Update ... and Much Gratitude for your support

So many have responded to the call for support it is very moving. The Heart is SO generous ... and thanks to those who have offered some much needed financial assistance, we are viable for now and the expression can continue, through this blog and our newsletters. It is truly a privilege to "be lived" in service to Truth, and it is clear here that The Self is transforming ItSelf ... through each and every one of you all.

Some have asked about the health situation, so here is the latest: It is always an interesting life ... the "waking-dream!"

Had several bad days since the accident and hospital stay; mainly just tired plus bad gas, some diarrhea and a day of intense stomach pain and vomiting on Saturday 3/19; almost went to ER but Totality 'toughed it out' and by Sunday noon it was much better.

3/21 was VERY strange! Got super dizzy and faint, could not walk more that 3-4 steps before nearly falling!! Dropped hard to knees once (ouch!) Used a director’s chair like a walker to get around. Better by about noon Sunday. And got me a cool cane!

But there are (finally) answers.

Had a Gallbladder Ultrasound test and it seems the issue actually is Gall Bladder Disease, which hid itself until it got bad enough to be discoverable. (15 months worth! Ug.) I will be in for Gall Bladder surgery to remove the offender next Tuesday April 5th. (UG, MORE Bills!! LOL) That it is fixable is some good news, to finally discover what the culprit is after many months of dream-illness. Maybe there will be light at the end of that tunnel which is not the train! At least for this so-called Now :-))

Anyways ALL is ALWAYS just fine in and for The Unborn which We Are. And my Unborn Cane helps too! :-) More later, after surgery and recovery... And again Great Thanks to all for your support. This blog is for you, with Love and Gratitude. Freedom is your Real Nature. Remembering that is a great step forward (so to speak) on the volitionless pathless path to the Home you never really left!

As my dear friend and Sage Ramesh Balsekar pointed out over and over: " Any reality that can be conceived by an individual entity is based on a belief of personal absoluteness in temporality which is a complete misapprehension in itself.  The individual human just cannot accept the fact that his individuality and, more importantly, his individual volition or free-will is nothing more than an illusion."

Yep. That is a FACT. Everything else is speculation, or dreamlike supposition and makes for much craziness for the hapless seeker ... until there is a "sinking in" of the Message of Freedom, Love and True Joy.

May you see NOW that the sages are spot on in telling us all, "Indeed, You Are That!"

You Are Already THAT Which You Seek ..

Sri Nisargadatta always said (and I usually repeat from this place in the Absolute out-here-ness) that we must start with the FACT of the very immortal Being that We are, which has never been bound for an instant. In other words, what we are is already-liberated and there is no necessity to "negate" what doesn't have any actual substance or independent nature. I sometimes ask students, "how will you get rid of what you never actually had"? So though for some patterns of cells there is a resonance with the so called "negative way" that way is ultimately futile as the seeker continues to ignore What Is whilst trying to eliminate a ghost! 

You see, there is a kind of craziness to seeking what we already are. And one who is really "crazy" never KNOWS he or she is crazy. That is the definition of crazy ... being insane and not having a clue we are insane. By "insane" here what I mean to communicate is that we are deluded by our believing that we are separate, and "individual" with free will, despite the overwhelming evidence of our own experience to the contrary!

Why? So Life can Live Itself through you. Because Life is the potential for manifest-livingness, that potential simply must "potentiate" i.e. APPEAR as duality, the "pairs of opposites. But what APPEARS to be is not What IS, and that is where the insanity takes us. Now, when Totality begins to recover the sanity of Being-Knowing, as a natural unfolding, through a particular organism, the rediscovery of what we really are arrives (always unexpectedly, by the way!) and the "becoming" urge ends in the palpable experiencing of Being-Lived by The Absolute, and there is no longer the crazy belief in being a separate (and unfindable!) entity woith any vestige os control.

Sanity rocks. Knowing what we really are ends the insanity. And it happens all by itself! So the "bad news" is that You cannot attain enlightenment (sanity). The great GOOD news is "you" cannot AVOID that happening. Your destiny is to BE rather than "become". In the paradigm (false though it is) of Time and Space the Absolute Liberation form craziness is inevitable. So meanwhile relax, enjoy and have a blast. This is an AWESOME dream! Of what? Of LOVE, loving-to-BE. As it all IS; and as you are, You - and All That IS - are Already That.

But please do BOT believe a word of this. Let these pointers POINT to That-Which-IS, the NON conceptual Livingness-Experiencing of Life being lived through what you call "you". Meanwhile, let the good times roll!

23 March 2011 - New Podcast: Superstitions, and What IS

Click the link to listen; right click and save to download.

http://charliehayes36.tripod.com/superstitions23march2011.mp3

Great Thanks to "Herb" for giving permission to share this. 

There is no charge. Enjoy!!

"'me' and 'my' shadow"

Have you noticed that in the light of a sunny day your shadow goes everywhere you go? You are NOT confused that you are that shadow, are you? You may not have given this any thought. The suggestion is to do so now, because that shadow is a perfect metaphor for the irreducible fact that a shadow is NOT the substance that casts it. Without the substance of the body-form there would be no shadow. Clear, isn't it? 

Now in the very same way without the Substance of the eternal Noumenal-Subject, i.e. That which IS, prior to the phenomenal-appearance of the body form, is akin to the the appearance of the shadow cast by the bodyform. Step up the abstraction, the Understanding, that as your shadow is not you as that body-form, NOR is the body form the You which mirrors Itself as the appearing bodyform, a temporal appearance with ZERO independent substance apart from the Noumenal-Eternal which mirrors Itself as that bodyform with its shadow.

Now let us step out further in the Understanding (which as many of you will recall, was said by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, to be the ALL: "Understanding is ALL". What does that mean? Exactly what it says. Do not "qualify or quantify Understanding please; this is immortal Understanding that belongs to no-person, n0-mind, No Thing! Stepping up and out, ponder this: Could the shadow of a bodyform, what we call "my shadow" on that sunny day, even appear UNLESS the Sunlight was there to "make it appear"? In the same way the bodyform itself cannot appear, for that matter the entire manifest appearance could not appear, without the Pure I Consciousness which ITSELF is a mirrorization of the Eternal Light of the Absolute (non-relational) Being which you truly (and s0o lovingly-Being) are?

Everyone LOVES TO BE! Even when the dung hist the wall! I speak from experience here, NOT theory. That Light we are is the Eternal Being Loving To Be.

Now: Can the light of the full moon illuminate the SUN? In this pointing the suggestion that you are invited to ponder, is, "I am the Sun, NOT it's illuminations!" As has been elucidated so cleanly by many sages, "YOU are The Light of The World." Full Stop.

Don't pretend to be otherwise!

"Keep the "I am" in the focus of awareness, remember that you are , watch yourself ceaselessly and the unconscious will flow into the conscious without any special effort on your part. Wrong desires and fears, false ideas, social inhibitions are blocking and preventing its free interplay with the conscious. Once free to mingle, the two become one and the one becomes all." Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Back In The Saddle...

A few readers have wondered, what happened? No new posts for weeks... well, Stuff Happens! Around the first of March a serious gas and bloat condition. Treatment was sought and was in process, when, on Friday night March 4th, I went for a nice long walk outside in springlike weather. Somewhere along the way a series of crazy accidents happened in this Dream-Play we call "Life": This 74 your old body tripped and fell, hitting the head hard! Then after a time, it got up and tried to walk on but was addled and fell again, twice. Then some hours passed, and the temperature fell well below zero, and the body had only the meager protection of a light windbreaker. I recall waking, and feeling freezing cold; attempting to rise, I discovered my legs would not work! St that point I blacked out again. What follows was reported to me by my BFF John Greven and the very kind police sergeant who picked me up after my comatose body was spotted laying motionless and who transported me to the ER at the great local hospital, St. Mary's.

I was admitted with a core temp of 85 degrees F., the lowest the hospital had ever seen. Another hour and this report would be of the body freezing to death! There ensued three days of intensive care by the kindest bunch of people I have ever met, 2 days in the ICU, then another in the PCCU. (Post Critical Care Unit).

John was and is a rock! He cut short a trip to return to Enid to assist me, and spent hours with me while I was in the Hospital; then transported this olde bod back home on Tuesday, March 8th, where a rather long and painful recovery began. I simply had no energy to write anything! As it turned out I WAS able to talk to two really wonderful "seekers" for Self to Self consults around the 14th, but for the most part it was sleep 14 hours a day, plus wearing a track from bed to bathroom with serious GI problems. Today is the first day I have felt enough energy to update y'all! Even yesterday, I had a serious bout with excruciating pain which kept me up most of the night. But I am reminded of what Sri Nisargadatta said when asked if he was in great pain from his Cancer:" There IS great pain". In other words the pain, which is NO fun of course, is clearly an impersonal happening. Our True Identity is The Unborn, space-like Being-Awareness, IN which the dream arises....

I dread seeing the hospital bills for the co-pays, endless tests, etc. but, somehow these things always seem to be worked out by The Unborn, which manages everything perfectly. (With I must add a lot of support from the readers of this blog for which there is immense gratitude!)

Now it appears there will need to be (perhaps) surgery on the Gall Bladder which was tested last week and which is "partially abnormal". I see my primary care doctor on Tuesday so we shall see what happens with that. But as I type this there is great gas, bloating and near constant belching, same old stuff I have had going on for over a year, which ain't a lot of fun! :-) Funny thing is, though, when I talk on the consultations it goes away! I would call that Grace.

As always all of this is absolutely perfect. Totality is Totality, including that, as many are aware, "getting this old ain't for sissies!"

There is no 'there' there!

On a friend’s site, this question appeared and I was invited to "chime in". This is my response...

Q. I don't think I'm there yet, enlightened or whatever I shall call it

C: Dear One:

Where is this one who claims "I am not there?" There is no 'there' to get to, there is only here and finally even less than that. The state of the sage is akin to deep, dreamless sleep, where there are no thoughts, no experiences, absolutely NOTHING and yet ... on waking from sleep or dream is so seems there is a "me-in-here" and a "world-out-there!" BUT IT ALSO SEEMS THAT THE EARTH IS PLAT AND THAT THE SUN ROTATES ROUND THE EARTH to mix a couple of absolute fallacies. The fool is a seeker / the seeker is a fool / BUT is that which is in fact nothing more than a passing thought. YOU are NOT a thought (or any other thing!) YOU are NO THING. That is why "you" cannot attain this; because you already ARE this. Between each arising thought, YOU ARE. Can you deny hat FACT of Being-As-It-Is?? In other words, what you are is empty and meaningless, and that doesn't mean anything either! Seeking for something other than what-is at some imaginary time-not-NOW is the fools errand. The mechanisms of thought go on for the Sage; BUT! It is just, as JD points to, from many angles, "nuttin' serious." It ain't about YOU, dear One. There is NO separate "YOU!” It is about the absolute death of the False-Sense-of-Me (FSM) which happens when the forces of Nature (God, Source) bring that happening about. The bad news? You cannot bring this death-of-FSM about. The good news? You cannot prevent it!

Relax as best you can, forget all this and go have some fun, Seeking is misery. Why keep beating your head up against a brick wall? Just stop. Just rest. You are Awareness, fully and always Present Eternally. As Ramana Maharshi said, "Be as you are!"

Is it true?

In the normal course of events, i.e. in our everyday assumed common-sense world-view, we "know" that "I am HERE" and the world of other people and all those trillions of "things" are "out there" ... i.e. NOT "here" where "I or me" is.

But is that TRUE?

Look and see: Isn't it believed, for the unexamined assumed-me, that "I am here"? As in: "Wherever you go there you are (meaning here you are)... And if I ask you where this text is appearing wouldn't you automatically say, "there" (On the page or on the computer screen)?This assumption of a "me or I" IN HERE (meaning perhaps, inside the body somewhere, gives rise to the assumption all the rest of it is NOT "in here". 

Look at this body of text. Doesn't it appear as an object out there apart from the "in-here-ness" of what you call your self? This is a fallacy ... but don't take my word for it. Take a good look. Maybe Socrates had a good point when he said, "The unexamined life is not worth living. Perhaps, to challenge our deeply believed assumptions is what Socrates was urging when he said that about life and it's worthwhileness being tied to investigating the everyday commonsense quote reality. Meaning: Investigating deeply that assumption of a separate being "in here" (or more simply put, just "here", which brings along with it the correlate assumption of "there" i.e. NOT here. Using a simple yet very potent question: Is it TRUE? 

Maybe what is real is that YOU as-you-really-ARE are HERE AND all those trillions of objects that appear what you call "there" are also HERE? A pointer has been coined to point to the fact of what is seen when the assumptions are challenged that there is such a thing (factually) as a "me in here" and a world out there. Look in your direct experience. Look again at this body of text; just look without reading it. Where does this body of text appear? Where exactly, in your own actual experience, does it arise? Is it not "out here" i.e. an arising all at once with what you call "I or me" AND the body that also appears IN THE SPACE i.e. in the no-thing-ness that we can label for the sake of our discussion "this out-here-ness?" 

So is it true that there are two things going on i.e. "here" and "there"? Or is it that experience (NOT concept or belief or theory) shows (before the mind, language, gets into the mix) that there is only "hereness" as what is the actual fact of the matter and the assumption of there being two things, "here" and "there", are simply wrong?

Perception seems to show us this "here" and "there" as reality. Nut IS THAT TRUE? Perception shows us that the sun travels around the earth. We know that THAT is not true. Although that assumption was at one time firmly believed and any challenge to that assumption seemed like nonsense. Now we know that the assumption was the nonsense and not the challenge, which in essence said, what if this assumption that the sun rotates around the earth is not true?

To examine the assumption of there being a here and there separate and apart from each other is my proposition tonight. I suggest dropping all our cherished beliefs and checking this out IN OUR EXPERIENCE. Then there may be a valuable insight into what provides for a "life worth living"; a life of possibility, a life of being Space rather than being a "thing among other things, a freedom, power and peacefulness rather than a life of effort and struggle trying to "get life to fit some picture or ideal". In short, perhaps, when your stand is, as Sri Nisargadatta's was, I am That, "That" being the Space IN which life arises and subsides, there will appear an unpredictable freedom and power, not for the "I or me' but rather for who you REALLY are.

The ball is in your court. I invite you to take it and BE, to rediscover the freedom and love that is your true nature when you have challenged and undone those fallacies of beliefs and concepts that bring you no peace. Please feel free to write non.duality@yahoo.com if you would like support.

I Love You.

(I am indebted to Werner Erhard, who inspired this conversation. For more: Go To "Presentation by Werner Erhard" , Then click "One Click Download".)

Heart-Felt Thanks

There have been some good responses to the call for financial support to keep the site, podcasts and newsletter live and available to all. THANK YOU for your generosity and for recognizing that the Living Message impacts life and living in ways that make a positive difference! Your support is crucial, and very deeply appreciated. It has been a great help in dealing with the ongoing health issues, which can be quite costly! 

It warms the heart to know that there are those who are willing to share their resources to benefit readers of these pages. YOU are making a difference in the quality of life for those who are sincere and yet are not able to share financially. Much Love to you all, and I hope the support will continue and I will be able to keep sharing in these formats! My heart glows with your good wishes. Thanks again and again, your own,

charlie hayes

01 March 2011