Spiritual Teachings With Shunyamurti

Excerpt: “It has always been recognized that the only difference between a sinner and a saint is that the sinner settles for crumbs of pleasure – in between which are massive amounts of suffering – while the saint is always in bliss. And so therefore can’t we say that the difference is simply a difference in intelligence? One makes a wiser choice. But the choice of bliss comes at a price, and the price is, well two prices, which come to be the same: one is hubris, the other is greed.” Recorded on the morning of Friday, February 27, 2015.

Student Question: How can I live with an open heart without taking on other's suffering?

Recorded during the Abyss and Pleroma retreat, on the evening of Tuesday, December 29, 2015.

Excerpt: “The Self, and by the Self we mean consciousness in its pure, original form, before it is conditioned by all of the indoctrination that we received in our childhood and in an ongoing way by all of the messages we get from society and each other . . . we are infinite beings in a state of bliss, with knowledge, with love, with power. And then we are taught a lot of misinformation that causes us to forget all of that. So within this infinite pure consciousness, little bubbles of finite belief systems form, and when such a bubble forms in which there is an identification, usually with the bodily form . . . we call that an ego. And that little finite bubble of consciousness gets cut off from the rest of consciousness and forgets about everything outside of that bubble.” Recorded on the evening of Friday, November 27, 2015.

Student Question: Why is love so painful?

Excerpt: ”Can you awaken to the dreamer of the dream who is within you at this very moment, and awaken to your own power to re-dream this world as a heaven rather than a hell? Do you have the courage? Do you have the will? Do you have the love to propel you to awaken from your own dream of life, and realize the truth that you are the dreamer? This is the real question we all face.” Recorded on the morning of Sunday, July 19, 2015.

Student Question: How do you deal with the hypocrisy of the ego when you say to yourself that you want to surrender and walk the spiritual path but you don't do it? How do you deal with that situation without starting an internal war?

Excerpt: ”If and when meditation is successfully accomplished it is the result of Grace. It is given, in the same way as in the Old Testament, the manna from heaven was given every morning in the desert; they didn’t have any food in their rucksacks. And they were moving along and couldn’t plant any, and it was a desert where very little was growing, but somehow every morning the manna would appear. In our meditations it is that same faith that the manna from heaven, the Shakti, the lumination, the presence of that inner Other, of that power that is the Real Self, will shine upon us, will grant us a glimpse or a realization of the fullness of the Being that we are that is beyond anything we can think we are. And that Grace comes when there is love.” Recorded during the Lion Heart Koan retreat, on the morning of Sunday, October 25, 2015.

Excerpt: ”Awareness is all that we know. Whatever seems to occur is only an appearance in Awareness. But what is Awareness made of? Does it have a substance? Is it objective? Awareness cannot be captured by any science because every science must be an appearance in Awareness; and science is a form of knowing, but there is no form of knowing that can know Awareness. Therefore we cannot say that Awareness is made of anything; it has no substance, no essence. And since everything is an appearance in Awareness, and is simply a modification of Awareness, then we cannot say that anything is.” Recorded on the morning of Saturday, October 3, 2015.

Excerpt: ”God is the infinitely branching reality of the creativity of life itself. And we who sit under this tree of life, we are life. And we can hear the sound of life, and it is the sound of love. And if we sit watchfully like the animals on the lookout, feeling the energy of God’s love, as Nature Herself, and realizing we are one with that; we are Nature’s tuning forks who transform the bliss of this divine presence into art, into meaning, into poetry, into philosophy, into prayer – into sheer delight. This is our function as part of Nature.” Recorded during The Dao of Love retreat on the morning of Monday, February 17, 2014.