September 16th

Awareness and thought

It can be incredibly liberating to realize that you are not thought.  All 'your' life, you believed every thought racing through the thought stream in the mind.  Then you hear a teacher that points you to pure awareness prior to thought.  From that pointing, there can be a freeing realization that thought is not who you are.  It merely arises and falls within who you are.

But liberation invites a deeper realization than mere identification as awareness.  Notice that the distinction between thought and awareness is a thought-created division.  Is there really something here called awareness totally separate from something else called "thought?"  Only thought creates that rigid division.  Until thought rises up to make that distinction, there is only This - One Life happening now as one continuous flow.

Although realizing that you are pure awareness can be liberating, it can also trap thought into searching for a purer and purer state of awareness - a state that is free of thought.  But only thought would seek to get rid of thought.  Chasing a deeper state of awareness is a thought-driven search.

In the realization that all distinctions are illusory, including the division between awareness and thought, liberation arises.  Life lives itself - simply, vibrantly, lovingly, spontaneously and effortlessly.  Everything is allowed to be just the way it is, including thought.

Michael Brown

From PART V: 2. 

(Continuation...)

This declaration tells us the personality manufactured for Jesus by our traditional Christian religion, that he was a nice person, is inaccurate and misguiding. It is a make-believe saintly mask that makes it impossible for any congregation member to move through the stages of emotional growth leading to authenticity. Jesus as The Christ was not a nice person; He was a real person as much as He was nothing and nobody. This is why He could charge into a temple, madly cracking a whip, shouting and screaming like a crazed lunatic, overturning tables, and chasing out the money-lenders. In that moment He was not angry, but He was anger. Nor was He the slightest bit concerned about His personal reputation; He was mirroring the hidden fear of the money-lenders and the suppressed rage of those whom they abused. He was allowing Himself to be possessed by what they were hiding within themselves.

Chapter 86

The Unknown is the Home of the Real

Q:  If I am not a person, then what am I?

M:Wet cloth looks, feels, smells differently as long as it is wet. When dry it is again the normal cloth. Water has left it and who can make out that it was wet? Your real nature is not like what you appear to be. Give up the idea of being a person, that is all. You need not become what you are anyhow. There is the identity of what you are and there is the person superimposed on it. All you know is the person, the identity -- which is not a person -- you do not know, for you never doubted, never asked yourself the crucial question -- 'Who am I'. The identity is the witness of the person and sadhana consists in shifting the emphasis from the superficial and changeful person to the immutable and ever-present witness.