The Gift Life Is Delivering to Your Door

Saturday, 21 August 2010 16:22 Written by Nirmala

Someone wrote and asked if life is predetermined or if their friend who uses manifesting techniques successfully is onto something. He ended with the following words:

I so want to just be, be the truth of what is. I feel the resonance in your words and voice, as well as in other's. I am choosing to share with others the deep truth of what I can feel and know. However, my life doesn't reflect the world's understanding of a successful person. How can this imperfect self help others?

I feel caught in ego's separation, yet, i deeply know the truth. I want to have an abiding wakening and live as this truth other than just as a mental knowing. I want it to be realized. I have the recent understanding to meet everything directly, and although this sounds like a conceptual tactic, I want to face the truth of the moment to moment experience fully.

I responded:

Your message has so much wisdom and perspective that I could just send it back to you as the answer to your own questions. Your sense of wanting to meet every moment is all that is really required. Our lives are not so much pre-determined (although from a certain perspective it looks that way) as much as they are orchestrated moment to moment by a very wise and loving presence. It is so good at creating this beautiful life and everything in it that it does not need a plan. It just improvises everything.

Everything you experience, and everything your friend who believes we create our reality experiences is a part of this wonderful improvised creation. It might help reassure you to hear about a visit we had from a Harvard researcher who is studying consciousness as described on another blog post on here called "No Formula for Spiritual Awakening."

He shared some stories about how people who are at the point where manifesting techniques are appropriate for them can use them succesfully. But another person who is not at the same point can use the same technique and it actually makes their life work out worse! And even someone who has used manifesting techniques successfully for years can find themselves at a point where it no longer works and even backfires and seems to cause their life to fall apart.

However, he had not yet found any formula that explains nondual consciousness. That can arise when your life is working and when it is not working at all.

I would invite you to welcome all of the experiences, including when you are apparently able to heal or transform your own or others wounding from this life, and when you are not able to help yourself or another at all. These are all opportunities to discover more of the depth, richness and mystery of this crazy and beautiful life. Whenever we can serve in this way, what a blessing. And when we cannot serve to relieve our own or other's suffering, then the blessing is found in the depth that the suffering takes us to. Sometimes our heart needs to be broken open to reach the deepest core.

The awakening you want so deeply is unfolding here as your entire life including every experience. This life you are living is exactly how it is happening in your particular case. No need to compare yourself to others except to notice what else is possible. But however it turns out for you each day is the gift life is delivering to your door.

I hope this helps.

2 Comments

Revised and Expanded Free Ebook

Saturday, 14 August 2010 15:56 Written by Nirmala

That Is That: Essays About True Nature

by Nirmala (revised and expanded edition, released August, 2010)

We have just released a new expanded and revised edition of That Is That: Essays About True Nature. It is now made up entirely of unique material not found in Nirmala's other books, and now includes the essay, Beyond No Self which was offered separately before.

Here is a description from the back cover:

"That is That is a collection of articles and answers to questions posed by spiritual seekers. It captures the essence of spiritual inquiry and provides the reader with a real transmission of Presence on every page. It is much more than an exposition about our true nature as infinite consciousness, it offers an experiential exploration of who we really are, not only through the transmission in the words, but through the many thoughtful questions it raises. Nirmala's warm-hearted and accepting presence makes it possible to drop into the space he so eloquently describes, where peace, love, and joy abide. He is a master at helping you fall in love with life and the many expressions of the one Being we all are."

Available now as a free ebook or as a printed paperback:

- Free PDF download of the entire nondual book

- More free ebooks by Nirmala

- Read an excerpt online entitled Beyond No Self

- Free download in various other ebook formats including epub, mobi, and palm doc

Purchase paperback That Is That for $11.95 on Amazon

Here are sample quotes from the book

"Something means what we decide it means. This whole life is make-believe: We make up our beliefs and then believe them. We make it all up as we go, and each moment we are also free to make up a new story. We are free to decide what this means and what that means and also free to change our mind and decide the opposite is true. So when you think enlightenment is important, then it is important. When you think enlightenment is meaningless, then it is meaningless. When you think what you do is useless, then it is useless. When you think you must go through an ego death, then it will seem like you have to go through an ego death. I'm not saying that you decide what happens. I'm saying that when something happens, you decide what it means. Meaning is like a work of art that we paint with our thoughts and that we are constantly retouching and recreating. This doesn't mean that things have no meaning, unless you decide they have no meaning; it just means that the meaning something has is the meaning we give it."

"Space is the softest, most allowing, most tender thing there is. Right now, it is holding you and all your resentments and doubts in a totally accepting embrace. Notice that space is allowing your resentment. Space does nothing to stop you from feeling or even expressing resentment. What a strange and ever-present quality space is! It isn't choosy. It doesn't love this and not love that. It loves and allows everything! Once you notice that space allows your resentment totally, then you might be able to notice that there's also space for the people or actions you're resenting. Space allows them to do the things you resent, and it allows you to resent them."

"There is just one source for everything. Everything comes from an infinite potential within existence itself. Don't take my word for it-reach out and touch something and, for a moment, just sense its pure existence, the simple fact that it exists. Then sense even more deeply to feel the source of the object. See if you can sense how it is coming into existence freshly in this moment. In every instant, it is a completely new version of itself. You may be able to sense its source directly, not with your mind or through logic, but with your fingertips and your Being."

(Please note: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License)