awareness

My Reading Notes:

• In compiling this book, we asked those who move closely with Mooji to send us the sayings which most touched, guided, inspired and shook them to the core—those pointings which ultimately threw them back into the Heart-Self. They are satsang excerpts so compelling that they ignited inside the Beingness as they were heard, and in response were scribbled onto bits of paper, backs of hands, tapped into phones and searched for in audio recordings, lest they disappeared or were forgotten. We are also tremendously privileged to have received quotes directly from Mooji’s own notebook, and recorded those that were spontaneously uttered as we read, refined and edited over eight hundred bullets of wisdom received from the sangha. Many quotes came from impromptu talks that arose in unexpected places—during a morning walk, on a bus ride to the beach, after a meal or while planting a tree.
• “Don’t touch anything that appears, because it will soon disappear. Look within to where there is no name or form and you will know who you are — Freedom.”
• Mooji often says that to find Truth you have to be like the cow that jumped over the moon. Even to understand such an utterance, one must leave the egoic mind-field and its literalness, and enter the heart’s orbit. One must jump over oneself, over the moon-mind, as it were, to enter the heaven of Self-realisation. May the white fire in this book ignite within your heart, leaving only the clear space of pure seeing and being.
• There is no one person on this planet who is apart from the Truth in their heart. The world is so diverse and extreme in its expressions; the greatest good and the greatest evil is here, and in this diverse forest of existence, you must find your way home. Many voices come to call us. I take it we are here together because of the power of God, the power of love and the power of Truth acting upon our hearts. I have not come to call you halfway home, but to call you fully home. I love to watch the beings awakening from the hypnosis of conditioning, from the fear of both death and life, by recognizing their true nature.
• Sometimes, a feeling of tiredness, lethargy and resistance comes, and I want you to be aware of that. Do not fight with that, but rather keep your attention in the place that I have been pointing to—the silence of being.
• In my view, there is nothing higher in the human kingdom than discovering our divine nature. As everything else is perishable, find that which is imperishable, and fall completely in love with That.
• Your own being created me in your life to remind you of who you truly are. Don’t depend on me—use me. Make use of this and come home.
• The veils of ignorance, delusion and identification hold all the beings hostage, causing them to be distracted from the Self and to fixate upon the fleeting things of this world. It is simply this which causes suffering. Here in satsang, these veils are being pulled apart so that true knowledge and the clear light of awareness alone shines. This is love, and true and lasting freedom. It is available to everyone, because we are already this. All that is needed is to come with an open mind and open heart, with this urge inside: I must be free in this life.
• Who or what arises here in this body as the feeling ‘I am’? Really try to identify what this ‘I’ is so that you become very clear about this. The sense ‘I’, which is natural to you, can it really be an object? And if so, what is perceiving it? Can this be also perceived? Ponder deeply over this.
• Those who feel bored in life are ever seeking entertainment for their minds. The lovers of God are ever content and serenely happy, for they are fed through the heart and not through the mind.
• Who can count how many lives we have tasted? Look at the stars. How old are they? And a star is not even sentient. You are sentient. How can you be less in age than a star? You don’t know at all. What you do know is that right now you exist and are here. All take this for granted. However, what should be known is what you are here as. And if what you are here as is clear, who knows this? You want to learn about so many things, but about yourself, you are not sure.
• Whatever comes, do not push away; whatever goes, do not grieve. Everything appears just like clouds floating by; they just come and go. Stay only as the unmoving awareness. Awareness and Truth are one.
• When you are absolutely nothing, you find galaxies of love, worlds of peace, oceans of joy. It is a paradox that you have to give up everything to find everything.
• Initially, people don’t easily grasp what I am pointing to because they are used to hearing and following with their mind. But I am not speaking to their mind; I am speaking directly to their heart. It takes them time to rediscover the ability to listen with the heart. When they hear me inside, everything becomes light and clear. The mind is habituated to carrying out instructions in order to reach somewhere or to discover something phenomenally. However, real understanding occurs in the heart, which is not trying to accomplish anything. It only reveals the ever-present and timeless Truth we are.
• Attempting to understand consciousness with your mind is like trying to illuminate the sun with a candle.
• Just keep quiet. What it means? ‘Keep quiet’ is the same as honoring yourself. When the mind wants to run, you stay put. You are not the mind—know this. When the ego wants to go to the red-light district and calls, ‘Come, come and play a little,’ you instantly detect the lie and the temptation dissolves. Your peace remains undisturbed. That is what it means to keep quiet.
• Young woman is walking through the forest of existence on the eve of her wedding day. Her heart is full of the joy of anticipation as she plans the final arrangements. Just a few hours to go before she is in the arms of her beloved. She is ablaze with dreams of love, future and prosperity. Suddenly a hungry lion steps out onto the forest road, and they are face-to-face. They are so close she can feel his rumbling breath. He is salivating, dripping. She is standing on the razor-edge of existence. Instantly, all her dreams, hopes and aspirations vanish. Even her beloved, the light of her heart, disappears. There is neither future nor past nor self here. Welcome the lion on your path.
• You ask how to maintain this joy of being. But I have to ask: How do you maintain being ‘you’? There is no one to maintain anything. All happens spontaneously. If someone had to maintain any state, you would have to keep replacing them, because they could not keep up with the pressure of maintenance. We don’t like some human beings because they reflect something we don’t like inside ourselves.
• We don’t like some human beings because they reflect something we don’t like inside ourselves. We think it is in the other, but actually we carry this trait ourselves. Now, if you were empty of this trait that you don’t like, you wouldn’t judge it. When you are free of that judgement, the trait ceases to appear, even external to you. You don’t see it, or at least you look towards it with great compassion and understanding, because you know it is not intentional. We are not really ignorant by choice. It seems like something is hiding the real seeing. So when you meet someone whose presence triggers discomfort within yourself, often it is because there is something there within you worth reflecting upon. Now I take you a step further than this. This which you are seeing in others and in yourself, this self that you find fault with, is only the idea you have of who you are and its own conditioning. It is not the true Self. It is only the acquired state, the learnt or constructed self. This is where all the bad smell is coming from. Rather than rejecting those encounters, the wise welcome them.
• Often due to the directness and power of satsang, deep insecurities and attachments get exposed, and many people experience the reflex to protect a sense of vulnerability by running away. This happens particularly at the start of intense introspection. The paradox is that the thing they are running away with is the very thing they should be running away from.
• No need to believe or disbelieve. Don’t interfere. You can’t improve the already perfect. Just stay quiet and empty—let life play.
• There is something powerful in being rendered powerless. It will break your arrogance and possibly set you free.
• The ego-mind looks for what it can get. Heart-mind looks for how much it can give.
• Don’t be a storehouse of memories. Leave past, future and even present thoughts behind. Be a witness to life unfolding by itself. Be free of all attachments, fears and concerns by keeping your mind inside your own heart. Rest in being. Like this, your life is always fresh and imbued with pure joy and timeless presence. Be happy, wise and free.
• Once you begin to recognize the divine gifts in life, you come to see that there are so many. Your life is abundant. Every moment is an opportunity to rest in effortless Self-awareness.
• To leave yourself aside is the greatest thing, but it will seem impossible in the beginning because as an ego you have always been your own favourite person. Your favourite person in the world is yourself and you love to serve yourself best. But now a joy is arising each time we deny ourself in favour of serving others. This gap between ‘you’ and ‘me’ begins to diminish somehow. First, it was ‘me’ and ‘the rest’, then ‘me’ becomes ‘we’. Ultimately, a realisation dawns: we are one. The sage within us emerges when the ‘we’, the ‘me’ and finally, the ‘you’ and ‘I’ disappear. There remains only the all-ness, the one beyond even the concept of oneness.
• Just learn what you can and leave the rest. Do not dwell on old mistakes or missed opportunities, for this sustains personal identity and drains the being of its freshness. Remember, none can live a fault-free life. Accept this. It is okay. It is the programmed mind that gets caught up in the sludge of morality. Don’t empower those tendencies further. It is not necessary nor is it required to make any oath, vow or pledge in your life, because few can fulfill them and they just become a burden around your neck. Recognising your true place as the uninvolved witness is your door to freedom.
• There will come a point when you find an ocean of peace inside you that will never leave you. Noise will come, but it will come inside your peace. Noise will go, but peace will not go. Once you discover this peace, you won’t buy any of the mind’s promises.
• Without the intrusiveness of personal mind, life is observed to be unfolding in a natural and harmonious way. Do not waste time just wishing for things to get better. The whole world is doing this and no one is really happy. We miss the true life. In fact, happiness arises when you stop chasing for something other than your own pure nature, and this is the happiness that remains with you.
• Avoid expectations and especially be aware of the tendency to wait for ‘next’ as a promise to happiness—the next good feeling, the next adventure or invitation from the mind. The ‘next’ experience, in fact, does quite the opposite; it pulls your attention away from pure presence, the seat of joy.
• Don’t make the mistake of imagining that the Divine judges the world by human standards.
• Before a thought arises, do you know it is going to come? You cannot decide, ‘Oh, I’m only going to have Jesus-thoughts today,’ or, ‘I dedicate this space for only Buddha’s words and thoughts this week.’ Thoughts arise arbitrarily and unannounced, but this by itself is not thinking. Thinking begins when the arising thought connects with the thinker-thought, the thinker- identity. Out of this communion, thinking is produced. Know that both the thinker of thought and thoughts are one: mind. When it is seen that the thinker-thought construct is a concept, the play of the psychological mind ceases to engage your attention and peace prevails.
• Do you really want to erase all your deluded beliefs, memories, stories, tendencies and identities one by one, or would you prefer to find the factory where they are produced and blow the whole thing up? I say this because right now I don’t have time for all this tiny pruning. You hold onto your little nail clipper, but I am giving you a great chainsaw to bring down the whole tree of suffering. This chainsaw is self-inquiry.
• Beloved Remember Love without clinging Give without demanding Receive without possessing Perceive without projecting Witness without judging Focus without tension Work without strain Relax without laziness Play without competing Enjoy without craving Reflect without imagining Serve without demonstrating Surrender without hesitating Challenge without dominating Meditate without identity Correct without blaming Overcome without pride Master without enslaving Laugh without cynicism Cry without pity Confront without hatred Guide without superiority Enter without self-importance Depart without regret Live without arrogance Exist without self-image Be one with God Awaken to the Real
• A lot of things I don’t know about, but I know in the moment I need to know. And the things I don’t need to know, I am not concerned about. This is my good fortune.
• There is nothing you need to do to become what you are, but there is something you need to recognise in order to stop being what you are not. Your complete nature is already here. Remember that all that you perceive, including your sense of self and personal identity, is as ephemeral as clouds floating in the unchanging sky. You can never not exist, but through perfect understanding, you will cease existing as what you are not.
• When you discover the here which is beyond place, and the now which is beyond time, then you will be unable to doubt your limitless freedom.
• Your urge to control life controls you.
• As long as there is wanting in you, especially for someone or something to make you happy, paradoxically, this is a sure way to make yourself feel lacking and therefore miserable.
• Be inside the inside itself. Don’t hold this thought that you are journeying towards something, because that itself is a belief leading to unnecessary despair. What you are searching for is already what you
• When one is without ego, one becomes immediately free of all personal judgements and perceives life and the world with divine eyes and mind. Nothing is offensive to such a one, and they remain in perfect serenity and peace always.
• Nothing is required of you. Only when you are a person do you need to prove something—to feel worthy, interesting or special. Why this haemorrhaging of energy trying to be special when you can simply be yourself?
• The mind, the illusory person, doesn’t want to change. It is very afraid of change. It doesn’t mind praying for change in the world, but doesn’t want to change itself. The mind doesn’t mind playing at spirituality. It doesn’t mind meeting God, even meeting Him as an equal, but it doesn’t want to exchange itself for God. The psychological mind is the devil actually—but not totally, because it is mixed with the beingness. The mind wants to sell you a brand of spirituality which builds your ego, telling you, ‘Yes, let’s do these exercises of embracing each other and praying for the world,’ but these things do not challenge you.
• I want to see that people reach deep into themselves, behind the facade of the person, and find the presence of God within. I want to see that people blow away these miserable states and live this life as the living Truth itself. You may think we are suffering from conflict, wars, famines and droughts. But no, we are suffering from ego! The ego is the atomic bomb that we drop on ourselves, in a way. Why do I say that? Because we are not helpless. As a person you are pretty much helpless, but you are powerful as Being. The change that really has to happen in the human kingdom is not a more advanced technological change, advancing in the outer things. We must be advanced in the inner world and rise above shallow, fleshly ambitions, to find again our original nature.
• All this play is in the world—but the sword of Truth is also here. The whole thing, from start to finish, is illusion. ‘This life I’m living, my family, my attachments, my hopes for the future, trying to save the planet and what religion I am’ is all a big, big dream. Even myself standing here talking is in the dream—but I’m awake. When you are awake, it is very different. You don’t panic. You don’t run. You don’t hide under the bed or under a rock, because wherever you are, you know God is right here. This is not fantasy at all. Does fear come in this body? Yes, it comes, but it cannot proliferate. It cannot grow. Human feelings come in consciousness, but they are seen immediately and can never overtake. This is a very important thing.
• The question ‘Who am I?’ is the most important question a human being can ask. To feel some attraction to this question already signals an auspicious life. From the birth of this body something inside has been saying, ‘I am, I want, I know, I love, this is me, this is mine,’ but when asked, What or who is this ‘me’ or ‘I’? no clear answer is given or formed. The ‘I’ itself appears to know many things but it doesn’t know its own Self. What exactly arises as ‘I’? What is the substance of ‘I’? These are the most powerful questions that can emerge inside the human consciousness. Why powerful? Because they break open and dispel every delusion and so remove the ego’s grip on us. Ego is the unreal identity and nature that makes us feel uneasy in the presence of other beings. It often brings fear and insecurity which causes us to hold onto feelings of rejection, jealousy, hatred and desire. However, by its very nature, ego can also help us to grow in understanding and aspire for lasting freedom by forcing us to seek what is true within ourselves. Satsang speeds up our liberation.
• Upon discovering Truth, the natural love one has for oneself expands until it encompasses the whole world. This love erases ego.
• Aspiration has to be a part of the drama of realisation. In the beginning, something has to search. You have to long for something. Before you had this longing, you knew nothing at all. You were in ignorance. You were not free. You needed to fake-learn something only to get rid of this learning once true understanding is revealed—and yet none of it is a waste of time. Sometimes consciousness creates the sense of a problem in order to experience transcending it. This is the game of life. You are the timeless experiencing the sense of time. How strange that time is needed to discover the timeless.
• When we are speaking from duality, we refer to ourselves as personalities, as individuals, as ego—the mind. And mind is never totally happy where it is. It hitchhikes from one place to another, from one state to another. When it’s not happy with the present, it goes to the past. When it’s not happy with the past, it projects a future. It is never content with anything. The belly of the mind is never full.
• You say, ‘I know I am That.’ And now something is saying, ‘But it is mind that knows that.’ But what knows that the mind knows that? Contemplate this. Is this too subtle a question to put to you now? Someone will grasp this and recognise the unchanging awareness that is ever present. Something may be avoiding such clarity, such direct pointing. The Truth always seems inconvenient from the position of the lie.
• If today was your last day in this body, would the opinions of your mind make any difference to you? Why not then live like this?
• Do not allow your mind to become so easily disturbed by the fleeting soap-bubble experiences of this world. Know your mind’s essence to be imperishable, indivisible and unborn. Without your Self, nothing is, for things cannot be their own witness. It is in the light of sentience that the world is seen. You are not an object. All phenomena report to the consciousness in you, the formless Self. Know your Self to be that in which they arise, play and are eventually absorbed.
• Sometimes, the thing you think is happening is not the thing that is happening. This is true of life. Much of what you think life is, is not what it is. Sometimes you see an action happening and it’s not what is really going on. Other things are going on that you cannot see. And if you take your version as real, you will continue disagreeing with life and having lots of opinions. If you are empty of opinions, you discover a synchronicity that you cannot deny. There is a higher power working beyond and behind the human mind that is coordinating things beyond our capacity to comprehend as a person. Live as though it is already your truth.
• We are the pure, timeless and unchanging being, but due to the debilitating effects of the egoic or personal identity, many people have drifted away from the natural state and so begin suffering from deep insecurities within themselves. Consequently, many human beings want to become ‘someone special’, and so much energy goes into this. But in truth, or you may say from a higher standpoint, no one is special because to be special requires that others have to be less special. Maybe there is a sense, ‘If I am not different and special, then I will become vulnerable.’ But actually, to be special, to be anyone, is to be vulnerable. Paradoxically, the way to be free of psychological vulnerability and the sense of separation is to become nobody. Somehow, without the attachment and pride of personal identity, we feel and know, ‘I am the same one in everyone.’ The sense of ‘I’ being one with ‘others’ now seems greater and truer than the sense of ‘other’ being apart and different from ‘I’. We seem afraid of this discovery yet it is a liberation. And so much love, real joy and compassion arises.
• Be nobody. When you are somebody, there are so many duties that even to be yourself is such a hassle. When you are nobody, you escape from every trap. It is immediate freedom!
• Every now and then, life causes you to lose your phone, lose your job, lose your relationship, the things you think are important, so you can see that you have a full life independent of them. There are many things you feel are so essential, but without them, you find you still have your Self, which is more than all of them put together. You cannot lose your Self. This is the most important thing.
• Life flows by itself. How arrogant to think it is you who makes it flow. Stop interfering and enjoy the ride of impersonal witnessing.
• Don’t worry about your problems. Don’t worry about the worst thing in the world. Find the best thing in the world, and it will take care of everything. Find the Self.
• Mind presents options Heart offers recognition Mind imagines Heart reveals Mind strays Heart stays Mind thinks Heart knows Mind is becoming Heart is being Mind introduces creature comforts Heart introduces the Creator