Awareness cannot be taught, and when it is present it has no context. All contexts are created by thought and are therefore corruptible by thought. Awareness simply throws light on what is, without any separation whatsoever.
Interpretation
Awareness is innate and beyond intellectual constructs, illuminating reality without distortion.
This quote by Toni Packer emphasizes that true awareness exists independently of the thoughts and contexts we create. It highlights the idea that while our perceptions can be influenced by our thoughts, genuine awareness is clear and unobstructed, providing insight into reality without any judgments or separations imposed by the mind.
In practice
In a meditation class, this quote could inspire participants to focus on being present rather than overthinking.
The emergence and blossoming of understanding, love, and intelligence has nothing to do with any tradition, no matter how ancient or impressive-it has nothing to do with time. It happens on its own when a human being questions, wonders, inquires, listens, and looks without getting stuck in fear, pleasure, and pain. When self-concern is quiet, in abeyance, heaven and earth are open.
Life is a vast, unknowable movement of wholeness with no one separate from it and nothing outside of it.
Great ideas travel slowly, and for a time noiselessly, as the gods whose feet were shod with wool.
Practice is funny that way. For days and days, you make out only the fragments of what to do. And then one day you've got the thing whole. Conscious learning becomes unconscious knowledge, and you cannot say precisely how.
Give them great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves and fight like devils.
The moon stays bright when it doesn't avoid the night.
If you have a problem and you can't find a solution, you meet again tomorrow and you keep talking until you find a solution. You can disagree with behavior or a particular position, but you do not resort to calling an opponent worthless.
Steady faith is stronger than destiny. Destiny is the result of causes, mostly accidental, and is therefore loosely woven. Confidence and good hope will overcome it easily.
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