Seeing Things as They Are — Adyashanti on Reality Beyond Thought

If you want to bake cookies or build a better bridge, go ahead and reference thought. It's great for that. Send people to the moon. It's really good to learn to figure out how to build spaceships. But for ultimate reality, forget it. You see, so when no longer referencing thought for truth, everybody's heard this in this room in some way or another. I imagine maybe a few of you have actually taken it seriously. But it only has impact when you actually see that your mind is creating a fabricated sense of reality. When you see it, then you don't need the discipline. Then you don't need to force thought to be quiet. Then it doesn't matter if thought is existing or it's not existing. It doesn't matter. Then because then we see we're no longer referencing the mind for truth. Then it doesn't matter if there's thoughts because you don't have another thought that says there shouldn't be thoughts. You see, you have to reference the mind again to tell you that there should or shouldn't be thoughts. You see, so then there's a quietness whether there's thought or not. It's the immense silence. And it's only by opening ourselves to this immense silence the unspoken, the unknown. that we actually can really wake up and see things as they are. Cuz that's all enlightenment is. Enlightenment is no big deal. It's just seeing things as they are instead of as they aren't. And since you are the closest thing to you, you might as well see what you are instead of what you aren't. Most important thing is to see what we aren't and just let it go as big as you're willing to let it go. What is the world when you have no thought about it? Now what is it? Go ahead, try to make a conclusion about it. Give yourself a good opinion about it. Just don't form it in thought. You see what I mean? How do you feel about yourself? What do you think about yourself when you don't think about yourself? Do you see? Are you good, bad, worthy unworthy saintly terrible wonderful beautiful ugly? Do you see? This is what I mean by silence. It tears away the fabric of our illusions. It just steals them away. It just pulls them out of your hand in one great swoop. And it's not even nice about it. You think that's true? Good try. And so we just let go into the great silence. It's very difficult to open to silence when in the back of your mind you're still thinking there's reality somewhere else. But silence becomes easy to open into when you realize there's no other option. Everywhere else is just more thought. [Music] Every other avenue is a dead end. So we just enter the silence. You might even realize easily that without a thought about yourself, you are the silence. Till you tell yourself you're not. And even if you see that, many of you in this room have seen that, have awakened to that, who know that Some of you, it's just waiting for this moment to realize that you're not what your mind says you are. You're not even what you feel. That's the other place human beings reference for truth. Well, if I'm if it's not in thought, it's in how I feel. See, but thoughts and feelings, they're contained within you. They're contained within you. They happen within you. So, they're not what you really are. They're just something that's happening within you. Actually, you are something that's happening within you. That's the joke of it. Everything about you is always something more content. You see, more stuff. So even you are something that's happening within you. And the final illusion, well that's not really true. Just one of them. Probably the biggest one is that I me somebody who's walking around in this vast universe. Me, that's the primary illusion. I'm walking around in this body, in this world. The funny thing about it is when you finally get out of the virtual reality, then you see that this simply can't be true. That it's so obvious that you're not a someone in a little body walking through a vast universe, but all of that, the someone and the vast universe is contained in you. It's just the opposite. And it's been staring you in your face your whole life. Everything's been contained within you. All evidence points that way. Literally, every single piece of evidence until you go into your mind points out the truth that everything exists within us. And it's amazing that we ever get it screwed up. It's absolutely amazing. If I hadn't done it, I wouldn't thought it was possible. and quite apart from taking you away from this life, away from your humanity, it actually delivers you to your humanity. It delivers you to this life. You realize that you up until that point you spent your whole life in a virtual reality thinking it was very real and you were very human and you were very here and you were very now and you realized you were very not here. You were very not now. You were totally in a fabricated reality and you were if anything is transcendent 99% of humanity is transcendent. I don't know where they are, but they're actually they're each in their own unique little world. Have you ever noticed that? It's an amazing thing, is it not? If we asked everybody in this room, so tell me what's what's it like for you? You'd get like 200 different, well, it's like this and da da da da. Gee, I like Ada. You do? Gosh, he makes no sense at all. I think he's just a can't wait to leave or what? Oh, I was thinking about yesterday's breakfast. What? What's And everyone would have their own little thing going, right? And in everyone's little universe, then we think that's the real that's real, do we not? That's what's real for me. And then we have like billions of little realities all thinking they're the reality that they got it right. Isn't it amazing? And then then they go to they do things like go to war with each other. So this isn't just like a little me thing. You see, it's not just like my little world. It has these immense consequences when when concepts decide that their virtual reality is real. And then there's a lot of other ones. And especially when they join together, then we're we are no more dangerous than when our illusions join, aren't we? Then we're very dangerous. Of course, it's very comforting to the illusion. I found company. It must be true. But when we awaken, if we awaken really fully, all that falls away. Because the truth for all of us in this room is the same. If we could, if everyone in this room could access what's actually true, it would be the same report card. It would be the same. There wouldn't be any difference. There never was any difference. That's the only place where oneness lies and reality lies. When you when you bump into it, you immediately recognize anybody that's ever bumped into it in all of history. You can just listen to them. What do they have to say about the truth? Oh, either they got it or they don't. It's easy. because it's the same. Of course, as I speak, I'm coloring that truth, right? Just through speaking, this personality is coloring the truth, shading the truth. In fact, what I'm speaking isn't really true. You see, because it's just it's concepts. So all of us are shading coloring. That's be that's that's fine. That's part of our personality. That's a very unique thing that each one of us has on that level. Things will always be a little different from one to the other to the other to the other. And thank God. Could you imagine a whole world full of people exactly like you? I would get very bored. I mean they are exactly like you but if the oneness didn't shade itself and color itself and blossom in unique ways. So of course there is that uniqueness but just underneath the uniqueness that's the one in the depths of that silence you are exactly the same as the greatest saint that's ever lived. You are exactly the same as Jesus. It's the same ultimate reality. The same or Ramana or you name it. It is exactly the same. That's what one means. As long as we've disconnected from the one in our virtual reality, we always feel somewhat lost. And as soon as we come out of that shading of truth in the mind, then we're home. But not uniquely home. Home in the sense of all things are this. This is home in the sense of no ultimate hierarchy. No better beings. And we are all that already. We don't become what we already are. We don't add what we already are onto us. If anything, we shake off the cobwebs of unreality and there's the truth just shining through right inside you. It's already there.