Why
rest, what are the benefits?
What
is resting as awareness?
What is awareness?
I
have negative thoughts, afflictive states, uncomfortable
sensations etc. I feel something is not right.
How
can I rest with my negative thoughts, emotions and experiences?
How
can I gain confidence in awareness?
I
feel the impulse to change my afflictive states, negative
thoughts. What can I do?
What
does it mean to not change anything?
How
do I know if I am resting?
How
can I have easy, loving relationships? How do I relate to
those who are not resting?
How
can I make good decisions?
Why rest, what are the benefits?
The Great Freedom Teaching invites you on a marvelous journey
into a vast resource of peace, happiness, and skillfulness
that exists within you. It’s a journey that only you
can take. No one else can do it for you. However, in the
Great Freedom Teaching you’ll find a constant guide
along the way, exact directions and instructions, and a
global community of support for adopting one simple change
that makes life easy.
By repeating brief moments of awareness, many times, our
attentiveness to the presence of awareness increases. More
and more, we experience warmth, ease, compassion, a balanced
outlook, innovative thinking, creativity, and an exceptional
ability to make good decisions and solve problems. A simple
word for this is “wisdom.” Our thoughts, emotions,
speech, and actions begin to spontaneously focus on the
welfare and benefit of everyone, not just on ourselves.
This innate ability to be at ease, wise, balanced, and compassionate
is discovered when we relax the mind’s focus on points
of view. As the mind relaxes into awareness, points of view
are recognized to be the dynamic energy of awareness.
A point of view is anything that occurs in the mind. It
can be a thought, emotion, sensation, or intuition, and
it can relate to inner or outer events. Points of view are
anything that can be seen, felt, enacted, intuited, or experienced
in any other way. Awareness is either involved in points
of view, or is naturally at ease. When awareness is involved
in points of view, we forget how to relax and how to rest
naturally as awareness.
The most important choice we have to make in each moment
of life is: the choice of how we use awareness. If we choose
to use our awareness to describe everything, we get lost
in descriptions, and we find ourselves on a roller coaster
ride of thoughts, emotions, and other experiences. If we
choose instead to let awareness simply be for brief moments,
we increasingly enjoy wisdom, compassion, clarity and a
balanced view.
Resting in awareness is best, because we directly experience
freedom from worry and concern. We’re better able to
be of benefit to ourselves, family, community, and to the
world. When we rest naturally in awareness, we tap into
our innate strengths, gifts, and talents and contribute
them to the benefit of all.
To rest or not to rest: that is the question!
What is resting as awareness?
What is awareness?
What does it mean to be aware; what is awareness? Just stop
thinking for a moment, stop thinking. That is awareness;
alert vigilance, alert cognizance, restful alertness that
has nothing going on within it; that is awareness. Now awareness
is required equally for no thinking and thinking. But when
we take that first moment of awareness without thinking,
and we repeatedly take a short moment of awareness, then
we have more moments of awareness every day. As we have
more moments of awareness, awareness is no longer a moment
of not thinking.
By taking that short moment of awareness without thinking
we begin to see that awareness is required for all thinking,
including not thinking, because you see, even the term non-thinking
is a thought. Awareness is required for everything we know,
everything we’re aware of: just like we’re aware
of the bird chirping outside, or aware of the sound of the
ocean. Hear it? That’s it. There isn’t anything
else, so don’t look for some fantastically altered
state, and don’t look for esoteric oddities that are
going to preoccupy your day. That will only lead you into
an extreme.
First of all, that there is nothing required but brief moments
repeated many times. That all we are doing is acknowledging
the native state of everything anyway, when we take that
short moment. It doesn’t need to be accumulated, because
it already is, so we are just acknowledging it repeatedly,
just as we didn’t acknowledge it, so it didn’t
seem to be there, so when we acknowledge it repeatedly,
it becomes evident. It’s as simple as that. What becomes
evident is that in this brief moment, everything is appearing
just as it is, without any kind of descriptive framework.
Everything that appears just is the dynamic energy of this
moment that is alert and cognizant of itself. There is just
this moment that is alert and cognizant of itself, that’s
it.
When we make a 100% commitment, we’re saying, “Yes,
nature is as it is. Everything is as it is, and I am committed
to being in complete alignment with that. I’m committed
to being completely absorbed into reality itself, completely
absorbed into the very nature of everything as it is. I’m
willing to have all my ideas about everything outshone by
the light of my own awareness.”
In the simple way, it’s like having a talk with a small
child. You are having a little talk with yourself. “Honey,
do you want to feel better or do you want to feel worse”?
“If you just rest, you will feel better. If you don’t,
you will feel worse.”
It’s as simple as that. If someone had talked to us
like that when we were kids, then no one would be in that
mode. It’s very, very simple. It doesn’t need
to be made anymore complicated than that.
When we begin to rest as awareness, then it seems like there’s
resting as awareness and then there’s all the thoughts—like
a tiger watching its prey. However, we don’t have to
worry about any of that—the merging or if it’ll
happen or any of that. If we just continue to return to
the ease that is at the basis, very naturally and very quickly
we will arrive at the point where it won’t be two any
longer. We won’t be even able to say when that happened
or anything else. It’s so organic and natural to our
being. When we acknowledge who we are and return to that
repeatedly—rather than getting caught only in the thought,
its label, and its proliferation—then it very swiftly
becomes totally obvious. Now, it does require just this
simple practice: listening until conviction dawns, or resting
naturally, or a combination of the two.
What has no cause and what requires no effort cannot be
brought about by trying to cause it or effort for it. It’s
already accomplished, already naturally present effortlessly
in the here and now, the pure presence of the here and now,
the complete perceptual openness of the here and now. This
is the basis of everything.
To have complete perceptual openness means to relax our
perception into wide-open spaciousness with no need to close
in on any thought, emotion, object, or experience to make
sense of what’s happening. When we completely relax
our attention from its habitual pinpointed focus, we see
everything as it is: a limitless, seamless expanse of changeless
pure awareness, in which myriad ephemeral forms of awareness
appear and disappear. Most of us have learned to fix our
attention on whatever is appearing and to describe it as
if it had a separate existence. However, when we do so,
we immediately disconnect from our natural openness and
collapse into the idea of a separate self that relies on
thought to describe what’s going on. When we have this
individualized thinking and the fear-based emotional field
that thinking creates, then we’re very restricted and
limited to that emotional field. We live on the head of
a pin when we do that, and that’s a very cramped and
uncomfortable space!
We keep it simple: we keep it totally simple. Everything
that appears is a point of view appearing within the pure
view of awareness. That’s it.
I have negative thoughts, afflictive
states, uncomfortable sensations etc. I feel something is
not right.
I invite you to put a complete stop to the addiction to
labeling each and every occurrence. When we persist in labeling
ourselves and others, we engage in a machine-like war within
ourselves. In doing so, we judge certain of our appearances
to be good and others to be bad, and we become like robots
sorting thoughts: “These are the good ones, and these
are the bad ones; I’ve got to get more good ones, and
I’ve got to get rid of the bad ones. I’ve got
to show everybody else what my good ones are, so they will
accept me, and then maybe I can think that I am acceptable.”
Beyond all the extremes, beyond the labels of good and bad,
is wisdom. Wisdom does not need anything to be good; it
is already wholly positive in and of itself.
Come to a complete stop and enrich yourself and the whole
world with the awareness that’s at the basis of everything.
No one is dependent on any label to be. Being is, regardless
of labels. The only self-essence of any label is forever
flawless awareness, so why not look at everything from the
vantage of awareness rather than through the foggy filters
of labels? The essence of your own being doesn’t need
anything to prop it up—it simply is, so relax and enjoy!
Please don’t be mean to yourself any longer. I really
ask you this from my heart.
Just allow everything to be as it is, as you would in any
other moment. Don’t force anything—just relax.
Whatever the thoughts, emotions, and sensations are, they’re
the unconfined capacity and creativity of awareness. They’re
inseparable from awareness, just as the brilliance of a
diamond is inseparable from the diamond itself.
It’s much easier to just rest as awareness and let
everything be as it is. No matter what appears, it’s
like a mirage. Like a line drawn in water, it is its own
undoing and will vanish naturally. There isn’t a single
thing that needs to be done about anything that appears.
We don’t need anything to make the clouds go away;
they disappear in and of themselves. They come from space,
they are space during their duration, and they disappear
into space. The space remains unaffected, and that’s
what we really are: aware pure space. The coming, staying,
and going are all space as well. So, what can we say? There’s
nothing going on. There’s nothing to react to. When
we just let go in evenness, then life becomes a lot easier,
and we don’t need so much for anything to change. In
letting everything be as it is, we open up to the space
of profound insight and the ability to act skillfully. If
we don’t let everything be as it is by the power of
resting as awareness, then we’ll never be in touch
with this level of insight and skill.
In the unhindered space of awareness, whatever comes, just
as it arises, there is nothing exact or precise, not any
reality that can be found to exist. By maintaining short
moments of awareness, many times, you realize that the whole
world of description comes into being moment by moment.
Outside that moment there is no way to really examine anything
and prove that it exists; and that moment cannot be captured.
So even in that moment, whatever is there can’t be
shown to exist either. Do you see what I am saying? When
you see this moment to moment in your own perception, you
get a firsthand experience, the instinctive realization
of what you are, which is all of this: The moment, pure
presence, unhindered, alert, cognizant – that’s
it. The experience of everything being up and down, that
evens out in awareness.
By relying on short moments of awareness, repeated many
times, it guarantees the authentic naturalness of awareness.
Initially, we are not at all familiar with awareness and
there are no thoughts we can have that are going to make
us instinctively realize it. So, by just resting all mental
processes, including the ideas about the body and mind and
being somebody, this allows us to briefly, super-completely,
spontaneously, and naturally moment-to-moment acknowledge
awareness in an uncontrived way, In this way, we become
convinced. We become convinced of the efficacy and the power
of it by its results in our life. There wouldn’t be
any other way for us to become convinced. Our confidence
grows when we see the results of awareness in our life.
It can’t come about in any other way.
In order to get along in life, we don’t need to rely
on descriptions. The most powerful way we can be in life
is entirely free of descriptions. It’s entirely beyond
descriptions yet it can use all descriptions effortlessly
and enjoy them thoroughly. The phenomenal world cannot be
fully and completely enjoyed unless there is familiarity
with the nature of the mind. In becoming familiar with the
nature of the mind, then life can be completely enjoyed
in all of its aspects from the wonderful parts of life to
the things that aren’t wonderful at all. There’s
a deep gratitude and sense of wonder at what occurs no matter
what it is.
This is important because it’s this that we can count
on. We can’t really count on anything else. It’s
important to count on what is immediately beneficial in
our human life and what ensures our well-being. That’s
what’s important to count on; what is immediately beneficial
and ensures our well-being right now, not at some point
in the future, right now, immediately beneficial right now,
ensures our well-being.
How can I rest with my negative
thoughts, emotions and experiences?
We have a very easy choice. It’s the choice of continuing
to describe and perpetuate stories based on an inaccurate
perception of our identity, or getting to know the awareness
that is the sole source and basis of all these descriptions.
When we rest as awareness for short moments, many times
and just allow everything to be as it is, we’ll realize
what wisdom is. We’ll understand the true nature of
existence. The clear light of wisdom begins to dawn in us,
and we can start to laugh for having taken ourselves so
seriously! In that complete relaxation is revealed the naturally
present awareness that is the mind’s basic space.
Thus the single practice in the Great Freedom Teaching is
short moments of awareness, repeated many times. By engaging
that instinctive realization for short moments, repeated
many times, the already accomplished, already present, instinctive
condition becomes obvious. It’s not going to come about
by trying to change yourself in any way. It’s only
going to be realized by settling into what you already are.
Many people rest actively throughout the day for short moments
repeated many times. What that means is that something appears,
whether it’s a thought or emotion, a sensation or experience,
and rather than getting involved in the story about that
experience, initially the choice is made to rest as awareness,
to acknowledge awareness. to sustain the essence of awareness
rather than getting involved in all the old descriptions
and ideas that have been used to describe everything. That
is one way of practicing short moments repeated many times.
Another approach that some people use is simply listening
to the teachings and reading the teachings. Just by listening
to the downloads repeatedly, and reading the Teachings,
conviction dawns.
Everyday awareness is just everyday life itself. Since nothing
needs to change, there is no need to behave in any special
way or attempt to attain anything above and beyond what
you actually are. There should be no feeling of striving
to reach some "amazing goal" or "advanced
state." The timeless wisdom of awareness naturally
reveals its qualities in simply resting imperturbably in
all experience. There is no effort to make.
How can I gain confidence in
awareness?
Short moments repeated many times. Just that. And if you
want to examine how you’re doing, don’t look at
how far you have to go, look at how far you’ve come.
Keep the focus on yourself and look at how far you’ve
come rather than how far you have to go. So if you find
yourself in the midst of an afflictive state, don’t
worsen it by saying “Oh, this isn’t working. I’m
not resting. Resting is never going to help this afflictive
state. I keep doing it over and over again.” Don’t
go there. Those are all points of view too that have no
power or significance, so just rest. Allow everything to
be as it is.
Say, you had an incredible talent for baking bread, but
you had never baked bread in your life. You wouldn’t
know that you had a talent for baking bread, and once you
started to bake bread, you would get more and more familiar
with your talent for baking bread. So, awareness is similar
in that once it’s identified as the source of experience,
then by short moments of awareness, repeated many times,
there’s more and more awareness that is noticed in
one’s daily experience. It’s the source of that
experience. It’s seen that awareness is really the
mainstay or ground. It’s the absolute nature. If we’re
looking for human nature it’s not only the absolute
human nature but the absolute nature of everything.
It is in our practical day-to-day experience that we gain
confidence in awareness, as we go through each step of the
day. Whereas before we may have been relying on our points
of view or our perspectives that we gather in order to make
sense of reality, instead, we start to rely on awareness
rather than relying on any of those opinions that we’ve
gathered about the nature of reality. More and more we rely
on our own direct experience of awareness, our own instinctive
recognition of awareness, rather than relying on all the
opinions about everything, our own opinions and others.
Gaining confidence in awareness is like a wildfire because
when you’re first introduced to awareness that first
moment of recognition of awareness becomes the basis of
your experience. Then, if you return to short moments of
awareness it will encourage the flame of awareness to grow.
It will be like the breeze that fans the forest fire. As
more short moments of awareness become obvious then the
whole forest of points of view goes up in flames.
Short moments repeated many times, always works. It always
works. If it’s watered with a little bit of diligence
and commitment, then beautiful flowers grow. Awareness has
always been present. It’s just that you may have trained
yourself to not notice it. By taking short moments of awareness
in a totally uncontrived way repeated many times it does
become automatic. You begin to notice that what appears
within your awareness whether it seems internal or external
is actually an appearance of that awareness and poses no
threat and also poses no promise no matter what it is. This
is very, very clear.
Awareness is the balanced view and at the same time it is
all-powerful, it’s self-perfect. It doesn’t have
any characterizations or descriptions, qualifications or
quantifications, and so this that you mention is very, very
important. It’s key, because the more we gain confidence
in awareness the more we find ourselves able to do the undoable.
And the way that this comes about is when we feel that we
can’t do anymore, rather than stopping and saying,
“Oh I give up. I’m a victim of this point of view”,
we get support for resting if we’re not able to rest
and in that way we really gain confidence in the self-perfected
nature of awareness because we see that there really are
no boundaries or limits. There aren’t any restrictions.
Gaining confidence in this in one’s experience is the
very basis of mental stability. By the power of relaxing
the mind for short moments, many times, the naturally settled
nature of the mind and all phenomena becomes obvious at
all times. The key point of this practice is the release
of tension of belief and assumptions about the workings
of the mind that is demonstrated by this relaxed state.
The way to remain in this state is leaving point of view
as it is. When this key point is realized, it involves no
striving or effort. It is the zenith of understanding the
nature of the human phenomena. Rather than confining the
use of awareness to the reification of points of view, it
releases the effort and striving involved in this into its
already natural effortless state, eliciting the balanced
view of the true nature of phenomena. In its all-encompassing
perspective that includes all points of view within it,
it recognizes these as its own self-appearances that are
fundamentally free of any independent empowerment.
I
feel the impulse to change my afflictive states, negative
thoughts. What can I do?
So
if we are trying to alter disturbing emotions or our thoughts
or sensations or experiences in order to get to some payoff
that’s going to permanently relieve anxiety, then it’s
never going to happen with antidotes. The only way it can
occur is to get familiar with and gain confidence in the
basis of all disturbing states, all disturbing states are
due to awareness. Without awareness they would not be. Awareness
is their fundamental condition. There would be no way to
be aware of disturbing emotions without awareness. So rely
on that and that alone and don’t look to anything else.
That’s just the way it is.
Now, disturbing emotions are the seat of tremendous energy
and the seat of vitality, the seat of wisdom and the seat
of complete mental stability. And the complete mental stability
does not come about by forcing disturbing emotions out or
covering them over with some kind of antidote. Perfect mental
stability comes about by just simply allowing the disturbing
emotion to be as it is while resting as awareness.
By allowing the disturbing emotion to be as it is, which
is as resting as awareness, it is resting awareness, then
we recognize that resting awareness is the essence; it is
the causal structure of that disturbing emotion. When we
realize that then we can continue to rest, and as we rest
we see that this disturbing emotion is free in its own place.
It vanishes without a trace spontaneously; it spontaneously
self-releases without anything being done about it.
Troubling states will continue forever, and troubling states
are where you’ll find the instinctive realization.
That’s where your realization of awareness really gets
profound. It’s resting in those troubling states, just
allowing everything to be as it is, while you take comfort
in awareness. You don’t go into the thoughts or emotions
and encourage them in any way, you ground yourself in awareness
and just see how they spill out however they will.
It isn’t in figuring out what the behaviors and properties
of phenomena are that we’ll ever find any relief. So
we stop trying to figure it out when we really understand
the exact nature of phenomena. We stop figuring out how
this phenomenon relates to that phenomenon. We stop trying
to figure out how one thought relates to another thought.
We stop being swamped by our thinking and emotionality and
sensations and other experiences as being one that leads
to another. In other words, “I’m angry because
so and so punched me in the stomach, and now I’m going
to get him, or punch him back, or yell at him, or gossip
about him, or whatever it is.” You can see how we’ve
trained ourselves to go into that narrative of linking every
experience to the next one and making something out of it.
When we understand the exact nature of phenomena we do not
do that any longer. When we do not do that any longer, we
have increasing mental and emotional stability, just like
that, without any effort or anything needing to be done.
If we have some kind of urge come over us and we don’t
take those short moments repeated many times, whether it’s
a momentary urge or an urge that lasts off and on for months,
then we’ll never see that that urge is just an appearance
of awareness. If we go into indulging it or avoiding it
or replacing it with something else, then we’ll never
see that. But if we just allow everything to be as it is,
which is the utterly lucid basic space of awareness, then
we will see all clearly. We’ll see that everything
is free in its own place of basic space. Everyone is free
in their own place of basic space. There is no other place
than the basic space. All words, labels, phrases, no matter
what they are, are the place of basic space and are free
as that place of basic space. Nothing has ever been made
into anything. There has never been any kind of identity
whatsoever of anything, consolidated or amassed. Now that’s
very clear isn’t it?
What does it mean to not change
anything?
We are meant to be completely relaxed. Look at the trees,
flowers, birds, and everything else. It’s all at rest,
all effortlessly in harmony with nature no matter the conditions.
The wind may be raging, but its essence is total rest. There
isn’t any resistance; everything is just the way it
is—and because there’s no resistance, the great
power and ease of awareness is effortlessly present.
Nature is at ease with whatever is occurring, and this is
how we are meant to be as well. Nature is at ease with all
extremes. Whether the ocean is rough and tumultuous, or
still and calm, it is content with itself as it is. It isn’t
trying to fiddle around with the big waves to make them
smaller, or trying to make the calm areas rise up into waves.
It is simply resting as its own nature, and letting the
waves be as they are.
This is how we are meant to relate to our thoughts and emotions.
Rather than trying to control each wave of thought and emotion
as it appears, we simply rest as the vast ocean of awareness,
seeing each wave as a perfect expression of that awareness.
In this way we live in harmony and peace with whatever appears
in our mind from moment to moment, identified only with
the all-encompassing awareness that is our true nature.
Everyone in this room has lived for at least decades now,
so there is now probably a lot stirring in everybody here.
Whatever it is, it’s okay. It doesn’t need to
be changed. If its painful, if it hurts, whether it’s
a past point of view or something happening now or something
you are afraid of in the future or that you are hoping will
happen in the future—no matter what it is, just rest
and allow the ease of being just as it is, to be what you
are getting familiar as your true nature.
We see everything as it is. We have great compassion and
wisdom, which is naturally occurring and inseparable from
the super intelligence of awareness. It’s not a mental
position. It’s the wide-openness of the vast expanse
of awareness in which there is no need to take a position.
It’s so clear that everything is itself and that there’s
never anything left out. Yet no one thing is a place to
take up residence. This just becomes very, very clear, and
then ideas like my thinking is so important, or my emotions
are so important, my sensations are so important take on
a different felt-sense. They just are what they are, but
they’re only part of the picture
When a troublesome thought comes up, just don’t think
about it. Just let it be as it is. That’s what awareness
is. Awareness lets everything be as it is, just like nature
lets everything be as it is
Just remain as you are and just let everything be as it
is. When extremely afflictive states come up, they are made
more afflictive by commenting on or correcting them. So
all that is done in making the choice to comment or correct
is to feel worse. That is what happens. So, essentially
if you chose to comment or correct you are choosing to feel
worse. Yikes! Sounds a little sicko doesn’t it.
When we look at it in a practical way, we just need to be
entirely ready to let point of view be as it is. We no longer
cling to all the descriptions of who we are that we put
together from what people have told us about ourselves,
what we’ve read in books and what we’ve decided
within our own mind about ourselves. We no longer invest
in those descriptions. The sole identification is with awareness
and its wisdom powers.
Whether running, sitting, standing, making love, defecating,
turning cartwheels—the natural state of the mind and
body are completely at ease. This effortless ease is the
best information we have about everything. In the field
of information, the field of super intelligence, the field
of awareness, all the information that appears are points
of view of that awareness and nothing else. That’s
all they are, and none is better or worse. When we just
allow the ease of that awareness to be as it is, then we
realize ourselves to be this super intelligence.
How
do I know if I am resting?
You know whether you are resting, just by whether or not
you have any results from it. Rest isn’t a thing. If
you are able to do what you think is rest for an instant
and you notice a change in your life in some fundamental
way, like you are not as likely to go for certain points
of view, then you know it is rest.
There’s no one resting as awareness, awareness is at
rest. Initially it seems like there’s someone resting
as awareness, but by the power of resting as awareness,
the rester disappears without any doing, without any effort.
Now, there’s a likelihood at first to associate resting
with pleasant states. This has been our old game all through
life; our old game has been to try to get a lot of pleasant
states going and to keep them in place. When we see that
all the unpleasant states we’ve been trying to avoid
or push away are profoundly restful, just like all the pleasant
states, then we’re really facing everything as it is.
It may be, and it very likely is, that this completely shatters
the confines of our reality, what we’ve taken to be
reality because we’ve taken ourselves to be someone.
We find that that someone rests in the basic state; it’s
a phenomenal appearance resting in the basic state. It has
no more significance or power than any other phenomenal
appearance. In other words, it has no independent identity,
just like no other appearance has an independent identity.
If you begin resting and you feel that you are “experiencing
rest” or “practicing rest,” that’s perfectly
okay in the beginning. The whole idea of someone practicing
or experiencing rest will naturally slip away without any
need to think about it. There’s no need to take up
a position anywhere, no need to say this way is right and
that way is wrong. Just relax into the essence of your own
being, and all is revealed exactly as it is. There’s
no need to describe anything as fixed or definite, no need
to put labels on your experience. Just relax. In the natural
equalness of everything as it is, there’s perfect wisdom.
Even though we may hear short moments many times and be
practicing it for a while, there will be the mechanical
regeneration of all these ideas about, “Oh, it must
be this” or “it must be that” or “it
couldn’t include all those horrible negative states
or total indifference” or whatever it might be. “It
couldn’t include all my sexual fantasies; there has
to be something wrong with me, when I see someone I’ve
never known and the next image is hopping in bed with them,”
or whatever our fantasies are or our points of view are.
When we begin to gain confidence in short moments many times
that frees up the ecstatic spontaneity of what’s appearing,
so we might have all kinds of thoughts and emotions that
we have never allowed us before, because we are too busy
keeping the clamps on.
How can I have easy, loving
relationships? How do I relate to those who are not resting?
Timeless
awareness is complete perceptual openness in all experience.
It’s freedom in immediate perception rather than being
focused in on stories. The whole field of perception opens
up in timeless awareness to include all perceptions. We
may find ourselves having a lot of thoughts and a lot of
emotions, even very, very strong emotions that we could
have never tolerated before we began gaining confidence
in awareness. However, this is the source of compassion.
This is really the source of compassion to allow everything
to be as it is about ourselves. It is the source of compassion
for ourselves and for everyone else.
Once we have that compassion for ourselves, it automatically
unleashes for everyone and everything. We find, much to
our bewilderment, yet also delight, that even though we
are having these intense emotions that we would have wanted
to get rid of in the past, at the same time, they are inseparably
married to, or blended with timeless awareness. They are
not anything else. There is intensive emotion appearing
but at the same time there is complete freedom in, of, as
and though it from your natural place of rest.
In order for us to have intimacy as a couple, for example,
or with our kids, first in ourselves we have to let everything
be as it is. Say, it’s with our intimate partner or
our kids, we have to allow every feeling we have about those
people, to be just be as it is - the love, the irritation,
the hate, the ambivalence, bad memories, good memories,
the hopes, the fears, the realization that you never got
what you wanted out of the relationship – to let all
of it be as it is while we maintain awareness rather than
trying to get rid of these feelings. “Oh, I shouldn’t
be feeling that way. I shouldn’t be feeling like I’d
like to put rat poison in their food right now,” or
whatever we might be feeling because we never know what
thoughts are going to occur to us.
As you ground yourself in the wisdom, love and compassion
that is the basis of every single description and thought
and emotion and sensation, experience and action—as
you ground yourself in that brief moment of wisdom, that
is the way you see the world more and more, your lenses
that have been clouded over with all kinds of ideas and
descriptions. It is like cleaning them with a magic cloth.
And where you saw a world of descriptions, now you just
see a spacious world—an open space of love, wisdom,
compassion. It is up to you.
It is just like all the ideas you have about yourself and
all the other people in your life. There is no way that
you are going to find release from those ideas in any kind
of contrived way like trying to be nice to the people, because
they are your family or whatever it might be, or trying
to be nice to yourself because you are a human being. If
you are really interested in having a compassionate, loving
face that looks out on the world, that is going to be found
in short moments repeated many times.
If
you want to heal all your relationships with everybody in
your life, that is going to be found in short moments repeated
many times. That is the only way you will see the relationship
with yourself and these other people rightly. It is the
only way. The only possible way. So give up all other measures
and gain confidence in awareness. In awareness is already
present love, compassion and wisdom. It is already present,
as well as energy to really have good relationships with
other people. So that is all that is required. Go to that
wisdom. Return again and again to that wisdom.
The beauty of everything as it is, is that it is so simple
and benevolent. The entirely beneficial and wholly positive
fundamental nature of being is the one and only reality,
and it includes everything. That’s very simple. There’s
no way to talk about anything or describe anything as finite
and definitive in and of itself, because nothing is separate
from this all-encompassing reality.
Before you had relationships based on points of view, a
mutual wounding regarding the nature of reality and this
is what you shared with each other. Right? All your view
points about everything and, oh, they were so real. And
oh you have your rights and oh if other people would just
do it your way – right? Then everything would be okay.
However, when we begin to gain confidence in awareness we
see that that’s only one way of living. And as we gain
confidence in awareness we see that there is a better way
of living, and that is to gain confidence in awareness rather
than identify ourselves with all our points of view.
And so we can either continue on with that lifestyle of
identifying with all points of view, or we can gain confidence
in the direct encounter with points of view. What that means
is that for example: you see a friend, so that’s the
viewpoint of a sensory impression, someone you see. And
then you have a thought about that, first of all that they
are someone, and then maybe that you are someone too –
this may happen very, very quickly. And the next thing you
know is that you are having all kinds of points of view
about them: at one time you liked them, now you dislike
them, or maybe you feel indifferent to them.
These are all just points of view: like, dislike, indifference.
These are all viewpoints. The friend is a viewpoint. The
only way to come into fully complete compassionate relationship
with the person is to do exactly what you did with your
family. Apply the skillful means of short moments many times,
no matter what points of view appear. In this way you come
into a balanced view of the relationship that isn’t
based on likes, dislikes or indifference. Rather, it’s
based on wisdom, compassion and clarity. Is that understood
and clear? So you see, this is very simple.
Wisdom awareness is equal to love, compassion and tremendous
energy. It is the heart of life itself. In order to gain
complete confidence in that, all that is required is short
moments of awareness until it becomes spontaneous at all
times. In every single moment of awareness is present full-out
love, wisdom, compassion and tremendous energy for the benefit
for yourself and the benefit of all. When you maintain awareness
this is what you are allowing yourself.
How can I make good decisions?
Many
of us have been plagued many times in our lives by needing
to make decisions about all manner of things. Before we
make the decision, we toil over it, and we don’t know
what to do, and this, that and the other thing, and finally
we make the decision, and we toil some more. Now we made
the decision, and we’re not sure it’s the right
one. We find very quickly usually that there’s a trade-off
in this kind of thinking about decision-making. This is
a story about decision-making that we’ve been perpetuating
that does not allow the tremendous energy and the profound
insight of naked intelligence to bear on the problem. If
we’re all wrapped up in the story, then we won’t
have the benefits of keen insight.
We find that by resting as awareness, rather than spinning
off into the old decision-making method, we find that there’s
an ease, an inherent ease that’s always the case in
all these ways that we’ve been going about things.
It’s in that inherent ease that we’re going to
find the most profound solution to the problem. It’s
not in spinning out the story about everything that’s
going on. It doesn’t matter what the situation is.
It can be going home to visit the family of origin and watching
everyone flail in their points of view, and see all your
own points of view come up in relation to that whole scene.
It can be something at work, where you are facing some kind
of situation at your work place and a decision needs to
be made, or it can be related to an intimacy, a personal
relationship, either with a child or with a significant
other.
Any of these situations that require decisions, the best
decision is going to come from this naked ease. So, we start
to see this trade-off very clearly. First of all we see
that we really don’t have to worry; worry is a choice.
Getting all wrapped up in worrying and negative thinking
and all of this kind of thing, it’s a choice, it really
is, so we see the trade-off.
When we are all wrapped up in our points of view then we
don't know what to do a lot of the time. This is just the
way it is. We are kind of lost little beings in the world.
We don’t know how to choose the right relationship.
We don’t really know where to live. We are never quite
satisfied with our work or totally unsatisfied. One of our
big things is that we really have a tough time making decisions.
And when we are all lost in all of these points of view,
it is like being in a dense forest. And we are so lost we
are willing to look anywhere for hope. So when we want to
make a decision, we are lost in the dense forest, and we
look up and we see all the trees of the dense forest. And
we think well, these are the trees that are here. So I am
going to take this tree and that tree and the other tree
and that is going to be my decision.
Then the decision is made, but we are still in the dense
forest so we say, “Well, did I make the right decision?”
This is the world of point of view, and this is what our
life feels like when we are obsessed with all the points
of view that we have taken to be our identity. When we begin
to rely on short moments many times, there is still this
rush of points of view. We are still in the dense forest,
but now rather than being so identified with all the trees
we are noticing the space. This is what we are noticing
about the dense forest.
Awareness itself is a vast expanse, like unchanging space.
Its display of perceptions is the expression of its dynamic
energy. All perceptions or points of view are the luster
of the basic space of awareness and nothing else. All perceptions
proliferating and resolving are the dynamic energy of awareness.
Because the basic space of awareness is entirely beneficial
yet arises as countless and ceaseless points of view, its
benefit is dynamically expressive.
However points of view appear within the vast expanse of
the basic space of awareness, they do not stray from their
natural equalness as awareness. Since the timeless basic
space of utter relaxation is naturally open and without
transition or change, all points of view constitute the
scope of naturally occurring timeless awareness and merge
as a single expanse, without any effort, without anything
needing to be done.
