Choiceless Awareness - The Secret of Secrets- The Wisdom That Leads to Samadhi

What we are going to describe

has been called ‘The Secret Of Secrets’,

the esoteric wisdom that leads to samadhi.

Samadhi is the goal of all spirituality,

its union with the source.

the truth of who or what you are.

The truth that transcends the limited mind,

cannot be seen by means of the limited mind.

The still point cannot be reached

by means of movement. If you want to

realize the still point beyond thinking,

let go of all interest in thoughts and sensations,

all preferences, all phenomena

generated by the mind and senses,

and rest in naked awareness.

There are two fundamental dimensions

to existence in this moment.

There's that which is changing

and that which is unchanging.

Thoughts and sensations are a field

of constantly changing phenomena.

What is unchanging is the awareness

of that field of change.

We are usually so caught up in the field

of change, fixated on its objects, that we

ignored the dimension of awareness.

So we start our investigation by

becoming aware of awareness,

being conscious of Consciousness.

The challenge with resting in awareness

for long periods of time, is that

most people have not cultivated

the concentration and equanimity

to stay in awareness.

We are addicted to comfort

and the limited mind will want

to escape from this exercise,

it will find it profoundly uncomfortable

and will create every type of

hindrance or distraction.

There are two primary knots that

bind us to ego identification.

The body is attached to comfort

and the mind wants to know.

If we continue to seek the comfort

of the body and continue to seek

knowing with the mind,

we will never move beyond the

limited mind and body.

We will remain like a herd animal,

a creature that craves pleasure

and avoids pain, endlessly responding

to stimulus, endlessly doing,

and unaware of the dimension of being.

To be aware, to be fully attentive to

what is happening, without the mediation

of egoic conditioning, without concepts,

without controlling, manipulating

or distortion, without the filtering

of the limited mind,

is to be present without choosing.

Present without choosing, and therefore

without a chooser.

Every time the mind moves without your

willing, even the tiniest movement,

it is due to filtering through the

conditioning of the self-structure.

The path leads to cessation of

the entire whirlpool of mind.

To realizing all levels of self as empty.

How do I drop all doing,

how do I drop mind activity?

Listen closely, this is the paradox.

The limited egoic mind hears that

question and wants to know how,

but that limited mind can't do it.

The mind will always fail in any attempt

to realize stillness, because
the mind is movement.

The mind itself is movement,

it is an endless process of doing.

We have to make the shift from doing

to BEING.

The you that you think you are is a

process a constant movement,

a collection of patterns.

That YOU has to die.

The pathological pattern of you

has to end for Samadhi to be realized.

Let that sink in...

Spiritual teachers have given

the instruction to reach Samadhi.

Be still and know.

Be still and know the True Self.

Primordial Awareness beyond name and form.

Be still and know that you are God.

What exactly do they mean?

What is it that becomes still?

Obviously no one's physical body can

become absolutely still,

existing within time and space.

Because time-space itself is movement.

Time-space is mind,

the Universe is big mind or Logos.

The first Hermetic principle is that

The All is mind, the Universe is mental.

If the Universe is mind and mind

is movement, how can I be still and know?

How can you be still on a globe spinning

a thousand miles per hour around its axis,

spinning 67 000 miles per hour
around the Sun,

moving 500 000 miles per hour
around the Galaxy,

and millions more through the Universe?

Your heart is beating,
cells are moving inside,

food digesting, the brain
producing brain waves.

Your blood is pumping, energy is moving,

how can we be still?

When the spiritual Masters say
'be still and know',

they must be talking about something else,

something Beyond time and space,

something beyond the physical and mental.

What is meant by stillness is something

that we have no word for in our
modern language system.

The Sanskrit language, the language

of the yogis, has more precise terms

which point to the non-dual.

The term 'shunyata' is often translated

as ‘voidness’, stillness or emptiness.

It is what is used in connection

with 'anata' or no-self,

the realization of Buddha nature.

Stillness is maybe the closest
English word,

but it is inadequate to describe something

that is not of this dualistic world.

What is actually realized is the
Primordial Consciousness,

which is beyond stillness and movement,

beyond time. It is eternal,

the ground of your being,

the essential nature of reality

that does not change.
Actually it is beyond

change and the changeless.

When our true nature is realized

it becomes obvious that stillness
and movement

are a duality created by the Mind,

silence and noise are a duality
created by the mind.

Everything is already inherent within

that primordial stillness, the movement

of the world is identical to stillness.

Be still and know,

be in motion and know.

It is all emptiness dancing.

This is not something philosophical,

but an entirely different way

of interfacing with the world.

Actually it's about dropping
the interface,

dropping the reducing valve which is

the self-structure, and experiencing
your true nature

unmediated by the limited mind.

The so-called outer world is transcended

by realizing stillness,
which when realized,

includes that which it transcends.

The duality of stillness and
movement collapses.

Realizing samadhi, this great awakening

is just the beginning of the path.

Patanjali says that the entire endeavor

of yoga is aimed at the cessation

of the whirlpool of the mind.

'Chitta vritti nirodha'.

You could say it is the cessation
of karma,

the cessation of deep unconscious patterns

on many different levels.

When we realize our true nature,

we temporarily cease our identification

and reaction to the mind.

It's like pulling the plug on a fan.

When we pulled the plug on a fan,

inertia of the Fan's blades keeps it

keeps it going as long as we don't

plug the fan back in,

it will eventually come to stillness.

Karma is simply the tendency for energy

to follow established pathways.

When Consciousness slips back
into pattern,

it's like plugging in the fan.

Energy follows Consciousness.

Energy goes back into the old patterns.

Another way of describing it,

is through the law of inertia.

A mind in motion stays in motion,

unless acted upon by an outside force.

In the matrix of the conditioned mind

that we call the Universe,

energy and thought cycle through fractal

labyrinths that exist on a Continuum,

for micro to macro levels,

branching and exploring endlessly

All spiritual practice is an intervention,

an outside force,

a Consciousness which diverts energy

from flowing in the conditioned pathways.

You have to be willing
to change your life.

Someone can do all the meditation

in the world but if they go back to their

same old patterns,

their same old routine,

then the wiring remains in place.

Our unconscious motivations must be

excavated and faced.

If through great perseverance and

determination, we managed to not plug in

the fan, then there is an actual

cessation of the 'vritties'.

A profound silence that is born

within the self-structure.

Every time we identify with and react to

some preference produced by the mind,

we plug the fan back in.

The longer we remain in awareness,

the more of the samskaras are purified.

The more the fan slows down,

and the human vessel becomes

more permeable to awareness,

the more we become empty of self.