Waking Up in a Busy World: We Are In It and It Is In Us

Remain still, with the conviction that the Self shines as everything yet nothing, within, without, and everywhere.

Ramana Maharshi

This quote is very profound and probably underlies the teachings found in the video listed below.

Oops...will get back to this in a minute. Decided, last minute, to have my Thanksgiving supper tonight as it seems to be the only time I can get everyone together and so now I have to pop the bird into the oven. (Man...I hate the sound of that. I don't eat meat for many reasons but I cook it for those that do. I find it hard to do so...yet I do. Forgive me Turkey)

This is what I gathered (paraphrased) from the last portion of the Alan Watts lecture, entitled, We have forgotten who we are:

We, in the west, tend to differentiate between what we do and what happens to us. When we decide to take a deep breath...it seems that we are doing the breathing but when we stop thinking about breathing, we are still breathing. Are we doing it then or is it just happening to us?
Do we beat our hearts? We don't say, I "beat my heart", like we say "I breathe". There are so many involuntary body functions in which we say we have no control. Watts tells us that just because it seems we have no "conscious control" over these process, we do have a "supra conscious" control over our bodily function, over everything actually. He says we make our blood flow just like we make the sun shine. The body knows that it is a continuation of the universe, that we are a continuation of the universe...not separated from it.
When we watch someone walking down the street , we are making them walk through our attention to them walking. It is hard to believe we are doing that but we are. If we were not observing them walk in front of us, would they be walking in front of us? We control everything the body is doing and we control everything the universe is doing...
Of course, we do not realize that. If we did we might go a little cra-cra...with all these delusions of Grandeur or what Watts referred to as "Holy Man Syndrome"...thinking we are special...when everyone of us has these same innate powers to control everything.
There is no such thing as separate events. Everything we observe is us...It is all us...the person walking down down the street and the person observing the person walking down the street are one and the same. Tat Taum Asi
We can, however, only experience one thing at a time and we have no idea how we, as everything, are making everything happen. We don't know how we make that person walk before us...but we do. We don't know how we make the sun shine, but we do. We don't know how we beat our hearts but we do.
This organism is a continuation of the energy that makes everything happen
Yet ego gets in the way of us knowing that. "Ego is nothing more than the focus of conscious attention. " "The moment we cease to identify with the ego and identify with the whole organism, we see how perfect and harmonious it all is. "
There may be discord at the personal level but at the higher level, it is all perfect and harmonious
"The world is really okay and can't be anything other than okay because it wouldn't exist if it wasn't."
Omnipotence is not about knowing how everything is done , it is about knowing that it just does get done
Life is a dance of energy. No such thing as a distinction between spiritual and material "stuff". It is all just pattern.
We may be aware that there is a brilliant light within everything...beneath everything... but we are often not aware that we are looking directly at that light right now
The brilliant light of the cosmos can be found in absolutely everything, even in an old paper cup...when we look at the cup we are looking directly at this light
Awakening is really a reexamination of our common sense which has been rigged so that we feel like strangers in an alien world. When we start to really question this common sense we grew up on we begin to see it as it really is...it becomes obvious to us that we are continuous with the universe....not separate from it.
When we take on a practice to attain something...say start practicing yoga... we are getting in the way of this truth. If we try to improve this "self" so we have a better experience in the universe ...this is an indication that we are not yet understanding the truth. We are one with that which we want a better experience of.
We can't strive or struggle to reach where we already are...to become what we are. We can't strive to love...if we do it because we think we "should" than we lose sincerity
Tale of a man with a problemed mind that goes to the sage for help. The sage says he can help if the man first shows the sage his problemed mind...which of course the guy couldn't.
Spiritual practices are ways of just continuing in this "folly" We are told to let go and do nothing...then we try to do nothing which actually becomes a doing something.
"There is no road to here and here is already there."
We already have what we are looking for but it is "our privilege and deeply felt wish to play the game that we don't". When we realize this... the distinction between voluntary and involuntary behaviour disappears.
We are part of the process. It is all one process
We do not come into this world...we are grown from this world
"In every lump of rock floating in space there is an implicit human intelligence."
"I am in it and it is in me. There is always a transactional relationship between organism and environment."