An edited talk given on April 9, 2002 in Palm Springs, CA
The only true companions you have on the spiritual path are love, trust and innocence. Everything else will betray you. Even the visions, satori, the transcendental awakenings, the high devotional experiences–all of these things will come and go. The essential nature of your Self is innocent, without knowledge, without time. That means that the Awakened Condition is already awakened.
You may ask then, “What am I supposed to be doing?” Well, when you come here just sit and listen and be open to your Feeling-Nature–see what passes through you, what comes before your eyes; see what floats up from within your Heart. Just See and Feel, be innocent, open–don’t resist anything.
There are so many different forms of spirituality available now that one can become confounded by so much knowledge. There are so many things to do, so many collectables of experience and knowledge. You may become fascinated for a time and then it will become old and you will drop it and move on. Until you become naturally awakened, which includes dis-awakening or non-awakening, you will be bored and you will continue to seek.
The Awakened Heart has this quality of innocence already established in it. It has natural curiosity. It accepts no answer as final, no experience as ultimate. It will not accept some absolute answer. So, the very nature of the innocent, curious mind is kept fully intact in the Awakened Condition. It’s something to be felt, right in the Heart.
So, each time we come here we start afresh in that Innocence, that Love. It’s such a beautiful thing to know this intuitively, without the mind, that inherently there is this Already-Present Love, which has Activated Energy in it, Awakened Consciousness. Its foundation is in the non-dual plane of Pure Consciousness.
It’s an amazing thing that when we listen from this plane of Innocence, in this meditation in the Awakened Heart, this gathering that we hold once a week here, it’s as if I’m speaking to each individual. That there’s a peculiar kind of relationship that’s forged in this Innocent Awareness that gives one the feeling that it’s just for you, it’s just for your Self. That feeling comes about because of the lack of duality, the lack of feeling of otherness, of others, of objects, of things. It comes about because there is this Inherently- Felt Oneness.
Right in this moment, you can feel this Self-Activating nature of the Shakti, which is meditation, which is Vedanta. Just as the waves of the ocean are not different from the vastness of its depth, so too the moving Shakti is not different than the Ultimate Consciousness, which is fully non-dual: without difference, without subject, without object.
Right in this moment, you can feel this Fire activated and moving spontaneously, without any human involvement. I often say that this teaching is avataric. It is not a Guru-based teaching, it is not the sadhana of a Yogi that is taught here. In fact, there is no sadhana other than to simply come as you are and to feel, to be in your innocence, what you are. That’s where this work is done, in the innocence of the Heart, the innocence of the Awakened Heart.
I’d like to open it up to any questions or any experiences that you might want to share.
Participant 1: I had a really great week. It was just Bliss, all the time.
Part of my path is always about giving and helping wanting to be of service. And I get caught up in it sometimes too much, rather than just being the One.
So, I called a friend of mine just today, and anyway, he said he’s getting married. And it’s someone I’ve known for about ten years on the path. The energy that came through was one of dissipation, really low energy, low vibe. And I felt really bad, because it was somebody who has grown over the years. And so, you know, [the question arose]: “Is this what relationships are about?” Is it dissipation?
David: Stay in the Bliss. Don’t get hooked into anyone’s stuff.
P1: And I did…. My heart just hurt. It went back to the human state of consciousness and it really hurt, but….
David: Try to avoid the human. Stay in that Divine Consciousness as long as it is natural to do so.
P1: And I don’t know how to…, it would be interfering with the other person’s space to say, “You know, look….”
David: That’s right.
P1: So, I can’t and that’s the hurt.
David: It’s good, you’re vulnerable.
P1: Why is being vulnerable good?
David: What’s the alternative?
P1: Bliss, stay in Bliss. But is that a human emotion? Vulnerable? I mean….
David: It’s okay, it’s okay. Just let it be now. Let Mother wash it all away.
P1: It kind of reminded me of what it was like when I was in that state. It was a reminder, it was painful. Why can’t there just be Bliss on both parts? Just an uplifting coming together and it’s just a momentum to go into more Bliss?
David: That’s what we’re doing here. It is that, that’s what we’re doing, right now.
P1: But for two people, as in partners, coming together, and forming Bliss….
David: Forget about anybody else, just think of yourself. You will see them that way, don’t worry, if it’s meant to be seen that way.
Just feel Me and let me feel you just as you are, without strategizing in anyway, without changing anything about yourself, so we uncover that Beauty right here, in the present moment. That beauty that always is, which is in relationship. It’s not “me” isolating into “my” Bliss and you isolating into “your” Bliss and then those two isolations meet. It’s this Shared Heart of Awaken-ness, which contains absolute vulnerability and also the indestructibility, the invincibility of the Non-Dual as well. So, let this wash away, it will just wash away and let the nectar of what we share now be the Reality for now. And don’t worry about the future. Can you feel how beautiful this is when we just greet each other like this?
P1: It’s wonderful! It’s the best.
David: It’s already what you are.
P1: And you know, the Light is just a Golden Light.
David: Do you want to share something?
Participant 2: Yeah. Something’s been happening for about two weeks with me. It actually kind of started when I first met you. And they seem, these two things seem incredibly different, but I think they’re the same thing. One, (I think they both come from Mother, I know they both come from Mother, even though they seem different), one is that with people, when a person is open, when a person is present with me, there’s a real delight, there’s a real joy and it’s deeper and more constant than I’ve ever experienced before. The opposite, and I give thanks to Mother for this, when that happens…, and then when someone is not present, someone is blocking, someone is totally domineering the scene…. Sunday a workshop leader, with only 20 to 25 people there, chose to sit on the stage rather than join the circle. I have an incredible body reaction to that, at a cellular level, body reaction to that. And it’s “get away.” It’s like a knife going through me. And I thought quite a bit about it and it’s not the past.
David: Once the Heart is open it stays open all the time: so it’s open to isolation, to feeling what isolation is, rejection.
P2: I don’t understand it fully but I’m feeling it.
David: Go with what you’re feeling non-verbally.
P2: Right.
David: Follow your gut, your intuition in this.
P2: It’s like I can’t have one without the other. I have both or none, or at least a lower level of both.
David: So, just stay with what is, for you. One becomes extremely sensitive to this movement of attention in humans, extraordinarily sensitive to the nature of how humans either open to their Feeling-Being, their Feeling-Nature, or [how] they shut down and isolate. They become very keen on that: as a matter of fact, that’s the only thing that remains left in you to function within.
P2: Ah!
David: There’s either That or there’s not that. And if there’s not that, you still don’t stop being That. But you do feel the pain of finiteness, the pain of limitation, the pain of those who are caught up in the hallucination of smallness, of apparent non-awareness.
Right in this moment, not in some other moment, right here and right now we share this Awakened Consciousness. I see you in it. My eyeballs are swimming in it. It’s pure delight. It has no beginning or end.
P2: I find that it’s a large percentage of the time with people, that’s true. It’s there.
David: Good. You’ve done sadhana. You’ve done your sadhana.
P2: I thank you for being here, too.
David: No need to thank me. I have no choice.
Don’t stop feeling even when we stop dialoging. Just stay in here with me, this nakedness of the present moment. You know, the deepest craving in the human being is to be seen and to see in love, in that naked transparency of Mere-Feeling: Mere, Total Feeling.
You know when you get a new car and you’re driving around, you want to be seen, right? A New Mustang GT, eight-cylinder, bright red convertible: you stop at the light, the convertible is down, the top is down, out of the corner of your eyes you’re saying, “Who’s noticing,” because you’re hungry for attention. Everything is a form of that. Books that are written, these authors want to be noticed, they want to be heard, they want to be seen, taken in, feel like they’re ingested.
Everyone has this primal longing to want to feel as though they are being ingested, digested, masticated. That’s the whole meaning of this field of birth and death, when you look with fresh eyes at what it is; why things are eating each other here, why things literally devour each other in this plane of relative existence. Why certain birds feed on insects, things are devouring each other here, because the relative is nothing but this huge ocean of appetite. Appetite for what? For itself. And so, millions and billions and trillions of others and entities and organisms are created to enact this Primal Drama of Self-Mastication, this feast of Bliss-Tragedy. It’s ecstatic….
P2: There’s a difference, David….
David: Am I out of my mind?
P2: No. I got it. The difference that I’m sensing now, rather than before, is that if the person doesn’t respond, I feel that yearning. I feel that pain, but it doesn’t last, I don’t go into some kind of depression for the next hour–it’s over.
David: You’ve seen something about the essentialness of reality and so it passes through you.
P2: Yes.
David: Exactly. So, if you were always seeing that kind of pain, you couldn’t bear it and also you couldn’t bear the great Bliss of certain high devotional states, high ecstatic states.
P2: Yes.
David: So, you enter into a very (apparently) ordinary life, in the most supremely awakened form, in the Awakened Heart Consciousness. You can live a very mundane, easy, simple life, without ever wondering again about the nature of reality, or the nature of awakening, because all of that has been finalized in you, as you.
It only takes a few seconds to see this. You may say, “Well, I’ve seen it and then it vanished,” [but in that case] you didn’t really see it. Or the body-mind has to catch up to that Realization. It has to say “yes,” too. Even the cells of the body need to agree to be in this omnipotent plane of Absolute Consciousness. So, it’s not your fault that you lost it, if that’s the conclusion you’ve reached, or that it comes and goes. In the end, it’s a Gift, not an achievement. It’s not a state. It’s a permanent, actual, Actuality.
Again, I want to point to this moment, this sublime moment, right now; of not looking for anything else, not asking for any particular demonstration of the Divine; not asking for your pain to be removed; not asking for your suffering to be alleviated; not asking to go into still a higher, blissful state. Just forget about this ladder of becoming. Don’t even forget it, just let it forget you, just let it fall away. You’ll feel this Bodily Thrill of being gripped by the Absolute. It’s so easy. Just be without so many conclusions, so many thoughts, so many concepts that screen out that Innocence, that overlay that Innocence of the Awakened Heart.
When we’re together here, we go into this mood of profound feeling in that nakedness of being, Transparent-Reality. The beauty, the uniqueness of being here is that this is unveiled without effort–just by seeing, just by looking, just by caring enough to look, just by being gentle in the stream of one’s experience. It’s very easy to sit, to feel, to know, without knowing any object within that whole movement. It’s so beautiful, it’s so lovely, it has all that is exhilarating in it, all that is expansive; nothing of the contraction in it.
Do you feel this in this moment? Yes? You could never deserve this. Neither can you dis-deserve it, non-deserve it. You can’t attain it. You can’t lose it. So, we gently move in this Semi-Circle of Bliss.
You feel something happening. You gently feel this Spell that I cast move you into a very high level of apprehension. Apprehending what? Whatever’s there to apprehend. We’ve gone beyond this goal-centeredness, this wanting to get somewhere, wanting to achieve something, wanting to understand anything. We’ve transcended all this demanding nature of the mind or of the emotions. Any other question? Questions?
Participant 3: Could you talk about “Avatar” a little bit more? I was very drawn to that word. I kind of have a sense of what it means, but when you said it, I just got all these, I don’t know…, visions.
David: I’m more interested in what happened to you when I said it. I can say more.
P3: I don’t know. I was just very drawn to it, that and duality. I’m always recognizing that that is the struggle and the big lie, kind of, is the whole thing about duality and that we are really not separate. And so, I’m always trying to get a grasp on what duality really is. I don’t know, when you said, “Avatar” I just kind of got images, and I don’t know, something sparked.
David: An Avatar is simply a human embodiment of a strong…, the strongest manifestation of Consciousness, of Awakened Consciousness that can appear on earth.
P3: I thought it was a sword. [laughs]
David: It is!
Avatar means “descent” and if you say a little more about it, it means,“descending from the Absolute or from God.”
P3: Is it descending or ascending?
David: It descends and then takes everyone up. Once he or she descends, she takes a human body and then while she is in that human form she will help people ascend into that level of Consciousness that is awakened. An Avatar is a great source of help and benefit for all beings, for everyone. Is that better, feel better? How are you feeling tonight?
P3: Great. I feel like I have all these labels: a mother, a body-worker and I felt during the meditation, I just really felt like Spirit. And I could sense everyone else in the room just as Spirit and just felt this opening.
David: So, we stay in our bodies, but we open to that Absolute Consciousness at the same time. We don’t just ascend out and go beyond everything, dissociate and then come back and say, “I was there.” We actually remain rooted in our physiological reality and then we also traverse into this, what I call the Awakened Heart, the Consciousness of the Heart.
P3: I have this sense of needing to recreate myself, cell by cell, but what I was doing was putting all these labels on everything and trying to manipulate everything around me; and what I realized is just being in “the Innocent” and letting Spirit flow through that, that is the definition.
David: That is “the definition,” is being it.
Any last question, or questions?
It’s just this present moment. It seems like you look through, out of, your eyes, but actually this is like a Blazing Sun, this Heart. And that’s what does all the seeing. That’s what feels everything.
