Staying Awake Until Grace Comes

Thursday, 14 July 2011 17:15 Written by Nirmala

Someone emailed me to share:

Life is seen as an unfoldment, as Grace, rather than as a "making"... the same life, this life, the same manifestations: yet the difference between the two visions seems immeasurable.

When Grace is recognised and perceived, I see this same life and its manifestations as an unfoldment rather than as a "making". Everything loses its gravity and its shadow of ego, and I truly feel I am walking freely and undisturbed. When things get heavy, and inner effort, struggle and discontent have their way, I find no more trace of Grace anywhere: only a scent of ego and time and mind is what I feel all around "me". How light is life - the same life - in the first vision of things!

How to melt more and more in this vision and recognising of Grace, which I feel is a truer vision of life? How to live more in this "not personal" way? Any comment or suggestion on this would be greatly appreciated.

I responded as follows:

Your message is so full of wisdom and light, that perhaps the best answer to your questions lies in rereading your own words. I especially like the way you asked your question at the end where you ask how to melt more in the recognition of Grace. Since there is nothing you can do to "make" there be more Grace or more Beauty, or more Love in your life, what is left is a very subtle opportunity to simply more often notice the Grace that is already here. This noticing is not really a "doing" or a "making things happen." And it is also not a non-doing which is often actually the "doing" of inaction. Noticing, inquiring, and paying attention are in between doing and not-doing, or perhaps in another category altogether. Noticing something is "doing" something that is already happening. Awareness is already happening and so when you notice something, you are "doing" this awareness that is already here! That paradox is what makes the noticing so powerful without it reinforcing the illusion that you are in charge or making things happen.

Action and inaction still occur as natural parts of life. but the bigger question is do you simply notice the Grace that is also present, and that is even present in all of your actions and inactions. Grace is all there is. So all you need do to live more fully in this ever-present presence of love, peace and joy is to give these things more and more of your attention. You do not need to make them happen, or to create more love, peace and joy. But you can notice them more and more. Can you see the love present even in the movements of the ego? Can you feel the peace that is present in the ordinary empty space in the room with you right now? Can you experience the joy and natural curiosity that is already present in your questions before you find any answers?

And can you also be more fully present to your experience when it seems Grace is a distant memory? The opporunity in that is to notice more fully what appears to be in the way of seeing the peace, joy and love that is here, and to find out what is ultimately true about these veils or illusions. Can you even see Grace in the movements of your mind and ego that seem to hide Grace from view?

You cannot live "more" in this non-personal way because you already live totally in this non-personal way. The only misunderstanding is the idea that it is somehow personal. So the only antidote is to see that your human life is already an expression of a supremely profound Grace. It is not "personal" because it does not just flow within you or only as the particular events that you want to experience. It flows through you, everyone and everything. Grace appears as everything that ever happens.

Ultimately the recognition of this deeper truth also just happens. The noticing and paying attention just creates a situation where that recognition is noticed when it happens. Efforting to make it happen does not work, and unfortunately "not efforting" to make it happen does not work either. Paying attention does not directly make it happen either, but it does mean that you are paying attention when the recognition spontaneously happens. My favorite metaphor for this is how sometimes you can't remember someone's name, and no matter what you do, you still can't remember their name. Then ten minutes later when you are no longer trying to remember their name, the name pops into your mind. Paying attention or noticing is simply what is required to notice the name when it finally appears.

A deeper recognition of Grace is a function of Grace itself. Paying attention just means you are not asleep when it happens!

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To Slay the Dragons of Our Core Beliefs

Wednesday, 13 July 2011 15:03 Written by Nirmala

Someone emailed with a question about doing inquiry into beliefs using The Work of Byron Katie. He asked if it was helpful to uncover the core beliefs that are the source of the more superficial thoughts and ideas he experiences, and then to do inquiry to address those core beliefs. As he put it:

It is like there is a big forest on fire. There are a five or six dragons standing in the middle of the forest. They light the forest on fire, by breathing out fire everywhere. If we put the fire out, then after a while, the dragons will start the forrest burning again. But if we killed the dragons, then after a while, the fire would stop and there would be no more burning. The fire is the outer layers of conditioning. The dragons are the core beliefs, or the inner layers. Would you keep your main attention on the core-ones or give the same amount of attention to everything?

I wrote back the following:

You are definitely correct that there are core beliefs that at times are the source of the more outer layers of your thinking. And practically speaking, it would be most helpful to address these with your inquiry as you have been doing. I would also suggest that you do not have to actually kill the dragons as they are after all just made up of thoughts. Instead, I would invite you to become very curious about them. How do you know what you think? How do you know that something is a belief and not just an idle thought? How do you sometimes know what you are unconsciously believing? What are thoughts and beliefs made of? How important are they really? If they are just thought dragons, maybe you can turn them into pets!

Another suggestion is that underneath the dragons, there are even more fundamental beliefs or convictions that we do not often stop to question because they seem so obviously and undeniably true. These are core assumptions we have like the assumption that "I am a person" or "I am this body". A very deep assumption or belief is the idea that some experiences are better than other experiences. And when you combine the belief in better experiences with the belief that I am a separate somebody, then it seems true to work hard at getting a better experience for this separate "me". But if you see that there is no experience that is better than any other experience (they are just different), or if you see that there is only one awareness here having all experiences, then you can hold this whole journey of life lightly, including holding all of the endless ways you can inquire and question lightly.

Since no experience is better than any other, the point of the inquiry is not to get rid of anything or get more of anything, but simply to discover what is happening. In the case of your deepest assumptions about life, you can explore, What are the beliefs that it does not even enter my mind to question? How do I hold a deep belief or assumption so that it does not seem possible for it to not be true? And in the more general exploration of all of your beliefs, you can not only ask what do I believe, but also ask what is the nature of belief itself? And ultimately, what is the nature of the awareness that experiences even the deepest beliefs? Does awareness need to be changed or fixed in any way? Awareness is the mother of all dragons! And good luck slaying that one!

Nice to hear from you my friend.

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The Radio of the Mind

Monday, 11 July 2011 14:36 Written by Nirmala

Someone used the contact form on here to ask the following:

What if thoughts dont come from us but to us, the brain being like a advanced radio, tuning in to a field of potential thought? What if thoughts are reading us as much as we are reading them? What if thoughts are aware? Would knowing this change our thinking and our attitude towards thoughts? Would it change our thoughts attitude towards us?

Here is my response:

My sense is that thoughts and also intuitions and insights come from many different sources, and the mind is like a radio that picks them all up. Many of the thoughts our mind picks up are simply triggered from our memory and so often they are of limited helpfulness in understanding this new moment. Some people are very sensitive and their "radio" even picks up other people's thoughts which may or may not even be relevant to their experience.

And then there are thoughts, or really insights and knowings, that come to us from deeper dimensions of our being. These can sometimes be profoundly helpful and liberating in the moment that they appear.

So how do we tune the "radio" of our mind to a useful and liberating station? It seems the mind just picks up all of the stations and plays every thought that arises. So perhaps the best we can do is to clearly discriminate between old conditioned thoughts that come to us from memory, and the deeper knowings that also appear in every person's awareness. By sorting out whether a particular thought or insight is very true or not very true, the various bits and pieces of information and intuition that appear in our minds are put into perspective. The important thing is to know how true all of our experiences are including thoughts and intuitions.

I would invite you to check out the free download of part two of my book, Living from the Heart, available here. It offers a simple direct way to sort out how true various thoughts, feelings, inspirations and insights are. Simply put, if something is true, it opens your heart and quiets the mind. If it is not so true, then it has the opposite effect of closing your heart and increasing the thoughts in your mind. Let me know if you find it helpful.

As for thoughts themselves being aware, I would say that everything is alive and aware and is affected by everything else. However, just as some things are more true than others, some forms of life have more awareness. Obviously a human has more awareness than a bug, and the bug has more awareness than a grain of sand. My sense is that thoughts are like incredibly small bugs with a very short life span. They hatch, mate and die in a flash. See if you can find the thought you were just having, or do you need to think a new thought? So even if a thought has awareness, it does not exist long enough as a separate form to evolve much or be affected by much.

I hold all ideas lightly, and yet the biggest truth is that there is just one awareness here. All of the forms and identities that appear from thoughts to bugs to human beings to galaxies are temporary expressions of this one awareness that is dreaming (thinking?) them all into existence. What a beautiful dream it is!

Staying Awake Until Grace Comes

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To Slay the Dragons of Our Core Beliefs

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The Radio of the Mind

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