Pointers to Presence

[atmavichar100]

In this thread I will be sharing the quotes that are basically Pointers to Presence and I will not be giving the names of the people who said that same ( it is from a combination of many Teachers from the East and West , Traditional and Non Traditional ) and it does not matter from whom it is taken and just read and reflect on it .



Pointer-1


"The flowering of Presence from within is like the mustard seed that Jesus spoke of. At first it seems small and delicate. But if it is nurtured, the roots of Presence go deeper and deeper into the earth, and the branches of Presence reach higher and higher into the sky. Then the wind blows, the rain falls, but it is impossible to shake you out of Presence. You nurture the seed of presence every moment that you are present."

[atmavichar100]

Pointer-2


"The resistance of the ego is the primary obstacle to the awakening of consciousness. You cannot defeat the ego, nor can you get rid of it. The intention to defeat the ego is nothing more than the ego trying to defeat itself. it will not work. If you are to overcome the resistance of the ego, you will have to come into right relationship with it. Right relationship with the ego is one of love, acceptance and compassion, and this is only possible from Presence."

[atmavichar100]

Pointer-3

"Within this consciousness, within this space of stillness, many thoughts can and do appear. Many emotions can and do appear, many ways that we could imagine in our minds that we know. But really, it's all imagination. How do we know it's all imagination? Because when we stop imagining, it disappears. When we stop naming ourselves, who we think we are disappears until we begin to name ourselves again. But when we stop and we look, what's obvious is that there's just the looking, an open space of awareness, and nothing more, because the next thing is simply the next thought."

[atmavichar100]

Pointer-4

It might help to better understand what exactly it means to ?let go? or ?surrender?.

Watch the mind and notice how all thoughts involve the mind imagining a person/I/me in the past or future. The time stamp on the thought is never precisely ?Now?.

It is a day dream. The wandering mind.

Have you ever laid in bed at night and found yourself lingering on a subtle and distant sound? Notice that in that moment the mind paused and all that remained was simple perception.

This is what it means to be present in the ?Now?. This is your natural state. This is what practice leads up to.... stabilized into stillness.

Notice the difference between those two states. The first has a time stamp of past or future. The other has no time stamp and is just stillness.

To ?let go? or ?surrender? means you turn attention away from that dreaming and wandering mind and rest it on the stillness of Now.

This whole process is all about stillness. Be still.

Notice how the mind will protest at the prospect of being in this stillness all the time. The mind will protest and imagine all sorts of bad things that might happen... the mind believes that it?s a terribly bad idea.

This is the opposite of surrender.

Don?t believe the mind.

Be still.

[Beloved Abstract]

who are you to be pointing ?

[atmavichar100]

[atmavichar100]

?If you ignore your inner purpose, no matter what you do, even if it looks spiritual, the ego will creep into how you do it, and so the means will corrupt the end. The common saying ?The road to hell is paved with good intentions? points to this truth. In other words, not your aims or your actions are primary, but the state of consciousness out of which they come. Fulfilling your primary purpose is laying the foundation for a new reality, a new earth. Once that foundation is there, your external purpose becomes charged with spiritual power because your aims and intentions will be one with the evolutionary impulse of the universe.?

[atmavichar100]

POINTER- 6

"When you make the present moment, instead of past and future, the focal point of your life, your ability to enjoy what you do and with it the quality of your life increases dramatically."

[atmavichar100]

Pointer-7

[atmavichar100]

Realizing the ?Deep I?

There are two dimensions to who you are. The first is what I sometimes call the ?surface I??the person with a past and a future. This is your historical identity, which is relatively fragile because the past and future only exist as thought forms or concepts in the mind. Most people on the planet are completely identified with the ?surface I.?

The second dimension to who you are is what I like to call the ?Deep I.? The most vital realization in your lifetime is to see that in addition to being a historical person or a ?surface I,? you are more fundamentally the ?Deep I.? This realization frees you from looking only to the ?surface I? for your ultimate sense of identity?where it can never be found. It frees you from the frustrating sense that there?s always something missing or not quite right in life.

So, how do you realize it? You realize it in the gap between two thoughts, the space in which the historical person of the ?surface I? momentarily subsides and disappears. What?s left of you is nothing that you could talk about or even understand conceptually. All you know is there is an underlying sense of presence, of being-ness, that is at once still, alert, and vitally alive. This is what it means to become aware of awareness. The practice is to invite moments of presence into your daily life so that you don?t spend your entire day dragged along by the stream of thought in the mind.

It?s important to recognize that the ?surface I? and the ?Deep I? are ultimately not separate. The ?surface I? is a manifestation of consciousness in the same way that the ripple on the surface of the ocean is a manifestation of the ocean. It?s only when the ripple is unaware that it is the ocean that a sense of separateness arises?which of course is an illusion.

This realization of yourself as the ?Deep I? is so freeing, so liberating, because you?re being liberated from the burden of knowing yourself only as the ?surface I? and its so-called ?drama.? When you realize yourself as the ?Deep I,? it enables you to have a compassionate attitude toward everything that makes up the ?surface I??your physical form, your personal identity (or the historical person), the thoughts and emotions you experience, and so on. It also gives you access to true creativity and true intelligence?both of which are rooted in the formless dimension.

So, welcome moments of quiet and stillness into your life whenever you can. It doesn?t have to be for an hour; even a few minutes throughout the day to step out of thinking and sense yourself as the ?Deep I? is enough. Over time you will live more and more continuously with an awareness of the ?Deep I? in the background of your life, so to speak. And you will find it easier to maintain this awareness even when challenges arise.

[atmavichar100]

Just as a fish lives his entire life in the water, most of humanity lives their entire life in the ego personality.
The fish doesn't know anything about the water, unless a fisherman captures him and pulls him onto dry land. The fish flops and wiggles and seeks desperately to return to the water.
A human being doesn't know that he or she is immersed in an ocean of ego (their own and every one else's), unless some rare and unusual experience pulls them out of it into a higher or deeper dimension of experience. Usually, this experience is welcomed, but after a little while, we start to squirm and flail about in discomfort. We long to return to the safe confines of the ego mind.
We secretly love our ego because it gives us our identity. Without the ego and its rich and varied content, we feel as though we are nothing at all. We may even feel that we don't exist.
The ego provides us our sense of identity through objects we own that make a statement about who we are: a nice car, a beautiful home, pretty clothes, the newest electronic gadgets, the best music collection. We surround ourselves with objects that make us feel good about ourselves and make us look good to others. Many of the things that we buy and own are simply "identity enhancers". How many purchases have you made based on the reason that the item will improve your status or popularity?
The ego also provides us our sense of identity through its attachments to particular qualities we may have. You can find out what these are by completing the sentence "I am intelligent, I am a star athlete, I am a talented painter, I speak four languages, I am the tallest boy in my school, I am the prettiest girl in my family, I am an engineer for a top secret space project, I am an award-winning journalist."
Ego is our identification with form, ideas, status, talents and even events. We live, trapped, in the surface level of these identifications. This is a cause of great suffering because so much of we identify with can and will change. The beautiful girl will eventually grown older and lose her looks. The athlete will eventually surpass his prime and lose his edge.
It's very important that we recognize what we are attached to and that it will change. We must bring a deeper dimension of meaning into our lives so that we're not doomed to suffer the trappings of the shallow surface level of living, which will someday let you down.