Q&A: No Process

Question: Well, I'm continuing to struggle with all of this.

Rodney: Oh, please don't.

Q: I want to be earnest. I keep hearing how it's the best quality a seeker can have.

Rodney: Earnestness comes of its own. You have very little to do with it. You simply find that you are pulled into something--in this case nonduality--in a way that really can't be explained. There is no "push" to do it--but rather a pull from the thing itself, which, in this case, is nothing less than your innate and numinous Self. It is a "struggle" for you because you are trying to attain it, rather than to recognize or understand it. When you set out to attain somthing, there is not only the supposed distance to cover, but there is this fictitious "me" who is making the onerous journey.

Q: Right, and I can't attain something that I already am.

Rodney: Exactly. And I'm not saying that there is nothing to be done. For there is, but it is a simple understanding or apperceiving, that's all. And that needn't be a struggle at all. In fact, the more relaxed you are, the better.

Q: Is there any way to quicken this understanding?

Rodney: Well, you're still thinking in terms of an "I" being there, when there isn't. Actually, it is there, but it is only temporary. And anything that's occasional cannot be your fundamental reality.

Q: Oh, jeeze. I was going about it wrong again!

Rodney: Don't see it in terms of "right" and "wrong." Those words only attract conceptual flotsam that perpetually clouds the issue of pristine seeing. Again, you are already that which you are seeking. Awareness is directly before you right now, as you are reading these words. What could be quicker than that? It's yours for the having, or rather for the seeing or understanding. And that could happen at the very end of this very sentence...Or it could occur next week as you are having a cup of tea or coffee, or standing in front of your bathroom mirror as you are washing your hands at the sink.

Q: Or when stretched out on a green, second-hand sofa. :)

Rodney: Particularly when stretched out on a green sofa! And it would help, certainly, to have one of John Wheeler's books in your hands.

Q: I continue to read everything by everybody. And I've ordered your book to examine over the holidays. I'm even having that sucker FedExed!

Rodney: Thanks for the purchase! But remember, the book is pointing to you, to your own enduring presence. Also stay mindful of the fact that it isn't necessary to "read everything by everyone." Try focusing on the works and teachers with whom there is some kind of synchrony. And a clear indication of that harmony is that the teachers' words and books slow your conceptualizing down. You can't read or listen to them for any length without being paused by their content.

Q: Yeah, I understand exactly what you mean. Thanks for pointing that out.

Rodney: A final point about "quickening" the process: There is no process, and there is no one to "quicken" it. If I were to say to you that nonduality will help you to reach a clear understanding in, say, a month instead of five years or ten, I'd be giving credence to the belief that time is a factor in all of this. And that is most certainly not the case. In fact, nonduality, is one of the few teachings that goes out of its way to say that you are already That for which you are searching. So take a moment to recognize the splendor of your immediate Self. I say a "moment," but even that's too much. For truly, this seeing is timeless.

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News & Info

"Your book is excellent!" -- Peter Kern, Gstaad, Switzerland

A Vastness All Around: Awakening to Your Natural State is now available for purchase. Rodney's first collection of essays, discussions, interviews and powerful pointers can be ordered directly from the publisher at Lulu Press.

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

And for the book's Press Release, click Here.

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Pointers

From moment to moment, what is it about you that Does Not Change?


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Why get bent out of shape about duality? It is simply an appearance in Reality. Objects, lives, and occurences are manifestations, giving rise to the concepts of space and time. Beyond and within all of this is a timelessness that defies all description. And you are That! There is not the slightest separation between you and awareness. Ponder this fact throughout day and evening until you are suddenly clear on its magnificent reality.


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The mind is no distinct entity. Rather, it is a functioning that occurs within the brain. And that functioning includes thinking, feeling, intending, guessing, reasoning, and imagining.


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Consciousness, among other things, is the sense of existing and the sense of being present. There is an "I-am-ness" quality to consciousness that is not there with awareness. As a sentient being, you know that you exists, that you are sitting, right now, directly in front of your computer screen, as you peruse these sentences. But when you are awake to your actual nature, you not only know that you exist, but that you are Existence itself.


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Sentience/consciousness is an aspect of awareness that allows awareness to recognize itself. Pure presence, which you ultimately are, does not know that it exists.


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There is really no "relationship" between awareness and the universe. Such topics may (seemingly) make for entertaining debates with a lot of weighted--but not necessarily correct--conjecture. But the bottom line is that awareness and all worlds are one. No matter the distance, the dimension, or the condition, all is presence.


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Your unexamined, day-to-day living amounts to you taking yourself to be something that you are not.


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One of the great myths of enlightenment (which is another myth in itself) is that, upon its occurrence, all notions of dualism cease. There still may be the occasional--but brief--identification with thoughts and feelings. But essentially, your life becomes rather like a lucid dream: You know that you are dreaming, but you still react to the sudden and on-coming bus or return a beautiful person's smile and gaze. But all is seen for what it is--temporary appearances in the dream. So ultimately, nothing is held, only enjoyed, steered cleared of, or reacted to normally.

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News & Info

A Vastness All Around: Awakening to Your Natural State is now available for purchase. Rodney's first collection of essays, discussions, interviews and powerful pointers can be ordered directly from the publisher at Lulu Press.

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

And for the book's Press Release, click Here.

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Pointers

There is no road to freedom. Only Freedom itself.


*****


"Deepening" your practice accomplishes nothing. It is still a practice, and there is still this perceived-person doing it. Further, at no point do you "reach" presence because it can only be recognized or understood, not attained. In short, with methods and practices, you are looking away from the very thing that you are seeking.


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Without a single belief or a nanosecond of any spiritual activity, awareness gleams radiantly before you. And it isn't so much because you are distracted by life that you aren't seeing it (though that contention is not without merit). You just haven't properly paused and cognitized the presence of awareness within that pause. And such a recognition comes simply and easily.


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Awakening is a direct understanding of your true nature. And it occurs only once, and that's it. Game over.


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You are aware of these words as you are reading them on the computer screen. But what is it that is aware? Pause carefully here. What is it that is immediately present in addition to the words that you are reading right now? See that there is a subtle presence of sheerness and spaciousness that has absolutely always been within you and before you. It is the Mona Lisa-smile within the 3D picture. It may appear hidden at first. But once perceived, you realize how it was always in rapturous view.


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The "I" is a convenience, a practicality, an assumed reference point that allows us to function and communicate in our day-to-day life. Attempt neither to negate it or to give it overwhelming importance. For your fundamental nature can't be anything that comes and goes. And the "I" and the "me" do just that. You are the splendor and the spaciousness that forever remains.


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The serious exploration of such spiritual concepts such as "grasping," "egoic consciousness," and "energetic unfoldings" is such a waste of time and neurons. You are awareness itself, the presence in which all of the above notions come and go. Give you attention to that which Does Not Move. Then perhaps you, like the English poet Thomas Traherne, will finally feel "no dross or matter in my soul,/No brims or borders, such as in a bowl/We see. My essence was capacity."

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News & Info

A Vastness All Around: Awakening to Your Natural State is now available for purchase. Rodney's first collection of essays, discussions, interviews and powerful pointers can be ordered directly from the publisher at Lulu Press.

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

And for the book's Press Release, click Here.

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Q&A: An Obvious Unfolding

Question: Hello, Rodney. I've been subscribing to your blog for a year or so now, and I really enjoy your expression.

Rodney: Thank you!

Q: I would like to share with you what has been an obvious unfolding over these last few months and to ask if you have any pointers for me.

Rodney: Sure.

Q: For a while there has been a strong sense of things being different but of not really knowing what, and therefore, I am not quite able to put it into words.

Rodney: Yes, I'm quite familiar with what you are saying. But go ahead, let's hear your perspective on it.

Q: Slowly, over the last few weeks, it has dawned on me that all that arises here is not really being taken personally, for the most part....This [Name] personality comes up, with all the familiar thought patterns, reactions, tendencies, etc, but there's really no weight to them. They are just clouds passing over. There's nothing personal about any of it.

Rodney: That all sounds good. It appears as if you are beginning to see how the maneuverings of your body and mind are actually operating. And now, because you aren't giving your thoughts and personality patterns any significant import, you are feeling this new and perplexing calmness. In fact, it is so much of an oddity that, as you noted, you aren't quite able to "put it into words."

Q: Exactly. I'm noticing that it doesn't matter whether joy or anger or fear or sadness or whatever emotion arises. There is no resistance to it, nor is there a wanting it to stay or leave. It's as if the purity of the emotion is experienced for its own sake, because there's no "me" story attached to it.

Rodney: Again, that's commendable. It seems as if you are truly getting your nondual bearings. And even your details concerning it are clear and resonant. But--

Q: I intuitively knew that that "but" was coming.

Rodney: Which, once more, points to your own deepening understanding of the matter. All that's needed here is a more precise orientation on this. In your case, I would suggest that you continue to move your focus away from your experiences and feelings, including your ones of calmness and joy. For neither of those is your abiding state. Presence is. Often, seekers equate calmness or elation with awakening. But the central aspects of awareness are peace and spaciousness. It isn't your thoughts, feelings, ideas, bodily sensations, or the fact that you are conscious. So what is left? What is it that remains? What is it that is none of those things and that does not move? What is it, right now, that is immediately present and that you have never apprehended before?

Q: I don't know...But there is definitely a pause occurring, a kind of--

Rodney: Natural cessation.

Q: Yeah, that it's.

Rodney: Now see that within the pause there is an actual presence of awareness that is, at once, beginningless and undeniable. It may appear subtle, at first. But once recognized, there is nowhere where it is not. Its reach is limitless, and you are It.

Q: Then just stay focused on awareness, rather than on the experiences, correct?

Rodney: Just see or understand that you are presence, first and foremost. There is no extra entity having to remain "focused" on anything. Then you will quickly discern that this peace and clarity doesn't come and go. They remain because they are authentic aspects of your Beingness. You continue to experience emotions (thank goodness!), but they are seen for what they are: Fleeting arisings in your natural state.

Q: Points taken. Much love to you, Rodney.

Rodney: And to you, as well.

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News & Info

A Vastness All Around: Awakening to Your Natural State is now available for purchase. Rodney's first collection of essays, discussions, interviews and powerful pointers can be ordered directly from the publisher at Lulu Press.

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

And for the book's Press Release, click Here.

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Pointers

Earnestness means full-speed ahead to a destination at which you have already arrived.

*****

You are completely wasting your time if you are attempting to end or to dissolve the ego. That is simply one thought or concept trying to negate another. And the harder and longer you try, the more frustrating it will become. Is that any way to live your life, especially a so-called spiritual one?

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The issue with recognizing presence is not so much its subtlety (though that is certainly a factor), but its immediacy. Even before you begin to sit in meditation or pick up a spiritual book or read the next word in this very sentence, your natural state is brilliantly present.

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True awakening doesn't cause "disorientation." Indeed, you are suddenly centered in ways that you could not imagine. And it's little wonder, given that you are then centeredness, i.e., awareness proper. You were that even before your awakening, of course; but now you know it to be actual.

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There is no need for you to "reexamine certain patterns of thinking" or create some sort of "energetic unfolding." Those are conceptual activities that never go beyond their self-perpetuating little loops.

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Awakening ends the process of seeking. If you're still meditating and going to your teacher for counsel, you have not recognized anything.

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There is no separation between you and awareness. Ponder this, naturally and earnestly. Truly let it sink in. Again, there is absolutely no separation between you and awareness. If there is any grand or root precept to nonduality, that's the one. You are this knowing, unblinking spaciousness that is within and before your so-called body and mind. Indeed, there is no way out, really. So why not stop all the struggling and take a non-moment to recognize this unabashed refulgence that you have continually been overlooking?

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News & Info

A Vastness All Around: Awakening to Your Natural State is now available for purchase. Rodney's first collection of essays, discussions, interviews and powerful pointers can be ordered directly from the publisher at Lulu Press.

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

And for the book's Press Release, click Here.

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DVD Review

Closer Than Close: A Portrait of Seeking and Finding Our True Self (Poetry in Motion Films/80 minutes/$12.95 plus shipping) is an often moving and diverting work. Director Shawn Nevins captures two sets of seekers: A young one and a middle-aged one. No person, in either group, comes to any final understanding, though their earnestness is apparent.

The young group includes Heidi (a project leader for a Fortune 500 firm), Jeff (an After-School teacher), Scott (a Robotics Software engineer), and Nevins himself. Their questions and discussions--which occasionally go in the wrong direction--are, at least, honestly given.

The middle-age group is comprised of Mike Conners, an "Effortless Meditation" teacher from Cincinnati, Ohio; Art Ticknor, who recently wrote Solid Ground of Being: A Personal Story of the Impersonal; and Bart Marshall, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina and is the author of The Perennial Way, which contains six new translations of such spiritual classics as the Dhammapada, Heart Sutra, and Astavakra Gita.

Most of the seekers have had potent insights, and a few have actually stopped actively searching. Marshall, for instance, "became unfooled" and saw the falseness of many of his ideas and activities.

And Ticknor credits Richard Rose and his works for helping him to realize that "the answer is within," and not in practices. Indeed, Ticknor makes the point that, "It's seemingly silly to say that all you have to do is be what you are. Obviously, we always are what we are. But there is something in the way of recognizing that." Actually, there isn't. It is just a matter of seeing that not only is there nothing in the way, but that awareness is immediately before us. And we are That.

For information on ordering Closer Than Close (which is a fine title, by the way) go to: www.poetryinmotionfilms.com

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News & Info

A Vastness All Around: Awakening to Your Natural State is now available for purchase. Rodney's first collection of essays, discussions, interviews and powerful pointers can be ordered directly from the publisher at Lulu Press.

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

And for the book's Press Release, click Here.

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Pointers

Consciousness is local. Awareness is non-local.

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The "new awakening" is the old awakening. Or rather, there is nothing new or old about it. It is timeless and beyond all categorizations. Why some writers and gurus attempt to make this understanding into something contemporary is puzzling.

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There is no expansion of awareness when it is recognized. That is one of those ridiculous notions put forward by teachers who have no clarity about themselves or nonduality. When true understanding occurs, awareness is seen as expansiveness itself. It is a sheerness that is completely without bounds. Even to talk of expansion and expansiveness when it comes to presence is to short change it in an almost laughable way.

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Keep a dream journal if you enjoy your dreams. But such a journal won't help you to discern your natural state.

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More often than not, meditation doesn't "quiet the mind." Rather, it tends to make thoughts more apparent. Why? Because all of your attention is on stopping the thoughts. And when that happens, you are prone to be more aware when any thought appears. Even when you say that you are simply "witnessing" the thought or just letting thoughts "come and go," there is this imagined person there attempting to do either thing. So you still haven't gotten any closer to who and what you truly are. You can easily go a lifetime in this nonsensical loop, and--of course--most meditators do.

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Can love and devotion really be practiced? Or are they simply a spontaneous and unbridled outpouring from the heart? This is one of those spiritual questions for which the answer can be readily intuited, even if it cannot yet be clearly seen.

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Self-inquiry is beyond "being spiritual." It is a clear and earnest pondering or investigation into your present and actual nature. There is no journey to be made and no practices to be done--just a peace and spaciousness to be recognized. Right now, as you're reading these words, you are seeing from, through, and at the solution for which you are seeking. This is your miracle, your glory, your effluence of sacredness: You are the answer. Don't move from this, because THIS is what you are.

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News & Info

A Vastness All Around: Awakening to Your Natural State is now available. Rodney's first collection of essays, discussions, interviews and powerful pointers can be ordered directly from the publisher at Lulu Press.

And for the book's Press Release, click Here.

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