When the search for enlightenment collapses, when the mind exhausts itself and gives up, it is clearly seen: enlightenment can never be found, because it was never lost.
This ordinary life is already what we are looking for, and already, in this moment, there is a perfection that could never be seen by the seeking mind. ... truth is a pathless land.
... this is it. What is happening presently is all that could possibly be happening.
And so these days, there is just the living of a very ordinary life, with no desire to reach some higher plane of existence, find my True Self, or become one with God.
And it's so obvious now: This ordinary life is all there is, or ever was. And in this ordinary life, there is such an extraordinary presence, an openness, an aliveness which means that nothing is ever really ordinary at all. It's all God. Freedom. Perfect in its imperfection.
-- Jeff Foster in LIFE WITHOUT A CENTRE - Awakening From the Dream of Separation, pg 13-15
When the search for enlightenment collapses, when the mind exhausts itself and gives up, it is clearly seen: enlightenment can never be found, because it was never lost.
-- Jeff Foster in LIFE WITHOUT A CENTRE - Awakening From the Dream of Separation, pg 13
... there have been, and still are, many who seek to encourage such beliefs [that enlightenment is something to be achieved] and who have actually claimed to have become enlightened. I now see that this is as pointless a declaration as someone proclaiming to the world that they can breath.
-- Tony Parsons in As It Is - The Open Secret of Spiritual Awakening, pg 15
... there is no one and nothing to be enlightened. Enlightenment simply is.
-- Tony Parsons in As It Is - The Open Secret of Spiritual Awakening, pg 16
[Enlightenment is] something that is as natural, simple, and available as breathing.
-- Tony Parsons in As It Is - The Open Secret of Spiritual Awakening, pg 17
... there is no process to learn because I cannot learn to achieve something that I already am.
Presence is totally effortless and is nearer to me than breathing. Presence can only be allowed and recognized.
-- Tony Parsons in As It Is - The Open Secret of Spiritual Awakening, pg 38
I don't have anything that you don't have. The difference is that I am no longer looking for anything. That is it, and that's the end of it. Give up the search for something to happen and fall in love, fall intimately in love with the gift of presence in "what is".
Here, right here, is the seat of all that you will ever long for. It is simple and ordinary and magnificent. You see, you are aleady home.
-- Tony Parsons in As It Is - The Open Secret of Spiritual Awakening, pg 138
Realize that resting in your true nature does not have to do with having a still mind or not experiencing the desires and interests of the body and mind.
-- John Wheeler in Shining in Plain View, pg 172
It's the letting go of the idea that there's anything to find and it's the letting go of the one in there who's looking around looking for something. It's just simply letting there be seeing, letting there be hearing, letting there be smelling, letting there be touching, letting there be recognition of feelings ... Letting the feelings simply be seen without any sense that they need to change; they just are what is.
-- Tony Parsons in All There Is, pg 38
... without all the effort of seeking, it sounds like a lottery.
... awakening doesn't happen to anyone. ...
People appear to do the lottery and win it, but nobody does 'become awakened'.
-- Tony Parsons in All There Is, pg 44
... there's no way you can creep up on yourself; you can't creep up on awakening. There is no method that allows you to go on a journey towards what already is the case.
-- Tony Parsons in All There Is, pg 50
Awakening ... is only about dropping of the one that's looking for something.
As a little child, you weren't looking for anything. As a little child, you were in total love. Everything was just what it was. And then the game of separation began. And from that very moment of separation, you were looking - 'Oh, I've lost it! Where's it gone?' You were looking for love; you were looking for what you are. And now you've come to discover that you don't need to look anymore because everything you're looking at is that. It's absolutely as simple as that, and there's no one there who can do anything about that.
-- Tony Parsons in All There Is, pg 70
The mind is always looking for something more -- 'What's going to happen next?' What we long for, we think we can get through the mind. So the mind is continually throwing up all sorts of riches and none of them ever satisfies. When you go and see people teaching about what is said to be the nature of enlightenment, the ones who teach some sort of process are still coming from the mind. It is very popular.
The nature of what we are is totally and utterly simple. It's here right now. It's this, the seeing of this. There is nothing complicated, there is nothing that needs to be done. But the mind wants the process of discovering our own nature to be complicated so that we don't find it. The mind wants to continue being employed. And it will go on and on and on forever. We go on filling the bowl with our mind's activity, and never ever will it be filled.
The crazy thing about it is that what is being looked for is right in front of us. What we are looking for is what is right in this.
The only thing that is constant, the only thing that never leaves, is this. You can go out of here and go down the road and there will still be this. It doesn't matter what you do or where you go, there'll always be this. ... You can never ecape the one, becaue you already are the one. The one is all there is.
-- Tony Parsons in All There Is, pg 122
... searching for truth is denying it. Searching for one is a continual denial of the realisation that one is all there is.
-- Tony Parsons in All There Is, pg 124
... the final understanding is the realisation that there is nothing to understand.
There is only one communication, and that is nothing to nothing. Any idea that there are different levels at which you speak to people is just ignorance or arrogance.
... it is all totally regulated -- there is only so much oneness that the body can stand, and then it needs to go back into contraction, until the time comes when that can be totally accepted by the body. It's a very energetic thing.
-- Tony Parsons in All There Is, pg 132
It's a dropping of all concepts about becoming anything or about being on a path. Basically, all there is is this -- there is just this.
Enlightenment has nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with personal change.
-- Tony Parsons in All There Is, pg 136
... you have to come to some sort of understanding that there is nothing to understand.
-- Tony Parsons in All There Is, pg 149
What is communicated here is that nobody can become enlightened. There is no such thing as an object called enlightenment, and no person has ever become enlightened. There is no singular separate person sitting here. There is no one!
Awakening is simply the dropping away of the seeker, the seeker who looks for something out there and goes on looking. It is the dropping away of the one who wants something. When that drops away, there is what is already always there -- simply light, the absolute, the source appearing as this .. It is not attained or owned by anyone or anything. It simply is that which is the only constant.
All of this is just the source appearing. It's the one appearing as two ... The one playing the game of being the wall ... And you are playing the game of believing that you are a person -- the only problem is that you take the game seriously.
-- Tony Parsons in All There Is, pg 168
... ignorance comes out of the presumption that the mind can and must understand something in order for awakening to happen -- this is generated out of a deep ignorance. What is being communicated here is totally beyond the mind and heart. It is speaking directly to the wisdon we all already are.
It is far easier for an utterly simple person to see this than it is for a person loaded with the luggage of so-called spiritual knowledge.-- Tony Parsons in All There Is, pg 192
... enlightenment only becomes available when it has been accepted that it cannot be achieved.
-- Tony Parsons in The Open Secret, pg 4
Enlightenment is devastatingly simple. Although questions regarding enlightenment often become complicated, the answer always remains simple: awakening to enlightenment is the direct result of freedom from the illusion of a separate self. A profound understanding of this ultimate simplicity provides all that is required for an awakening to enlightenment.
Enlightenment is what we are. There is nothing to gain, only its recognition.
... you are always already enlightened.
Awakening to enlightenment is a journey from here to here, not from here to there. There is nowhere to go and nothing to be attained. Enlightenment is simply an awakening to what has always been the case. ... at the finish, one experiences the same world from an entirely different perspective. As a result, your case of mistaken identity effortlessly dissolves.
The release of an illusary separate self occurs effortlessly through understanding what was never really there.
The masterpiece of enlightenment is already here. There is only the awakening to it. ... Upon awakening, one sage purportedly exclaimed, "Is that all it is?" He then laughed and went about his daily business.
Seeking enlightenment is like searching for a pair of glasses that are perched on top of your head. All efforts to find the glasses are seen as ridiculous once one understands the situation. How humorous it is to discover what was there all along!
-- Gary Crowley in From Here To Here, Turning Toward Enlightenment, pgs 1-4
... no amount of meditating will turn you into a buddha. How could it? You're already Buddha -- that is, inseparable from Reality and Truth. Yet we ignore this and carry on as though we're all missing or lacking something.
... there's no gaining idea in Zen practice. It there is, it's not practice.
Zen is never a matter of adding something to your mind or removing something from it or denying how it functions.
Do you really think that there's something "out there" -- enlightenment, Nirvana, some special insight -- that's ever going to satisfy? ... As long as you hold yourself apart, there's always something you have to get or get away from. The supply of such things is endless. ...
What you are truly after ... cannot be grasped or attained or obtained or conceptualized or even described.
... our life can't be separated from Reality -- from the life of the world as a Whole, from the lives of others. In other words, there's nothing to get. ...
... We can realize, right up front, that this very restless, itching mind that asks, "What am I getting out of this?" and "What's best for me?" is already the paid and the confusion we wish to free ourselves from.
-- Steve Hagen in Buddhism Is Not What You Think, pg 24 - 27
You're already here, We're already here In fact, you can't leave.
There's no trail to this place. We're already here. All of us.
To be here is freedom from insanity, fear, worry, struggle, striving, the urgent desire to
control, and the habitual yearning for sedurity and escape from pain.
-- Steve Hagen in Buddhism Is Not What You Think, pg 33 & 35
There's nothing you must learn or believe.
-- Wayne Liquorman in Never Mind - A Journey into Non-duality, pg 14
The ultimate goal or prize turns out to be what already is. ... All along You have been the butt of Your own cosmic joke. ... You are, and always have been, completely awake, aware and present, but merely mesmerised by Your own cosmic play.
-- Nathan Gill in Already Awake, pg 28
There is seeking for some kind of ultimate knower -- whereas, in fact, all there is is knowing. It's always immediate, always right now. If it is projected as an awakening that's going to happen in the future, then something is being overlooked.
... all that is going on here is a description, not a prescription.
-- Nathan Gill in Already Awake, pg 86
... the 'me' can't do it because the 'me' is what is seen through. All that can be said is that within the play of life, the mesmerisation with the thought story is gradually -- or suddenly -- seen through.
-- Nathan Gill in Already Awake, pg 88
Recognising your true nature is not an advantage -- that is the seeker's assumption and is what appears to keep the whole seeking drama in place, the idea that there will be an advantage.
-- Nathan Gill in Already Awake, pg 142
The seeker is the sought.
-- Wayne Liquorman in Acceptance of What Is -- A Book About Nothing, pg 29
The mind of a seeker is out to destroy itself .. in theory. When it comes right down to crunch time, mind will never destroy itself.
-- Wayne Liquorman in Acceptance of What Is -- A Book About Nothing, pg 30
Quotes About Advaitism:
The Aim Of Inquiry
/ The Inadequacy Of Words
/ Suffering
What Am I?
/ The Illusion
/ Purpose
/ Seeking
/ Awakening
/ Acceptance
Other Quotes
Alan Watts:
AlanWatts.com /
AlanWatts.org /
Audio Collection
Science & Nonduality /
Books, Video, Audio, Podcasts
A Skeptics Approach To Non-Duality /
On Being Adopted
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