WakeUpNow

• Very good. Used it in my practice!
• Avvaita ("non-dual") Vedanta. Instead of encouraging students to achieve enlightenment, teaches that our always already awakened true nature in our birth right, our inherent condition, our natural state, which we merely need to recognize.
• Instead of awakening being complete and irreversible, as often expected, it can oscillate between vast spaciousness and peace and overwhelming fear.
• The awakening described in this book is a fundamental recognition of the inherent insubstantially or emptiness of the person you take yourself to be and a radical shift in your identity from being the suffering separate self to being the eternal witness, the limitless space or ground in which all experiences arise.

WhoWeAre

• When you awaken you realize that the separate person you took yourself to be is just a construct, a mental fabrication – a collection of thoughts, feelings, memories, beliefs, and stories that have been woven together by the mind in to the appearance of a substantial, continuous someone which certain abiding qualities and characteristics.

WhoWeAre

• You are being itself. Which cannot be located or grasped with the hands or mind but can be directly intuited or perceived. You can know with certainty what you are, but are not quite able to describe how you know.

WhoWeAre

• Everything you can hear, see, smell, taste, touch, feel, and think – everything with qualities or characteristics – is an experience, an object of your observation, and therefore cant possibly be the you who experiences or observes. The real question is who or what is this you, this me? Spiritual awakening means waking up to the experiencer, the witness, pure being itself, the one who is eternally aware.
• Recognize that you are the light of consciousness, pure awareness, the impersonal witness. Then deepen to know that the witness and what is witnessed, observer and observed, subject and object, you and the objects of your experience, are inseparable. They are both manifestations of some deeper reality or mystery that enlivens, encompasses, and gives rise to everything else.

WhoWeAre

• Everyday reality is merely a reflection of some deeper truth that's close at hand but hidden from view.

UnpopularImportantTruth

• The Truth cannot be found through seeking, but only seekers find it.

Paradox

• Against the progressive approach: The danger of investing your energy in seeking is that you ll end up a perpetual seeker, without ever finding what you were looking for in the first place. The idea that you need to engage in certain practices over a period of time in order to realize who you are – reinforces the belief that you true nature is deeply concealed and requires protracted effort to uncover.
• The seeker is the sought, the looker is what he is looking for.
• You come to see that the separate self is just a construct and the feeling are just that – merely feelings – and have noting to do with who you really are, which is the limitless space in which thoughts and feelings arise.
• Whatever concepts you have about yourself cannot be true.
• You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness, there's no need to attain or cultivate it. You are the welcoming space in which reality reveals itself.
• Instead of focusing the light of your awareness on a particular object or activity, open it like the sky, welcome the experiences that arise just as the sky welcomes the clouds, neither ignoring nor indulging them. Instead of concentrating, relax and let go, allow everything to be just as it is without any attempt to control it.
• Eventually presence ceases being a practice, something you do, and naturally dissolves in consciousness, unconditional presence, with a separate someone being present.
• The realization that the separate someone doesn't exist marks the ultimate fruition of the practice of presence.
• Self alone exists, and separate objects are merely the illusory play of consciousness.
• The separate meditator arises as a function of the stories you tell yourself about meditation.
• Cultivate the mind that dwells nowhere.
• In true meditation – the emphasis is on being awareness - not on being aware of objects, but on on resting as primordial awareness itself.
• In the end meditation is supremely simple, just sit down and let everything be as it is. Any attempt to manipulate or calm the mind or make meditation happen just interferes with you natural state of true meditation. Remain as you are without question or doubt, that's your natural state.

Protocols

• Eventually the sense of a separate experiencer may drop away and only experiencing remains. No separation between subject and object – just this!
• Experiencing arises in a limitless stillness and silence that cant be experienced in any way. This is your own Self, unconditional presence consciousness without a second, the source of all experience.
• The one who is apparently doing the work of being present dissolves into unconditional presence, in which awareness and the objects of awareness are one. No longer is there someone watching and someone being watched, there's just this single seamless, non-dual reality – just this. Simultaneously, you may experience a profound silence and stillness that underlies everything and seems more authentic and real that the thoughts and feelings you generally take yourself to be.
• The continued practice of presence which at a certain point becomes natural and effortless, may ultimately flower into a complete recognition of who you are, in which awareness becomes aware of itself as the limitless, ungraspable silence, openness, and space in which everything arises.
• Often the process of awakening involves some form of deliberate self-inquiry, some intentional attempt to find out who you are.
• The space and openness that reveals itself in the gaps between you're feeling of a substantial self, is your true nature.
• In self-inquiry, you generally start out looking for what you are but end up encountering everything you're not – your body, your sensate experiences, your thoughts, your emotions – until you find yourself on the outer margins of the known, at the precipice of the unknown. Once the mind exhausts itself in the search, which is the purpose of the self-inquiry, you're available to be taken by the realization of what you are, not as another thought or experience, but as a living reality.

WhoWeAre

• When you fully realize that what you're seeking doesn't exist in manifestation and cant be found "out there" in experiences or states of any kind, there's a relaxation of being and a cessation of seeking.
• Anything you can perceive, no matter how intimate – including physical body and the cluster of images, memories, thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that constitute the mind – is merely an object of perception; it cant possibly be the preceiver, the "I" in "I notice, I think, I feel".
• Let your inquiry be fervent and wholehearted, but not obsessive or effortful, and dont let it become automatic or habitual, like taking your vitamins because you've been told they are good for you.
• The question will one day reveal the answer, not as a particular thought or experience, but as the timeless, unchanging ground of all experience.
• Like any practice, self-inquiry runs the risk of becoming progressive if you view it as a gradual path to some distant goal. Remember that your not trying to develop, manipulate or cultivate any particular mind-states in order to arrive somewhere or become something that you are not already. Instead, ask the question and allow a response to emerge right now, then let it go. The question may keep recurring, but resist the temptation to make a "practice" out of it.
• Zen stories and riddles known as koans lead to the same realization as the straightforward question "Who am I".
• Where do you suppose your thoughts arise ? If you say, "In my head" then try to locate them. Where exactly does your thought occur? How big are your thoughts ? What color, shape, and density? They seem to have so much reality, but can you point to them or describe them with any degree of accuracy ? What happens to you thoughts when you try to describe them?

Protocols

• Consciousness and its objects are one.
• Instead of practicing presence, rest as primordial awareness itself.
• In the initial stage of awakening, you generally find that the locus of your identity is dislodged from your usual sense of self and shifted to the uninvolved witness who is always aware but never apart of what it witnesses. You may experience this witness as a vast spaciousness, a profound silence or stillness, a deeper ground underlying all things, or a disembodied reference point.
• Rather than localizing yourself in the brain, you now recognize that thoughts, images, feelings, and memories actually arise in a timeless, boudaryless space.
• The next step is to recognize that everything without exception has ultimate value and meaning because everything is not not separate from who you are.
• If you over emphasize emptiness, you risk becoming detached, distant and uncaring. If you overemphasis form, you risk becoming embroiled in the dream once again.
• The everyday world is nothing other than the lofty spiritual reality we're searching for, yet the spiritual reality doesn't exist in some distant abstract dimension, but inevitable and spontaneously expresses itself as the everyday world.
• Find yourself "behind" in the back of the head, rather than in the "thought factory" of the neocortex.
• Enlightenment is not a state or event in space and time, but the realization that you are the screen itself, the timeless, unchanging space or ground in which all states come and go, the silence behind the noise, the stillness beneath the activity.
• Enlightenment can never belong to someone because its the clear realization that the separate someone doesn't exist – and everything is just as it is perfect and complete.
• Pure wakefulness is your birthright, your natural state, and its always present and available in every instant of awareness. You merely need to let go of all effort and die into what you already are.
• Who do I take myself to be ? What is my original face before the ego was born? Who am I really?
• When I look within and see that I'm nothing, that's wisdom. When I look without and see that I'm everything, that's love.

WhoWeAre