The obsession of self...

What's forgotten is that state of simplicity. That paradox of the immensity of existence, of life here and now. The fullness of it and the absolute emptiness of it. It's that quiet immensity. I was reading an old journal of mine from the mid 1980's and in it was this wonderful quote from, actually quite a few wonderful quotes from Thomas Merton that I had written down.

I used to love reading Thomas Merton. But he had this very beautiful, this one line this one description and he called it the abyss of freedom. And I loved that because he's linking that very paradoxical words that only someone who's experienced that abyss of freedom will know what he is talking about. That abyss of freedom.

Everybody wants freedom, not everybody wants the abyss. The emptiness of freedom. The disappearance to just a simplicity, a quietness that takes paradoxically because I am speaking but takes the words away from us. In other words takes away the inner dialog away from us and we actually begin to live in that abyss of freedom rather than to talk to ourselves about that.

And so when you stop looking in the high places for truth but look in the low places, the places that are obscure, the places where nobody pays any attention. That's where you'll find what you are. That's where it will become obvious. When you start to pay attention to what you don't usually pay attention to, what's quiet.

Not clamoring inside of you for attention. What's not insisting. What's not trying to take some sort of spiritual stance. That in you which does not have a theology whether it's dualistic or nondualistic. That simplicity. That very simple shining emptiness. Very easy to forget that that's what its about. That's what brings self-liberation. That's what takes us beyond our own self-obsession. Wakes us up from the dream cause that's the awakening.

Suddenly you're awake from the dream of being obsessed with yourself. Past, future. You awaken even from the obsession with being a self. Because that's all being a self is, it's an obsession. One thought obsessing on another thought obsessing on another thought obsessing on another thought until it spins the illusion of a self into existence.


-Adyashanti, Mount Madonna retreat 2009