21 July 2008

A Review of "Paradise Found"

Charlie’s Living Expression of the “Truth that Sets us Free” is, as he himself (or Not Self) is so fond of saying, is of the “Hardball and/or End Game" variety. With this in mind, one might also say that Charlie Hayes is, quite literally, a perfect expression of “Tough Love.” As such, “Paradise Found” does not offer to wake “YOU” up to “What YOU Always Already ARE” softly or gently, but rather (if one has the nerve) to provide a “cold slap in the face" (and repeatedly hard kick in the "ego’s butt") until “No One gets It"! 

However, if you truly are “sick and tired of being sick and tired" (read: suffering), and are actually serious about “getting out of the way” (of your Self), this is the last book the “seeker you believe yourself be” will ever think it needs.  And although Charlie's "north end" will repeatedly remind you that anything other than I Am (and even That) is BS, his Obvious Love for That Which Is Beyond Relative Conception (read: YOU) is Self-Evident and Passionate.  (Note: Though there may yet be other books forthcoming, this one may actually be “Mister Charlie’s Opus”!) 

Friend and Author of “Out of My Mind and Back to My Senses,” retired Military and Airline Pilot, and 40 year (some of us become true masters of avoiding the Obvious Truth of Being in favor of “self-delusion and suffering”) seeker of Truth as the Common Thread in All, Rich Hay, Major, USAF (Retired)

PS Today’s Hay-Ku:

“Who I think I am”

Is a reflected-image

Of the “One I Am.”

PS: Today’s Hay-Ku:

“Who I think I am”

Is a reflected-image

Of the “One I Am.”

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20 July 2008

Who Do You Think You Are?

Questions Requiring Honest Answers

Who do you think you are? Are you the Source of your life? Are you responsible for controlling the beating of your heart? Are you the Source of that beating heart?

Who do you think you are? Are you the Source of the world of others? Are you responsible for the war in Iraq? Are you the Source of the Stock market’s rollercoaster ride? Who do you think you are? Who do you know you are? Are you the Source of thinking you know who you are? Are you the Source of that energy making the sun burn, the earth turn? Who do you feel you are? Are you the Source of what you feel? Who do you think woke you up today? Who do you think you are? The One who woke your body up? Did you make sure not to die in your sleep? Who do you think believes feels knows accepts denies rejects adores hates loves what IS? Who do you think you are? Are you the Source? Are you responsible for anything? Everything? Nothing? Are you at all? Are You I Am I you IS there a Source? WHERE IS IT?

Questions Requiring Honests Answers

Who do I think I am? Am I the Source of my life? Am I responsible for controlling the beating of my heart? Am I the Source of that beating heart? Who do I think I am?

Am I the Source of the world of others? Am I responsible for the war in Iraq? Am I the Source of the Stock market’s rollercoaster ride? Who do I think I am? Who do I know I am? Am I the Source of thinking I know who I am? Am I the Source of that energy making the sun burn, the earth turn? Who do I feel I am? Am I the Source of what I feel?

Who do I think woke I up today? Who do I think I am? The One who woke my body up?

Did I make sure not to die in my sleep? Who do I think believes feels knows accepts denies rejects adores hates loves what IS? Who do I think I am? Am I separate from my Source? Am I a thing at all? Am I Source? Am I responsible for anything? Everything? Nothing? Am I at all? AM I? Am I at all? Are You I Am I you IS there a Source? WHERE IS IT?

Do I have a Source? Do you? Where is my Root Core Source? Your Source? Am I Source? Are you Source?

Who do you think you are?

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19 July 2008

No One Really Wants To Know This

Gilbert shares this today … The radical view IS this natural SEEING, happening right now, right there.  (You wont be able to find a 'point' where it is happening).

In that SEEING, the so-called 'mind' is obviously nothing but appearances, words, concepts etc.....they do not actually appear as 'something' seen, in the ACTUAL seeing.  If you believe they do, then what color or shape are they?

These points are so obvious (here) I never give it a thought, so to speak.  If I contemplate it, it seems strange that everyone can't see this obviousness...but that thought dissolves by itself.

The obvious thing is that no one wants to know about this stuff.....they want to hang onto their beliefs, knock them into shape and continue on.

Many want to play with the non duality jargon and play games of 'getting it' etc.  The latest gig is Psychotherapist catching onto the business opportunity ........ “POST AWAKENING”  ........ those appearances posing as “teachers” 'create' masses of believers in having to LEARN how to live the Awakened State of Being ......... apparently it is rife in places like Santa Cruz, California ........ [yes, and also in places like” Ashland, Oregon”].

It is SO TRANSPARENT......no one is released...they just learn how to pretend to be released from suffering ....... if they knew how transparent the whole thing is, they would cease to play these silly games .............. Ordinary awareness is totally present in everyone .... it has nothing to do with 'personality and ego'.

C. Spot on as always, Gilbert.

Can it be seen? Happiness is what you are ... to seek it denies it ... The wonderful paradox! "You must get rid of you” - can what does not exist get rid of what does not exist? Wherever you go, HERE, You ARE! Nowhere, Everywhere ...  Simply Being. Full Stop!

(Gilbert’s blog can be found at http://www.shiningthroughthemind.net.)

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19 July 2008

Flowers In Air

Many pen lovely poems! Rumi. Hafiz. Kabir. But still these poems are ONLY conceptual. The Real is NOT a concept, no matter how “flowery”! Some are quite lovely, but still, they are like “flowers in air” – and try but always must fail to point to That which mind cannot grasp.

What IS, is inexpressible yet Does Exist…

A seeker writes and asks for “guidance, says a teacher is wanted. The seeker says say "I" a LOT. "I, me, myself" - what are those? What IS that "I"? Dear seeker: What exactly do you assume you are? Look! Really LOOK and do NOT just "think about it"! Look from Naked Awareness. LOOK.

Who – or what ‘mechanism’ - asks for “guidance”? Who says “I’m lost”? How can you LOSE the actual indisputable ever present FACT that There IS BEING? Who asks “how”? Who asks “who am I”? WHO!? Where IS the Asker? The Speaker? The thinker of all this imagination of a “me”? WHO says “I cannot see it now”?

Find out!

What do you assume you ARE? A “knower”? A “self”? This ‘I’ thought? An “experiencer”? A “me”? Who wants a teacher?

Bad news! I am NOT a "teacher". You can't teach this because that would assume there is a knower who could teach a non-knower. That is an utterly FALSE construct, a false paradigm, a set of false assumptions. The "set" is, I assume there IS separateness, an assumed I/other dualism, then added on is the assumption “I am me” and “there is ‘time’ and nOT Only tis moment of timelessness, therefore there are others” that are “not me” and some “one of those others” will teach “me” how to be The One (that I already ANM, The I AM of Awareness Just That) and “then” this "I" will "gain paradise" but not now, only “someday’. This is ALL BULLSHIT.

You are NONE of those. NOT that “set of assumptions”. What ARE you then? You are NO Thing. Or Ordinary Awareness, No Thing Else but That. You see, what you ARE is just Plain, Ordinary, nothing-special, Awareness.

All you are describing is weather in an empty sky - Awareness. ALL knowledge is ignorance. Imagination. A dream!

You are the Dreamless Awakeness that sees the dream, the sleep, the birth, the death. YOU WERE NEVER BORN.

The sky is Empty. Untouchable. You ARE that sky of Pure Empty Awareness. That is not "precious or special. That is NOT a "state" - all "states" come and go ON that Empty Screen of Awareness.

That is unattainable and inescapable. You cannot GET that. You ARE That!

That Awareness Simply IS, Empty, Meaningless, and THAT registers and allows ALL of it to appear in Timeless Peace.

Simply KNOW this: YOU ARE.

That is all that is being pointed to: YOU ARE.

This Presence is NOT an object.

You are this Silent Blank Screen we call Being, Consciousness, Peace.

The Peace you are is the silent observer of all you are describing. You never left that. You ARE That.

ALL your experiences are imagination. The dream.

ALL paths of looking, meditating, pointing you back to nothing, etc. lead AWAY from Paradise.

This is all there is. As It IS. And as It is NOT.

Let the weather come and go in what You are.

Being Awareness is what You are.

All else is imagination.

Full Stop.

Okay, now you have been anti-virused. 

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18 July 2008

You Find Nothing, Yet Still Assume You Are  A Thing?

B.L. writes, The me sense is seemly strong, yet when I look for the me inside, there is nothing. This is clear, your words and others such as Tony Parsons and John Wheeler bring such a resonance at the time of hearing or reading it is the end of the search, there is a sort of knowing. Douglas Harding’s way of getting the looking to turn in to find nothing is great. Yet, (don’t you just love the “yet’s and but’s”) when emotions run such as anger or fear, the me feeling is so strong it (the feeling of I am) seems to be really real and is something precious that does exist and can be lost.

C. How could BEING be “lost”? Doubts are thoughts about a flse entity called me that now egoicly claims when “I” look for “me” “I” find nothing. Then if you really DO find nothing what mechanism makes you keep searching for answers? Fin out where you are starting from and the whole thing is seen as stormy weather in the Empty Sky of this inescapable timeless presence of awareness.

Q: When the excitement passes, I can look for the one that was afraid and find nothing. If someone else was to tell me this tale, I would spout “What’s the problem, look in right now, can you find the you that was afraid now? No, nor was there ever a you, so who was there to be afraid or angry, problem fixed. But (there’s that but again) I know what was felt and don’t want to feel it again.

C. I I I. WHO?

Q: My question that I am about to ask is daft, as I seemly know the answer, so why ask? I wish I knew.

C. Again, what or who IS this I? If the question is REALLY seen as “daft” than what force makes it get asked? The issue here is that you are starting from an assumption of a separate entity called “I” – the questioner. That is the core mistake. Why not start from the ONLY FACT you KNOW beyond all doubt (reasonable or otherwise)? YOU ARE. BEINGNESS IS and THAT is absolutely inescapable.

Q: Why can’t there be knowing and fear/anger in the same moment.

C. You ask “why” this and “why” which will only lead to an embellishment of an already FALSE story of a nonexistent "me"!

What asks? What do you assume you ARE? A “knower”? A “self”? An “experiencer”?

You are NONE of those. You are NO Thing. Or Ordinary Awareness, No Thing Else but That.

You see, what you ARE is just Plain, Ordinary, nothing-special, Awareness.

All you are describing is weather in an empty sky - Awareness. ALL knowledge is ignorance. Imagination. A dream!

You are the Dreamless Awakeness that sees the dream, the slpeep, the birth, the death. YOU WERE NEVER BORN.

The sky is Empty. Untouchable. You ARE that sky of Pure Empty Awareness. That is not "precious or special. That is NOT a "state" - all "states" come and go ON that Empty Screen of Awareness.

That is unattainable and inescapable. You cannot GET that. You ARE That!

That Awareness Simply IS, Empty, Meaningless, and THAT registers and allows ALL of it to appear in Timeless Peace.

Simply KNOW this: YOU ARE.

That is all that is being pointed to: YOU ARE.

This Presence is NOT an object.

You are this Silent Blank Screen we call Being, Consciousness, Peace.

The Peace you are is the silent observer of all you are describing. You never left that. You ARE That.

ALL your experiences are imagination. The dream.

ALL paths of looking, meditating, pointing you back to nothing, etc. lead AWAY from Paradise.

This is all there is. As It IS. And as It is NOT.

Let the weather come and go in what You are.

Being Awareness is what You are.

All else is imagination.

Full Stop.

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16 July 2008

The Ego Is The "Me" That Says "I Can't"

What is pointed out here over and over until it REALLY sinks in is that there is NO authentic  "freedom" until the root has been absolutely severed. Until that happens, the ego’s claim to now “know” “There is no one in here who can do this investigation”  can quite often become its own mental egoic-justification for refusing to listen and look into what the urge to “investigate” is actually  pointing to - that what we point to is that when "the me" is STILL operating deep down, and driving the emotions and stories of right and wrong, acceptance and rejection, approval and disapproval, then the search is NOT over.

One way it (the fake) kept its job in "charlie" for a while after meeting John and Bob was, "I cannot do what you suggest - to investigate, to look, to get at the SOURCE of all my flip-flops, because there is no one here with control".

THAT is the EGO USING the "truth" to its own perverted ends.

To enter the Kingdom of Wholeness you start from the FACT that YOU ARE. That YOU ARE is indisputable! But what the ego assumes you are is totally false.Absolutely inauthentic!

The price of freedom is, all you know and all you believe and all you assume that you ARE.

So you see, as long as you believe “you are you”, that assumed-to-be entity you CALL “you” MUST get real, get down, and once and for all root out the cause of thought-identity. When you have NOT done this, you will often claim, usually with a great deal of frustration, “I CAN'T” That  is how the EGO maintains its power and force. WHO makes such a claim?

Find that personal power that claims “I can OR I can’t.

Look within.

Ask you what AM I?

Am I separate from others?

Who said so?

Who believes that crap?

Who AM I?

Who AM I?

Who AM I?

Who AM I?

Who AM I?

Who AM I?

Full Stop!

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15 July 2008

Cults, Cons, Coercion, and Catharsis

One definition of a cult is, “a religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader”.

You’ll never have to worry about falling into THAT trap with any true sharing from Oneness to Oneness.

The appearing patterns of Infinite Energy of Love, seen as organisms with names and forms that speak and write about Nothing-Everything, those which most effectively express this timeless Non-teaching are definitely NOT “charismatic”!

One of the most revered, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, would summarily toss out of his meetings anyone who tried to turn him into an “exalted master” and put him on pedestal. Others that come to mind include such really excellent expressions as Bob Adamson, John Wheeler and John Greven.  And a very austere and potent sharer of this, one Wayne (Ram Tzu) Liquorman. I have experienced “Ram Tzu’s” fire directly! Burn baby burn! Ram Tzu wrote in “No Way”, “Ram Tzu loves you so he is out to destroy you”. Pretty NOT charismatic, wouldn’t you say!?

If you are looking for the charismatic leader where those guys hang out you are in for a rather rude awakening. Not that they are “rude” – these men and women who share Oneness from Oneness are generally quite kind and courteous to those who find themselves in their company. Unless you are looking to prove your bullcrap “enlightenment” to them or seek approval from them. Then you might experience the fire of ruthless love (and if you are so blessed you would be well advised to TAKE IT and NOT run away with your tail between your legs one more time.)

You see, it’s just that there is none of the ass kissing approval-seeking forked tongue nicey-nicey speaking to you that often takes the form of a seeming sincere but really inauthentic “I love You so very much” - whilst the dagger of invalidation and assertion of unchallengeable authority is concealed in the folds of their holy robes (actual or metaphorical).

Or, behind their backs and masked by their persona of me holy you stupid nut stick around for another 33 retreats and maybe someday … all delivered by a master con woman or con man presenting such a smiling kindly face.

They are easy to recognize: The take a position that they have the answers and you must obey regardless of what your nagging intuition may tell you. You might sniff out a sense of cult-feeling but you are told that this is only your failing to “surrender” and that you must NOT object when your own One-Self suspects something is rotten in this fish market, when the stink under the pretty face and words is sniffed – Oh NO! You must according to these cult leaders keep eating the crap (or as in the extreme case of this ignorant leader-follower paradigm, swallowing the poison laced Kool-Aid) and never challenge this postured authority. If I believed that there were evil surely this must fit the concept!

So if you have been roped in and the “teacher” keeps demanding you do more exercises, practice more and more processes, and attend another retreat and another retreat and another retreat and more, grab your wallet and run as quick as you can.

Come back to the simplicity of this sharing (this is NOT a teaching, and there are no “teachers” of this) - what we call Paradise Found” around here: A) You ARE full stop. No-one can claim I am NOT. That – the impersonal not-a-concept Beingness that “mind” calls “I AM” IS the natural, eternal Isness that you really are. That is a knowing that is imbued with Timeless Love. B) IF you still assume you are anything – any thing! – OTHER than that I AM, see if you can fine a separate actual “thing.” All you find is thoughts arising in Awareness, This Presence of I AM that you are.

Believe NONE of this. Neither accept nor reject. This that You are is not a belief nor a believer.

Those bits of energy forming into words come and go. What You are cannot come and g. IT IS and You Are That. That is all: Paradise is Found when the search for it is seen to be futile and it drops through the bottom of the empty net and all there is is all there is. Home. Love.

Love can be ruthless. Yet in the end, Love is all that really matters. Being loving is the natural way. Being a greedy “charismatic leader’” is not natural and not ever going to matter. Love is Empty, and Meaningless, yet filled to overflowing with a timeless courage that appears as an unconditional yet uncompromised Loving Respect for all that is. Baba Muktananda, John Wheeler, Bob Adamson and John Greven all showed me that in their unique ways, and made me see that only Love really matters in the end. Let it be so for you. This One Love is all you need. Everything else is dust.

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14 July 2008

You Cannot “Own” Oneness

J.D. Writes, Hi, Charlie - after about a year of reading and thinking about non duality, I believe I am beginning to get it.  Also, I am understanding the difference between the two camps, neo and traditional.

C. There are no “camps” in This Timelessness. And all "understanding” is useless. It's the booby prize. This Beingness is the Seeing Nowhere for No one - just NON-Conceptual "Knowingness" - that is spaceless, empty and belongs to no one. You cannot "OWN" Oneness: You ARE Oneness. You cannot get it. Give that idea up straight away! What is pointed to is the ABSENCE of a "you" to "get it or NOT get it" There is NO "it" to "get"!

Q: I see that we are only awareness, and that which we are aware of is perfect. 

C. WHO claims "I See"? That one does NOT exist.  Seeing IS. There is NO se-er (look and see where any "se-er actually is. You find nothing. You are that No Thing. That is Love.)

Awareness is NOT “awareness OF.” Awareness is all there IS. Another “name” for Awareness is Being, or Oneness, or “One-Without-A-Second”.

Q: Does that not also apply to our awareness of our thoughts and emotions?  And if so, from this perspective, are not all our feelings perfect just as they are?

C. Again this is pointing to ONE and THAT is NOT “aware of”. Awareness and appearance are one essence, one Loving Spacelike Beingness. Thoughts, feelings, all object-concepts! Arising in Emptiness. Thou Art The Emptiness, NOT any object!

Q: Taking this to the next level, all emotions and all thoughts, good and bad, are perfect in that they are reflections of aliveness - right?

C. Neither right nor wrong. NO concept can be true! Yet it can be said – as a ;pointer ONLY - that ALL "reflections" are in Reality reflections OF The Timeless Self that you are. There are NO levels in The One You Are. Nothing said or written anywh