Awakening Is Not Like Baking A Cake

It’s so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you have to do XY&Z in order to realise the Self…. as if it's like a cake that you put all the exact ingredients in the bowl in the right order and put it in the oven and ping, you have yourself a perfect cake. Except it doesn’t work like that, that's the mind’s imaginings of what it is. What I’m talking about is prior to the mind, and therefore can’t be grasped by the mind. Anything the mind thinks it knows or understands about this is just the mind imagining what it thinks. It’s not an adding to, it’s not a changing of, its a realisation of that which you cannot NOT be, that which you already are, that which you always were, that which you always will be whether you realise it or not. It’s like waking up from a dream; before… you were in the dream and you didn’t realise that you were dreaming, but you were. Then you wake up and realise it was a dream. It doesn’t change the dream, the dream is still there, playing out at it was, but you realise you…

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Taste the Strawberry

I’m pretty much an open book these days, but I’m not some kind of spiritual google that people can ask any amount of questions and I give them the answers. Someone on twitter recently asked me “…does that mean people have no individual purpose?” A perfectly normal and unassuming question as questions go, but all of these questions, do they need to be answered? If you have the answer will it stop all questions, or will it just satisfy that particular question for a second then another one will fill it’s place? Is there a question that will end all questions? Is there an answer that will end all questions and answers? Will this cycle of questions and answers ever stop? Is there something in you that is nothing to do with questions and answers? (Wow, see how many questions I just asked there!!!) Throw out all questions, throw out all answers. They are just more of the same stuff, empty and meaningless. Keep quiet and see if any questions or answers come in this quietness of being. (more…)

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The Collision That Changed Everything

Two years ago today I collided with the Self, setting in motion the falling away of life as I thought I knew it to be.  I was smacked over the head with the realisation that who I took ’Imogen’ to be was false. There was in fact no identifiable 'solid' form of Imogen that could be found. It’s been quite a journey, a journey to realise that what I sought was always here, looking out at the unfolding of an apparent journey. Although I now see that that collision was ultimately a fleeting experience it was so dramatically felt that it changed everything. It changed my casual interest in spirituality into a search that left everything else in its wake. The abiding realisation of non-duality came about a year and half later. It’s been a constant learning and discovering of what it looks like to move in this life as a passenger rather than believing the illusion that I'm the driver. I’m still discovering the implications of this realisation and while all this may sound so far off and mystical, know that what I’m pointing to is in fact your very nature and you’re never NOT this. It’s just a matter…

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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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