Q&A: Plodding Along

Questioner: I'm continuing to plod along, Rodney. That's about as much as I can say, right now.

Rodney: I understand. Plodding along is okay.

Q: I'm going to just take my time with this.

Rodney: Taking your time is fine, as long as you keep in mind that time isn't a factor in nonduality. It's all about seeing or understanding what is fully present, not about "getting" or "attaining" anything.

Q: Reading your blog helps keep me going. But sometimes, I really feel discouraged.

Rodney: Again, I understand. What comes up--in terms of your thoughts, feelings, and uncertainties--is what comes up. Just know that those sentiments make absolutely no impact on what you are at this moment. Presence cannot be touched. You aren't your doubts or hesitations. You are the clarity and spaciousness that knows that the doubts are temporarily there. You (largely by force of habit) are bringing your attention to your uncertainties rather than to this simple presence of awareness that is before, around, and beyond those uncertainties.

Q: Yes, I know you're right. I'm just not seeing it.

Rodney: It isn't evident to you yet. But you see (and this is something that you might want to ponder or reflect upon, if you're drawn to do so), the central reason you aren't recognizing it is because it is so directly in front of you that you are looking right passed it, so to speak--for there is no place where it is not. Awareness is your natural state. Any thoughts, images, concepts, and doubts are merely temporary arisings in that awareness. Even your body is a passing appearance in your perpetual spaciousness!

Q: I get these little moments when I feel like that's how it actually is. But I can't get those times to remain stable.

Rodney: If you're talking about peaceful moments, they are merely experiences. They are, by their very nature, fleeting. But if you're talking about pauses, you are genuinely "open," at that point, to who and what you fundamentally are.

Q: How can I be sure of the difference?

Rodney: If it's an experience, you are likely to be thinking or feeling that this moment is nice, pleasurable, etc. With a pause, however, there are no thoughts whatsoever--just a subtle but very real presence of awareness, that you immediately know or intuit is everlasting.

Q: Okay, that helps me to see the difference between them.

Rodney: Just take note of what it is that remains as all of your thoughts, emotions, and unsureness come and go. Something remains, something doesn't change. Allow yourself to be alert for a subtle absoluteness that is within you right now. For you aren't a theory or a belief or a spiritual concept. You're awareness itself. You are that that never changes. Take note of what it is that remains absolutely the same at any time, whether you're bringing your attention to it or not. That is your essence, your treasure-trove. Have a look for yourself. For there is nothing that is more immediately before you than That.

Q: Thanks, Rodney. I'll let all this marinade a little, and maybe get back to you in a couple of weeks.

Rodney: Sounds good.

-----

News & Info

Rodney's new book, Fully Present: Daily Reflections on Nonduality, has just been published. It is $18.95 for the paperback (excluding postage). You can order it directly from the publisher right HERE.

~~~~~

The Kindle version of Fully Present is now available on AMAZON.

~~~~~

And go HERE for the press release for Fully Present.

~~~~~

More praise for the new book:

"Fully Present is an elegant addition to the growing literature on nonduality as it is being uncovered, lived and understood in the modern West."

--Philip Goldberg, author of the best-selling American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation--How Indian Spirituality Changed the West. Philip's Web site can be found at www.philipgoldberg.com.

****

"Rodney Stevens opens his daily life and thoughts to us in these immensely natural and pleasant ramblings of one who is fully engaged in life, love, nonduality, and cinnamon muffins."

--Catherine Ann Jones, award-winning screenwriter, spiritual workshop leader, and author of The Way of the Story: The Craft and Soul of Writing. Her Web site is www.wayofstory.com

~~~~~

Rodney is also the author of A Vastness All Around: Awakening to Your Natural State, a powerful and elegant collection of essays, discussions, interviews, and powerful pointers. It can be ordered directly from the publisher at Lulu Press.

~~~~~

For the book's Press Release, click Here.

~~~~~

Check out Rodney on YouTube talking about "The Fundamental Thing."

~~~~~

Feel free to read a review of the Kindle Edition of Vastness on Amazon.

~~~~~

Nonduality Magazine has published a discussion with Rodney about his work and book. The extensive and wide-ranging interview was done by John LeKay, the magazine's editor.

~~~~~

"I like your approach in A Vastness All Around. The stories, thoughts and vignettes of your life seem wonderful ways to make people stop and pay attention to where they actually are right now, rather than in some imagined past or future. They show that you don't have to be some specially qualified person, preferably with a title and a name in Sanskrit, to pursue the spiritual quest. Your message comes across particularly well in such pieces as 'Sheerness of Being.'"

--Valerie J. Roebuck, Ph.D., Honorary Research Fellow, University of Manchester (England)

~~~~~

I am now doing phone consultations via Skype! Each conversation will take about an hour, and a $25 donation will be greatly appreciated.

I am also scheduling teaching events at this time. If you would like to arrange something in your area, you may email me at: writerguy (at) fastmail (dot) fm

~~~~~

This blog is generally updated every Sunday afternoon, Eastern Standard Time.

Pointers

You're looking away from what you are seeking. You're looking at everything but It.

*****

You are certainly present, for you're reading these words at this very moment. But what is it that is present? Take a calm and quiet moment to ponder what, precisely, is being overlooked. And with the answer, you go from being merely present to Presence itself.

*****

All pointers here are pointing to something that is immediate, actual, and without beginning or end. I have zero interest in theories and conjecture. For before any concept or idea can pop into your head, you are awareness already. Just confirm it for yourself.

*****

The world is not the problem, and neither are you. This understanding is simply about your recognizing the fact that what you are seeking is precisely what you are right now!

*****

There is a hushness to presence, as well as a hallowed palpability. It is there, and it isn't. Once you see that it is "this," you also see how it is "that." Then you understand how it is neither. Turn in any direction, and it is there. And so are You.

*****

Nonduality requires neither decades of devotion nor a disciplining of the mind. Awareness is your very nature. You are more It than you are your body and your breathing. See what it is that you keep coming back to throughout the day and evening--those precious periods between every transient thought, sentiment, and belief.

*****

There is a presence of awareness directly within and before you, as you are reading these words. It never moves from being right there, right now.

*****

The mind can help you enormously with your seeking. It will take from one experience and concept to another, and it will do this until the end of your days. It can't, however, recognize and understand your abiding nature--for the mind comes and goes within that nature, in that eternal peace and spaciousness that just happens to be your ever-present state.

*****

You say, "From now on, I'm not going to care about what the mind does." But who is the perceived individual that is going to be doing that? Notice that a position is being taken here, and that that can only happen when there is a doer, a "someone" who is going to set things right. The mind is going to do what it is going to do. Thoughts and emotions are going to continue to rise. They aren't you. They can't possibly be you! You are That which recognizes them. Bring your attention back to your timeless essence, and see the bare, beautiful truth of who and what you are.

-----

News & Info

JUST IN: The Kindle version of Fully Present is now available on AMAZON.

~~~~~

Rodney's new book, Fully Present: Daily Reflections on Nonduality, has just been published. It is $18.95 for the paperback (excluding postage). You can order it directly from the publisher right HERE.

~~~~~

And go HERE for the press release for Fully Present.

~~~~~

Praise for the new book:

"Rodney Stevens opens his daily life and thoughts to us in these immensely natural and pleasant ramblings of one who is fully engaged in life, love, nonduality, and cinnamon muffins."

--Catherine Ann Jones, award-winning screenwriter, spiritual workshop leader, and author of The Way of the Story: The Craft and Soul of Writing. Her Web site can be found at www.wayofstory.com

~~~~~

Rodney is also the author of A Vastness All Around: Awakening to Your Natural State, a powerful and elegant collection of essays, discussions, interviews, and powerful pointers. It can be ordered directly from the publisher at Lulu Press.

~~~~~

For the book's Press Release, click Here.

~~~~~

Vastness is now available for the Amazon Kindle! Order Here.

~~~~~

Check out Rodney on YouTube talking about "The Fundamental Thing."

~~~~~

Tami Brady reviewed Vastness on her TCM Reviews page.

~~~~~

Feel free to read a review of the Kindle Edition of Vastness on Amazon.

~~~~~

Nonduality Magazine has published a discussion with Rodney about his work and book. The extensive and wide-ranging interview was done by John LeKay, the magazine's editor.

~~~~~

"I like your approach in A Vastness All Around. The stories, thoughts and vignettes of your life seem wonderful ways to make people stop and pay attention to where they actually are right now, rather than in some imagined past or future. They show that you don't have to be some specially qualified person, preferably with a title and a name in Sanskrit, to pursue the spiritual quest. Your message comes across particularly well in such pieces as 'Sheerness of Being.'"

--Valerie J. Roebuck, Ph.D., Honorary Research Fellow, University of Manchester (England)

~~~~~

I am now doing phone consultations via Skype! Each conversation will take about an hour, and a $25 donation will be greatly appreciated.

I am also scheduling teaching events at this time. If you would like to arrange something in your area, you may email me at: writerguy (at) fastmail (dot) fm

~~~~~

This blog is generally updated every Sunday afternoon, Eastern Standard Time.

Q&A: Vantage Point

Question: Hey, Rodney. Congratulations on the new book!

Rodney: Thank you.

Q: I've already ordered a copy, and I'm really looking forward to reading it.

Rodney: Thanks again!

Q: How do I recognize something that is "prior to consciousness," as Nisargadatta called awareness? It seems really difficult--make that impossible--from my vantage point.

Rodney: Well, first of all, get rid of the idea of there needing to be a "vantage point" from which to discover presence. The vantage point is part of the problem, because it can take the form of any number of things--your mind, your personality, your gender, your nationality, your physicality, etc.

Q: Those things are just the ego, I take it?

Rodney: Right. We are simply taking ourselves to be this or that throughout the day and evenings. And that this occurs so often points to the fact your ego is a temporary appearance. It isn't this defined "thing" that you can obliterate or chip away at, as some teachers suggest you can do. It is merely self-identification with whatever you are feeling, thinking, or imagining at the moment.

Q: It's just coming and going.

Rodney: Coming and going.

Q: Okay.

Rodney: Consciousness also is coming and going, with its varying states. So at this point, you have to ask yourself, "Can something that is occasional and conceptual actually recognize awareness?"

Q: Okay, I see it now. No, it won't work that way.

Rodney: Exactly. So what perceives awareness? Awareness recognizes itself, which it can do through the body/mind structure. You can think of this recognition and understanding as an ultimate form of sentience, with the following trio of statements becoming progressively more clarifying for the seeker: "I exist, I am aware that I exist, and I am Awareness." In pure presence, no objects are there. Deep sleep is close to such awareness, but not fully so. Still, you feel profound rest and contentment when you wake in the early morning hours.

Q: That's good. I'm getting a real sense of what you're saying.

Rodney: And again, it is merely a matter of seeing and understanding something that has already taken place. Presence isn't going to "happen" to you at some future time or at some supposedly sacred location along the Ganges or high atop some Mayan ruin.

Q: I couldn't afford to go anyway!

Rodney: I mean, it might happen while you're there. I'm just saying that it isn't necessary. Your time would be far better spent talking--directly or by phone--to someone whose understanding is unimpeachable. You see, before you take a single step to go to any of those supposedly spiritual places, you are already shining in your own resplendence--a resplendence in which your thoughts, emotions, and varying states of consciousness are appearing. What is it, right now, that is aware that all of those things are coming and going, coming and going? If you look carefully, you will see that it is a beginningless peace and spaciousness for which all words pale, and that has never not been present.

Q: Rodney, I really appreciate this--your taking the time and all. I'll touch base with you again in a week or so, if that's okay?

Rodney: No problem. Take care.

-----

News & Info

JUST IN: The Kindle version of Fully Present is now available on AMAZON.

~~~~~

Rodney's new book, Fully Present: Daily Reflections on Nonduality, has just been published. It is $18.95 for the paperback (excluding postage). You can order it directly from the publisher right HERE.

~~~~~

And go HERE for the press release for Fully Present.

~~~~~

Praise for the new book:

"Rodney Stevens opens his daily life and thoughts to us in these immensely natural and pleasant ramblings of one who is fully engaged in life, love, nonduality, and cinnamon muffins."

--Catherine Ann Jones, award-winning screenwriter, spiritual workshop leader, and author of The Way of the Story: The Craft and Soul of Writing. Her Web site can be found at www.wayofstory.com

~~~~~

Rodney is also the author of A Vastness All Around: Awakening to Your Natural State, a powerful and elegant collection of essays, discussions, interviews, and powerful pointers. It can be ordered directly from the publisher at Lulu Press.

~~~~~

For the book's Press Release, click Here.

~~~~~

Vastness is now available for the Amazon Kindle! Order Here.

~~~~~

Check out Rodney on YouTube talking about "The Fundamental Thing."

~~~~~

Tami Brady reviewed Vastness on her TCM Reviews page.

~~~~~

Feel free to read a review of the Kindle Edition of Vastness on Amazon.

~~~~~

Nonduality Magazine has published a discussion with Rodney about his work and book. The extensive and wide-ranging interview was done by John LeKay, the magazine's editor.

~~~~~

"I like your approach in A Vastness All Around. The stories, thoughts and vignettes of your life seem wonderful ways to make people stop and pay attention to where they actually are right now, rather than in some imagined past or future. They show that you don't have to be some specially qualified person, preferably with a title and a name in Sanskrit, to pursue the spiritual quest. Your message comes across particularly well in such pieces as 'Sheerness of Being.'"

--Valerie J. Roebuck, Ph.D., Honorary Research Fellow, University of Manchester (England)

~~~~~

I am now doing phone consultations via Skype! Each conversation will take about an hour, and a $25 donation will be greatly appreciated.

I am also scheduling teaching events at this time. If you would like to arrange something in your area, you may email me at: writerguy (at) fastmail (dot) fm

~~~~~

This blog is generally updated every Sunday afternoon, Eastern Standard Time.

Pointers

You are awareness already. It doesn't get any simpler than that.

*****

Who is it that is doubting that self-knowledge can't be had? If you examine the issue carefully, you will see (and with considerable ease) that the doubt is just an arising thought. Thus, your uncertainty can't be you because you can't be something that comes and goes. So what remains? Ever-present awareness, which has merely being ignored.

*****

Conditioning isn't a constant. It is a thought, feeling, or action arising in the spaciousness that you presently are. Freedom is your nature, your inherent condition. You're giving emphasis to the thoughts and emotions because you think or imagine that they are the only things that are there. But that simply isn't the case.

*****

Your mind can never find awareness. Can a shadow reach the sun?

*****

See how hypothetical you are making everything--how needless questions arise out of your intellectualizing (not to mention mythologizing!) your search for self-knowledge. When this is seen, there is a very natural pause that points to presence itself.

*****

In order to know that your thoughts and sentiments are temporarily there, there must be a fundamental knower that is always there. This knower isn't your body or your mind or your consciousness. It is pure awareness. And yes, you are the Knower. Allow yourself to see the immense beauty and fullness of this. You will marvel at how you could have missed it for so long.

*****

Awareness is independent of your thoughts, concepts, and spiritual lineage. It's there whether you believe in it or not. It's all a matter of seeing and understanding presence As-It-Is. Anything less than that is experiential, fleeting, and conceptual. You are what you are at this very second. But you take yourself to be your job, body, personality, gender, nationality, or bank account. And none of that is true.

*****

The answer to all of your spiritual and philosophical questions is directly within and before you. All that is needed is for you to recognize how clearly your own Clarity is already present. No spiritual or geographical journeys are required for that. Radiance is what you are at this very moment. So go ahead, have a quick and timeless look at your ever-present nature. It is lustrous and unfeigned, and it will never desert you.

-----

News & Info

Rodney's new book, Fully Present: Daily Reflections on Nonduality, is now available. It is $18.95 for the paperback (excluding postage). You can order it directly from the publisher right HERE.

~~~~~

And go HERE for the press release for Fully Present.

~~~~~

Rodney is also the author of A Vastness All Around: Awakening to Your Natural State, a powerful and elegant collection of essays, discussions, interviews, and powerful pointers. It can be ordered directly from the publisher at Lulu Press.

~~~~~

For the book's Press Release, click Here.

~~~~~

Vastness is now available for the Amazon Kindle! Order Here.

~~~~~

Check out Rodney on YouTube talking about "The Fundamental Thing."

~~~~~

Tami Brady reviewed Vastness on her TCM Reviews page.

~~~~~

Feel free to read a review of the Kindle Edition of Vastness on Amazon.

~~~~~

Nonduality Magazine has published a discussion with Rodney about his work and book. The extensive and wide-ranging interview was done by John LeKay, the magazine's editor.

~~~~~

"Loved [A Vastness All Around], Rodney. Enjoyed it as much as John Wheeler's first book, Awakening to the Natural State. My favourite quote of yours was "you are no more your personal history than you are your toothbrush." I like the fact that you included little tidbits of your life and surrounds. It felt more like reading a book on travel or history than some of the other textbook style books on nonduality. I think for anyone serious about a direct approach, your book and John Wheeler's are the two to have." -- Ian

~~~~~

I am now doing phone consultations via Skype! Each conversation will take about an hour, and a $25 donation will be greatly appreciated.

I am also scheduling teaching events at this time. If you would like to arrange something in your area, you may email me at: writerguy (at) fastmail (dot) fm

~~~~~

This blog is generally updated every Sunday afternoon, Eastern Standard Time.