Have you ever come back to a spiritual teacher and suddenly heard them in a new, deeper, more profound way?
I heard Vernon Howard several years ago but he didn’t knock me over (because I understood so little of what he was actually saying). However, now? Now I find his teaching to be one of the most direct and compassionate, because he doesn’t BS around one iota.
You are not what you think you are, you are not the imposter self that you currently take yourself to be. What’s more, you are in love with your imposter self and thus your suffering continues right up to this very moment!
That until you are 100% clear that YOU are the problem, no one else, the suffering will continue. Only when you admit you are totally helpless and clueless and can do nothing whatsoever via your own power… when you at long last give it up totally and completely, that is the first step towards real freedom. “I can of mine own self do nothing.” -John 5:30
Michael Jeffreys
p.s. Below is a youtube link to one of Vernon’s many amazing and life changing talks, Lose Helplessness And Find Real Power.
“Your thoughts do not belong to you at all.” -Vernon Howard
MICHAEL: It means to remove your ATTENTION from ‘objects,’ i.e., persons, places, things, thoughts, feelings, ideas, sensations, etc. (where it habitually/automatically goes for almost everyone on the planet pretty much non-stop). And to place your ATTENTION on THAT which is silently AWARE (pure Awareness) of everything you seem to be aware of.
For example, as you read these words, notice that ‘something’ must be aware of them or how would you even know of their very existence?? Right now, notice this ever-present-formless-silent Awareness and let your attention rest on ‘it.’ ‘It’ is not a ‘thing,’ and thus has no perceivable qualities, yet it’s what allows for the knowing/perceiving of anything! In other words, are these words aware of themselves? No. Then what IS? (And if a thought says, “Me, I am!”, then what is aware of this ‘me’ thought??)
Hint: Be still/silent and ‘allow’ ‘your’ impersonal Awareness to become aware of itself. If you find yourself going back to a thought/object, gently bring your attention back to the Awareness itself. This is the ultimate meditation and can be done anywhere, anytime, and ‘you’ cannot ‘do it’ too much!
You can’t find the truth because You ARE the Truth. –Michael Jeffreys
If you ever come to the West LA weekly satsang (which is held weds. evenings in my apt.) you’ll see Buddha peacefully sitting on the table next to the couch.
Value and importance are not “out there” with the “thing,” but here where Awareness itself is being aware. -William Samuel
MICHAEL: The illusion is that the “person, place or thing” that we are interested in “contains” the feeling or value we are placing on it. But in actuality it is ALL coming from us. Any “person, place, or thing” is inherently devoid of meaning. It is we who “project” any meaning on to it.
For example, we are so excited about getting a new book from Amazon, sometimes even paying extra for faster shipping!, and then a few months later, the book is up on the shelf, essentially forgotten about as we have already moved on to the next “thing.” What happened? If the excitement was actually contained in the book itself, it would always make us happy. But our own experience (if we are honest) is that a “person, place, or thing” can seem to make us happy for a little while, but then it fades.
So, was the happiness, value, importance truly in the object, or was it us all along? Other than pure Awareness, what else is present to even know or be aware of anything??
p.s. And this includes the mental object in our mind called, “me.” Its “value” too… is it not constantly fluctuating? Than the “me” (the egoic sense of imagined separate self) must also be a “thing” and thus inherently meaningless. When all identification with objects ceases, that leaves only silent, free, whole, loving, ever-present Awareness as our one and only nature.
Q: Absolute truth vs relative. What’s the difference?
MICHAEL: It may be relatively true that I like cream and sugar in my coffee, but it’s not an absolute truth. Some people don’t like cream and/or sugar in their coffee. A relative truth is only true from a particular perspective.
On the other hand, absolute truth has no opposite, no particulars, no divisions. It is neither “this” nor “that,” yet paradoxically it contains ALL “this” and “thats.”
Btw, this is to a large part what goes on on facebook. Most (not all) are taking their relative perspective as absolute and then arguing with anyone that suggests a different or counter perspective. What hasn’t been seen is that there is no absolute truth in ANY perspective. (Go back and re-read that last sentence and let it sink in.)
Why? Because the absolute doesn’t depend upon or require ANY perspective to exist, but ANY thought/feeling/perspective/belief/opinion/appearance depends upon the absolute in order to exist. Again, ALL concepts are relative and no concept is absolute.
And since all thoughts are conceptual in nature, they cannot contain the absolute. However, they can be useful to point to reality/absolute which is ever-present, whole and undivided. It is eternally THIS prior to thinking about THIS.
All you’ve ever wanted is this moment, as it is. But the moment always seems to have something wrong with it. What to do? See that you are not in the moment. You are what is aware of the moment. You are the Knower of the known. You are the Ultimate Subject to which all objects are known.
The attempt to escape now is what every jiva is doing via distraction. Distraction from what? Death. Insentient body is on its way out. Jiva/ego doesn’t want to deal with this, so perpetually distracts under illusion of creating “my” life, getting, achieving, having, owning, possessing, etc.
Freedom is recognizing this. Noticing how you are incessantly distracting yourself from being present, unbrokenly. Life is now, so you are now. Life is never not now, so you are never not now, regardless of what comes or goes.
Is LIGHT separate from the SUN? No! Light is an extension of the sun, just as you and I are an extension of the ONE Creator, God, Infinite. To argue this is to say that you created yourself, i.e., that the Sun’s Light created itself. It is a denial of Source. The Sun’s rays can deny the Sun all it wants… and yet this denial is only possible thanks to the Sun itself! No Sun, no Sun’s rays to argue naught.
Since I don’t watch TV, no interest in the Academy Awards this evening. Instead, I took a walk for an hour in a nearby park here in LA while listening to an mp3 of a satsang by Jac O’keeffe. She is amazing and one of my favorite teachers!
As I was listening, a homeless guy came up behind me while I was on one of the park paths, and began talking to himself. I could hear his voice through my headphones, even though I was listening to Jac’s talk.
And suddenly, it hit me that his voice sounded just like the voice in my head!! In fact, I asked myself what the difference was between the homeless guy’s voice going on about “blah, blah” and my voice going on about “blah, blah”? And I realized there really wasn’t any difference! Both are just sounds. The words had meaning only because I had been taught that this sound means THIS, while another sound means something else.
The “mistake” we make is that we think there is correlation between the sounds in the head and reality. But there isn’t! You don’t need the sense of “I” (the commentator) to live life. Life is already living life. And you don’t have to do anything other than realize that the voice in the head is not you, meaning you don’t have to try to get rid of it. In fact, trying to get rid of it just enforces the belief in it. If something is not there, how can you get rid of it? In other words, it’s the trying to get rid of a thought or change it that reinforces the belief in it.
Look around you. Nothing you are looking at has any meaning whatsoever. None. All objects are “neutral.” Any meaning is “put” there by your mind. Superimposed onto the object and that’s what gives that object whatever meaning it has for you. Something that has great meaning for you means nothing to someone else and vice/versa. This lets you know that the meaning is not contained within the object itself, but within the one viewing it. If it were truly within the object itself, everyone that came upon that object would feel the exact same way about it. But that isn’t what happens. Each of us doesn’t see that object “naked,” but rather through our “meaning” filters.
What would your experience be of the world if you stopped putting meaning on anyone or anything? Rather than let your mind try to guess at the answer, what if you actually tried it to have a direct experience of what it actually felt like?
