You Are That Which Observes

 “Whatever happens, happens to you by you, through you; you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive.”

― Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The trouble with most people's concept of Enlightenment is that they think it adds something to them. It doesn't. The Ego wants to add things, to become more, to be important, to have a shiny "I Am Enlightened - Look At Me!" badge, but it can't.

YOU, the Ego, is that which is awoken from.

You never existed. You were just a construct, reliant on false memories, conveniently forgetting those gaps in time when you didn't exist because you forgot to pay attention to the thoughts.

Let me make that  clear again:

The little you, the Ego, CANNOT be enlightened, because it's not real.

For anyone who is still trapped in seeking and not understanding, Enlightenment takes things away, it does not add them. The truly enlightened know very little, because we are trying to express truth and truth cannot be expressed well in language.

What you truly are exists before language.

• You do not see, seeing happens.
• You do not taste, tasting happens.
• You do not touch, touching happens.
• You do not hear, hearing happens.
• You do not smell, smelling happens.
• You do not THINK, thinking happens.

You are as real as the 'it' in the phrase "It is raining".

Post-enlightenment brings with it the realisation that there is no 'do-er'. That life just happens and that you are not the body, or the mind, but you are the totality of everything.

You no longer 'know' anything that can be expressed well in language, because language cannot express that Truth. The best we can do is 'truthy' posts, like this one.

You don't need some super-experience of one-ness, some Samadhi High, because those are experiences, and they only happen to the ego. It just becomes something you understand, that you cannot find an edge to the real 'you'. That you cannot imagine a place in the universe where 'you' do not exist, because what you actually are contains the whole universe.

You truly are the Creator and Destroyer of all you perceive.

Nothing Has Ever Died

“All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant emptiness of spirit is to stop seeking something more or better or different, and to turn your attention inward to the awake silence that you are.” -- Adyashanti

Since the beginning of life, nothing has ever died.

This is not some strange philosophy. This is not some weird new-age belief. This is a simple, scientific fact. It also aligns nicely with the whole process of Enlightenment. I have never seen anyone else discuss this, although it is something that I have been teaching for years.

Think about what life is. Really think about it. Take several seconds or a minute and think about what creates life. Think about the biological process. Think about DNA. Think about how things reproduce.

If you have got all that in mind before we continue then the answer is obvious as to why nothing ever dies, nor ever has.

Some time way back in the evolutionary past a soup of amino acids came about, possibly in a warm vent, a hot bubbling pool, some heated mud. Those amino acids came together to form the first life.

That first life then, as it does now, self replicated by dividing its genetic material and making a copy. 

The simplest lifeforms in our world still do the same thing. Everything from amoeba up to bacteria. Also, if you give it some thought, this still applies to humans.

Leaving aside all our ancestors on the trail to becoming Homo Sapiens, ever since the first identifiable member of our species walked upon the earth they have replicated themselves in the same way. The host body creates a copy of its DNA. A sperm or an egg exists that is part of that host, created from the same genetic material as that host, alive inside that host. So the human divides itself and makes copies from its own material, its own flesh, its own self.

In our biological method of reproduction, the sperm from the male is introduced to the egg from the female to create a new life – but is it new? Isn't it really half of the male's self and half of the female's self? So as long as this reproduced version continues, then so does the male and so does the female. They have simply procreated by dividing their own cells and then allowing those cells to combine with those of another organism to which they are related.

I'm not talking about kissing cousins here, I mean in the simple fact that at some point they shared a common ancestor who divided its genetic material and passed it on in the same way and is therefore still alive in them.

So you take it to its logical conclusion and neither of them is a separate living being. 

They are formed of the genetic material from that common ancestor who still lives because all of her cells never died. That common ancestor can be traced back in a line through various species and forms of reproduction all the way back to that primordial soup, that bubbling mud, that heated pool and those amino acids.

The original life which formed in that pool never died – it divided, it copied itself using its own material, its own flesh, its own life. That original life still exists in everything that is alive on this whole planet.

There is only One Life. One original ancestral mud pool. One life that has developed and adapted to whatever environment or situation it found itself in. One life that became you. One life that became me. One life that became the trees, the birds, the fish, the insects, the bacteria, the viruses and everything else that lives, however you understand that life to exist.

Nothing has ever died, because there is only One Thing going on.

Even Teachers Can Muddy the Waters

I created my own suffering yesterday.

For around 12 hours yesterday I was dealing with an ego issue, not reality. This was caused by a belief. Beliefs are never true, yet this one allowed me to cause my own suffering.

I was reading a book by an enlightened teacher yesterday wherein he mentioned what enlightenment is. Now, quite how this statement of his got into a book that was written by such an enlightened teacher surprises me. At the time, ego was looking over my shoulder reading the book and latched onto the description of enlightenment and the definition given by this enlightened teacher.

"Wait a minute! Mine wasn't like that! That must mean that I am not fully enlightened! I'm a fake!" Said the ego.

That's what ego does. Ego is not real, it only exists as beliefs, opinions, positions and stories. The problem is, we don't always realise that it is ego causing the issue.

I know I didn't.

I am still very new at this. I am still clearing stuff out and trying to get rid of old ego patterns as they arise. Everyone who is newly enlightened goes through this process. The teacher I was reading presented his enlightenment experience as being total and immediate Oneness with the Universe and seeing that nothing was other than him. Period.

I watched a video by Fred Davis where he didn't exactly call out some of these teachers on this claimed experience, but he didn't exactly not call them out either. He said that he was not saying their claims were BS, but neither was he saying that their claims were not BS.

My problem arose because the teacher's description of enlightenment and how it 'should' happen is just his belief. Whenever the word should appears in the sentence, that is an ego belief. I did not immediately realise this at the time. I was reading a work by an enlightened master, so my defences were down. My ego believes that Enlightened Masters know what they are talking about. There's the second belief. You put those two beliefs together and my ego immediately believes that we have just got it all wrong.

I sat with a group last night and during that sitting I finally broke completely free once again of the hold of the ego and saw reality. I became Awakeness. I Am Always Awakeness. Awakeness has no beliefs.

So what I am saying here, to any others in post-enlightenment who experience a similar situation, is that it doesn't matter what their enlightenment was like or what their claims might be about what enlightenment should be like because beliefs and comparisons are the realm of the ego and the ego is not real.

I am not going to define what enlightenment is yet again, because it has to be experiential. If your enlightenment is not like his (or my) enlightenment, who cares?

That is not just a flippant remark at the end there – ask yourself honestly, who is it that cares? I think you will find, as I did, that it is the false self, the ego, the fake character that you have played for the better part of your life.

Nobody said that shaking it off would be easy...

As the Mud Settles - Stay Awake!

But so long as you are separate from things, you need everything. To exist as a separate individual constitutes the entire problem. – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

In the biographies and Writings by the greats of Enlightenment it can seem that they are perfect and live in constant bliss, but in actuality that is not true.

Enlightenment brings contentment. This is not because all of your problems go away. Nothing in your external life changes. Whatever is, remains. The change comes about in your shift of perspective.

Problems simply become situations. – Adyashanti

Even though you are now awake, your ego still exists. An ego is a collection of beliefs, opinions, stories and so forth – all of which are fictitious. As long as the body unit continues to exist, the ego will continue to exist and it will try to drag you back into the dream. That is its function. The ego was created to deal with the dream, by the dream, for the dream.

Watch a newborn infant. They have not yet developed an ego. They have not yet learned about the imaginary separation which they will be taught later. They have no language, they only have Actual Experience. Seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, sensing is their whole world. They are Awakeness.

Later they will learn their name and the names of those around them and those labels will lead them to believe that they are separate from the world, and thus their ego will be born. The ego's job is to ensure that the particular unit in question, the body and personality which it now believes in, get what it thinks they need.

The process of awakening is the process of seeing that the ego is a fictitious character which we believed was us. Once it is seen for a fiction then the separation that it believes in is also seen as a fiction. The power of the ego is broken but in order for that power to stay broken for the rest of the life of that unit, Awakeness must be continually experienced.

Any thought patterns that arise which contain beliefs or opinions or stories are coming from the ego. Particular warning signs to look out for are the existence of words such as "could, would, should". Feelings will arise and some of these will be the result of the ego's machinations.

If Awakeness perceives a raging flood approaching, the unit's defence mechanism will fire up and a quick appraisal will show that the body-mind unit seems to be in physical danger so a physical response is appropriate. The ego will come up with suggestions for the best way to avoid the danger. Safeguarding the body unit makes sense to Awakeness also, so a response will be selected and action will be taken.

If someone in an email is taunting/mocking the unit, the body-mind unit will fire up a defence mechanism and a quick appraisal by Awakeness will show that the body unit is in no physical danger. The ego on the other hand will see this as a threat and will try to amplify the unit's defence mechanism and will begin to plan its response. Thoughts will start to fly. The ego will desire to chew on those thoughts to produce more thoughts and 'bad feelings'.

If you are fooled by the ego, you will drop back into the dream and you will respond as the ego wants to. You will feel the ego's anger that someone would dare to criticise a being as perfect as you obviously are.

Yes, it will even claim your awakeness as a status symbol for itself, even though the ego can never be awake. You know that is ridiculous, but that is how the ego works. It will come out with sentences like: "You can't say that about me. I am an Enlightened Being. You know nothing. I bet you don't even sit and do zazen!" (Laughing again - I've actually had that one appear)

You will create your own suffering.

You learn to recognise the ego's responses and when you detect one, you do not fight it. If you fight the ego you are giving it the recognition it desires – you are treating it as though it exists. All internal language is the ego talking to the ego.

What you then do instead is experience Awakeness once more.

Take a deep breath and look around without labelling, without language, just seeing What Is. Seeing that there is no separation. There is no other. That the illusion of all the other units is just an illusion and that every one of them is perfect just the way it is, and is acting perfectly from the highest spiritual knowledge which it possesses.

When you view the world as Awakeness, the ego naturally fades.

If you find a situation still exists then, as Awakeness, sit.

Examine it. Ask if it is Real. Ask if it is True. Ask WHO is having the issue. It is always the ego/character – not You.

Vigilance, Constant-Awake-Vigilance is the way forward.