Presence
Be here now.
Pay attention.
Do one thing at a time.
Do everything in a sacred manner.
Your purpose is to awaken and to remain awake.
Let present-moment awareness be your spiritual practice.
This moment is the only reality; all else is abstraction, a mental construct.
Just look and listen. No more is needed. Being inwardly still, looking and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you.
Attention is primordial intelligence, consciousness itself, the living God. It joins the perceiver and the perceived in a unifying field of awareness.
The present moment is deeper than what happens in it. It is the space in which it happens. Eventually, the focus is on the inner, silent and still presence of awareness itself, rather than on its passing content.
You’re responsible for reining in your attention, taking command of this power of focused awareness, and purposefully choosing how you’ll live the moments of your life. You can waste and dissipate them, or you can centre yourself intentionally and live fully in the present moment. It all begins with a decision to live in such a way, a decision that you refuse to betray.
Silence
Things are the meaning of things.
In the godhead there is no thought of God.
Stop thinking, and there is nothing you won’t understand.
Spiritual awakening is awakening from the dream of thought.
You’re here to learn something. Don’t try to figure out what it is.
You’re not the voice in your mind, but the one who is aware of that.
Call off the search for self-definition. Being must be felt; it can’t be thought.
The single, most vital step towards enlightenment is learning to disidentify from your mind.
Observe all the content of evolving life without making any mental comment, criticism or judgment.
It’s when you’re trapped in incessant streams of compulsive thinking that you lose the ability to sense the oneness of all that exists.
The world doesn’t really need your personal opinions about anything at all. Attachment to views is the greatest impediment to the spiritual path.
When the criticalness and discrimination of dualistic perception are set aside, the absolute perfection and beauty of everything stands revealed.
Enlightenment happens when you’ve become capable of finding the inner being—the meditative quality within, the gap between thoughts, the inner silence and emptiness—so that it becomes a natural quality. You can find the gap whenever you want. You’ve found the door to God. You’ve come home.
Acceptance
No drama.
No whining.
This, too, will pass.
Merge with the situation.
Enlightenment is the quiet acceptance of what is.
Surrender to the natural course and sequence of things.
Why is there so much suffering in the world? No reason.
Cast aside the mind that says this is good and that is bad.
When you become a lover of things as they are, the war is over.
Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When you don’t struggle against it, you’re in harmony with reality.
All you really need to do is accept this moment fully. You are then at ease in the here and now, and at ease with yourself.
Weather comes and goes, but the sky remains unchanged. Enlightenment is merely the shift of identity from the cloud to the sky.
The world is neither bad nor defective, nor is it in need of help or modification, because its appearance is only a projection of your own mind. No such world exists.
What will be left of all the fear and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that, every day, takes up most of your attention? A dash, one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone.
Realization
God is not a being, but a state of being.
You’re awareness, disguised as a person.
You’re not in the universe; the universe is in you.
You’re here to awaken from your illusion of separateness.
Your state of consciousness is primary; all else is secondary.
“In here” and “out there” are mirror reflections of each other.
Heaven isn’t a physical location, but a state of consciousness.
All the consciousnesses in your life are your own consciousness.
All the separate activities in the universe are actually one activity.
You’re an aperture through which the universe is exploring itself.
Consciousness is continuous and present in everything; it’s the one reality.
The eye by means of which God sees you is the same eye by means of which you see God.
There’s neither a perceiver, nor that which is perceived, because they’re one and the same.
Nothing in the universe happens by chance or accident. Everything influences everything else and is in perfect balance.
The entire universe was designed for the purpose of creating and expanding a consciousness capable of observing and understanding itself.
The very ground of the enlightened state is the absolute, unequivocal, unshakable confidence in the perennial, mystical revelation that IT IS . . . and I AM THAT. It’sexperienced as a clarity that is empty of content, a weightiness that’s full of nothing in particular, a profound knowing that dissolves all questions. You simply know, unequivocally, before thought, that “I am.” That’s the only answer: I AM. There’s no why.
Practice
Don’t try too hard.
Practice and enlightenment aren’t two different things.
Laugh! Even seriousness itself is humourous.
[su_pullquote align=”right”]Your life is your practice. Your spiritual practice doesn’t occur someplace other than in your life right now, and your life is nowhere other than where you are.[/su_pullquote]
The mundane and the sacred are one and the same.
Generate consciousness through the activities of daily life.
For most of us, enlightenment comes little by little—otherwise, it would overwhelm us.
Enlightenment isn’t the end, but the beginning of an unending process in all dimensions of richness.
Your life is your practice. Your spiritual practice doesn’t occur someplace other than in your life right now, and your life is nowhere other than where you are.
The essence of spiritual practice is to activate by inspiration, dedication and decision of will those aspects of consciousness that become progressively self-actualizing.
Seemingly small steps in spiritual development often occur almost unnoticed, but it’s the small shifts that occur out of sight, below a mountain of snow, that result in an avalanche.
Live effortlessly. Enlightenment isn’t a desire, a goal, an ambition. It’s a dropping of all goals, a dropping of all desires, a dropping of all ambitions. It’s just being natural.
Enlightenment isn’t a destination or graduation into a permanent higher state of consciousness, but a moment-by-moment experience that’s constantly fluctuating between degrees of wholeness and limited consciousness.
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