Natural Well-Being perspectives by James Waite
Discovering what it's like to serve truth in everyday aware living.
" Natural Well-Being, or authentic living, involves a subtle and sensative dwelling in the stillness of this streaming moment - a trusting in our deepest resonate knowing - love!" (More details? Please see below. Subscribe free, below, right)"
First, a letter concerning a discussion I had about Alzheimer’s with Dr. David Hilfiker over at www.davidhilfiker.blogspot.com. He’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and he’s blogging bravely with first-hand reports from the inside, so to speak, titled “Watching the Lights Go Out.” That resonated with me in light of my own adventure in reporting the inside [...]
Ah, the Great Assumption! The self-sense of being a critter called “me” and “you”, is a fiction – a story invented with a learned language of symbols and images about reality contrived by mind and supported by feelings like fear and hope. Psychological fear is a man-made invention of course, and not to be confused [...]
Growing up in the Age of Plastics, i.e. the 1960’s and 70’s, in an old fashioned English–from–England speaking household in Canada, we boys learned a word that used to be common but is rarely used these days: “shall”. Now “shall” was the proper way to refer to a contemplated action in the future. So, sitting [...]
The Island is called “Terra Cognito” – Latin for “known territory“, and the name pretty much describes how our habitual self takes up residence with its repetitive, reassuring and therefore safe, routines for daily living. The island is an insane little place where we live on a very limited diet surrounded by an ocean of [...]
LIVING IN THE HALLWAY OF TIME. We’re always passing through time, living our actual life in a hallway that connects a remembered yesterday with an anticipated tomorrow. You could say we’re in the importing and exporting business – we import yesterdays’ experience into todays’, and export that repeated experience with our notions about tomorrow. That [...]
As it happens, I’ve been meeting with a small group of friends at Peets for tea here in Berkeley on Wednesdays (11 am) and Sundays (2 pm). If you’re in the Bay area, I’d be delighted to see you there! You can slip an email under my door at: nondualityliving@gmail.com As a writer, one of [...]
THE PHANTOM “I opened myself too wide. I forgot there’s more outside than things and animals at ease with themselves, whose eyes reflect the wholeness of their lives. I forgot my habit of grasping every look that fell my way: looks, opinions, scrutiny.” Rilke The personal ego can only fake responses to life. It encounters [...]
A MISPLACED SELF. “Everywhere joy in relation and nowhere grasping; world in abundance and earth enough.” Rainer Maria Rilke Sometimes, I write to weep, and sometimes to sing, but always to explore reality. To explore this joy, this aliveness…to celebrate all that life offers up moment to moment, day to day. I take particular joy [...]
NOT FAR FROM HERE. It’s funny how far we go to get away from our self, only to someday find we not only never left, we never returned either! It’s at that point not far from here where we’ll pick up our story about living here. And we’ll reflect a little on life up to [...]
I’ve had vertigo all my life –ever since I was dropped off here. It’s a strange kind of fear of heights, this fear of falling. It gives me sweaty palms just to think about it. I cringe when I reflect on all that losing, all that slipping, all that disappearing. One by one –and rarely [...]
SPIRITUAL TEACHINGS ARE TYPICALLY LAYERED. For example, sacred literature, whether it was written a thousand years ago, or the day before yesterday, can only reveal to us what we’re already prepared to see. There is a wealth of terrific information, and a ton of fabulous pointers in plain sight every day. We can’t see them [...]
We’re not talking about the recent landing of the space-ship “Curiosity” on Mars here! (Although we offer our congratulations all around, and salute spirits’ amazing expressions in science, time and space!) The kind of “curiosity” we’re talking about here is the kind that always moves toward love. The kind of curiosity that lands us smack [...]
( PASS IT ON! ;>) Thank you for registering for Spiritual Awakening: A Radical Shift in Identity with Adyashanti. This two-hour live video event will start on Wednesday, August 22, at 9 pm Eastern Time (GMT -4). Please bookmark the link below to join the event once it starts. http://live.soundstrue.com/spiritualawakening/event.php We look forward to sharing [...]
We’re always passing through time, living our actual life in a hallway that connects yesterday with tomorrow. You could say we’re in the importing and exporting business – we import yesterdays’ experience into todays’, and export that repeated experience with our notions about tomorrow. That is , we’re always living in transit, in the connecting [...]
It’s our nature to be happy! You’re invited to a free, 6 week exploration with friends about life’s most profound and timeless existential questions – “Who am I?” and “What is this?” This is an unstructured and teacher-less gathering, drawing on some of the core non-dual spiritual principles common to all the major religious traditions [...]
I’d like to share a little walk with you. The other day, two friends and I were alternately strolling, loitering and walking randomly about our Berkeley ‘hood. It was a walk on a day not unlike any other day. You know, a full sky and a full town – up to the heavens and down [...]
I’d like to share some “delights” my friend John Greer sent (below) and also issue a second invitation to San Francisco bay area NDL readers to a 6 part series on NATURAL WELL-BEING & AGING starting Sun. Sept. 9 here in Oakland, CA (More Meeting details are posted on NDL home page) And now this, [...]
In my days of sailing, it was common to drop a long length of rope from the bow of our boat as it was entering unknown waters in search of a safe harbor. Let’s call it “sounding for bottom” or probing the depths. Likewise, here are a few pointers to help us “sound for truth”. [...]
I had lunch last Saturday with a really pleasant guy who lives in the area. He discovered Awakening Clarity not long ago, {That’s Freds’ blog; more below. Ed.} and invited me to eat with him. I liked him right away, but noticed that he did tend to have a bit of a racing mind. It [...]
I clipped a New Yorker cartoon the other day and still glance at it now and then with delight. There’s a picture of a wide-eyed, grinning man dressed up in a superman outfit with high boots and a cape; on his mighty chest is a large capital “I”. The banner above our guy says: “Introducing [...]
I have just finished reading James Waite’s book, Fading In The Light, Nonduality Insights on Living and Dying, and I loved it. It is a gem of uncommon clarity, and is written in an almost lyrical style that can be savored long after it is finished. His gift for written expression gently draws the reader [...]
A friend emailed, asked me “do you pray?” earlier today. I’m moved to share the response with my NDL community, along with my best wishes for Thanksgiving. Perhaps real thanksgiving is all about prayer?…James Hi you! For me, there’s prayer and there’s prayer…the first is a kind of bargaining; it arises mostly from a conditioned [...]
We cannot know anything, unless and until, we know our self. And when self-knowing occurs, there is no self that’s knowing. No particular self remains. Nobody with a limited identity founded on an idea about reality, a creation of minds’ imagination. A fiction founded on words and beliefs that have defined almost all our entire [...]
ONE OF THE PRIMARY DIFFICULTIES I had in trying to fit both recovery and Nonduality into my life and lifestyle was figuring out what a recovery-style spiritual awakening was–and what it wasn’t. I mention this here because this column is about telling the truth. This truth may upset a bunch of people. So be it. [...]
Dear NDL community: I’m delighted to premiere the new book “BEYOND RECOVERY” by our friend Fred Davis. It is truly a fine expression of the power of love founded on reality. Be well! James) Intro and First Chapter: BEYOND RECOVERY Nonduality and the Twelve Steps Fred Davis INTRODUCTION There is just one thing going on [...]
Whenever I have the opportunity to spend time with my little grandsons, all under the age of three, I am vividly reminded of the wonder and miracle of simply being alive. A muddy twig or stone they find on the ground fascinates them as easily as a shiny new toy. They see with “Beginner’s mind,” [...]
Life is lived the way we describe it to our self – usually narrowly and conceptually. Our conditioned memory-based mind – when believed – shapes our present experience. What is, is not an idea or a feeling we have about it. What this is and we are, is infinite spirit, and its manifestation in form: [...]
It’s a curious thing, life. People always say how it goes by so fast. Truth is, we run through it so fast. We’re in such a hurry in our heads and hearts, to grasp experiences – to touch, to taste, to hear, to smell, to see, move, think and talk. In truth, we live in [...]
(The following is a reply about awakening I’d like to share with the NDL community. Have a lovely Christmas! James) …Hi F, thanks for the note. I’ll try with words to convey the wordless; please do not read this with your mind, but with your innate knowing, like a letter from a lover who you [...]
Let’s start this little report on aware living with a caveat: I make no claim to know anything other than love, and, like Walt Whitman during the Civil War, pretty much find myself to be all that really interests me these days. That “myself” includes you; we are not, and have never been, separate. And [...]
Our average living (if not “normal”) is guided by emotions and intellect, by pleasure and pain, by the habitual self…what’s it like to let the love inherent in our natural well-being guide us in daily aware living? About 30 years ago, at a time when I was poised to begin a decades long search for [...]
“Darkness is your candle” Rumi. Suffering is endemic to the human condition. Even with the extraordinary advances we in the developed world have made in the quality of daily life, few would deny the suffering that continues to dominate our horizons. In addition to the endless conflict, starvation, and natural disaster we see on the [...]
Communion-with-Self. I lived the first 38 years of my life pedaling around familiar terrain within sight of the hospital I was born in. Early marriage, family, career, cars and houses – you know it! – the whole imported dream that turns into a nightmare! Of course, these nightmares are exactly what we need to wake [...]
(First, for context, here’s my 2010 NDL article, followed with comment by Laurel:) BEDTIME STORIES As very young children we are told bedtime stories. Even if our parents never actually read stories to us. We take in all of our life-story at the nipple of life, so to speak. And what we are fed adds [...]
POPULAR DREAMS: Do we have free will? Perhaps a useful way to approach this is to turn to our own authority, to turn the question around: “do I or you have free will?” When I look into this for myself, I find that from early childhood, I have never had free will; that, in truth, [...]
This book has arisen from Direct Pointing sessions that I’ve had with clients around the world. These deceptively simple inquiries and dialogues work. Men and women who have studied Nonduality for decades, both in and out of structured traditions, without experiencing even the first authentic glimpse of themselves have come to recognize their true nature [...]
It seems that for most of my adult life I’ve had more trouble with my doctors than with my pain. Or to put it more precisely, it’s always been more troubling to go to a doctor than it was to grin and bear the pain. And that suffering doubles for some of us when it [...]
NOT FAR FROM HERE. It’s funny how far we go to get away from our self, only to someday find we not only never left, we never returned either! It’s at that point not far from here where we’ll pick up our story about living here. And we’ll reflect a little on life up to [...]