The non dual condition is fundamentally paradoxical. As quantum phenomena are real but make no sense, the non dual perspective confounds its own actuality. It is formless yet revealed by and as form. It is empty yet abundantly full. There is no there there yet it’s actuality is apparent by it’s absence.
It defies all meaning as there is nothing to hang anything onto. It asserts itself by denying itself.
Nothing to see yet everything revealed.
‘Awareness’ is a word that points to the seeing that is never divided into seer and seen.
Joan Tollifson
The only way one really gets any of the most important benefits of meditation practice is by giving up on the notion that there are any benefits to meditation practice.
Brad Warner
“The entirety of practical spirituality consists of distinguishing fantasy from actuality.
Spirituality is the art of distinguishing fantasy from actuality
The entirety of practical spirituality consists of distinguishing fantasy from actuality. The spiritual problem consists of not being able to distinguish fantasy from actuality… It’s not that fantasy is bad, it’s not that fantasy is wrong, and it’s not that imagination needs to be squelched or repressed. It just needs to be seen as it is for what it is.
Peter Brown
This. This, that is utterly inconceivable and yet totally obvious and impossible to avoid.
Joan Tollifson
Thoughts are stories. Emotions are energy. Connect the two and cling to either or both creates suffering. To see through them and show their essential transient nature reveals the pristine neutral clarity of open empty awareness which precedes all experience.
Stories are sophisticated patterns and we have evolved to create patterns out of chaos to survive. What we haven’t learned to do, yet, is recognise how this behaviour confines and limits us.
We are constantly told that we love stories. I would amend that to; we are addicted to stories. Stories create meaning but meaning is comforting and comfort imprisons us. If we were truly free we would see (through) stories for the ephemera they are.
Nihilism is just another story. Open awareness is that which is prior to, and allows for, all stories to appear and disappear as they inevitably will.
As open awareness, walking along a deserted beach or a tranquil field is no different than being in the midst of the teeming cacophony of a busy city.
Liberation is the aliveness and immediacy beyond belief. Liberation is when all the answers, explanations and positions disappear, and what remains is the open mind of not knowing.
Joan Tollifson