More From Theoron Felson

We cannot find the Self (or God, if you will) by seeking. What we seek is here and now. It is this moment; whole and complete. Once an attempt — via a thought process — is made, the moment is lost. Therefore, that which is sought is best left unsought and allowed to arise on its own.

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When the individual being identifies itself with the One, there is a realization: the death of the limited self gives birth to the immortal Self and there is no need to be concerned with any experience beyond “death”.

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When we still our restless thoughts and see beyond concepts, duality, and all the illusions created by the ego-conscious mind, we experience life as it is — an effortless expression of the True Self.

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Our detached, disconnected, and fragmented view of the Universe is the underlying cause of all our ills. It is this ego-sensation, wherein we view ourselves as something separate from everything else, that pits two “opponents” — mankind and nature — in a foolish, futile, and ultimately disastrous confrontation.

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We think about the past and future. But what are the past and future beyond mental concepts? The past and the future are not the manifest here and now. We react to situations as they arise. But we should be aware that “imagining an outcome” and “looking back on a choice” are present moment activities.

Profound Wisdom

This one life has no form and is empty by nature. If you become attached by any form, you should reject it. If you see an ego, a soul, a birth, or a death, reject them all.
- Bodhidharma

If there is to be any peace it will come through being not having.
- Henry Miller

The present moment is a powerful goddess.
- Goethe

Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality.
- Robert Pirsig

Maybe that is the purest and most radical kind of religion – simple attention. Present-moment awareness. Instead of a belief system, awareness sees through all beliefs.
- Joan Tollifson

The world exists only when we think about it; creation stories are for children. In reality the world is created every moment.
- Jean Klein

Be knowingly silent as often as you can and you will no longer be a prey to the desire to be this or that. You will discover in the everyday events of life the deep meaning behind the fulfilment of the whole, for the ego is totally absent.
- Jean Klein

It is the 'I-am-the-body' idea that is so calamitous. It blinds you completely to your real nature. Even for a moment do not think you are the body. Give yourself no name, no shape. In the darkness and the silence, reality is found. Behave as if you were fully convinced and the confidence will come.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9% of everything you think and of everything you do is for yourself – and there isn’t one.
-  Wei Wu Wei

The Bare Essentials

Expensive garments, jewellery, and adornments make a statement regarding the social status of the so-adorned individual. Clothes can be a visual declaration of monetary wealth. Gymnosophically speaking, money and the ostentatious attire it buys are of no concern, while the spiritual life and feelings of unrestricted joy are of the utmost.
- Theoron Felson

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
- Henry David Thoreau

Sometimes naked, sometimes mad,
Now the scholar, now the fool;
Thus they appear on earth: 
The free men! 
- Shankara

Full nakedness! All my joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be,
To taste whole joys.
- John Donne

Adam and Eve entered the world naked and unashamed — naked and pure-minded. And no descendant of theirs has ever entered it otherwise. All have entered it naked, unashamed, and clean in mind. They entered it modest. They had to acquire immodesty in the soiled mind; there was no other way to get it.
- Mark Twain

If people were meant to be nude, they would have been born this way.
- Oscar Wilde

Modesty died when clothes were born.
- Mark Twain

Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your skin and less of your raiment, 
For the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind... 
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
- Khalil Gibran

And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
- Genesis 2:25

What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed?
- Michelangelo

In order to swim one takes off all one's clothes. In order to aspire to the truth one must undress in a far more inward sense, divest oneself of all one's inward clothes, of thoughts, conceptions, selfishness, etc. before one is sufficiently naked.
- Søren Kierkegaard

From Laozi

If you don't realize the source, you stumble in confusion and sorrow. When you realize where you come from, you naturally become tolerant, disinterested, amused, kindhearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king. Immersed in the wonder of the Tao, you can deal with whatever life brings you, and when death comes, you are ready.

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

If you are depressed you are living in the past.

If you are anxious you are living in the future.

If you are at peace you are living in the present.

Do you imagine the universe is agitated? Go into the desert at night and look at the stars. This practice should answer the question.

The world belongs to those who let go.

The ego is a monkey catapulting through the jungle: fascinated by the realm of the senses it swings from one desire to the next, one conflict to the next. Let this monkey go. Let desires go. Let conflicts go. Let ideas go. Just remain in the center, watching.

Speak, Oh Sapient One

Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don't realize this because almost everyone is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being.
- Eckhart Tolle

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
- Albert Einstein

I have simply stopped arguing with reality. How do I know the wind should blow? It's blowing. How do I know this is the highest order? It's happening. Arguing with 'what is' is like teaching a cat to bark. 
- Byron Katie

See if you can catch yourself complaining in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.
- Eckhart Tolle

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.
- Jiddu Krishnamurti

When you demand nothing of the world, nor of God, when you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing, then the supreme state will come to you uninvited and unexpected.
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

See who is the doubter, who is the thinker. It is the ego. Hold it; the other thoughts will die away - the ego will be left pure. See the source from where the ego arises and abide in it. That is pure consciousness.
- Ramana Maharshi

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name.
- the Tao Te Ching (Laozi)

Zen tells man that he is free now, that no chain exists which he needs to throw off; he has only the illusion of chains. Man will enjoy his freedom as soon as he ceases to believe that he needs to free himself, as soon as he throws from his shoulders the terrible duty of salvation.
- Hubert Benoit

Additional Insights

Here is just emptiness. There is no getting my ego out of the way, and all that stuff. There is just the seeing, shining in great brilliance and clarity.
- Douglas Harding

You know that you (as presence-awareness) are here, that something is happening. The bare actuality of being here is undeniable and impossible to doubt, needing no proof or belief. This presence (or emptiness) is the water in every wave. It cannot be grasped or possessed, and yet, it is always right here, unavoidable and thus unattainable. This is the jewel, and this jewel is showing up as absolutely everything.
- Joan Tollifson

When we accept that God's will prevails all the time and not the individual will, the ‘me’ as the doer gets smaller and smaller till it gets completely merged in Consciousness.
- Ramana Maharshi

Self-Realization or Enlightenment is nothing more than the deepest possible understanding that there is no individual doer of any action - neither you nor anyone else. Also you are not the thinker of any thoughts, nor the experiencer of any experiences - they happen. When IT happens, no bright lights are likely to flash in your head!
- Ramesh Balsekar

A gentle, loving, inner peace and silence is here and now in this moment. It has always been this way. It is always here. It is right here within you and all around you, a stillness, an apparent void, a seeming nothingness out of which everything arises, exists, and eventually returns.
- Mark McCloskey

Is the abode of God anywhere but in the earth, the sea, and sky, and air, and virtue? Why do we seek the heavenly ones beyond?
Whatever you see, and whatever you touch, that is God.
- Lucan

Self-Realization is effortless. What you are trying to find is what you already are.
- Ramesh Balsekar

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein

Mystical Musings

The light of consciousness passes through the film of memory
and throws pictures on your brain. Because of the deficient
and disordered state of your brain, what you perceive is
distorted and colored by feelings of like and dislike. Make
your thinking orderly and free from emotional overtones,
and you will see people and things as they are, with clarity
and charity.
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

This Wholeness, this Unity, this Oneness cannot be denied. It is the One True Self performing a great dance for no purpose other than the dance itself. Life — this astonishing feast of sights, sounds, joy, laughter, pain, pleasure, and love — is a colossal smorgasbord served by and to a party of One.
- Theoron Felson

Strong wine, fat meat, peppery things, very sweet things, these have not real taste; real taste is plain and simple. Supernatural, extraordinary feats do not characterize a real man; a real man is quite ordinary in behavior.
From "The Gospel According to Zen"

When you are content to be simply yourself and don't
compare or compete, everybody will respect you.
- Laozi

You are the Self, here and now. Leave the mind alone,
stand aware and unconcerned and you will realize that
to stand alert but detached, watching events come and
go, is an aspect of your real nature.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

Silence is the mother of everything that has come out from
the Depth. And Silence kept quiet about what she was
unable to describe: the Unspeakable.
- Clement of Alexandria

We can never, never describe all features of the total
situation, not only because every situation is infinitely
complex, but also because the total situation is the Uni-
verse.
- Alan Watts

In life and in love, there is only that moment, the NOW.
The only reality we know is what we experience this very second.
Reality is not what has passed or what has yet to come into being.
Grabbing hold of this simple idea makes life magical
because it brings love alive.
- Leo Buscaglia

There is nothing wrong with asking "What is God?" or "What is the meaning of life?" — go ahead and ask. Humans, by their very nature, want answers to all of life’s mysteries. The problem lies in formulating a satisfactory response in the form of language which is merely an expression of the limited conscious mind.
- Theoron Felson

The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is
what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams,
illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that. Unknown is
what it is. Accept that it's unknown, and it's plain sailing.
- John Lennon

More From Mr. Watts

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

You don't look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

The common error of ordinary religious practice is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to look at the finger pointing the way and then to suck it for comfort rather than follow it.

This is the real secret of life - to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination.

We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.

- Alan Watts

Quoth The Wise Man

In original nature there is no this and that. The Great Round Mirror has no likes or dislikes.
- Seung Sahn

Mind is consciousness which has put on limitations. You are originally unlimited and perfect. Later you take on limitations and become the mind.
- Ramana Maharshi

That which is, is peace. All that we need do is to keep quiet. Peace is our real nature. We spoil it. What is required is that we cease to spoil it. If we remove all the rubbish from the mind, the peace will become manifest. That which is obstructing the peace must be removed. Peace is the only reality.
- Ramana Maharshi

The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present.
- Alan Watts

...when you really understand that you are what you see and know, you do not run around the country-side thinking, 'I am all this.' There is simply 'all this.' 
- Alan Watts

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.
- Alan Watts

Enlightenment means rising above thought, not falling back to a level below thought, the level of an animal or a plant. In the enlightened state, you still use your thinking mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before.
- Eckhart Tolle

The description is not the described; I can describe the mountain, but the description is not the mountain, and if you are caught up in the description, as most people are, then you will never see the mountain.
- Jiddu Krishnamurti

What Would Jesus Say?

Jesus said: When you make the two one, and when you make the inside as the outside, and the outside as the inside, and the upper side as the lower; and when you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the man is not man and the woman is not woman... then you shall enter the kingdom.

Jesus said: I am the Light which is over everything. I am the All. From me that All has gone forth, and to me the All has returned. Split wood: I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.

The disciples said to Jesus: Tell us how our end will take place.
Jesus said: Have you then discovered the beginning so that you inquire about the end? For where the beginning is, there shall be the end. Blessed is he who shall stand at the beginning, and he shall know the end and he shall not taste death.

The disciples said to Jesus: Tell us what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.
Jesus said: It is like a mustard-seed, smaller than all seeds. But when it falls on the tilled earth, it produces a large branch and becomes shelter for the birds of heaven.

Jesus said: Look upon the Living One as long as you live, so that you will not die and seek to see Him without being able to see Him.

Jesus said: And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

So Said The Sage

You cannot describe it or draw it. You cannot praise it enough or perceive it. No place can be found in which to put the Original Face; it will not disappear even when the universe is destroyed.
- Mumon

See what at this very moment your own face looks like - the Face you had before you, or indeed your parents, were born - there is nothing hidden. If you look within and recognize your own ‘Original Face', all secrets are in you.
- Hui-neng

God, whose love and joy
are present everywhere,
can't come to visit you
unless you aren't there.
- Angelus Silesius

You are the eternal thing that comes and goes that appears - now as John Jones, now as Mary Smith, now as Betty Brown - and so it goes, forever and ever and ever.
- Alan Watts

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
- Alan Watts

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god?
- Alan Watts

We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.
- Alan Watts

Everything affects everything. In this universe, when one thing changes, everything changes (all minds are joined). Hence the great power of man in changing the world by changing himself.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

God is a pure no-thing,
concealed in now and here:
the less you reach for him,
the more he will appear.
- Angelus Silesius

Self-surrender is the surrender of all self-concern. It cannot be done, it happens when you realise your true nature.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

Are not our desires inseparably intertwined with the continuation of life? Even the idea of eliminating desire is fruitless. The desire to eliminate all desire is still itself a desire. How can we find release and peace by replacing one desire with another? Surely we shall find peace not by eliminating desire, but by finding its fulfilment and satisfaction in the One who created it.
- Sadhu Sundar Singh

...a man sitting quietly and contemplating, with no purpose or aim except that of experiencing himself and his oneness with the world, is considered to be "passive", because he is not "doing" anything. In reality, this attitude of concentrated meditation is the highest activity there is, an activity of the soul, which is possible only under the condition of inner freedom and independence.
- Erich Fromm

God is my final end;
Does he from me evolve,
Then he grows out of me,
While I in Him dissolve.
-Angelus Silesius

The eye by which I see God is the same as the eye by which God sees me. My eye and God's eye are one and the same — one in seeing, one in knowing, and one in loving.
- Meister Eckhart

If you ask a good man: “Why are you seeking God?” — he will reply: “Just because he is God!” “Why are you seeking Truth?” “Just because it is Truth!” As life lives on for its own sake, needing no reason for being, so the just man has no reason for doing what he does.
- Meister Eckhart

There is no duty except in relation to an authority which imposes it. The believer of this or that religion will say that 'God' is the authority which imposes on him the obligation of salvation. But who then is this 'God' who while imposing something on me, is separate from me and has need of my action? Everything, then, is not included in his perfect harmony?
- Hubert Benoit

The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode... Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
- Henry David Thoreau

Thus Spake Theoron Felson

We are at our best when we are empty — free from greed, lust, opinions, prejudice, desire, ambition, and ultimately even hopes and dreams.

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Seeing ourselves in others is a key. It speaks to the interconnectedness of us all. Giving our time to others not only demonstrates love; it is an act of selflessness which, whether we realize it or not, contributes to our spiritual growth.

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We want to be distracted at all times, as if to avoid the silence where we just might get a glimpse of the True Self. We're afraid of losing the ego-image; afraid that it would be the end of what we're accustomed to and comfortable with; afraid of losing our “identities”. But it really comes down to an avoidance of who we are; an avoidance which produces and perpetuates misery, suffering, sorrow, hardship, heartache, adversity, grief, and all the “problems” associated with life.

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“My” mind and “your” mind; “my” body and “your” body are of the same realization. There is but one Mind, one Body.

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True, lasting happiness is not something we can attain by some switch we “decide” to turn on. It is available to us all, now; for it is our True Nature. However, it is clouded, hidden, and obscured by ego. No “decision” is going to dispel that particular illusion.

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We react to situations as they arise and it appears as if a choice has been made. Life just happens. It is, for all intents and purposes, a no-choice proposition. There is no “you” (as an individual) to make decisions as to what should be done and then to lament what could have been done. In reality, it is not in “your” hands. Life flows like a river, always in the present moment. The past (as in lamenting a choice) and the future (as in imagining the outcome of a choice) exist only in the mind.

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We are, in reality, a single unified process. But life entails a forgetting of the Eternal Process. In order to put drama into life, we pretend that we are not, in fact, the One.

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Our own well-being is best served when our concern is to serve the well-being of others.

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When we are aware of the here and now and when we eschew the trivial egocentric desires that motivate our everyday way of living, we give way to a new sense of Self.

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Seeing is sight. Hearing is sound. My mind and my experience are one. There is no need to differentiate between them.

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Neither does the world’s most brilliant mind nor the world’s wisest sage possess any knowledge beyond that which is truly in everyone.

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Only peaceful souls can effect a peaceful world.

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If we are having difficulty finding peace, then let's be still for a moment. Maybe it will find us.