Water Does Not Care What Is In It.

"Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil."

-- Marcus Aurelius

Fred Davis recently said "THIS has to be enough". He is of course referring to What Is.

There is only what is, as I have said before, because there is no such thing as what is not. We can only have what we have. We can only experience what we experience. So where does that leave us?

Right here. Right now.

This has to be enough. There is nothing else. As long as you have desires for something that does not exist, for something other than that which is, then you will create your own suffering.

That is what ego does; one could almost say its job is to do that.

The ego was a survival mechanism. I suspect its original design was all to do with creating circumstances in which the organism could survive, even if that meant banding together with other organisms. The problems arise when it begins to believe that it really exists.

It's like when you go to watch a movie. 

You know you're just watching a movie. You know you paid your entrance fee. You know you are sitting there with drinks and snacks and perhaps in the company of friends, but in order to enjoy the experience you deliberately forget all that. You become so involved in the story playing out on the screen before you that you forget that it is not you. You forget that it is a story. You become fully immersed in the story and, usually, quite enjoy it.

Life is the same. 

The character, the ego, the little me – whatever you want to call it – is just a story. 'What you really are' is here to experience that story. There is nothing wrong with not waking up and realising that it is a story, because that would be what is happening and there is never anything wrong with what is happening. The whole universe is perfect just the way it is. That which you truly are understands this. The ego does not.

Awakening, Enlightenment, Unity with God – whatever you want to call it – is simply what you are when you realise that it is just a story.

There is no you. There never was a you. There never will be a you. There is only this, right here, right now.

Egos spend the majority of their time living in a world that does not exist, a world of their own imagining. If only I had more money. If only I had a better job. If only I wasn't so fat. Feel free to add your own to the list. It is all just a list of things that do not exist created by ego, because it does not think that This is enough.

Enlightenment is not a state of permanent bliss, because enlightenment is not a state.

It is very nice to sit around and feel total bliss, but total bliss is just an arising in what you truly are. To what you truly are there is no difference between Hitler and Schindler.

There is no good or bad, they are just points on the same sliding scale of okayness.

Opinions, beliefs, positions, values and stories are all the realm of the ego. They are all arisings. You, whatever you are, observe all those things and therefore are not those things.

Your true nature accepts everything just as it is. 

I do not know what it is, I just know that it is perfect.

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.