You will never be satisfied until you realize who you are. The time is now.
How do I remove the clouds obstructing the sun of realization?
Clouds that seemingly obstruct the sun have to be removed only if you imagine you are not the sun. If you are the sun, what can it matter that clouds pass by? Do they block your own light from yourself?
If your point of view is that you are separate from the light, then anything that appears has the potential to come between you and that light. Recognize that the core of your being radiates light. What can separate you from that?
You are even more than the sun. You are the sky. By sky, I don’t mean the upper atmosphere of our planet. I am speaking of endless, limitless, spacious consciousness. The power that gives rise to clouds and the power that gives rise to dissipation of clouds is in the sky.
This power cannot be imagined. It is too big to be thought. The sky of consciousness is inclusive of all, blocked by nothing.
You are the sky. The sun is an image that arises in you. The image of light exists in the sky of consciousness. The sky is infinitely larger than any image.
In your mind you may imagine that consciousness, God, truth, or sky is up there somewhere. But really, where does it begin? Where does it end? When is it ever absent? Even if you close yourself into a closet, is the sky of consciousness absent? No, it is never absent.
Clouds are born in you and die in you. If you begin to identify yourself with phenomena, such as clouds, there is unnecessary suffering. If you identify yourself with the cloud called the body, you will experience separation from the eternal sky of consciousness.
The true sky is endless. It is both forever beyond and immediately present. It is forever here. There are different realms, different universes, and different solar systems, yes, but all exist within the sky of consciousness. In true identification you recognize yourself as that. Recognize yourself truly, and there is no problem with any cloud, any sunset, or even an eclipse. Different climatic events are just phenomena. Atmospheric weather, emotional weather, and mental weather do not affect the sky of consciousness.
Early astronomy once imagined that the sun and planets revolved around the Earth. This type of primitive thinking is still within our psyche. Misidentification must be realized to be old thinking that is useless, and must now be discarded.
This philosophy of the sky as self is easy to talk about, but it is hard to realize.
You are partially right. It is easy to talk, but it is even easier to realize. Ease is the secret. Books, teachers, parents, friends, and enemies have told you, “It is hard; it is difficult.” Now this cloud— It is difficult—has become a part of your primitive belief system. You walk around thinking, Awakening is hard; realization is difficult.
With the thought of difficulty, awakening is experienced as hard; realization is experienced as difficult. I am telling you that awakening is inherently easy. You are already that which you are seeking in awakening. Put aside your commentary and see.
Is it easy to stay in that state of mind all the time?
No state of mind is present all the time. States of mind are like clouds, appearing and disappearing.
And the good feelings that can arise?
Feelings come and go. You are the sky that feelings and states come and go in. You Are That
It is not a question of, if you feel you are that, then you are that. You are that, whatever the feeling.
What about life?
Life is that! You are life!
So all is self-realization?
All is true self. There is no separation anywhere.
Suffering comes while imagining separation from self. Fear arises around whatever it is you imagine you are separate from. You wonder, Is this enemy or is this friend? Fear-based relating is very ancient. Dogs and pigs and even protoplasm in a petri dish relate in protective, fear-based ways. Somehow, with a human birth, a gateway through that fear opens up.
The gateway is the call and the promise of all who have awakened. This is the good news of the Buddha, the good news of Christ, the good news of Mohammed— Consciousness is one; God and I are one; Allah is one. Whoever awakens declares the possibility of realizing, I am that oneness.
What you are telling me is very familiar.
I am telling you what you already know.
Now trust what you know beyond what has been told to you. Trust deeper than what you have read or believed or followed.
I feel very serious about this, and it also makes me fall into desperateness. I feel it is so important.
It is important. It is the most important, and you must be absolutely serious. However, if by serious you mean rigid, then your seriousness is absurd.
I think the rigidity is the problem.
True seriousness is resolve. True resolve must be immovable. Resolve is serious sometimes, and lighthearted and joyful at other times. Resolve uses all faces.
The tide of conditioning, temptation, and self-doubt is very large, isn’t it?
Oh, yes!
Without serious resolve, satsang would be just another experience in your mental bundle of experiences. I applaud your resolve. I bow to your resolve.
You must strap yourself to this resolve, this bodhi tree, this mountain peak, this cave, and not be moved.
There will be tests of your resolve. Tests reveal the depth of resolve. Let the whole world come to try to move you, including God itself. Be immovable.
Whenever I feel my resolve isn’t great enough, I get angry with myself, and I want to let that anger go.
You do not have to let go of anger. Just keep full attention on the truth of who you are. Anger may arise. All emotions and states arise and pass. If you fix attention on the story of anger, then you are back into the old, sordid relationship with it, and attention is pulled from the truth of who you are.
Many tendencies arise to be burned. In resolve, if you have one tendency left or thirty-five million tendencies, it does not matter because that is not where your attention is.
Let whatever arises arise. In letting it arise, you let it go. It is only when you pull your attention away from the truth of who you are that you get into the story of what should or should not arise.
Be prepared for everything to arise. Be prepared for nothing to arise. It is the same, really, and this is the great secret.
Enormous feelings of suffering may arise. In the moment that you are willing for everything to arise, while your attention is firmly, resolutely, attached to that in which all arises, suffering cannot continue.
If you call some state, emotion, or event suffering, then as awareness itself, meet suffering. Then it is conscious suffering. Running from suffering only perpetuates suffering. In your willingness to directly experience whatever arises, then suffering is not suffering.
Jesus is reported to have said, “If you know how to suffer, you do not suffer.”
How to suffer? By willingly, completely, and unsentimentally experiencing the suffering all the way through to the core to discover who, in reality, is really suffering.
This week at massage school, when I was being worked on, I had a feeling of going into a different space that was really happy and blissful, but there was nothing there.
Yes!
My teacher kept trying to lead me back.
Leading you back to known reality is the normal teaching. Luckily you are not a normal student.
I looked around at the surroundings, and it felt like I had been beamed somewhere. Then I ran into confusion as to why I’m even in a body. Why can’t I just be in that other place all the time?
You are. Your body is in that all the time. Your body is never separate from that.
But it is.
No, it’s not.
Are they both just as real as one another?
There is that which is permanently real, and there are experiences in that which seem real, look real, and feel real, but are limited in duration. Your body is an example of limited, impermanent experience. In satsang, the word “real” refers to what is permanently present, not what appears real and then disappears.
People sometimes do not want the body to continue, and people sometimes want the body to continue forever. Both desires reflect the same misidentification. Some get the idea that the only way to return to final truth is to get rid of the body. You must recognize that truth is here now. It is the animating force of all bodies, and it exists independently of any body. Only when the body is either worshipped or reviled is it a problem. In either worshipping or reviling what is limited, the limitless source is overlooked.
So why do bodies feel so separate from one another?
They feel separate because they appear to be separate, and we are trained to accept our perceptions as reality. There is deep conditioning that you are a particular body. Then for an instant you glimpse the freedom of no body present. This glimpse is the cut in the knot of misidentification.
Directly experience the body, and you will see. At its core, at the core of every cell, at the core of every phenomenon, is that limitlessness which is bound by no body.
Can you speak further on a word you’ve touched on at other satsangs, “unborn”?
When you own nothing—not your body, your name, your history, your fear, your courage, or your conclusions—then you recognize yourself to be that which is forever unborn. Even deeper than unborn— that which is forever unconceived.
The moment that conception arises, stop. What is before that? Purity before and beyond all conception is the truth of who you are. This purity does not go away during conception or after conception. It is immovable. It is untouched by anything conceived.
What is unborn and unconceived has nowhere to go. In this moment, discover within yourself that peace which has nowhere to go. It is forever unborn, and yet all that is born is born of it.
Satsang is not limited to something read or heard. Satsang is the potential context for every moment of your life.
You are not separate from any awakening that has ever occurred. You are not separate from Buddha’s awakening, Christ’s awakening, Ramana’s awakening, Poonjaji’s awakening, or any other awakening. It is the same awakening, the same self awakening to itself, crossing all lines of religion and culture, boundaries and horizons, crossing all lines of perceived differences and separation, recognizing itself totally and without limit. Each of us has some exquisite role to play, an unknown, mysterious role. The possibility in satsang is to be inspired to play that role fully. To play a role fully, recognize that any role is just a role, and that who you truly are is beyond all roles.
If you end mental fixation on personal problems, awakening of self to itself is served. Your life is then naturally used to facilitate the awakening of all being, and service to awakening is discovered to be the deepest bliss.
Now is the time to recognize the core of peace that exists within you. You Are That Yes, now is the time.