October 17th

Space as a pointer

The word space is a nice pointer.  Look with awareness into your inner body.  Let awareness feel the inside of your toes, your calves, your knees, your legs, your groin, your stomach and chest, your arms, your shoulders and your head.

Notice that your inner body and mind is one undivided awake space.  Notice that the only thing that makes a distinction between the inside and outside of the body is thought.  Thought creates an imaginary, solid boundary between You and life.  When thought is looking, there is a boundary.  When non-conceptual awareness is looking, it sees no solid boundary.  The space in the room or area around the body is the same space as within the body.

As this awake space sees that there is no separation between you and life, Oneness is revealed.  This awake space is directly aware of what is, before thought registers or records experience and places it into concepts.  Before the thoughts arm, body, me and space arise, there is only the direct, undivided presence.  There is only this direct experiencing.

In this direct experiencing, thoughts arise.  Emotions arise.  These things appear from this space and are therefore not separate from it.  Only thought creates a distinction between space and form, between thought and awareness.  In seeing that this interplay between space and form is one seamless dance, all there is, is the present play of life - a total mystery.

Michael Brown

From PART V: 3. 

Why is it necessary to continue our breathing        practice after Session 10?

(Continuation...)

This is why getting to the harvest, destination-consciousness, is to be avoided. It is better to embrace this as an ongoing journey, as a daily gardening practice, because much of the experience revolves around consistent cultivation and maintenance. Gardening is about consistency, not surges of sporadic behavior. It is about dancing with the ebb and flow of cycles, not focussing on static endpoints. When we stop attending to our breathing practice the moment we complete Session Ten, in spite of the recommendations to continue, this is proof we entered this experience as a means to an end and are still embracing destination-consciousness; we are still hoping to be fixed and not open to the ongoing transformation of living a conscious life.    

Chapter 87  

Keep the Mind Silent And You Shall Discover

(Continuation...)

Q: What can take me beyond the person? How to go beyond consciousness?

M: Words and questions come from the mind and hold you there. To go beyond the mind, you must be silent and quiet. Peace and silence, silence and peace -- this is the way beyond. Stop asking questions.

Q: Once I give up asking questions, what am I to do?

M: What can you do but wait and watch?