Katie Davis is a Satsang Spiritual Teacher of Advaita, Non-duality, Self-inquiry, enlightenment, spiritual awakening, the power of being now and presence. Since 1999, she has been traveling to offer satsang in communities worldwide. The Awake by Katie Blog is moderated by Katie Davis, author of "Awake Joy: The Essence of Enlightenment." http://www.AwakebyKatie.blogspot.com
Maren Springsteen is The Beloved Friend. The initial awakening was over eleven years ago with many profound and customary twists along the way. The universal and divine creativity that is one of the extraordinary trademarks of spiritual realization is now in full bloom.
From the moment that you were first cradled in your mother's arms, you have been love; open, innocent and free.
Even now in this moment, no matter what life circumstances you have had to endure, nothing can change the fact that:
~ You are Pure Love ~
You are life's very purpose.
It is not that you were created to be loved, as though you could possibly be separate from that which you organically are. This would imply that you would need to get love from someone else, or through some imaginary future circumstance, or maybe within other things.
What I am saying is that you can directly realize that you are far more than your form with its given name. This has always been so. As a baby, you had not yet learned that mental idea of separation. You experienced that
"I am love, all is love, I am you."
Within you now is the same unfathomable field of pure love and this realization is the crux of spiritual awakening. Consciously awake, we live as that very essence that has no form and yet is inseparable from the extraordinary experience of being human, as well as indivisible from the divine.
The greatest gift of the Heart is realizing that you are this ever-present, unwavering and unlimited love.
We do not need to believe that we are lovable or have someone else prove their love. Through deep inner exploration, you realize that you essentially are all that you have been looking for in every other.
After all, when that magical and mystical moment of 'falling in love' appears, is it not true that the love arises within you?
The great twentieth century sage Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon once said:
"I am the abode of love, stainless, the one without second, and ever peaceful."
This is an absolute truth and you are this truth.
This radical realization is the end of separation and therefore the end all suffering. It is also the conscious beginning of an overwhelming sense of fulfillment that never fades.
As the infant begins forming an ego, it learns separation; the idea of being a separated body only that is divided from all other things, circumstances and people. Most unfortunate, it is also through this imaginary division that the loving essence that you truly are seems to be lost.
True love can never be lost, you have only been attending other things.
With a sense of estrangement from love, you then begin yearning for love and its fulfillment. The problem is, you have been searching for love in all the wrong places.
You can imagine how dynamic this realization might be for you, if you had spent an entire lifetime seeking love ... and then realize that it IS you! The magnitude of that revelation!
~ You are perfect and divine universal love ~
Then, you are no longer looking for love. You are being love, an inexhaustible and infinite source, and watching for every opportunity to overflow the greatest gift of the Heart.
That original separation never happened, other than in the imagination of the dual mind. It simply is not true. Now, it is your turn to explore to see whether what I am sharing is true.
This false belief has been an alienating force in every one of your relationships. The burden of pain becomes heavier and heavier, until you feel like you can no longer bear the hurt, and just cannot carry the burden any longer. Through grace, one fine day, your attention just might turn within.
This is salvation and the beginning of spiritual awakening and healing. You realize an indestructible love that was never broken and the miracle is ... that it is you ... and absolutely inseparable from the divine.
Your mental idea of love is only relative and it contains all of your conditions that you have formed through past experience. When your partner does not comply with those conditions, that small love quickly cycles to hate or resentment. Since you believe that you are separate, you experience your partner as a separate object from whom you must get love or you fear that they might take love away.
Impossible!
Love knows no separation. Separation is unattainable.
~ You are Pure Love ~
Diversity is beautiful! Multiplicity and variety does not require separation. We are one wild and magnificent love appearing everywhere as everyone and virtually everything.
Relative love appears within time and after certain duration, it inevitably cycles to dislike and within a certain duration of time, it again cycles to relative love. Then ... we blame our partner for our unhappiness! Is that even vaguely logical? We think that love is dependent upon their every action or reaction.
As the 'inferior' ego, I believe that I am undesirable and unworthy. As the 'superior' ego, I believe that most everyone else is undesirable and unworthy. In fact, for any ego, if people cannot improve my sense of self or if I do not believe that they could be a threat or take love away, people are basically ignored and found to be rather uninteresting, boring or not important at all.
For the ego, the keywords are time, separation and body as identity.
Whereas, wise love is free of time, sees through the mirage of separation and is no longer limited to the body.
Pure love is gigantic and in fact, the only omnipotent power in the universe.
As the sage Osho once proclaimed:
"Why should anyone else enjoy being with you, when you cannot even enjoy being alone?"
Being alone, you begin realizing who you genuinely are. In that revelation, life's truest passion for loving effortlessly emerges as patience, humility, forgiveness and emotional maturity. As love, you are naturally kind and in harmony with living, instead of throwing life around.
In the human mind, we have our differences and differing perspectives. However awake living is not attached to individual perspectives and we are open to the greater whole, so that human diversity is honored and naturally respected. This receptivity encourages a broader reality for the family, spirituality, society, workplace environment, science and the arts, so that we live in cooperation, appreciation and acceptance.
It all begins with you.
The invitation is to forget about "getting" what you think love is. Instead, behold the revelation of who you really are now!
The magnitude of this first conscious meeting shatters every illusion that you thought you were and destroys every idea of what "all else" is.
The human being is in constant search for stable happiness, whether one is conscious of the fact or not.
This search is often objective in that most still believe that their happiness depends on other people, life circumstances, professions, possessions or some other.
When the ego gets what it wants, it is relatively happier. For just one moment, it senses the illusion of completion and it finally rests free of desire. Yet, true fulfillment is not a possibility for a fraction. For the ego, completion is a delusion, since partiality can never be whole.
For the mind-made self, happiness soon wanes. Sooner or later, discontentment in the form of desire once again arises, since it still senses lack and the life situation within time is in constant change.
Further, the ego senses that it is separate from "those" people and its life circumstances. It is therefore under constant threat of loss or hoping for future gain. Most every moment is used as a means to some ego end.
When the ego does not get what it wants, it judges the situation and then blames someone else. The result is usually disappointment from false expectations or personal intention. My will vs. your will consistently ends in pain and suffering for all involved. Once again, we have the delusion of separation and its inherent opposition.
Of course, stable unhappiness is just as impossible as enduring relative happiness, since within time the life situation changes. When our happiness depends on other situations, our emotions fluctuate and follow our judgment.
Virtually everything within the world of form comes and goes. Everything is impermanent. When we seek permanence within impermanence, we suffer; whether we are seeking pleasure or trying to avoid pain.
Again, the life situation is in constant flux. Happiness will surely cycle to unhappiness and after certain duration, we will cycle to happiness. Furthermore, both polarities are dependent upon something or someone externally. In this manner, we are subject to the unending push and pull of ever changing emotions.
With certain maturity, we at last begin taking responsibility for our emotions. Our attention shifts to what is genuinely going on within us. When we watch carefully, we note that it is actually our judgment of people and situations that is causing our emotional changes.
That judgment is based on past experience and our conditioned likes and dislikes. In other words, the negativity is based on time and the suffering is actually self-inflicted. For the ego, everything would be alright, if only everyone else would just change.
This is an opportunity to be gentle and allow compassion, love and deeper understanding through watching our thoughts and how they are directly related to our emotions.
Unfortunately, the ego is more likely to cast its judgment and guilt upon itself. In resistance, it tries to change its thoughts into better ones in the hope that happiness will improve somewhat. For the ego "I," love and joy are always in the future, however never possible right now.
Even with positive thinking, within time everything changes. Nonetheless, this self-improvement project is actually quite important, since it is finally exhausted! Patience and tolerance emerge and we begin realizing that the emotional highs and lows are actually one continuum and only time separates them. In this, we begin waking up out of time.
Resistance transforms into surrender and acceptance as we begin allowing what is. The joy of being consciously emerges and spiritual awakening may be drawing near.
Every positive and negative emotion is based on the mind's idea of time and separation. By merely noticing, you will realize that all emotion is the result of memory, imagination and anticipation. All are factors of the time-based mind, that still believes that its identity is separate and exists within the mind's time.
It is not that we are attempting to avoid emotion or escape. That would be the mind's resistance and fear. In fact, by welcoming them, feeling them fully, observing how they operate in relationship to the mind that we are able to transcend psychological pain. You might in fact perceive that most of the suffering is within the resistance and in your imagination of how deep that emptiness might be. When we inquire into the depth of these emotions, it is the birthing of true compassion. It is also the realization of what lies beneath.
Of course, you are always welcome to continue surfing the waves of emotion, while the mind assists the spin or ... rest as the abode of wise love.
The resolution is to realize the perfection that you are genuinely right now. You are completely beyond the mind and its emotional aspect; human emotion.
Unconditional love and pure joy are here right now and they are absolutely indestructible. They are dependent on nothing and caused by nothing. It is essentially who you timelessly are. The extraordinary opportunity is to realize what is already deep within, without trying to change a single thing.
You are the silence of the Heart that makes all things possible. This realization is complete fulfillment and effortlessly transforms the life situation. Rather, we are able to directly realize what truly is right now. You are inseparable from the Heart this very moment.
When we shift attention from compulsive thinking into the physical body, we become more aware of how we are feeling emotionally. The emotion that we are currently feeling is always a perfect reflection of our thinking.
The mind is more than our superficial thoughts. It also includes unconscious patterns, mindsets and tendencies. They may never surface in the form of an observable thought, so it may seem difficult or even impossible to bring them into consciousness.
Yet, the body is the perfect tool. If you are willing to feel the body, it never lies. We bring the feeling or emotion into the light of consciousness and simply allow it to be. I am not suggesting that you try to change anything. That is resistance and just another form of violence that will perpetuate more negativity.
Neither do we need to analyze or interpret "why" the feeling is here or "what" the feeling means. The analyzing and interpreting mind is a good tool for many things, yet not the right tool for Self-realization.
When the emotion is allowed, we are no longer controlled by it, just like when we are watching our thoughts, they can no longer use us. We no longer have emotional takeovers. Instead, we are the witnessing presence that allows everything to be as it is.
This witnessing is a harmonizing and unifying factor. In the light of attention, the darkness of negativity cannot prevail.
I am not proposing that you act the emotion out. That is the emotional takeover that will more likely than not cause another emotional reaction; causing more suffering for you and others. Nor am I speaking of repression. Repression is a form of resistance that perpetuates suffering. I am only suggesting that you consciously feel the emotion in the body and allow it to be. Be the space within which it is appearing.
In your willingness to fully feel the body, all that remains unconscious within you will be revealed until all that remains is the simple joy of being ... and that is love.
Free advaita and non-duality videos, free downloads of articles, e-books and chapters, free Friends of the Heart monthly issues with articles on being now, presence, spiritual awakening, non-duality, advaita, enlightenment and Self-realization.
As this year drifts by in clock time, I would like to take a moment to express this gratitude.
You have shared so much beauty!
I am grateful for the visionary art, the photos that have reflected not only this love, but also stirred compassion for the seeming reality. You have creatively written poems, notes and blogs and even vigorously debated.
The shared videos have generated love and laughter with such beautiful music that sometimes it seems like the Heart is singing. It is fun getting to know you, through your event invitations, groups and pages.
There is such wonderment in that we have somehow 'connected the dots'; these relative points in consciousness that I call Heart Friends, family and friends. I look at "My Friends' Map" and you are everywhere! :)
Though most I have never physically met directly, I greet you as love during every Maui sunset.
I see you at midnight sparkling as moonbeams over the ocean as the full moon sets over the island of Lanai.
I sense the power of love in the breech of the whales, as they are now arriving to mate and calve their young.
Even the Monarch butterflies are joyfully dancing and whispering the language of love.
May we leave no footprints ~ All Love ~ Katie Davis
Saints Bowing in Mountains by Hafiz
From the Book I Heard God Laughing, Translated by Daniel Ladinsky
Do you know how beautiful you are?
I think not, my dear
For as you talk of God,
I see great parades with wildly colorful bands
Streaming from your mind and heart,
Carrying wonderful and secret messages
To every corner of the world.
I see Saints Bowing in the Mountains
Hundreds of miles away
To the wonder of sounds
That break into light
From your most common words.
Speak to me of your mother, your cousins and your friends.
This video is a meditation on Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi's teachings and the Holy Mountain, Arunachala. Verses are from Ramana's devotional, "Five Hymns to Arunachala" Produced by James Clark
As always, when we use a word such as "witness" or even the words "I am," one can never be certain where those words are actually pointing. Likewise, when someone reads them from their present reference point, they may "think" that the words are pointing to something altogether different.
For instance, the self-observer is generally watching its thoughts, feelings and body. It may even open to a personal "I am" and recognize that it is neither this nor that. Yet, it is still looking from within the dream body ... within the dream of form.
When I speak of the "I am the witness only," the witnessing consciousness, generally speaking a profound and spontaneous detachment occurs. The world of form, including the former reference point "I am the dream body," seems somewhat remote and almost like heat haze.
Having realized that it cannot find itself ANYWHERE within form, it surrenders deeper; the only thing that seems true is the subject-witness. Some are teaching from this reference point.
It is profound since being-consciousness-bliss is dynamically at the forefront, yet the dream body and its life situation have not yet fully transformed. Suffering is still possible for the dream body, but there is no one there to suffer. This is the witness, enlightenment has not yet "happened" and neither has Self-realization.
Detachment is not separation. It actually allows the energetic beauty of oneness which is why I call it the Beauty Trap. One does not have as much incentive to continue the inquiry when everything seems beautiful ... yet the dream body continues suffering ... and no one suffers!
For the witness, generally the personal "I am" of the self-observer has transcended to the impersonal "AM" of the witness.
The witness study is generally one of formlessness, hence that feeling of being "between two worlds." It witnesses a remote dream body and its dream but is more fascinated with witnessing formlessness. Its purpose is to eradicate the collective pain body. In other words, it still has an object of observation.. either "Heart" or "world of form."
The witness is meant to be only a bridge to cross over from form into formlessness. After all, in deep sleep, there is no witness and no objects. So for the witnessing consciousness, the inquiry continues.
Enlightenment is the disappearance of the universe and it is beyond consciousness and unconsciousness. The realization of Non-duality.
Self-realization is the CONSCIOUS recognition that "I AM THAT!" It is the complete integration of formlessness as all form.
YOU are beyond all and without contradiction ALL.
Yet first things first. One can only realize who one is ... and in due time, one will then realize what all else is.
Ramana Mahrshi is one of the most revered sages of modern day India. This beautiful and compassionate video, Abide As The Self, by Inner Directions is well worth the one hour viewing time. Even if you watched this before, you will find that it is well worth reviewing. This free advaita video highlights the essential teachings of Ramana Maharshi.
Here is the free Abide As The Self video description offered by Inner Directions:
Abide As The Self is a transforming video that takes you on an inner journey into the teachings of Ramana Maharshi and the path of Self-knowledge. Comprehensive film footage of Ramana comes alive, with emphasis on the teachings of Self-Inquiry and its practical application. A special collection of rare photographs enhances Ramana's presence and captures the compassion and grace of one of the most respected sages of our time. The inspired narration by Ram Dass provides an overview of Ramana's teachings. Also included are interviews with H.W.L. Poonja, Douglas Harding, Allan W. Anderson, and others.
In Abide As the Self, you will experience how the profound teachings of Ramana Maharshi can be easily applied in our daily life. This is a deeply inspiring video in which the sage Ramana speaks directly to your heart.
"Abide As The Self skillfully interweaves old and new still photographs, excerpts from Ramana's writings, interviews with longtime devotees, narration by Ram Dass, and, not least, rare and precious footage of Ramana from 1935 to 1949. Highly recommended."
Yoga Journal
"The presence of the great Indian sage Ramana Maharshi, his clear approach to Self-Realization, and the teachings of Self-Inquiry are beautifully presented. Interviews and exceptional film footage of Ramana Maharshi make this video an inspiring and transforming experience."
New Renaissance Bookshop
"The video concludes with the encouraging words of Ram Dass, who tells us that Maharshi's message is not Indian but universal: the peace that illuminates the heart and mind is always present. Anyone curious about this aspect of Eastern spirituality will find this informative and interesting video worthwhile and surprisingly accessible to general viewers. Recommended."
Video Librarian
"Bhagavan was always silent, that is everyone's true nature . . . In this quietness the mind will automatically return to its source and there will be a tremendous fountain of peace. All doubts are cleared and one remains quiet, in the heart."
You are here now and the eyes are reading. Are you also aware of the breathing? How delicate the air feels as it moves in and out your nose! Breathing is effortlessly happening all by itself. Just rest here for a moment and be relaxed and yet alert. Take a deep breath ... and just allow the body to relax a bit little more. No need to rush on with reading or all the other things of the day or evening. Is it possible to stop a moment?
Do you note that silent space at the end of each exhale? Are you aware of it? Just listen to it for a moment. When I say listen, perhaps listen with every cell of the body. That silent and still space at the end of each breath is an opening into organic being. There is no doorway to open, it already is. Are you noticing this?
Are you aware of the simplicity of being? Did anyone ever have to teach you this fundamental sense of "I am?" We may at sometime become confused with all of its attachments or extensions, such as I am a mother, I am angry, I am afraid or whatever the case may be. Right now, I am just pointing out that while all the roles, names, circumstances and descriptions change ... the "I am" is consistently the same. Not ... "I am this" ... or "I am that," ... solely "I am."
It may seem to some that these words, "I am," are only mental and therefore they seem flat and superficial. However, I am not pointing to the head. I am asking you to truly sense the aliveness that is existence. How does the body feel, when you are conscious of being? Just allow attention to rest as being. We are not trying to go anywhere or achieve anything. Watching is always enough.
Are you inwardly quiet right now?
Thoughts and emotions are welcome here as well. One could say that they are just Heart Friends passing through. Yet, I am not asking you to follow them. I am asking you to attend only the feeling sense of being that is within the body.
If the thoughts and feelings begin clouding the inner space, no worries. We allow that to be here as well. We are only being present with what is. In case you haven't noticed, thoughts and sensations always move on. They do so on their own accord. Trying to stop or control them is not the way. Just let go.
We are passively watching and relaxed, yet profoundly alert. What the thoughts are saying is not really important. Watch the analyzing and interpreting mind trying to go to work to figure out the thought content, judge and therefore try to change them or define what the thoughts means. So, we are just present with that as well ... and nothing more.
Since we are watching the thoughts, emotions and sensations, we are able to maintain a certain equanimity, so that we do not get carried away with them. Instead of jumping into the river of thought, it is more like just resting on the bank. The thoughts are more like autumn leaves floating on the surface of the river as they flow downstream and soon each one disappears. Then, we are present with that. Instead of attaching to thoughts or identifying with them, we allow them. We detach from them, so that they are free to go.
Are you still aware of organice being right now?
As you click out of this window, are you able to continuously be aware of being as you prepare this evening's meal or drive home from work? This is a simple movement meditation without anything to manipulate or become.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is a brilliant sage and one of the most revered spiritual teachers of modern day India. Nisargadatta passed form in 1981 at the age of 84. His primary talks are compiled in the book I Am That.
A simple man, Nisargadatta Maharaj, was a householder and shopkeeper in Bombay where he lived with his family and four children. He had not been educated formally, but came to be respected and loved for his insights into the crux of human pain and the extraordinary clarity and power of his direct discourse. Hundreds of diverse seekers traveled the globe and sought him out in his unpretentious home to hear him. To all of them he gave hope that "beyond experience is not the mind, but the self, the light in which everything appears...the awareness in which everything happens.
