! Gerardus' Grist ! adyashanti !

Inexplicably it comes. When you least expect it. For a reason you can never know. One moment you are striving, figuring, imagining, and then, in the blink of an eye, it all disappears. The struggle disappears. The striving disappears. The person disappears. The world disappears. Everything disappears, and the person is like a pinpoint of light, just receding until it disappears. And there's nobody there to witness it. The person is gone. Only, only awareness remains. Nothing else. No one to be aware. Nothing to be aware of. Only that remains itself. Then it's understood, finally and simply.

Then everything�, all the struggle, all the striving, all the thinking, all the figuring, all the surrendering, all the letting go, all the grabbing hold of, all the praying, all the begging, all the cursing, too�, was just a distraction. And only then is it seen that the person was, is, and ever will be no more than a thought. With a single thought, the person seems to reemerge. With more thoughts, the world seems to reemerge right out of nothing. But now you know.

The incarnation is nothing more than a thought. A thousand incarnations are but a thousand thoughts. And this amazing miracle of a mirage we call the world reappears as it was before, but now you know. That's why you usually have a good laugh, because you realize that all your struggles were made up. You conjured them up out of nothing� with a thought that was linked to another thought, that was then believed, that linked to another thought that was then believed. But never could it have been true, not for a second could it have actually existed. Not ever could you have actually suffered for a reason that was true �only through an imagination, good, bad, indifferent. The intricacies of spiritual philosophy and theologies are just a thought within Emptiness.

And so at times we talk, and I pretend to take your struggles seriously, just as I pretended to take my own seriously. You may pretend to take your own struggles seriously from time to time, and although we pretend, we really shouldn't forget that we are pretending, that we are making up the content of our experience; we are making up the little dramas of our lives. We are making up whether we need to hold on or surrender or figure it out or pray to God or be purified or have karma cleansed� - it's all a thought. We just collude in this ridiculous charade of an illusion pretending that it's real, only to reveal that it's not. There is no karma. There is nothing really to purify. There's no problem. There is only what you create and believe to be so. And if you like it that way, have at it!

But we cannot continue this absolute farce indefinitely. We cannot continue to pretend this game we play, indefinitely. It's impossible. Everything comes back to nothing. And then it's a bit harder to hold a straight face consistently for the rest of your life.

Transcribed from a talk in Pacific Grove, CA, June 9, 2006.
(c) 2006 by Adyashanti. www.adyashanti.org

Adyashanti Interview - Asilomar Dec 2006 Someone in the gatherings stands up... Q: I don't know if I can talk. My name is _______ and I'm from ______ . A: Well, Welcome. Q: Thank you. Interesting thing about time I just thought about, the room I got has, I am from Sweden originally, it has a calendar on the wall over my bed and it's from 1893 by Swedish artist very well loved, Carl Larson from February. It's just a little wonderful thing, I just love those little wonderful things that happen. Anyway it seems like I have tried my whole life to wall myself off from awakening. Lately something has opened up, maybe the last couple of years and there is this immense gratitude that's there and it's also this love that's flowing. I call it my love flashes because it's so immense, it's like a hot flash. A little more... A: yeah, yeah, yeah. Q: fearsome. A: You never know where is going to come from or show up. Q: It's quite amazing. Also things have changed in the way, when I'm walking it's not like I am going somewhere, it's like everything is coming to me. A: Yeah, coming to you, coming through you. Q: Yeah. Looking it as if a set. It's beautiful and it's enjoyable and it's a set. It's an image. It's as if I could put my arm through it, almost. The last person up here talking, when I'm meeting people sometimes I feel as if I can go into their being, their consciousness and that frightens me to the point that I pull back. A: Oh, I see. Q: I think that actually... A: Remember there's no such thing as there. Q: Right. That's what I was thinking also, that probably the only thing that frightens me is to lose the ego probably or to get out of myself. Now there is this one thing that concerns me that and that is basically what's going on with my brain because I do feel a lot of changes going on. A: What's going on in your brain. Q: Well, it feels like it's getting more blank. A: Yeah. Q: And in itself like when I'm here, it's just wonderful and its no problem but I happen to be a dentist and I have a business... A: I made some of you rich. Q: Not me yet. And I have staff. And part of this has actually been very very wonderful because I relate totally different and my work is totally different. A: I imagine. Q: That is the lovely part. The thing that concerns me is it's like being on the edge because if I open up too much as I say in my language now... A: I understand. Q: It's as if then I don't know any names, I don't know the name of the instrument. I can feel such a connection with one of my patient I want to start crying and it's not very professional, you know. So it's that edge, walking that edge that's very very interesting to me. A: It is, it is. Q: And it's like I have to pull back. Thank heaven the work itself, it works better than it worked before. A: It's almost like a temporary willingness to be deceived in that you look at your instruments and it's like okay I'll call it that even though you know it's not. It's not what you call it and your patient is not really your patient. None of it's real. But to function in this thing right there becomes the realization of like, 'Oh this is just how things work here.' That's all you're doing is you're just letting yourself notice how things work here. The agreements that we kind of make, you know like this actually is an instrument and that's actually a tooth and we'll actually do the work and you know what I mean as if everything is separate and different and yet that's the agreement that you make. So it's not really straddling the two worlds, it's that both of those things are sort of simultaneously there for you, right. As if none of it's real and this other thing, oh, this is how you operate in the dream state. And the more you're with it, it's been a couple of years? The more you're with it the easier it gets. It may be one or the other place for a time but after a while they sort of start to come together. They kind of mix like we're doing right now. Like we're both using words but we both know that none of these words have any truth whatsoever to them. But we use them anyway. You get the feel of it, though? Q: Yeah, yeah. Thank you very much. A: Yeah. It's just sort of like your system getting used to it. More and more and more over time. It is strange for a while though. It can be a little weird.