Advaita Vision

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Advaita for the 21st Century

Reflections
Stephen Wingate

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Stephen Wingate

 

Visit Stephen's website - Self Knowledge, for audio talks, blog etc.

See Stephen's entry on the Teacher pages.

What do you want ultimately?

What is real?

What is imagination?

Imagination can be seen.  Can what is real be seen?

Is imagination troubling you?  Do you take images to be real and run from them or long after them?

Awareness is the ultimate context of all existence. Not an idea of awareness, but awareness itself, yourself.

What is aware of being here and reading these words right now?  Stop.

What is it that stopped?  What is it that is here before, during, and after what stopped?  You are not what stopped.  You cannot begin.  You cannot stop.

You are this awareness, now.  You are always this awareness.  This awareness is life itself.  You don't have a life, you are life.  You cannot attain eternal life, you are eternal life.

All there is is eternal life, this awareness, and you are This.

Truth is the infinite, absolute context in which everything is born, lives, and dies.

This truth is what you are.  This awareness is what you are.  You are This.

When the thought "I" arises and is identified with a body and mind this is the birth of separation, conflict, struggle, and death.

You are not the sensations of the body nor the thoughts of the mind.  What is real?  What is imagination?  The body and mind can be seen, felt, and experienced.  Can what is real be seen, felt, and experienced?

Is the seer real?  Is the seen real?  Is the seeing real? What is real?  What is imagination?

"I am" the beginning and end of all trouble, all suffering.

What is born and what dies?

Death happens to something that was born.  Were you ever born?

When the thought "I" is born the world is born.  Before the thought "I" is born, all is.  No "I", no world.  The thought "I" is a picture projected onto a screen.  The screen is you, awareness.  Without you, there is no "I" and no world.

You are the projector, the projecting, the screen and the projections.  Without you, awareness, nothing is.

What is imagination?  What is real?  Look now!

What is the common denominator in all your troubles, all your suffering?  Is it you, the me, the I you call yourself?

What is this "I"?  Is it real?  Is it imagination?

When the "I" is known to be imagination what happens to all your troubles, all your suffering?

When the "I" is known to be imagination, what happens to the world?

As trouble is experienced, as suffering is experienced, if you ask, "Who is suffering?"  What will be found?  Who is reading these words right now?

When the "I" is seen to be imagination, what's left?  You are!  Awareness is!

Home is awareness.  Home is peace.  Home is heaven.  All paths to heaven lead to hell.

The doer is the I-image, the me which is unreal (having no independent, permanent existence), it is imaginary.

All is happening.  Who is the doer?

What is imagination?  What is real?  Do look, now.

Happiness and sadness, right and wrong, good and bad: how are they born?  When are they born?  What is the context into which they are born?

There is laughter.  There are tears.  Is there any difference to you?

What is it that says, "good?"  What is it that says, "bad?"  What is classification, judgment, knowledge? Is it thought?  Is it thinking?

Awareness is not a thought.  Thoughts happen in awareness.  Thinking is division, separation, conflict,  me/not me,  good/bad,  like/dislike.

There are pleasurable sensations felt as the body.  There are painful sensations felt as the body.  The objects of pleasure are remembered and sought.  The objects of pain are remembered and shunned.

Pain happens now and is real now.  Pleasure happens now and is real now.  Pain and pleasure are not a problem.  Suffering is different.

Desire is the memory of pleasure.

Fear is the memory of pain.

Suffering is desire and fear: "I want," and "I don't want."  What is desired is a memory.  What is feared is a memory.  Memories are images, imagination.  Imagination is not real.

What is real?  What is imagination?  Do you see it now?  Is it clear?

What is desired?

Ultimately, isn't desire the desire for love, peace, happiness, union: the desire for BEING?

What is feared?

Ultimately, isn't fear the fear of conflict, war, suffering, dissolution: the fear of NOT BEING?

Is it possible for you to "not be?"

What is it that can "be" and then "not be?"

There is absolute, infinite, undivided awareness until the first thought is born: the thought "I."  When the I-thought is born, the world is born.  The world is "not I."

The I-thought is the birth of fear and desire.  Before I am, All Is. Who is there to have fear and desire before I am.

Truly, what I AM is before, during, and after the arising of the I-thought.  Are there any words for it?

The body is a flowing series of sensations.  The mind is a flowing series of images.  What is witnessing these sensations and images?  What is witnessing this body and mind?  You are.  Who are you?

Is there time without imagination.  Are memories what is?  Are memories the future?

There are images and sensations.  Is there a real entity called me?

Space and time are thoughts, images, concepts, past, present, future.  All of these are the same. They are all relative and they have no separate, independent existence, no absolute reality.

All exists now.  All there is is now.  All there is is the all.  The all and the now is the real.  The thinking process, which is the mind, divides the all into the many, divides the now into the past and future.  The division of the all into the many, and the now into the past and future is imagination.  Imagination is not the real.

What is imagination?  Look now.

If some"thing" is seen, is it real?  Seeing something implies division, which implies naming, which implies recognizing, which implies the past, which implies time, which implies thought.  Can we see without dividing, without naming, without recognizing, without the past, without time, without thought?

Seeing some"thing" implies a seer, the seen and seeing.  What is imagination?  What is real?  Feel it?

Intelligence is life, awareness.

Can awareness see all that is, as it is, now?  Can we see as intelligence sees and not as thought sees?  Can we see what is rather than what was?  Can we see what is real rather than what is imagined?

When we see all as it is now, what is there to fear?  Who is to be afraid?

There is desire: "I want."  There is fear: "I don't want."

Every"thing" you desire is imaginary.  Every"thing" you fear is imaginary.  The "you" that wants and fears is imaginary.

Before "I" is reality.  After "I" am born is imagination.

"I" is imagination.  All is real.

Ultimately, what I want is what I AM: Awareness, Love, Happiness, Peace, Unity, Heaven.

Copyright 2005 Stephen Wingate

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Page last updated: 02-Oct-2017