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.
Question:Is it possible that changing brain chemistry through meditation tapes, meditating, body work, or sudden trauma such as a fall or auto accident, could lead to realization?

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
Waking up this early spring morning, the hillside out my window is covered with robins. After breakfast I walk to the pond and find it is liquid for the first time in months. What a rush of pure joy in my heart. I find a big frog floating in the cold water. I touch his back and he doesn't move. I think he is dead, frozen. I sit awhile and then rub his back again. Suddenly his eyes open, he blinks, turns and swims away. Awakening from his long winter sleep.



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


    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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