STRETCH: What is Enlightenment?

PILLAR STRETCH...
July 18th, 2016, 3:00 to 5:00 PM
Myron Stratton Home, Colorado Springs
No cost
Facilitator:  Charlie Coon

Topic:  What is Enlightenment?

In this gathering we will view and discuss a video conversation between Adyashanti and
Francis Bennet, two spiritual teachers whose backgrounds include
both Christian and Eastern traditions...

Francis Bennett quotes...

The only thing covering over the clear, light, peaceful, joyous presence that you have always been, is the constant activity of "your mind". You think that you ARE that "mind" and so you are distracted from who you really are.....radiant presence here and now! But in reality, there is no entity called"mind". What you think of as your mind, is simply a bunch of thoughts. There is no such thing as "a mind" at all! There is a function of thinking that constantly comes and goes, but you are not that function. You don't need to identify with a function. That is where all the trouble begins! If you "liberate" all thoughts as they arise, if you simply let them come and go in the clear, bright sky of awareness and don't make them into an entity of some kind. You will be free of the pesky ego you are trying so hard to get rid of. Your belief in the existence of an ego-entity is exactly the same as your belief in a mind-entity.

Ego = Mind...........They are the same illusion!
---Francis Bennett

Often, we think of awakening and "enlightenment" as a very complicated, very esoteric or exotic experience that only happens to very special people who go off to India and sit in a cave for 13 yrs or so! But one simple way of describing enlightenment would be to simply say it is the realization that "past" and "future" are completely in our heads and NEVER in our own direct, most obvious experience. All we ever directly experience is NOW. We create past and future as a purely conceptual "reality" and then take them to be true reality. They are not. The only real reality you ever have...is NOW! It has always been so. It has ALWAYS been NOW! Obviously, if past and future are illusory, the "self" you have also created in your head is no more real! To exist, this "self" is entirely dependent on past and future. So, it doesn't really exist as anything more than a concept either.

Who you REALLY are always, in your own most simple, direct experience, is simple, open awareness right here and now. You have always been that, you never were NOT that awareness. How could you NOT be that!? On a certain level, this is already as plain to you as the nose on your face! The realization of this simple truth is enlightenment "in a nutshell"!! NOT esoteric, not complicated, not inaccessible but rather, who you always have been!
---Francis Bennett

“Enlightenment is a destructive process. It
has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier.
Enlightenment is the
crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing
through the facade of pretence. It's the
complete eradication of everything we
imagined to be true.”
― Adyashanti


Francis Bennett
3 hrs · Columbus, OH ·
THE PEACE THAT PASSES ALL UNDERSTANDING
Once we wake up to the vast ocean of peace that we are, EVERYTHING that arises in experience, arises and ceases in that peace!
I NEVER cease to be amazed by this! The peace is vast and big enough to hold absolutely anything!
Losing my brother was one of the biggest and most difficult events of my life...I am sad. I cry, it is a huge loss to me....I am fully feeling everything that goes with such a loss......AND...........All is well and peace still reigns!
Both things are true simultaneously!
This is amazing to me and impossible to logically explain to anyone, even to myself! I was speaking with Adya about this on the day my brother died and he said, "yes, I know......strange, isn't it?"
I think this is what it really means to be fully human and fully divine! We are grounded in the vast and infinite peace AND, we remain vulnerable human beings...We are vulnerable, weak human beings arising and ceasing in the vastness! And no matter what comes and goes, the vastness remains!

---Francis Bennett on Facebook

STRETCH

July 18th, 2016

Myron Stratton Home

What is Enlightenment?

Charlie Coon

(charlesrcoon@hotmail.com

polarityinplay.blogspot.com)

THE PEACE THAT PASSES ALL UNDERSTANDING

Once we wake up to the vast ocean of peace that we are, EVERYTHING that arises in experience, arises and ceases in that peace!

I NEVER cease to be amazed by this! The peace is vast and big enough to hold absolutely anything!

Losing my brother was one of the biggest and most difficult events of my life...I am sad. I cry, it is a huge loss to me....I am fully feeling everything that goes with such a loss......AND...........All is well and peace still reigns!

Both things are true simultaneously!

This is amazing to me and impossible to logically explain to anyone, even to myself! I was speaking with Adya about this on the day my brother died and he said, "yes, I know......strange, isn't it?"

I think this is what it really means to be fully human and fully divine! We are grounded in the vast and infinite peace AND, we remain vulnerable human beings...We are vulnerable, weak human beings arising and ceasing in the vastness! And no matter what comes and goes, the vastness remains!

---Francis Bennett on Facebook