FIRESIDE LOVE LETTERS AND AN INVITATION
Hi James –
I just discovered your blog today via the Nonduality Street interview you did with Jerry. Your writing really resonates – thank you for posting it! I’m writing to request your e-book in PDF form.
Also wanted to say that I am getting ready to travel to Fairfield, Iowa in a couple of weeks for two satsangs with Adyashanti – my first in-person time with him. Woo-hoo! I’m one of the masses who has had glimpses, yet “abiding” awareness seems to come and go. “Incubator” is a great word for how I feel about where I live.
Thank you for the generosity of sharing your observations and impressions.
Best,
Cate
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Hi Cate,
Thanks for your kind note! Resonate awareness is echoing all over… here!
Adya’s voice is your voice, in that he speaks from truth to truth. So just “rest in awareness” when you go to see him; check your expectations at the door and listen deeply not so much to the words as the reality they re-present…that is what he introduced me to – the realization that “I” am not my mind, not my body either, and then, with that, there was a dawning within awareness to the simple and obvious reality of Being – this pure,nonpersonal existence of I AM. This needs no “outside” authority once it is recognized, and I am very grateful to Adya for his midwifing!
I’m delighted to share the attached ebook REAL, WHOLE, HERE AND HAPPY! It’s kind of a cook book without recipes but with tastes I know you’ll recognize! Please let me know if I can help you clarify any of these fatty, buttery words!.
With love and gratitude,
James
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Wow, James – thanks not only for sharing the book, but also your reminder to rest in awareness. I like to believe that Adya is my Self teaching my Self, but there is another part (who is that?) who is eager to hang out with a guy whose presence I consider to be “the real deal”. (Oh, words are so ridiculously inadequate.)
I am also grateful for your offer to clarify some butter! I look forward to savoring your words.
With love,
Cate
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HI Cate, here’s a few non-thoughts…rambling reflections you’ll perhaps find you already know!
I like to believe that Adya is my Self teaching my Self,
There’s no need to have a belief; a belief is just an idea…a word that is an idea. The truth may be that ideas are not real? Check it out for yourself, through your Self. Don’t ask outside yourself, ask inside…but gently, from the love that you are…to the love that you are. Self teaches self lovingly.
Don’t think about all this -just let it all be possible… just keep on keepin’ on and allow for unknown possibilities beyond the minds limited conceptions of reality. Then you are allowing and rejoining the flow of life and living harmonious with it. That is , there is a loving acceptance – a gentle but firm “surrendering of all resistance to the inevitable”, which Anthony de Mello called enlightenment.
This surrendering is an opening, a relaxing into what Adya might have called ” a big, comfy armchair” aka reality.
So release and relax. Things do not need to turn out well – they already are well.
(Oh, words are so ridiculously inadequate.)
Yes, it ‘s spiritually natural for us to feel something is missing, to feel inadequate, to then seek out the truth of our being as much as we think we know it to be. As children we have all innocently taken on a set of beliefs. Beliefs that incubate each other. You already are that peace which you seek. Why? There are no mind constructs, no ideas, remaining when the mind is no longer believed. Thought vanishes and reality remains.
Absent belief in words, the concept of “You” dies. Self as the unborn nature is recognized by Self as the unborn nature…yes, the same! 🙂
“…the other part” is just another idea. There is no other. Reality is not the surprise we might think it is! What ‘s far more surprising is that while we all function in reality, we almost all, overlay it with our ideas about it….our judgements, our conceived inadequatness,
Turns out you’re already hanging out here with your Self. And in truth, you know it. In love you know it. And you love it!
I am also grateful for your offer to clarify some butter! I look forward to savoring your words.
Enjoy Cate with love!
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Good morning, James,
Finding your emails in my in-box is like opening a gift – many thanks for taking the time to gently remind and illuminate. Ahhh. . . .
Resting in the resonance of a soft comfy armchair, surrendering . . . enveloped . . . at least for a moment,
until mind wants to know if you can you say more about: Reality is not the surprise we might think it is!
with love and delighted appreciation,
Cate
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Hi Cate
Reality is not the surprise we might think it is!
In truth, we find reality to be rather simple and obvious –not anything like we thought it would be. That’s not to say there is no joy, of course! I could say that I am daily “surprised by joy”. It’s a lingering, long and long, in the fullness of the moment. A resting in substance, in abundance. A dancing of the dance of life as it happens.
So the mind functions, chattering away like a radio in the corner, heard but not listened to, mostly not believed. I say “mostly” because, from time to time, believing a thought does occur; as it is seen, it passes, simultaneously. The freshness of this living moment is restored.
There is a continuing ground of stillness, like the movie screen often referred to by some sages, where the figures and events come and go … “strut and fret…and are heard no more” as Shakespeare says. This contineous change dances on the unchanging screen, is seen and surrendered to, with love and compassion.
Being is a simple surrendering to what is.
Loving,
James
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Wow, James. I just finished your e-book this morning. Wow again. I stopped several times during the course of the reading to just absorb and resonate. I’m also a big fan of word play, so was delighted by that aspect of the writing, as well.
I love this:
“In ending this weird relationship with a fictional character, we end up where we began – in and as pure awareness.”
Thank you, thank you.
C.
( Please …pull up a fireside chair, and join in the conversation, with your comments below. Thanks J.)
