February 25, 2020

February Satsang Gems (from our weekly online Sunday meetings)

Fred Davis

Awakeness operates unconsciously through these units until it just can’t take it anymore, until the story becomes insufferable. Then truth (through whatever teaching) finds us.
Fred seeing that there is no Fred is futile. Only when Awakeness notices there is no Fred is there awakening. It’s Awakeness’s awakening to Awakeness.
Give as much attention to attention as you do to the content of any experience.
Meditation is simply paying attention to what you are. You are meditation. There is no meditator and no object of meditation. It is witnessing without a witness or the witnessed. Paying attention to attention short-circuits the notion of separation.
I helped a woman today who had experienced numerous awakenings, but she walked right through them all. She felt that enlightenment had passed, had been lost. She came to see that it couldn’t pass. There is nothing else. But it’s almost impossible to stay alert on your own. It was for me.
Something’s wrong here. Is that true? Any troublesome thought is preceded by the notion that I am a Fred.
If I am having a problem, it’s because I am Awakeness thinking it is a Fred. It’s my job as Awakeness to surrender to this, to relativity, right now. Awakening helps us to see the world as it is as opposed to the world we imagine we want.
Better is not the enemy of best when it comes to clarity. “Best” is nowhere. It implies graduation, and there is no such thing as graduation from spirituality. That’s a concept that would only appeal to the ego.
Clarity does not stem the flow of thoughts, but we learn to question them, to not believe them. Our aim is not simply to shift the thoughts to improve the dream experience, to tell ourselves a better story. We want to see right through them.
Discordant, unskillful thoughts still arise to Fred, but no credence is given them. They soon dissipate because there is no place for them to rest.
Conditioning doesn’t wake up. Awakeness wakes up to itself. But it is still subject to the influence of conditioning.
We are not aiming to subdue all thought. What matters is what we believe, and, most critically, what we believe about being awake. If we believe any circumstance or influences restrict our clarity, then they will.