David Bohm

"Reality is what we take to be true.
 What we take to be true is what we believe.
 What we believe is based on our perceptions.
 What we perceive depends on what we look for.
 What we look for depends on what we think.
 What we think depends on what we perceive.
 What we perceive determines what we believe.
 What we believe determines what we take to be true.
 What we take to be true is our reality."

Some uncomfortable truth

Here is some great writing from David Carse's book 'Perfect Brilliant Stillness'.
He claims no copyright to his writings and so I can write down here what he has to say
about this whole spiritual teaching business, great stuff:

"....But of course if you're a dream character whose role in the dream is to make a career out of awakening, simplicity won't do. You have to have an organization, and develop a distinctive teaching; you have to gather a gaggle of followers, and very publicly (and with much drama) work on getting yourself and selected disciples through all those many levels of advanced enlightenment. Which, if there really was the understanding that there is no 'you' and 'you' aren't 'doing' anything, there wouldn't be any bothering about because there would be the knowing that these things don't exist, they're just constructs in the dream. But then of course you also wouldn't be able to gain prestige or importance and make lots of money giving seminars, convincing people they need their primary personality matrixes modified.
   Money is necessary for living in the modern world, and there's an honorable tradition of gifting money or its equivalent to support teachers, monks, ashrams, monasteries. But there's a clear line here because on a basic level money and spiritual teaching don't mix. There is an attempt to justify charging a fee for hearing the teaching by appealing to the 'energetic exchange' theory, which says that any time you get something of value you should pay for it. It doesn't take much reflection to see that's bullshit: anything you have of true value, you didn't pay for.
   The theory of fair exchange makes sense for things within the dream. But once there is talking about What Is, about seeing no individuals and no separation, about the realization of what you always already are, then the whole concept of one person charging another person money for this is quite blatantly meaningless. Truth is gift, and it is only passing through 'us', it cannot be bought and sold.
   This game of money for spirituality is a whitewash job. It's widely practiced and widely accepted, but it's the spiritual community's dirty little secret; nobody's really comfortable with it, because everybody knows in their hearts that charging money for access to spiritual teaching, even indirectly, is inauthentic and basically inconsistent with the Teaching itself.
   Even when it is said that the money is to run the ashram, to finance the organization, to fund the travel schedule, to spread this 'vitally important message' to as many people as possible; even then this kind of sales pitch is still an appeal to ego, to every ego's desire to be part of something big and important.
   Euphemistically calling it 'donation' when it is set up in such a way that guilt and social pressure make it difficult to refuse, is dishonest. Once you have an ashram, once you have a church, you have to pass the basket and give sermons soliciting contributions. But any time you bring money into the temple, you run the risk of some firebrand carpenter from the countryside coming along and turning over the tables.

Be still. Who's engaging in all this activity, taking on this importance, believing the hype that what is happening has some special significance? Who thinks it's important that great numbers of dream characters wake up, and that it's your job to do it? What's with this Advaita televangelism crusade crap?
   Behind the New Age pleasantries, this messianic idea of being the anointed one, saving the world, is insidious. Stop. The Teaching is universal, and there are many teachers, and they are always already where they need to be. In the Understanding it is known that the world doesn't need any special message from any special teacher. That's all being taken care of. The dream in Consciousness is unfolding perfectly, and personality cults around popular and well funded spiritual teachers are part of that unfolding; but not in the way they, or their devotees, might think.
   
Even so, compassion is stirred, and I've got news for the enlightenment seekers out there. To an extent much greater than you would like to believe, theses emperors and empresses have no clothes."

Arrrghhh

All these words, all these ideas,
all these beliefs, all these assumptions.

All is One, you are That.
Presence - awareness,
Advaita, Non-Duality, on and on and on.

But what is really going on?
What is really happening?

This moment is all there ever is.
What is going on in this moment?
Not as a belief or idea or assumption,
but in actuality.

When everything we seem to know is suspended, then there is only this
????????????????????? 
and this



No doubt, there is something going on, a happening, but what it is.............???
And who, what, why wants to know?
And even if the who, what, why seems to know, 
does it really know.................

All is blown out of the water, windows and doors are wide open.
This is clear to see, because this is what is actually always happening.

Everything is just happening...........
No-thing is ever happening...........

And that of course includes
the who, what or why you hold yourself to be...........

Why not