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The Gift of Pamela

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When did I first discover the love and joy of Being?

How did I come to recognize that the Universe is generous and beneficent?

I've learned this repeatedly when I realize the many gifts I've been given in this life.

Meeting Pamela Wilson is one of those gifts for which I owe my deepest gratitude.

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For many years I had a curiosity  and urgent interest in discovering more about our potential as human beings, and I suspected there was a unrevealed common ground of the world's religions and philosophies, but my explorations just led to more questions, and a maze-like landscape of practices and possibilities. Then I met Pamela. 

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My remembrance of Pamela is of her barely able to contain the overflowing and radient bliss inside her. She appeared to be like a big container of joy about to explode upon the world. It seemed accidental, our first meeting, (if you believe in accidents) and I was propelled to follow her to satsangs and retreats in various locations over the next few years. It wasn't her words or wisdom I sought, but the overwhelming love I felt as my heart repeatedly opened in her presence.

Imagine my delight when one day in Santa Fe she accepted my invitation to lead a weekend retreat in our New Hampshire home. Imagine further my surprise when she asked me to begin leading regular gatherings at home. I was too fearful to acceed at first, but Pamela persisted in asking for a response and 3 months later, when she again confronted me directly, I agreed to hold weekly satsangs. How could I refuse a teacher for whom I have such total love and respect?  So, in 2007 the Eaton Satsang began, and it's proved to be a major learning process ever since.

Thank you, Pamela, I love you.

 

Dick & Kathy with Pamela at October 2007 weekend retreat in Eaton (photo by Bill Nagahiro) 

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An introduction Pamela prepared for her address at the 2012 Science & Nonduality Conference.

On Self

The nature of the Self is this same abiding, still intelligence that we call Nature. A deep and true love that animates and cherishes every form equally. It is eternal and wild and knows all is deathless. Looking out of all eyes, it loves itself, eats itself and challenges itself into a full return back to raw wisdom, calm strength, and fierce love. Soaring above, substrating below and rippling through existence, it manifests as form, function, mind, emotion and sensation, beings, weather. Neither divine nor human, nor not divine or human, it is elemental, before existence and human ideas of non-existence. It is not free, nor bound; these are paltry ideas it has never heard of. Its strength is immeasurable, its intimate view everywhere; seeing all its forms having ultimate and equal value, it lives, holds and breathes Life. So wise is stillness it holds no wisdom, so silent it animates and hears all sound, so unmoving it carries all movement. It inspires and is the artistry of forests, lakes, music, and dance, that celebrate the beauty of life. It has never been born nor died. All forms are its own and, when spent, returned back into the earth or sea with reverence. Eternal, timeless, sensual, constant, surprising and true, it is celebrated by romantic love, mother love, the seasons, all the apparent opposites, and worshipped as divine. As spaceless space, it births the five elements: fire, water, earth, air and space. A primordial iridescent mystery, luminous and dark, alert and resting, its heartbeat pulses everyone's blood, and gives the breath of life to its creation. All names are its own, so it does not mind if we call it the Self. 

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Favorite Pamela Quotes

 

You have only one job to do. Actually two: relax and enjoy. 

It's a tough job but somebody's got to do it. 

We are designed to be delightfully imperfect. 

Any attempt at perfection is not trusting the Beloved. 

So actually you have three jobs: rest, enjoy and be imperfect.

~ Pamela Wilson

 

Everything is welcome here.

~ Pamela Wilson

 

Close your eyes...
and notice your heart.
See if it needs some gentleness from you.  
Comfort it the way you would comfort your best friend. 

~ Pamela Wilson

 

The more we rest in the silence, the more we call forth love.

~ Pamela Wilson

 

Everything that kindness touches relaxes into its true nature. 

~ Pamela Wilson 

 

Look inside with devotion and gratitude. 

~ Pamela Wilson 

 

Everything can awaken because everything is this naturalness. 

~ Pamela Wilson 

 

You are the Sun. 

Each one of us is the Sun. 

When you just shine on whatever is fearful, it all comes out of its form and knows itself. 

That's the ultimate satisfaction, this meeting of you as love meeting form and function that's lost its way. And when those meet, everything rests. 

Because everything is made of love, everything is in service to this One. 

But everything is tired out. The me is tired. The mind is tired. 

Everybody is limping home to the heart. 

~ Pamela Wilson 

 

Each one of us is the only sage who ever was, and in the light of your warm regard everything bows back and rests. And then we know ourselves as love. 

~ Pamela Wilson 

 

Nothing is as it appears to be, and You are not as you appear to be. 

You only have to look a little deeper and feel a little deeper. 

~ Pamela Wilson 

 

In every culture there's a beautiful unveiling that happens because Music isn't music, and Art isn't art, and Food isn't food, and so on and so on . . . It's all just Divine play. 

~ Pamela Wilson 

 

Even the body cannot die. As the 5 elements only the form changes. 

~ Pamela Wilson 

 

You are not what you appear to be, you are divine, you are absolute reality (Brahman). 

~ Pamela Wilson 

 

Be really tender with thought. 

The pressure we put on it is extraordinary. It's only because thought is also the great mystery of emptiness that it is able to function with all that pressure of disapproval and dislike and aversion... That is why in all the great spiritual traditions, at their heart is tenderness - just to be kind inside, and then everything rights itself. Fear rests. Confusion rests. Everything that was perturbing the system rests. Because they know that when you are tender inside you no longer need their services, because you have returned to your true nature. 

~ Pamela Wilson 

 

Spiritual states come and go, but this ordinary presence has always been here. It is totally naked of form.

~ Pamela Wilson

 

We’re just traveling salespeople for rapture. 

I’m in the rapture business. 

Rest and rapture.

R and R.

~ Pamela Wilson

 

The mind thinks it’s holding up a sword: the Self sees it as a toothpick.

~ Pamela Wilson

 

The minds only job is to make sure you’re safe.

~ Pamela Wilson

 

For a moment, take off the persona.

(It’s just an item of clothing, threadbare, stained with years of wear & tear.) 

Much more fun to put on a fresh fragrance. 

Like putting on a raiment of a thousand stars.

~ Pamela Wilson

 

Awareness gets confused by the bundle of thoughts and feelings. It really thinks it's so-and-so, it's a Pamela and then it really feels the stakes are very high. 

If you think that you're just a body, then the fear of death will be looming every day.

~ Pamela Wilson

 

Everyone is this naturalness. When we start calling it enlightenment and awakening, thought can use that to compare, right? But if we say this naturalness or this simple presence, thought can't run a comparison study. The whole invitation is to look prior to language, prior to concepts, prior to thought's projection. 

~ Pamela Wilson

 

Awareness by nature is devotion and innocence and it's so curious. It merges with everything. If awareness smells using the senses, it's just mmm — it literally merges with the fragrance. So that is a delightful quality of it. We suffer when it merges with suffering, when each cell is literally in agony, and yet it is still pure awareness, fully immersed or identified. The sweet thing about awareness is that it thinks it is thought and it thinks that it's a body but really it's just conditioning.

~ Pamela Wilson

 

Words are like bones thrown out for the mind, 

to keep the mind busy while grace does the work,. 

Like dog biscuits.

~ Pamela Wilson

 

Could you trust Love more than any idea of needing protection?

Just for a second.

Just like lighting a match.

That fast.

~ Pamela Wilson

 

There is a reservoir of devotion in the spiritual heart which rests waiting for a silent song, akin to moonlight whose soft touch opens the evening flowers.   

And then it flows unreservedly from heart to heart.

~ Pamela Wilson

 

How lucky we are to be the mystery's children, that we can know it not as father or mother but that which breathes us, moves rivers within, and beats the drum of our heart.  

This is communion of Self to Self, love and life in devotion to itself, a celebration of what is Real and cannot die.   

~ Pamela Wilson

 

Love is like Mercury

Ungraspable

It rests in the silence of The Heart like the Sun at the core of the galaxy

Be quiet and It seeks you until there is no difference between seeker and sought.

Only the thrill of Oneness remains."

So ask it, "Who are you?"

~ Pamela Wilson

 

Ramana's great question was, "Who am I?"

Nowadays it's easy to see that we are this formless intelligence inside. Yet so many of us, in our innocence, still think that thought is thought, and that it's an object, and that it's going to be there for eternity, yacking away about nothing, bothering us.

Now, if we are not who we are, how come everything else is who they are? Wouldn't it make more sense to say, "Well, if I'm not my role, maybe nothing else is its role."

And rather than wondering what that role is, just ask it directly, "Who are you?" It's so much faster than trying to figure it out.

You don't ask it, "Who am I?"

One of thought's functions is to project onto you, because you have no form. It has to come up with projection after projection, and just in case you relax out of your role it has to create a diversion, quickly.

So ask it, "Who are you?"

Curiosity is the way wisdom gets revealed inside. It is the forerunner of wisdom. Curiosity arises and, if you sit with it, connected right underneath is the wisdom. They are not two.

Each one of these servants inside, from the most irritating of emotions, can reveal an incredible amount of wisdom when you interview it. First of all they show you their functions, and if you have ever had curiosity about how creation was created, or how bodies function, or what the nature of emotion is, or the nature of thought, or the nature of wisdom, all of it is there. These are amazing biocomputers, and you can ask and they will reveal anything you want to know.

~ Pamela Wilson

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Have you ever sat with Eckhart Tolle? Have you seen how magnificent ordinariness looks. Yes, he is just absolutely beautiful and light, and he is completely ordinary. There's only one thing that doesn't irritate people, and it's called no thing. As soon as we move into a role or be an object, half the people are going to like us, and the other half are not going to like us. Because when we're an object or when we're in a role, we're subject to duality. We'll get half the love, and we'll lose half the love. Finally you start to realize that the only refuge is being no one.

~ Pamela Wilson

 

In the old days young men used to go into the forest, or into some very dangerous place to prove their courage. 

This is actually the most dangerous place: the heart. 

That's why we talk about being lion-hearted. 

It requires the courage of a lion to rest there.

~ Pamela Wilson

 

When failure comes, or fatigue comes, it's a blessing. 

This is the humility that is required: to stand naked before God, to say, 

"You're right. I am a failure at doing." 

This is innocence.

~ Pamela Wilson

 

The body really is like a pet that we have. 

We should walk it and we have to feed it, make it rest. 

If you had a young child or a pet and it was really scared you wouldn't judge it. 

You would just comfort it.

~ Pamela Wilson

 

That's why we are so blessed nowadays,

because there was Ramana

and Poonjaji

and Robert Adams.

We are reaping the fruits

of their devotion and austerity

and renunciation.

We are the spoiled grandchildren of

Ramana Maharshi.

~ Pamela Wilson

 

You are Divine. It’s time to start being that; quit pretending your not. 

You are needed as a sage, in your majesty, in your dignity, in all your fierce, clear seeing. Don’t throw it away.

Every day I watch you throw it away. 

You have freedom here to feed yourself and you throw it away. Chatting about nothing. Seeking relief through endless talking about nothing. Is that going to feed your heart, or would gazing at the mountains feed your heart? Would walking silently feed your heart, or would you talk about nothing - more and more.

You are required right now. There is an amazing shift in consciousness and you are needed. Consciousness has been silently inviting you into your bigness.

Throw off all your smallness and all your veils. Look at someone like Adyashanti - it’s clear he’s thrown off all his smallness; and look at Eckhart - you are the same Being. And Ramana, and Buddha and Mohammed and Moses. You continue to pretend and go on with the suffering because of that, and you fail yourself. 

Enough already! Have you had enough of smallness yet? It’s time now. I know you’re gods and you have all the freedom that gods have, but Enough Already. 

Stillness is saying Enough Already. Can you feel it? Let’s all just unveil ourselves. 

The gifts you’ve been given are not to be squandered, but to be shared.

~ Pamela Wilson

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For more of Pamela's quotes click here: 100 Pamela Wilson Quotes

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