Effort is what grace looks like from the point of view of the separate self. If you feel you need to make the effort, make the effort, but know it is always God doing it.
Rupert
Being aware is effortless
- Our true nature is always whole, complete, pristine;
- Only the believe and investment in personal doership resists the natural and abundant flow of life.
What is there to practice?
- Just give me something to do! says the mind.
- I don’t know how to be still,
- I am afraid to disappear when there is no mental activity.
Be knowingly the presence of awareness.
- Simply: be aware of being aware.
- Our whole life we only gave attention to the objects arising in awareness:
- thoughts,
- feelings,
- perceptions.
- We overlooked the space/presence in which these objects arise and subside.
- Our whole life we only gave attention to the objects arising in awareness:
- Again and again,
- relax attention into its Source.
Don’t be intimidated by thoughts and feelings!
- Relaxing our good ol’ “me” can stir up fear and doubt.
- “Only what is false can die.”
- It is our birthright
- to know ourself,
- to enjoy being ourself.
Don’t run away from uncomfortable feelings.
- Gently inquire, with
- patience,
- love,
- deep interest:
- Who is suffering?
- Who is invested in this?
- What is the worst thing that can happen?
- What do I really want?
- Whatever comes, goes:
- we are not looking for states of mind.
- “Happiness through peace of mind, in daily living, independent of circumstances.”
- Whatever comes, goes:
It takes humility, bravery
- to not run away back into our old grooves and habits,
- to see that what I always longed for IS always here and now,
- to see and understand this weird attachment to suffering,
- to recalibrate my sense of self from the
- conceptual separate-self – me, to the
- open borderless presence of awareness, as I am.
On my own I was stuck in my me-bubble, for decades; meeting “others” – like-hearted truth lovers – make all the difference!