Pointing To The Moon

the greatest lie - steven norquist

"The greatest lie ever told is that there is a search, a quest. None of this exists. There is only pure consciousness, existing endlessly in perfect peace and perfection." - Steven Norquist, "What is Enlightenment, No, I Mean Really, Like What is It?" essay

recognize ourselves to be that which is impersonal and absolute

"The narcissistic ego always wants to know who we are when we look in the mirror. But when we die into our own True Self and recognize ourselves to be that which is impersonal and absolute, we stumble upon the miracle of enlightenment. We find that the Self that we have discovered is a mystery that cannot be seen with the eye and cannot be recognized by the mind. And that is why, if we want to truly know that Self, we have to be willing to not see it with our eyes and not know it with our mind. If we want to be free, we actually have to let go of the very thing that we want to know in order to truly know it. We have to be willing to forget ourselves utterly and die into that ungraspable mystery. And from then on, we have to always be willing to live in a state of unknowing, a state in which we don't know who we are." - Andrew Cohen, Living Enlightenment

Byron Katie: "it was all pulsing with life and delight, and it was all one unbroken experience."

"I fell in love with myself one morning in February of 1986. I had checked myself into a halfway house in Los Angeles after years of suicidal depression. A week or so later, as I lay on the floor of my attic room (I felt too unworthy to sleep in a bed), a cockroach crawled over my foot, and I opened my eyes. For the first time in my life, I was seeing without concepts, without thoughts or an internal story. All my rage, all the thoughts that had been troubling me, my whole world, the whole world, was gone. There was no me. It was if something else had woken up. It opened its eyes. It was looking through Katie's eyes. And it was crisp, it was bright, it was new, it had never been here before. Everything was unrecognizable. And it was so delighted! Laughter welled up from the depths and just poured out. It breathed and was ecstasy. It was intoxicated with joy: totally greedy for everything. There was nothing separate, nothing unacceptable to it. Everything was its very own self. For the first time I -- it -- experienced the love of its own life. I -- it -- was amazed!

Satori: "It Was Just Obvious,"- Elizabeth Gilbert

An account of satori by Elizabeth Gilbert, in Eat, Pray, Love: "As a reader and a seeker, I always get frustrated at this moment in somebody else's spiritual memoirs -- that moment in which the soul excuses itself from time and space and merges with the infinite. From the Buddha to Saint Teresa to the Sufi mystics to my own Guru -- so many great souls over the centuries have tried to express in so many words what it feels like to become one with the divine [1], but I'm never quite satisfied by these descriptions. Often you will see the maddening adjective indescribable used to describe the event. [2] But even the most eloquent reporters of the devotional experience -- like Rumi, who wrote about having abandoned all effort and tied himself to God's sleeve, or Hafiz, who said that he and God had become like two fat men living in a small boat--"we keep bumping into each other and laughing" -- even those poets leave me behind. I don't want to read about it; I want to feel it, too. Sri Ramana Maharshi, a beloved Indian Guru, used to give long talks on the transcendental experience to his pupils and then always wrap it up with this instruction: "Now go find out."

So now I have found out. And I don't want to say that what I experienced that Thursday afternoon in India was indescribable, even though it was. I'll try to explain anyway. Simply put, I got pulled through the wormhole of the Absolute, and in that rush I suddenly understood the workings of the universe completely. I left my body, I left the room, I left the planet, I stepped through time and I entered the void. I was inside the void, but I also WAS the void and I was looking at the void, all at the same time. The void was a place of limitless peace and wisdom. The void was conscious and it was intelligent. The void was God, which means that I was inside God. But not in a gross, physical way -- not like I was Liz Gilbert stuck inside a chuck of God's thigh muscle. I just was part of God. In addition to being God. I was both a tiny piece of the universe and exactly the same size as the universe. ("All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop," wrote the sage Kabir -- and I can personally attest now that this is true.)

It wasn't hallucinogenic, what I was feeling. It was the most basic of events. It was heaven, yes. It was the deepest love I'd ever experienced, beyond anything I could have previously imagined, but it wasn't euphoric. It wasn't exciting. There wasn't enough ego or passion left in me to create euphoria or excitement. It was just obvious. Like when you've been looking at an optical illusion for a long time, straining your eyes to decode the trick, and suddenly your cognizance shifts and there -- now you can clearly see it! -- the two vases are actually two faces. And once you've seen through the optical illusion, you can never not see it again.

"So this is God," I thought. "Congratulations to meet you." [My note: As author was traveling in India, many people would greet her in English this way.]

The place in which I was standing can't be described like an earthly location. It was neither dark nor light, neither big nor small. Nor was it a place, nor was I technically standing there, nor was I exactly "I" anymore. I still had my thoughts, but they were so modest, quiet and observatory. Not only did I feel unhesitating compassion and unity with everything and everybody, it was vaguely and amusingly strange for me to wonder how anybody could feel anything but that. I also felt mildly charmed by all my old ideas about who I am and what I'm like. I'm a woman, I come from America, I'm talkative, I'm a writer -- all this felt so cute and obsolete. Imagine cramming yourself into such a puny box of identity when you could experience your infinitude instead.

I wondered, "Why have I been chasing happiness my whole life when bliss was here the entire time?" 

choosing from your heart is in harmony with the world

"Discernment is the clarity of choosing from your heart. All choices that flow with clarity from the heart are in harmony with not only your personal unfolding, but also the unfolding of the world. The mind tells us that this is not possible, that we as individuals must at times want things that the world does not. This is logic, and is founded on the idea that we are separate from each other. A unified diversity is the realization of the intimate fusion of the unity of the whole with its expression of diversity. It is the realization into being of each individual choice fitting perfectly with the whole." - Story Waters

People Are Like Stained-Glass Windows

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is
out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if
there is a light from within. -  Elizabeth Kübler-Ross

Whitman and Galileo on Teaching

Not I - not anyone else, can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself. - Walt Whitman

You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him find it within himself. - Galileo