Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

By letting go of even the thought I, what is left? There is nowhere to stand and no one to stand there. No separation anywhere. Pure awareness. Neither this, nor that. Just clarity and being.

But it turns out that Christ was right when he said, “Lay not up your treasures where moth and rust doth corrupt and thieves break in.” Buddha was right when he said, “The cause of suffering is craving,” craving after things that are not permanent, and nothing is permanent.

Spiritual practices such as meditation slowly help us to extricate ourselves from attachment to the levels of illusion of our separateness.

Next we begin to realize that although they are all equal in teaching quality, some of our experiences seem to shake us more than others, that the model that we are stuck in, sometimes so subtly we don’t even know it, is shaken by pain and suffering and all the negative qualities. At that point we recognize the bizarre phenomenon that suffering is

And the power of the human intellect is based on discrimination, individual differences; if we can tell the difference between this and that, and we can do it better than anybody else, we get paid more.

The only time we might need to intervene with people is when their actions are limiting the opportunities for other human beings to be free.

Most of us didn’t bargain for the implications of the journey we found ourselves on. We started to understand that it might have something to do with what had been talked about as “God” or a “coming to God” or, if you would rather deal with the unmanifest, the state of Nirvana.

And how do we make an offering to Kali? The things that don’t liberate us, we give up. What do we give up? Unworthiness. We don’t need to analyze it; we just give it up. We give up guilt. Guilt isn’t going to get us to God. We give up anger. It’s not going to free us. Preoccupation with our own melodrama—we give up. Do we want to hold on to it, or

When awareness is identified with thoughts, we only exist in a certain time/space dimension. But when awareness goes behind thought, we are able to be free of time and see thoughts appearing and disappearing, just watching thought forms come into existence, exist, and pass away in a millisecond. And when the intensity of concentration allows us to

Our true strength lies in our honesty with ourselves about our predicament.