Yesterday, in his afternoon talk at the Ridhwan School’s summer retreat, A.H. Almaas referred to the recycled self. This is our normal sense of self – a false identity based on self-images and history. This self is engaged in constant ego activity which includes mental, emotional and physical patterns of rehashing the past.
All of this activity is a result in a belief that effort will get us where we want to be – and while that may be true when it comes to walking across the street, it is not true when it comes to satisfying urge or longing for peace, authenticity, happiness, love and other more fundamental human and spiritual quests.
The recycled self stands in shard contrast to what Almaas refers to as “runaway realization” – where True Nature spontaneously moves from moment to moment revealing deeper dimensions and understanding with no effort, hope, longing or past.
The Ridhwan School’s annual summer retreat’s focus this year is – The Fulcrum.
Some will say lack of self-worth; others projection; others self-hate.
Self-rejection is a function of the mind
The mind is the gate that opens or closes, thereby allowing or preventing direct experience. Any action of the mind that blocks direct experience is self-rejecting; conversely, any action of the mind that allows direct experience is self-accepting. – John Ruskan
Any serious exploration of self-rejection needs to include:
An exploration into the “self” being rejected as well as an open-ended inquiry into the whole notion of self.
An exploration into the ego’s fundamental dynamic of rejection. Rejection is at the core of all ego activity.
Every internal action involves some kind of rejection of our present state, our actual reality. And there is a deeper consequence to this attitude of rejection: By rejecting what is so for us in the present moment, we are rejecting ourselves. – A.H. Almaas
The continuing popularity of these books reflect the continued interest in the spiritual journey. Oprah and Eckhart Tolle have one of the most dynamic presentations to ever hit the web. according to reports, over 500,000 people are trying to tune in to the ten-week series.
In June of 2008, Shambhala willl publish A.H. Almaas’ 14th book – The Unfolding Now.
The keys to self-knowledge and deep contentment are right here before us in this very moment—if we can simply learn to live with open awareness. In The Unfolding Now, A. H. Almaas presents a marvelously effective practice for developing the transformative quality of presence. Through a particular method of self-observation and contemplative exploration that he calls inquiry, we learn to live in the relaxed condition of simply “being ourselves,” without interference from feelings of inadequacy, drivenness toward goals, struggling to figure things out, and rejecting experiences we don’t want. Almaas explores the many obstacles that keep us from being present—including defensiveness, ignorance, desire, aggression, and self-hatred—and shows us how to welcome with curiosity and compassion whatever we are experiencing. – from the bookcover.
What keeps us from living in the Now?
This book is an exploration of the barriers and obstacles to Being Here Now that prevent us from experiencing the reality of the Power of Now. In short, it looks at the mind, the ego, and how the past keep us from being able to be in the now.
How is our experience within time a hindrance to our experience of our essential nature?
…our time orientation will disconnect us from our True Nature because it contradicts the now-ness, the timelessness, of our True Nature. It is paradoxical, of course, to think about things that way because we are always thinking in terms of time. The time axis is very important for the mind. The mind is always thinking of things in the past and of what it is going to do in the future. It rarely settles in the moment. If it did, it would become quiet.
When you settle into the moment, you realize that there is not much happening—a few things here and there. The primary awareness is of the immediacy of the moment. This is because presence—being in the now—is characterized by beingness, simply being here now. In contrast, our familiar self is based on doing, going, making things happen. We do not trust that action can arise and proceed from inner stillness; we do not recognize that Being is the ground of everything. To be in the now connects you with that quiet beingness that underlies all changes, all activity—the simple hereness where what is most basic is not activity but presence.
So when we are not settled, all the images, all the reifications, all the projections from the past arise and influence the present. We don’t see the present as the present; and we don’t experience the presence of the present.
That same influence of the past also keeps orienting us toward the future. Something will come up from the past that we are not happy about, and in our desire for things to be better in the future, we disconnect ourselves from the moment. We miss the now. And when we miss the now, we don’t just waste time, we miss the now-ness of what we are, the realness, the here-ness—the very fact that we are.
When people talk about being in the here and now, it is a more profound experience than simply being aware of the content of the experience of the moment. It begins with that awareness because the content of the moment is what is arising now. So, we are aware of the content of the moment—the physical attributes, the feelings, and the thoughts that are arising in the moment. But the more we are attuned to what is arising in the moment, the more time slows down as we become more present to the moment. And when we become more present to the moment, we begin to recognize the now-ness itself, which turns out to be the presence that is present to the moment.
So, my presence is the now-ness of the moment; they are not separate. It is not that my presence is present in the now of the moment; the presence is the now of the moment. That is how we actually know what presence is. In the practice of being where we are, it becomes clear that to be ourselves, to be real, we need to be in the present moment. We need to attend to the moment, we need to embrace and be completely aware, immediately in touch, with the moment. This immediate in-touchness with the moment is the in-touchness with the now-ness of the moment, which is the same thing as the Being of our presence.
In some sense, all the obstacles to being ourselves that we have observed and explored so far are basically in time; they are a function of the passage of time perceived in the linear sense. They come from the past and move into the future. If our center of consciousness is operating within a linear time framework—in the passage from the past to the future—it will be engaged in these obstacles. Our judgments and rejections and hopes and desires and expectations all happen in time. Even our inner practice becomes a practice in time. We are going from one point of time to another for a process that has a beginning and an end. There is a cause and a result: something we do now will result in a change in the future. That kind of time orientation will dislocate us, will take us outside the presence of what we are and into the ephemeral mental world of time, which is where most people live. – The Unfolding Now
What’s the 
. It is currently in its 37th reprinting and has sold over one million copies.
What keeps us from living in the Now?