Advaita Post 10-21---When your own depth of light becomes fully recognized...

December 21, 2009

--- When your own depth of light becomes fully recognized, it's perfect ---

The light can become total

There are two pieces of text included from the successful workshop done in cooperation with the magazine Koordanser for this final issue of the 10th year of the Advaita Post: a syllabus for the participants and notes by Pia.

The Koorddanser Workshop "Introduction to non-duality '

November 28, 2009

Non-duality

Spirituality is expansion and purification in being-awareness. This movement goes in the direction of an ever greater unity or non-duality. The term non-duality is preferable, because there is less danger that it will be perceived as a totality than the term "unity". It refers to the sphere of openness in which your self, others and the world are present without separations. The entire rich diversity has a part therein. In the experience, that which you experience is not different from yourself who experiences it. As vision, non-dualism is a man and world-view.  Therein the boundaries and divisions, including between me and the other, are seen as learned and relative. The non-dualistic vision can be found in all cultures. It is the core of all religions and of every spirituality. It is thus of great value to receive a clear experience and a lucid understanding of the non-dual nature of yourself and reality, prior to separateness, contradictions and conflicts.

Examination of one’s own  body

In your own body non-duality appears to be very visible.

With your attention go inside your body and become aware of your own internal sphere. In this internal space is there a separation to be found? Is there a real gap anywhere?

In the internal experience, the body is one whole. Viewed biologically: in one organism, all parts relate to one another. If one part is sick, the whole body suffers.  Experience-wise you can confirm that internally, in your own feeling body.

Go once again with your attention inwards to the sphere of your physical-feeling-self-being and go towards the right with your attention. Is there still the same feeling-sense sphere of yourself or does it stop at your skin? Then go even further to the right. How far can you go to the right without your bodily self-sphere falling away? Stay concrete and soberly experience: the sphere of your feeling self-being. Don't make any cognitive image of your body, but go with your feeling-sense to know more. How far can you go? Where is there a border? Is there a border with the others that are present on the right? Then go to the left in the same manner ...  How far can you go? Then go forwards and backwards, up and down with your attention... How is it now? Then can you also establish that your physical self sphere is infinite, as large as the entire cosmos? And that everyone and everything has a place within it?

You have learned: somewhere there is a skin, my body stops there and the outside world begins. With your internal examination of your physical self-being, you notice that the image of your body with its skin is a representation in your thinking. If for once you let your thinking fall away and from within very clearly and alertly determine how things are, it appears that the physical self-sphere is infinitely spacious and without internal divisions. It is a cosmos of being-self-being. The material things and all you experience with the senses appear in this sphere of universal self-being and you feel them from the inside-out. Thus people and other living beings and things are not different from yourself. They are yourself, in the same way that your hands and your feet belong to your own self-sphere. So there is thus a not-twoness or a non-duality that can be very present.

The other as yourself

Sit down two by two. Close your eyes and let the palms of the other person rest fully upon your arm. What do you feel? What reality is that? Don't go projecting what you know; it's about an unbiased confirmation of what can be observed. What do you really experience now?

There is a feeling whereby you no longer experience yourself as separate (your skin) from the hand of another.  In the experience it is one phenomenon. You don't experience your own skin and the external hand separately. They have totally come together. It is one feeling phenomenon. Just call it hand-skin.

If the other also closes the eyes, does he/she experience that also?

Do you experience that feeling skin-hand in the space? Do you see that the physicality of yourself and what supposedly comes from outside, from the other, comes totally together? That there is a non-duality of yourself and the other?

Not only with feeling, but also with seeing the non-duality is obvious, if only you have the right attitude.

You look towards someone else, at first with a distant attitude. Determine then what you experience.

Then let yourself relax and let your attitude become a feeling-sense. Eventually go back to your heart sphere. You become aware of your feeling sphere, let it become stronger and imagine that you really like the other person. Then look at the other in this atmosphere. What is the difference between this situation and the previous one?

Seeing is highly dualistic, because sight establishes something at a distance. But there is also another kind of seeing, a feeling-sense sight in which there is no distance present. You can also see everything in the sphere of your own body, your own bodily feeling, your feeling body. You see someone else from your heart. The distance falls away and you can confirm directly: there is no duality with the other but only a non-duality. If a little relaxation comes, you automatically sink down. You are feeling once again from your heart and you see the separation disappear.

Yourself as consciousness

Look at something in front of you and let your awareness expand backwards until you're aware of yourself as an observer. You confirm: I am an observer (subject) and am aware of the observed (object).

You can also position your point of observation behind / higher up and observe your body from a distance. You confirm: I am an observer (subject) and am aware of the perceived body as an object. I am more than that body.

You become aware of yourself once again on the level of the witness-consciousness and let yourself relax there. What happens then? You confirm: I am a universal being-awareness, without borders; everything is in me, I am in everything; there is one large non-dual sphere.

Living in non-duality

From the universal relaxation and non-duality become aware once again of your body in the world. Then there is a consciousness of your body from inside-out, of the feelings and impressions, and from outside-in, of the body in the greater whole of the conscious space. You are the body there as well as the universal space. The feelings and impressions then have a place in the greater whole of the space, for example that of the movement of breathing. The breathing mechanism is yourself, but you draw no breath. Breathing happens by itself and you are aware of that from the greater whole. In the whole that you yourself are, breathing arises spontaneously.

From the same kind of situation the right hand can go up. From the outside you see this movement occur automatically, even though the hand is yours. Especially if the up and down motion continues for awhile, it's clear that you aren't doing anything.

This can remain so for all actions.

After the workshop itself, all of the above can be further explored and experienced. It is a fascinating, joyful and expansive development!

The Koorddanser Workshop November 28, 2009 - last part

 Notes by Pia

In the feeling-sense consciousness phenomena pass through. You see everything therein, even your traumas and problems. You are aware of your stress as an energetic pressure of society. But most of the tension comes from your own "I"-tension. When you relax in that feeling-sense consciousness it naturally dissolves. Relaxation immediately allows the non-duality to be seen.

So return to your self. There, in deep relaxation let everything go. Then there is no hard energy of the ego any longer, on which the stress-energy can continue to press. Then everything flows on the best manner possible.

"Stress in your work is sometimes nice."

Yes, why? Because the work brings an expansion. This nice feeling arises when there is expression in your work. But when the work is complete, the expansion usually stops. I know artists who are in heaven when they are creating, but deeply depressed when the work is finished. Notice that it's not about "I do this or that." In your space don't be dependent on conditions. In the vitality of life everything happens by itself.

If you feel that something is not right with you, is that in the energetic existence. Then ask yourself: how is it with myself? I go with my attention a bit backwards. I see the energies in my physical sphere in space. They form only a part of that space. I am more than that. I am myself and so I am aware of my energetic existence.

So practically experience your great space and have trust. Then the energies will harmonize and hardness will dissolve automatically.

 I have lost touch with the original being-awareness of my childhood.

Yes, children know the open being-sphere. Children seek it, so long as there is a limit, they experience it, for example when they are lifted up by their parents. However, they have no real conscious knowledge of it, because they just go along with the narrowing of the ego-formation. The point is now, as adults, to see through this and to experience the openness in such an aware manner that no narrowing can arise.

Is it good to do relaxation exercises during stressful times?

Yes, they can help you to relax at that moment and to be aware of yourself once again.

Also chakra yoga or pranayama can help, when you keep your consciousness there, so that it gives insight into who you really are. Otherwise, they are just little exercises that can be nice. Sometimes it's amazing to see that very simple little exercises (by Pia, among others) can give people sight of non-duality.

Thus, what's important is the great space of your feeling-sense consciousness. The energies can harmonize themselves therein. That happens by itself. Energies that are concentrated have the tendency to spread themselves evenly. So stay aware of the great space.

Sometimes it is not possible to return to that space.

Can you take one step?  That's enough. If you've taken one step, you can take another, back to the space. Actually you don't need to take any step. It's only about becoming aware of yourself and relaxing into it. Then the closing energies receive room.

The point isn't that you don't know where the solution to the problems lie. The point for you is to focus there with devotion. If you choose for expansion, then it comes. Yoga is your becoming aware of alternatives and then always opting for the expansive option. Just see what happens, when you always apply that kind of yoga.

There are open moments every day.  Between the words is silence, between the thoughts is silence. Then you can focus yourself there.

To be able to see them, to see what is really going on, you will need to be more simple than most of the people who live in constructions, such as materialism and the separation between one and the other.

"When I'm on the computer, I'm not always myself."

Before you start your computer work, you can first sit up straight with relaxed shoulders and awareness of yourself in the whole situation: that you will be sitting behind the computer typing in the large space. In looking at the screen and typing it can still remain so. Everything continues automatically.

See the addiction: the old patterns continue, according to previously learned stimuli.

Someone: "Music helps me a lot to enter into expansion."

That's great, but then go with that music into infinity, while you remain aware. Then you don't remain dependent on the music; there is freedom from any condition whatsoever.

Keep it simple: return to yourself; let yourself fully relax there; there is the being-experience of the universal essence.


Er is geen tweeheid

als je ontspannen bent
in zelf-bewustzijn
is dat duidelijk.


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