November 28, 2019

November Satsang Gems (from our weekly Sunday online meetings)

Fred Davis

The question is not whether or not I have free will. The question is who here would have free will?
The recognition that neither the character nor Awakeness is in control can be initially unnerving.
Our core addiction is that we are addicted to thought. Primary thought: I am Fred. Followed by something is wrong here, and I need something more.
Many people do not want to give up the seeker self-image, self-esteem and lifestyle. They are waiting for the big event. Oneness is waiting for some other version of oneness to show up! The seeker does not wake up. You cannot find something that you are. The seeker is the sought.
In the absence of a goal, there is just this. A goal shifts attention to an illusory future, with the false idea of a moment more important than the present.
[On money, other addictions]: There is no security for Fred, because there is no Fred. But there is security for the absolute: you are unbound, unborn and untouched.
There are many grades of clarity but only one degree of self-realization or Awakeness. Realization is Awakeness noticing or becoming conscious of itself. The instant that happens, ego rises up, reforms around the event, and then thoughts creep in disqualifying the event, judging its perceived inadequacy. There is an addiction to addition, but the truth is all about subtraction.
When Awakeness abandons the character’s story, clarity arises. You pull away what is false, and what is left is truth shining.
You have already woken up, so it’s not a matter of you coming to recognize your true nature, it’s a matter of you coming to embrace what you have already seen. Don’t let the truth be masked by denial.
Awakeness has a choice: to experience arisings as the absolute or to experience arisings as the character. When you privilege thought over non-conceptual experience you suffer.
The character does not embody Awakeness; Awakeness embodies the character. Clarity arises with the absence of Fredness. We notice this by the decline or displacement of unskillful patterns.
I do not move from the absolute to the relative. I am both. I do accentuate or direct attention to the absolute or the relative depending upon the experience. The balanced view is the concomitant view of both.
There is nothing that you need to do to clear, because you are always here and always clear. But the Fredness patterns are not clear. Clearing is the growing transparency, or the de-clouding, or de-Fredding of the patterns. We are not here to clear Fredness up, we are here to clear Fredness out. These are not decisions that Fred makes, because there is no Fred. But as long as it feels that there is someone to make those decisions, then guide them in the direction you want to move, which is toward clarity.
The wellspring of awakening is gratitude. Nonspecific gratitude. If you’re not grateful right now, you are not awake right now. How could you be conscious of all of this abundance and still be complaining?