Awakening to the Dream
The Gift of Lucid Living
Welcome
The world is unreal
Inner Strength
Be the way you are
Where is Shiva not?
I am not this person
What is real
Talks with Bob Adamson
Clarity talks with Nathan Gill
An ancient story
Certificate of Awakening
The Mysterious Stranger
Extracts from Tony Parsons
Seeds for the Soul
The Drama of it All
Clarity talks with Nathan Gill
The Self-Perfected State
Amazing Grace
The cage of self-centeredness
Original mind
You Are That
All There Is
The existence of consciousness
A myriad bubbles
Beyond the grasp
Selling water by the river
Awake In The Heartland
What is wrong with Right Now?
This First Instant
Peace of Being
Talks with Ramana Maharshi
All That Jazz
About Silence
It is all
The background
Seeing it Simply
The Dream of Space and Time
Discovering
Already Awake
Reincarnation?
IN MEMORIAM
Basic Questions
Integration
Simplicity
One Essence
Thought
The Central Teaching
Unity
Knowledge and Ignorance
Inexpressible Door of Nonduality
The real "I"
Presence/Awareness
Awakening to the Natural State
Looking for God
Life As It Is
There is only Source appearing
Yearning for otherness
Dharmakaya
The ever-present nature
Getting rid of the ego
To Hell with it All!
You Are the Self
The Search is the Trap
The Obvious
Are you awakened?
The Supreme Self
Naturally Timeless Awareness
The Absolute
Seekers of Enlightenment
Presence of Awareness
I am...
This Amazing Realization
I am Life itself
Awareness is the Source
The Golden Eternity
Simple Beingness
The Boundless Void
Self-enquiry
Who pays the bill?
Changeless Reality
The Precious Treasury
Transparent Radiance
You Are the Buddha
Beyond Good and Evil
The real does not die
Memory
Seeking
I Am
The Nature of Thinking
The Great Way
Beyond na?ve affirmation
Ping-ting T'ung-tzu
Free will versus determinism
The End Of Seeking?
A Sharing of Timeless Being
Present and Obvious
Blinded by the Light
Hooked on Enlightenment
It's marvelous
All the world's diversity
There is no oblivion
Direct insight
Remembering and forgetting
Letting go
Beingness
That which appears
Manifestation of the Absolute
Nothing Being Everything
Consciousness
This
Radiance
Benedictory Verse to the Self
ATTD News Letter number 27
* Sunday, March 21, 2004 *
Table of contents.
Q & A |
Awake In The Heartland |
Awakened Poetry |
Quote of the moment! |
Smile of the moment! |
Links
Q & A.

Answer:With your question you touch on the great paradox inherent in realization. Everything can lead to realization, yet nothing can lead to realization. The words ???lead to??? seem to suggest that realization is a future goal to be reached by someone, while awakening reveals that both, future and a separate someone, are illusory.
Realization can be seen as the falling away of the illusion of time and separation. Since it is an illusion that falls away, there is in reality nothing that falls away and thus nothing that either leads to -or stands in the way of- awakening.
This may create a feeling of helplessness. So if that happens, I suggest to look and see what it is that is aware of this feeling of helplessness. Who or what is aware of everything including the body/mind and the questions that come up?
Here are a few quotes from ???Awakening to the Dream??? that address your question from different angles.
* This is not about a gradual progression to a future goal, but about a radical awakening to what is. No conditions have to be fulfilled for this to become clear. Self-realization can happen at any time for anyone.
* You don???t need to do anything to ???become ready??? for it. It will happen by itself and reveal that Awakeness is ???and always has been??? fully present. It will shine when it shines, and it will shift the attention from the content of Awareness to Pure Awareness itself.
* It may be silence from a sage or words from a shopkeeper. The surrender may come through agony or ecstasy. It can happen through an apple falling on your head; it can come from the smile of a child; or it can arise from deep inside as you walk along a beach at sunset or when you burn your finger on the stove. At any time, your sense of separation may dissolve to reveal the One beyond all duality.
* Enlightenment is not something difficult and remote, attainable only by an elite few. In fact, it is not attainable at all, but reveals itself through the removal of the illusion that there is an individual entity to take hold of it.
* There are no fixed rules as to how awakening should occur. The problem with preconceived notions about the much-coveted holy grail of truth and the packaging in which it should be delivered, is that such notions prevent the seeker from seeing that the liberation he is looking for is always fully present and instantly available.
If or when you have a question you'd like to see answered in this newsletter send it to:
author@awakeningtothedream.com
Awake In The Heartland


In recent years, I have grown ever more interested in awareness itself, simply what is: the sound of traffic, the sensation of a toothache, the song of a bird, the television images of devastation, the vague sense of dis-ease felt upon awakening in the morning, the sound of a lawn mower or a jet plane. I find that these are the moments of deepest truth, when there is simply this, as it is-when the urge to explain or get something out of it, get rid of or improve it, or have some ultimate transcendent experience above and beyond it-when all of that is gone.
There used to be an image or an idea about what "awareness" or "awakening" ought to look like, an image that didn't include finger biting, emotional upset, mental confusion or obsessive thinking. That fell away.
Quotes from Joan Tollifson's book
'Awake In The Heartland: The Ecstasy of What Is'
Visit her at: http://home.earthlink.net/~wakeupjt/index.html
Painting by Paul Owen Lewis.
Visit him at: http://stoningtongallery.com/artists/lewis2.htm
Buddhist Verse
When they curiously question thee, seeking to know what It is,
Do not affirm anything, and do not deny anything.
For whatsoever is affirmed, is not true,
And whatsoever is denied, is not true.
How shall anyone say truly what That may be,
While he has not himself fully won to What Is?
And, after he has won, what word is to be sent from a Region
Where the chariot of speech finds no track on which to go?
Therefore, to their questionings offer them silence only,
Silence - and a finger pointing the Way.
'Awake In The Heartland: The Ecstasy of What Is'
Visit her at: http://home.earthlink.net/~wakeupjt/index.html
Painting by Paul Owen Lewis.
Visit him at: http://stoningtongallery.com/artists/lewis2.htm
Awakened Poetry


Buddhist Verse
When they curiously question thee, seeking to know what It is,
Do not affirm anything, and do not deny anything.
For whatsoever is affirmed, is not true,
And whatsoever is denied, is not true.
How shall anyone say truly what That may be,
While he has not himself fully won to What Is?
And, after he has won, what word is to be sent from a Region
Where the chariot of speech finds no track on which to go?
Therefore, to their questionings offer them silence only,
Silence - and a finger pointing the Way.
Quote of the moment!

"Although everything has Buddha nature,
we love flowers,
and we do not care for weeds."
"Dogen."
Smile of the moment!


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