by Adyashanti: To move beyond all pairs of opposites within oneself is the heart and soul of spirituality.
Awareness itself is not a female or a male awareness. It doesn’t belong to me; it doesn’t belong to you. It’s not a right awareness or a wrong awareness. Awareness itself, consciousness itself, lies beyond and before the opposites.
The fundamental ground of your nature is inherently already and always free, inherently already and always complete. This part, when it’s discovered, is where you realize everything is One. It is an exquisite place beyond the pairs of opposites. It is in the very heart of every being, and it is the same in every being. This is a wonderful thing to realize, because then you can start to connect to that which is indivisible. And that is an entirely different place to live one’s life from.
Most human beings are living their whole lives from the pairs of opposites because it’s the only way they know. But when you discover that there is within you this place that is beyond the pairs of opposites, and that place, that state of awareness, is actually what you are, you start to realize you can live from that place.
To live from that place, self-grasping must be let go of more and more fully, because the only thing that keeps anybody from living from that place is holding onto thoughts, ideas, judgments, regrets—all those things that cause you to hold onto yourself. They literally create your self, and as soon as they are let go of, that self is not there anymore.
Living from that place, you start to choose to be simple, to give your attention to the simplicity, to what’s awake in you, to what lies beyond the pairs of opposites: your inherent nature as awareness or consciousness itself. It’s a very simple thing. Through this, it introduces you to the fundamental nature of yourself, the fundamental nature of reality.
You’ll know when you get there, because you stop asking, “Have I gotten there yet?” It’s an exquisite place to get to. It’s very liberating when you discover yourself as you truly are. It’s that place within you that is free, within and from the pairs of opposites. The exquisiteness is the sense of freedom. It’s what brings rest.
Excerpted from the DVD “Beyond Opposites.”
