There are two levels to your pain: the pain that you create now, and the pain from the past that still lives on in your mind and body. Ceasing to create pain in the present and dissolving past pain - this is what I want to talk about now.
Facing facts is always empowering.
If you are not taking responsibility for your state of consciousness, you are not taking responsibility for life.
Instead of being lost in your thinking, when you awaken you recognize yourself as the awareness behind it. Thinking then ceases to be a self-serving autonomous activity that takes possession of you and runs your life.
It takes practice to hear your true desires. Your passion will often come as a whisper or serendipitous event that reminds you of what's important and what makes you happy.
The more shared past there is in a relationship, the more present you need to be.
By watching the mechanics of the mind, you step out of its resistance patterns, and you can then allow the present moment to be.
Until you can love what the truth would teach you about yourself... then your love is incomplete.
Why is old considered useless? Because in old age, the emphasis shifts from doing to Being, and our civilization, which is lost in doing, knows nothing of Being. It asks: Being? What do you do with it?
Awareness and ego cannot coexist.
Learn to be one with who you are in Reality, and the waves of a thousand passing worlds cannot wash you away.
Many people who are going through the early stages of the awakening process are no longer certain what their outer purpose is. What drives the world no longer drives them. Seeing the madness of our civilization so clearly, they feel somewhat alienated from the culture around them. Some feel that they inhabit a no-man's-land between two worlds. They are no longer run by the ego, yet the arising awareness has not yet become fully integrated into their lives. Inner and outer purpose have not merged.
To listen to the silence, wherever you are, is an easy and direct way of becoming present. Even if there is noise, there is always some silence underneath and in between the sounds. Listening to the silence immediately creates stillness inside you.
If spacious stillness is missing, the relationship will be dominated by the mind and can easily be taken over by problems and conflict. If stillness is there, it can contain anything.
The mistake we have made in our lives is that over and over again we've run into the needful moment and then failed to learn its higher lesson. We don't like needful moments and therefore we resist them.
It's interesting that stepping out of thought was actually triggered by a thought.
When you accept what is, you are grateful for whatever situation arises.
It's important for us to become aware of the fact that we are needful, for with that awareness also comes the sensing that we couldn't be needful if there weren't something to fulfill the need.
Sense your presence, the naked, unveiled, unclothed beingness. It is untouched by young or old, rich or poor, good or bad, or any other attributes.
The present moment is all you ever have.
As the lesser is always found within the greater, so this principle holds true with regards to time and the eternal.
Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain.
What you don't want to know about yourself wants to be known, which is why it keeps 'showing up' at your door unannounced!
Statistics vary, but in less than seven years there won't be a single cell left in any of our bodies that's the same as it is today. This means that any human being who 'wants' to change is like a mountain river wanting to reach the valley floor. It's a done deal; that's what mountain rivers do, and 'changing' should be our first nature.
Everything is honoured, but nothing matters.
Doing is never enough if you neglect Being.
Nothing has happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.
When you completely accept this moment, when you no longer argue with what is, the compulsion to think lessens and is replaced by an alert stillness. You are fully conscious, yet the mind is not labeling this moment in any way... It is a shift from identification with form --the thought or the emotion-- to being and recognizing yourself as that which has no form -- spacious awareness.
The unchecked striving for more, for endless growth, is a dysfunction and a disease. It is the same dysfunction the cancerous cell manifests, whose only goal is to multiply itself, unaware that it is bringing about its own destruction by destroying the organism of which it is a part.
Many adults play roles when they speak to young children. They use silly words and sounds. They talk down to the child. They don't treat the child as an equal. The fact that you temporarily know more, or you're bigger does not mean the child is not your equal.
Something inside you emerges....an innate, indwelling peace, stillness, aliveness. It is the unconditioned, who you are in your essence. It is what you had been looking for in the love object. It is yourself.
To listen to the silence, wherever you are, is an easy and direct way of becoming present.
What is the nature of that place where our original self is one with its longing to explore its own deepest possibilities, and where discovering the treasures waiting there is the same as fulfilling our purpose for being?
Wasting your time in anxious worry over what you may not have is a good way to waste what you need to get it.
Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.
Real achievement -- the true measure of how far we have advanced in life -- is not determined by what we have acquired, but rather by the degree to which we have put our fears behind us.
Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems - most life situations are - but find out if you have a problem at this moment. Do you have a problem now?
The whole movement of happiness, unhappiness, happiness, unhappiness, could be called unhappiness. You're suffering because your state of mind is in flux, moving back and forth. The ego's happiness is really a form of suffering, because it cannot live without unhappiness.
Attention is the key to transformation- and full attention also implies acceptance.
The deepest parts of you know that if freedom from fear was as easy as 'creating a new reality' for yourself, then you would already be the fearless person you know in your heart that you're meant to be.
People believe that when they say "yes" to this moment, things won't change anymore. They're afraid that if they accept what is, whatever form this moment takes, they're going to be stuck forever in this moment that they don't like: this job or relationship or whatever situation they're in that they don't like. But this is not true.
Acceptance of the unacceptable is the greatest source of grace in this world.
Being fully present is the best guarantee for a bright future.
If you are not in alignment with the moment, life is a struggle. Really, all you have to do is take responsibility for your inner alignment with now.
Your entire life only happens in this moment. The present moment is life itself. Yet, people live as if the opposite were true and treat the present moment as a stepping stone to the next moment - a means to an end.
If you don't have a good relationship with the now, you don't have a goodrelationship with life.
If action is possible or necessary, your action will be in alignment with the whole and supported by creative intelligence, the unconditioned consciousness which in a state of inner openness you becomeone with. Circumstances and people then become helpful, cooperative. Coincidences happen.If no action is possible, you rest in the peace and inner stillness that come with surrender.
There's not some idea I'm going to create a work that's going to change everybody's consciousness.
That is the real spiritual awakening, when something emerges from within you that is deeper than who you thought you were. So, the person is still there, but one could almost say that something more powerful shines through the person.
This is my secret," he said. "I don't mind what happens.
Even within the seemingly most unacceptable and painful situation is concealed a deeper good, and within every disaster is contained the seed of grace.
To end the misery that has afflicted the human condition for thousands of years, you have to start with yourself and take responsibility for you inner state at any given moment. That means now
If peace is really what you want, then you will choose peace.
The future does not exist, because nobody has ever experienced it. You can only ever experience a present moment.
Only the truth of who you are, if realized, will set you free.
Our greatest strength isn't our ability to imagine brighter days ahead, it is that we are empowered-in every present moment-to effortlessly dismiss any dark thought or feeling that, left unattended, diminishes our happiness.
Instead of creating expectations of what should or should not be happening, cooperate with the form that this moment takes.Bring a 'yes' to the isness, because it's pointless to argue if it already is.A greater intelligence is available to you when you no longer reject, deny, or 'don't want' what is.
Peace can be threatening because peace is the absence of problems and conflict. There is something, perhaps in the personal you, that does not want freedom or peace, or the absence of problems. There's something that wants the opposite.
The most decisive event in your life is when you discover you are not your thoughts or emotions. Instead, you can be present as the awareness behind the thoughts and emotions.
The basis for true change is freedom from negativity. And that's what acceptance implies: no negativity about what is. And then you see what this moment requires: what is it that is required now so that life can express itself more fully?
