An Interview With Adyashanti -- Awakening (Excerpt)

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TS: Okay. Back to Adya in his early twenties. You're working at the bike shop.You're meditating. You're going on some retreats.

Adya: I had built a little zendo in the backyard, and I was meditating anywhere from two to four hours a day, consuming books by the hundreds, and doing a lot of writing and a lot of journaling. I was going at this spiritual thing from every angle that seemed reasonable. When I was in my early twenties, it was a different environment from what it is today. I didn't really have any peers. I didn't have anybody my age who was into this stuff. I rarely even talked about it to anybody. Most of the people that were in the practice were much older than I was, so it was very much a solitary thing for me.

TS: And at some point there was a shift of some kind?

Adya: The first shift came when I was twenty five. In my practice, I had been really pushing in a very aggressive. male way-pushing to storm the gates of enlightenment with a tremendous amount of effort and a lot of determination, because it was what I was used to. I grew up as an athlete and a competitive bike racer. And I was dyslexic. I learned to get what I needed and what I wanted by out-working everybody else. And so that's how I thought spirituality was going to work. And Zen almost fosters that. You know out-meditate everybody. Zen seems to unconsciously encourage that. And so for about six to eight months, I would be walking to work in Palo Alto, and I would be pushing myself, constantly asking, "What is this? What is this? What is this? What's true?"

I literally thought I was going to go crazy any day because I didn't think that a human being could sustain this sort of internal intensity for that long. I was fully expecting to end up in some psych ward some day, because I was literally pushing myself to some sort of psychological edge. Or being pushed.

So one day I'm sitting in my room and this well of intensity came up, and I thought, I've got to find out what's true, and I've got to find out right now. So I went into the backyard, and I sat down to meditate, and I made an incredible effort to still my mind and break through some barrier. I didn't even know what it was. And within a minute it was like I'd taken all of the effort over the last five years and stuffed it into about one minute.

All of a sudden I just realized, I can't do this. I can't do this. And as soon as I said, "I can't do this," I could feel everything relax at the same time. And, when everything relaxed there was-and this is the only way I can describe it - an inward explosion.

It was like someone plugged me into a wall socket. There was a huge inner explosion, and my heart started to beat harder and my breathing got labored and I thought I was going to die because my heart was beating faster than it had ever beat in my entire life.

Having been an athlete, I was very familiar with what my maximum heart rate felt like. And this was way, way, way beyond that. I literally thought my heart was going to burst. At some moment the thought occurred to me that whatever this energy was, it was going to kill me. l thought, l can't sustain this very long.

And the next thought I had was, if this is what it takes to find out what's true then, okay, I'm willing to die right now. It wasn’t a courageous thing or a macho thing, it was just a fact. It was: I'm willing to die. Period. That's it. And as soon as I said that to myself, and really meant it, the energy just disappeared. All of a sudden I was out in space. I just became space. All there was was space. Just infinite space. And in that space I could feel something like a download of insights, but they were happening so fast I didn’t even know what they were. It was like hundreds of insights every second. Like downloading computer program into your computer system. l felt like something was being downloaded into me so quickly that I couldn’t comprehend any of the pieces, but I could feel the popping of insights.

So I sat there being space and just having these insights downloaded into my system, and that happened for awhile, I don't know how long, for awhile. And then it stopped and, at some point it became obvious that I should get up off my cushion, l did what I always did: 

l got up and looked at the Buddha figure that I had on a little altar, and I bowed to it. And as soon as I bowed to it, I just burst out laughing. It was the most hilarious laughter I’d ever had.

The funniest thing is that I thought, "You little son of a bitch," referring to Buddha, "I've been chasing you for five years." And at that moment, I knew what it was I had been chasing. I got it. And I just couldn’t believe it. It was like, wow, I've been chasing what I already was. So I had a great laugh and walked outside. That was the first awakening.

The funny thing is that by the time I got outside, this little voice, which I've become very used to hearing from that point on, said right in the middle of this huge revelation of happiness and bliss and tremendous relief, "This isn't it. Keep going."

And I thought damn, don't I get to just groove here? Even for a moment? But that little voice still said, "This isn't it. Keep going." And I knew it was true. Somehow I knew that this voice wasn't discounting what was happening. The voice wasn't saying, "This is of no value, this isn't true, this isn't relevant. "This voice was saying,

"There's more to this. You haven't seen the whole thing. You've seen a very significant part, but keep going. Don't stop here."

But at that moment everything changed. From that moment on my spiritual seeker energy - that desperate drive-disappeared and was never to come back again. It made no sense to get all worked up trying to attain something that I already had, trying to become what I knew I already was.

TS:What would you call this experience? You had "foretastes" when you were young; this was a..?

Adya: I would call it an awakening.

TS: Okay.

Adya: But I didn't comprehend what I had awoken to. What I realized was that I was what I was seeking. I knew that:

I am what I am seeking. I am this truth. And then right away, the next question arose: What is this? I am it. I know I am it. But I don’t know what it is.

That is the part I didn't know. There was an awakening, but it wasn't complete. It was a part of the picture, may be a big part of the picture, but a next question arose almost immediately: What is this? And that became the next question for me. I continued to meditate a lot. From the exterior, I was doing everything I did before, because I knew  there was more, and meditation was my way of exploring.

But from that point on, most of what happened spiritually didn't really happen on the cushion. Most of what happened spiritually over the next five or six years was actually happening in my daily life. I was an athlete, and I had a lot of identity wrapped up in being an athlete.

So even after that awakening, even though by that time I was not racing bikes anymore, I was still riding and training as if I was a competitive bike racer. And I started to question, why am I doing this? Why am I training as if I'm a world-class athlete when I'm not? I started to see that it was about some remnant of a self-image. It was a very good self-image to have you could say, not just being physically fit, but the image that goes along with being a very high-caliber athlete.

TS: You're cool.

Adya: Yeah, you’re cool. You're sort of physically domineering. And although I didn't act domineering toward people in my daily life, athletically I certainly was domineering. Even when I started to realize that I was simply perpetuating my old self-image, for some reason I couldn't stop.

Then when I was about twenty-six years old, I developed an illness nobody could diagnose. It put me in bed for about six months. I was somewhat functional, but pretty much not functional. Just ill. Sick. One thing after another with no let up for six months.

At the end of six months, of course, there's not much of the athlete left. And it felt wonderful when the athlete had been taken out of my system, because it is hard to be the dominant athlete persona when you're weak as a kitten. And I realized, this feels great. It felt so good to be rid of that persona. It felt very liberating.

I wish I could say that was the end of the story. But a year later, when I found myself healthy again, I woke up one day and started training, not even consciously. I just started doing the whole thing all over again. I didn't realize what I was doing until I was well into it, and then I thought, I'm doing it again. And I know what it's about. It's about this self-image, this persona. And I would have liked to just let go of it when I realized what I was doing, but I wasn't ready. 

So I got another six-month illness, and this one was worse. I had a sinus infection, a lung infection, and mononucleosis. And that pretty much did it for that self-image.

Once the persona was removed by that illness, the desire to rebuild it really didn't return. To me, that is a spiritual unfolding. It’s not getting rid of your self-image through meditation... it’s just the school of hard knocks.

It's an intelligence that takes over and puts all of us through whatever we need to go through to get us to let go.

During that time, I also went through what I would call a totally ridiculous relationship, which was very unhealthy.

The relationship pulled on my unresolved shadow material. You fall in love with all of your weaknesses, and it elicits the worst from you. In my case, the relationship elicited various roles like the helper, and of course that was a total disaster.

Fortunately, it ended after awhile, but it was similar to the illnesses-it wrenched out of me all of these images, all of these personas that I had gotten used to being-a good person, a nice person, the helper, all of that stuff. It ripped them out of my system and showed me that they were false and phony, and the only reason that I wore them was because I was afraid of not wearing them. Who would I be without them?

Between those illnesses and this relationship, I was really torn apart. The falseness was torn out of me bit by bit. And when that part was done, I really felt quite free. It was quite wonderful. I was back in the emptiness and realized how to be space in a simple, human way. To just stand in the middle of a sidewalk and not feel like I had to be anybody or appear as anybody.

The desire to be seen in any particular way had been torn out of my system. And the tearing out wasn't easy and it wasn't fun, but the end result was simply fantastic. Looking back, that set me up for what I would call my "final awakening." The awakening that was totally clear came on the heels of these tearing-out experiences. Actually, it came a few months later, soon after Annie and I got married.

I was thirty-three years old, and I had just gotten married and I had gotten a real job. I'd started to be an apprentice with my father in his business, and so I was getting a real career. I was also getting out of this rut-having my life focus specifically on an inward form of spirituality-which had been my focus up until this point.

I'd put everything in my life on hold for a long time. And then at about thirty-three years old, I realized this process may not complete itself, and I better get on with my life. So I ended up getting married and getting a real job.

I see this willingness to engage with life as being a very important part of my personal spiritual progress. And a couple of months after Annie and I got married and on St. Patrick's Day, which is kind of funny because Annie comes from a totally Irish family and Irish heritage-that's when the

second awakening happened.

TS: Do you have any sense that the marriage created the stability necessary for this second awakening?

Adya: Very insightful. Yes. I can't know that for sure, but since then I've thought that there was a missing element in all of this, which was a kind of stability. Now I had a career that I could make enough money to live on, and I was married to a wonderful person.

And at this point, an insight came to me that was very vital. When I met Annie and we got married, I knew that this was more than I ever thought was possible in a relationship. I could not have ever dreamed of a relationship of this quality.

That's just the way it was, and is. And that realization played a significant role because one morning I woke up and said to myself,

"This relationship is better than I ever dreamed possible, and it's not enough."

Not like the relationship needed to be more, because it didn't need to be anything different. Although the relationship was totally satisfying, I thought;

"This has not completed me; this has not taken me to where I've always been pulled to so inside."

Knowing that was sort of shocking. You can be very happy in life, be on your way, and not really have to suffering driving you, and yet still realize that even all of this is not enough. It doesn't even touch this place inside.

So I had stability in my life, and I think it allowed a real spontaneous letting-go to happen. Because in a human sense, there was something to let go into.

TS: Can you describe what happened?

Adya: It was very simple and it actually started before it started. The night before, right before I was ready to go to sleep, I sat on the edge of the bed and had this thought. It wasn't a big thought; it wasn't a big insight. It was the simplest thing and totally out of context from what I was thinking at the moment.

But this thought ran through my mind that said: "I'm ready." I noted it; literally within five seconds I noted it. And I went to sleep, but the sense of "I'm ready" was so plain and so simple. And it wasn't my mind or my ego saying, "I'm ready, ready to storm the gates!" It was just this innocent, simple moment, like a gift. Fact. Just a thought: "I'm ready." And I thought nothing of it. it didn't gather much attention except I noticed that it was happening. So I went to sleep.

The next day, l got up early because I was going to see my teacher, and I usually got up early to do a little meditation before I went to see her.

I wasn't thinking anything in particular and I just sat down and within thirty seconds I heard a bird. Just a chirp. And a question that I'd never heard, that I'd never used in practice, came from my guts rather than from my head. A question spontaneously arose, and it said, "Who hears this sound?" And as soon as that question happened, everything turned upside down, or right side up. And in that moment, the bird, the sound, and the hearing were all one thing. 

Literally, they were experienced as exactly the same... the hearing was no more me than the sound and the bird and anything. And it was very quick, very sudden, and it was just one. And then the next thing that was noticed was some thought. It was so distant I didn't even know what the thought was about. But there was thought, and then there was the recognition that that's not me. That's thought.

And this that woke up, this that was awake, had nothing to do with that thought whatsoever. It was just happening. The two were completely separate. There was zero identity in the thought.

And so after a few minutes, I got up. And I literally had these five-year-old ideas in my head. Very curious. I thought, I wonder if I'm the stove. And so I trotted out to the little living-room area and kitchen area and sure enough, this was the stove. And I trotted into the bathroom and looked at the toilet, because I was trying to look for something that was really unspiritual and I thought, I'll be damned, this was the toilet. And I opened the bedroom door and looked in and Annie, my wife, was sleeping, and I went: it's her. This is her, and it's the same.

And I walked around our little 450-square-foot cottage that we lived in for six-and-a-half years, and I looked around this cottage and everything was this, everything was the same.

So I'm just standing there in the cottage and interestingly there was no emotion. There was no yippee or oh my god. That was totally absent. Everything was seen totally clearly and not mistake with any state of experience, because there wasn't any state happening. And then walked a few steps in the living room, because the living room was only a few steps long. And in those few steps, consciousness completely woke up. This is a hard thing to describe but it was completely, completely separate from the body.

And at that point, that's when I saw this string of images and immediately I knew, this that was awake knew immediately that I had been trapped in those images, what we might call incarnations. I thought those were me. I was asleep in those images, and it was so clear that this was not those. It wasn't trapped in those anymore. It wasn't confined to any of those forms including the current form. And I could see the current form was no more significant or real than a form fifty life-times ago. And there it was, just this awakeness, completely only itself. No form, no shape, no color, no nothing. No location but everywhere.

And at that moment there was a knowing that even though this awakeness was everything, this awakeness was also beyond being everything. That if this thing totally disappeared, all the forms and everything that I saw, if it all disappeared this would not diminish any, not even a teeny bit. It couldn't diminish. So that was pretty much the awakening.

With this also came a sense of being bigger and outside the body, that the body was happening within that awakeness or spirit. The body was in it rather than I was in the body. And then in the midst of that, this awakeness or consciousness also came back into the body. It was still outside, but now it was both outside and inside. It didn't just stay outside, it took occupancy again, but it took occupancy without confusion this time, without any identification. It was like putting on clothes in the morning; you just put on clothes. You don't think that you are your clothes; they're just something you wear. And it was just so clear that this form, that this particular personality, this guy formally known as Stephen Gray, that this was clothing.

This is his current incarnation, this thing that he is going to wear and function through. And the nice thing was the joy that came with it. Such a joy with the clothing, with the incarnation. With the personality there was such an intimacy and such absolute childlike joy. Almost like a young girl who puts on a Cinderella dress and looks in the mirror and feels, "Wow, this is so cool!" And there was just that sense of the amazement of form.

And then the last thing was I took another step, and it was like the first step I’d ever taken in my life. It felt like I'd just come out of the womb. It felt like being a baby who had just put his foot on the ground for the first time in his whole life.

And I literally looked down at my feet and just walked in circles because it was like a miracle - the feeling of the foot on the floor and walking and it was the feeling that to put my feet on the floor is a miracle, an absolute miracle. And every step was the first step. Everything was new and everything had this sense of intimacy and wonder and appreciation.

So for me, all of these things happened in quick succession to each other. The waking up out of the form and occupying form and the oneness with the form and the appreciation and realizing I'm not form. It was like everything was good. I didn't have to be outside the body; I didn't have to be beyond anything because everything was this.

I just knew at that time that this is a miracle: this life, this body. This is heaven, as messy as it is, as silly as it is, as wonderful and terrible as it is. This is, you know, the great joke. Walking in god’s hand looking for god.

That was it. It was actually very simple. Very, very simple. And what also came out of this was an enjoyment of the ordinary. There was no longer anything extraordinary that needed to happen-extraordinary experiences didn't need to happen, just an enjoyment of the ordinary. I could be talking about so-called truth or spiritual stuff or I could be talking to someone about football or groceries... all of a sudden it just didn't matter anymore.

And still to this day, I often tell people-they often don't believe me-but I say, "To me doing satsang and talking about just about anything are about equal."

The ordinary became totally satisfying. Of course it's very satisfying to see someone awaken or even to see him or her transform a bit. That is a kind of highlight, but there's just a love of the ordinary and to me that's one of the most beautiful things-that nothing extraordinary needs to happen in my life anymore. Just existing is a sort of a miracle.

TS: Adya. you call this : "final awakening," but what if you have additional awakenings in the decades to come that reveal an ever-deeper dimension of realization? Do you think this is possible?

Adya: I'm glad you brought that up. I call it final for a particular reason. When I say "final," I don't mean necessarily that another awakening can't happen. Of course it can. Who knows? Right? We never know. This is infinite after all.

But what I mean when I say final is that with this awakening;

I realized what I am in a totally clear way. It was realized without any emotion in a totally pure state.There was no energy to it. There was no elation.

And when I say final, I mean I saw it clearly. There wasn't anything that was being sought anymore; there wasn't another question left to be answered spiritually. 

So I call it final because it felt like a line of demarcation where a certain life and a certain journey took me to that point, and once I stepped beyond that place, it wasn't at all like it had been before. That journey in the way I had engaged it was very obviously and very cleanly finished. It was done. And it never was going to come back. And to me that's what I mean by final. Does that mean that there is not something else to see? There's always something else to see.

TS: You said that at twenty-five with you first awakening you realized that what you were seeking was you, but that you still had a question, " What is this?"

Adya: What is this? Yeah.

TS: So what did you discover in your final awakening?

Adya: That's a good question (laughs). I'll do my best, but it's an impossible question to answer.

TS: But you're not asking the question anymore.

Adya: No, the Funny thing is the answer to the question is that the question disappears. That's the answer to the question. It's not like you get a nice answer that you can put in your pocket.

TS: You can't say love and wisdom or something like that?

Adya: No, no. It's way before love and wisdom. It's the place love and wisdom come from. It's paradoxical but the more we know ourselves, the more we know what we are, the more we know that what we are is something that by its very nature can never be known. So you and I, we are the unknown, and since the unknown is the unknown it can't be known, not because there's any deficiency, but because the unknown by its very definition is the unknown.

So in Buddhism they might call it emptiness or the void or shunyata. In some sects of Judaism, it was traditionally thought of as a heresy to even mention the word of god in any form. And I think these kinds of directives come from this experience that is paradoxical-you know what you are but you know that you are a mystery.

You see we can't call it anything. 

We can't say anything about pure potential. There's nothing to know. We can only know something when potential has manifest and become something. But before that, it's pure potential. It's pure emptiness or pure intelligence or whatever you want to call it.

To me that's the paradox-l've come to know what I am, but now I know that I am that which can never be known, because that's its nature. And so the funny thing is that you in a way almost end up where you started. You start out not knowing who you are or what the ultimate reality is. The difference is you end up knowing that you are what you can never  know. 

So the mystery becomes conscious, it wakes up to itself. It knows itself, it's the "l AM" as it says in the bible. But there's no definition you notice; it's just "I AM." That's the mystery declaring itself. That's it.

TS: One of the interesting stories I've heard is that you didn't tell your Zen teacher about your second awakening until three months after it happened. That seems odd to me.

Adya: There just didn't seem to be any reason. It had such a sense of completeness. In one sense, it was extraordinary, but it also felt very ordinary. It didn't feel like something I needed to run off and tell someone. I didn't feel like I needed it confirmed. I didn't need for it to be heard. I didn't need someone to understand. It was the dropping away of all of those psychological needs.

And the only reason I actually told my teacher is that after about three months I reflected and I thought, oh, this is what she's been talking to me about for fifteen years and why she's putting so much of her heart and compassion into my process. I thought it might be nice for her to know. That's where the impetus to tell her came from.

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Ram Dass -- The Cost of Denying Suffering

In the ascent and descent between planes of consciousness, there are two kinds of fears that people often face.

On the way up, there is the fear of dying or surrendering or losing control, giving up what you are familiar with. When you’re starting to move into these other planes of consciousness that have a different perspective, the one you were holding onto has to let go before the new one can enter in. That moment of letting go is like when you’re climbing, and you have to reach for something but you have to kind of let go of the last thing to reach for the next thing, and there’s a moment of tremendous anxiety in that – so is the anxiety of dying into the next plane of awareness.

Now with coming down, with re-entry and coming back and facing what you left behind when you started, there’s a certain amount of not wanting to come back into it, because it’s not appealing anymore, because you feel trapped by it and a lot of people, after having very high spiritual experiences, even something like a near death experience, they say, 

“What shit is this, man? I don’t want to live here, I want to go back there. I want to get out of here.”

There is sometimes a very deep depression for people who go through that, before they 

realize that the art form is to integrate these planes together, that’s the process of awakening.

When you have been in the higher planes of expanded awareness, where you see the lawful nature of all things, you see the beauty of it, and then you have to come back into a limited consciousness, into your own human heart and separateness, you’ll still have some of that opening of awareness, and you’ll sometimes be overwhelmed by the nature of suffering in the world around you.

You’ll see that you cultivated a defensive stance to protect yourself from that suffering – I mean if you’re in New York, you’re walking over people sleeping on the streets, you turn on the TV and there’s immense suffering all the time, and most of us, in order to function on Earth, is use massive denial as a device to keep the suffering under control so we can handle it.

When we use the word “unbearable” to describe suffering what we really mean is “Who I thought I was, the container I thought I was, the somebody I thought I was, can’t handle this amount of suffering without breaking apart.”

… And there are choices at that moment.

You can go into denial mode, which is 

“I won’t think about that suffering. I’ll push it away.” 

And the cost of that is very heavy. See, if you go into a denial mode, what you do is you armor your heart from the world, and when you do that, you are keeping something out that is going to overwhelm you, but you’re also 

keeping something out that you need, which is the nourishment that comes from the emotional interaction with the world around you. 

You become armored, you become ‘professionally warm’, you become able to handle the crises moment after moment, the horror of it all, by just going up into your head, closing your heart. 

So denial has an incredible cost.

– Ram Dass, Detroit, Oregon – 1994

杨定一 : 失落, 痛苦本身是生命最好的恩典

神聖的你  容納世界  接受一切

面對大大小小的失落，如果我們能容納、接受每一個瞬間，自然會發現──我們可以把瞬間的痛苦包容起來，放過它。只要徹底的臣服，我們也就自然回到「這裡！現在！」把這個瞬間單純化，並不需要衍生出念頭所帶來的種種萎縮。

在痛苦中，可能這些話用不上，因為我們情緒上有個很大的反彈。不是在責備自己，就是在怪別人。也沒有關係，就讓反彈發出來。接下來，連這些反彈也包含、容納。接受自己的反彈，接受自己當時容納不了的心情。反彈過去了。我們還是可以容納。
就用這種方法，不斷地把我們帶回這個瞬間。

這種容納，很自然就帶來一種生命的空檔。會讓我們透過這個空檔，看著這個痛苦。只要多重複幾次，生命更深的層面，自然會帶給我們生命的平安，也自然會發現──失落，大大小小的失落，本身是生命最好的恩典。沒有這個失落，我們也不需要從人間走出來一條路。

其實，這就是人解脫的第一步。

杨定一的書《神聖的你》https://goo.gl/OAGgmS

Ram Dass -- Trusting Your Intuition vs. Your Analytical Mind

You are creating a structure to be able to support the fullness of our humanity. And different people have different unique opportunities to play in that. The art is to listen for the part you play. When one person writes a book of poetry, is that book of poetry any less of a contribution to the wellbeing of humanity than somebody who’s out on the line fighting the fire?
Now, the fire people will say “Look, it’s important that you fight fire. Don’t worry about the poetry book.”

But if not poetry, then something very precious is lost that humanity needs for its own feeding as well.

So there are all these balances and you don’t need to judge,

but rather

tune to hear what part you play.

And which part you play has to do with your skills, your capacities, your opportunities, and the environment you live in.
The yearnings and desires are all part of the play. And the job is to keep quieting the mind to stand back further and go within to hear more clearly the way it all works. And then out of that

comes the next action.

You may go sit on a rock by the Rio Grande and watch the light on the back of a Robin, and you’re sitting there and you’re feeling like, “What difference does it make?” and then something comes into you and says, “This isn’t totally fulfilling.” And then you leave that and you go back to someplace and the telephone rings and somebody says, “Will you do this?” and you don’t know why, but you say, “Yeah, I’ll do it.” It starts a whole other course of life.

I have no idea why I do the things I do. I trust my intuitive wisdom.

I get many letters. Some I answer, some I don’t.

There’s no way I can decide what’s the worst and what’s the best. Sometimes I need to get into the hot tub. Sometimes I need to pick up the phone and offer to do a benefit.

I’m allowing myself more and more to trust my intuitive wisdom rather than my analytic mind as to how I should do it.

Cause the more analytical mind can’t really handle the complexity of the situation so you go from moment to moment just listening. The fact that you had that job and then gave it up for this job, that’s all part of what’s feeding into this moment. Then you’re looking for the dream, and then the model of the dream, and finally you keep letting go of the model into just what is.
I was at a point where my father was ill and I needed some help. This fellow called and he had read ‘Miracle of Love‘. 

He wrote me a letter saying he had read it and cried and wanted to meet somebody who had known Maharajji, and could he come see me. He came over and saw me and we sat and talked for several hours. I asked him what he did and he said he had been working with mentally disabled adults for much of his adult livelihood, but was kind of tired from that, and didn’t know what he wanted to do. I told him I was going to Burma to study meditation and needed somebody to hang out with my father and my stepmother, and would he consider?
He said yeah, he would do it, and at first my step mother said, “He’s too weird,” but then he hung and she mellowed and pretty soon got cancer. Then she died and he took over. He took care of my father until my father died. And that was three, four years. He had no plan when he came to see me about Maharajji, of doing that thing.
I had no plan of having somebody like that. Dad had no plan. And there they were, and their whole lives all changed and served and worked just that way. Who knows whether the next message comes at the laundromat or whether the message comes through... you know, who knows? 

Ram Dass __ Letting go of Solid Ground

There are many stages of the process of transformation.

There is a stage where you feel something in you that is behind your social façade and your social relationships to people. You feel a somebody-ness which we call ‘soul’. Like you feel an entity. Then as you get deeper into the transformative work, that thing starts to dissolve. There’s no self; there’s no one. 

Then you see that there are just processes going on. There’s nobody there; there’s just these processes going on.

And then the question is, how do you incorporate that understanding into existence? How do you live with no continuity?

The continuity is the result of karma. 

It’s the result that who you were started an inertial process that leads to you to be this person. But as your awareness is less attached to that, you’re just aware of processes, just as 

I’m aware of my body aging and decaying, I’m aware of my awareness getting lighter and less attached to my forms, I’m aware of personality processes, old ones running off; 

I’m aware that when somebody comes up to me that is a strong symbol of this, or somebody that awakens this desire, the desire will arise or the reaction will awaken, but I can see it now almost in slow motion as 

just processes going on.

And all I end up being is just these processes; all the form of me ends up being just these processes. And behind it all 

there’s just awareness, 

which is even subtler. See, 

there’s nobody there. 

There isn’t anybody here. And it’s so interesting because many of us can’t handle even imagining there’s nobody in there. We keep projecting our own solidity into everybody else. So it’s very hard for me to convey to you the kind of nothingness that’s going on in here…and say to you that you just keep delicately approaching it, and just playing with watching the way in which you need that reassurance, and watching that need, and seeing that need as just a phenomenon that exists in the universe, 

lawfully existing.

Keep quieting the mind and deepening the connection to just that part of you that just is with it all, just the 

spacious awareness. 

It’s called spacious awareness. It’s the sky, just the sky.

楊定一答客問：什麼都接受，念頭一少，問題就消失，讓心帶著走

The Heart of Oneness ...

楊定一答客問：要粉碎「我」，那麼，我還能創作嗎？

楊定一答客問：什麼是真實？

楊定一答客問：我們好像都誤解了快樂，那麼，什麼是快樂？

楊定一談心靈的力量

楊定一讀書會(十九) 這一生唯一的選擇是不反彈

楊定一答客問：年輕人面對不喜歡的環境、工作怎麼辦？

Kyunpin Village - Innocent Childhood Life

The Source

Bali 2016

The Source is the original state of mind, 原始點, where all thoughts, feelings, sensations, all mental activities arising from here. Immediate after its arrival, it becomes a phenomenon, an object. Stays awhile and it fades away. That's human life.

Nothing is permanent in this state of mind, it is in flux unceasingly, like waterfall. 

Without mindfulness to see the process as it is, one is very easy to collaborate with the arising thought process and take it as my thought, my feeling, etc. Then you fall into the prison of thought-process, totally in the control of the thoughts and senses. It is very difficult to break through the identification of thoughts within its field of awareness. By meditation, you are able to break this identification. Subject and object, these are the two different processes of mental states. If you can recognise the pure subjective field of awareness — the Source — then you are able to stop clinging to the thought process and free from it. That's the purpose of meditation.

You need to witness it first, before you can dis-identify with it.

The Source, is empty, a sense of spacious, it is also the spiritual centre. To be integrated you must be able to  recognise and remember its ever-present space. The world as what it is - going on and on - but you are the observer of world. The Source is your home, before anything happens, you are already eternally here and now. Nothing changes here, nothing happens now. It is empty as the space in open sky, until a cloud afloat and passing by. Human life is alike the floating cloud, appears in the Source of emptiness, just like bird flies through open sky. 
It is just the phenomenal activity  happening, an object rising and falling. Before that, originally we are empty, then thoughts come, we grasp, relate and give meaning to them. That's is how we form relationship by extending them to the outside world. With strong grasping, we hold them dear as permanent by possessing them, then creating the pseudo entity of I am this, I am that. Gradually things or people changed, and we lost them. Suddenly, we are in deep suffering because we have ignorantly forgotten, originally, we are nothing and empty in the first place. We did not possess them in the beginning, and will never possess them. In the end, nothing to gain, nothing to lose. 

It is a delusion to think you ever possess anything. 
Not even your life!

Let’s say, there was a relationship lasting for 6 months. It was originally a thought movement arising with sensational feelings and emotions. Explicitly, they developed and manifested as a loving relationship, then you clung to this relationship as mine love. Six months later, the karmic drama of the relationship exhausted, everything came to a halt and  back to the original point of life, which was devoid of that relationship. At the Source, it is empty, no one there. 

Sky remains empty after cloud drifting away.

The relationship was just a phenomenon which happening within the period of 6 months. It was only a series of thought processes came with its army of sensations and emotions you interpreted, involved and developed deeply as a loving relationship. It is exactly like a bird has flown through the sky and disappeared. Then the sky is empty again. Before the bird appeared, it was empty, so the bird stayed awhile and gone. 

Everything in life, and inclusive of life itself, they come and go, without exception. 

The only thing stays is the Source, the original point which is empty in the first place. So you have nothing to gain and nothing to lose, even the experience of that relationship has no trace to be found and is absolutely gone. You are back to the square one — emptiness. You are always in balance at that point or centre, but you cling and get involved with the arising impermanent phenomenon to make you think you have 'something' as a person. But this is a delusion because in the beginning you are nothing but a pseudo entity. What is there to feel sad and lost when originally, you have nothing, you are empty. You are just back to your original self -- the Source of emptiness. This insight knowledge shows us the profound wisdom to be applied and learned in our life:

We are nothing. We are not something. 
Emptiness is our nature.

Something is only happening in this life. And life itself is also another phenomenon happening. Both life and something happening to life is out of our control and in flux. There is no one there to control and dictate, because it is empty originally. Human being is just a process, a journey to the earth is to live this life in flux. What else you can retain when everything is in the process of changing? In this process of living you are only entitled to use whatever provided to you - temporary - and you are unable to possess them. Whatever provided to you is not belonging to you. I am the Source which is empty and I cannot possess anything. Everything happening within the Source, devoid of entity of me, I, including life. We do not owe anything to anybody.

The Source is responsible for everything, but there is no one there to claim that.

Life itself has no meaning until you put meaning and define the activities of life, and claim it as my life. That is the beginning of suffering. 

Wake up, I am that I am.

Another Half of You

I suppose Wind, as a person living in this world, is inescapable of avoiding that identification as the person, whether I like it or not—the one in the mirror—the form as the person in this world. That identification is very important to Wind’s life, it functions as a person to live in the world. It is essential to connect to the world, to express himself as the precious, and extraordinary being created by God. Wind—particularly through his face, voice, behaviour, and bodily language revealed his unique existence in this life. He is unique and the only one in this universe, no other face and person will behave exactly like him. Billions of people on the earth—and this unique being by the name of Wind, is just one of them—but he has his unique role and unique way to contribute within his particular life.

Wind, on one side, he is in the form of person; as the unique manifestation of Reality or God; on another side, it is in the formless form—the expression of Reality itself—called this the game of God, or Lila. Just like the two sides of a same coin, that’s needed to complete the whole story. It sums up well the relationship of God and men, Reality and its manifestation.

The relationship of the Reality and its manifestation, or God and men, the two is inseparable. If you separate it— mostly by ignorant—you will be led to the road of sufferings. So the ego or the separate self, is the one who only lives on one side of the coin. If your consciousness lives or identifies only with the half of story of the same coin—identify with this person, this world—even how inspiring, successful, valuable you are in this life; still, you are heading to the road of suffering, to the road of Hell. Why is it heading to suffering? Because the little man in the mirror, distinguishes me from all others. Then he becomes isolated, and separate from all others. But

who I really am is the combination of God and its manifestation, which is inseparable in nature.

Habitually, men are so wholeheartedly involved and attached to only one side of their existence of this world and this life, they are totally ignorant to who they really are—the Godly side of existence. Their sufferings; due to not living in totality, not seeing the whole picture. So, once you are out of the equation:

God+men=Totality of Life 

then you are also out of balance in life.

Therefore you are disconnected from your spiritual self, your root, your source and separate from God as well as all others which is the essential to your being. So you are left alone, you become a separate self, ego, fallen soul ... in other words: you are not complete, there is a missing link in life. Obviously, the combination is marvellous, it makes you whole and full circle in life. Nothing left out.

If separate from the two, or out of the equation and you are in deep trouble, you are heading to the endless samsara. You are trapped in the eternal hell of world.

In combination which allows you to join all others where we share the same identification—the Reality or God. This is what we really are. If totally involved with half of the little ‘I’ of ego, a tiny little person, a temporary and impermanent being in this world, which is incomplete in life, and you are always missing something in life. If too much absorbed into another half of spiritual Self of God— which will make you out of humanity, indifferent and out of the ordinariness of human being—which your remnant karma still plays the role in this life. Simply because your birth in this life is human life, there is a role for you to play. But remember, in Reality, or in the perspective of God, all sentient beings are exactly like you. But once you identify with your personality, your ego, your social status and of all worldly things, you separate yourself from the Reality, from God. So that’s how the equation works;

who I really am is the totality of Life,

then you can see the whole picture.

In my reality of who I really am—is exactly who you really are, and all sentient beings really are. For all the phenomenal of Wind in all his life, which is insubstantial, impermanent ego trip lasts a lifetime—and to identify with that alone is just half of the whole picture, is only half the worldly job done, which is incomplete and still leads you round and round in samsara endlessly until you have found another half.

In combination of the two by enquiring who am I; is the God order, is also your destiny for the union of the two, in this life.

Don’t miss it, find the missing link!

There Is No Other

They say today, 14 Feb is a valentine day, a lover's day to express love, is there someone to love? Who am I? When you are the witness, at the soul level, beyond the ego and personality, there is no other. The soul drops away the ego and its story. 

When you are somebody, acts as a separate self then you identify with your story.  It only happens when you are at the ego level of ‘I’ and its story. I am this and that. At this level, your love is a possessive type of love; this ‘body’ loves that ‘body’, therefore it is individualistic and unique love, personal and special love for specific persons. Love with conditions, of course. This kind of love, you still don't know who you really are. Another kind of love, is conscious love, you know who you are. You have found the home of love, that's yourself. So you don't need other to love you, because you are. 

When you are the soul, the witness--a flow of love occurs, not active loving in nature but natural present of flow. You are nobody although the storyline is still going on as usual but no owner to create a drama between you and me. Just being and with no other. Because you are no longer identifying with it. There is tremendous release on your life! You are no longer binding to the conventional love, which needs somebody to love, and beloved. You no longer need bodily and possessive love; personal of love and hate relationship--always to be reminded to love and to be loved constantly--because there is simply no one to love. It is empty but there is the individual storyline, floating out there. You see it without identifying with it. How can you fall in love or get involved with the characters of a movie script? Because you know it is just a script with the characters playing and moving on a screen, it is not real. That insight of realisation, that understanding extricates you out of the world of duality--the world of love and hate, of personal, possessive and selfish relationship. What a relief!

When there is no other, the life is simple and easygoing, you save yourself for involving with the complicated and messy relationship. As long as you take somebody as the object of love, this personal involvement with possessive love, indicates you identified with the ego level of separate self, where all the world of emotions and feelings are pressing on you and become a burden to your life. You are trapped and not free when intertwined with this kind of love. Your world is limited and narrowed. That's the ego level of love, all the time  you need to sustain this separate self. You are afraid to lose the love, you cling to it tightly. There will be the end of the world when you lost it! It is terribly tiresome to sustain it. But people are so used to live this kind of life--a life of ups and downs, love and hate, pleasure and pain. Although, it is a burdensome and oppressive life, on ego perspective, it is perfectly aright.

What life style do you want to live? It is like choosing a radio channel, you can switch to another channel--the soul channel, one level up from ego--the witness. Your world change, so your love perspective. And you are ready to open up your heart. Then, there is unconditional and conscious love in the air that previously you have not detected or noticed. It pervades and spreads in every part of the universe, every moment you are in love--with tree, plant, dog, cat, even rock and walls of your house ...  Every moment, everywhere, you are expressing your love to everything. You simply feel indebted to the whole universe for no reason. That's love! So everyday is valentine day. Your soulful love is expressing itself because its nature is love. "The love is in the air" -- This is the real meaning deserved for it.  In the soul level,  there is no other, no lover but only the universal love of soul is ever-present, and it is always and already here, why look outside? So no need to look for lover, you are love. Doesn't it Beautiful? 

Still, wishing those who are engaging in conditional love of ego--a happy valentine day! And hope one day you may be able to upgrade yourself, switch to soul level and know who you really are. At the time being, enjoy while you can.

God Is Now

In practice the witness is always here to stay, and to witness all the mental activities. By this way, you realize that the witnessed is outside you, therefore not you. The clinging to the witnessed is what made you deluded to think you are the witnessed. Once remove the veil of this delusion; the trinities of witness, witnessing and witnessed become one — only witnessing left, that’s the only reality, oneness. So the presence of witness means

you are aware of your mental activities, also being aware of yourself in the present moment.

And its absence indicates you either engross to your thoughts (the ego leads you unconsciously) or when you are in deep sleep. (the ego temporary subsided or suspended)

The witness, or more appropriately, the I amness, or the sense of presence, which is the reflected light of the pure consciousness which pervades the whole universe and exists since time immemorial. The witness or the I amness, which associated with the body is obscured by the ego due to the preoccupied mental thoughts. Once the mind is not involved with its own mental activities, the witness is emerged. Like the cloud drifts away and the sunlight shines. The witness is readily present here and now all the time. The God is within you, it is now! It is always with you! You can tune into it if you want. But people are busily preoccupied with their thoughts, and pay no attention to it.

The pure consciousness or the Tao, the Source, the ultimate Truth, the impersonal God, or whatever you can call it, is pervading everywhere, it envelops our whole bodies and minds in and out, yet due to its extreme subtlety and ordinariness, it is also hard to recognize its presence. For any spiritual practice to be effective, it is essential

to notice its presence.

The here and now, the sense of presence, the witness, is pointing to the Source, to our true nature. Therefore, it is the heart of practice, the very essential centre to start first with the investigation of the mind. The practice must be evolved around the witness, the I am, and gradually, the pure consciousness will expand and grow indefinitely, until a sense of detachment of body and mind is felt.

The witness or the I am, is the gate-less gate, the door-less door for opening up our spiritual heart. That’s the self realization, that will liberate us from the torment and tyranny of the ego.

As a child growing, so the emergence of the ego. Once the ego takes over and controls the body, it clings to the body as mine, and is fascinated and engrossed with the outside world, hence the attention goes outwardly to look for excitements. That’s why all the time, the witness or the pure consciousness is left unnoticed. As the result, it seems to be our only tool in life is the ego or the mind. By this perception, we miss out the reality of life. Therefore our life is limited and constrained.

Although the witness is there all the time, the ego is being busy with its thoughts, ideas, feelings, and worldly pleasures, that it loses in touch with its creator—the pure consciousness. As originally,

the Father and the son are one. Now, the ego becomes the lost soul, as the son that is separated from its Father.

The ego is left alone and to dominate our life, that’s the beginning of delusion, and results in suffering simply because of separateness from the pure consciousness, the pure soul. To go home, or to its Source is simple. You know, you are the pure consciousness, it is always here and now, never leave you. All you have  to do is to get

your mind silent, let the ego and its thoughts subside. That is!

Then, the witness emerged, like the morning sun rises after the night of darkness. Allowing the pure consciousness embraces your whole being once your ego is subdued and subsided. That’s the emergence of your true nature. God says:

surrender or give me your ego, I will give back your true self.

This is a barter trade with God. That’s the deal!

End of the day, it is the application of the reality that matters. No matter how much we talk, we still have to come back to apply what we learned. The ego and the body has its destiny and karma, that’s the reason it is born for. You can’t stop the flow of waterfall from falling down, similarly, the script of your life which is unfolding beyond your control. The reality already reveals:

the mind-body process is always going unceasingly, unless you are able to split it out, become the witness and the witnessed. And act as the witness.

That’s no way out when you cling to your mind and body. Until the witness is emerged, then you are able to be free from its entanglement. Then the real spiritual practice begins. But to make your life different depending on whether you have the determination to apply the new found reality or wisdom. If not, it is just another wonderful concept to talk about.

The application and the conviction to the insight is essential for the daily application and practice. Until the full realization, that knowledge or insight will flow within your blood and marrow, to the core of your being. Before that, practice with the necessary earnestness and conviction will surely enhance the speed of realization and deepening it. The secret lies here, as Maharaj, the great spiritual master says:

The door that locks you in, is also the door that lets you out.

The ‘I am’ (the witness) is the door. Stay at it until it opens. 

Beyond the Person

Untrained mind identifies with bodies, thoughts, ideas, I am this, I am that, usually it is called the ego, which is no difference from the mind. You are persons, individuals, then you are egos. The ego is the mind-body process, and also the personality-based entity, as a whole it is called a person, simply a bundle of what you cling, remember or identify to be. That’s the delusion of mind that caused you attached or identified with what you think or feel.

When the attention focuses on the mental and bodily activities, that related to a person, he claims the ownership of all doings and being responsible for them. There is an ‘I’ of doing, the doer. This is the root cause of all miseries and sufferings of human beings. The wrong identification with ‘I’, is ignorantly and responsibly for inflicting all the world of sufferings to the mankind as long as they attach or identify with the ‘I’, or taking themselves as persons. By meditation, when the attention shifts  away from body-mind process, such as thoughts, feelings, there is also a shift of consciousness away from the mind. Now you are switching to a new channel. On this layer of consciousness, the attention now focuses on the one who is habitually paying attention to the mental activities of outside world. It means the attention shifts attention to itself, and which is the witness itself. (it can be the observer, knower, or seer, etc)

The shifting is like tuning the radio channel, by turning the attention inwardly, to its source. Habitually, our attention inclines to indulge itself outwardly, attached to the manifest world of mind, such as thoughts, ideas, sensations, sensual pleasures, excitements, hence becoming I am this and I am that. Therefore the personal world is limited only to the sensual sphere of the person. But once you turn inwardly, you are looking for the source, then, there is another unlimited world, beyond your imagination of your senses. By searching, you find there is nothing inwardly, but only the existence of the witness. That’s your true self. It is always and already here and now, but you never pay attention to notice it.

All your life you look for things outside, but overlook your true nature, which is YOU.

Since you have found it, simply rest the attention as the witness. Being as the witness,

you are neutral, natural, non-attached, you don’t identify with the arising thoughts,

you merely play the role of witnessing, as a calm and indifferent witness. At this stage of consciousness, you are transcending yourself

as the ego to the witness; as the person to beyond the person.

Anything that can be witnessed, observed is NOT you, because it is outside you, which is changeable, unreliable. So the proof is in the pudding. At this ascended consciousness, it is verified and proven that you are not the ego, the person as what you think to be, instead, you are just the witness. Resting on the witness is the beginning of the true spiritual practice of meditation.

The true practice is to look beyond

the objects of mind.

So, thoroughly investigate the meditator, that’s YOU, the source: it lies the way, to get you out of the eternal sufferings. The liberation is within YOU.

Start from YOU, the witness.

Initially, the witnessing process involved the trinities: witness, witnessing and witnessed. Or seer, seeing and seen. But when you stay or rest on it long enough, the three becomes one, only witnessing is left behind. Even the witness or seer, is the creation of mind, which is false and non-existent. Witnessing, without objects to witness, is the pure consciousness, so the identity of a person is gone, then no one claims to be the witness or being witnessed. Only witnessing exists.

Witnessing is the expanse of consciousness, it means you are not the body nor the ego, but the whole universe is within you. Just like diving into the ocean, leaving the surface waves on the top of ocean. You are no longer your body or ego. You are the free agent, without boundary and identity of ownership.

Witnessing is autonomous and independent, there is no self to dictate it. It is simply BEING.

When witnessing expands to objectless, or outside the pull of the duality, it becomes pure consciousness, beingness. It is like a sleep-like state, a ‘black out’ or ‘blank’, in a void but not a void, which is timeless and spaceless state and beyond verbal description. The experience is like that: you may feel like in the deep sleep, but actually you are stepping out of the mind and its functions. That’s the real spiritual moment!

The power of witnessing, as it goes further, is eventually to weaken the duality of mind. The mind inherent power is to separate and attach. It creates the delusion of separateness. The mind is very tricky, when you look for it, it disappears, and becomes empty. Only when the mind subsided or transcended, the veil of delusion is lifted, there is only pure awareness without identification of this and that. So what so called reality is for you to see things as what they REALLY are. It is not easy to get over the mind, due to its strong built-in habitual tendency. Just like the strong pull of gravity, we strongly cling to the mind, live with it for whole life without knowing it. Of course, with the deeper understanding, the mind or the ego, can be used as the vehicle to help us for the daily life living. But the witnessing power must always maintained in the practice, and acts as the purifier agent, which is able to purify the mind, so the actions.

The practice is progressive and spiritual, providing the opportunity for deepening the understanding that the mind is not you, it is limited. And finally it goes beyond the ego when witnessing power getting stronger and leading consciousness further to the subtle state. So in daily life, the mind still comes back, so the veil of delusion follows. The ego is emerged, so the sense of separation. But now you know, it is no longer fooling you, you are no longer dictated by it. In fact, it is just the spiritual vehicle to serve you, rather than you serve it. This is the real spiritual practice, as you will feel released and relieved, as the mind or the ego having lesser power to control you. You are freer.

To sum up the process of meditation: first; as long as there is the ego or the mind, there is the ‘I’, which identifying with the world of mental activities, it acts as the person living in the world and take the world as my world; second; by resting on the emerged witness, it means you are tuning the attention by stepping out of the mind. So you are witnessing and dissociating from all the mental activities, third; to stay longer, by deepening the consciousness, until the witness and the witnessed also gone, only the witnessing left. Like diving into the deep ocean, the waves gone, left only the silence of the deep ocean. Here and now, only

YOU, alone without any identity. The pure consciousness without object,

losing the sense of time and space, that alone shines, exists.