Embrace suffering, and you transform your relationship with what causes you to suffer, as well as your relationship with suffering itself.
AdyashantiRead
Awareness isn’t something we own; awareness isn’t something we possess. Awareness is actually what we are.
Interpretation
Awareness is intrinsic to our nature rather than a trait we can possess.
In this quote, Adyashanti suggests that true awareness is an essential aspect of our being, not merely a quality that can be acquired or owned like a possession. This perspective emphasizes that awareness is fundamental to our identity and existence, rather than an external attribute we seek to control or acquire.
In practice
During a meditation workshop, you may use this quote to emphasize the importance of recognizing one's own awareness.
Embrace suffering, and you transform your relationship with what causes you to suffer, as well as your relationship with suffering itself.
If we do not live and manifest in our lives what we realize in our deepest moments of revelation, then we are living a split life.
The willingness to not bypass illusion is very important. We come to nirvana by way of samsara. We come to see the true nature of things by seeing through the illusory nature of things. We don't come to nirvana by avoiding samsara. We don't come to clarity by avoiding confusion.
Our illusions-the beliefs we hold on to-are the very doorways to our freedom. We simply have to enter through them without grasping or pushing away. We must not believe them, but we must not run away from them either. We need to see each moment of apparent bondage as an invitation to freedom. Then it becomes an act of love, an act of compassion, to stop running away.
Let go of all ideas and images in your mind, they come and go and aren’t even generated by you. So why pay so much attention to your imagination when reality is for the realizing right now?
The joke of it all is that you are looking from your true nature right now without knowing it. If you would stop being fascinated with the contents of your mind, you would experience what I am saying. Feel your way into what I am saying rather than thinking about it. Only a self-concept looks and longs for God. Drop your self-concept and there is only God meeting God. Enlightenment is the restoration of cosmic humor.
Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear. Just as vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people. And falsehoods the truths of other people. Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself. To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
all stories are like those about the creation of the universe, no one was there, no one witnessed anything, yet everyone knows what happened.
No tyranny is more cruel than the one practised in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice - when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves. And since a tyrant never lacks instruments for his tyranny, Tiberius always found judges ready to condemn as many people as he might suspect.
Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.
Freedom of speech...Freedom of worship...Freedom from want...Freedom from fear.
In ancient, prehistoric times, the temples of the spirit were outwardly visible, but today, when our life has become so unspiritual, they no longer exist where we can see them with our physical eyes. Yet spiritually they are still present everywhere, and whoever seeks can find them.
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