Passage through the
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The Self
Knowing Who You Are
What if feeling depressed in an abusive |
Author David Hoefer
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Become What You Are Author David Hoefer says, "I appreciate Watts insights into who we are, really." ISBN: 1570629404 |
THREE: The Way of Zen; Nature, Man, and Woman; Psychotherapy East and West I found Watts scholarly depiction of Zen Buddhism, Art, and Religion to be insightful and profound - very much worth the read. ISBN: 0394419049 |
The Gnostic Gospels Pagels makes profound comparisons between early and orthodox Christianity. It provides perspective for the beliefs, attitudes and reactions I find myself engulfed in. ISBN: 0394502787 |
Practicing The Power of Now Tolle s insight and constructive exercises support the awareness that takes us from who we are trying to become to being our true self and knowing it. ISBN: 0340822538 |
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Stillness Speaks A good book that will help you appreciate Tolle s numerous reflections on awareness and the self. ISBN: 0340829745 |
Tao Te Ching Perhaps the most meaningful translation of the Tao ever written. ISBN: 0061142662 |
Essential Rumi This twelfth century poet eloquently expresses the experience of awareness, and is a pleasure to read. ISBN: 0062509586 |
The Awakening of Intelligence A profound discussion on thought, ego, and awareness. ISBN: 0380456745 |
I could say I know we are all divine and you may already believe that this is true. But believing we are divine is not the same as knowing we are divine.
Believing we are divine actually blocks the experience of being divine. It is an affirmation that creates a feeling of divinity while sidestepping the fears and unknowns that precede any true experience.
A true experience brings with it a true knowing. An experience has feelings associated with it - but the experience is not the feeling. Knowing I am divine, for example, does not mean that I feel divine. Instead I feel joy, exhilaration - happiness.
Knowing I am divine does not require repeated prayers and affirmations. It requires no effort. I am content simply to look ever deeper into being, itself.
A true experience comes from standing still - doing nothing that interferes with the information arising within us. Our slightest reaction alters it, and we are reacting all the time.
Scientists go to extremes to avoid contaminating evidence - not allowing their own involvement to alter what they are looking at. They simply want to know.
To know, they have to allow what they are looking at to show them. Science is as much concerned with how it knows as it is with what it knows.
The notion of conducting an experiment designed to support our own bias is absurd. We gain the satisfaction of knowing we are right while remaining lost in the very ignorance that prompted our investigation - yet this is what we typically do when we look for the truth of our self.
Everything in life arises in conjunction with everything else. Every living cell is connected to every other life form. Every thought is derived from every other thought. Light arises from darkness as darkness arises from light.
If we suppress one aspect of our lives we suppress all aspects of our lives.
To know our self we have to allow all of the evidence and all of the feelings.
To experience our feelings we have to stand still - stop reacting, suppressing, averting - but how do we do that? How do we stand still - become the observer - when our attempt to be still is just another reaction?
Think about it. If I'm discontented and quiet myself in order to find contentment, I'm back to creating a better "me" so that I can feel better.
Awareness can have no motive. The moment we do one thing to get something else, we are back to designing our life - trying to achieve this with that.
Standing still will allow my divinity to arise, but until it arises, I have no idea what divinity is. Saying it is such and such is just another presumption or belief taken
on to achieve a feeling or assurance without facing the sorrow, fear, often depression arising from the darkness that is also within me.
There is an infinite aspect to standing still. Standing still allows infinite reflection. A commitment to be with and observe whatever, out of infinite possibilities, is revealed.
To know oneself one must be willing to allow the darkness for as long as darkness lasts - not knowing if or when it will end. Not knowing if our worst fears about ourselves will be sustained.
We have to remain open to the reflections that come to us, triggered by the feelings and information arising from within us - triggered by the reactions of life and others to us.
To know who we are we have to care about what is true.
ForeSite
© 2010 John Clark Craig and
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