p. 2: What I realized was that adults spent a lot of time thinking, and more important than that— and more odd,
it seemed to me— they actually believed what they were thinking. They believed the thoughts in their head.

p. 4: I wondered, "Why is it that human beings have such a difficult time putting their suffering down?
What's the reason that we often carry it around, when it becomes such a burden to us?" In some way, many people's lives are defined by the events that have caused them to suffer, and many are suffering over events
that occurred long, long ago. These events are no longer happening, yet they are still being lived, in a sense,
and the suffering is still being experienced. What is going on here?

p. 5: It took me many years, probably a good couple of decades, to realize that what I'd seen as a child struck
at the root of why we actually suffer, that one of the greatest reasons that we suffer is because we believe the thoughts in our head.

pp. 6-7: The great spiritual teacher Krishnamurti once said, "When you teach a child that a bird is name 'bird',
the child will never see the bird again." What they'll see is the word "bird". That's what they'll see and feel,
and when they look up in the sky and see that strange winged being take flight, they'll forget that what is actually there is a great mystery... Of course we need to learn these names and form concepts around them, but if we start to believe that these names and all of the concepts we form around them are real, then we've begun the journey of becoming entranced by the world of ideas... Because after all, that's what thought does: It separates. It classifies.
It names. It divides. It explains.

p. 8: This is the dream world that is addressed by many ancient spiritual teachings. When many of the old saints and sages say, "Your world is a dream. You're living in an illusion", they're referring to this world of the mind
and the way we believe our thoughts about reality. When we see the world through our thoughts, we stop experiencing life as it really is and others as they really are.

p. 9: To begin with, we have to make a simple, yet very powerful observation: All thoughts— good thoughts,
bad thoughts, lovely thoughts, evil thoughts— occur within something. All thoughts arise and disappear into
a vast space... But the silence or quiet I'm talking about is not a relative silence. It's not an absence of noise,
even of mental noise. Rather, it's about beginning to notice that there is a silence that is always present,
and that noise happens within this silence— even the noise of the mind. You can start to see that every
thought arises against the backdrop of absolute silence.

p. 11: There was a saying attributed to Jesus in The Gospel of Thomas, written shortly after Jesus's death,
in which he says: "The seeker should not stop until he finds. When he does find, he will be disturbed.
After being disturbed, he will be astonished. Then he will reign over everything."

p. 12: This is one of the laws of the universe: that everything you see, taste, touch, and feel will eventually disappear back into the source from which it came, only to be reborn and appear yet again, receding again
back into the source.

pp. 14-15: This is why Jesus said that when you begin to find, you will be disturbed... Are you willing to be aware? Are you willing to open your eyes? Are you willing to be wrong? Are you willing to see that you may
not be living from a standpoint of truth, from a standpoint of reality? This is what it means to be disturbed...
To be disturbed means you're willing to see truth, you're willing to see that maybe things aren't the way you thought they were... This is really the entry point into the end of suffering: when you become conscious of
the fact that you don't really know. I mean that you don't really know anything— that you don't really
understand the world, you don't really understand each other, you don't really understand yourself.

pp. 16-17: When I look underneath the veil of thinking, what I find is that I am a mystery. In some ways, I disappear. I disappear as a thought. I disappear as an imagined someone. What I find, if I'm anything at all, is that I'm a point of awareness, recognizing that everything I think about myself isn't really what I am: I recognize that the next thought I have could never truly describe me... And isn't it obvious that if we don't go to our minds, that what we are is something spacious and of amazing mystery, amazing wonder, that we are a still quiet point of awareness and consciousness?

p. 18: Because you longer want to suffer. Because you're willing to be disturbed. You're willing to be amazed. You're willing to be surprised. You're willing to realize that maybe everything you've ever thought about yourself really isn't true.

p. 20: But if we're beginning to look at the core and the root of suffering, we start to see that an image is just that: It's an image. It's an idea. A set of thoughts. It's literally a product of imagination, It's who we imagine ourselves to be... we remain in a continuous state of protecting or improving our image in order to control how others see us.

p. 22: If we think we're good and worthy, we'll create good and worthy emotions. But if we think we're unworthy, then we'll create negative emotions. So we can have a good or bad self-image, a self-image that feels emotionally either better or worse, but no matter what it is, if we look deeply at the core of all our images, there is this feeling of not being authentic, not being real.

p. 24: There's a Zen koan— a riddle that you can't answer with your mind, but that you can only answer through looking directly for yourself— that says, "What was your true face before your parents were born?" So of course, if your parents weren't born, then you weren't born yet, and if you weren't born, then you didn't have a body, you didn't have a mind. So if you weren't born, you couldn't conceive of an image for yourself.

pp. 28-29: In terms of how suffering originates, we can start to see that it originates with the creation of a "you" and a "me"— with this separate sense of self...It's when children start to say, "This is mine, not yours. That's mine! Gimme this! I want this! I want that!" that things begin to shift... But there's a shadow side to our sense of self: When we see ourself as separate, as something other than the life around us, it breeds a sense of alienation and a sense of fear... these "others" are seen as potential threats. Of course, life itself is one of the biggest threats that an ego can perceive. Life is an immense happening. You can go on a trip, you can go on a vacation, you can go to the other side of the earth, but still you can't escape life. You can go to the moon, but still you can't escape life. You can't escape existence.

p. 30: To be clear, I'm not suggesting that anyone should try to get rid of their sense of self... If you had no sense of self, you literally wouldn't know how to operate in the world. If you were thirsty, you wouldn't know where to put the water... So to have a sense of self, a feeling of "Here I am!" is very important. In fact, it's biologically hardwired into our system.

p. 31: All of the great spiritual teachings direct us to look within, to "know thyself". Unless we know ourselves, we can never find our way beyond suffering. In fact, it's because we don't know ourselves that we're so prone to suffering, that we're so prone to misunderstanding the nature of who we are and reality itself. So this assumption that we are something separate, something other than everything around us, is the basis of what I call our "egoic consciousness".

p. 33: If this was fully understood in its deepest aspect, that the ego is just a state of consciousness, we wouldn't be chained to it. We wouldn't be weighed down by it. We wouldn't feel isolated. Yet we see our egos, we see ourselves, as very separate entities; and everyone around us is doing the same thing... To find liberation, we must wake up from this dream that our mind creates, that we're something separate than everything around us. This is the only way we can begin to find a way out of suffering.

p. 39: It would be a terrible thing, indeed, if we actually were our egos, if we actually were the though-created self in our mind. But we're not. Rather, what we really are is that which watches the mind, what notices the mind, and what is aware of all mental activity, including the desire to control.

pp. 42-43: Another thing we do when we feel separate is that we argue with what is and what was. This is the third most common way that we suffer. In fact, if you want to guarantee your suffering, argue with what is... "What is" is this moment— before you even think about it. That's what is. Argue with this moment, and you will suffer. There's no way to argue with this moment and not suffer. That goes for the past, as well. Argue with the past, decide what has been shouldn't have been, and you'll suffer... But what has happened in the past is neither good nor bad. It just is what was. So, when we argue with what was and we say, "It shouldn't have happened", we suffer. It's that simple.

p. 44: When we see and stay with what is, it actually opens up creative responses, new ways of seeing and engaging with "what is", which aren't based on separation or denial or trying to control, but instead are sourced in the human heart— in love, compassion, and wisdom... This is the moment that we can end suffering. This is the moment when we can wake up from all of our stories of the past, present, and future.

pp. 49-50: Coming to the end of suffering is really about beginning to see all of the ways that our mind maintains suffering through habitual patterns of thinking. As we begin to understand the causes of suffering, that all of our suffering is based in various ways in which we imaging ourselves to be separate and different, we begin the process of waking up, from unhappiness to happiness... As we begin to awaken from this egoic state of consciousness, begin to suffer less an less, and as we suffer less, we cause less suffering in the world around us.

pp. 52-53: When we begin to look at our experience clearly, we'll see that there are at least two phenomena going on: one is the movement of mind, including all the descriptions, self-images, ideas, beliefs, and opinions that arise moment to moment. The other phenomenon is the awareness of mind. Very rarely do we take into account the awareness of mind, the space in which mind arises and subsides... All of the imagination of your mind ceases when you go to sleep, at least until you start dreaming. In this state of deep sleep, what you experience is great peace. We call it "sleep", we call it "rest", and it's absolutely vital to our survival. If we don't get enough sleep, we'll eventually go somewhat crazy.

p. 54: But our history shows us— hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of years of history— that our ideas haven't saved us. Our ideas haven't saved us from our own anger, bitterness, and violence. They haven't saved us from wars and famine and destruction.

p. 61: When you watch the mind, you will notice that it is always trying to make itself separate. It is expert at drawing distinctions and pitting itself, in one way or another, against something or someone else.. The ego is very intelligent that way. This is the dilemma that human beings have been in for thousands of years: collectively caught in a trance state of ego and thus prone to being sucked into this vortex of suffering and sorrow.

p. 66: What you'll begin to experience is a peace and a stillness— a deep inner quietness. At that moment, you're experiencing a whole different dimension of consciousness, one beyond the ego and its activity.

p. 71: There's really nothing to learn here. Awakening is actually a process of unlearning. The important thing is where we're acting from, where we're relating from. When we relate from our true spiritual essence, then the quality of our relating is transformed. Then what we say to each other carries a whole different feel to it. It is then that we become expressions of peace, rather than expressions of the insanity of a divided world. This revelation begins with the recognition that you are not your mind, and you are not your ego or your personality. In fact, you are something much, much vaster.

pp. 74-75: When we struggle, we manufacture something in our experience that, to the egoic state of consciousness, is very essential: a contraction. A "contraction" is simply a narrowing down... What is spirit, after all? It's not something you can see. It's nothing you can grasp. It's nothing you can really touch. Another way to describe spirit is as an "awake nothing". I like the Biblical term "Holy Ghost" because to me, spirit is like a ghost— not because it's frightening, but because it's an invisible, ungraspable something without real definition. A ghost is something that exists without really existing, and spirit is like that— an awake nothingness, an awake expanse of consciousness... The way we narrow down consciousness is through struggle, through striving. What we all aspire to, and what is in fact natural to us, is openness, peace, love, and well-being. These qualities are completely natural qualities of spirit. They arise in us when we become conscious of our spiritual nature, of our non-separate, non-somebody nature. Then love flows quite naturally.

p. 78: We're seeking it: because we believe that peace and happiness and freedom aren't here, right where we are, right now, already. The assumption that what we're seeking, some state of completion, isn't here right now is what causes us to look for it, to start the search.

pp. 80-81: There's a lot of knowing that's very useful, but when it comes to our state of consciousness, when it comes to finding peace and happiness, we have to let go of knowing. We have to let go of the effort to know, because really, we don't know.

pp. 82-83: But all of a sudden, what came into my mind, the thought that I had, was that there's no such thing as a true thought... An insight is something that you understand and comprehend with your entire body. That's why, when you have an insight, you often say, "Aha!" It's the "Aha!" which is the response of your body. When you have a regular thought, there's no sense of "Aha!"... I saw that thoughts are symbols for things; they're not the things, themselves. They're descriptions of things. I began to see the truth that thought doesn't have any reality to it; in other words, a mentally formed conclusion isn't the truth... It appeared as revolutionary to me at the time, as well, to see that none of my thoughts are true. And I do mean see, because realization or revelation has the quality of seeing— you see something all at once. That was the "Aha!" "There's no such thing as a true thought." What a surprise!

pp. 84-85: Because if no thought is true, then you'll no longer believe any thought that causes you to struggle... But when you open yourself to this notion that all your ideas aren't true, you're likely to feel quite empty-handed. The mind doesn't know quite what to do. It feels exposed and vulnerable... Look in this moment, and you'll see: The things we value most in life— happiness, love, creativity, peace, joy, union— even though I can reference these by using a thought, none of them are actually the same as the thought.

pp. 86-87: Revelation and insight come from somewhere else, from some other space. They come from a place that we as a culture seem to have so little respect for— a place called "silence". What's more neglected in our lives than silence?... Silence is something that disarms us, which is why we move away from it so often. Our society is one in which we're more and more preoccupied with noise. Last week, I was driving down the highway, and I looked over and saw a group of high school kids walking home from school. They all had cell phones. There were seven or eight of them, and every single one of them was either talking on their phone or texting. No one was interacting with the people or the environment around them.

pp. 88-89: As one wise Christian mystic said, "Stop telling God what you want, and instead listen to what God has to say to you." That's a very wise thing to say, and it comes from a basic insight into how our minds incessantly assert themselves, which ultimately is just another form of struggle... As the great mystic Saint John
of the Cross said, "In order to come to knowledge you have not, you must go by a way in which you know not."
I love this quote. It's entirely paradoxical. It's what my teacher referred to as "the backward step": coming to knowledge not through knowing, but through not knowing...You begin to embrace this unknowing. Embracing the unknown makes us wonderfully and beautifully humble— not humiliated, but truly humble. True humility is a very open state. It's a state of great availability, and it's from this state of great availability and openness, from this willingness to realize how little we really know, that our consciousness begins to shift.

p. 90: In order to find the end of struggle, we have to find a state of consciousness that's totally natural, that doesn't fight against our inner or outer environment. That's what I call "aware spirit", or "awake spirit". It's an awake emptiness. That may sound abstract, but simply put it's the openness to a lived sense of not knowing... There's a wonderful quote from the Gospel of Thomas in which Jesus says, "Blessed is he who existed before being born." Jesus is pointing here to being itself; he is acknowledging that essence of who and what we are before our minds created an mage of ourselves as something separate and distinct from all of life.

p. 92: You'll open to what I call an "alive, pregnant nothingness". This is not a "nothingness" that is blank or absent of any qualities, but rather one that is extraordinarily vital and rich with potential.

pp. 94-95: Everything, in its way, is a gift— even the painful things. In reality, all of life— every moment, every experience— is an expression of spirit... We have to remember that our true spiritual essence isn't just goodness; it isn't just happiness. It's everything and nothing. There isn't a force outside of our spiritual essence. There's nothing but God, as the mystics have told us. Everywhere you look, there's God. Everything you feel, there's God feeling. All of it... We have to realize that spirit is an infinite potential that includes everything. And all of our lives are proof that our spiritual nature contains everything a once— that we can become clear or confused, that we can act loving or cruel. How we act and feel depends on how awake we are, and how much we experience that silence, that peace within.

p. 96: Jesus once said, "The kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it."... Jesus, like so many of the great spiritual masters, reminds us that this is Heaven, that everything you see is a manifestation of spirit. Everything is God incarnate... When you open yourself to this, how does it change how you operate in this life?

p. 101: In order to really allow ourselves to stay with the depth of our emotions, we must cease judging ourselves for whatever come up.

pp. 106-107: Almost always, this deep-seated pain and suffering that stays with us for many years, or even throughout an entire lifetime, are held in place by the unconscious conclusions that we make in the moment... As soon as we go unconscious, whatever emotion that happened at that time will be locked into our system. It will stay there and regenerate itself over and over again until we find the capacity to experience that emotion without going unconscious in any way.

p. 108: Our bodies are very well adapted to purge themselves of suffering. When we cry, for example, our bodies are trying to purify us by washing away painful and toxic emotions. But while our body is often trying to help us let go of suffering, our mind is doing the opposite. It's re-traumatizing us with its stories and conclusions.

p. 113: I was in great physical pain, but I wasn't suffering. It was clear to me that suffering and pain are in fact two different things. Suffering is derived from our resistance to what is. This is what causes us psychological, or emotional suffering. Pain is an inevitable consequence of life.

p. 115: You may have experienced some very real suffering, but when we add on top of that what we believe should or shouldn't be, that mental position literally locks the painful emotion into our systems. So even though this is a very difficult thing for people to see because it's so contrary to the way we think, it's absolutely necessary if we're really going to end suffering.

pp. 116-117: But this thawing out is absolutely critical. Because unless we purge ourselves of all the stories that contain our suffering, we won't ever feel the freedom and peace of interacting with life from the perspective of truth... They are all ways in which we argue with what is. Any time you argue with what was, what is, or what will be, you limit your ability to experience the vastness of who you are. When we argue with life, we lose every single time— and suffering wins.

p. 118: My teacher called it "the you who has no difficulty, even when you're having difficulty." I didn't understand what she was speaking about the first time I heard about this always present "you", but it came to have a great impact on me. It stayed with me, and I thought, "What is that? What is the me that has no difficulty, even when I'm having difficulty?" Because up until that time, I thought either I was having difficulty, or I wasn't. It was one or the other. Yet, when you're experiencing fear, if you really stop and open, you'll see that fear happens within a space of fearlessness, that sorrow happens within a comforting presence, that when we have the willingness to really open ourselves and experience our own resistance to that openness, we experience a state of ease and relaxation that underlies all of our trauma, all of our "dis-ease".

p. 120: We begin to come to know the "you who has no difficulty, even when you're having difficulty". We come to know that there is a great reservoir of well-being even in the midst of incredible grief and loss.

p. 122: This silence is not merely a quiet mind, where the mind rests and you're not hearing or connected with the exterior world. Rather, it's a space within where all our experience naturally occurs. This is a different kind of silence. Usually when we hear about silence, we immediately think of a still mind, a mind that thinks only good thoughts or preferably no thoughts at all. But his is a relative stillness, and all forms of relative stillness are fleeting.

p. 125: When our minds start to open, we're no longer in a constant state of evaluation and judgment. Naturally, then, our senses open— and we can really see what is before us. Our eyes open in a different way, our hearing opens to all of existence. We see how judging and condemning actually close our hearts and harden us to our experience of life and others. Open-mindedness allows you to embrace the nature of your experience.

pp. 126-127: Open-mindedness doesn't mean you're just opening to the good parts of life; it means you're opening to everything. And this is when you start to discover a type of inner stillness, an inner stability, that vast unchanging expanse that is at the heart of everything... you start to see a certain kind of magic inherent in all of existence; there's a mysterious grace that permeates everything. It's not magic because it unfolds in a particular way, however. By "magic", I'm referring to a sense of wonder and deep satisfaction— because life itself is so mysterious... Essentially we fall into grace. By that I mean that a certain mysterious quality reveals itself and cradles us within an intimacy with all of existence. This is something that many people are looking for without even knowing it. Almost everybody is looking for intimacy— a closeness, a sense of union with their own existence or with God, or whatever their concept of higher reality is. All this yearning actually comes from our longing for closeness, intimacy, and true union... There's a sense of homecoming, a sense of "ahhhh, I'm finally in alignment with what's happening." This is the magic. This is what brings forth a sense of inner peace, inner balance, and equanimity. And it is within this silence that true stability is found... Opening to things as they are is what it really means to be still, to be quiet, to be in a state of meditation.

pp. 128-129: Existence is just the way it is. Conflict only comes from our relationship with life. Inner conflict only comes from our relationship with ourselves... I'm not talking about closing our hearts or denying the suffering that's going on in life. Meditation isn't a closing off from life or our surroundings as many people perceive it to be. But what it does involve is a giving up of our resistance to life.

p. 130: The most essential aspect of meditation, what meditation really is or can be, is a relinquishing of control. It can be very helpful to set aside 20 or 30 minutes every day for stillness... This is what meditation actually is: letting go of our conflict with life, dropping the struggle with who and what we are. Through resting in this way, we enter a state of nonresistance, where we'll be able to have a taste of what it is like to live for a moment without judgment or conflict

p. 132: Opposition, in fact, is its own form of suffering. It is a denial of the stillness that lies within. So when we really look at what happens when we let go of judgment, suffering, conflict, hate, greed; when we stop judging it and saying it should or shouldn't be there, what happens inside of us... What actually happens when we stop judging, when we stop resisting the flow of our lives, is that we come into an alignment where we are in a natural and clear relationship with whatever presents itself.

p. 133: This response is not based in conflict, but in wholeness and oneness. When we're not responding out of conflict, division, and resistance, what manifest is pure compassionate action, wise action that comes from intimacy, stillness, and true connection... We simply realize that the only thing that can keep us from being still is when we argue with what is, when we judge or condemn what is or what was or what might be. This is the only way that we can create chaos. Inner stillness is nothing but the absence of conflict.

p. 139: If you give yourself this gift of not knowing and you follow it, a vast spaciousness and a mysterious openness dawns within you. Relaxing into not knowing is almost like surrendering into a big, comfortable chair; you just fall into a field of possibility.

p. 141: It's a feeling of absolute union with every part of experience, with life itself. A great Zen master Dogen who lived hundreds of years ago, defined enlightenment as "intimacy with the ten thousand things." Of course, in the context of his teachin, the "ten thousand things" refers to everything.

p. 142: One of the primary qualities of this space of unknowing is that it is aware; there's a completely natural awareness or consciousness flooding the whole of experience. Awareness simply means that there is a pure perception of whatever you're experiencing. The unknowing is itself aware, is itself conscious. The Tibetan Buddhists call this "self-luminosity".

p. 143: I'm not actually saying, "Never know anything." That would be nonsensical. There are many things in life that are very helpful to know: We need to remember our name, we need to know where we put our car keys, we need to know all sorts of information so we can go about our day and accomplish our tasks... This new way of knowing is what we refer to when we speak of an "insight" or an intuitive understanding. This clear seeing then allows for a new way of relaxing with and using the mind, which I call "inspired thinking."

p. 145: Doing nothing does not refer to just sitting in a cave all day or on the couch avoiding what is happening in our lives. But it is pointing to a very fresh and creative way of responding to our lives, to the spontaneous action that arises directly from the reality of not-knowing.

pp. 146-147: How thoroughly have we returned to stillness? What we come to see is that there is nothing quite like our day-to-day relationships to show us where we really are, to show us firsthand our level of realization...

p. 156: We're going to have to open our heart to everything that could possibly happen. Why? Because we're not separate from anything or anyone. Anything you consider separate from you can scare and can intimidate you... You can express and manifest the very depth of yourself in the outside world, so that there's no longer a division between inside and outside and there's no longer a boundary for our love.

p. 161: There's one thing about which I would like to be completely clear: If we want to stop suffering, if we really want to bring an end to suffering, we've got to wake up. "Waking up" means awakening to the truth of our being, and it also means waking up from a whole host of illusions... Who wants to find out that everything they hold onto and cling to is the very reason that they suffer? Who really wants to find out that we're all addicted to qualities like approval, recognition, control, and power, and that none of these things actually brings an end to suffering? In fact, they're the cause of suffering! So the truth is that most of us don't really want to wake up. We don't really want to end suffering.

pp. 162-163: The disturbing truth is that coming to the end of suffering isn't really a personal matter at all. Coming to the end of suffering has to do with reality and truth, with what's real as opposed to what's not real, and valuing what's actual instead of what's imagined... It is through our suffering that we can continue to hold onto everything we think is true. Wearing the veil of suffering, we don't really have to look at ourselves and say, "I'm the one that's dreaming. I'm the one thats full of illusions. I'm the one that's holding on with everything I have."

p. 164: Spiritual people often listen to the teachings of the great awakened ones and try to apply them, but they often miss the key element, and that is: We're addicted to being ourselves. We're addicted to our own self-centeredness. We're addicted to our suffering. We're addicted to our beliefs and our worldview.

p. 167: The day I hit the brick wall, I was in my little backyard hut that I had built for my meditation practice, and I sat down on my cushion like I did every other morning... all of a sudden— from my guts, not from my head, but from deep, deep down within me— something yelled out inside me: "I can't do this anymore! I can't do it! I don't know how to break through! I don't know how to stop struggling. I don't know how to stop striving. I can't do this!" That was the moment. That was the moment when everything began to change. I didn't know it at the time, but everything I'd ever done in my life up until that moment had prepared me to realize that I was powerless, because I was trapped in a certain view of things.

p. 168: But in that moment where I realized there was literally nothing I could do, everything changed. All of a sudden, my view of everything shifted. Almost like flipping over a card or a coin, everything that I ever thought or felt, everything that I could remember, everything in that moment literally disappeared. I was finally alone. And in this aloneness, I had no idea what I was, or where I was, or what was happening. All I knew was that I had hit the end of some imaginary road. I'd come to some brick wall and foud myself suddenly on the other side of it, where the brick wall actually disappeared. And then this great reveation occurred where I realized that I was both nothing and everything, simultaneously.

pp. 168-169: As soon as that realization came, I started to laugh... when you're in your twenties, four years seems like forever... because I realized that what I was searching for was always right here, that the enlightenment for which I was seeking was literally the space that I existed in. All along I hadn't ever been far from the end of suffering. It had been an open door from the very beginning, from the first breath that I ever took... I had heard the teaching of "Don't know. Let go of what you think you know." But I had taken these teaching and conveniently enfolded them into my worldview. I'd thought I understood what the great spiritual teachers were talking about. But at that moment, what I really saw was that I had never understood anything. I had never understood a single thing, and that was quite shocking.

p. 170: To come to the end of suffering, to experience the beginning of the end, you must go through a type of death. Many spiritual traditions have taught this: you must "die" before you physically ddie so that you can truly live. If you've ever been with somebody who's close to physical death and who has also completely let go, you know what a state of freedom this can be.

pp. 171-173: Ultimately, waking up to reality and coming to the end of suffering isn't actually a process. This is a very difficult thing for people to realize and truly embody. It's about waking up. There isn't a process of you being asleep at night and then waking up in the morning. You're either asleep or you're awake. And so it is with spiritual awakening. We're either asleep within the dream world of our minds, or we're awake within the true world of reality.

pp. 174-175: What I've found, after meeting with thousands of people around the world, is that thos who are still suffering say that it takes time to waking up and end personal suffering; those that are awake, however, are clear that it doesn't... Take a moment and imagine that there is no time. Take a moment to just let go of tomorrow. What if letting go of suffering wasn't possible tomorrow— that today, even right now, was all you had, and you had nothing else but today? All of a sudden, you would look at your whole existence through completely different eyes... See what it is like to completely take tomorrow, and yesterday, out of the picture... Nobody knows how to stop. Nobody ever has known how to stop. Tell yourself the truth: You don't know how. Nobody knows how to stop. Nobody knows how to not suffer. Nobody knows how to awaken... Who wants to know that they don't know how to not suffer? Who wants to know that they don't know how to wake up? But if you let it in, if you really let it in— just like an addict letting in the knowledge that they don't know how to stop—' what happens?... When you stop, do you suffer?

p. 176: What you are can't die, but the idea of yourself is destined to die... This is not a physical death I'm
talking about. This is a death of who you think you are, of your past and your future. All of that exists only in imagination. Right now, there is always and only freedom and peace. The question is: Is that what you really want?

p. 177: When I began my spiritual search at 19 or 20 years old, I had the idea that when I finally found out
what reality was, when I found the enlightenment I was looking for, then that would be it. I imagined that enlightenment was the goal and the end-all. Most of what I'd read in spiritual literature and heard in spiritual teachings reinforced this idea that once you get to enlightenment, it's basically over. You've gone as far as the spiritual life can take you. What I discovered, however, was something quite different. Once I began to awaken, and once I started to feel a sense of what some of the spiritual teachings might call "enlightenment", my experience was one in which I felt very free and open. Life was no longer this intimidating even that felt separate from my own being. For a while, that felt totally complete.

pp. 178-179: And then, bit by bit, it began to reveal itself. I began to realize that our spiritual unfolding doesn't really have a goal called "awakening" or "enlightenment". There's not an end point. To spiritually awaken or become enlightened is actually something that allows another moovement to happen— and another and another and another. Spiritual awakening is the ground from which a whole new movement of spirit starts to occur, and that new movement that comes out of our own sense of freedom is what I call "awakening into our true autonomy."... What I realized was that our true autonomy arises from a knowing of unity, of oneness. Even with the realization that everything really is one— even with that— there's still this human element, there's still this being that's been born in time and space... This other movement of consciousness is not really a waking up from our humanity, waking up from time and space, waking up from an individual identity. It is almost the opposite, where spirit comes into form and discovers this true autonomy.

pp. 184-185: The more awake we become, often the more capable we are of having life hand us bigger and bigger situations as our capacity to accept and embody our spiritual essence grows. So life can and does respond to that growth, and in many ways it tends to demand more and more from us... Even though were not separate, even though the whole universe is contained within us, there's still a human component, an individual person with the capacity to allow spirit to flow out into the world. We can either open to this or shy away from it... A lot of people who come to hear me are trying to abdicate their authority. They're trying to give it over to me, and I'm often saying to them, "No. You can't do that." You can't do that, even at the very beginning, because to think that we're going to ride on the coattails of some spiritual teacher to enlightenment is a great delusion. It doesn't work that way. To wake up, to find out what enlightenment is, to touch upon the ending of our suffering, requires us to have the willingness to occupy this life, to occupy our incarnation, without grasping at it or identifying with it.

p. 186: A true spiritual teaching will never take anyone's autonomy; it won't require us to give away our good sense. Yes, don't grasp your judging ideas, don't stick with you limited opinions, but don't abdicate your own authority because there is something within everyone, even at the start of their search for freedom, that has a stand in truth, an intuitive sense of what's real or not real... a good spiritual teaching helps you to hone in on your own truth— to beccome quiet and to listen deeply and openly enough so that you can literally begin to feel the way life is informing you. That's your inner wisdom. That's your inner teacher, and it's the beginning of standing in your true autonomy.

p. 189: A true teacher will always be trying to give your authority back to you as fast as you can receive it— and without becoming egoically self-centered again.

p. 190: A spiritual teaching should actually challenge us, challenge our views, challenge the way we think. If it simply conforms to our views and the way we think, it's really not any good to us, because it will just reinforce our illusions of separation and superiority... True autonomy is not about "me" as an ego; it's about life itself. It's spirit embodying form, inhabiting a human life, and standing up in that form. The paradox is that first we often awaken from form. We come to realize that we can't be defined by our bodies, minds, egos, and personalities. That's why the term "waking up" is so instructive: we're literally waking up from identity, from who we think we are. We're also waking up from all the ideas that culture has placed within us and all the emotions to which we've become addicted.

pp. 191-192: The first time I went to see my teacher, it was a very odd experience. I had found her name in the back of a book, and I couldn't believe that there was a Zen teacher fifteen minutes from where I was living. What great good fortune to have a Zen master almost around the corner!

p. 193: She opened the door. She looked at me and said, "Welcome". She pointed to my shoes, and then she told me where to put my shoes. I kicked off my shoes to the side of the door, and she sid, "Oh, no, no! Please put your shoes nice and straight.", so I straightened them up, and I walked in the door. What I didn't know at the time was that I was receiving my first teaching... Without saying it, what she was really saying was, "Be aware of your shoes. Stay conscious. Stay awake. Don't go to sleep to anything."

p. 195: Again, I didn't understand what my teacher was doing until many years later— that she was trying to help me discover my own innate autonomy right from the beginning. Because she refused to take all the authority away from me, so I could find my own way. This is one of the sobering realities of waking up, of shifting out of the egoic state of consciousness and into our true nature: No one can tell you exactly how to do it... From the very beginning, we have to be feeling our way in the dark for our true inner wisdom.

p. 197: If someone were to ask me, "Adya, what is it that you've found that you're meant to be, that you're meant to do, that spirit is really meant to accomplish through you?" the most I could say is, "This moment is it. This moment is it, and in the next moment, that's it. And in the next moment, that's it."

p. 198: Love is synonymous with this fierce embrace of life. Love is seeing yourself as everything and as everybody, and that seeing is not for your mind. It's not meant for your ego. You can never see all as one with your ego. You can only see if from your essence... As long as you care about being remembered or being significant, you haven't totally let go. What if you found out that the way spirit wanted to manifest through you was as a simple, ordinary person, but a person with great love, great compassion, and great wisdom? Maybe nobody would even recognize you. Nobody would acknowledge it in you, but it would simply be who and what you are. What if tat were the way life wanted to manifest through you? Would that be okay with you? Would you allow it to happen?

p. 201: I read about a sage in India, Nisargadatta Maharaj [1897-1981]. A woman told him about the suffering, violence, anger, and greed in the world, and her own inner world of turmoil. She asked him how he interacted in that world, and he said something very surprising. He said, "That's your world. I don't exist in your world. I don't even know your world. In my world, none of that exists." It took me aback when I read this. I thought, "What does he mean that he doesn't exist in that world, that his world is something else?" It brought to mind another saying that's very well known, where Jesus says, "I am in the world, but not of it." [John 17:16]

p. 202: Everything in the manifest world operates through this flux and flow of opposites. In some ways, these distinctions are necessary. Life itself couldn't exist without opposites, without night and day, without breathing in and breathing out. If you look closer, you'll find that within most human beings, we find the same opposites: the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, what happen and what shouldn't happen... So how can these sages say that this is not the world that's true to them, not the world where they essentially are? They may operate in this world; they may seem to exist in it, but where their consciousness is, where their real home is, is in another world.

p. 203: There is a whole other state of consciousness, a state of consciousness that isn't of the world of duality. This is the state of consciousness that Jesus referred to as "the kingdom of Heaven". The kingdom of Heaven is really the state of consciousness that's beyond duality, that's not living withing the world of duality. As a person, Jesus clearly existed withing the world of duality, but his consciousness was obviously somewhere else. His consciousness was in "the kingdom of Heaven", what the Buddha called nirvana. Nirvana refers to complete freedom from the "wheel of suffering" and life lived outside the egoic state of consciousness altogether.

pp. 204-205: Many years ago, I was staying at a Buddhist monastery, an the abbess there made a very interesting observation. She said, "Everybody knows not to get caught in Hell, but very few people know how not to get caught in Heaven."... It took me many years before I realized, myself, what she meant by this. Because if we get caught in Heaven, it's just as limiting as getting caught in Hell... As one old, wise Zen master said, "to abide in non-abiding."

p. 206: Ultimately, the idea isn't to go from identification with form to identification with formlessness. It's not about going from a somebody to a nobody. You dan't define the truth as something, or as nothing. You can't ultimately define it as spirit or as matter. You can't define it as ego or other than ego. Our ultimate nature can't be described in dualistic terms at all... So our minds can never really know reality directly.

p. 207: But if we get attached to the formless, to the inner spaciousness of being, to that pure consciousness— even though it's much more free, open and spacious— if we get caught there, we've just settled for another,
higher level delusion.

p. 208: One of the Taoist masters said, "When the Great Way is lost, good and evil are created." "The Great Way" refers to the ultimate truth, the ultimate reality. When you and I become unconscious of the Great Way beyond all duality, then we have to create conventions like good and bad.

p. 209: Our human birth is the birth of opposites. It's the coming together of male and female, and that produces a human being. Our humaneness is a manifestation of the opposites, our hearts beating, opening and closing, our lungs breathing in and then out and then in and out. So our physical birth is always a birth of opposites, which is quite beautiful in and of itself.

pp. 209-210: The virgin birth points to our own awakening from the ego. At the moment of awakening, it literally feels like we've being born again, or like something completely new and unexpected has shown up in our consciousness. It literally is a virgin birth— a birth not of duality, but a birth of non-duality, a birth of that which is far beyond all dualities.

p. 211: There's a wonderful quote from the Zen master Huang Po [d. 850]. What it describes is the unity of spirit, that our truest nature is neither this nor that, but both. Huang Po uses the word "mind" not to the thinking process, but to the context in which all form, including thought itself appears. He said: "Mind is the Buddha, and the Buddha is all living beings. It is not less for being manifest in ordinary beings, nor is it greatest for being manifest in the Buddhas." This is Huang Po's way of saying that all is one, and whether it's ordinary or extraordinary, it's all an equal expression of spirit.

p. 212: The vision of Jesus was vast and immense. He saw that there was no ultimate difference between the human and the divine. As he said, "The kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men don't see it."...
To him, the world itself was the kingdom of Heaven, and what was beyond this world was the kingdom of Heaven. For Jesus, everything was an expression of the divine.

pp. 214-215: In the world of duality, there's always coming and going, there's always life and death, there's always this moments and that moment, so we can't actually hold onto anything in the end... The great sage Ramana Maharshi [1879-1950] spoke a very well-known verse "The world is illusion. Brahman is real. The world is Brahman." Brahman means "God, the divine."... This whole creation in our mind is nothing but a construct. It's quite illusory. It's not actually real at all.Brahman, the divine, alone is real, that this formless state of consciousness, that place of pure being, unborn, is the reality... It is easy to get stuck there, however. It is the last verse that is necessary to bring us home to the real transcendental vision: "The world is Brahman." The world itself is divine. Ramana is pointing us there to the truth of nonduality, to the truth of the fundamental oneness of form and formlessness... Remember, the goal isn't to become spirit instead of human, but spirit as well as human. The goal isn't to become the divine nobodyness instead of being somebody. In truth, it's about realizing that what you are is a divine nobodyness, or nothingness, as well as a somebodyness and a somethingness that has a definite life to live.

p. 216: I read that one of the Sufi mystics called this presence "the dazzling darkness", and I really love the sense of this, the feel of it. The dazzling darkness is not something that can be described. Who could ever say what it is? Who could ever say what's beyond light and dark, what's beyond spirit and matter?... When our consciousness is rooted in this ultimate mystery, in this dazzling dark, in the ultimate Godhead, then we're no longer confined to Heaven or Hell. We're no longer limited to being spirit or matter. In fact, finally we don't see any difference between the two.

p. 218: It only requires a willingness to stop. The more we stop and the more we let go, the more our consciousness naturally opens. The more we question our conclusions, the more the doorway opens for us to have a wider and wider vision. The deeper we see into reality of things, the more our heart opens to include everything, because if we're really feeling into our deepest reality and truth, the heart isn't something that would want to escape from what is here and now; rather our hearts are already embracing everything. We can allow our hearts to be big enough to be broken... Another one of my teachers said, "All true love sheds a tear. It's bittersweet," and I've found this to be more and more true.The more deeply I love, the more I taste the bitterness with the sweet.

p. 220: We're not something that exists within Heaven or even in the great mystery of being, but we actually are the great mystery of being. One Zen master said, "The whole universe is my true personality." This is a very wonderful saying: "The whole universe is my true personality." If you want to see what you truly are, open the window, and everything you see is in fact the expression of your inner reality. Can you embrace all of it?

p. 221: Grace is a difficult thing to define, to pin down; it's often thought of as a rather positive moment or event. However, we've all had experiences of extreme difficulty where, when we look back, we see that these were times when we transformed the most, when we made the biggest leap in our personal evolution... In essence, grace is anything that helps us truly open— our minds, our bodies, our emotions, our hearts. Sometimes grace is soft and beautiful. It appears as insight. It comes as a sudden understanding, or maybe just the blossoming of our hearts, the breaking open of our emotional bodies so that we can feel more deeply and connect with what is and with each other in a deeper way.

p. 222: I remember hearing a talk from a very famous Tibetan teacher... He was crippled, and so he couldn't use either one of his legs... a big boulder fell on his legs and broke them, and he spent many years in a stone hut, because there was really nothing that he could do... He said, "To be locked in that small hut for so many years was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. It was a great gracee, because if it wasn't for that, I would never have turned withing, and I would never have found the freedom that revealed itself there. So I look back at the losing of my legs as one of the most profound and lucky events of my whole life." Normally, most of us wouldn't think that losing the use of our legs would be grace. We have certain ideas about how we want grace to appear. But grace is simply that which opens our hearts, that which has the capacity to come in and open our perceptions about life.

p. 223: I remember sitting in my little meditation hut, and I felt absolutely crushed. I became convinced that this was the end of my whole spiritual life, and I remember thinking "What am I going to do now? My spiritual life is over. I've failed." And as I sat there in that moment of utter and absolute defeat— a defeat that was so total that I didn't even feel sorry for myself— right in the middle of that moment, my heart just began to flower. It was like a golden love was being poured right into my being. It was as if I could hear everything, and it was just singing with this love... I heard a voice saying "This is how I love you, and this is how you shall love all beings everywhere."

p. 224: This was a moment of grace. The entire experience was grace. The feeling of being absolutely defeated, having nowhere to go, feeling that there was no way out, feeling totally despondent with my spiritual search: it was all grace. Sometimes grace cuts through us like a knife. It was this defeat that opened me up— opened my body, opened my mind— and it was only through this experience of being defeated that I could finally be open to the immensity of this unconditioned love.

p. 225: I've said many times, "My spiritual path was the path of defeat. It was only through this crushing defeat that awakening was revealed." People hear me, and they chuckle, but most of all they don't really understand. Of course, most of us are all trying to avoid this kind of defeat— this deep cutting of grace— as if our lives depended on it... The first time I ever said a true prayer was when I was sitting in a vast desert at a bus stop in California, in a long desert that stretches between two mountain ranges. I was contemplating my spiritual life, and I suddenly had the impulse to pray... I said to the universe, "Give me whatever is necessary for me to awaken. I don't care what it takes. I don't care if the rest of my life is one of ease and I don't care if the rest of my life is hellish. Whatever's necessary, that's what I want. I'm inviting it. Give me whatever I need to awaken from this separation."

p. 226: When I said this prayer, it was like giving the keys of control back to the universe. When I uttered this prayer, it was very frightening... But in retrospect, I had to admit that I got everything for which I asked. I got exactly what I needed in order for my own consciousness to awaken from separation. So never underestimate the power of prayer and its ability to pen us to grace... To open ourselves to this grace, to this flow of truth, means that we have to step out of ourselves. We have to let go of the illusion that we are in control of our life. When we hand it over, we'll find ourselves falling into grace, falling into this clarity and openness and love, falling right into the grace of awakening from separation, where we realize our true spiritual essence: this beautiful, unknown, unborn presence which manifests as everything we see.

p. 227: On the third day of the five-day program of my first Zen retreat, the leader Kwong Roshi, told a story of his time in India

p. 230: Grace is all around us, if we only have the eyes to see it. The good moments are grace, the difficult moments are grace, the confusing moments are grace. When we can begin to open enough to realize that there is grace is every situation, in each person we meet, no matter how easy or difficult we perceive them to be, our hearts will flower and we'll be able to express the peace and the love that each of us has within us... In this moment of grace, we see that whatever might be there in our experience from the most difficult emotional challenges to the most causeless joy, occurs within a vast space of peace, of stillness, of ultimate well-being.

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