The Jewel of Reality

In this talk, Adya discusses the many-faceted jewel of true reality. He points out that we often believe we’ve discovered true reality when we encounter one or two of these facets, but consciousness is truly free only when it is fluid enough to move freely among all facets. He dialogues with students about our root delusion of separateness, the importance of stillness, the return of our karmic conditioning after glimpsing absolute truth, and the futility of grasping for more experiences of true reality when that karmic conditioning kicks in.

Topics:

• The Fluidity of a Free Consciousness
• The Return of Karmic Conditioning after Awakening
• Noticing the Consciousness of Grasping
• Taking the Spiritual Medicine Needed in the Moment
• The Root Delusion of Separateness
• The Winding Down of the Personal Will

Quotes:

“It’s common in spirituality that people will have a certain awakening to a facet of their true nature. They’ll think it’s the whole thing, and their mind will fixate on it, and their consciousness will fixate on it, and they’ll see everything through that facet and only through that facet.”

“The true nature of existence requires an extraordinarily fluid consciousness so that our consciousness can move from facet to facet to facet.”

“Life itself is continuous movement, continuous change, continuous impermanence, and to be really free, the consciousness that we are needs to be just as fluid, just as free, just as flowing as life is.”

“If we want to realize the whole of the truth of our being, then we don’t have the luxury of grasping on to any facet of reality, to any facet of our realization, because it will stunt our spiritual growth.”

“Spaciousness and presence, and that which is aware of spaciousness and presence, are not different things. They’re only different things in our minds.”

“The root delusion that we human beings seem to suffer from so often is the delusion of separateness—‘I think, I feel, and I believe myself to be this particular person’—so our identity is locked into our personality, our conditioning, our thoughts, our beliefs, our preferences, all of that.”

“The ego’s job is to try to make sure that you never get to the root of the matter. It tries to make sure you’re always trying to solve peripheral concerns and peripheral problems.”

Recorded in San Jose, California on September 25, 2008.
© 2008 by Adyashanti. All rights reserved.