Pointers

Self-knowing: Thisness without end.


*****


Awake to your awakeness. Pause a moment and see what is already before you. It is, at once, subtle and splendorous, immediate and beginningless, unconditioned and ever-present.


*****


Every time you attempt to "reach" self-realization, you are--inversely--delaying it. Why? Because you are already awareness itself. Your seeking it entails not only an imagined seeker, but the notion that you have to make some sustained effort to "gain" this state.


*****


There is nothing cosmic, mystical, exclusive, or positive-minded about your natural state. These descriptions are used by writers and teachers for whom self-realization has yet to occur.


*****


Even happiness is only an experience. Thus, it is limited in duration and in no way compares to the peace of presence itself.


*****


The space in a jug or bottle cannot actually be separated from the totality of space itself. Likewise, awareness permeates all apparent bodies, minds, and states-of-consciousness.


*****


To what does a thought appear? It obviously is not your body, because your body is physical matter. And it can't be your mind, because your mind is nothing but the occurrence of a thought! So to what does a thought appear? Allow the power and significance of this question to bring you to a Full Stop. You really don't have to do a thing. Just see that there is something to which a thought must appear. It can't be another thought, because one thought can't know another one. So to what are your present thoughts appearing?


*****


Matter and energy are manifestations of one reality: Pure awareness.


*****


Your daily life is a race from concept-to-concept, from reaction-to-reaction, from experience-to- experience, and from sensation-to-sensation. You have rarely taken the time to ponder if there is something, amid all this coming-and-going, that Does Not Move. In all likelihood, you are feeling it right now. Take moment to examine the fullness of this presence. Then you will discover that you have actually never departed from its consummate richness and glory.


*****


You can easily spot the ego (which is the false identification with the body, mind, and senses). The ego always appears after an occurrence or activity as a particular thought, response, or feeling.


*****


If you could see the foolishness of your seeking, you would be struck speechless with disbelief. You are floating in the clearest, purist, most magical of springs; and yet, you search for water. Pause a moment and recognize not only the presence of this sheer, aqueous plenitude, but that you are the spring itself.

Q & A: All Was Seen Clearly

Question: Hi, Rodney! I just stumbled upon your blog from John Wheeler's link page.

Rodney: Thanks for taking the time to write. And I'm happy that you happened upon my link, especially by way of John's superb site.

Question: I really resonate with the style of expression that flows through the pointers on your blog.

Rodney: Well, the blog is a labor of love. I say "labor" because I'm unable to fully access it from my ancient iMac. So I have to catch the bus to the public library to post my entries. I try to post weekly, but that's getting increasingly harder to do with the demands of my job and the round-about-way I have to do the posting. So I'm saving up to get one of the new MacBooks 2GHZ (the white ones, with the matte screen). That is a couple years off, but that's okay. As long as the blog is providing lucid pointers and insights, I am a contented camper.

Question: Your blog's pointers are much like the writing that arises spontaneously on paper for me now. Through a couple of phone conversations and email dialogues with John, all was seen clearly.

Rodney: I'm totally thrilled! A huge hug to you. John's pointers are so vivid and on-the-mark that they, in themselves, are thoroughly capable of bringing one to a clear-seeing of one's true and vivid identity. But when you add phone conversations and email exchanges with John, the days of an apparent self are close to being over (if you will tentatively allow me to interject the time component into all this). I can't add much more than that, given that your understanding is now firm and tangible.

Question: I continue to enjoy John's writings and yours. I most especially liked your recent points on methods, practices, gurus, enlightenment, and the whole bag of techniques and practices! All futile, of course!

Rodney: Indeed. Most seekers who are drawn to gurus and meditation aren't vitally interested in self-knowing. They are drawn to the possibly of ecstasy, attainment, experiences, and anecdotes to the share with their friends, even to the detriment of their personal savings. And if you tell them that they need not deplete their finances or suffer repeated bouts of raging dysentery,more often than not, they will still opt for the spiritual sojourn. It's remarkable, in a truly unfortunate way.

Question: Yes, that is why I also resonated very strongly with U.G. Krishnamurti many years ago, particularly his relentless stance on how practices move you further away from yourself. I see there is reference to him on your blog and that made me smile.

Rodney: U.G. was a great tell-it-like-it-is kind of sage. I'm not so sure he would have made a pleasant lunch or dinner companion, but who knows? His declarations about methods and meditation are required reading if you want the blunt, sarcastic, nondual truth of things. Note this gem from his classic THE MYSTIQUE OF ENLIGHTENMENT: "Get this straight, this is your state I am describing, your natural state, not my state or the state of a God-realized man or mutant or any such thing...But what prevents what is there from expressing itself in its own way is your reaching out for something, trying to be something other than what you are."

Question: Thank you, once again, for sharing your clear pointers.

Rodney: My very best to you. And as John says, keep in touch, if the spirit moves.

Pointers

Right at this moment, what is present in addition to any passing thought or bodily sensation?


*****


You have to be awake to realize that you are already awake. Meditation is merely a form of drowsiness.


*****


There is no YOU to be "enlightened." You are not your thoughts, emotions, and body. You are the spaciousness in which they arise. Stay with your deep conviction or notion until you see the truth of this for yourself. When I say to remain with this, I don't mean that you should concentrate or meditate. Just naturally and easily ponder it. In that way, you will have your answer, an answer that has always been in plain view.


*****


Be suspect of overly-conceptual questions (e.g., "What is just?", "What is my place in the universe?", "What should be my moral imperative?", etc). How will the pursue such matters clarify your self-knowledge?


*****


Awareness is the radiance by which consciousness is recognized.


*****


Nondual talks and retreats can be enormously beneficial. The dialogues (with a self-realized teacher or speaker), the concerted energy, and the naturally occurring silences can all assist in engagingly bringing you back to the question of who and what you truly are.


*****


You don't require a single thing to recognize your natural state. It is simply being overlooked. You are peering beyond it, so to speak, at sundry thoughts, experiences, sensations, and conditioning. Particularly enthralling is the false and antiquated notion that self-knowing connotes bliss and involves attaining something that is not already completely present.


*****


Time is a concept. It is simply another thought or idea arising in presence. You say that you hope to "reach enlightenment" in a year or two. Or maybe even a decade! But awareness is already in full evidence. Who is this me that says that it will achieve this in X-period of time? That apparent "me" is the issue, not your innate and pristine clarity.


*****


See right now that what you perceive as emptiness actually radiates with perceptible knowingness. It is thoroughly beyond and prior-to all thoughts, speculations, and spirituality.


*****


You are aware of being conscious. Or to be more specific: You are aware of being awake, of being drowsy, and of dreaming. There is even awareness in deep sleep; otherwise, you would not be able to declare, "I slept so deeply!" Discover the fullness of this awareness for yourself. For that's the only way you can truly know it--not as an object or an experience, but as a genuine spaciousness that is none other than yourself.


*****


What is being pointed to is your natural and ever-present state. You never move from this, even when "life" appears to toss you every conceivable direction. Pause a moment and take note of your nonconceptual, self-shining nature.


*****


Self-realization is the end of all doubts, seeking, and suffering. There are simply no-more-questions. Pause and moment and consider the enormity of that fact. For heretofore, questions were literally all you had. Perhaps you even wondered if life could go on without them! Well, it most certainly can--a deeply felt life in which only presence prevails. And you are That.

Pointers

You are sitting. There is the awareness that you are sitting. You are Awareness.


*****


You are no more your thoughts and body than you are the clothes you have on.



*****


You can see yourself in the mirror. But can your reflection see you back? The same applies to your thoughts, feelings, and body.



*****


One of the first things you realize after discovering who and what you are is that sacred and spiritual names, however beautiful, utterly fail to capture the vastness and resplendence of your timeless essence.


*****


Understanding has nothing to do with comprehension. It is a felt knowing and seeing that you are presence itself.


*****


Nonduality: "Neti, Neti." Neither this, nor that.


*****


Awareness is not a concept. Neither is it something that is not fully present.


*****


There is no you to "transcend" your body and mind. Self-knowledge is the recognition that there is a knowing sheerness already in evidence--thoroughly transcending your thoughts and physicality.


*****


There is nothing that needs to be accepted, eliminated, or controlled. These are actions of a "divided" self. And at no time is there ever any division within you.


*****


What is it that recognizes your body and apparent mind? If you would like a Question-of-the-Day, this is the ultimate one.


*****


I love what U.G. Krishnamurti declared about practices and meditation. He said that not only do they take "you away from yourself, in the opposite direction," but that they have "absolutely no relation" to what you already are. And what you are is beginningless presence, which U.G. and Nisargadatta rightly called our natural state.