Spacious Mind
Coaching
Coaching
Welcoming Life As-it-is:
Coaching, Conferences and Courses
Contemplative Dialogue based on Non-dual Buddhism and Advaita
Coaching, Conferences and Courses
Contemplative Dialogue based on Non-dual Buddhism and Advaita
Teachings
attraction and aversion:
"When you realize that you can leave every self-definition behind and still you
are, then you begin to see that these thoughts must not be what you
are. In other words, who are you when you are not thinking yourself
into existence? Who are you when you give up all thoughts, even the
ones you are not supposed to question, such as, "I am a human being. I
am a man, I am somebody's daughter or son?" You start to see that
when you are not thinking yourself into existence, who you have taken
yourself to be literally isn't there anymore. If this 'you' can
disapear and reappear as soon as you think it into existence, how real
is it?
.... Then, if you don't redefine this moment or rebox it in some concept, rethinking yourself into existence, your true state of being starts to present itself. What you really are begins to awaken. The true I am is so unbelievably empty. It's so free of everything you thought you were. It has no limitation. It has no definition.... All that is left is consciousness and it's not even that because that's a word."
Adyashanti
Emptyness Dancing
.... Then, if you don't redefine this moment or rebox it in some concept, rethinking yourself into existence, your true state of being starts to present itself. What you really are begins to awaken. The true I am is so unbelievably empty. It's so free of everything you thought you were. It has no limitation. It has no definition.... All that is left is consciousness and it's not even that because that's a word."
Adyashanti
Emptyness Dancing
“Without the present
there can’t be past or future.
Knowing the present,
Which is eternal,
is knowing the truth.”
Baba Hari Dass
"When we're resting in unconditioned mind, our conditioning - our age, sex, history, education, physical condition, and financial situation - no longer limits us. We find ourselves connected with everything within and around us, yet we're beyond being disturbed in any way. We transcend suffering not because our problems are solved, but because we experience a level of consciousness in which nothing is missing, a way of being that doesn't depend on the conditions of our mind, body, and life situation...
In the Vajrayana tradition of Buddhism this experience is called invincibility, or indestructibility. It's the only experience that's completely open, unstructured, and without content, which is why it is sometimes called contentless wisdom."
Peter Fenner
The Radiant Mind
The following link takes you to a wonderful article by my friend, Joel Agee. It was published in Tricycle in the Fall, 2008.
“This is it, and that’s the end of it. Give up the search for something to happen and fall in love, fall intimately in love with the gift of presence in What Is. Here, right now, is the seat of all you will ever long for. It is simple, and ordinary and magnificent. You see, you are already home.”
Tony Parsons
Are you looking for yourself in what you do? Are you attempting to add more to who you think you are? Are you compulsively striving toward the next moment and the next and the next, hoping to find some sense of completion and fulfillment?
The preciousness of Being is your true specialness. What the egoic self had been looking for on the level of the story - I want to be special - obscured the fact that you could not be more special than you already are now. Not special because you are better or more wretched than someone else, but because you can sense a beauty, a preciousness, an aliveness deep within.
When you are present in this moment, you break the continuity of your story, of past and future.Then true intelligence arises, and also love.
The only way love can come into your life is not through form, but through that inner spaciousness that is Presence. Love has no form."
Eckhart Tolle
If you expect your life to be up and down, your mind will be much more peaceful.
Lama Thubten Yeshe
When we truly hate what’s happening, our instinct is to flee from it like a house on fire. But if we can learn to turn around and enter that fire, to let it burn all our resistance away, then we find ourselves arising from the ashes with a new sense of power and freedom.
Raphael Cushnir
After all, what is so scary about things just as they are? If we see things as they are, at least we know the truth. What should frighten us is denying things as they are.
Shyalpa Rinpoche, a contemporary Nyingma lama
“The older we get, the more likely we are to experience these moments of ‘cognitive dissonance,’ when self-image and reality contradict each other. Though this conflict is uncomfortable, it is a clear window into the place where we are clinging, and where we need to pay attention. Just as physical pain alerts us to trouble in the body, mental pain alerts us to where we need to be more conscious. In other words, our frustrations, anger, delusions, and so on become our greatest helpers in freeing ourselves from suffering. They point to where the Ego is trapped, and remind us to begin to shift our identity to the Soul level. They show where we are resisting change, where we are time-bound, and where we need to grow beyond past conditioning.”
Ram Dass from Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing and Dying
“If you want reality to be different than it is, you might as well try to teach a cat to bark. You can try and try, and in the end the cat will look up at you and say, ‘Meow.’ Wanting reality to be different than it is hopeless. You can spend the rest of your life trying to teach a cat to bark.”
Byron Katie
