Know Thy Self

An exploration of the wisdom and the unexpected gift in allowing yourself to be misunderstood, to be projected upon, to even be demonised in the eyes of someone else, maybe even everyone else... - To not need to defend, to not push away, to not take offence, to not assert their wrongness or your rightness, but instead to use it as a mirror, to take the picture life presents fully in. Yet to do this is the type-rope walking of a very delicate line. To not allow it to get sticky within you, identified, calcified. To not take it personally. To not take ownership except in the context of finding it to be a reflection of something already there in you that needs to be seen, met and transmuted. What you may find might not even be what's being pointed to by the other. So let yourself be along for the ride, welcoming all twists and turns. This is the difference between holding it lightly and easily in your Being, and carrying the heavy load and burden of "I am this", of ownership, of misidentification. To be brave enough to hold it with love and the light/wisdom of seeing, to…

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Know Yourself – Simply As This | Interview with Susan Hill

Interview for the April 17th, 2021 Summit "Know Yourself - simply as this" by Susan Hill, of WoW Peace. The title of the talk was "Know Yourself - Integrating Humanity" where we talk about knowing yourself as the all-encompassing awareness. And how integrating all of life is a process and a healing of the body mind.

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Keep Quiet; The Seeing Is the Doing

Keep quiet, let the mind flail around and burn itself out with exhaustion... you don't need to go to war with life, trying to subdue and submit it to some image of how it 'should be'. Eventually you’ll come to recognise the constant ground in all of this is you, awareness you. Awareness that holds within it all the multitudes and flavours of experiencing, effortlessly without tire. Keep quiet and this shall be known, the seeing is the only doing necessary, all else that you find yourselves doing is in support of that... every practice, every book, every teaching, every circumstance that life throws at you, every dead-end, every challenging relationship, every 'wrong' turn... all in support of life showing you the nature of life, showing the groundless ground of Being - Awareness. Consciousness. Self.

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Clues

What is the ground of your experience?
Is it the world?
Is it the body?
Is it the thoughts?
Is it the sensations?

Or is it the simplest form of non-conceptual awareness, aware of all of *this*.

Search for the gap in between the content. (more…)

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Personal ‘I’ vs Awareness ‘I’

There’s an assumption that when I say “you are awareness/consciousness” that I’m talking of I-personal/ego/individual I/you. Firstly I want to clarify that when I speak of I/me/you in conjunction with awareness I’m talking of the non-personal ‘I’ that is consciousness. That is awareness. The you (big Self, I-I) that IS awareness-consciousness.

It seems to be common that when someone realizes that who they took themselves to be (the mind-body ‘I’) is untrue, it’s seen that at the heart of experiencing there is nothingness/emptiness/awareness. This is true. But I urge you to not stop there, look/inquire deeper into this recognition.

(more…)

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The Humanness of Existence

The utter humanness of existence cradles in it every possible emotion, sensation, feeling & thought. We can’t run from that, we can’t hide from that, we can’t avoid or resist that, and nor should we want to.

It’s our human experiencing that reveals the ever-changing world of perception that we live in – our ‘world’ is constantly being born and reborn in every moment. Embrace this change, embrace it as the play and display of awareness-consciousness (you). This play is set on the stage of pure open, unconditioned and ineffable awareness-consciousness. (more…)

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You Are Aware

You are the awareness that’s witnessing the comings & goings of life. You have no qualities, no attributes other than you are aware – you’re not an object that can be described. There’s nothing that can show up that can disturb you - for you just ARE. Notice that you're observing even the thought or feeling of an 'I' that wants to identify what's showing up and why it's showing up. In this recognition you realize that anything can show up, nothing can be avoided or gotten rid of, life doesn’t need to ‘look’ a certain way, because you are simply aware. You are that awareness, you have always been awareness, you cannot NOT be awareness, for you are aware. Notice that all that I say is not a prescription for something to do, rather is a description of how it is; you need no instruction or ‘practice’ to be aware. And so you say “but it’s not always like this”, but it is… are you not always here, always aware? Do you-awareness need anything, does the feeling of peace, space, bliss or lack of thoughts need to be there in order for you to be aware? Are you not aware even when sadness or anger…

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Nothing More Than This

There’s nothing more than this…. and yet people spend their lives convinced that they’re missing something, not getting something, not where they’re supposed to be, not doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Pretty much focused on everything BUT This, what IS, the present-moment experience.

There’s something in the mind that’s compelled to go with the seeking energy for that ‘greener grass’ over yonder. This constant looking/seeking motion that pulls your attention out of the very now is derived from the attachment to the idea of how life ‘should’ look. Ultimately this is where suffering shows up, where there’s a disparity between how life should look, i.e. your expectations, and the reality of what is actually happening. But if for a moment you can set aside this seeking, this outward searching movement to fulfill expectations and desires, and look to your own experience prior to words and descriptions in this very moment – is there anything lacking here? (more…)

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Awareness

No questions No answers No effort No doing No practice No deciding No letting go No coming No going No descriptions No disconnection No suffering No story No universe No god No you No me Awareness is aware

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Go Beyond the Qualities, to the Recognition of You

When you experience an awakening – the recognition of the primordial nature of awareness, you’re centerless center; often what comes with it are things such as relief, spaciousness, invincibility, freedom, few thoughts and even bliss. It’s quite easy to then start identifying with those qualities as something that has to be present to indicate your new found ‘awakening’.

This can lead you down the path of trouble, because as you go about your life you’ll naturally start to bump into the different flavours of living, some nice and some not so nice. You might start experiencing what you might call ‘afflictive thoughts’ or intense feelings & sensations. Maybe the feeling of invincibility and spaciousness feels like it has lessened or disappeared. This can lead you feel that you’ve lost ‘it’. You then try all that you can think of to get back to those wonderful qualities that you experienced; all the while trying to avoid the shitty thoughts and feelings that are coming up. (more…)

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The Obsession with Understanding

The obsessive need to understand enlightenment or anything for that matter, is the very thing that’s stopping you from experiencing this present moment in its fullness. When resting in the present moment it’s seen that there’s nothing missing and no needs are unmet; there’s no understanding that you need that could add or take away from what you essentially are.

You are that which sees everything, you are what is being sought. There’s no understanding that would bring about this realization. Understanding is only ever something that the mind ‘gets’. That’s not to say that some understanding might come; but you as consciousness are prior to any understanding. The understanding arises within you, not the other way around. You exist before any understanding. (more…)

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The Shortcomings of Teachings…Or Not

Anything other than the recognition that you are formless awareness is born of the mind. There’s nothing that can adequately capture the indescribable awareness that you are. To try and do so will always fall short somehow. But it doesn’t mean that these pointings can’t be useful, that they can’t lead you to the doorstep of recognition, it’s for grace to push you over the threshold. To simply dismiss the importance and power of any or all teachings is to miss the possibility that even a woefully inadequate pointing, that is full of concepts and occlusions may in fact give way to a greater seeing. (more…)

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