God and so is everybody else. Right here, right now, already. Most of us just need to realise it.
2) The happiness and joy we experience in connection with others is our own happiness and joy reflected back to us.
3) This is a game and we're all just playing. Sometimes we forget it.
Mastering yourself is equivalent to mastering the world.
Because the world that you experience does not exist apart from you.
A lot of times, it looks like our feelings are coming from out there - be it a person or an event.
What if that's a lie? What if you didn't have to change your circumstances to feel better?
We create all our experiences through our thinking.
Knowing this, what would you like to stop creating?
What would you like to create more of?
All struggle is resistance to the natural flow of life. And we are always creating resistance in several ways.
How are you creating resistance?
What if it is easy for you to step out of your own way?
We all get held back by fearful thinking from time to time.
What are you afraid of these days?
What would change if you started seeing how your fears are telling you more about your ability to create imaginary futures, than about the future itself?
We think we are our thoughts. And herein lies the pitfall.
If you're the one painting, you aren't the paint. You are the painter.
How then can it be that if you're the one thinking, you are your thoughts?
When we realise that our human life is a playground of thought,
We play with it, instead of being played by it.
In seeing this truth, we transform from being a slave to being the eternal master.
For the master, inaction is complete action.
Through non-doing, he lets everything be done.
Love, understanding and connection are our true nature.
They exist in the space before thought, in our eternal home, and are all the same.
That's why they are beyond all logic and reason.
If you shower love on a dog on the street, it loves you back, even if you're a stranger.
Try loving a human being, and you will encounter all sorts of resistance.
The dog understands. Man only thinks he does. And with his thinking, he stifles his divine spirit.
Why would you want to keep looking at the shit that happened if that's not where you are headed?
The only reason we get disappointed is because we create imaginary futures, and think they are accurate predictions.
We can keep thinking positive or negative about uncomfortable situations as long as we do not realise that the situations were created by us, and that they do not exist outside of our thinking.
Lean in to your fear.
Speak your truth to power.
In your looking, what you look at is created.
It's not your perspective.
It's your creation.
Our consciousness expands and shrinks in proportion to the noise of our personal thinking.
The less you think about how well you are doing, the better your performance while you are doing it.
Our consciousness expands and shrinks in proportion to the noise of our personal thinking.
Our words create our world.
When you have fresh thinking, fresh action emerges inevitably.
The better the thinking, the better the doing.
I thought ignorance was blissful.
But Enlightenment is bliss.
It's the transition that sucks.
Driving yourself to exhaustion at work is not high performance.
You can never get bored of somebody.
You can only get bored of your thinking about that person.
Sometimes, all you need for unleashing your potential is the realization that people's judgements are about their thinking, and not about you.