Quotes from Adyashanti

Thinking is something and then feeling it are two different reference points for most human beings: If I think it and I feel it, then it is real. But it does not take much reflection to acknowledge we have all thought and felt things to be true that later found out were not.

This adult world has an insane quality to it. Everybody's going around pretending like they really know things, pretending like they know what's real and what's not, pretending they know what's right, pretending they know who's wrong, but actually nobody really knows. But this is something we're afraid of. We don't really want to admit that nobody really knows.

As Jesus says, "The Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon earth, and men do not see it.

In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, "There is light within a man of light, and he lights up the whole world.

I didn't make the calling happen, I couldn't pretend it didn't happen, and I couldn't have turned it off even if I'd wanted to. It was disconcerting. And sure enough, my intuition was true: the entire trajectory of my life had changed at that instant.

in a true awakenin, it is realized very clearly that even the awakening itself is not personal. It is universal Spirit or universal consciousness that wakes up to itself. Rather than the "me" waking up, what we are wakes up from the "me". What we are wakes up from the seeker. What we are wakes up from the seeking.

It's as if you wake up from the dream of thinking that you're already awake in your ordinary waking state. When you are spiritually awakened, what you thought was an awake state now seems like a dream.

True meditation has no direction or goal. It is pure wordless surrender, pure silent prayer. All methods aiming at achieving a certain state of mind are limited, impermanent, and conditioned. Fascination with states lead only to bondage and dependency. True meditation is abidance as primordial awareness.

We cannot storm the gates of heaven. Instead we must allow ourselves to become more and more disarmed. Then the pure consciousness of being becomes brighter and brighter, and we realize who we are. This brightness is what we are.

True Meditation is effortless stillness, abidance as primordial being.

In meditation you are not trying to change your experience; you are changing your relationship to your experience.

When this unification occurs, there's a simplicity to life, a deep sense of freedom and essential well-being and also of fearlessness.

Where there was abiding tranquility, what awakens now is sense of an extraordinary vitality, of life-force. It's as if the fullness of your being is radiating, and from the tips of your toes to the top of your head, you feel this very deep and powerful radiance.

ADYA I will try to explain what happened experientially. At the moment of awakening, it was as though I was completely outside who I thought I was. There was a vast, vast, vast emptiness. In that vast emptiness, in that infinite emptiness, there was the smallest, smallest, smallest point of light you could imagine. And

myth carries is not fact, not history, but truth—the ultimate reality. The Jesus story carries this ultimate reality, and that's why, two thousand years later, it remains so compelling.

Otherwise spirituality and our daily life become two separate things. That's the primary illusion -- that there is something called "my spiritual life," and something called "my daily life." When we wake up to reality, we find they are all one thing. It's all one seamless expression of spirit.

Consciousness, or your true nature, is allowing everything to be as it is.

I have found that one of the keys to really being free is to live in the same way as you meditate.

Whatever thoughts you have about yourself aren't who and what you are. There is something more primary that is watching the thoughts.

There exists only the present instant … a Now which always and without end is itself new. MEISTER ECKHART

It's good to be reminded that hubris, left unchecked, can have serious consequences in our lives. If we don't notice soon enough, we might just realize too late that we've lost some very important things in our lives. The beauty of this story is that it reminds us: keep your feet firmly planted on the soil, keep your consciousness and your heart open, and stay available to this relative world and all the human beings within it.

It's the way spirit moves in the world of time and space. That's what a human body-mind is: an extension of spirit in time and space.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." [John 1:1, NIV, ESV]

The beginning of the spiritual journey is what I call "life after awakening.