Two Different Dream Worlds - Robert Adams

Look at the world like bubbles on the ocean, bubbles and waves on the ocean. Look at people that way too. They keep disappearing. They keep coming back. The bubbles, the eddies, the waves come and go continuously, constantly. Yet the ocean understands that the bubbles, the eddies, the waves, are part of the ocean. They’re not separate from the ocean. Yet the bubbles come and go. The waves come and go. So it is with us. Bodies come and go continuously, constantly. You make such a fuss out of life, out of a body that's so important. They come and go like bubbles in the ocean. New bodies appear every day, old ones fade away, yet the source, beyond everything, is consciousness. The substratum of all existence is consciousness. Consciousness is like the ocean, and all the forms on this earth, in the universe, are superimpositions on consciousness. In other words, all the forms are like bubbles and waves on the ocean.

When you discover who you are, you’re no longer a bubble or a wave. You no longer come and go. You become the ocean. The average person as well believes they are a bubble or a wave. They identify only with their little self. They’re always thinking about themselves. "I need, I want, I hurt, I this, I that, I everything." It's. Always I, I, I. This is how the bubble thinks, that it’s separate from the ocean. But the ocean knows it’s not separate.

And so the infinite lies waiting in sweet repose for you to understand who you are. In other words, the ocean, consciousness, is not going to do anything to make you understand who you are, for consciousness is already your self. But somehow you've been hypnotized, mesmerized, deluded, into believing that you are a separate entity, a separate body, and you have to fetch for yourself, care for yourself. While the bubble persists, it is well taken care of by the ocean. While the wave persists, the ocean looks after it. That's why waves become big sometimes, they become tidal waves. They're still part of the ocean.

As you persist in believing that you're human, believing that you are a body, that you are separate, you are still looked after and protected. You may still suffer and go through experiences, because you think you're the body or the mind, but nevertheless you are always protected and looked after.

In any case you don't have to worry. In any case you don't have to fear. Why? Because you live in eternity. You live in bliss. You live in total joy and happiness. You are immersed in consciousness, like space. Space is immersed in consciousness. And all the forms, like planets, galaxies, universes, are superimpositions in space. And what holds space together? Consciousness.

You do not have to do anything to understand this. You simply have to recognize it. You do not have to pray, or meditate, or do mantras or japa. There is nothing you have to do to recognize your reality, to the ocean, to consciousness. You simply have to see it, and recognize it, and awaken. That's all you have to do.

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The True Master

The world is full of half-enlightened masters. Overly clever, too “sensitive” to live in the real world, they surround themselves with selfish pleasures and bestow their grandiose teachings upon the unwary. Prematurely publicizing themselves, intent upon reaching some spiritual climax, they constantly sacrifice the truth and deviate from the Tao. What they really offer the world is their own confusion. The true master understands that enlightenment is not the end, but the means. Realizing that virtue is her goal, she accepts the long and often arduous cultivation that is necessary to attain it. She doesn’t scheme to become a leader, but quietly shoulders whatever responsibilities fall to her. Unattached to her accomplishments, taking credit for nothing at all, she guides the whole world by guiding the individuals who come to her. She shares her divine energy with her students, encouraging them, creating trials to strengthen them, scolding them to awaken them, directing the streams of their lives toward the infinite ocean of the Tao.

L a o – T z u

Deepened Entrenchment

It seems like it would be very easy for someone you’ve given some sort of authority to (even an unintended, projected authority) to say all the right words to you, all the right things to you, all the most comforting, ideologically satisfying terms and conditions when it comes to what you want to hear about spirituality. And the marketplace is geared for that. There is just about every single flavor out there for people to dive into. And they do. Those who say they are leading spiritual lives, and they are spiritual people, and so forth. There is very little challenging that goes on. And the challenging that does come about is a challenge more toward – well, deepening an entrenchment into identification, rather than a challenge in the opposite direction, of allowing to dismantle what’s allowing one to believe lies, to believe untruth, to believe what’s not the case in favor of what is totally the case, and always has been and always will be, in a time bound structure – and beyond. What is fascinating to see is just how completely riveted a spiritual seeker can be on thinking and believing that they are making “progress” because they have done so much “work” on themselves. And to see directly, while as perfect as that is – those are the trajectories that need to be followed – but in light of what they THINK are being pointed toward, it’s the exact opposite. It could not be more averse or unattuned. Now, in the broad scheme, sometimes you need to be duped for a long, long time in order to finally have the day come where the shackles come off and the scales fall from the eyes – and that’s why I say it’s perfect. What I’m merely trying to convey is that, to watch this going on – to hear this – to sort of see people becoming so entrenched, and being so caught up – there is a remembering of what that was like. And how caught up in the brambles one can be come in that situation. However, when it comes to Truth Realization, ultimately any sort of self development, self improvement like that, makes no sense. There is nothing you can do to any of that kind of a structure that’s going to have any bearing on Truth Realization. It’s slated or not slated from moment one. What working on the ego, self improvement, self development does is bury people even further into this tangled mess – yet at the same time they think all of this so-called development is “working”, and they listen to people who are telling them to do keep doing this – maybe even challenging them on those counts, but challenging them in the wrong direction. And how willingly our belief is suspended in that position – how willingly we allow ourselves to fall into that trap, to fall into that guise of progress, fall into somebody telling us, or “challenging” us to be better – while, when it comes to Truth, what they are actually often doing is moving us away, trapping us, or even burying us further into the muck than perhaps we have ever been.

Just Perception

Quotes from Adyashanti

Ego is basically the movement of the mind toward objects of perception in the form of grasping and away from objects in the form of aversion.

This fundamentally is all the ego is.

This movement of grasping and aversion gives rise to a sense of a separate "me," and in turn the sense of "me" strengthens itself this way.

It is this continuous loop of causation that tricks consciousness into a trance of identification.

Identification with what?

Identification with the continuous loop of suffering.

After all, who is suffering?

The "me" is suffering.

And "who" is this me?

It is nothing more than a sense of self caused by identification with grasping and aversion.

You see, it's all a creation of the mind, an endless movie, a terrible dream.

Don't try to change the dream -- trying to change it is just another movement in the dream.

Look at the dream. Be aware of the dream.

That awareness is It.

Become more interested in the awareness of the dream than in the dream itself.

What is that awareness? Who is that awareness?

Don't go spouting out an answer, just be the answer.

Be It.

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One of the most beautiful inquiries is, “What does my life serve?” This is a big question. It’s not asking, “What form is my service taking?” It doesn’t particularly matter what form our service takes when we are serving the silence of the heart. The only thing that’s important is, “What is my life really serving?

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"If you are a true seeker of liberation you've got to be willing to stand alone. At the moment of Liberation everything falls away...everything. Suddenly the ground beneath your feet is gone, and you are alone. You are alone because you have directly realized that there is no other, there is no separation. There is only you, only Self, only limitless emptiness, pure consciousness.

To the mind, the ego, this appears terrifying. When the mind looks at limitlessness and infinity, it projects meaninglessness and despair. To the ego Absolute Freedom can look terrifying. But when the mind is let go of, the view changes from meaningless despair and fear to the unending joy and wonder of Liberation.

In Liberation, you stand alone. You stand alone because you need no supports of any kind. You need no supports because you have realized that the very notion of a separate you no longer exists; that there is nothing to support; that the whole ego experience was a flimsy illusion. So you stand alone but never, never lonely because everywhere you look, all you see is That, and You are That."

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This innocence waking up, realizing that everything is itself, even all the confusion and all the ignorance and everything....this is the dissolving of confusion, of ignorance, of karma.

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Enlightenment is perceiving not through the lens of ego. It is not an unending satori experience, unending awakening experience. This misunderstanding will create
more tail chasing than it is dreamed possible.

It is not the quality of "aha" that will sustain because it will not sustain itself. Next week you may be going to have another "aha" that is bigger.

True practices or useful spiritual disciplines, if there is any, is a way not fueling the egoic consciousness.

The liberating truth is not static; it is alive. It cannot be put into concepts and be understood by the mind. The truth lies beyond all forms of conceptual fundamentalism. What you are is the beyond—awake and present, here and now already.

To be here, all you have to do is let go of who you think you are. That’s all! And then you realize, "I’m here." Here is where thoughts aren’t believed. Every time you
come here, you are nothing. Radiantly nothing. Absolutely and eternally zero. Emptiness that is awake. Emptiness that is full. Emptiness that is everything.

http://www.adyashanti.org

HAPPY PEACE DAY!

Generosity

"You are the sky. Everything else, it's just the weather."

~ Pema Chodron

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"You can measure the depth of a person's awakening by how they serve others"

~ Kobo Daishi (774-835 CE)

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The end and the sum total of all mysticism, philosophy, and meditation, of everything one learns and develops, is to be a better servant to humanity. Everything from the beginning to the end in the spiritual path is a training to be able to serve mankind better, and if one does not do it with that intention, one will find in the end that one has accomplished nothing.

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

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"Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to
either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live."

~ Pema Chodron

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Gratitude, the simple and profound feeling of being thankful, is the foundation of all generosity. I am generous when I believe that right now, right here, in this form and this place, I am myself being given what I
need. Generosity requires that we relinquish something, and this is impossible if we are not glad for what we have. Otherwise the giving hand closes into a fist and won't let go.

~ Sallie Jiko Tisdale, "As If There is Nothing to Lose"

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When you are practicing generosity, you should feel a little pinch when you give something away. That pinch is your stinginess protesting. If you give away your old, worn-out coat that you wouldn't be caught dead wearing, that is not generosity. There is no pinch. You are doing nothing to overcome your stinginess; you're just cleaning out your closet and calling it something else. Giving away your coat might keep someone warm, but it does not address the problem we face as spiritual practitioners: to free ourselves from self-cherishing and self-grasping.

~ Gelek Rinpoche

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"Generosity is revolutionary, counter-instinctual . Our survival instinct is to care only for ourselves and our loved ones. But we can transform our relationship to that survival instinct by constantly asking ourselves, "How can I use my life's energy to benefit all living beings?"

~ Noah Levine

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"Wherever you are is the entry point"

~ Kabir

The Simplicity of What IS - Joan Tollifson

Liberation is not about having the answers or having an experience. It has nothing to do with belief, but is rather the absence (or transparency, or seeing through) of belief. Waking up does not happen in the past or the future, only Now. Liberation or enlightenment is not something you find or acquire like a new car. It is not some dazzling or exotic experience like being permanently high on ecstasy or LSD. Liberation is seeing through the ubiquitous fabrications and mirages of conceptual thought, including the whole idea of liberation and the one who supposedly needs to be liberated.

Ultimate Reality is hidden right in front of our eyes in plain view. It is showing up as breakfast dishes, laundry, sunlight on leaves, the barking of a dog, sound of traffic or rain, the humming of the computer, the taste of tea, the shapes of these words, and the awareness being and beholding it all. And only when we describe all of this in words does it seem as if "awareness" is one thing and "the taste of tea" is something else. The non-conceptual actuality of this breathing-hearing-seeing-being is undivided, without center or periphery. No inside, no outside. No subject, no object. Simply this, just as it is.

And then perhaps a thought: "There must be more to life than this," or "What is the meaning of it all?" or "What about final enlightenment?" or "Isn't this all just the phenomenal manifestation, and isn't that an illusion?" Thought creates imaginary problems and tries to solve them. The complex human brain has an astonishing ability to conceptualize, imagine, remember, project, and think about things that have no actual reality. Yet even these thoughts are nothing but a momentary dream-like shape or expression of the One, undivided, boundless Whole.

Thought labels, categorizes, evaluates, and reifies the ever-changing perceptions that appear. Conceptual thought creates the hypnotic, mirage-like illusion of solid, persisting, independent things (including "me" and "you") -- the illusion of duality and separation. Thought imagines "me" as a separate character on a journey through time. It conjures up goals and stories of success and failure. It even creates the image of "me" as a serious spiritual person dedicated to getting rid of the "me." But without thinking, where is the "me"? What am I, really?

***

Is it possible that the peace and well-being we seek (that longing at the root of all our more superficial desires), cannot be found or satisfied by answers or attainments or experiences of any kind? Is it possible that the very search for it "out there" is precisely what prevents us from noticing that what we are seeking is the very essence of Here and Now?

And what is that?

It is nothing you can take hold of conceptually, and it's not any particular experience (as opposed to any other experience). It is the beingness, the groundlessness, the IS-ness of this moment -- this that is undeniably present beyond all doubt, requiring no proof or belief, impossible to deny -- before and after and even during all the grasping and searching and experience-seeking. The words (beingness, groundlessness, IS-ness) are only pointers. What they point to is nothing you can get hold of as an object. In fact, there really are no solid objects because everything is thorough-going flux. This no-thing-ness (or emptiness) is all there really is.

And this no-thing-ness is vibrantly alive, aware, conscious, awake, present. The grasping, searching and thinking may seem to destroy the wholeness of being or the spaciousness of presence-awareness, but can anything really destroy awareness, or the present moment, or beingness? Doesn't everything appear Here and Now, in awareness? And doesn't everything appear altogether at once as one diverse but seamless whole?

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The Wisdom of Nisargadatta Maharaj

"Either you remain forever hungry and thirsty, longing, searching, grabbing, holding, ever losing and sorrowing, or go out wholeheartedly in search of the state of timeless perfection to which nothing can be added, from which nothing - taken away.

... In it all desires and fears are absent, not because they were given up, but because they have lost their meaning."

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"Immobility and silence are not inactive. The flower fills the space with perfume, the candle -- with light. They do nothing yet they change everything by their mere presence."

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"Once the illusion that the body-mind as oneself is abandoned, death loses its terror, it becomes a part of living ... All happiness comes from awareness. The more we are conscious, the deeper the joy. Acceptance of pain, non-resistance, courage and endurance - these open deep and perennial sources of real happiness, true bliss."

"Forget the known, but remember that you are the knower. Don't be all the time immersed in your experiences. Remember that you are beyond the experiencer, ever unborn and deathless. In remembering it, the quality of pure knowledge will emerge, the light of unconditional awareness."

"But why worry so much about causation? What do causes matter, when things themselves are transient? Let come what comes and let go what goes - why catch hold of things and inquire about their causes?"

"If you could only keep quiet, clear of memories and expectations, you would be able to discern the beautiful pattern of events. It is your restlessness that causes chaos."

"Discard every self-seeking motive as soon as it is seen and you need not search for truth; truth will find you."

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"Spiritual maturity is being ready to let go everything. Giving up is a first step, but real giving-up is the insight that there's nothing to be given up, since nothing is your property."

"Having realized that I am one with, and yet beyond the world, I became free from all desire and fear. I did not reason out that I should be free, I found myself free, unexpectedly, without the least effort."

"Meet your own self. Be with your own self, listen to it, obey it, cherish it, keep it in mind ceaselessly. You need no other guide. As long as your urge for truth affects your daily life, all is well with you. Live your life without hurting anybody. Harmlessness is a most powerful form of Yoga and it will take you speedily to your goal. This is what I call nisarga yoga, the Natural yoga. It is the art of living in peace and harmony, in friendliness and love. The fruit of it is happiness, uncaused and endless."

"You must find your own way. Unless you find it yourself, it will not be your own way and will take you nowhere. Earnestly live your truth as you have found it, act on the little you have understood. It is earnestness that will take you through, not cleverness - your own or another's."

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Visit : http://nisargadatta .co.cc/

THE POWER OF EMPTINESS

This excerpt from Elijah Crow's Silence of the Mind is just a taste of a tome so absolutely clear.....well....you'll just have to read the whole thing yourself. Beautiful....

The book can be downloaded and read here:

http://www.scribd. com/doc/34607176 /Elijah-Crow- The-Silence- of-the-Mind

Enjoy!

The Power of Emptiness

The "void" or " psychological emptiness" is a strange phenomenon,
It appears spontaneously, in the pause between two thoughts,
As the old thought ends its course and disappears,
Its end is the gate, natural silence ensues.

Insist in being with it, as much as you can,
The mind is completely silent, we are attentive – a clear consciousness,
All meanings, boundaries disappear – us and the Infinite are "One";
Practically, we have a new mind – always fresh.

Being in the pause – I become infinite!
It separates two worlds. I leave the limited world
And enter Boundlessness, through total melting;
The whole being is calm – a constant sparkle.

There is no time, no space – just everlasting Eternity;
I move in direct contact with life, in a permanent present.
I am Pure Energy, without motivations,
The simplicity of existence integrates us completely.

We really encounter Life only through this "now",
Free from the old, we are able to embrace the new.
All this beauty vanishes, when another thought appears,
It comes from the knowing mind – an old recording.

Let it play its game, do not oppose any resistance,
Encounter it as it is, without any purpose,
It will certainly disappear, and "emptiness" ensues again,
Another opportunity to encounter it practically.

We find the real meaning of Life through this "void",
It is a boundary line between the two worlds:
On the one side the limited, where the "ego" is the master.
On the other, the Infinite, where Love is the master.

Emptiness also separates Light from the darkness,
The permanent chaos through struggle, contradictions and conflicts,
From the harmonious being, equilibrium and joy;
The whole egocentrism perishes, by encountering the void.

Peace, divine order becomes our nature
It changes our way of being, without effort or will,
Only through this psychological void, we become honest and humane,
The Purity of the Energy – makes titans out of pigmies .

Let this "psychological emptiness" be your guide,
In everything you encounter on your spiritual path.
If it is not the starting point, we easily get deceived,
Only through emptiness – we become Love!

IF YOU KNOW HOW TO RELAX, NOTHING CAN DISTURB YOU

Osho:

LIFE WITHOUT IS A CYCLONE -- a constant conflict, turmoil, struggle. But it is only so on the surface -- just as on the surface of the ocean are waves, maddening noise, constant struggle.

BUT THIS IS NOT ALL OF LIFE. Deep down there is also a center -- soundless, silent, no conflict, no struggle. In the center, life is a noiseless flow, relaxed, a river moving with no struggle, with no fight, no violence. Towards that inner center is the search. You can get identified with the surface, with the outer. And then anxiety and anguish follows. This is what has happened to everyone: we are identified with the surface and with the struggle that goes on there.

THE SURFACE IS BOUND TO BE DISTURBED; nothing is wrong in it. And if you can be rooted in the center, the disturbance on the surface will become beautiful; it will have a beauty of its own. If you can be silent within, then all the sounds without become musical. Then nothing is wrong in it; it becomes a play.

But if you don't know the inner core, the silent center, if you are totally identified with the surface, then you will go mad. And everyone is almost mad.

ALL RELIGIOUS TECHNIQUES, techniques of yoga, meditation, Zen, ARE BASICALLY TO HELP YOU TO BE AGAIN IN CONTACT WITH THE CENTER; to move within; to forget the periphery; to leave the periphery for a time being, and to relax into your own being so deeply that the outer disappears completely and only the inner remains.

Once you know how to move backwards, how to step down into yourself, IT IS NOT DIFFICULT; it becomes as easy as anything. But if you don't know, if you know only the mind clinging to the surface, it is very difficult. Relaxing into one's self is not difficult: but clinging to the surface is.

I have heard a Sufi story.
Once it happened that a Sufi fakir was traveling. It was a dark night and he lost his way. It was so dark he couldn't even see where he was moving -- then suddenly he fell into an abyss. He was terrified. He didn't know what was down there in the darkness or how deep the abyss was. So he caught hold of a branch and started praying.
The night was cold. He cried but there was no one to listen, only his own voice was echoed back. And the night was so cold that his hands were becoming frozen, and he knew that sooner or later he would have to leave the branch -- it was going to be difficult to keep on holding it. His hands were getting so frozen that they were already slipping from the branch. Death was absolutely near. Any moment he would fall and die.
And then the last moment came. You can understand how terrified he was. Dying moment-by-moment, then the last moment came, and he saw the branch slipping out of his hand. And his hands were so frozen that there was no way to hold on, so he had to fall.
But the moment he fell he started dancing -- there was no abyss, he was on clear ground. But the whole night he had suffered...

This is the situation. YOU GO ON CLINGING TO THE SURFACE, afraid that if you leave the surface you will be lost. REALLY, CLINGING TO THE SURFACE YOU ARE LOST. But deep down there is darkness and you cannot see any ground; you cannot see anything else than the surface.

All these techniques are to make you courageous, strong, adventurous, so that you can STOP THE HOLDING ON AND FALL WITHIN YOURSELF. That which looks like an abyss, dark, bottomless, is the very ground of your being. Once you leave the surface, the periphery, you will be centered.

THIS CENTERING IS THE AIM. Once you are centered, you can move to the periphery but you will be totally different. The quality of your consciousness will have changed altogether. Then you can move to the periphery but you will never be the periphery again -- you will remain at the center.

AND REMAINING CENTERED AT THE PERIPHERY IS BEAUTIFUL. Then you can enjoy it; it will become a beautiful play. Then there is no conflict; it is a game. Then it will not create tensions within you, and there will be no anguish and no anxiety around you. And any moment that it becomes too much, too heavy on you, you can go back to the original source -- you can have a dip. Then you will be refreshed, rejuvenated, and you can move to the periphery again. Once you know the way...

And the way is not long. YOU ARE NOT GOING ANYWHERE ELSE THAN INTO YOUR OWN SELF, so it is not long. It is just near. The only barrier is your holding on, holding to the periphery, afraid that if you leave it, you will be lost. The fear feels just as if you are going to die. Moving to the inner center is a death -- death in the sense that your identity with the periphery will die, and a new image, a new feeling of your being will arrive.

So if we want to say in a few words what Tantra techniques are, we can say that they are a deep relaxation into oneself, A TOTAL RELAXATION INTO ONESELF.

YOU ARE ALWAYS TENSE; that is the holding, the clinging. YOU ARE NEVER RELAXED, never in a state of let-go. You are always doing something: that doing is the problem. You are never in a state of non-doing, where things are happening and you are just there not doing anything. Breath comes in and goes out, the blood circulates, the body is alive and throbbing; and the breeze blows, and the world goes on spinning around -- and you are not doing anything, you are not a doer; you are simply relaxed and things are happening. When things are happening and you are not a doer, you are totally relaxed. When you are a doer and things are not happening but are being manipulated by you, you are tense.

YOU RELAX PARTIALLY WHILE YOU ARE ASLEEP, but it is not total. Even in your sleep you go on manipulating; even in your sleep you don't allow everything to happen. Watch a man sleeping: you will see that he is very tense, his whole body will be tense. Watch a small child sleeping, he is very relaxed. Or watch an animal, a cat -- a cat is always relaxed. You are not relaxed even while asleep; you are tense, struggling, moving, fighting with something. On your face tensions are there. In dreams you may be fighting, protecting -- doing the same things as when you were awake, repeating them in an inner drama. But you are not relaxed; you are not in a deep let-go.

THAT'S WHY SLEEP IS BECOMING MORE AND MORE DIFFICULT. And psychologists say that if the same trend goes on, soon the day will come when no one will be able to sleep naturally. Sleep will have to be chemically induced because no one will be able to fall naturally into sleep. The day is not very far. Already you are on the way towards it because even while asleep you are only partially asleep, partially relaxed.

MEDITATION IS THE DEEPEST SLEEP. It is total relaxation plus something more; you are totally relaxed and yet alert; awareness is there. TOTAL SLEEP WITH AWARENESS IS MEDITATION. Fully alert, things are happening but you are not resisting, not fighting, not doing. The doer is not there, the doer has gone into sleep. Only a witness is there, a 'non-doer alertness' is there. Then nothing can disturb you.

IF YOU KNOW HOW TO RELAX, THEN NOTHING CAN DISTURB YOU; if you don't know how to relax, then everything will disturb you. I say everything. It is not really something else that disturbs you, everything else is just an excuse. You are almost always ready to be disturbed. If one thing doesn't disturb you, then something else will; but you will get disturbed. You are ready, you have a tendency to get disturbed.

If all the causes are withdrawn from you, even then you will get disturbed. You will find some cause, you will create some cause. If nothing comes from without, you will create something from within -- some thought, some idea -- and you will get disturbed. You need excuses.

ONCE YOU KNOW HOW TO RELAX, NOTHING CAN DISTURB YOU. Not that the world will change, not that things will be different. The world will be the same. But you don't have the tendency, you don't have the madness; you are not constantly ready to be disturbed. THEN ALL THAT HAPPENS AROUND YOU IS SOOTHING -- even the traffic noise becomes soothing... if you are relaxed. Even the market-place becomes soothing. It depends on you. It is an inner quality.

AND THE MORE YOU GO TOWARDS THE CENTER, the more the quality arises; and the more you move towards the periphery, the more you will be disturbed. If you are too much disturbed, or if you are prone to be disturbed, that shows only one thing: that you are existing near the periphery -- nothing else. Simply this. It is an indication that you have made your abode near the surface. And this is a false abode -- because your real home is at the center, the very center of your being.

~OSHO