On Passion, Intention, and Hitting the Mark Completely To hit the mark completely means you have no new nest in which to settle. ~ Dogen NISARGADATTA SAID THAT THE ONE THING required to reach enlightenment is earnestness. It’s quoted a lot. It’s probably referred to so often because it’s a plain-as-day truth that is overwhelmingly ignored, […]
NOW THAT I’VE GOT YOUR ATTENTION, I’ll be spending the rest of this column trying to write my way out of the hole I just dug with this post’s title and the accompanying photo. Still, there’s nothing like a little heresy to stir the pot and get things going. Let’s have at it. WHAT I’M PRIMARILY […]
SO, WE HAVE COVERED REBIRTH, which is happening in every moment, not at some time in the future. We have taken a close look at the one-shot, Wabi-sabi body, which is here today, and gone forever at death. So where do karma, continuums, and DNA fit in? Logic would tell us that if the personality is […]
YOU CAN’T IMAGINE HOW DAUNTING it is to see a title like the one above spill out onto the page in front of you, with the blank page expecting illuminating action to now take through these fingertips. Thank God I don’t have to write this post; I’m pretty sure I can type it. Let me take […]
THE LAST AC POST, as you undoubtedly noticed, was almost all background and set-up. It brought our attention to attention itself. It was to drive home the keen understanding that we have a finite amount of attention at our disposal, and that the “mystical math” that we’re going to need a great deal of it if we’re going […]
Housekeeping Notes: I began this blog at the end of July with the same number of readers every new blog starts out with: none. It now appears that there is the better part of 200 of you dropping by regularly, and Awakening Clarity has reached into 44 countries. That seems like something of a miracle […]
The Nondual Diary: Everything Is Important, Part II (Conclusion) THE POINT OF THE BACKWARD-LOOKING examples of struggle that I used in Part I is simply to strongly make note that truth is not always easy or pretty, it’s often not what we want to see, but it’s always available. We have to want the truth more than we want the […]
The Nondual Diary: Everything Is Important, Part I Housekeeping Notes: IN THE FORTY-SEVEN ESSAYS that I have written in the three months since the inception ofAwakening Clarity, I’ve posted something over sixty thousand words in the main posts alone. That is more material than is contained in the average book on Nonduality. So we now have a […]
I SPEND A LOT OF TIME WRITING AND TALKING to people about waking up; about the true nature of reality. Other than some splendid down time with my wife, Betsy, and our three Beasts Without Value, whom we both adore, I am […]
Where we left off: [So, on we go with the show, only now, for a while here, it’ll be just as it really occurred, I’m going to be playing both sides, just as I did while Vince sat in my living room drinking it all in. From here to almost the end of Part II, […]
ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL METHODS OF INQUIRY I’ve used in helping a person begin to realize they’re not a person is with a slight turn of the traditional Advaita question of inquiry, “Who am I?” Instead of asking you to use that inquiry on yourself, I facilitate, move into storytelling, and together we inquire together about, “Where are you?” […]
The Nondual Diary: Lunch on the Wild Side I HAD LUNCH ON THURSDAY with my friend and regular AC Reader, Larry Coble. This was our second lunch together and the atmosphere was instantly warm and spiritually intimate. I guess that Larry and I sat on a cloud sometime before we were born and decided that this […]
I AM WORKING OFF AND ON WITH SEVERAL PEOPLE RIGHT NOW, all of them in different stages of awakening to the obvious and self-evident truth of this What Is that they already are. Theirconscious awareness runs the gamut from the first hint of a blush, to on-again-off-again-I-got-it-I-lost-it oscillation, and everywhere in between. Their common current barrier to the Gateless […]
A DEAR FRIEND AND REGULAR AC READER, had a wonderful, truly authentic experience of Oneness this week. That is Big Joy! She wrote me about it, and you can’t write the way she wrote until you’ve seen what you really are. You can write the same words and delude yourself if you want to, but you’ll never fool anyone […]
“THOSE WHO KNOW DO NOT SAY. THOSE WHO SAY DO NOT KNOW.” Like every relative statement about absolute spiritual truth, these two are both true and not true. The first line of the Tao Te Ching, though it varies in different translations, is roughly, “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.” Nonetheless, […]
I WANT TO CONCLUDE THIS SERIES, the most popular pieces I’ve ever posted, with a look at how Awakeness can directly function through a human being, without that person, or anyone else, being the wiser. You may recall that I have named this a state of being “actively inhabited”. It’s as good a label as any, I […]
I REMEMBER LISTENING TO A KEN WILBER SERIES several years ago, I think it was The One Two Three of God, which helpfully classified the three types of mystics: Nature, Theistic, and Nondual. Reality can be discovered through any of those three channels: nature, a personal God, or Nondual awareness. However, because both the “software” and the “hardware” […]
AUTHENTIC SPIRITUAL AWAKENING is both a lot more and a lot less than most people think. I insert the word “authentic”, because 99% of the people I hear talking about spiritual awakening are talking about a spiritual experience. Spiritual experiences can be very beautiful, and can even be life changing, but it’s just not the same thing. […]
LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY WIFE, Betsy. She is a wholly remarkable human being and Awakeness is consciously alive in her. You can see it. You can feel it. You can hear it when she speaks; people are mesmerized by her voice. Animals recognize it. Even plants recognize it. God is here, moving from room to room […]
AS MANY OF YOU KNOW, for the last few weeks I’ve been doing online video meetings with my teacher, Scott Kiloby. I’m a student/mentor, meaning that it’s very much his show, but I’m allowed to contribute if I behave. I’m the sidekick who listens closely and then offers observations and suggestions. The students seem to […]