What is Authentic?

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If you are searching for authenticity in your life, you may eventually discover that this is just another sneaky way of putting up more boundaries to separate this from that. Some experiences are considered special or ‘it’, and others are considered inauthentic, wrong, or not ‘it’. In this play of experience, all experiences, without exception, are equally authentic, or in fact equally inauthentic.
However, some experiences seem to be sweet reflections of your true nature beyond the thinking: a walk in nature, a melting into a lover’s eyes, a blissful moment in meditation or dance, or just a random moment when thoughts seem to fall away. When these sweet gifts happen, see them as pointers to who you are, and don’t get distracted by the sweet experience that is only ever temporary and always unreliable.
When we start to believe that this experience is ‘it’, we immediately get excited that we have arrived at our spiritual goal. We immediately start to look down on all other experiences with great superiority, as ‘not it’. So as soon as the experience of ‘it’ passes, as all experiences do eventually, we assume we have lost ‘it’. But you never had ‘it’. You never had anything. It was just a passing sweet gift. Be grateful for whatever insight it brought, and let it go. It is already gone anyway.
Who you really are is never an experience of authenticity. It is never an experience at all. It can not be got and it can not be lost. This is the freedom beyond all experience.

Unmani
www.die-to-love.com

You can never control what people think about you

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Today in the meeting, a bright young woman courageously raised the issue of how to navigate in life when you can never control what other people will think about you. You always risk losing the approval, acceptance and love that you think you can get from someone else. Every step you take you potentially risk being ostracized from society, and essentially even risk your very survival. The pressure to make the ‘right’ decision, and to avoid ‘wrong’ actions or words, is so strong that it can even paralyze us.
At some point we have to see that there is no way of controlling other people’s perspectives. They too are looking for approval and acceptance. They, just like us, simply don’t know. There is no authority ‘out there’ that can tell us how to live or whether we are ok. We can never rely on anyone else, and we will never get the final stamp of approval from anyone else, because they are all just as lost as we are. At some point we have to come to see that our own not-knowing, is the only authority to really know.

Unmani
www.die-to-love.com

Thought tries to hijack everything

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When you understand the nature of thought, that it can only fit whatever is heard, recognised or experienced into what has been previously understood or labelled, you can see that it can not do anything else. It will always try to hijack everything, but who you are is always free, no matter what.

Unmani
www.die-to-love.com

Risk it all

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Life may not always fit into your ideas of how it ‘should’ be. It may not always feel comfortable. But there comes a point when you are just so tired of chasing temporary experiences of peace and love, and hoping for a perfect future ‘one day’. There comes a point when you acknowledge that your deepest longing is to wake up to reality no matter what. There comes a point when it is time to risk losing it all, and to courageously take a step into the unknown.

Unmani
www.die-to-love.com

The Push/Pull Game

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We make so much effort to be unique and different from other people, but at the same time we long for love and acceptance from them. It’s such a push/pull game. We want to stand alone and be independent individuals, but at the same time we want to melt and merge as One with all that is. This paradox of Life isn’t a problem to be solved, it’s just the way it is.

Unmani
www.die-to-love.com

Dancing on the surface

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Many so-called seekers are dancing on the surface, tasting many flowers, but never really courageously dive deep into what is real right here now. This comes from a idea that “something ‘more’ might satisfy me one day if I keep looking out there”. It is an endless agitated energy that will never be satisfied. It will always be looking for the next fix. If you really want to explore what is true, at some point you need to stop and feel what is here, instead of continuing to dance to the next flower. Feel that agitated energy when it comes up, rather than just blindly following it.

Unmani
www.die-to-love.com

A Beggar for Approval

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When we believe that we need others approval, love or acceptance, we are like beggars. We believe that what is, is not enough, and that what we need is in someone else’s hands. Without the crumbs of attention that someone else might occasionally throw at us, we are bereft, lonely and generally lacking. This has perhaps become such an old habit, to energetically reach out there, that we have forgotten how to really meet the other, and more importantly, meet ourselves in whatever is really felt. Beyond this old habit, there is the genuine longing to meet beyond all boundaries. But it requires giving up the position of need which has felt so safe and familiar for so long. Without that position we just don’t know how to interact anymore. And in that not-knowing, there is the openness to meet and be met as we truly long for.

Unmani
www.die-to-love.com

A Teacher or Facilitator

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People will either put so-called ‘teachers’ up on a pedestal position, or will crash them down and trash them. Both are an illusory, and both are a way of not meeting directly whatever is here.
Although it does seem that I am teaching, or rather facilitating, something, the message is really about seeing through any boundaries or positions, including my own.

If you really have a passion for the truth, you will question any and every position that you find yourself protecting or defending.

It is an endless losing any position that you think you are standing in.

I have no choice but to live like this myself and it leaves nothing to hold on to. Absolute vulnerability, and endless humility (and even humiliation). Being open to being touched by it all. And simultaneously, the knowing that the whole thing is simply a play of itself.

I find myself playing the role of the facilitator for people in their exploration into the truth of who they are. And every time I sit with someone, the truth is that they are always me. It is always an exploration into myself, and every person is always playing it out in me. When it is interpreted by thought, it is misunderstood again and again, in one way or another. It is mistakenly assumed that it is about me as some kind of special person, or that it is about having some kind of special experience. But when it is recognised and resonated with, there is a meeting the wholeness of Life itself, beyond you or me, beyond all the words, concepts, boundaries, and positions.

Unmani
www.die-to-love.com

No Back Up

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This is the same message as Jesus or Buddha or all the Zen Masters, but striped of any tradition, lineage, or dogmas. Once, this message used to be the secret mystical teaching that only those who had been practicing, or on the spiritual path for many years, and had attained certain spiritual qualifications to prove that he was ready, could have access to. It was greatly respected because it was understood to be truly dangerous to those who might misinterpret it. Now, in our modern age of technology this message is much more freely available (and more open to misinterpretation). However, this does not mean that it is not still mortally dangerous to what you think about yourself. If there is any kind of crack in your belief system, this message can really destroy your life as you think you know it. But if you already feel that the life you have been living, is only one pretence after another, then you are willing to risk it all, to wake up to what is true. This is the courage to stand alone.
I have no tradition. I have no lineage. I have no permission to speak from some nice old man. I stand naked with nothing to hold on to and no back-up. And yet, as Life itself, there is no way to prevent this pouring out of what is true.

Two Strands to ‘Waking Up’

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There are two strands to waking up in this life: recognising who you really are as Life itself, and then the living of that in the human experience. If you try to find a position in one strand more than the other, then there will be an imbalance, that will eventually have to come to balance somehow. You can not rest in the Absolute and escape the human experience forever. And you can not endlessly try to fix the human experience, and overlook that it is all only a play in the Absolute. Either way you will feel that something is missing and out of balance.