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- Herausgeber: tredition
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
What is special about this book? Jean Klein said that non-duality is not a philosophy but simply the truth. But if non-dual truth is beyond the mind, what good are “reflections” on it? Why is the "path of knowledge" (of "jnana" or "gnosis") more promising than just meditation? The reason is that it is difficult to let go of a mind that still believes it can give meaningful answers to questions like "Who am I?" or "What is real?" When, however, through understanding and direct investigation, the mind's skewed, limiting ideas have been seen through, when we stop believing in anything the mind has created, including our identity, it immediately becomes natural for us to live in Openness and Not-Knowing. Then we are available for Grace, for Realization. This book approaches spiritual awakening from two directions. Expounding non-dual core teachings and providing some philosophical, psychological and religious context for them, it also uses direct pointing to help you become aware of any mind-movement away from reality. Overview of contents: Part 1 is designed to help you enter a state of natural meditation, using non-dual pointers and answering basic questions about ego identity, reality and the nature of thought. Part 2 discusses psychological and emotional aspects of spiritual awakening. Part 3 provides some helpful philosophical context for non-duality. Part 4 relates non-dual teachings to near-death experiences, religion and mysticism.
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Seitenzahl: 210
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Stefan Ahmann
Always Being, Always Becoming
Reflections on Non-Duality
© 2024 Stefan Ahmann
Druck und Distribution im Auftrag von Stefan Ahmann (Autor):
tredition GmbH, Halenreie 40-44, 22359 Hamburg, Deutschland
Printing and distribution on behalf of Stefan Ahmann (author):
tredition GmbH, Halenreie 40-44, 22359 Hamburg, Germany
ISBN
Paperback
978-3-384-27038-2
Hardcover
978-3-384-27039-9
e-Book
978-3-384-27040-5
Das Werk, einschließlich seiner Teile, ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Für die Inhalte ist der Autor verantwortlich. Jede Verwertung ist ohne seine Zustimmung unzulässig. Die Publikation und Verbreitung erfolgen im Auftrag des Autors, zu erreichen unter: tredition GmbH, Abteilung "Impressumservice", Halenreie 40-44, 22359 Hamburg, Deutschland.
The work, including its parts, is protected by copyright. The author is responsible for the content. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author. The publication and distribution are carried out on behalf of the author, who can be reached at: tredition GmbH, Abteilung "Impressumservice", Halenreie 40-44, 22359 Hamburg, Germany.
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, V,1
If the path before you is clear, then you´re probably on somebody else´s path.
C. G. Jung
In looking out upon the world, we forget that the world is looking at itself.
Alan Watts
Know what is before your face, and what is hidden from you will be revealed to you.
Gospel of Thomas
These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.
John 16:33
If, when thirsty, you drink water from a cup, you see God in it. But if you are not in love with God, you will only see your own face in it.
I used to think that love and beloved are different. Now I know that they are the same. I was seeing two in one.
Rumi
I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty.
Kabir
Table of contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
Part 1: The Foundations of Non-Duality
This Might be All the Pointing You Need
Ego Identity
The External World
Reality
The Physical Body
Consciousness and Energy
Thought and Social Conditioning
Thought, Emotions and Identity
Some More Pointers
Part 2: Holistic Spiritual Psychology
Shadow Work and Integration
Spiritual Lessons from Narcissism
Fulfilment and Desire
Engaging and Disengaging
Yoga in the Kashmir Tradition
Vibration and Creation
Trauma, Pain and Healing
Healing Meditation
States of Consciousness
Openness and Presence Vs Memory
Meeting
Unconditional Love
Judging Your Destiny
Live Your Passion, Don´T Get Distracted
Part 3: Some Philosophical and Transcendental Context
Ways of Looking at Consciousness
Experiencing through the Mind
Artificial Intelligence Vs the Wisdom of Nature
Resolving Seeming Dualities
Spiritual Cosmology
The Soul Dreaming
Your Spiritual Mission
Nothing Touches You, Nothing is Kept
Waking up from Collective Delusion
Using Spiritual Techniques
Wisdom and Love
Social Conditioning and Anxiety
Ancestry
Immortality and the Now
Part 4: Religion, Ndes and Non-Duality
Choosing a Religious Framework
Theistic Language and Mysticism
The Gospels, Vedanta and the Upanishads
Near-Death Experiences and Non-Duality
Ndes and the Origin of Christianity
Core Teachings of Jesus and Lessons from Ndes
Wisdom from the Gospels
Humility and “Sin”
A Course in Miracles
The Holy Grail
Always Being, Always Becoming
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
The Holy Grail
Always Being, Always Becoming
Cover
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Introduction
It is really weird that we are here on earth and beyond the fact that we need to provide for ourselves in terms of food, shelter and caring for our families, which animals do as well, we have absolutely no idea who we are, where we came from, where we are going, why we are here or what this is all about. And yet just about everybody acts as if they knew exactly what life was about, as if there was not the slightest doubt about it. When you grow up, you look at your parents and grandparents and they give the impression to know so you believe that they do know and that really everybody knows. What they actually know is how to function, how to survive, but they do not know the answers to the really fundamental questions. Possibly they have rarely, if ever, asked these questions. They are just pretending and so you start pretending, too. Everybody does it.
It is really important to see very clearly how totally ignorant we are and also to recognize that this is such an uncomfortable situation, having no idea whether you are going to survive or just going to disappear etc. So one just concentrates on avoiding pain, always focusing on the day´s tasks, on what is at hand and tries to live as comfortably as one can. Which is basically closing your eyes to all existential questions, to the fact that you do not know anything that is really important. Once you see it, this incredible ignorance, you almost get the idea that forgetting and not knowing are maybe what this is all about. Which is true. But this is just step one, which everybody that is here has already taken. Being on earth, being human, means descending into spiritual ignorance, which means suffering. Step two is important. It consists in overcoming this ignorance and rediscovering your true Self.
Part 1: The Foundations of Non-Duality
This might be all the pointing you need
“Unbound consciousness”
Is a good way of pointing
It is not bound by any ideas and projections
You realise that what you really are is just what is
You stop believing in anything else
You are what is present now
You are not anything that you have to think about
What does it feel like to be without having any ideas about what it is?
What is it like to stop going beyond now?
Just noticing the attempts to go beyond now through thinking
Seeing the ghostly character of thoughts
Seeing how thoughts arise and subside in the moment
Never taking you beyond the moment
Seeing how futile these attempts of escaping what is really are
Witnessing thoughts in the moment
Losing interest in them
Becoming more interested in what is really here
Just remaining as what is
Naturally, without effort
Because any effort to escape, any resistance, is utterly futile
It is based in the insane belief that there is somebody who can escape himself
Who can be what he is not
That idea must be seen through
So you can fully let go
Into what you really are
Unbound consciousness
Ego identity
You are either the story, your story, or you are this, here and now, whatever it is. There is no other option or possibility. It really comes down to finding out which of the two you really are. Are you the story in the mind or are you the reality here and now that cannot be described by concepts. It is perfectly unknowable and inexplicable for the mind and yet it is everything there is.
You have been living in your story a lot, maybe most of the time, and you know what it feels like. Or maybe you do not know because you have never even asked yourself what it feels like. If so, you can ask yourself now: “What it does it feel like to live in the story?” And then, in the present moment, you can consciously let go of the story and dive headlong into reality, here and now. And again you can ask yourself: “What does that feel like?” and “Where do I want to be?”, “Where do I want to live?” In a way, the question is ridiculous because you cannot really live in the story but you can believe you do and you can identify with it. The question is which of the two “places”, which are really different states of consciousness, feels more right, more free, more aligned and natural.
So the “story of you” is one escape route that you can go down, away from reality and who you really are. This is the escape route in time. So we can cut that off and then there is the other escape route, which is localizing yourself, which means imagining yourself to be somewhere in this world that is appearing to you. That has to be cut off, too. Most people feel that they are located in their heads, behind the eyes and between the ears. Take a good look inside your head and see if you can find yourself. Can you find any perception of yourself that is more real than any other perception? Is there a direct perception of yourself as opposed to a perception of something else, which is indirect?
Upon closer scrutiny, you may come to realize: I'm here now, but “here and now” is without time or location. So in my quest of looking for myself I have at least found out what I am not. I am not the story of me, stretching out in time, and I am not in any location in the world of objects. So I suppose that I should just remain as that which is now and without feeling myself localized. This, however, basically means there is no limited, solid entity at all. So it seems like I'm “all over the place” and nowhere in particular, without any form and without any duration.
If we look more closely at the idea that you exist on a timeline, it looks something like this: you might compare yourself to an analogue musical record and this record is who you really are. The present moment is like the needle that touches the groove and successively you become aware of who you are, which is synonymous with becoming aware of your life story. So recognizing who you are means just living your life and interpreting your story.
But when you think this through, this would mean that you are information. Information, however, may determine the content of your experience but it can only be realized or experienced through a capacity for experience, which we call consciousness. This must be prior to information or content because, even though this may be rather a crude comparison, there cannot be any content without any container.
The idea that you are limited and localized in space has to do with the fallacy of applying the qualities of objects to the subject. Objects that appear in time and space are limited. Although all objects appear in you, you have somehow managed to convince yourself that, nevertheless, you too are an object (the body) and, mysteriously, a subject at the same time. You have conflated the properties of subject and object. There are limited objects but there is no limited subject, there is only the ultimate subject, which does not have any properties that objects have, which does not have any properties at all, which does not have any form, although there could be no form without it.
Interestingly, your experience and everybody's experience is determined by a cosmic field of information. It is a “cosmic event”, not isolated from the rest of the cosmos in any way. This field of information determines the content of your experience but you are not separate from it. You experience yourself and your experience happens according to laws that, in a sense, you have created because you are also the universal you, the universal I.
You cannot keep a personal point of view. You cannot really look at things differently as long as you look from the personal point of view. Clarifying and modifying the personal point of view and seeing things more positively, differently is fine but is not really different as long as it´s still personal. That is not freedom. Dropping the personal point of view entirely and looking at everything from nowhere, that is it. You can't keep the narrative and be free; the narrative will have to go for the sake of freedom. It is a matter of either-or.
You can always refer to all these memories of what you have experienced in your life and they may be quite “accurate” but they only exist as memories, meaning reality can never be recreated. Everybody has memories and everybody has acquired certain skills. These skills, conditionings and memories make sure that you function within your environment, especially your social environment, which means that the conditioning, the memories and the skills have a certain value for survival and also for the functioning of society. So from a relative point of view they are quite important. From a relative point of view, from the point of view of others and from the point of view of thought they appear to be determining who you are. All these memories are basically “content” and content of enormous complexity. There are mental images, there are emotions connected with these images, there are thought patterns and stories. And all this is repeatedly processed by your brain, which also means the memories are reshuffled and changed. The all-important question that arises then is that of identity, the question of who you really are. Are you both the processes and content and the awareness? Is awareness changed or influenced by the processes and content? Is awareness different from the processes and content? Is awareness real? Yes, obviously. It is the first thing you know, it is primary. Are the processes and content real? Yes, but only in a secondary way, only as far as they appear in awareness.
As you are always there, your experience of yourself is permanent. So you must be that which is always there or which does not change. The point, however, is that there is nothing personal about it, the awareness that is always here isn't personal. The awareness is unchanging and transcendent, the content is transient and immanent. The person is just a mental solidification of processes. And even this solidification is constantly changing. It is a mirage.
But letting go of that mental fabrication, of that collection of memories is not necessary. They are what they are, they cannot be wiped out, they need not be wiped out. But one shouldn't derive one´s sense of identity from them. That is madness. Of course, then one may ask: What else should one derive a sense of identity from? Then there is nothing left. So it is really a letting go of identity in terms of thoughts, images and ideas. You are ultimately formless.
It is important to note that seeing through the ego and dissolving your thought identity is not only compatible with living your life fully but in fact is the very precondition without which this is not possible. The ego, which wants to stabilize, grasp and be safe, is the very thing that keeps your joy, your creativity and your energy at bay. The attempt of the ego to control prevents the free flowing of that particular creative expression of the universe, of the Divine, that is you (in the sense of: the place, the body, the manifestation, the form that is experienced through your consciousness, the vantage point that universal consciousness takes through your eyes, your ears, your body). All this is something unique, a unique expression or individuation of “Source” or “Source energy” or “God” or whatever you want to call it. It wants to flow and flower and be fully expressed and enjoyed consciously, deliberately, moment to moment in the now. This is only possible if the perceptual filters of the ego are loosened up and reduced to what they were meant to do, if they do not obscure the seeing and experiencing of pure consciousness, so that the servant-mind just remains the servant.
The kind of “I” you feel or believe yourself to be determines your felt relationship with the world. The experience of yourself and the world is determined by what you take and feel yourself to be. This permeates everything. Generally, you have the idea of yourself as “somebody”, some particular physical person or entity that is aware or has awareness as an attribute to it. So, first, you are whatever you think you are and, second, you have this one quality among many which is awareness. That quality distinguishes you from, say, the stone or a blade of grass. But when you look a little more closely, you realize that being aware precedes everything else. It is prior to being anything particular and there is no direct relation between being aware and being anything particular. In fact, when you have fully realized that awareness is your being, you also realize simultaneously that you can never be an object. So you notice that you have turned everything totally upside down because a thought or a concept (“an object”) is never aware. Awareness is the precondition, the ground which everything else rests on. Everything, including your ideas about yourself and who you are, arises in that awareness and without that awareness you wouldn't exist. You actually are nothing but this awareness, which is not a thing, not an object, which experiences or contains all change but itself never changes. It contains all patterns and conditionings but is itself unconditioned. Because it is not an object it is ultimately undefinable. But there are pointers which help you to feel into it and return to it, especially the fact that our sense of existence or being is so closely related to our recognition that we are conscious or aware. You almost refer to the same thing when you say “I exist” or when you say “I am conscious.” This is why you are consciousness, why your existence is consciousness.
The movement of the mind is just one of many movements. If the mind does not move for a moment the world does not stop but, miraculously, all the movement continues and one realizes that all movement is contained within a great stillness. Paradoxically, not resisting the movement of reality, the eternal change, is the only thing that allows the stillness to be there. As long as there is resistance, pushing and pulling, there is noise rather than stillness. To be in sync then means appreciating what goes on, appreciating reality, seeing that the eternal, infinitely complex symphony that life and reality are cannot and need not be changed or improved, that changing and improving relate exclusively to so-called practical changes in the dream world. But the movement of reality in this moment is always perfect. Only one thing is needed: to look from the place where even our own dissatisfaction is okay, where the thinking mind is allowed to be just what it is, where the futility of all psychological control is seen, the totally crazy idea that reality needs to be controlled, sustained, improved, interpreted etc.
The external world
Have you ever experienced anything outside of you? How could you, logically, experience anything outside of you? You cannot experience it, there is definitely no way of experiencing anything outside. The moment you experience it, it is part of you. You can only experience yourself. Everything that says something is inside and something is outside is a model, an afterthought, an explanation, a way that one part of you negotiates with another part of you.
Even when just considered logically, it does not make sense to say “I am experiencing an external world.” Everything you experience directly is, when you look at it scientifically, in materialist terms, necessarily something that goes on in your body, sense perceptions being turned into electrical signals in the brain. So if you look at your experience from the point of view of neuroscience, you must say that the world that you experience is actually in the brain. While this is not necessarily true, it is still absolutely incorrect and illogical to draw a dividing line between some experiences, which you call “internal” experiences and of which you say “this is me” and others which you call “external” and say “this is not me”. Where would you draw the line? Can you see a line? There is no line and so there is really no way of subdividing direct experience into internal and external. So “internal and external” is a construct. It is conceptual, it is a model. Directly investigated, reality does not provide any evidence for the model being truthful. It is just useful because a body is navigating its way in a world with the help of a mind; but consciousness encompasses body, world and mind as one.
The weird thing is that I appear to be here both as a spectator and as an actor. There is the drama of life going on and I can see all the other actors (bodies) and I can see their reactions to my person (body). I can see personal behaviour both in me and in others. But if I were asked to decide who I am really, am I a spectator or an actor, then it is clear that I am a spectator who needs to engage and participate. Or rather: who witnesses the world through the eyes of an actor. The spectator is very much primary and the actor secondary. In one way the actor is no more me than any other actor is me. In another way there are two different perspectives on life. I can experience what form, personality etc. are by looking outside but I can also see form and personality by looking inside. These are two different ways of experiencing the same thing. This is of course the same with every other human being, which shows us how similar we really are.
Everything that appears, all the objects, whether close or far away, can only appear because of you. They can only appear in you. Where else could they appear? Their existence depends completely on you. When you realize this, your being expands, it becomes vast, it becomes infinite. But at the same time it loses all its form and solidity. You are vast and you are also formless, you are full of all these objects and empty at the same time.
Reality
Reality is certainly made of experience. But we are talking about such fundamental ideas here that even using a noun is misleading. It always is
