Eaton Satsang
Perspectives
Spiritual teachers often use metaphor to communicate an understanding. One such example relates that our familiar, usual and everyday perspective is that each person is like a separate, independent and temporal wave upon the ocean, separated by time and space from other distinct waves. I’m a wave and you’re a wave. We take this viewpoint to represent the entirety of reality. A larger perspective, however, is that each wave, though unique, is nothing but an arising of a vast ocean, inseparable from it, returns to it, and in truth, each wave/person is just a passing appearance of the fullness, depth and stillness of the ocean itself. What you truly are is the ocean (of consciousness).
We encounter a variety of challenges when we attempt to fully recognize the truth that this metaphor describes. A good starting point is suggested by the popular quote from A Course in Miracles (and Rumi?) that reads: “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” You can substitute for “love” any relevant term you prefer: truth, reality, beauty, god, etc. since all such words are merely pointers to the ineffable depths of an infinite ocean.
The “barriers” referred to in the quote are those habitual and conditioned patterns of mind and the corresponding beliefs that limit us to seeing reality as dualistic in nature; a world of opposites: yes/no, up/down, future/past, inner/outer, me/you, etc. This is an either/or view of reality that maintains a perspective of separateness. We are urged to penetrate through this singular, dualistic view in order to discover the reality of oneness, of nonduality, and to be able to see both duality and nonduality from a both/and perspective rather than a limited either/or viewpoint.
Quotes
If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is - infinite.
~ William Blake
Life is God manifesting as every conceivable form and shape.
There is only God experiencing what can only be God. All that you imagine as being separate from you is in essence exactly what you are.
There is only God and there cannot be anything that is other than God.
Live your life from this non-dual perspective.
~ Jac O'Keeffe
From the viewpoint of the illusory individual entity, problems will never cease.
From the viewpoint of the totality of phenomenal functioning, problems never arise.
Deep understanding of this, is itself the master key, which will open the door to peace that is joy, the joy that is freedom.
~ Ramesh Balsekar
There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of
perception.
~ Aldous Huxley
The I, the ego, is engaged in continual activity: rejecting, wanting, justifying, judging, discriminating.This activity itself is suffering, and is the source of the point of view which believes in its separateness. As long as you are engaged in any desire to change things inside you, to want something to be different, you are coming from ego and identified with that point of view.
You cannot perceive reality as long as you are looking at the world from the perspective of the ego. To act from that point of view means to perpetuate it. The moment you think of change, of fundamental transformation, of enlightenment, you are speaking from the point of view of the ego. You think there is someone who is going to change, be enlightened and have all kinds of wonderful things. You want the island to become a paradise—lush and beautiful with all kinds of rivers and gardens full of fragrant flowers. You can’t think any other way! If you believe in islands, no matter how rich and wonderful your island may be, you are bound to suffer fear and frustration.
~ A. H. Almaas
From the perspective of the infinite it is obvious that the individual self absolutely does not exist. The idea that we have a self that controls. arbitrates, or is the doer behind our actions, is absurd. The individual self is nothing but an idea of who we are. Ideas are ideas - and nothing more.
~ Suzanne Segal
Sometimes a change of perspective is all it takes to see the light.
~ Dan Brown
This is the paradox of being, where everything is always and already a unified whole from one perspective; and from another perspective, opposing experiences, and even opposing perceptions, are brought into a unified whole by the alchemy of the heart.
~ Adyashanti
We can recognize when we turn our attention to defend a particular point of view or definition as reality. We will have points of view, of course – it is a part of being human – but when we embrace them as reality and decide that our reality conflicts with another’s reality, we forget to recognize that these are simply different points of view – multiple, infinite points of view – all arising from the same consciousness.
~ Gangaji
From man's perspective
In this intricate game of love,
It is so easy to become confused
And think you are the do-er.
But from God's Infinite Certainty,
He always Knows
That He is the only One
Who should ever be put on trial.
~ Hafiz
Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
~ Marcus Aurelius
From the personal point of view,
The world is external to the personal.
When this dissolves like ice in water,
It is seen that nothing is external.
Everything is contained within the unified whole.
There is no separate person.
One is because the world is.
The world is because one is.
Arising and setting together,
Where is the boundary between them?
Use the mind to attain the
Point of understanding that
The answer is not in the mind.
Therein, the searching ends.
~ Wu Hsin
Each awakening has a view that becomes a new mental view -
reality doesn’t have views, only human beings have a views -
experiences become viewpoints of reality but cannot represent ultimate reality -
different teachings take their view to be ultimate reality -
holding a view becomes a distortion -
view informs the mind.
~ Aleksander Grunčić Krajnc
The I casts off the illusion of I and yet remains as I. Such is the paradox of self realization.
~ Ramana Maharshi
Why have spiritual teachers over thousand of years pointed to the idea that we are not the body?
It isn’t because you are not (now come on, you're obviously here). It’s because with body identification, we forget the spirit part. We forget that we are pure consciousness. Identifying ourselves as purely body, the mind takes itself as only form, the experience of being separate from the whole results, and suffering ensues. This is for the most part, the human condition . . . .
We are both form and the formless. We are the body, we are life, and we are pure consciousness, awareness, which everything is made up of. We are the resolution of the paradox. We are both, as One.
~ Susanne Marie
Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.
~ Wayne W. Dyer
You do not need to TRY to be good, to be loving, to live up to some kind of spiritual ideal. While often well intentioned, this spiritual trying can often mask rejection of other forces like undigested pain from our history, hurt and anger that might want to be embraced so that genuine integration can occur.
Ramana taught that we simply need to “be as you are”. This is the spirit of unconditional allowing that is truly loving. It helps us accept the paradox of our divinity and humanity. If we can open and embrace everything – things unwind back into the substance from which they came, and ultimately everything comes out of the great mystery. That is why there is nothing to fear by taking the naked inner journey home. We might meet things that have a scary countenance, but they are only ever gargoyles on the gate to the sanctuary. In the depth of things, there is nothing but God.
~ Miranda Macpherson
Two perspectives exist: one posits awakening as a spontaneous event, dismissing the need for practice as reinforcing an illusory separate self. The opposing view asserts that active effort and practice are essential to liberate oneself from the grip of the ego/mind. The truth lies in both and neither.
~ Enza Vita
Self-awareness is a primary human trait, but one we have wrestled with for centuries. Other species are thought to have a marginal capacity to be aware, but only humans are defined by awareness. This constituted a major evolutionary shift in prehistory. We became a consciousness-based species with unlimited potential. Our origins story began in self-awareness and then unfolded to the point where we inhabit a human universe, not simply colored by our perspective but actually reified--given material existence--by us. Once it is understood that the universe is the play of consciousness in different modes, the next evolutionary leap becomes possible. Evolving from human to Metahuman can be defined as going beyond the products of consciousness to the source, where existence is consciousness. The scientific search for an irreducible something that forms the ground state of creation has inevitably led here.
~ Deepak Chopra
This is the paradox of being, where everything is always and already a unified whole from one perspective; and from another perspective, opposing experiences, and even opposing perceptions, are brought into a unified whole by the alchemy of the heart.
~ Adyashanti
The view of totality recognizes that dual and nondual perspectives are different ways that Being manifests itself. Seeing how these two views interact opens up the possibility of experiencing reality in ways that are neither dual nor nondual. . . . The view of totality, because it can hold both perspectives at once by being outside both of them, can give us a more complete understanding and appreciation of how they interrelate.
~ A.H. Almaas
And those who were seen dancing, were thought to be crazy, by those who could not hear the music.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
The shift of perspective from conventional reality to fundamental reality is a huge, quantum jump from one universe to another. No wonder this Work is difficult! When we see just how difficult, we understand more why we need to be patient and compassionate with ourselves.
~ A.H. Almaas
