Presence is Available Always

An Eternal Now SG

http://www.kiloby.com/writings.php?offset=0&writingid=232

Presence can be accessed at any moment in our lives because it is always with us. It is what we are.

I meet with people who meditate in the morning or do this or that method on the weekend or who visit retreats or sit with teachers now and again or question thoughts all day long. All of that is fine but it overlooks the fact that we can simply rest in thought-free presence repeatedly throughout the day and actually realize our true nature directly and immediately. This is not a suggestion to stop doing whatever practice you are doing. Practices fall away naturally as you recognize presence.

The invitation here is to stop postponing your freedom, believing it to be the end result of a bunch of work.

Presence is available in every experience. When we treat presence as something we are working towards or something that is available only when certain conditions are present, we are deceiving ourselves. We are missing the basic point that presence is always here. All we have to do is notice that.

Presence is not available only in meditation sittings. It is not dependent on whether we are sitting, standing, at work, or at home. It is not available only when you are listening to a teacher or reading a book on nonduality or enlightenment. Don't limit presence in that way. Don't treat it as a state you return to once or twice a day. Recognize and rest in thought-free presence whenever you think of it during the day. See that it is always available.

When you begin doing this, it may seem like a struggle at first. But as you continue just relaxing into the present moment as it is, without emphasizing thoughts about what is happening, it becomes natural, effortless, and automatic to return there often.

This is the greatest treasure, to realize that the very thing we are looking for in life—contentment, well-being, peace, and freedom—is already fundamentally what we are. All of this is contained in presence.

I invite anyone I’m in contact with to simply relax all thoughts throughout the day and just rest there. As often as possible, take a moment and recognize thought-free presence. In this restful presence, all thoughts, emotions, sensations, states, and experiences are allowed to be just as they are.

Thoughts, emotions, states, sensations, and experiences come and go. Presence remains stably present.

Presence is not something to prove. If you find yourself arguing with others about presence or trying to prove a point about presence, you've missed the fundamental ease and peace of it. You are emphasizing thoughts about presence rather than simply resting and recognizing it as your real nature.

Presence contains indestructibility, non-discriminating openness, flawless clarity, profound simplicity, and an all-pervading equality within all beings. By recognizing presence, often, throughout the day, we see these attributes as aspects of our real nature.

In resting in thought-free presence, we experience this presence as an opening through which everything comes and goes. All self-centered thoughts and painful emotions are equally allowed. Wisdom does not lie in cultivating positive thoughts, emotions, and states. The deepest wisdom is available only when we allow everything to be as it is, including the negative and the positive equally. When you chase after positive thoughts, emotions, and states and try to run away from or cover up negative thoughts, emotions, and states, you are trapped in a cycle of seeking. You are seeking some future moment where your life will be better. You are overlooking the basic present awareness that is shining right now. It's the very presence that reads these words and then lets every word just fall away, like a cloud moving through the sky.

Nothing needs to be held onto, understood, or analyzed about these words or any other words about presence. They are merely pointing you to the seamless flow of life, moving through and as presence itself. Let this page disappear completely when you are done reading it. Let it die. Let all thoughts die as they arise. Just let them pass freely through presence.

Break free of postponing your freedom to the future by simply checking repeatedly throughout the day and seeing that thought-free presence is your basic nature. When you check in, notice that all thoughts and emotions are movements of that presence. This presence is the opening through which all of life happens.

When you treat enlightenment or nonduality or spiritual awakening as a future event, you place it in some future moment. By resting in thought-free presence throughout the day, you are recognizing timeless nondual awareness repeatedly and directly now. You aren't in a waiting game. You aren't anticipating anything. It becomes increasingly easy to allow all thoughts, emotions, states, and experiences to just be there, without trying to get rid of them, analyze them, or chase some future moment where they aren’t there. This ends the cycle of seeking.

No longer do we have to buy into the idea that presence is somehow not available in our busy lives at work or with the family. I’m inviting you to rest in presence in the middle of doing your job, arguing with your spouse, or taking care of your kids. Don't believe that there is some moment when you cannot recognize presence. And don't believe anything that any spiritual book or teacher tells you. Do this looking yourself. Come to know presence for yourself. It is always there. Rely on it completely.

An Eternal Now SG

http://www.kiloby.com/writings.php?offset=0&writingid=235

The more we posit and really believe in separation, the more it seems real. And we devise very elaborate ways of buying into separation.

Teaching or pointing methods like awareness, the Witness, consciousness, or Buddha Nature can be new ways that we buy into separation.

Recently, I heard someone repeat that a spiritual teacher said that there is a super-intelligence “behind” everything. But where is that? What is it? I get the image of some entity or force doing everything somehow behind or beyond life in all its appearance. This still creates the sense of separation, of twoness. It makes one feel cut off from this superintelligence as if this superintelligence has to be known about, understood, conceptualized, found, or realized.

Words like awareness or the Witness, although good teaching or pointing tools, can solidify separation. We start to talk about awareness as someone behind or prior to appearances, creating a sense of separation. Use these tools only for a while, then see that they are part of duality. We talk about witnessing as if there is something prior to what is witnessed, something separate from what is witnessed, that sees this “other, separate thing called ‘that which is witnessed.”

A good teaching tool at best, nothing more. That duality can be seen through.

Find out where you are emphasizing viewpoints that create a sense of separation.

What do you believe?

Do you believe in a God that is cut off from you or your present experience? That creates a sense of separation.

Do you think of yourself as a person, on a path, towards some other thing called “awakening” or “union with God” or “nonduality?” That creates a sense of separation.

Do you think of yourself as a person in relationship with other, separate people or objects? . . . a sense of separation.

Do you believe you are witnessing thoughts come and go? In order to do that, you have to split the universe into parts, that which sees and that which is seen. Again, a good teaching tool that may help for a while, but in the end . . . a sense of separation.

Then we get to really clever oneliners like, “It’s all Oneness” or “all there is, is Consciousness,” or “ISness” or “God” or “Buddha Nature.” These are fine. Use them. Paint pictures with them, let them create images. But these are just images. And the moment you have an image, you have a sense that there is something in the image that is separate from other things that are not in the image. There is an inside and an outside to every word, thought, or image, because these things exist in thought only, in duality. As soon as you have the image of Oneness, you pretend that there is something else called “not Oneness.” As soon as you fall in love with silence, holding it as the “final seeing,” you divide silence from what is not silence—that is, you divide it mentally from sound.

The notion of attaining Buddha Nature presupposes that there is something that is not Buddha Nature or others who have not realized Buddha Nature. It's a clever division, but no more real than the notion that the sky is separate from the earth. The Universe is not opposed to or cut off from itself in any way. It's only thought that creates the sense of separation.

Separation is a very sneaky thing. It hangs out even in our most “enlightened” viewpoints.

We can even start saying things like, “Everything is a concept” or “all concepts are false.” Sounds good until you see that it creates a division between not thinking and thinking. . . . a sense of separation.

What is left when you see through your belief in these ideas that create a sense of separation?

Don’t put another idea there. Just be that!

An Eternal Now SG

Great interview with Scott Kiloby, if you don't have time just skip to the last 10 minutes of the interview, very potent pointers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU0KkuLZstE

Stepping out of the story of the separate self into thought-free Awareness... is the end of the fundamental seeking and disattisfaction and anxiety... what liberation it is.