Knowledge and Religion

Turning Ignorance into Wisdom

2012-05-23T22:37:22-07:00

Ignorance is a fascinating substance. That’s because it is not a substance at all. As soon as you learn about your ignorance it vaporizes into nothingness. For instance, how long have you not known about this blog, blog.light-up-your-life.com? It was for most of your life, wasn’t it? In a second you learned about this blog and in that second that ignorance disappeared. Where did it go? You can’t really say, can you?

Now even though ignorance is nothing, it can wreak all kinds of havoc. Here’s an ancient story that will illustrate this: As the evening shadows were starting to fall, a woman was walking through the forest on her way home after a long days hike. She only had a few more miles to go. Then she felt a bite on her leg. She turned around and there was a huge poisonous snake. She sat down and started to cry. Now she knew that she was going to die. And she had so much still to do.

Do you mistake a snake for a rope?
At that moment a nun came by walking to the local monastery. She saw the woman crying and asked, “What is the matter?” The woman replied, “I was just bitten by a poisonous snake and am about to die.” The nun looked around and in an instant she saw what had happened. The first thing the nun said was, “Don’t worry; let me see your bite.” Then she said, “See that branch over there with a little blood on it. You were scratched with that branch. Now see that rope hanging behind you. That is the snake that you thought you saw.” At that moment it clicked; the woman realized that she had mistaken a rope for a snake. Relieved that she was no longer going to die, the woman thanked the nun and continued on her journey home.

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Making Your Wisdom Come Alive is a guide to waking up to your innate freedom. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also, now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.

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So what happened: ignorance of the rope was the cause of her fear? Not knowing what the rope really was she assumed it was a snake. And the imagined snake was the cause of her fears. With the knowledge of the real nature of the snake it disappeared and she was left with its real form. Discovering the rope the women’s fears disappeared.

Find happiness at its source
Ok, you might wonder, “This is a nice story but how does it affect me?” Do you know what the world really is? If you don’t look clearly into the nature of the world, you may give it a power that it just doesn’t have and then you will be disappointed. For instance do you give the world the power to make you happy? If so, look again. Happiness comes from the place where you actually experience it and that is from you.

As long as you assume that happiness comes from the world you will feel the full force of its motion. Like the waves in the ocean, happiness will seem to come toward you, and then to recede. But once you discover the real place of happiness you will find the substance that the whole universe rests on, and that substance is you. Then seeing things as they are, your fears will disappear.

Asking Questions
If this blog seems a little theoretical to you, ask questions. Then you will see how the explanations in this blog apply to your life. And the freedom that you find will be real. Questioning is the key to your freedom. You’ll see that when you question limitation, it falls away.

Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com. I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it. When you can ask, you are well on your way to freeing yourself from the limitations that seem to cause your suffering. Of course, to preserve confidentiality your name will be left off.

Also for more detailed explanations and examples read through these blogs or get my book, Making Your Wisdom Come Alive.

Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman

The Energy for Liberation

2012-05-16T14:37:07-07:00

The most important qualification for liberation is the desire for liberation.

Shri Adi Shankaracharya

Seek liberation with the same strength as a person who is drowning seeks air.

Ramana Maharshi

This thing called liberation is your self-nature. That means that you are what you are seeking. Liberation is the one thing that is so close that we overlook it. In fact even thing is a misnomer. Liberation is freedom from the limitations of the things that we see. It is standing in your original nature, naked without form.

As you probably can tell, standing here defies words and descriptions. The only way to know liberation is by being liberation, which means by being your-self. So here’s the question: If you are what you are looking for, why put in the energy to seek your-self? After all you exert energy to get something that you don’t have; not a thing that you already possess. So what’s the problem?

The energy that questions the assumptions
that we live by
The energy for liberation is a different kind of energy; it is the energy to question assumptions — the things that we take to be normal. Assumptions are interesting forms. They can box us in and cause all types of mischief. But as soon as we recognize an assumption as an assumption and not as reality, it disappears. The reason is that this mysterious substance has no form of its own. We are the ones who lend our sense of reality to assumptions. In order to free ourselves from them we have to go back and look at them with a fresh set of eyes. Dullness is living life without questioning these assumptions.

So what are these assumptions anyway? Essentially there are two types of assumptions. One is public, the ones that we all agree to, like we are limited to a body that lives in a world. The other is private, the views that color how we live and how we react to the individual situations that we face.

First what are public assumptions?
As I have talked about in many of these blogs and in my book “Making Your Wisdom Come Alive,” when you examine your actual experience closely, this world and your identity return to their proper perspective. And that’s the perspective that came into being before you were born.

To get a glimpse of what this means, think of last night’s dream. If you went around proclaiming to all of the people in that dream, “You are just dreaming,” their reply would be, “No we’re not, we’re awake.” To prove his point, one of these characters hit you on the head, and that’s when you woke up. The dream was gone so totally, it was as if it never came into being. And yet the sense of reality that for a moment seemed to belong to the dream remained just the same. That’s because reality came from you and not from the dream world.

Is the waking world like a dream?
If you experiment a little you will see that this waking world is similar to a dream. Yes this waking state seems to last longer than the dream, but that’s only if you use waking time as your measurement. Remember the dream too can seem to last for hundreds of years. Of course when you wake up with a startle and look at the waking clock, only a half an hour of waking time went by. As you can see, even time is more flexible than we could have imagined.
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Making Your Wisdom Come Alive is a guide to waking up to your innate freedom. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also, now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.

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Another experiment that will make this clearer is to ask, “Where do I experience the world? Is it over there or is here?” Of course if it was really over there you wouldn’t see it. I hope you can see that if you have some fun and experiment a little, whole new vistas will open up before you. And the world will turn out to be different than you ever could have imagined. If you can put in the energy to question our common assumptions, you will find the very source of reality and bliss.

So what are private assumptions?
Now as I promised there is another type of assumption and that is your personal view of the world, your mind, and your-self. An example of this type of view is that the world is a scary place and you have to defend yourself against it. Another famous example is the thought, “I can’t,” a lousy definition for your mind.

As you may see these assumptions govern your reactions to the world and how you live in it. You may feel as if these views are just natural because you had them for most of your life. In fact you may think that this is just the way things are or just the way I am. Now they may seem so close to you that you don’t even notice them. But you do see them and that’s why you live by them. And that’s why you suffer from fear, anger and all kinds of suffering. The clue that these private concepts aren’t natural is that they cause suffering and suffering does not feel natural.

So what is the energy that you need for liberation? It is not the kind of energy you need to lift weights or run around the block. It is the kind of energy to look at the world, your body and your mind afresh. It is the kind of energy that recognizes concepts as concepts and not as reality. With the knowledge that there is a way out, you want to challenge suffering.

The secret to destroying assumptions
Now here’s the secret that many of us overlook: destroying concepts is not a matter of changing your mind. Any change in the mind will not be permanent. An example of merely a mental change is, now I get angry, when I am free I will never get angry. The secret is that when you recognize the views of the world and your mind that cause the anger you are free. At that point you are standing outside the concept. Standing outside your concept, the changes that happen in your life will surprise you. After the situation that usually causes you to blow your stack, you will look in amazement and think: “This situation didn’t bother me at all!”

Then life will then become a real adventure. What you thought you knew becomes sparkling and new. The same world with the same experiences will become distinctive and unique. So the energy that you put in to destroy concepts is the energy that empties into unbounded joy, free from the least trace of suffering. That’s what you want out of life anyway, isn’t it?

Asking Questions
If this blog seems a little theoretical to you, ask questions. Then you will see how the explanations in this blog apply to your life. And the freedom that you find will be real. Questioning is the key to your freedom. You’ll see that when you question limitation, it falls away.

Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com. I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it. When you can ask, you are well on your way to freeing yourself from the limitations that seem to cause your suffering. Of course, to preserve confidentiality your name will be left off.

Also for more detailed explanations and examples read through these blogs or get my book, Making Your Wisdom Come Alive.

Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman

Michael, do you want everyone to live in poverty?

2012-05-08T08:03:09-07:00

You often hear me talk about finding happiness at its source, and its source is the place where you actually experience it. Happiness does not lie in the things that you see. So now you are asking, if people aren’t constantly hankering after more things, won’t we all be poor? After all our whole economy is based on buying and selling things like cars and houses etc.

Before I can answer this question we have to look into the purpose of life. It is of course to find happiness, coupled with the assurance that this happiness won’t slip away in the next moment. We accumulate more and more things with the hope that we can find the lasting happiness that we intuit life has in store for us.  In order to make sure that this happiness lasts, we build walls around our house and hire guards with the hope that thieves don’t snatch our happiness away.

We long for happiness that will not disappear
And yet the little things that snatch our joy away are insidious. They seem to attack us from inside of our walls. For instance no matter how thick the walls, they cannot keep out old age and diseases like cancer. No matter how much wealth we have, we cannot bargain with death. _____________________________________________________________________________________

Making Your Wisdom Come Alive is a guide to waking up to your innate freedom. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also, now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.

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Moreover we fear that the thoughts in our mind will invade our walls and sabotage our happiness; thus we attempt to keep our mind occupied by travelling the world, and piping music and four hundred TV channels into our living room. However we begin to find that no matter how much money we spend on travel and entertainment, we do not find the satisfaction that we want. We squirm as we lie by the swimming pool that we own, unable to relax in our own skin. And yet even in our dying days we long for the happiness that does not disappear.

The Secret to finding lasting happiness
Where can we possibly look? We cannot take any of these things with us when we pass from this world. Still we hope that at the time of death our sense of happiness and peace will not disappear. In order to find lasting happiness, you have to know several things: First while material things can be an aide while living here on earth, they cannot be the purpose of life. The reason is simple: things do not contain happiness. No matter what you do to them, squeeze them, store them, or sell them, things just can’t give you what they don’t have.
Second there is a great harmony in this world that provides us with what we need. Just like we need to breathe and there is air, we need to eat and there will be food. Your needs may be fulfilled in a different way than you expected, but if your desire to wake up to your real identity is strong, you will get what you need to complete your spiritual practice. That is part of this great harmony.

Here’s a quote from The New Testament, Matthew 6:26 that expresses this:

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

Joy comes from your Being
If you meditate on the harmony of the universe you will discover that your self-nature includes your mind and the universe; you can never be divided. Then you will understand fully how you are the very source of the happiness that you are looking for.

With this deep experiential understanding that comes from your own self-nature you will live at peace in your innate joy. It will make no difference if you appear to have the wealth of a king or live in poverty. And when you leave this earth the thing that lights up your experience and makes it seem so real, that thing will remain; that is what you really are. And most important you will not expect the things of the world to give you what they can’t: the joy that comes from your being.

Asking Questions
If this blog seems a little theoretical to you, ask questions. Then you will see how the explanations in this blog apply to your life. And the freedom that you find will be real. Questioning is the key to your freedom. You’ll see that when you question limitation, it falls away.

Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com. I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it. When you can ask, you are well on your way to freeing yourself from the limitations that seem to cause your suffering. Of course, to preserve confidentiality your name will be left off.

Also for more detailed explanations and examples read through these blogs or get my book, Making Your Wisdom Come Alive.

Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman

Diving into the Unknown

2012-05-01T16:44:01-07:00

I am curious to find out why many of the people that I talk with and write to hesitate to take up the path of Self Knowledge. After all, when you look into it, you find that the source of happiness and the Consciousness that lights up the world come from you and not from the world. Another way of saying this is that wisdom and happiness come from the place where you actually experience them, not from the things that you see.

Self-knowledge sets the meaning of life on its head. Meaning in life does not come from what you do or what you can get; meaning comes from what you are. It’s just that we are so close to our self-nature that we look right past it and identify with the things that we see like our body and the thoughts in our mind. And thus the path of Self-Knowledge is the discovery of the most fundamental quality that gives meaning to life; this quality is what you really are.

What you are is greater than any thought _____________________________________________________________________________________

Making Your Wisdom Come Alive is a guide to waking up to your innate freedom. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also, now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.

___________________________________________________________________

So where’s the hesitation? Your mind cannot conceive of your Self-Nature. Mind just draws a blank. That’s because you see your mind — but you mind doesn’t see you. The steady unwavering flame of Consciousness which lights up the mind is your real identity. Unchanging and without motion, it is however, impossible for your thoughts to grasp. And thus you have to know yourself in a different way: you know yourself by standing as yourself; not by creating a structure in your mind.

This makes self-discovery an adventure. That’s because you can’t preconceive or theorize about your identity. All that you can do is experience it; and it is by this direct experience that you know your self-nature. Do you know what you discover? Your self-nature is much better and much more inclusive than you would ever have thought. If on the other hand you try to think your way to your real identity, you will never get it right.

Usually you think of an adventure as traveling to an unknown place. But this is discovering the place that you know the best. And yet when you discover the place where you really stand, it feels completely new. As I told you, it doesn’t fit into a state of mind.

Let go of limitation and find your real home
Here’s why I think that people fail to take up the path of self-discovery in earnest: First, if you stand as the thoughts in your mind you may think, “This self doesn’t really exist.” That’s why I write this blog; to show you and prove to you that your real home is beyond the thoughts in your mind. Or second, you may encounter fear of the unknown. And that’s why I write that your self-nature is the source of the happiness that you hope to get in a million different ways. Rather than scary, your self-nature is a very friendly place.

But there comes a point where you have to put this blog aside and dive inward to your very core. To dive deep, let go of the things that you are used to identifying with like the body and mind. If you can find a way to let go of the limitations that you see, you will be in for a surprise. You will find that which was never born and will never pass away; that you are the steady flame of wisdom. Although you will have finally come to rest in your true home, you will not find the words to describe you newfound joy. Still you will know for sure that you are standing in the place where everyone hopes to be.

Asking Questions
If this blog seems a little theoretical to you, ask questions. Then you will see how the explanations in this blog apply to your life. And the freedom that you find will be real. Questioning is the key to your freedom. You’ll see that when you question limitation, it falls away.

Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com. I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it. When you can ask, you are well on your way to freeing yourself from the limitations that seem to cause your suffering. Of course, to preserve confidentiality your name will be left off.

Also for more detailed explanations and examples read through these blogs or get my book, Making Your Wisdom Come Alive.

Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman

On Facing Death

2012-04-23T04:22:29-07:00

This is a wonderful question. Is there an answer for the one thing that we all have to face? Find out below:

Question:
A 17 year old friend of mine recently passed away. He slipped in a track event and hit his head on a metal bar. I can still see the blood running down his face as the medics came to take him away. I can’t stop crying and wonder what I can do.

Our Response:
You have our sympathies at the loss of your friend. It is good however, that you are willing to acknowledge your emotions and face death head on. So many people try to ignore and avoid looking into the one thing that we will all face. Moreover, you don’t know how long your life will last. There is no such thing as a contract with God guaranteeing a long and healthy life. But here’s the good news: There is an answer for death and you can find it in this lifetime.

Knowing this, you do not have to block your emotions. Rather you can use them as the fuel and determination that you need to challenge conventional wisdom and to look at life afresh. After all, conventional wisdom says that you are limited to a body and of course the body will die. But are you really limited to a body, or is there more to you than meets the eye? The way you find this more-ness is by discovering what you really are.

You are space-like consciousness
To give you a sense as to what self discovery is like, if space said, “I am afraid that when this room gets demolished I will die,” what would your reply be? “No you are much more that this room. You exist inside of it, outside of it and even in the walls. When the room gets demolished you will merge with all space, and become like you are even now.”
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Making Your Wisdom Come Alive is a guide to waking up to your innate freedom. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.

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You can give this same advice to yourself. That’s because you are the space-like consciousness that sees limitation. You are not the one caught in it. Whether it is the body or the thoughts in your mind, you are more than the limitations that you face.

You are the still reference point for change

You may feel that everything in the universe is changing and in motion. Even the body is not the same as it was when you were a baby. We all know that the body grows old; sometimes it is thin and sometimes it is fat; sometimes it is sick and sometimes it is well. And yet somehow in the depth of our being we feel that we don’t change. Did you ever wonder where this feeling comes from? It comes from your identity; it is from the stillness of your being that you see the changes as your body grows older and then passes away. Moreover, greater than the body, you are the absolute stillness that is the reference point for all motion. In other words you are the stillness that the motion of the universe rests upon. And when the body passes away, it is the universe that disappears, not the stillness that you are.
Of course this is not something that the mind can conceive of. The mind cannot grasp the one who knows it. So you have to know this stillness is a different way. You know this stillness because this is what you really are. Still awareness is your direct and immediate experience. When you discover this you will be in for a surprise. You will find that you are free of birth and death and all of the ups and downs that the universe seems to present.

How can you find this stillness?
The practice is simple; where you take your self-nature and superimpose it upon the things that change, free yourself by remembering that your real home is the stillness that sees the change. Sometimes this stillness is called the witnessing consciousness. When you die to the limitations that you take to be reality, you will wake up to your real identity in its full glory. Welcome to your new home! It is the space-like Consciousness that was never born and will never die. Stand here and be free.

Asking Questions
If this blog seems a little theoretical to you, ask questions. Then you will see how the explanations in this blog apply to your life. And the freedom that you find will be real. Questioning is the key to your freedom. You’ll see that when you question limitation, it falls away.

Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com. I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it. When you can ask, you are well on your way to freeing yourself from the limitations that seem to cause your suffering. Of course, to preserve confidentiality your name will be left off.

Also for more detailed explanations and examples read through these blogs or get my book, Making Your Wisdom Come Alive.

Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman

The Source of Love

2012-04-14T03:11:27-07:00

The other day I was talking with my wife, Brigit, and she described waking up as finding the source of love. This is a great way of describing the thing that can really only be described by your own experience. People often think that realization is a feeling of love or happiness that they find in their heart. Furthermore they blame that feeling on what they do, what they have, or on their environment. Then something happens and they lose that feeling. They exclaim, “Oh no, I lost my realization!” Indeed their feelings of love and happiness seem to come and go. So let’s see what happens:

Are you what you do?
First let’s look at the things that people do. They might identify as: “I’m a teacher,” “I’m a lawyer,” “I’m a doctor,” “I’m a policemen,” or “I help others, etc.” For the doer satisfaction depends on the results of their actions. Sometimes they go as planned and sometimes they don’t. For instance sometimes a doctor can save a patient and sometimes the patient dies. Sometimes the teacher succeeds in educating his or her students, and sometimes the students are just a ball of mischief. Similarly, sometimes a person is grateful for the help of a saint, and sometimes not. Identifying as the doer, when a person’s actions succeed, the person feels happy, when the person runs into one of the multifarious obstacles that come along with any action, the person feels apprehensive or unhappy. And thus people swing between happiness and misery.

Does love come from the people you love? _____________________________________________________________________________________

Give the gift of enlightenment when you give Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.

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Second, sometimes people depend on the things that they have and the people they relate to for love. The problem with blaming love on relationships is that too many moving parts have to line up. When the parts diverge, love seems to disappear. If you need proof, just look at the divorce rate in the United States. Once you notice all of the ingredients that have to come together to derive love from another person, you won’t be surprised by this high rate.

First the person who is the object of your love has to be there and in the condition you expect; then the person’s desire and capacity to enjoy the relationship has to be there. Finally the person’s mind must be there. The same thing that’s true for the other person is true for you too. You must be there and in good condition (not a corpse etc.), your desire and capacity to enjoy the relationship must be there, and your mind also must be there. Isn't it a wonder that with the necessity all of these changing parts coming together, that a relationship can ever be the cause of your love?

Does love come from your environment?
Third, some people depend on their environment to find love in the form of peace. In order to find peace they move into a monastery or into a quiet place in the country. Everything goes well until the construction crew comes in and makes a racket as they chop down trees. Or the monks in the monastery go into the city to buy food where the bustle of the city seems to destroys their enlightenment. It turns out that even your environment is a moving part. Using it as a crutch, you will never find the constant flame of love.

Now here’s where it get more subtle. Love does not come from a feeling in your heart either. Where ever there’s a separate experiencer the experience of love will seem to come and go. So where is love anyway?

To a separate experiencer love seems to come and go.
You can see why people have trouble conceiving of love as a steady flame that supports the whole universe. Even though they crave this love, they think of it as the most nebulous, volatile and unpredictable thing in the universe. There are simply too many moving parts that have to come together in order to experience love. That is of course if you don’t know the secret of love. So here’s the secret: Love comes from what you are, not from what you do, what you have, or where you live. Here’s a practical way of stating the same thing: Love comes from the place where you actually experience it, not from the things you see and experience. Remember you don’t know love as a separate thing; rather you know love because you are love.

Take these words and use them as a pointer to find the love that you have to experience to know; the love that does not fit into the concepts conceived by your mind. Things that you experience are in constant motion going this way and that. But you are the steady flame that brings everything to its source in oneness. Like a moth is attracted to a flame, everyone is attracted to the flame of love. Not realizing that this love is what they are, they strive for it in the millions of things that they think and do. Once you discover this truth, you will know for sure that enlightenment is finding the source of love. Fortunately that is what you are!

Asking Questions
If this blog seems a little theoretical to you, ask questions. Then you will see how the explanations in this blog apply to your life. And the freedom that you find will be real. Questioning is the key to your freedom. You’ll see that when you question limitation, it falls away.

Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com. I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it. When you can ask, you are well on your way to freeing yourself from the limitations that seem to cause your suffering. Of course, to preserve confidentiality your name will be left off.

Also for more detailed explanations and examples read through these blogs or get my book, Making Your Wisdom Come Alive.

Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman

The Secret Meaning of Easter

2012-04-06T08:46:38-07:00

You may wonder why we celebrate Good Friday and Easter. Shouldn't these days be days of morning? After all Jesus just died a gruesome death on the cross. I think that after reading this blog you will see that there is a secret meaning to dying and then rising up. Understanding this secret, you will know why we celebrate Good Friday and Easter.

The key can be found in the Nag Hammadi library. Although the Gospels in the Nag Hammadi library didn’t make it into the standard New Testament, they give a clear sense of the inner life of Jesus and his disciples; and most important they point to how anyone who desires this secret can find that which was never born and will never die.

I thought I would start this blog in celebration of Easter with Jesus introducing himself as he really is. He is not pointing to something that you can comprehend with your mind. You know the truth of these words in a more direct way. You understand these words because this is a description of what you are. Notice that Jesus is describing himself in the third person. Now from the Nag Hammadi Library:

Matthew said to him, “Lord no one can find the truth except through you. Therefore teach us the truth.” The Savior said, “The one who is ... is ineffable. No sovereignty knew him, no authority, no subjection, nor did any creature, from the foundation of the world, except himself.

For he is immortal. He is eternal having no birth; for everyone who has birth will perish. He is unbegotten, having no beginning; for everyone who has a beginning has an end. No one rules over him, since he has no name; for whoever has a name is a creation of another. He is unnamable. He has no human form; for whoever has a human form is the creation of another. He has his own semblance-- not like the semblance that we have received or seen, but a strange semblance that surpasses all things and is better than the totalities.

It looks to every side and sees itself from itself. He is without end; he is incomprehensible. He is ever imperishable, and has no likeness. He is unchanging good. He is faultless. He is everlasting. He is blessed. He is unknowable, while he nonetheless knows himself. He is immeasurable. He is untraceable. He is perfect, having no defect. He is imperishably blessed. He is the “Father of the Universe.

From: Eugnostos the Blessed
Translated by Douglas M. Parrott
The Nag Hammadi Library In English
Copyright © 1977 by E. J. Brill Leiden The Netherlands

The Nag Hammadi Library was discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945. The texts were rescued just before they were about to get burned up for firewood. They were obviously edited out of the New Testament but contain the highest wisdom.

Death and Birth into your own Nature
Now, in celebration of Easter it is time to talk about dying and being reborn. Not in the physical sense because if Easter was about what happened to a man who lived 2,000 years ago it wouldn’t have much relevance for us today.

If on the other hand dying and being reborn is a description of the potential for each and every human being then it is relevant for us even today. So what is the nature of the death that Jesus was talking about? This death was dying to limitation. That’s when he discovered the truth that was before the universe, behind the universe, and the remainder when the universe perishes. As Jesus said: “He is without end; he is incomprehensible. He is ever imperishable, and has no likeness. He is unchanging good.”

Dying to limitation
By the end of this article you will see how it is possible to die to limitation. And when you die to limitation, you are automatically born to eternal life. Now you will understand why Easter is a celebration. That’s because even now you are unlimited. It is only an assumption that you are limited by the things that you see. Death is destroying this assumption and returning to what you really are so beautifully described by Jesus above.

The reason we seem to be limited is that we overlook our essential nature and take our identity to be limited to the objects that we see. That’s because all of our senses are directed outward towards the world; there is no sense that can look back and see our real nature.

You are the light that shines on limitation
So we have to know our self in a different way. This is by direct experiential knowledge. You know yourself because you are your self. In fact it is because you are Consciousness that you even know about limitation.

If I told you to go outside with a flashlight and look for the sun you would think that I was crazy. That’s because the sun is light. You do not need a separate light to see the sun. In the same way you are Consciousness; you do not need a separate consciousness or mind to know yourself. You can know yourself directly.

But you see your body and you see your mind, you see your roles in the world, and you take these objects to be yourself. And by their nature bodies are limited by birth and death, health and sickness. Your mind is also limited by its condition and its ability to know. But fortunately these objects are just that, objects in your Awareness. They are not you and they do not define you.

Are you just a thought?
The most subtle object that you see is the thought “I”. Just because you think a thought with “I” in the subject, doesn’t mean that the “I” is you. Here “I” is just another object that you see. This “I” is sometimes called the ego. The ego is also the little connection that attaches to limitation and makes it seem as if it is really you. When your ego dies there is no place left for limitation to rest. As for you, you can rest in your true home. Is this the inner meaning of the crucifixion?

Returning to your home
When by your deepest and most direct experience, you die to the limitations that you thought were you, you wake to your real identity which is the space like Consciousness that was never born and will never pass away. Here you get to abide as the source of wisdom and joy.

Now you see why we celebrate Good Friday with joy and not with the sadness of a funeral dirge. It is a celebration of dying to our assumed limitations where the ego falls away. And then Easter celebrates rising up to our innate freedom where we can rest in peace eternally.

Other resources available to you
If you need a more basic understanding of this Self-Knowledge or if you just want support for your practice, go to www.light-up-your-life.com and read down the main column. Also check out the different links that we provide as resources that can help sharpen the focus of your meditation practice.

Another resource that we have is the book, Making Your Wisdom Come Alive , a step by step guide taking you from your everyday experience to the highest wisdom and truth. To find out more, click on the link below: http://www.light-up-your-life.com/wisdom.html.

Asking Question
Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com. I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it.

Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants to can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman
www.light-up-your-life.com

On viewing a dead body

2012-04-03T13:48:44-07:00

Last week my wife and I had the opportunity to attend the wake and final viewing of the body of a friend. The body was fixed up perfectly, his hands where red as if the blood was still flowing through them, and he even seemed to still be breathing.

Perhaps this final viewing is a symbol of the hope that we have that people don't really die. For us it was an opportunity to meditate on where does life come from and where does it reside; where does our sense of existence go when the body passes away? Is death more like a phone line getting cut, where the person remains at the other end.

Fortunately we know a secret so that we don’t have to approach this meditation on a mere mental level based on just hope or faith. This means that we can actually have the direct and immediate experience of what we know. It is not the discovery of something new. Rather it is the discovery of what we are.

Our aim is not to leave the body
At first it may seem reasonable that we are limited by the confines of the body. But if you are willing to investigate this a little, I think you will be amazed as to what you will find. It is just a flying rumor that we are limited by the body, which is just another object that our senses capture. And even if everyone were to disagree with us, we still have the freedom to investigate this matter for ourselves, to see if we are really limited by the physical body.

Now the first thing that you should know is that we are not trying to get out of the body. Attempting to leave the body assumes that you are in it to begin with. No, just rest in your usual place and begin your exploration. Here are a few suggestions:

Meditate to discover how free you really are
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Give the gift of enlightenment when you give Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.

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First of all everyone reading this article has changed immensely since they were a tiny baby, then a child, a student and now some of you are adults and even advancing into old age. But for all of this change do you feel as if you have changed? When you look at your direct experience do you feel that you have grown up and are now old, or is there something about you that is always the same. Perhaps you can find this sameness in a quality of seeing, hearing or knowing that has not changed. In your meditation I think you will find that this feeling of sameness is closer to what you are than the ever-changing body.

Let’s try another experiment to see if the thing called a body, the thing that you are supposed to be, is the real you. We all know our experience is supposed to be that of a body. But let’s dive a little deeper and see if “supposed to be” is really true. In your meditation close your eyes. Do you really feel a body there? Of course you may feel a sore back or a stiff neck. But does that add up to a body? What do you actually feel? Although words may not be adequate to describe it, you will we pleasantly surprised by the depth of your actual experience.

The final viewing of an old friend
I know that many people conceive of spiritual experience as being way out there somewhere. But if you are willing to look afresh, you will find that the thing you value the most is right here. It is your true identity. Standing here in your new-found freedom, you will view your body like the final viewing of an old friend.

Asking Questions
If this blog seems a little theoretical to you, ask questions. Then you will see how the explanations in this blog apply to your life. And the freedom that you find will be real. Questioning is the key to your freedom. You’ll see that when you question limitation, it falls away.

Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com. I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it. When you can ask, you are well on your way to freeing yourself from the limitations that seem to cause your suffering. Of course, to preserve confidentiality your name will be left off.

Also for more detailed explanations and examples read through these blogs or get my book, Making Your Wisdom Come Alive.

Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman

On Atheism

2012-03-27T23:30:20-07:00

The other day someone asked me what I thought of atheism. Some people believe that God is way up in the sky somewhere, and we are way down here and never the twain shall meet. And where God and people don’t meet, there’s nothing left but belief. And where there is merely a belief that cannot be backed by evidence, there is plenty of room for non-belief too. Belief and non-belief are both based on the same fictitious story.

But here’s a question for you: what if you didn’t have to hold your breath, put your reason aside, and just hope that God is somewhere up there? What if you could use your reason to find the direct and immediate experience of God? Wouldn’t that completely take you out of both sides of this faith verses non-faith argument?

Where is God not? _____________________________________________________________________________________

Give the gift of enlightenment when you give Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.

___________________________________________________________________
It seems like reasoning is impossible for something that you can’t perceive, isn’t it? Fortunately there is a way out of this conundrum. If there is really One God as monotheistic religions claim, and everything is nothing but that God, then God would have to be you too, wouldn’t he or she? Here’s another way of putting it that might make this clearer: before there was anything, if God wanted to create a world, She couldn’t have gone to the local hardware store to get the necessary supplies She needed. That’s because hardware stores didn’t exist yet. So like a spider creates a web out of himself, God had to create the world out of Herself. Indeed even the stuff that you see created in this universe is nothing but God.

But there is more to it, and this is what makes the knowledge of God so fascinating. If everything is God, you must also be God; when you know yourself you will know something that you can’t even imagine: The "You are also God," turns out to be oneness without the "also". The things that you see as separate are not really separate. They are just you in your original form. This means that when you know yourself, by your direct experience you know what God is too. God is not a separate object that you see; God is what you are.
How to know the knower?
Most of us are used to looking at objects; but there is one thing that without a second thought we look right past. That is the knower of these objects. When you know the knower you will find that like the rooms in a house do not divide space, the objects that you see do not divide us.

So now you must wonder, “How can I know the knower?” After all you do not know yourself like you know an object. That means you can’t see yourself, hear yourself, taste yourself, smell yourself or even think yourself. So how can you possibly know yourself? Well you are yourself, aren’t you? Indeed you know yourself because you are yourself; you do not know yourself as a separate thing. So the trick to self-knowledge is to separate your sense of Existence, Consciousness, and Bliss from the things that you perceive.

Your home is bigger than the limits of the body
For instance are you contained in a body? If you notice that the body is merely something that you see and not your identity then you can rest as something bigger. This is a shift in the place that you stand. You will also notice that the body is too cramped to call home. Your home is much bigger than the limitations of the body such as old age, disease, and death. Is it possible that you are beyond these limitations? If you ever had a feeling that you won't die it comes from your real home, free from the birth and death of the body. Take a look and see; I think you will be in for a surprise. Abiding as you are you will see the body is a tiny room in a huge mansion. You are that mansion.

In this way when you eliminate objects from your identity, you get to remain as the limitless freedom that you really are. Now is self-knowledge a matter of faith? Of course not; it is your direct and immediate experience. Here you don’t have faith in God. Rather you are the one God that is the Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss that courses through the whole universe. And the whole universe partakes of a small portion of your true nature. You can know this directly by finding your home, the place where you really stand. Here belief and non-belief are irrelevant.

Asking Questions
If this blog seems a little theoretical to you, ask questions. Then you will see how the explanations in this blog apply to your life. And the freedom that you find will be real. Questioning is the key to your freedom. You’ll see that when you question limitation, it falls away.

Here questions about this article or other things going on in your life are always welcome; you can write us at michael@ananya.com. I love questions and try to answer them all in this blog. That’s because when you start to question limitation, you are on the verge of destroying it. When you can ask, you are well on your way to freeing yourself from the limitations that seem to cause your suffering. Of course, to preserve confidentiality your name will be left off.

Also for more detailed explanations and examples read through these blogs or get my book, Making Your Wisdom Come Alive.

Please Tell Your Friends
Please tell you friends. Although we don’t have an advertising budget, we hope that everyone who wants can find out about and wake up to this wisdom.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman

Albert Einstein and the Theory of Everything

2012-03-20T05:16:28-07:00

We often think of the universe as an entity separate from us: but if you read through the article below, I think you will see that if you don’t know the nature of the observer, your view of the things observed will be skewed. That is true for a brilliant scientist like Albert Einstein. It is true for us as well. On the contrary, when you know yourself, you know the nature of this universe too. Although this is a reprint of a blog that we published before, read it again with a view towards self-discovery. Then you will see how when know yourself, you also know the nature of the universe.

The Theory of Everything
Einstein was looking for the general theory of relativity, a theory that includes everything in the universe both large and small. His general theory said that the laws of physics should be the same for any observer no matter what velocity and direction he or she is going in. In order to accomplish this Einstein devised a theory where space and time would bend. So even if it seemed that an observer was not going in a straight line, relative to the space time continuum the observer was going straight.

Although he got his theory to work for large objects, it never quite worked for the smallest objects in the universe, including electrons, quarks, and neutrons. To Einstein these objects seemed to move in a random way that he could not accept. And thus his famous statement, God does not play dice with the universe. Einstein died before he could devise a theory of everything that worked for both large and small objects.

So what is the nature of the observer?
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Give the gift of enlightenment when you give Making Your Wisdom Come Alive. This book points to the wisdom and joy that you find at your center. Here you can find the light that makes life shine in its full glory. See our fully revised second edition.

For more information go to:Amazon.com

Also now you can read this book on your Kindle or other electronic device. Please go to Amazon Kindle.

___________________________________________________________________
But the one thing that Einstein forgot to investigate was the nature of the observer herself. If he would have looked in this direction, he would have discovered some amazing things that would be right in line with his beliefs. When you look carefully, you can see that the thing that Einstein took to be the observer was just another moving object and not the observer at all.

But in order to clearly see what I am referring to you have to separate the observer from all the objects that he or she sees. This type of experimenting is called inner experimenting, and that means discovering what you really are. Since at first this may not be obvious, it is easy to mistake the observer for an object that is in motion, and that's how Einstein saw it.

When you know the observer, the rest of the universe falls into place

When you misrepresent the observer you have to come up with all types of mathematical weirdness in order to describe the universe. But when you get the observer right, the rest of the universe falls into place, and the real substance of the universe becomes obvious. I think you will see clearly that when you look for the fundamental particle or wave that makes up the universe, you find only Consciousness and not electrons or quarks.

So in order to uncover this Consciousness, the observer, you have to separate what it sees from what it is. If you take the process of uncovering Consciousness through to its core, you will find some surprising results including that Consciousness is the fundamental particle in the universe. This is the direct results of your own perception.

So where is Consciousness anyway?
So let’s take a close look and find out what this observer really is. As a starter, is it a body or other physical being? The answer would have to be no; that’s because the observer sees a body just like it sees other objects. Therefore it is the body that has motion and acceleration, but the body cannot be the observer that Einstein was referring to, could it?

So what other properties can we ascribe to the observer? What about our thought process commonly called mind? But, like the body, the observer would see his or her thoughts too, wouldn’t she? Even special thoughts such as ‘I am’ are just objects to the observer and not to the observer herself.

The observer is one unlimited space
So what can we conclude if we return the observer to its original place, free of the objects that it sees? First, like a room does not divide space, the objects do not divide the observer. Therefore the observer is one unlimited and unified space.

Second the observer is aware so we can call it Consciousness. And third this Consciousness is still. It is the reference point from where the observer can see motion and change in velocity. So relative to what does motion in the universe travel? It is relative to this still, undivided, space-like Consciousness, which is the real subject. Since this observer has no boundaries or borders, it would have to include everything and be us too.

How can we test for Consciousness?
But if Consciousness turns out to be the ether through which the universe moves, what test could we devise to prove this ultimate subject? There would be no cosmic wind that we could measure. In other words, what method can we use to prove the ultimate subject? Would this method include a large enough linear accelerator or another thing?

The answer is that the mind cannot grasp the still, ever-present Consciousness, and thus none of the usual tests could prove Consciousness. What we need is a different kind of test called an inner test. Since one, undivided Consciousness is the ultimate subject, it is our real nature too. So if we can find our real identity, we will also know the nature of this Consciousness, just not as a separate thing. Rather, we will know the nature of this Consciousness because that’s what we are.

Where do we stand so we can see motion?
Here is where I think modern science and the ancient meditation on Self-Knowledge will come together as one discipline. And in the end the nature of the universe will turn out to be much simpler than we now think. That’s because the motion of the universe will be relative to this absolute stillness called Consciousness.

One of the most interesting things about this direct knowledge of Consciousness is that what we thought was out there is really in here. This will give a completely new perspective on what we call universe. If we can get a sense of this in our inner research, we will also find the smallest particle in the universe. And it might turn out to be the same as the largest particle, Consciousness.
Feel free to ask questions
And until then I want you to see the nature of the universe in its full glory. After-all that is also your nature. So please feel free to continue asking questions. I’m always glad to hear your reactions and clarify my answers. Unlike the path of faith, on the path of Self-Knowledge it is curiosity that destroys limitation and allows you to abide in your natural freedom.

If the comment section of this blog doesn't work, please send your questions and comments to michael@ananya.com. To find out where this all leads go to, www.light-up-your-life.com. And finally, if you enjoy these blogs please tell your friends.

                                                                        Best Wishes,

                                                                        Michael Gluckman