The Sky of Now ~ Excerpt from Awake Joy by Katie Davis

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The Sky of Now by Katie Davis

Awake Joy is the radiance that strings the happy and unhappy moments of the life situation together like the pearls of a necklace. In the direct realization of this radiance, the pearls dissolve into the precious freedom of conscious joy. Sensibly, inherent joy can not be given to you, nor can it be taken away. In essence, it is who you really are. If you are searching for joy, you are what you are seeking and in seeking, you can not realize your radiance.

I am not a therapeutic guide, who changes your life story, so that you can be more joyful. I am suggesting that you leave the story alone for awhile and turn your attention to the storyteller. In your willingness to surrender the teller of tales, joy naturally emerges. The life story then effortlessly transforms to reflect that joyful transcendence.

Of course, the conditioned mind does love repetition, so it is persistent. If you have ever read books to small children, perhaps you have noticed that they love reading the same stories over and over. They cherish the security of knowing the storyline and they adore the anticipation and expectation of what is already known. This is similar to repetitive adult storylines as we anticipate more of the same. The ego loves the known, because it is based upon it. Ego freedom is the end of psychological suffering and the conscious realization of ever-present joy.


Waves of Emotion

When you are identified with your story, you believe that outside circumstances cause your emotions to change. For example, someone does something that you either love or hate, so you feel either happy or angry. This translates that if you are happy, somebody can take it away and if you are angry, somebody else should fix it. By surrendering your true power in this manner, you helplessly ride the waves of emotion. You remain subject to their merciless push and pull. Your opportunity is to turn attention inward in self-observation to attend to what remains pristine and untouched by emotion.

At first glance, you begin realizing that your attitudes about past situations are linked to present emotional reactions through conditioned thought. Based on past experience, this conditioned linkage is the actual cause of your emotional storms. This is self-inflicted psychological suffering. You can not learn the Joy of Being, but you can observe how you deny this truth through self-observation.

You can observe how you drain your life force as you willingly perpetuate negative emotions through storytelling. You can even become aware of the instant, when you choose to do so. Meanwhile deep within, constant joy is, without the need of any condition or circumstance. My invitation is to look deeper than the storyteller for its discovery.

(continued in tomorrow's post)


In 1986, KATIE DAVIS radically and spontaneously awakened without practices or teachers. The spiritual realization integrated twelve years and she began sharing her message of conscious freedom and causeless joy in 1999. Her new book, Awake Joy, published in 2008.


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The Pain Body Does Have an End ~ Katie Davis, Author, Awake Joy

The pain body is collective suffering that only appears to be alive in you. It is an accumulation of emotional pain or what we refer to as unconsciousness. Through misidentifying with thinking and being unconscious of how the pain body is functioning and thriving through identifying with your thoughts, you have the opportunity to transmute the unconsciousness into consciousness.

The perfect tool is self-observation. Become conscious of the pain body's structure and how it requires both thought and time to operate. Most of all, it requires that you identify with thinking. Since you are observing thought, you no longer tend to identify with the thoughts and therefore the pain body can no longer use you.

When you are able to be in self-observation all day, you are nearing the end of the pain. This essentially means that you become free of the emotional pain caused by psychological thinking. This does not mean that you have to sit doing nothing all day long in self-observation or meditation. It merely means that you are not only present with everything that is happening during the day, but you are also conscious of what is happening within you.

Even after you have become conscious of the structure, the pain body will continue to arise within you for awhile. It is almost like a temptation that begs you to dance with it. It may arise as a sense of unease or mild sense of dread. However, you are now conscious of when it starts activating. Take a few conscious breaths if you find yourself slipping into unconsciousness. Follow your breathing for a moment. You will notice that you shift out of time into presence.

I am not suggesting that you try to stop it or escape from it. That is resistance and it will actually empower the pain body all the more. The pain body loves conflict and grows stronger through resistance. So, simply follow your breathing and allow it to be as it is while observing it.

That which is unconscious will dissolve into the pure consciousness that it genuinely is. Be willing to feel the pain body, even welcome it, but do not identify with it. This requires a consistent, conscious watcher to always be present.

The emotional pain may be uncomfortable, but it does have an end. Just as the darkness of night effortlessly disappears when the sun rises in the morning, the darkness of unconsciousness cannot prevail in the light of consciousness. Instead of energizing the pain body, you will find that your consciousness is growing brighter and stronger.

Only This Love ~ Katie

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Dreaming "I" and Its Attachments ~ Katie Davis, Author, Awake Joy

The dreaming "I" or "I" thought is like any other word. Words only represents things that they point to. We have assumed that this word has been pointing to our body and therefore believe that I = body. However, when we awaken, we realize that this first, primary assumption is actually false. There is something unfathomable here that we are overlooking. The word “I” is of course pointing to the body, but is it also pointing to something deeper within the inner body that is radically more?

When we accept this mental concept “I” that is limited to the body, our living experience is limited to a superficial, mental realm. We believe in this limitation and few have actually directly investigated this assumption to discover the truth. When we misidentify with a mental modification of what I call Pure I, our life is living in separation and it is the source of all sorrow. In addition, the misidentification drops a veil and prevents our discovery of who we really are in the deepest sense.

Those seeking enlightenment or Self-realization must first discover the falsehood of this most unfortunate misidentification. When we seek the “I” thought, it disappears. This lifts the veil that is blocking access to the divine dimension within.

We can define the word I that is the body in many ways, such as “I am a mother. I am a daughter. I am an author.” These descriptions are not saying who “I” is. If you investigate for yourself and find that since “you” are AWARE of the body, who you are must be beyond your form. Who is that who is aware? Who are you in the deepest sense? These questions signify the beginning steps toward enlightenment and Self-realization. Are you curious enough to want to realize the Truth?

Self-realization is the end of psychological suffering since it is the end of the psychological self. The old way to deal with misery was to try to manipulate or modify the emotion or thoughts. The new way eliminates the cause; the psychological self or “I” thought. In this, we discover that there is no thinker of thoughts, no performer of actions and we live free from the awareness of an individual self that is separate.

The body is still there with all of its beautiful inborn talents and traits, but the idea of “me” and all of its past and future fixations are finished. We are freed of the problematic psychology of the ego and free of its constant sense of threat.
Inside, there is the stillness and quietude that we genuinely are and in the world of form, our body is there accessing this ultimate creativity. A sense of giving all the love away and selfless service comes to the forefront.

When we give up this relationship with “myself,” we are at one as Life, whether with form or without. The Totality is the pure still awareness and its power, the appearance of the universe. After a lifetime of toil, it is amazing to discover that it is all happening by itself with such beauty, harmony and peace. We have only to get out of the way to consciously realize who we actually are.

When the “I” thought arises it does so to attach to things and objects it desires. “I want that new car. I believe that this is the right way. I need this to be happy.” These attachments take on a mental journey and we get lost in the mental world of form.

There will never be true and lasting fulfillment gained through attachments, no matter how many things, objects and people you attain or gather together. There will always be something more lacking.

That lack is inherent in the idea of being only a fraction of the Totality that is functioning independently from the whole. The lack truly has nothing to do with the lack of attachments that we hope to attain in order to feel whole and happy.

The lack is what is occurring prior to the arrival of the attachments; misidentification with the “I” thought and its individual desires. The entire search for happiness by the psychological self is actually a search for wholeness and fulfillment. Enlightenment is this ultimate fulfillment. In fact, a synonym for realization is fulfillment.

If you will silently watch and notice what is actually happening, you will be able to trace back every attachment to the original attachment to the “I” thought. Instead of trying to let go of attachments, let go the one who they all belong to … the dreaming “I” that is the ego-body. Self-inquiry removes this first person pronoun of suffering and all of the attachments fall like a wall of sand.

If you will hold onto “I am” and be free of “I am this” or “I am that,” the ego I will disappear and you will have a direct experience of the true Self. The “I” thought originates from the Heart that is within, so when it disappears … that is, go back where the thought came from … you will have a direct experience of peace. This will be a temporary, fleeting experience until one realizes that all objects are untrue as Self identity.

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Marci Winters, Sweetwater Film Screenwater, Writer, Director and Producer Review of Awake Joy by Katie Davis in Maui Vision Magazine

Book Review by Marci Winters in Maui Vision Magazine, Your Guide to Natural Living, August 2, 2008

Marci Winters is a screenwriter/writer, director, producer whose family film, Sweetwater, has aired on PBS. Sweetwater is endorsed by Kids First!, The Coalition for Quality Children's Media. She is available for script consultations and editing and can be reached at her website www.sweetwaterfilm.com

Twenty years ago, Katie Davis was not a spiritual seeker until one day, this mother of two, spontaneously awakened from ordinary business woman/secondary school educator to Enlightened Being. Without a spiritual practice or teacher, she radically awakened to the reality and truth of who we really are.

Years later, Eckhart Tolle encouraged Davis to write Awake Joy: The Essence of Enlighenment, her thought-provoking guidebook to higher consciousness. Awake Joy is both poetic and comprehensive. The language, abstractions and metaphors are like the filling in a dense, rich, dark chocolate layered cake.

Davis believes that our conditioned intelligence is limited and most of us are essentially sleepwalking through life. We each live in a mental illusion that the mind-made self creates. Because the ego, the conceptual I, has a need to tell stories, our mental images match what we are conditioned to believe. Through self-observation, recognizing that you can be free of ego's push and pull cycles, the opportunity to awakened is unveiled.

To be liberated from the ego, Davis suggests that you accept each moment in your life situation to be as it is. This profound acceptance opens the door and lets the ego out, thus a greater connection with the oneness in life can be experienced. This allows us to become more present and to focus on the way of the Heart.

Various breathing exercises, mantras and meditations are offered at the end of the book. They are extremely easy and a relaxed centered feeling washes through the mind-body after practice, creating a more conscious presence. I experienced a new appreciation for the abundance surrounding me, which felt like the Essence of Enlightenment, when I chanted the Sanskrit mantra, Om Nama Shivaya. It is a divine pleasure to taste Davis' sincere heart filled love that she shares on each page.

Marci Winters is a screenwriter/writer, director, producer whose family film, Sweetwater, has aired on PBS. Sweetwater is endorsed by Kids First!, The Coalition for Quality Children's Media. She is available for script consultations and editing and can be reached at her website www.sweetwaterfilm.com

Be As You Are, Ramana Maharshi, Edited by David Godman - Katie Davis Blog

Katie Davis book review: Be As You Are, Ramana Maharshi

Essential Wisdom, Must Read, Extraordinary Sage

Be As You Are is a spiritual classic from one of the most revered sages of modern day India. First and foremost, the book carries the frequency of presence and will have its effect without even reading a single word.

As far as structure, David Godman has compiled Ramana's dialogues with his students with skill and clarity. I have the paperback edition which is 251 pages as well as an aged, original hardbound copy edition entitled "Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi" that was published by Sri Ramanasramam in Tiruvannamalai in South India.

As far as structure, "Be as You Are" begins with Acknowledgments followed by an Introduction that introduces Ramana, his life, awakening and Self-realization.

The book is divided into six parts followed by a quite helpful Glossary, Notes and References, a Bibliography and an excellent Index.

Ramana is pointing to a single, indivisible Supreme Reality that lies deep within every human being. In fact, we are experiencing this Reality right now, we just may not be consciously aware of it.

Ramana, with the help of David Godman, begins in Part One by presenting the nature of True Self and who the "teacher" really is.

Part Two leads to Self-inquiry as a means to discover our true identity. It clearly presents the theory, practice and any misconceptions that we might have.

In Part Three, we focus on the guru and what the 'teacher' is actually representing and point to the stillness and silence of sat-sanga; being in the presence of someone who has realized the Self.

Part Four is an instruction on meditation and yoga (scriptures), the use of mantras (sacred words) and japa (repetition of the name of God) as well as life in the world.

Part Five is an important chapter for those awakening, since it is so easy to be trapped by spiritual experience, such as visions and psychic powers.

Finally in Part Six, creation theories are discussed and the reality of the world is revealed. He touches on the subject of reincarnation, the nature of God, suffering and morality, and ends with a discussion on karma, destiny and free will.

Sooner or later, you will be led to this profound spiritual classic, the extraordinary wisdom of Ramana Maharshi and realize the deepest peace.

I strongly recommend this book as well as the other spiritual classic, "I am That" by Nisargadatta.

~ Katie Davis, Author, Awake Joy

Katie Davis Website: www.katiedavis.org

Awake Joy by Katie Davis and Free Spirit by Sundance Burke Publish - Presales Now

Awake Joy: The Essence of Enlightenment by Katie Davis and Free Spirit: A Guide to Enlightened Being by Sundance Burke are currently taking discount presale orders for the new hardbound books.

In 1986, Katie Davis awakened spontaneously, without spiritual practices or teachers. In fact, she had no intellectual reference whatsoever for what had occurred. She began supporting people in 1999, when someone asked for help.

In 1982, Sundance Burke awakened with Satoshi (Osho/Nisargadatta influence) and Shunyata, named the Rare Born Mystic by Ramana Maharshi. He also began sharing in 1999.

Katie Davis and Sundance Burke became friends with Eckhart Tolle, before the publishing of Power of Now. In 2004, he encouraged Katie and Sundance to write theirs books.

Awake Joy by Katie Davis is a 224 page book and is an A-Z handbook on awakening, enlightenment, full embodiment and living the Awake Life. It is designed to be a resource that you can refer to again and again on your journey to life's fulfillment.

Free Spirit by Sundance Burke is also a 224 page book that points to spiritual awakening and Self-realization.

Enjoy the book summary, contents, reviews and author biographies at www.AwakeJoy.org and www.FreeSpirit-Sundance.org.

Katie Davis Website www.katiedavis.org

Sundance Burke Website www.sundanceburke.org