This is the irony, the great cosmic joke, the great secret of
"enlightenment." When the person who searches for enlightenment
dissolves, then and only then is the object of the search revealed -
having been obscured all along by the "me" who wanted it.
The discovery that "personal enlightenment" is a myth can be received
as quite a shock. From my own experience I can verify that the mind and
personality does not happily embrace this discovery when it is first
glimpsed, for it makes one look somewhat ridiculous. All the searching,
all the practicing, all the trying to "get" it, is seen as worthless,
is seen as having per perpetuated the illusion of "me," as having
obscured what was and is already here, what all this striving and
practicing is occurring in-one's own limitless Self.
Amber Terrell Surprised By Grace
When peace comes at last
to those
who wrestle with temptation and fight against the giving in to sin;
when the light
comes at last into the mind given to contemplation; or when the goal is
finally achieved
by anyone, it always comes with just one happy realization; " I need do
nothing."
To do nothing is to
rest, and make
a place within you where the activity of the body ceases to demand
attention. Into
this place the Holy Spirit comes, and there abides. He will remain when
you forget,
and the body's activities return to occupy your conscious mind. A Course in Miracles
T-18.VII.
My understanding is that enlightenment itself is just another trap that
many get
stuck in for lifetimes. Mikaire
While I benefited enormously from the training offered in the Thai and
Burmese monasteries
where I practised, I noticed two striking things. First, there were
major areas of
difficulty in my life, such as loneliness, intimate relationships,
work, childhood
wounds, and patterns of fear, that even very deep meditation didn't
touch. Second,
among the several dozen Western monks (and lots of Asian meditators) I
met during
my time in Asia, with a few notable exceptions, most were not helped by
meditation
in big areas of their lives. Many were deeply wounded, neurotic,
frightened, grieving,
and often used spiritual practice to hide and avoid problematic parts
of themselves. Jack Kornfield
Buddha cannot be found by searching, So contemplate your own mind. This
is the highest
teaching one can practice; ..... I attain all my knowledge through
observing the
mind within, Thus all my thoughts become the teachings of Dharma and
apparent phenomena
are all the books one needs. Seeking the innate face of the self-mind
is supreme
How can common meditation match it? Milarepa
When I began my teaching work, people were having phenomenal
experiences, but things
weren't changing their habits, their neuroses. It became clear that if
people didn't
work with their psychology, no matter how devoted and sincere they
were, they were
effectively blocked at a certain stage. If we don't efficiently deal
with our psychology,
we can forget spiritual work. Not that we can't have experiences, but
we always come
down from them. Lee Lozowick
There is no process of becoming in God, but only a present moment, that
is a becoming
without a becoming, a becoming-new without renewal. . . All that is in
God is an
eternal present- time without renewal. Meister Eckhart
'Who in heaven's name do you think is enlightened? You?' How could it
ever be possible
for a person to be enlightened? The personality is just a series of
pictures in your
thought, and a couple of pictures of enlightenment simply get added on
to that. The
pictures come and go, they are not constant. So that so-called
enlightenment is not
constant either. If you have found this 'enlightenment', it means that
you must have
been searching for it to start with. You will not find it by searching
for it. The
searching stops because of total insight. You can only search on the
outside, and
this changes continuously. Jan Koehoorn
Meditation on oneself was a necessary and admirable pursuit, but it did
not constitute
the entire activity which life was constantly asking of man. It was
good, but it
proved to be not enough. For the efflux of time had shown me the
limitations of mystics,
and more time showed that those limitations were accountable by the
one-sidedness
of their outlook and the incompleteness of their experience. Paul Brunton
I don't encourage anything. I let it happen. If a person thinks he is
getting spiritual,
then he isn't spiritual. Having the very idea "Now I'm getting
spiritual"
means he's not, because ego has come in. You must become like an empty
flute of Krishna.
Krishna can play his tune through the flute, the correct tune. But as
long as the
flute is saying, "I am playing a good tune," there's a stoppage in the
flute and Krishna can't play. The higher you go, the less you think you
are anything.
When you ask me about a teacher, what teacher? Who teaches who?
Everybody teaches
you something. Some teach you what not to do and some what to do.
Everybody's your
teacher in this world. We are just one infinite body, and if I begin to
think that
I am a teacher, then I cease to be a good teacher because I have ceased
to be at
one with the one and only teacher, God. Hilda Charlton
The One Ultimate Reality Offers no self-help teaching, path, practice,
course, seminar,
or therapy: all of those are made by egos and for egos. The Teachings
Of the few
True Incarnations who have lived are Founded primarily on Grace; and
secondarily
on the follower's passionate inviting and allowing of, and thus
participation in,
That Grace. The true follower is looking to Reality to be Used and
Consumed By That,
rather than to use and consume It. Dava
Q: What is Moksha, or enlightenment?
A: It is nothing. It is not an event that occurs, but is ever-present,
already existing
in everything. This needs to be strongly emphasized, because most
people make the
mistake of thinking of it as some kind of dramatic happening, some kind
of "spiritual
experience." No, it is simply the fading away of ignorance, and the
realization
of our true nature, which is unbounded, limitless, beyond the realm of
space and
time. This fading of ignorance is happening slowly in everything and in
everybody.
Everything is moving back toward the knowing of reality, which is
revealed only when
ignorance is gone. Tim Gerchmez
Goals, especially the highest and finest, work like over valued ideas,
the roots
of delusion that nourish great canopies of sheltering paranoia, these
spreading ideas
of size and import which characterize positive goals. Such belief in an
overriding
idea about one's purpose in life turns out to be the very thing which
blocks the
way and may result in destructiveness. Pat Hawk
For forty years I traveled all over the world, actively seeking
freedom. I have gone
down many paths, been with many acclaimed teachers and gurus and
experimented with
most of the known techniques for awakening. I have not seen anything
work effectively.
My conclusion is that nothing on the outside works. No method, no
technique, no teaching
in itself, leads to freedom or awakening. Ava and Paul Lowe
New Chart - The
Seeker's trap