Quotes about Beyond self

It is one step, and a giant one, to see clearly and participate in the love that flows between the persons of the Trinity, but even here, God is seen as the object of his own love. It is yet another step to realize that God is beyond all subject and object and is Himself love without subject or object. This is the step beyond our highest experiences of love and union, a step in which self is not around to divide, separate, objectify or claim anything for itself. Self does not know God; it cannot love him, and from the beginning has never done so.

Only God is love, and for this love to be fully realized self must step aside. And not only do we not need a self to love God, but for the same reason we do not need a mind to know him, for that in us which knows God, is God.

Whoever was responsible for the idea of dividing self into lower and higher parts committed a serious crime against humanity. This division has given rise to the notion that the lower (ego and immature) self must be overcome while the higher (unitive and whole) self must be sought as the goal of human realization. Out of ignorance, I too clung to this notion because I believed it was this higher self that would be united with God for all eternity. It took a long time before my experiences led me to doubt this conviction and, at the same time, let in the possibility that this was not the whole truth and that there was still further to go.

The real beauty of realizing your true nature is in the freshness,
peace and deep bodily relaxation which touches to the core of
your being, flows into your everyday life and bursts forth naturally
into blossoming from within itself. Without you 'doing' a thing
about any of it.

This is a beautiful and simple change of lifestyle.
A lifestyle of letting go and living openhandedly, curled
up in the sunlit warmth on the lap of
the Divine (your heart)

It's the same with all the thoughts and feelings and other experiences that arise in the ocean of ourselves. The ocean never resists them, it never creates a negative reference point saying "Damn , that seaweed is still there. There must be something terribly wrong with me".  When they arise, the ocean just sees them for what they are and they pass away naturally.

These eyes see the incredible benevolence of the universe, which is completely trustworthy in all respects. There is nothing to fear. Everything in each moment is so well taken care of - and always has been.

Behind most spiritual practices is the belief that you have to get someplace you're not- a destination called realization or enlightenment. But realization isn't someplace else; it's the naturally occurring human state. It doesn't belong to anybody. It's who we all are. Spiritual practices also set up many pictures of what this state looks like. For example, when I described how much fear was present, people told me the fear meant that something must be wrong, because fear was an indication that I wasn't in the proper state. But fear is just what it is, and it's there too in the vastness of who we are.

There was a part of the mind - perhaps what we call the self-reflective or introspective function - that kept turning to look and, finding emptiness, kept sending the message that something was wrong. It was a reflex that had developed during the years of living in the illusion of individuality, a reflex we commonly consider necessary to our selves. We "look within" repeatedly to determine what we think and feels, to make a study of ourselves and track our states of mind and heart. Now that there was no longer an "in" to look "into", the self-reflective reflex was adrift, but persisted. It kept turning in and turning in, unable to come to terms with the fact that there was no in anymore, only emptiness.

Suffering occurs when something is taken for what it's not , rather than for what it is.

I moved down the street like a cloud of awareness following a body that seemed simultaneously familiar and foreign. There was an incomprehensible attachment to that body, although it no longer felt like "mine". It continued to send out signals of its sensory perception, yet how or where those signals wwere being received was beyond comprehension.

Instead of experiencing through the physical senses, I was now bobbing behind the body like a buoy at sea, cut loose from sensory solidity, separated from and witnessing the body from a vast distance.

I lifted my right foot to step up into the bus and collided head on with an invisible force that entered my awareness like a silently exploding stick of dynamite blowing the door of my usual consciousness open and off its hinges, splitting me in two. In the gaping space that appeared, what I had previously called "me" was forcefully pushed out of its usual location inside me into a new location that was approximately a foot behind and to the left of my head. "I" was now behind my body, looking out at the world without using the body's eyes.

Once beyond the self, however, holiness is no longer possible, because now, there is nothing left to give and no-one left to do the giving.

This journey then, is nothing more, yet nothing less than a period of acclimating to a new way of seeing, a time of transition and revelation as it gradually comes upon "that" which remains when there is no self. this is not a journey for those who expect love and bliss, rather, it is for the hardy who have been tried by fire and have come to rest in a tough, immovable trust in "that" which lies beyond the known, beyond the self, beyond union and even beyond love and trust itself

......at this point the self has obviously outworn its function; it is no longer needed or useful, and life can go on without it. we are ready to move on, to go beyond the self, beyond even its most intimate union with God, and this is where we enter yet another new life- a life best categorized, perhaps, as a life without a self.

The very heart of existence itself is what is looking out through the very eyes of this mindbody that you find yourself so intimately involved with. You think that you are this mindbody- it is what you are unconsciously trying to be from moment to moment...

It is all so very simple but this simplicity will not be seen via your familiar vision of looking at everything via the running commentary of your mind informancy. Awakening to the state of the natural man will only come about through you consciously choosing to move from this, that already is - and this you are very capable of.

The point of all this IS to stay here as our true nature. That is the goal, so to speak, of this eternal now moment.

Our true nature is the nothing which the something arises out of.

Our true nature is entirely unknown.

Duality:
We are always talking about two 'things', until there is only silence on a momentary basis. These two things are:-

a. The 'no-thing' which is our true nature or the Divine.

b. The 'some-thing' which is not.

The nothing we will call our true nature, because that is exactly what it is.

The something or mindbody package will be referred to as the Self. (This includes the conscious-self, unconscious-self, ego-self, feeling-self, true-self, knowing -self and all the rest of the ideas of the chattering mind.)

The self is also the entire package of the person which we know as me/myself/I.

Regardless of the apparent depth to the Self, which we have created out of our spiritual seeking and the buiding up of the Self in this or any other way; it is an entirely shallow and superficial motion. not just shallow and superficial in its outward projection, although this is also true, but actually and only shallow and superficial.