Perfection.

Culture and the new age movement has spawned the idea that perfection is something we work towards. But you are perfect right now - you are perfectly you and I am perfectly me. I am exactly the way I should be - warts & all (as they say). Perfection usually conjures up, at least unconsciously, some model of what we should aspire to. In the new age movement it may well be enlightenment - perhaps a balance of the body/mind energies. BUT, the model of perfection is a future goal and a future goal is in time and therefore is in mind and as such will never achieve enlightenment. Perfection is acknowledging that you are exactly what you are supposed to be right here, right now and not to compare yourself with somebody else. How can you compare two unique individuals - one is no better than the other, they are just different. You can't say that you are better than me or I am better than you although you can say that you are better at golf than me. The body/mind organism is functioning exactly as it is programmed to function - exactly as nature intended. That's my definition of perfection.

Don't delay.

Wishing or enlightenment actually delays it. Expecting anything to happen in the future means you're in time and mind and mind can never know the nothing that contains mind. Mind is just another object appearing in space-like awareness. So mind cannot understand the awareness that it appears in - in the same way that my car cannot understand the factory and people who work in the factory who built the car. The trick is not to wait for enlightenment somewhere in the future but to recognise your true nature here and now, this very moment. As advaita points out anything that will appear in the future will one day also disappear and if it's not here now then it has no independent reality - is not real. And the one thing that is real and cannot be argued against is your own existence.

The search is for the self, and the self is the awareness that everything appears in, but the self already is. It already is what it is, there is no need to search for it - you already are what you are - I AM. Searching for it doesn't make sense - except to the mind. The search for the understanding of what it is however, may be what the search is for.

Identity and disidentity.

At an early age (of the human) awareness becomes fascinated by the content of awareness - the world. Increasingly involvement with contents takes place and in the end identification occurs. At some stage there is an intuitive knowing that things are not quite right. In some cases spontaneous enlightenment occurs while in others there is a long period of seeking where the seeker goes looking for his true nature. But - for awareness to look for itself there has to be two, one looking for the other, as awareness is non-dual the difficulty is that awareness is trying to identify with something other than itself but this never satisfies it because it won't find its true self as something other than itself. There comes a point where it has to stop looking and simply acknowledge that it already is. And then it has found what was never lost.
Roy.

Paradigm shift.

Is enlightnment an event or not? Some say yes and some no. For me there was a time, and for many years I might add, when I suffered as a seeker and although later on I could see that I am awareness and generally understood much of what Advaita said I also knew the point of no return hadn't occured. Then the day came when it intuitively hit me and was most obvious that I AM is awareness. From there on the whole paradigm shifted and for me that was the moment of enlightenment and in this description I would call it an event. Before then I thought of myself, as most people do, as a person who was aware. After then, and now, I see myself as pure subjective awareness in which everything - thought's, memories, feelings, this body and the world appear. The one thing that doesn't show up is the 'me'. There is no me and never was. That was the fiction - the ghost in the machine. That is the marker for enlightnment or self realization. The whole landscape changes even though the appearances are the same the chopping wood and carting water thing.

Simplicity & clarity.

As long as you live from the perspective of 'me' then you will perceive yourself as living in the world and will be seemingly subject to the laws of duality - of cause and effect. With enlightenment you no longer perceive yourself as living in the world but you understand that the world exists in you. While you perceive from the 'me' and through the mind then questions, doubts, argument, philosophy will prevail along with complexity and confusion and the search for meaning. After enlightnment you no longer perceive yourself through the mind but see that the mind exist in you. As such the mind is still a tool to be used but it is not your identity, who you are. From this new perspective questions and doubts about the nature of reality dissolve and there is immense simplicity and clarity. Education and knowledge give the belief that you know something and blinds you to your true nature.

Separation.

Sometimes I go to bed and try to tune out my active mind so I can sleep. I focus as awareness so to not get involved in thoughts but not only does it not help but often has the reverse effect. Then it occured to me what I was doing.

If, as awareness, I try to separate myself from the objects that appear in awareness in order to isolate and either know who I am or to keep from becoming involved in content then I'm practicing separation. But it's the concept of separation where the problem started in the first place. By practicing separation the mind was performing a basic mind task - separate, categorise and pigeonhole for further reference. Energy was going into the mind and I was kept awake.

I think it was Sri Ramana Marharshi who said 'all there is is awareness and everything that appears in awareness is awareness also'. The concept of awareness is where the problem started at a very young age. Then the solution is the understanding of non-duality which means to understand that you are awareness and not a separate object that appears, to pursue the question 'who am I' until you fully understand that you are always the awareness behind each and every object/thought/memory that appears. And ultimately to understand that everything that appears in awareness is awareness too, is you too. The whole storey, Lila, the play of consiousness is you, everything, non-duality.

No chooser, no choice.

We appear to make choices every day but, self realization reveals there is no one here - just impersonal awareness with objects and experiences appearing in it. The experience of human-ness goes on but there is no-one to experience it - just the experience. Experience without an experiencer. If there's no experiencer - no 'me' then who makes the choices. Choices are made by the unique individual programming - the needs and reactions of the human. The human needs food for maintenance and energy. The body creates an experience of hunger and it, through it's programming, seeks food to allay the discomfort. It's automatic. It doesn't require a third party to decide. I was a seeker - it wasn't my choice. It's part of the programming - it was destined. This body/mind organism was programmed to be a seeker and it set out to allay the suffering. When self realization happened the seeking stopped and the suffering ended. There is now no, or ever was, a separate individual entity called 'me' guiding this human. The programming is self determining.