It’s not so much that we are IN conscious contact; we ARE the conscious contact.
Please note that Paul's early material from which the "Slaps" were taken has been edited and is now available in his book "Escape To Everywhere" (February 2015) available directly from Paul at: https://www.createspace.com/5116702
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The basic fact of living is the awareness of it. There is only consciousness.
When we forget that we ARE conscious contact there’s trouble, because life is no longer experienced as what is simply happening, but as what is happening TO ME.
All the thoughts that are happening in your head are a product of the system of self centeredness. Whatever has happened in your life, self takes advantage of it. Polishes it, cherishes it, makes it the basis of its story. No way it’s going to let loose of it. It receives whatever your life comes in contact with and takes advantage of it.
You realize finally there is no need to be liberated. All that needs to be liberated is you, from the idea of being a noun.
There is an event going on, you think it is happening to you as a self. You don’t see yourself as proceeding THROUGH an event, but as an event that’s happening TO you.
When you think life is happening TO you, thousands of files download. This system of self centeredness gives meaning through you to life. You see the meaning as though it’s real and solid and outside of yourself.
There is life. Then it becomes my life. My self. Creating this huge movie about me.
Trying to get a solution? To what? To get out of self? Sounds like a natural response to a situation that’s unbearable. But the response is part and parcel of the bigger problem, called self-centeredness. It’s called duality. Your getting out of it is being in it also.
I attempted to get better through spiritual practices. I was in that marketplace quite awhile. I figured that was the only place to find value in life, those practices. Always seeking for 10 years or so, but formulated in self-centeredness. All to be a BETTER SELF: “I as Paul am going to do something and have something for Paul to be better.” That’s the only way I could think; I didn’t know any better. I couldn’t think outside the box, because if you THINK you’re still in the box. All the thinking I could entertain was defined by self-centeredness.
Then I met someone who talked about this position of the pointless point. I entertained the possibility. I got the flavor of it, I sensed it. Once I entertained it, it became the last answer for me. Maybe I’ll get a new answer, but I haven’t for years.
Now Paul doesn’t have to be so busy with doing and having, getting better and worse. It’s produced good things in my life.
We are overwhelming what’s happening with what’s not happening. It’s amazing if you turn on to entertaining something that is true, what it can produce. In self-centeredness there is only a very limited range of possibility. It’s the same old same old. You’ve been into every nook and cranny already.
If you apply a solution to an imaginary problem (self) what can you expect? A lot of something’s going to happen, but it’s not going to be what you thought. If you apply a solution to an imaginary problem what you’re doing is verifying the reality of the problem.
What solution that you think you’ve found has lasted? None. How can a solution work on an imaginary problem? The true solution is recognizing its imaginary; that’s the quickest way out. To realize you’re not in it.
You lose total interest finally in being “liberated,” because you realize there is no need to be liberated. All that needs to be liberated is your freedom from the idea of being a noun. That’s it; that’s as far as liberation needs to go.
Selfing says, I want to be the awareness. No you frickin’ don’t. You don’t want to be free. You just want to have a better self. Want everything to get better just as you are.
That’s the whole solution. The recognition that I was never in what I thought I was in, and I was trying so hard to get out of it. I stopped; I was out of it by not trying to be out of it.
Someone will say, maybe you can help me get on to that awareness thing, maybe I’ll feel better. The lie is that you can ever be “off” the awareness.
Consciousness is a constant state. It doesn’t have to get ready. It doesn’t take a vacation and come back. It’s always on. No entrance point, no exit point. You’re on the ride, there’s no getting off.
Feel the energy. Be the verb. We’re trying to signal you, through the wall of the noun that you’re really a verb. That’s all that’s happening. Trying to tickle the verb through this shell of a noun.
Do you want to be the thing that can be aware half the time, or do you want to be the awareness?
You can’t serve two masters at the same time. Serving the one master frees you up to travel lighter. Serving the other master wants to exclude you by HAVING you, as a noun.
You’re being taken over by the parasite. Of course you want relief! The stories aren’t you; but if you decide to believe they are your attention can be drawn into them. And you’re stuck.
The mind feels very safe in the idea you MIGHT be conscious one day. “When I do such and such then I, as the mind, will allow myself to feel how conscious I am.” But never now; it’s always put off. Because being conscious, NOW, would be the end of self.
Self doesn’t exist. Only the process of living, the verb, exists. There is selfing, but there is no self. Selfing is not a problem; what is the problem is the illusion of being a self. Selfing will keep happening. The real solution is to recognize you’re not the self or the selfing; then all the perceptions of illusion can keep appearing and creating an illusion – which you’re not falling for anymore! Because you are not playing at being a noun, which is the biggest thing it makes up.
Self lives in a world of options that are not correct. It believes I can become spiritual, but inherently I am not spiritual. I can feel peace or get peace but I can also lose the peace. I feel connected, and I also feel disconnected. It entertains possibilities based on duality. That’s what it does. But in fact, the conscious contact is choiceless; simply what’s happening.
An interpretation of the conscious contact includes the idea that it’s possible to be in it --- or out of it. Which is a lie.
You know FROM the truth. The self thinks it can know the truth because it plays the subject and makes truth the object. But that’s not what’s happening. The truth is all there is, and I’m seeing from it right now — but not as a Paul; that’s a story ABOUT the seeing. Self loops everything back to itself in a loop of self reflection. You get absorbed in that because you think it’s you.
So now a question, a self inquiry, a good little
Knock on the door. Ask, “Who am I?”
The Attention says, “It’s me.” If you continue to do this, you run into pure awareness.
The Attention that’s been playing at selfing all day says, “Oh I have to answer the door.” But it doesn’t go as self, because it’s not self; it is Attention.
So Attention leaves off selfing and goes to answer the door. And when the door opens you see — the you that was looking-for sees what’s looking — and it ain’t you!
So there’s a stop, a pause, and you get a free sample. It will startle the selfing into submission for a second, perhaps, and there will be a pause in the selfing. Because selfing is a verb it can be stopped; you can throw a wrench into it.
One part of your energy is always looking out, observing things. Another part of your energy is going back into self. Referring all the contact back to ME, saying I am what is in contact, I.
So we’re going to ask who am I. The selfing, busily being the I, goes, “I heard the door,” and turns to it. And because it’s not the self, but the awareness, awareness meets the awareness. Bingo. There’s your freedom from the bondage of self.
When you no longer pontificate about what’s happening, then you are in conscious contact. Where the rubber meets the road. There is life, happening. I don’t know what happened yesterday, and I don’t care; the context of this day was enough. There was one thing that was always going on, which was the verbing of it. Always the sense of being. The sense of movement. Of presence. The generator of life humming in the background.
We might say, awareness is you; but that’s stretching it. There’s just awareness. This whole act of sensing the being of it is the joy.
Like Jesus said, “You are the light of this world, but you’ve put a basket over your light.” The basket is the idea of being a self.
