Blue Mountains Long Weekend

A lovely long weekend with the hiking gang, hiking in The Blue Mountains, staying at The YHA.

Memories

• The drive up with Kate
• Raining at the start of our first hike, then stopping (much to our relief)
• The mist and cloud over the valley
• Getting to meet Liz's new man, Mark. He's wonderful!
• Martin coming up to join us for Saturday night and Sunday. Everyone loved him of course.
• A hilarious game of Trivial Pursuit
• A fun game of Taboo
• The delicious pizza at the local bakery
• Restaurant in Leura
• A veritable feast of soup and chicken and cheese on the last night
• Visiting The Botanical Garden at Mount Tomah in the sun on the last day.

First day hike (Katoomba)

Day 2:  Evan's Lookout to Pulpit Rock

Day 3:  Botanical Garden

Michael Singer

I read Michael Singer's book "The Surrender Experiment" thanks to a recommendation from Nic. It had a huge impact on me.  Surrender is now a core spiritual value for me. I also read his book "The Untethered Soul" which I also found very powerful. 

Books that inspired me

Some favourite quotes

Just sit in the seat of awareness and never leave

• Come to know the one who watches the voice, and you will come to know one of the great mysteries of creation.
• Now you are in your center of consciousness. You are behind everything, just watching. That is your true home.
• Consciousness is the highest word you will ever utter. There is nothing higher or deeper than consciousness. Consciousness is pure awareness.
• If you aren’t centered, your consciousness is just following whatever catches its attention.
• You are sitting inside the center of consciousness watching your personal TV show. But there are so many interesting objects distracting your consciousness that you can’t help but get drawn into them. It’s overwhelming. It’s three-dimensional. It’s all around you. All of your senses draw you in—sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch—as well as your feelings and your thoughts. But you are really sitting quietly inside looking out at all these objects.

Withdraw attention from and identification with the mind

• Withdraw your attention, and the thinking mind falls away.
• My sense of me no longer included the neurotic thought patterns that were passing in front of me.
• When your mind is disturbed, don’t ask, “What do I do about this?” Instead ask, “Who am I that notices this?”

Stay open and aware in a state of relaxed allowing (non-resistance)

• Acceptance means that events can make it through you without resistance.
• Your only way out is the witness. Just keep letting go by being aware that you are aware.
• Stop defining the disturbed mind as a negative experience; just see if you can relax behind it.

To stay happy, keep your heart open

• Most of all, keep your heart relaxed and  open.
• No matter what happens below you, just turn your eyes upward and relax your heart.
• The moment you feel a change, relax your shoulders and relax the area around your heart. The moment the energy moves, you simply relax and release.
• Every single time you relax and release, a piece of the pain leaves forever. Every time you resist and close, you are building up the pain inside.
• If you close around the pain and stop it from passing through, it will stay in you.
• The more open you remain, the more  energies and experiences are able to pass through you

In so doing, you are able to fully embrace the experiences of life

• Don’t be afraid of death. Let it free you. Let it encourage you to experience life.
• To see, to experience, and to honor is to participate in life instead of standing back and judging it.

Use your human energies and disturbances to awaken and transcend

• Awareness transcends what it is aware of.
• Now what used to hold you down becomes what wakes you up.
• That which is holding you down can become a powerful force that raises you up.

You now become aware of a universe behind your seat of consciousness

• When the drop of consciousness that knows itself as an individual drifts back far enough, it becomes like the drop that falls into the ocean. The Atman (Soul) falls into the Paramatman (Supreme Soul). The individual consciousness falls into the Universal Oneness. And that’s it.

This is how you know something about God. You become one with Him.

• Such a state exists; one can merge into the Universal Absolute. One can merge into God.
• If you move your search for God down to the mental level, somebody will dispute it. You can’t know God that way. It must come from actual experience. Michael Singer

This centred state of awareness is a state of freedom

• The only way to inner freedom is through the one who watches: the Self.
• To feel great love and freedom, to find the presence of God within you, all of this stored pain must go.
• Let go of the need to control everything with the mind
• Life is continuously changing, and if you’re trying to control it, you’ll never be able to fully live it.

Realise there is a creative Intelligence running the show that is far vaster than the limited human mind

• If life can manifest the DNA molecule on its own, not to mention create the human brain, how is it that we feel that we have to control everything on our own?
• If the natural unfolding of the process of life can create and take care of the entire universe, is it really reasonable for us to assume that nothing good will happen unless we force it to?

Surrender to life’s unfolding

• Life was asking me to get out of the way and let her do her thing.
• I was willing to roll the dice and let the flow of life be in charge.
• I was not in charge, yet life continued to unfold as if it knew just what it was doing.
• It seems as though life knew exactly what it was doing, and as usual, my mind knew nothing.
• What would happen to me if I just inwardly surrendered my resistance and let the flow of life be in charge?
• My personal experience is that aligning one’s will with the natural forces unfolding around us leads to some surprisingly powerful results.
• I decided to stop listening to all the chatter about my personal preferences, and instead, start the willful practice of accepting what the flow of life was presenting me.

Quotes on Wisdom Trove

Special connections (2017)

Connect

• Anderson’s glad I was at lawyers & wonderful re carpentry
• Mum’s birthday - write message
• Aimee conversations in car and at coffee
• Conversations with Kate
• Martin and Kate dinners
• Deep sharing with Tina (Cambodia)
• Connecting with Sok (Ratankiri)

Service

• Help Chris with speech (x2)
• Found car keys for Jilly
• Help Chris with CV
• Heather - book on Kindle
• Set up computer for Chris
• ESL resources for Aimee
• Photos for Michelle’s new site
• Sue’s Queensland photos
• Jilly to dr X 2
• Jilly money back
• Aimee: Site
• Wedding site for Roger
• Site for Brendan

Vivid 2017

Rupert Spira

Apart from Eckhart Tolle, no spiritual teacher has played a greater role in my spiritual awakening and evolution.  I have read many of his books and listened to many hours of his teachings on You Tube.

Books that inspired me

Some favourite quotes

• Happiness is in the knowing of our own Being.
• Happiness is simply to allow everything to be exactly as it is from moment to moment.
• In ignorance, I am something; in understanding, I am nothing; in love, I am everything.
• Love is the experience that others are not others. Beauty is the experience that objects are not objects.
• Give your attention to the experience of seeing rather than to the object seen and you will find yourself everywhere.
• There are not two things—one, the screen and two, the image. There is just the screen.
• The greatest discovery in life is to discover that our essential nature does not share the limits nor the destiny of the body and mind.
• Only that which is always with you can be said to be your self and if you look closely and simply at experience, only awareness is always ‘with you’.
• The separate self is not an entity; it is an activity: the activity of thinking and feeling that our essential nature of pure Awareness shares the limits and the destiny of the body and mind.
• Just as a screen is intimately one with all images and, at the same time, free of them, so our true nature of luminous, empty Knowing is one with all experiences and yet, at the same time, inherently free of them.
• Quotes on Wisdom Trove

Key insights

• All I can be certain of is the awareness of experience and the awareness of being aware. In other words, all I can be certain of is the existence of consciousness. The existence of a world external to consciousness, consisting of matter, is pure conjecture.
• Experience is indisputably real even if what is experienced is an illusion (not what it seems). The ego (the sense of being a separate self) is an experience I am having. It is an activity in consciousness.  But it has no stand-alone existence except as an experience in consciousness being had by consciousness.
• Consciousness is not only the Knower of all experience but also the Substance of all experience. Consciousness always only knows Itself. There is only God, Godding.

Mack, the Most Fabulous Senior Doggie !!

Hi there Graeme,

I wasn't planning on going down to Bradfield Bark (North Sydney Council dog event) today but a client I saw briefly this morning lives at Kirribilli so we went across with him and his HUGE Labrador.

MACK won The Most Fabulous Senior Dog! Yay to Little Handsome MACKee.

I really enjoyed being in the show ring and MACK behaved beautifully + performed each command to perfection! Needless to say I felt very proud of him. It was a funny thing to do, unplanned with a great result...

I know you don't like dog clothes but MACK was extremely popular in his Ralph Lauren POLO (must have been stopped by every second person, honestly, and paid compliments) + I'm pretty sure it swayed the judges.... I don't have any photos of us with the second and third prize winners but maybe the photos taken will be in the Mosman Daily, or on social media during the week. Not sure...

Meanwhile, here are some photos of dear MACK I took before the competition commenced, and a photo of MACK's certificate (already on our fridge!).

MACK & I left the event before my client and are completely exhausted. MACK must have sniffed 40-50 backsides and lifted his leg a couple of hundred times. He had a great time!

Dinner now for dear MACK and I'd say he'll be asleep for the evening by 7pm... great dreams of fresh air/blue skies/green grass + all those wonderful encounters with other canine's.

Bye for now, Liza

PS. I think I said many years ago MACK would have been wonderful to train as a pup-Jack Russell's really are amazing... we watched a flying JR at the event; a very young dog who seriously did fly through the air! MACK was watching intently, all the organised races...

Insights (2017)

•  Did not rush into telling Srini to leave
• Rush to tell Sharon re Yogi without planning it
• Did not rush into threat with Sharmista.  Sent her blessings.
• Mal Plumber under immense pressure - took personally. 
• Interplay of Essence and Substance
• Make decisions using Consciousness ladder
• Surrender - no agency, nothing personal

Playing table tennis with Chris

There is a table tennis table under the Harbour Bridge and Chris and I have been making the most of it.  So much fun.

Abe's birthday at Eckhart