B: There are no great ones who know me. The sense of greatness implies division and I am not divided. One can only know what one is. Those that know me are not divided, nor do they let others perpetuate division. I have no students, as that would imply division.
B: There is no reality to the idea of ‘your presence’ or ‘my presence’. You did nothing different. It was not your activity, but the falling away of doubt. See how when the doubt dissolved, love was revealed? Q: Was it only my doubt that caused me to fail? B: But you were not failing. As long as doubt persists one must practice. It is the practice that washes away the essence of doubt.
Q: What is this doubt? B: Why draw your mind back to that which clouded your awareness? Would you like me to leave? Q: No! Please forgive my ignorance! I only thought if I could know the nature of that which hid you from my sight, I could avoid it in the future.
Remember. Unless in an acute situation, it is often an inner cause rather than an outer cause which creates a feeling.
Absence of judgement, absence of comparison, the end of craving - these make room for Faith to arise.
Is it this kind of love that nourishes the Garden of Faith? If so, how do I maintain such love? B: There are many preconceptions that help one in the beginning that we outgrow as the soul seemingly matures.
These are fine for the initiate. In time, one must let go of these to find the permanent, lasting love you now know.
B: That is good. You cannot, nor should you try. Trying to describe this will only draw you back away from it. It is this love that nourishes the garden of Faith.
B: Be calm. Breathe. Let this be natural. You already know that you must fully lose judgement, comparison and wanting, which are really only symptoms of one factor. This occurs through practice. Q: And what is practice? B: Some say practice is meditation. Some say it means to vigilantly abide as the Self. Some say life is the only practice. Q: Which of those is right? B: They are all correct.
Notions, concepts and outward identification ceases through the application of effective meditation. Practiced rightly, memories lose their charge, dreams are seen to be no different than any other experience, and one learns to feel safe without having to identify with any particular point of view. This is what allows one to abide as the Self consciously.
By Self, I do not speak of the collection of tendencies, cravings, quirks, idiosyncrasies, attachments to friends, lovers, enemies or family, memories and habits that most define as a self. I speak of the Self of which these are only a fragment, like a whirlpool to water. Some say the small self is like a wave to the ocean, but it is really like a whirlpool to water. Whether a wave or a whirlpool, it really does not matter. To abide as the Self is to be the water of the ocean. This being, only requires a shift of viewpoint.
B: Yet here you are, unscathed and radiant with delight. Q: Yes, but that is because you are here with me. B: I am only here because of the dissolution of your doubt. In fact, consider that I may have always been with you. Q: I could not see you until today! B: The mist and smoke had to clear.
To the wise, life is compassion. It is the womb-like space that holds one through the storm, until the fear subsides, and one can appreciate that I was always here and always will be.
Q: I am still. The sensation is of unbounded freedom and safety. Although, even those words do not explain it well. To even say it is a sensation is not accurate. B: Then what do those past experiences matter? Q: I do not want to go back there.
B: So you see, life is like a great mother. She holds you and cherishes you. She lets you explore, fall and hurt yourself, but is always ready to hold you again. Life’s lesson is to reveal that after all experiences, no matter how painful, you are always safe. Life reveals that throughout all changes there is always one changeless element and that is your very Self.
Through time and circumstance, the wise
realize this. Once realized, the wise then ceaselessly identify with the one constant variable. By doing so they realize the proper perspective as it relates to the changing phenomena of nature. This realization reveals the love you now know. This love is complete in that it allows one to honor and adore the great mother of changing experience, which embraces you until you are calm, until you can see you are safe no matter what rises or falls. It allows you to become strong like an…
Some speak of this because they still entertain the notion that a change in outer circumstance will alter the…
Inquire, ‘what is it that wants to escape from the cycle of birth and death?’ When this line of inquiry is followed to its conclusion, the ideas of escape,…
What is being? How does one experience timelessness? B: Being is all that is. Being is also the space in which that existence occurs. It is timeless, because only a timeless nature can contain time. I would advise inquiring into what it is that is aware of time. Meditate deeply until the mind and emotions and memories are gone. Then inquire. Inquire, ‘what is it that is aware of this experience now? What is it that was aware of my dreams last night? What is it that was aware of my experience last week? What is that…
Many confuse hearing or reading of sacred instruction as the end of the matter. I cannot, nor can any other, talk you into Self-realization. You must apply what is heard until truth dawns. You must…
B: How long it will take is irrelevant. If you worry about time, you sabotage your capacity to experience timelessness. Then there is not…
When understanding dawns, it is like knowing the taste of sugar. No matter how sweet the sugar, until it is experienced for one’s self, no amount of description can impart the reality. When understanding dawns, there is no question as to if it has dawned or not. You must continue to practice until there is no doubt that I am eternally with you. There are many forces still in your body, mind and emotions that would cloud your vision of me.…
You have learned to remain alert, yet relaxed, in the silence between techniques for as long as you are able. This is all very good. You can continue in this way. Now you must practice withdrawing from your habitual sense of self.
They may reflect upon their thoughts, their preferences and fears and realize neither of these things are their true eternal nature.
B: Yes. The techniques you already know. These will purify your mind and emotions. After each technique be sure to rest in the clarity and stillness for as long as you are able. After the final technique, then withdraw more intentionally from all you think you are, in whatever way you can, and rest with full awareness in what remains. Then go about your day, living your life from that greater understanding.
Breath awareness can be simple. Merely anchor your attention on the breath for a set duration or practice alternate nostril breathing, steadily, for 12 to 24 repetitions. Next, choose a mantra dear to your heart. Let the sounds of the mantra fully absorb your attention.
These may be thoughts, memories, feelings or external experiences. When your attention is lost to these distractions, then you will know it is time to practice your next technique.
B: When one circulates awareness through the space within the spine, they are actively neutralizing the mental and emotional patterns that cause one to feel as though separate from the wholeness of life. For this process to occur most effectively, a great capacity for focus and internal peacefulness is required. Breath awareness and mantra provide this foundation for many.
Q: How long and how often should I practice in this way? B: The length of time correlates to your ability to stay engaged without drifting off and without causing yourself strain. Twice a day is ideal, yet once is sufficient if done well. Remember, the experience of life is equally important as intensive meditation.
In time, you will learn to appreciate no difference between your experience in meditation and your everyday experience seemingly engaged in the world!
B: To one of wisdom, the more complicated one’s meditation practice has to be, truly, the less advanced it is! However, just as a complicated musical phrase in a creative composition has its place for a certain effect, so too do more complicated meditation techniques have their place at an appropriate time. For now, do as I say.
If one meditates for five hours, yet accesses no depth of peace, it is no better than if one practices for five minutes with the same results. If one meditates for 48 minutes, and in that time lets go of countless obsessions and compulsions that were troubling one’s mind, this is more desirable than sitting for a week in distracted thought.
The goal is to meditate so that the truth of one’s relationship to the wholeness of life is experienced directly and then to live with that direct realization.
It is also true that some eventually reach such a depth of joy in meditation, that they are neither trying to sit for an extended time nor are they trying to avoid life. It is simply a natural expression of their being. Advanced techniques have their place with these ones.
2 True Meditation
Q: Yes, but life feels much easier when I can see you. B: Perhaps in time you will know all that I am and let go of attachment to the limited form of flesh and blood.
Q: What is proper implementation of practice? What is intensity in practice? How can I harmonize these most effectively and honor your teaching in action?
When one sits to meditate that should be the only object of one’s attention. Even if one can sit for many hours in perfect posture and with a perfect countenance, if the mind is not fully absorbed in the process of meditation, one’s actions are no better than any other form of sedentary entertainment!
The mind must become one-pointed in whatever way it can.
For the accomplished yogi, focusing on one thing at a time is as natural and easy as it is for a beginning yogi to be scattered and mentally frustrated. In fact, it is even harder for an accomplished yogi to be scattered than it is for a beginner to focus! This is all a matter of intelligent training. Those who have experienced and even transcended their dearest form of divinity have done so only because of their total commitment to retrain their perspective from fragmentation to wholeness.
They are a point of focus, so the concepts and notions of the mind dissolve, and then the timeless reality remains.
Q: What is true attention? B: It is directing all awareness to practice one’s currently chosen activity.
Remember. That which you focus on, you become.
If one wishes to experience transcendence, with the support of previous endeavors, one learns to wait, attentive, for all concepts and notions to dissolve.
True attention is simply doing whatever is necessary, and only doing what is necessary.
Ultimately though, the doing is simply a gross form of focus.
When one’s mind is at peace, undisturbed, and undistracted by notions and concepts, truly, this is intensity in practice.
B: Some are liberated simply by ceasing to entertain the concepts of liberation or bondage as a reality. Meditation as you conceive it certainly has its place, particularly for one such as yourself. However, it would do you well to contemplate what meditation truly is.
It could be the one in meditation is not truly enlightened and is still caught up in a self image of what enlightenment is to look like.
It may also be that the enlightened one is simply resting in the pure infinite experience of consciousness and you are only observing how his or her body naturally appears during that experience.
One day you will recognize your own radiance, and that also requires the experience of confusion and then the will to work through that confusion! Confusion and misunderstanding is a fertile field for inner growth. The
This is an active inner process! It cannot be done for you.
That cannot be done for you. When there is confusion or uncertainty, you must find your own way through it.
True meditation is direct experience of reality as it is, free from attachment to cravings, notions or concepts of any kind. The sage Patanjali defines meditation as Yoga. In his Yoga Sutras he states that, “Yoga is the ending of the fluctuations and changes in consciousness.” He then states that when Yoga is realized, “The Seer abides in its own true nature.”
The accomplished yogi always abides in this state, no matter what activity is occurring. When one abides in this experience, full attention is given to every moment and every action. By practicing meditation techniques as duty, every day, you are engaging your consciousness in an intensive activity to reveal the wholeness of life.
3 Living Contentment
Even though everyone says they want to know God, or to be Self-realized, nearly everyone really means they want to be happy.
B: Happiness does not equate to any mental concept or situation for me. I am content, peaceful. These are the closest notions that may describe my experience.
My question to you is this. Do you honestly want to live from a place of greater understanding or do you only want to cater to your imagination? As long as one is identified with a corporeal form or any confined and defined sense of ‘I’, there is bound to be a rise and fall to what ‘I’ perceives as good or not good. Good is what sustains the sense of ‘I’. Not good is what threatens it.
To live from greater understanding requires ceaseless realization of the true nature of one’s individualized sense of self, the ‘I’, and one’s true nature, which is all that is and also all that is not.
B: That realization is one of peacefulness and contentment. It is as if one knows everything is in its right place and all is being taken care of effortlessly and intelligently. There is a sense of openness, trust and faith, even in circumstances that appear less than ideal.
If there was no contrast between what feels right and what feels wrong, how could you know it? Opposite, polarities, and contrast is required for you to have this experience of life. The immensity of the intelligence required to provide this experience through time and space is beyond the human mind’s capacity to understand.
Human happiness is such a small, small facet of creation. Compared to the infinite, it is even less than a grain of sand in proportion to the Sun!
To live from a higher perspective as the Great One does, requires one to see the proper place of one’s individualized mind and personality as it relates to the whole. Then one does one’s best to play the role given while endeavoring to remain immersed in that infinite intelligence from which all is born.
To nurture the seed of this realization, you must pay deep attention when this feeling arises. You must absorb yourself into it. Remember it! Then at other times when the truth is not immediately obvious to your mind, you must still live like it is so, even take time to reimagine the experience. This will water the seed of that realization and in time it will grow into a great and mighty tree!
Your realization, supported by peace, contentment and faith will be like the space that cradles the heavenly bodies.
4 Embodying Truth
Truth is a state of being. It is like the wind and Sun. Sometimes it blows when seeds need scattering. Sometimes it shines when fields need to grow. At other times it may be silent and motionless.
Q: Earlier you said that when one is engaged in one’s natural expression it is easy to know what is appropriate. Then one’s natural expression is truth?
Q: What is it like, then, to be established in truth? B: It possesses a sense of rightness. It is like when your beloved gives you a kiss. There is no reason to think or feel it should be otherwise. Remember when someone asked you a question and you knew the answer. That feeling of knowing is what it feels like. Think of when you last told a lie or acted in a way that was not true to your nature. That is what it feels like to be in a state contrary to truth. How did that feel?
B: That feeling was not your heart sinking into your stomach. It was your life force receding down into the base levels of your consciousness. When you are established in truth your life force rises. It ascends and nourishes your heart and rises further to clarify your mind, until it even takes you beyond the mind.
to learn at the outset of your meditation is the different quality between your temporal and eternal Self. The temporal is the small sense of self. It has preferences based on the personality. The eternal Self is ever aware of its complete relationship with God. The eternal Self is concerned only with the body of God, while the temporal self is usually only concerned with one cell of the whole.
By attending to developing a healthy sense of detachment, your capacity to feel and demonstrate truth will also grow.
Any time a decision is to be made or knowledge discerned, you must check and trust the compass of truth within you. Heaven flows from within when you do so.
Sometimes what begins as a great tragedy may turn into a gift beyond words. If you are ever in doubt then the time has come for you to do whatever it takes to identify with your eternal Self, then rest as close to God as possible. Only in God are all possibilities understood clearly.
technique. As one matures into Spirit, nothing is more important than anything else. There is only what is important in the moment. Meditations are helpful so long as they are clear, conscious and drawing one ever closer to one’s truth. Living that truth happens more easily the more often one expresses naturally.
God is then your personality and the small sense of self vanishes like a puff of smoke in the wind.
However, as you mature in Spirit, vulgarity, meanness, and compulsive sexual desire become as interesting as a baby’s doll is to a grown man. Vulgarity is a way to get attention. To be vulgar in the presence of God makes as much sense as hauling cow manure into an opera house.
Love is the only way to help another through their karma faster. It breaks the feedback loop of karma when attended to, without ceasing.