September 11th

Silence

Silence is the natural state.  That does not mean that we have to remain quiet all the time or that we must try to avoid sound or bring about a quiet mind.  We don't have to do anything to recognize silence as the natural state except notice that silence is always and already here.  It is already the natural state.  It is everywhere.  It is all around you.  It is within you.  You are it.

No sound is separate from the silence that gives birth to it.  If you cannot sense the silence, just notice what is here.  If sound arises, notice the sound.  Notice that it arises and falls naturally without any need for you to judge it, welcome it, escape it, or reject it.  Notice the silence that is here before the sound arises, while it is arising, and after it falls.  If loud music is playing, notice the music and notice the silence that surrounds it.  Conversations, music, explosions and other sounds arise from silence.  These things are silence in another form.

The next time you hear a sound, notice that you are the silence that is listening to it. You are the silence that is here before the sound arises, while it is sounding, and when it is gone.  There is nothing that you need to do to recognize silence as the natural state except notice that your very essence is silence.

Michael Brown

From PART V: 2. 

(Continuation...)

An authentic facilitator invests no importance in their reputation. When they are carrying out their tasks they are prepared to be hated, despised, misunderstood, harshly judged, and seldom seen, until of course the individual they are facilitating "gets it". When we are sitting in a pile of our own feces, and we then ask to be facilitated, the task of a facilitator is not to make us feel comfortable and secure about our predicament because they do not want to appear harsh, or to upset our feelings, or have us and others to think poorly of them. Their task is to assist us to smell our feces, to taste it, so we become repulsed enough by our circumstances to leap beyond them. If this entails them standing in our midst, looking, tasting, and smelling of the feces we are hiding from ourselves, this is what they do. Therefore, another question we may ask is: Who in their right mind wants to voluntarily perform such a task?  

Chapter 85

'I am': The Foundation of all Experience

(Continuation...)

Q: God has created me, he will look after me.

M: There are innumerable gods, each in his own universe. They create and re-create eternally. Are you going to wait for them to save you? What you need for salvation is already within your reach. Use it. Investigate what you know to its very end and you will reach the unknown layers of your being. Go further and the unexpected will explode in you and shatter all.

Q: Does it mean death?

M: It means life -- at last.

END