The True Nature of Reality

" People are tied down by a sense-object when they cover it with unreal imaginations; likewise they are liberated from it when they see it as it really is. The sight of one and the same object may attract one person, repel another, and leave a third indifferent; a fourth may be moved to withdraw gently from it. Hence the sense-object itself is not the decisive cause of either bondage or emancipation. It is the presence or absence of imaginations which determines whether attachment takes place or not. "  –        Ashvagosha Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words.

"Life in the relative unfolds spontaneously. Without the patterning of desire and fear, there is no attachment to things happening one way or another way. However, there does seem to be a strong movement towards what is SILENT, what is STILL and what is NATURAL. This silence allows a seeing with the interior eye – a dance of Love with the mystery of life expressing in this constantly changing show. This affinity to where silence and stillness are naturally present is like LOVE drawing itself to itself."  –       Louise Sterling Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words.

Awareness doesn't change. The contents of consciousness are irrelevant – the `I' is just a content arising and passing away – just an old tendency, nothing substantial. It can't really affect the Awareness that is the groundness of Being.  –       Andrea Pucci Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words.

We can be truly self-attentive — that is, firmly established in the non-dual practice of atma-vichara or atma-nishtha — only to the extent that we surrender or deny ourself by refraining from rising as this thinking mind, which is our false self.  –       Michael James  Happiness of Being Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words.

"Prayer" is a word or label used after the fact to describe the spontaneous movement of bliss, awe,  reverence which arises in recognition of your own true nature.  This recognition cannot be planned or called forth -- it simply arises in response to the intensity or earnestness of the "seeking".  How absurd then to turn "prayer" into a static and  ritualized  practice. However -- when the emphasis is on the outer form of the practice,  characterized  by subject-object duality, this is also an indicator of body/mind/personality identification.   Remember, to know Yourself, return to the silence before words.

Though it is true that the world is a figment of our imagination, like the snake, and that brahman is the reality underlying its false appearance, just as the rope is the reality underlying the false appearance of the snake, this application of this analogy fails if we try to extend it further by inferring that just as the snake will be found to be a rope if we look at it carefully, the world will be found to be brahman if we look at it carefully. No matter how carefully we scrutinise the world or any other second or third person object, their illusory nature and the true nature of their underlying reality will not be revealed, because by attending to them we are sustaining and perpetuating their seeming reality. Their unreality will be revealed only if we scrutinise the first person, the ego, which is the false foundation upon which their seeming existence rests.  –       Michael James  Happiness of Being Note: In this explanation...