Present Moment Awareness

Assess not, compare not! Just be fully present and still, and let the Universe bless you abundantly with Peace and Eternal Love.

- Ernest Fokoue-

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,
-Walt Whitman-

How can one forget these benign which the fate have portioned for us, when they make us play with the thought that under the cruel face of life, a benevolent and beautiful Power may yet be hiding ? These minutes put our common place hours to shame. Out of the dark void they come like meteors, to light a transient trail of hope and then to pass away from our ken.

-Paul Brunton-

Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.
-Marcus Aurelius-

Why, then, O mortal men, do you seek that happiness outside, which lies within yourselves?

The passing now makes time, the standing now makes eternity.

- Boethius-

Stillness and Surrender

Be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you’ve died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.
The speechless full moon
comes out now.
-Rumi-

We find this place of Silence through surrender, after perhaps years of struggle to dis-cover the false self.
-Bob Fergeson-

” The discovery of the truth is the discernment of the false. You can know what is not. What is – you can only be. Do you understand that the mind has its limits? To go beyond, you must consent to silence.”

- Nisargadatta-

” There is a way between voice and presence where information flows. In disciplined silence it opens. With wandering talk it closes.
-Rumi-

“It is, moreover, only in the state of complete abandonment and loneliness that we experience the helpful powers of our own natures.”

-C.G. Jung-

Self Inquiry: Know Thyself

The first and foremost of all thoughts, the primeval thought in the mind of every man, is the thought ‘I’. It is only after the birth of this thought that any other thoughts can arise at all. It is only after the first personal pronoun, ‘I’, has arisen in the mind that the second personal pronoun, ‘you’, can make its appearance. If you could mentally follow the ‘I’ thread until it led you back to its source you would discover that, just as it is the first thought to appear, so it is the last to disappear. This is a matter which can be experienced.

-Shri Raman Maharishi-

Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment – the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.

- Jorge Luis Borges-

Let body needs dwindle and soul decisions increase.
Diminish what you give your physical self.
Your spiritual eye will begin to open.

When the body empties and stays empty,
God fills it with musk and mother-of-pearl.
That way a man gives his dung and gets purity.

Listen to the prophets and not some adolescent boy.
The foundation and the walls of the spiritual life
are made of self-denials and disciplines.

- Rumi-

“What is the use of knowing about everything else when you do not yet know who you are? Men avoid this enquiry into the true Self, but what else is there so worthy to be undertaken?… The only thing that keeps us from realization is the belief that we are not realized…”
“Pursue the inquiry ‘Who am I’ relentlessly. Analyse your entire personality. Try to find out where the I-thought begins. Go on with your meditations. Keep turning your attention within. One day the wheel of thought will slow down and an intuition will mysteriously arise. Follow that intuition, let your thinking stop, and it will lead eventually to the goal.”

- Ramana Maharishi-

Can we begin to see the consciousness itself rather than just the objects of this consciousness?

If we can see the mind creating its own reflection and judging it to be real, then we have stepped back into the listening attention. In this silent mind, the awareness not only looks upon the view of the senses, but also becomes a passive listening, a looking back towards Awareness itself, so as to allow the possibility of the unknown. This dual gaze stops the projecting process and brings us into a quiet place of possibility, where there is no longer a reflexive mind. Here, there is no ‘consciousness’, for there is no ‘I’ or mind to be conscious of itself, for the reflexive pattern has suddenly ceased. Awareness has become free from the reflections of the dual mind, leaving us in a position to receive, rather than endlessly creating a parade of reflected images.

We are so in love with our own creations, we never sense that they are only projections or reaction patterns. To see and admit that we don’t ‘know’ is the first step beyond this mind. By making the mind itself the object of consciousness, we leave consciousness, and retreat from the circular pattern of reflexive thinking to enter the quiet realm of possibility and the Inner Self.

-Bob Fergeson-

” Surely thinking is a reaction. If I ask you a question, you respond to it – you respond according to your memory, to your prejudices, to your upbringing, to the climate, to the whole background of your conditioning; you reply accordingly, you think accordingly. The centre of this background is the ‘me’ in the process of action. So long as that background is not understood, so long as that thought process, that self which creates the problem, is not understood and put an end to, we are bound to have conflict, within and without, in thought, in emotion, in action.

” Thought is old and can never discover the new. When thought realizes that it cannot do anything, then thought itself comes to an end. Therefore there is a breaking through of the limitation of consciousness.

When I want to understand, look at something, I don’t have to think about it – I look at it.”

-J.Krishnamurti-

The sense of ‘I’ pertains to the person, the body and brain. When a man knows his true Self for the first time something else arises from the depths of his being and takes possession of him. That something is behind the mind; it is infinite, divine, eternal. Some people call it the Kingdom of Heaven, others call it the soul and others again Nirvana, and Hindus call it Liberation; you may give it what name you wish. When this happens a man has not really lost himself; rather he has found himself.Unless and until a man embarks on this quest of the true Self, doubt and uncertainty will follow his footsteps through life. The greatest kings and statesmen try to rule others when in their heart of hearts they know that they cannot rule themselves. Yet the greatest power is at the command of the man who has penetrated to his inmost depth.

-Shri Raman Maharishi-

By learning to observe our thoughts rather than mechanically react on them only, can lead to a new level of being, one in which everything is possible, even our own becoming.

A listening which is attentive yet not reactive, and unaffected by circumstance and the constant changes of thought and mind.

Knowing that all thought is reactive and one step behind the present moment, we may begin to just listen, to observe without reaction. In this quiet, listening mind, something Real has the possibility of entering.
-Bob Fergeson-

Only through staying in the present, and Being, can we be free of our mind and its misery, and access the power of Now.

Now – that intensely alive state that is free of time, free of problems, free of thinking, free of the burden of the personality.
The whole essence of Zen consists in walking along the razor’s edge of Now – to be so utterly, so completely present that no problem, no suffering, nothing that is not who you are in your essence, can survive in you. In the Now, in the absence of time, all your problems dissolve. Suffering needs time; it cannot survive in the Now.
-Ekhart Tolle-

The mind won’t allow you to be in the moment…ever.

- Vicki Woodyard-

· The greatest of all pleasures consists in the contemplation of truth. -Thomas Aquinas-

Al-Ghazzali, a Persian philosopher and theologian, who flourished in the eleventh century, and ranks as one of the greatest doctors of Islam, has left us one of the few autobiographies to be found outside of Christian literature. “The Science of the Sufis,” says the Moslem author, “aims at detaching the heart from all that is not God, and at giving to it for sole occupation the meditation of the divine being. Theory being more easy for me than practice, I read {certain books} until I understood all that can be learned by study and hearsay. Then I recognized that what pertains most exclusively to their method is just what no study can grasp, but only transport, ecstasy, and the transformation of the soul. How great, for example, is the difference between knowing the definitions of health, of satiety, with their causes and conditions, and being really healthy or filled. How different to know in what drunkenness consists–as being a state occasioned by a vapor that rises from the stomach–and BEING drunk effectively.

Similarly there is a difference between knowing the nature of abstinence, and BEING abstinent or having one’s soul detached from the world.–Thus I had learned what words could teach of Sufism, but what was left could be learned neither by study nor through the ears, but solely by giving one’s self up to ecstasy and leading a pious life. I recognized for certain that the Sufis are assuredly walking in the path of God. Both in their acts and in their inaction, whether internal or external, they are illumined by the light which proceeds from the prophetic source. The first condition for a Sufi is to purge his heart entirely of all that is not God. The next key of the contemplative life consists in the humble prayers which escape from the fervent soul, and in the meditations on God in which the heart is swallowed up entirely. But in reality this is only the beginning of the Sufi life, the end of Sufism being total absorption in God. The intuitions and all that precede are, so to speak, only the threshold for those who enter. From the beginning revelations take place in so flagrant a shape that the Sufis see before them, whilst wide awake, the angels and the souls of the prophets. They hear their voices and obtain their favors. Then the transport rises from the perception of forms and figures to a degree which escapes all expression, and which no man may seek to give an account of without his words involving sin.How should you know their true nature, since one knows only what one can comprehend? But the transport which one attains by the method of the Sufis is like an immediate perception, as if one touched the objects with one’s hand.”

-William James-

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.

- William Blake-

Maya: The Real and the unreal

Thus taken was God’s plunge into the Night

This fallen world became a nurse of souls

Inhabited by concealed divinity

A Being woke and lived in a meaningless void

A world-wide Nescience strove towards life and thought

A consciousness plucked out from mindless sleep….

Vast minds and lives without a spirit within
Impatient architects of error’s house
Leaders of the cosmic ignorance and unrest
And sponsors of sorrow and mortality
Embodied the dark Ideas of the Abyss……

A gossamer marriage-hall of Mind with form

Is hidden by a tapestry of dreams

Heavens meaning steal through it as through a viel

Its inner sight sustains this outer scene

A finer consciousness with happier lines

It has a tact our touch cannot attain

A purity of sense we never feel…..

- from Savitri by Shri Aurobindo

“The mind has the ability to create, better than the ability to accurately witness. With the ability to create comes the ability to delude the self.”

“The dawn breaks because another day and night have died, but the sky was there through all.”

“You will not know what mental troubles are until you have risen above the mind dimension. The mind cannot analyze the mind with the mind.”

- Richard Rose-

” When you come to think about it, nothing has any meaning, for when there was nobody to think, there was nobody to interpret what happened.”

- Carl Jung-

” That which people take to be their self, their identity, their very being, is itself only an experience — witnessed by something anterior to that identity, which is completely impersonal and which is the only real being.”

-Bob Cergol-

While men are dreaming, they do not perceive that it is a dream. Some will even have a dream in a dream, and only when they awake do they know it was all a dream. And so, when the Great Awakening comes upon us, shall we know this life to be a dream. Fools believe themselves to be awake now.”

- Chaung-tzu-

Never forget that the life of this world is only a game and a passing delight, a show….the life of this world is nothing but a deception..

- The holy Quran 20:57-

“What is the use of knowing about everything else when you do not yet know who you are? Men avoid this enquiry into the true Self, but what else is there so worthy to be undertaken?… The only thing that keeps us from realization is the belief that we are not realized…”
“Pursue the inquiry ‘Who am I’ relentlessly. Analyse your entire personality. Try to find out where the I-thought begins. Go on with your meditations. Keep turning your attention within. One day the wheel of thought will slow down and an intuition will mysteriously arise. Follow that intuition, let your thinking stop, and it will lead eventually to the goal.”

- Shri Raman Maharishi-

The powe to think which had hitherto been a matter of ordinary pride, now becomes a thing from which to escape, for I percieve with startling clarity that I had become its unconscious captive.

-Paul Brunton-

In searching for our true self, we come to see that the reactive mind is not a reliable reference for truth. We see we have been searching for truth with what amounts to a mechanical reaction-pattern, trying to find something real which lies beyond that pattern. All information is instantly qualified by our own perception apparatus according to our past, our genetics, and our unconscious inherited beliefs. The silent witness or true observer, is lost behind this endless mind chatter and ‘self’ knowledge. A true attention, or seeing, free of the individual mind, would be better for our search. What would this be like? Can we find it, in ourselves? Is there a way of seeing beyond the individual ego, and to reconnect with the Universal?

The silent passage to the inner world is always with us, it does not need to be formed, just found, but we may need years of preparation to see it. A great deal of self-analysis, ‘ work on one-self ‘, is usually needed in order to get beyond the ego and its belief that the mind and worded thoughts will lead us to the Real. A lifetime of learned behaviors, emotional blocks, fears, self-doubts, and wishful thinking need to cleared away. We must reach a point where we can slip behind our compensatory thinking patterns long enough to let something real get through. All repressed emotional material and debilitating drains on our energy must be dealt with, too. We will need all our strength to face the unknown, alone and unarmed.

- Bob Fergeson-

Why, then, O mortal men, do you seek that happiness outside, which lies within yourselves?
- Robert Fripp -

” Soon the child’s clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day . . . we become seekers.”
-Peter Matthiessen-

The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

- Marcus Aurelius-

What is of importance is the fact that you obey and allow your judgment to be perverted by authority. Your judgment, your mind, your affection, your life are being perverted by things which have no value, and herein lies sorrow.

- J. Krishnamurti -

To understand the cause of this slavery it is important to see how people live, what is the aim of their existence, the object of their desires, passions and aspirations, of what they think, what they talk, what they serve and what they worship.

- Ouspensky –

We have created a false self through identification with our thoughts and projections, and have come to believe this strange creature to be us. Through self-observation, we see through the fallacy that we have to remain as victims, moved about by the world and circumstance, and instead see that we can be happy, at peace with the moment, and free from events and time.

Escape this trap of the false self through the door of unbiased, impartial observation of our own thoughts, emotions, and mind, leading us to the truth and realization that we are the Seer, rather than the seen.
THINKING produces noisy and wrong action.

SEEING allows silent and right action.

To be asleep means to be the slave of anger and envy, to demand that events turn out according to personal desire, to deceive oneself and others, to suffer from guilt and shame, to take secret delight in hurting others, to live in fear. To be awake means to possess self understanding, to have only one person within yourself, to see through the folly of worldly ambitions, to live from your real nature, to be free of all negative feelings, to be genuinely compassionate. Awareness and happiness are exactly the same thing.
Our pains are caused by our wrong viewpoints toward things. The false self throws up an imaginary picture of how it insists things should be. And every time this should be clashes with what actually happens, we react painfully. The problem is not what actually happens, but our demands that something else should happen.
Interpretation blocks reception while masquerading as reception. Rightness does not need interpretation; it requires simple acceptance and nothing else.”

- Vernon Howard-

· Thoughts are wreathes of evaporating intelligence. Thoughts are composed of what one’s vitality consists of.
As we think and act, so are we. Our thoughts leave an indelible mark upon our features…
- Joseph Sadony-