KiloBits

True spiritual liberaton is freedom from your own past spiritual insights. It is freedom from any ideas or concepts about the self. But it is also freedom from the grand and wonderful insights that are revealed along the way in a spiritual awakening. It is freedom from Oneness, nonduality, enlightenment, religion, belief systems, no self, or any other ideas about awakening. It is freedom from even wanting or caring about freedom. The simplest way of expressing it is 'This' or "presence." But the ultimate truth is so close, simple, and precious as the very life that is in this moment. It is liberated from trying to find or hold onto any concepts about it and yet it is free to play with any and all concepts. This truth simply cannot be expressed. Nonetheless, here are some pointers: ;)

Never trust a teacher who appears to believe his own bullshit. Simply recognize love. Sometimes love appears as a teacher. Sometimes it appears as a dog.

Do you want to know what your religion is? It is that on which you are seeking agreement or avoiding disagreement. Beyond that, love is . . .

Spiritual ideas are like heroin. When you get hooked on any spiritual idea (including oneness, enlightenment, meditation, presence, no self, awareness, consciousness, beingness or any other idea) remember that there will be a weening off of that idea at some point. Liberation is about the possibility of waking up now to what is looking at all those ideas rather than believing any of them.

The best spiritual teachers know that they are not truly teachers, and will constantly undermine any authority which is placed upon them.

If there is anything called non-duality or enlightenment, it is freedom from attachment to anything called non-duality or enlightenment.

Love is picnicking with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich under the shade of an oak tree while everyone else is looking for, or claiming to have found, enlightenment or God.

You come to the truth naked or you don't come at all.

Thank your teacher, destroy your lineage, and stand alone.

Holy war begins the moment consciousness identifies with a past spiritual insight.

The whole notion of a spiritual seeker could be summed up this way: Thought that believes thought holds the truth, and then sets out to "find it," or believes it "has it."

Whenever there is enslavement to an idea, there is separation between those that adhere to the idea and those that do not. This includes enslavement to the idea of non-duality. Shall we disband the organization that has been created around the notion of non-duality? Shall we do that for the sake of liberation itself?

To be at one with God is to never utter his name.

Love is what is left when you are no longer searching for or claiming to have found the truth.

The only way to truly utilize and learn from ideas is to be attached to none of them.

Beliefs are arguing with beliefs, religions with religions, perspectives with perspectives, approaches with approaches, methods with methods, practices with practices, ideas with ideas. Only the mirror between all these relationships is telling the truth.

Attachment to the notion that it is all One is no different than attachment to a victim identity. It's all bondage to the past. The truth cannot be expressed. It is too close. Here. Now. So be free, drink a cup of coffee, play with your cat, look your loved one in the eyes, and talk about the price of oil.

The best pointer is the one that allows you to dissolve attachment to the pointer.

Spiritual awakening is the most dangerous drug. One glimpse of the divine and you might chase it for years, addicted to the search itself. The best teaching is the one that weens you off your addiction to chasing enlightenment and points you to the simple, non-attached love that is your true nature in this moment.

The highest truth is not a conceptual understanding of Oneness or a belief in God or some other idea. It is an inexpressible shift in the body and mind characterized by not knowing, not resisting, and not trying to control. Call it enlightenment, pure awareness, liberation, non-duality or divine presence. The words are just maps pointing to it. Once it is embodied, attachment to the words dies and love flourishes.

Love does not want anything in return, only you do.

Non-duality is not a religion, although it is being treated like that by a sea of seekers. It is an actual shift in the energy within the body and mind, which devours the illusory separate self. Treating it as an idea, religion, philosophy, or belief is a massive act of reductionism of a spirit too vast for thought to capture.

Seeking enlightenment in the future is like flying to the moon in search of your belly button.

It is noble to suffer consciously or openly, knowing--even in the midst of the pain--that the suffering is a self-centered story. But to suffer completely in the dark, totally believing a story to be true or not even seeing one's own delusions, well . . . that is just ignorance.

Just watch. The truth takes over from there.

Thought is a self-centered loop. It is memory (past), coming to meet this moment, and projecting itself forward into a future dream where it seeks to confirm and strengthen what it already knows, which is memory (past).

Thought creates what matters, then looks to the world to validate its creation, not realizing that the world is simply a reflection of thought.

Liberation is the complete and final release of the human mind from its dependency on thought for a sense of self.

You cannot find the truth through an idea. You will only find the idea.

The spiritual search is just self-centeredness in another form.

Life is not about you, and yet, without you, it cannot happen.

If I want to experience misery, all I have to do is think that I own or possess something or someone.

What a blessing to have realized that the flowering of human consciousness happens only in the absence of “me.”

There is only nothingness. There is a dream of separation. And yet there is also only One Life. Each of these expressions is pointing to the same truth.

THIS is an unnameable opening. Every thought which attempts to name THIS arises in THIS.

What is the difference between a person and his shoe? The shoe does not believe it is separate from the rest of life.

The truth is whatever is in front of you.

A true insight occurs only in this moment. It can never be carried forward through time. Committing insight to memory kills it, and transforms it into "spiritual knowledge." Once the accumulation of spiritual knowledge takes place, the ego is born again into the dream in a new incarnation as "the one who knows." Therefore, this insight is dead.

Every spiritual disagreement is a spiritual search to strengthen and separate the thought-based self. When one of the participants in the disagreement is insisting that "he has found enlightenment" or that "it's all One," laugh heartily, but with great compassion. You are witnessing the dream of separation, masquerading as the One. The false, masquerading as the truth.

Instead of trying to figure out how you can find enlightenment, realize there is no you, and that every step taken in search of enlightenment actually obscures it.

You are the beingness from which thought comes, not the thought which comes from it.

Spiritual enlightenment cannot be found on the level of agreement and disagreement. So stand alone.

You are much, much less than you think you are---and yet more than your mind could ever imagine.

True freedom is not another concept in which I just add the word "true" in front of "freedom." It is not the opposite of bondage or nonfreedom. It is not a wanting, a projection of the mind, an experience, an awakening or another stage or level of enlightenment. It is not "trying" or "wanting" to be free, reach a state, or maintain a state, or be more awake, aware, present, or enlightened. If anything, it is the negation of all wanting and trying. It is freedom from wanting to be free.

"You," as a thought-based self, do not know unconditional love, because "you" are a set of conditions.

Where are you going? Life is here, now.

If you are going to be a spiritual teacher, be relentless in liberating consciousness. Be like a thief. Steal the best lines and pointers from the best teachers. Nobody owns the truth, because nobody is here.

In dreamland spirituality, you peel back the layers of the onion to find a better version of yourself. In mature spirituality, it is realized that there never was an onion.

To liberation, liberation does not matter.

Life is a bowl of cherries.

Enlightenment does not care about your story. It swallows it up entirely, every identity you have or have ever had. Enlightenment sees presence and oneness as stories, and swallows them up as ultimately not true, and not you. These are all stories that are swallowed up by a realization which cannot be put into words. Some have called it self-realization, but even that gets swallowed up. In the end, every story is seen through, every belief. Enlightenment swallows itself in the end. Love survives. And love loves every story.

You are not any answer you place upon the question "who am I?" You are the asking.

You don't die. Where are you going to go? There is only One.

A spiritual teacher is an illusion, born of ego. I am an illusion. Illusion is conflict and separation. As a teacher, I am no different than a soldier fighting you in a war. Whether I am trying to kill you, or awaken you, I am not at one with what is.

The projector in my mind creates you as a separate person. Then, I try to reach out into the movie I've created to change you, my projection, not realizing that the thing about you which I seek to change is only a reflection of my own mind. If I had turned my attention to the projector in the first place, I would not have bothered trying to change pixels on a screen.

Love loves itself everywhere it sees itself, and it sees itself everywhere.

The rote rehearsal and regurgitation of enlightenment phrases smells like dogma. So I'm sniffing around in my head.

Anything I say about 'what is' feels like a variation on the theme, "this is all about me."

The truth cannot be known through concepts. Realize "you" are a concept and the truth will be known.

I am sitting on a chair, lost in "deep" spiritual thoughts, and trying to see the truth. Blind. My dogs run by, chasing one another. Pitter patter of feet. Barking. What is moving them? Wow. Truth revealed.

Suffering is . . . to be at war with one's own thoughts, arguing with what is, and to not see this, and then to point out into the world and say that the problem is there, in the other.

How can I claim a speck of humility, and not see that it is a claim, and therefore not even a speck?

Dreamland humility is where you think you have assets and liabilities as a person. You feel good about yourself when you think you are balancing them well. True humility never receives its own reward. There is simply no one there to take credit for anything.

Looking at life, a mirror of my own mind, knowing that I don't know, and that I can't know, but looking to see whether I can even know that. And then, to see the perceived other, suffering under the illusion that his thoughts are true, creating his own hell. And still another, filling himself with positive beliefs, the secure warmth of a mental heaven. Everything is in its right place.

One, not two, and even that is not true.

The fear of death and the fear of life are flipsides of the same coin. You bet the whole coin, or nothing at all.

Wisdom is aware of knowledge. Knowledge knows nothing of wisdom.

I will take your complaints about your co-worker, your spouse, and your president seriously when you realize you are not separate from them.

An ant in a desert in India is as close to God as the Pope.

When you realize the truth of who you are, it doesn't matter whether the body/mind dies now or in thirty years. It is not about time.

When you realize the truth of who you are beyond thought, thought is finally used in service of the truth, instead of in service to who you think you are.