Disclaimer: Welcome to the laboratory, explore with an open heart ❤️
Do Not Undervalue Attention. 04/23/2023
Posted by Holger:
Sunday, April 23, 2023 3:45 pm (California Time)
We are a small group of friends;
together we read some paragraphs in
Nisargadatta’s I AM THAT
and then talk about it.
Please RSVP to Ron@Nondual.Community
and you will receive a Zoom link ❤️
Namaste to One and All!
This quote from Anonymous caught my fancy:
We do not see things as they are…
We see things as we are.
Do we look…or do we just stare?
What is ‘Attention’?
Sina will facilitate this Sunday.
Hello to Tara in India.
Peace Peace Peace
Chapter 31 Do Not Undervalue Attention
Q: Do you experience pleasure and pain?
NM: I am experiencing these in consciousness,
but I am neither consciousness, nor its content. 122-123
Q: How is it that your experience is so different from ours?
NM: My actual experience is not different.
It is my evaluation and attitude that differ.
I see the same world as you do, but not the same way.
There is nothing mysterious about it.
Everybody sees the world
through the idea he has of himself.
As you think yourself to be,
so you think the world to be.
If you imagine yourself separate from the world,
the world will appear as separate from you
and you will experience desire and fear.
I do not see the world as separate from me
and so there is nothing to desire, or fear. 123
Q: What is the difference between you and others?
NM: There is absolutely no difference between me and others,
except in my knowing myself as I am.
I am all.
I know it for certain and you do not. 123
Q: So we differ all the same?
NM: No, we do not.
The difference is only in the mind and temporary.
I was like you, you will be like me. 123
Q: A Tibetan Yogi wrote that God creates the world
for a purpose and runs it according to a plan?
NM: All this is temporary,
while I am dealing with the eternal.
Gods and their universes come and go,
avatars follow each other in endless succession,
and in the end we are back at the source.
I talk only of the timeless source
of all the gods with all their universes,
past, present and future. 123
Q: What lies at the root of all creation?
NM: At the root of all creation lies desire.
Desire and imagination foster and reinforce each other.
The fourth state (turiya) is a state of pure witnessing,
detached awareness, passionless and wordless.
It is like space, unaffected by whatever it contains.
Bodily and mental troubles do not reach it
– they are outside, ‘there’,
while the witness is always ‘here’. 124
Q: What is real, the subjective or the objective?
NM: Both the subjective and the objective
are changeful and transient.
There is nothing real about them.
Find the permanent in the fleeting,
the one constant factor in every experience. 124
Q: What is this constant factor?
NM: My giving it various names and pointing it out
in many ways will not help you much,
unless you have the capacity to see…
First purify your vision,
learn to see instead of staring…
Also you must be eager to see,
you need maturity of heart and mind,
which comes through earnest application in daily
life of whatever little you have understood.
There is no such thing as compromise in Yoga…
Nothing can block you so effectively as compromise,
for it shows lack of earnestness,
without which nothing can be done. 124-12
Q: I approve of austerity,
but in practice I am all for luxury…
To tell me that that I am not honest does not help me,
for I just do not know how to make myself honest?
NM: The problem is not yours – it is your mind’s only.
Begin by disassociating yourself from your mind.
Resolutely remind yourself that
you are not the mind
and that its problems are not yours. 125
Q: Shall I come to the true nature of the self
through mere attention?
NM: Do not undervalue attention.
It means interest and also love.
To know, to do, to discover,
or to create you must give your heart to it
– which means attention.
All blessings flow from it. 126
Q: You advise to concentrate on the ‘I am’.
Is this too a form of attention?
NM: What else?
…Of your personal universe you are the center
– without knowing the center what else can you know? 126
Q: But how can I know myself?
NM: As you cannot see your face,
but only its reflection in a mirror,
so you can know only your image reflected
in the stainless mirror of pure awareness. 126
Q:How am I to get such a stainless mirror?
NM: Obviously, by removing stains.
See the stains and remove them.
The ancient teaching is fully valid. 126
Q: The entire world is a stain?
NM: Yes, it is.
Q: How awful!
So, the world is of no value?
NM: It is of tremendous value.
By going beyond the world you realize yourself. 126
Q: I want to go beyond the world?
NM: You don’t.
All your life is connected with it.
Your past and future, your desires and fears,
all have their roots in the world.
Without the world where are you?
…find a foothold beyond and all will be clear and easy. 127
Please RSVP to Ron@Nondual.Community and you will receive a Zoom link for Sunday ❤️
One Source
Related Presenters:
Related Friends:
Image Source:
“File:’I Am That’ by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Book Cover.jpg”
by Vyacheslav Argenberg is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Category:
Tag:
Created: April 22, 2023
Last modified: May 6, 2023
Leave a Reply