“You flee within through contraction, through inversion, through dissociative emotion, in order to protect yourself, and then you focus your attention on your own self-sense and the products of it—the thoughts, the tendencies, the reactions, the self-imagery, and everything associated with self-possession. You are all fleeing from your parents—not just your blood relations, but the meanings in your own body-mind—and yet you do not escape. You imagine yourself to be escaping somehow because you are withdrawn. But your withdrawal can never be so far within or away that you actually escape these meanings, because the meanings are in you. They are you, you see.”
Month: July 2012
True prayer
“Prayer is the surrender of judgment about what should happen, letting Truth run your life. It is rightly understood as a form of meditation. The most common form of prayer consists in asking God for something for yourself, or petitionary prayer. This is not true prayer. Can you really know that you will be better off getting what you want? Can you really know what is best for you or anyone else? Since God’s will is what is happening at any given moment, praying for a specific outcome implies a basic distrust of God’s will. Not trusting God’s will is a barrier to Liberation. If you really knew what was best for you, wouldn’t you have made it by now? Wouldn’t you be truly happy? True prayer implies surrender to God’s will, to Reality.
What else is there?”
-from Ten Paths to Freedom by James Wood
“A master is one who has achieved some measure of spiritual freedom”
“In some religious teachings, there are those known as masters, just as in ancient days Jesus was called Master. A master is one who has achieved some measure of spiritual freedom, which means some measure of nonattachment to the things and thoughts of the world. People often get the idea, however, that the function of a master is to take over another’s mind and life and to govern and manage them for that person, but a master is one to whom a person can go and through whose help and co-operation he can be lifted up into a state of spiritual consciousness and discernment where he himself realizes the Master in his own consciousness. The Master is not a man: the Master is a state of unfolded and developed consciousness.”
– Joel S. Goldsmith. The World is New (1997).
The only way to end global suffering…
The snowball of judgment and how to stop it, by James Wood
THE “SNOWBALL” OF JUDGMENT AND HOW TO STOP IT
“Judgments snowball until the mass of mind-material overwhelms you. It is important to know how to break the cycle. Notice if you judge, and then notice if you judge yourself for judging, and then notice if you judge yourself for judging yourself for judging, and so on. If the tangled mess is too complex and hard to follow, just notice the feeling of all those judgments until you can discern patterns and notice those. The better you get at noticing what you are thinking and feeling in the moment, the quieter your mind will become, and the more you will be able to notice individual thoughts before they can spin out of control. You must see yourself exactly as you are in the moment without flinching or turning away, without apology or rationalization, without creating a ” me” out of it—as in I’m no good because I’m angry and I’m angry because I’m no good. That is how you get wound up tight. That generates more anger. You are afraid of dissolving, so you contract in fear, judging yourself to defend against dissolution. Ecstasy is terrifying for the ego to taste, much less BE.
Your mind will try to lash out and get you involved in its ugliness by getting you to judge yourself for judging. Remember, you are not your mind. If your mind lashes out, notice it but recognize that you are the witness while your mind is the perpetrator. Let it show you what you are doing unconsciously, because on some level you are imbuing your mind with a sense of self that keeps it going. The mind tries to get you to identify with it. You are not your mind, but you are responsible for its behavior, in the same way that you are not a vicious dog, but if you own a vicious dog, you are responsible for watching it and keeping it from attacking others or responding appropriately if it does attack someone. As you go through your day, notice what the mind is doing. Keep it on a leash. Discipline it by developing discriminating awareness. Often, the mind lies in wait for you to let your guard down. If your mind suddenly rages out of control, just notice it. Like a vicious dog, it’s not who you are. It may feel like you, but it’s not. You must witness it impersonally and see it for what it is, without judgment. This keeps you from beating yourself up when you see what it’s up to.
Judgment obscures your true nature and keeps you from having permanent peace and satisfaction, like a pond that is clogged with trash. If you unclog the pond and tap into life without judgment, you will taste the sweetness of Freedom like spring water from a pristine well, the Truth you have been looking for as long as you can remember.”
-from Ten Paths to Freedom by James Wood
Adi Da describes self-contraction
Embracing Uncertainty, by James Wood
Embracing Uncertainty
“To be in the world but not of it, you must be able to embrace uncertainty and chaos. You must give up trying to know things with the mind, as if mental certainty—something you will never get—will deliver you from life’s inherent uncertainty. You cannot ever know things with complete certainty. An awakened person doesn’t know things with absolute certainty, as if thought could deliver Truth. She is absolute certainty, regardless of any thoughts that may appear. An awakened person enjoys just being with what is and letting the future take care of itself. Wanting certainty in life is like skipping to the end of a novel to find out what happens, or wanting to learn the end of a movie without watching it—only in life, the story never ends, and you miss all the good parts. It blocks your joy of the Now and makes life feel incomplete, like you’re missing something.
Chaos is constant. You cannot predict when things will go wrong. “Wrong” just means chaotic or unexpectedly out of control. Chaotic circumstances are not ultimately wrong, just messy. Life is never going to get more orderly or certain than it already is. If you create order in one place, chaos erupts elsewhere. If you wait for certainty, it will never happen. The awakened life is not completely certain, as the mind might have it. In a way, it is completely uncertain, involving total trust. It is Wisdom. In that sense, it is complete and hence completely uncertain, but only on the level of Being. On the level of the mind, it is out of control. The mind cannot grasp it, cannot comprehend it. Knowledge is necessary for getting by in the world, but it cannot give you certainty. It is the uncertainty and chaos of life that makes it spontaneous and fun. You have to let go of the mind to get there.”
– from Ten Paths to Freedom by James Wood
Ten Paths to Freedom: Awakening Made Simple
Essential reading for anyone interested in spiritual freedom!
James Wood’s book, The Path of Awakening has a beautiful redesigned cover and new title: Ten Paths to Freedom: Awakening Made Simple. This is one of the most helpful, direct and honest books I have ever read – I learn something new every time I pick it up!
Straight talk from Vernon Howard
“What is there to be concerned about? There’s nothing to be concerned about because there’s no one to be concerned over.”
Svaha 