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Thursday, September 29, 2011

Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World's Religions Can Come Together


~By The Dalai Lama

Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World's Religions Can Come Together


"May the effort of this book be of benefit to the emergence of a genuine understanding between the world's great religions, and may it foster in us deep reverence toward each other." The Dalai Lama

In perhaps his most important book, the Dalai Lama shares his hopeful yet realistic views on how humanity must step into the future.  In our daily lives today no one is untouched by what happens in the rest of the world.  New technology, environmental problems, economic gain and loss, nuclear weapons, and instant communication have all created unprecedented familiarity among the world's many cultures. With this historic development, the Dalai Lama understands that the essential task of humanity in the twenty-first century is to cultivate peaceful coexistence.

Many believe in the inevitability of an escalating “clash of civilizations”.  Peaceful coexistence has long been problematic between religions, and while previous conflicts over religious differences may have been significant and regrettable, they did not threaten the very survival of humanity. Now, when extremists can persuade followers with the immense emotional power of faith and have access to powerful technological resources, a single spark could ignite a powder keg of frightening proportions.

Yet the Dalai Lama shows how the challenges of globalization can also move us in another direction, to a deeper plane where nations, cultures, and individuals connect through their shared human nature.  All major religions confront the same perennial questions; each have distinct forms of expression. But this marvelous diversity of insight has the potential for inspiring dialogue which can enrich everyone’s pursuit of wisdom.

In Toward a True Kinship of Faiths, the Dalai Lama also explores where differences between religions can be genuinely appreciated instead of becoming sources of conflict. Creating genuine harmony does not depend on accepting that all religions are fundamentally the same or that they lead to the same place.  Many fear that recognizing the value of another faith is incompatible with having devotion to the truth of one’s own.  Nevertheless, the Dalai Lama shows how a sincere believer can, with integrity, be a pluralist in relation to other religions without compromising commitment to the essence of the doctrinal teachings of their own faith.

An issue of central importance for the Dalai Lama personally and for the entire world in general, Toward a True Kinship of Faiths offers a hopeful yet realistic look at how humanity must step into the future.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Cree Indian Proverb

“Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.”




Monday, September 26, 2011

Excuses Begone – Wayne Dyer Interview




Mahoney: What common excuses do people use in grappling with their conscience?

Dyer: Excuses are the explanations we use for hanging on to behaviors we don’t like about ourselves; they are self-defeating behaviors we don’t know how to change. In Excuses Begone! I review 18 of the most common excuses people use, such as “I’m too busy, too old, too fat, too scared or it’s going to take too long or be too difficult.”

We spend a big hunk of our lifetimes contemplating what we can’t have, what we don’t want and what’s missing in our lives. What we have to learn is to put our attention and focus on contemplating what it is we would like to attract, and not on what is missing.

Mahoney: You talk about mind viruses. What are these?

Dyer: A virus has three purposes: to duplicate, to infiltrate and to spread from one host to the next. Ultimately, even a single virus can shut down an entire system.

A mind virus is different in that there is no form to it; these are ideas placed in our heads when we are little. We get programmed by well-meaning people like our parents and their parents, our culture, religions and schools. We get conditioned to believe in our limitations and what’s not possible.

After a while, we start really believing these things are true. People who have had self-defeating behaviors for a long time, such as people who have been overweight since they were children or people with longtime addictions, actually believe there is no other alternative.

Mahoney: What’s the payoff for living a life filled with excuses?

Dyer: There’s a payoff for everyone. The reason we hang on to self-defeating behaviors is because it’s easier not to take responsibility. If you’re blaming something or someone else for the way you are, then that person, those people, those circumstances or those energies, are going to have to change in order for you to get better; that’s most likely never going to happen. It’s also a way to manipulate other people.

Usually, making excuses is just something we can get away with, rather than challenging or changing ourselves. If you want to change and you want your life to work at a level you’ve never had before, then take responsibility for it.

I’m not saying that a child who was abused or beaten or abandoned made that happen, but your reaction to it is always yours. While you were four, you didn’t know anything other than being terrified and scared; you’re not four any longer. Now [as an adult] you have to make a choice and recognize that even the abuse that came into your life offers you an opportunity to transcend it, to become a better person and even more significantly, to help someone else not go through what you did.

Mahoney: What is your seven-question paradigm to help people change long-established habits of negative thinking?

Dyer: The paradigm helps a person identify the thought system, which is almost always false, that is behind the rationale for the continuation of excuses. It helps them really look at excuses from an objective point of view and realize that everything they’ve been thinking is just as likely to be not true as it is to be true.

I believe if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Mahoney: When we look at our own lives and think about the lives of loved ones, what is key to living a healthy, happy, love-based life?

Dyer: The key is to trust in your own divinity, to know that you are a piece of God, and that you are like what you came from. As a spiritual being, you have Divinity within. When Albert Einstein was asked about the impact of quantum physics, he said, “It’s just all details, I just want to think like God thinks.” And God thinks in terms of creating, kindness, beauty and goodness.

His newest book, Excuses Begone! How to Change Lifelong, Self-Defeating Thinking Habits, was inspired by the ancient teachings of the Tao Te Ching.


Wayne Dyer’s Website


Ellen Mahoney is a freelance writer who teaches writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Contact evm@infionline.net.

“The Truth is the only thing you’ll ever run into that has no agenda.” ~Adyashanti


"To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day." ~Lao Tzu




Sunday, September 25, 2011

Different Religions & Beliefs

~by Pamela J. Wells

If we accepted and respected the fact that there are different beliefs and religions in the world without fighting about which belief/religion is correct and which one is not correct, that would drop the wall of separation between people and maybe, just maybe there would be more peace in the world.

Fighting over beliefs is all just a big ball of the egoic state of consciousness. I’m right, your wrong—is at the kindergarten level of thinking and consciousness.

On a superficial level it is easy to judge and argue and fight over religion or beliefs, yet let's get back to what it is really all about. Under all of that superficial nonsense, it is really all about coming together and being accepting of each other, regardless of what each person believes or does not believe.

Until we get past our own delusional ways of interacting and communicating with each other, history will continue to repeat itself, from generation to generation, from society to society. There is a deeper dimension underneath all of that madness.

Belief/religion should be about love, not just for a select few. If a belief or religion is not based on love or it is not communicated from a place of love, then it is ego, the mind. Instead of fighting verbally or otherwise there should be compassion, giving, and helping those who need help the most; those who are suffering, hungry, or poor.

I truly believe that there is an Ego God out there masked as belief.

When the mouth opens to speak, does it attack or does it love? That is the question.

Copyright © 2011 Pamela J. Wells. All Rights Reserved


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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

What Does It Mean To Be Undivided?

~by Adyashanti




In these teachings, I’ve talked about being undivided, and I’ve equated awakening with being in an undivided state. But I want to make sure that no one gets a mistaken idea of what it means to be undivided. Nondivision is the effect of awakening; it is the expression of the realization of our true nature. As I have said, being undivided has nothing to do with being perfect or saintly.

Also, there is no guarantee after awakening that, in any particular moment, you will not experience division in some way; there is no guarantee that division will never happen again. In fact, to be free, to be awakened, is to let go of concern with such things, with how awakened one is or isn’t.

One of the great poems of the Zen tradition ends with this description of the awakened state:

“To be without anxiety about imperfection.” So, to be undivided does not mean to be perfect. Being undivided does not conform to images we might have in our mind about holiness or perfection. If someone were to look at my life, I’m sure they could come up with lots of reasons to say something like, “Oh, that doesn’t fit my idea of what an enlightened being would be. That doesn’t fit my image of what an undivided being is like.”

I’m sure that my life would probably not conform to a lot of people’s ideals about what they think enlightenment should look like. Because, in truth, I’m much more of an ordinary person than most people would imagine. To me, part of awakening is dying into ordinariness, into non-anxiety.

Regardless of what someone might say looking at my life or anyone else’s life, the state of Nondivision is not something you can understand until it starts to wake up within you. I can only encourage you not to believe any image that may arise in your mind of holiness or perfection, because these images only get in the way.

Being undivided—seeing and acting from nonseparation, from oneness—is something that we must each discover for ourselves. What is it to see beyond love and hate, beyond good and evil, beyond right and wrong? These things must be discovered in your own experience. Evaluating other people’s experience of Nondivision is not helpful. The only thing that matters is where you are. In any moment, are you experiencing and acting from division, or are you experiencing and acting from oneness? Which is it?

~by Adyashanti – From his Book: The End of Your World



Zen Buddhism – Hyon Gak Sunim (Part 1 of 3)




Dennis Wholey Interviews Hyon Gak Sunim.

Zen Buddhism is about human beings returning to their nature—in this moment. Buddha is from a Sanskrit root that means Wake Up.

One’s own awakening is the awakening of other things, see because when you wake up to yourself your nature and the nature of all things is revealed to be the same awakened nature. There is no me that’s awakened and you that’s not. We don’t realize we’re awake.

Everything is already awake. It just doesn’t know it. Buddhism teaches that when we wake up to our nature we don’t get this spiritual quality, this divine quality, we are it.

I Believe with Dennis Wholey

(Part 2 of 3)


Buddhism recognizes that in this dimension that we exist in and in dimensions that are inconceivable to us that there are always enlightened natures waking up and waking others up.  

Dennis: Why at this point in time do you think that people are attracted to Buddhism?

Hyon Gak Sunim: I think the extent to which we have been able to develop and kind of magnify this exteriorization of our experience through technology and architecture and materialism and I don’t just mean that in a negative sense of materialism; the sense of our senses being outwardly directed to lights and colors and flavors and possibilities and things and values and everything and music. We’re so fascinated exteriorly, at the same time we’re numbed to the fact that it doesn’t satisfy us ultimately, so in some sense we are numb. And as long as we grasp exteriorly we have learned to believe that it just does not satisfy.

I Believe with Dennis Wholey

To see (Part 3 of 3), please go to my YouTube Channel:
AwarenessConscious YouTube Channel

Friday, September 23, 2011

No Presents Please

The Buddha was sitting in the shade of a tree when an angry man came upon him. The angry man started yelling insults, but the Buddha sat there calmly and said nothing. The angry man continued screaming, but received no reply. After a few minutes the man could not keep up his anger at such a level and asked: 

“Do you have nothing to say?” 

The Buddha then asked the man, “If someone gives you a gift and you do not want it, to whom does it belong?” 

The man answered that it must remain with the giver of the gift. Then the Buddha said, 

“I refuse to accept your anger, so you will have to keep it yourself.” 

The angry man is said to have become a disciple of the Buddha.

~By Peter Whitfield - Zen Tails


Thursday, September 22, 2011

Love is Being Present

~by Thich Nhat Hanh



TO LOVE IS, above all, to be there. But being there is not an easy thing. Some training is necessary, some practice. If you are not there, how can you love? Being there is very much an art, the art of meditation, because meditating is bringing your true presence to the here and now. 

The question that arises is:

Do You Have Time To Love?

I know a boy of twelve whose father asked him one day, “Son, what would you like for your birthday present?” The boy did not know how to answer his father, who was a very rich man, able to buy anything for his son. But the boy did not want anything except his father’s presence. Because the role the father played kept him very busy, he did not have time to devote to his wife and children. Being rich is an obstacle to loving. When you are rich, you want to continue to be rich, and so you end up devoting all your time, all your energy in your daily life, to staying rich. If this father were to understand what true love is, he would do whatever was necessary to find time for his son and his wife.

The most precious gift you can give to the one you love is your true presence. What must you do to really be there? Those who have practiced Buddhist meditation know that meditating is, above all, being present—to yourself, to those you love, to life.

So I would propose a very simple practice to you, the practice of mindful breathing: “I breath in—I know that I am breathing in; I breathe out—I know that I am breathing out.” If you do that with a little concentration, then you will be able to really be there, because in daily life our mind and our body are rarely together. Our body might be there, but our mind is somewhere else. Maybe you are lost in regrets about the past, maybe in worries about the future, or else you are preoccupied with your plans, with anger or with jealousy. And so your mind is not really there with your body.

Between the mind and the body, there is something that can serve as a bridge. The moment you begin to practice mindful breathing, your body and your mind begin to come together with one another. It takes only ten to twenty seconds to accomplish this miracle called oneness of body and mind. With mindful breathing, you can bring body and mind together in the present moment, and every one of us can do it, even a child.

If the father I was talking about had known that, he would have begun to breathe in and breathe out mindfully, and then one or two minutes later, he would have approached his son, he would have looked at him with a smile, and he would have said this:

“My dear, I am here for you.”

This is the greatest gift you can give to someone you love.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Perception & Peace

~by Pamela J. Wells~

Your perception of the external world and external phenomena is a determining factor in whether you are at peace or not. Put another way:

How you mentally process your external world, external phenomena, people’s behavior will impact the way you see yourself if you attach yourself to that external phenomena, to the way in which people behave towards you, or the way they behave towards others.

Remain in awareness of what you see and hear without programming into your brain that phenomena, others actions or behaviors as your personal resume of who you are.


Copyright © 2011 Pamela J. Wells. All Rights Reserved


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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Do Not Take On External Phenomena, Others Actions or Behaviors Towards You As Your Personal Resume of Who You Are.

~ Pamela J. Wells


Copyright © 2011 Pamela J. Wells. All Rights Reserved

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

The Heart of Relationship

~By Adyashanti~



Awakening to the truth of perfect Unity means to awaken from the dream of a personal self and personal others to the realization that there is no other. Many spiritual seekers have had glimpses of the absolute unity of all existence, but few are capable of or willing to live up to the many challenging implications inherent in that revelation. The revelation of perfect unity, that there is no other, is a realization of the ultimate impersonality of all that seems to be so very personal.

Applying this realization to the arena of personal relationships is something that most seekers find extremely challenging, and is the number one reason why so many seekers never come completely to rest in the freedom of the Self Absolute. Inherent in the revelation of perfect unity is the realization that there is no personal me, no personal other, and therefore no personal relationships. Coming to terms with the challenging implications of this stunning realization is something that few people are willing to do, because realizing the true impersonality of all that seems so personal challenges every aspect of the illusion of a separate, personal self. It challenges the entire structure of personal relationships which are born of needs, wants, and expectations.

It is in the arena of personal relationships that the illusion of a separate self clings most tenaciously and insidiously. Indeed, there is nothing that derails more spiritual seekers than the grasping at and attaching to personal relationships. The revelation of perfect unity reveals the true impersonality of all relationships. The ego always interprets "impersonal" as meaning cold, distant, and aloof. However, "impersonal" simply means not personal, or void of a separate me and a separate you.

The mind cannot comprehend a relationship without separate entities, much as a character in a dream cannot comprehend that all other dream characters are simply manifestations of the same dreamer. Yet when the dreamer awakens, he instantly comprehends that the entire dream, and all the characters in it, were none other than projections of his own self. In the dream there is the appearance of separate, personal entities in relationship, but upon awakening, one comprehends the impersonal (non-separate) Self that is the source of all appearances.

To deeply inquire into the question "Who is another?" can lead to the direct experience that the other is one's own Self -- that in fact there is no other. However, I have seen that for most seekers, even this direct experiential revelation is not enough to transform the painfully personal ways they relate. To come to this profound transformation requires a very deep investigation into the implications inherent within the experiential revelation that there is no other. It is in the daily living of these implications that most seekers fail. Why?

Because, fundamentally, most people want to remain separate and in control. Simply put, most people want to keep dreaming that they are special, unique, and separate, more than they want to wake up to the perfect unity of an Unknown which leaves no room for any separation from the whole.

There is a powerful tendency in most spiritual seekers to avoid probing deeply into the implications inherent within profound spiritual experience and revelation, because these implications are always threatening to the sense of a separate self, or ego. It is the implications inherent within profound spiritual revelation that demand the transformation of the apparent individual.

Inherent within the revelation of perfect unity is the realization that there is no other. The implications of this realization reveal that in order to manifest that unity in the relative world, one must renounce the dream of being a separate self seeking to obtain anything through relationship with another.

Indeed, personal relationship appears to happen in the relative world, but in reality, all appearances simply arise as temporary manifestations of a unified whole. In the relative world these appearances are in relationship, but not as separate entities. Rather, they are the play of the one Self projecting itself as apparent entities in relationship to one another.

As long as you identify yourself with the projection of separateness, you will continue to deny that you are the Source of all projections. When you truly and absolutely awaken to this fact, and comprehend the overwhelming implications inherent within this awakening, you will continually experience that all apparently personal relationships are in truth nothing other than the play of your Self.

To realize that the personal me is an illusion born of false identification with the body, thoughts, and emotions brings a profound sense of freedom. This is fundamentally the realization of emptiness, of what you are not. But contained within the realization of emptiness (formlessness) is also the realization of what you ARE. In the most absolute sense, you ARE this conscious emptiness which is the source of all appearances (existence). But you are the appearance as well—not just one part of the appearance called "me," but all of it, the entire whole.

This is the challenge, to let your view get this vast, to let your view get so vast that your identity disappears. Then you realize that there is no other, and there is nothing personal going on. Contrary to the way the ego will view such a realization, it is in reality the birth of true love, a love which is free of all boundaries and fear. To the ego such uncontaminated love is unbearable in its intimacy.

When there are no clear separating boundaries and nothing to gain the ego becomes disinterested, angry, or frightened. In a love where there is no other, there is nowhere to hide, no one to control, and nothing to gain. It is the coming together of appearances in the beautiful dance of the Self called love.

To the seeker who is sincere, an experiential glimpse of this possibility is not enough. If you are sincere, you will find it within yourself to go far beyond any glimpse. You will find within your Self the courage to let go of the known and dive deeply into the Unknown heart of a mystery that calls you only to itself.


You Are the Source of All Projections

As long as you identify yourself 
with the projection of separateness 
you will continue to 
deny that you are 
the Source of All Projections.

~Adyashanti~

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Shamanism & Spiritual Light





Tami Simon speaks with Sandra Ingerman a shamanic practitioner, psychotherapist, and educational director for the Foundation for Shamanic Studies who has taught workshops on shamanism around the world. Sandra is the author, along with Hank Wesselman, of the Sounds True book Awakening to the Spirit World and the three-part online event 21st-Century Shamanism, which begins August 5, 2010, at SoundsTrue.com. Sandra discusses our connected web of consciousness, understanding our individual spiritual aspects, and how developing our shamanistic qualities can benefit others.

Pema Chödrön: Fear and Fearlessness (Video)





Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Recognize How You View Others ~By Wayne Dyer

Persistently viewing others as 
dishonest, lazy, sinful, and ignorant 
can be a way of compensating 
for something you fear. 

If there's a pattern of 
seeing others as failures, 
you need to notice this pattern 
as evidence of what 
you're attracting into your life.

~Wayne Dyer - Power of Intention Cards

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Awareness

By Jiddu Krishnamurti

Question: What is the difference between awareness and introspection? And who is aware in awareness?

Krishnamurti: Let us first examine what we mean by introspection. We mean by introspection looking within oneself, examining oneself. Why does one examine oneself? In order to improve, in order to change, in order to modify. You introspect in order to become something, otherwise you would not indulge in introspection. You would not examine yourself if there were not the desire to modify, change, to become something other than what you are. That is the obvious reason for introspection.

I am angry and I introspect, examine myself, in order to get rid of anger or to modify or change anger. Where there is introspection, which is the desire to modify or change the responses, the reactions of the self, there is always an end in view; when that end is not achieved, there is moodiness, depression. Therefore introspection invariably goes with depression.

I don't know if you have noticed that when you introspect, when you look into yourself in order to change yourself, there is always a wave of depression. There is always a moody wave which you have to battle against; you have to examine yourself again in order to overcome that mood and so on.

Introspection is a process in which there is no release because it is a process of transforming what is into something which it is not. Obviously that is exactly what is taking place when we introspect, when we indulge in that peculiar action. In that action, there is always an accumulative process, the `I' examining something in order to change it, so there is always a dualistic conflict and therefore a process of frustration. There is never a release; and, realizing that frustration, there is depression.

Awareness is entirely different. Awareness is observation without condemnation. Awareness brings understanding, because there is no condemnation or identification but silent observation. If I want to understand something, I must observe, I must not criticize, I must not condemn, I must not pursue it as pleasure or avoid it as non-pleasure. There must merely be the silent observation of a fact. There is no end in view but awareness of everything as it arises. That observation and the understanding of that observation cease when there is condemnation, identification, or justification. Introspection is self-improvement and therefore introspection is self-centeredness. Awareness is not self-improvement. On the contrary, it is the ending of the self, of the 'I', with all its peculiar idiosyncrasies, memories, demands and pursuits. In introspection there is identification and condemnation. In awareness there is no condemnation or identification; therefore there is no self-improvement. There is a vast difference between the two.

The man who wants to improve himself can never be aware, because improvement implies condemnation and the achievement of a result. Whereas in awareness there is observation without condemnation, without denial or acceptance. That awareness begins with outward things, being aware, being in contact with objects, with nature. First, there is awareness of things about one, being sensitive to objects, to nature, then to people, which means relationship; then there is awareness of ideas. This awareness, being sensitive to things, to nature, to people, to ideas, is not made up of separate processes, but is one unitary process. It is a constant observation of everything, of every thought and feeling and action as they arise within oneself. As awareness is not condemnatory, there is no accumulation.

You condemn only when you have a standard, which means there is accumulation and therefore improvement of the self. Awareness is to understand the activities of the self, the `I', in its relationship with people, with ideas and with things. That awareness is from moment to moment and therefore it cannot be practiced. When you practice a thing, it becomes a habit and awareness is not habit. A mind that is habitual is insensitive, a mind that is functioning within the groove of a particular action is dull, unpliable, whereas awareness demands constant pliability, alertness. This is not difficult. It is what you actually do when you are interested in something, when you are interested in watching your child, your wife, your plants, the trees, the birds. You observe without condemnation, without identification; therefore in that observation there is complete communion; the observer and the observed are completely in communion. This actually takes place when you are deeply, profoundly interested in something.

Thus there is a vast difference between awareness and the self-expansive improvement of introspection. Introspection leads to frustration, to further and greater conflict; whereas awareness is a process of release from the action of the self; it is to be aware of your daily movements, of your thoughts, of your actions and to be aware of another, to observe him. You can do that only when you love somebody, when you are deeply interested in something; when I want to know myself, my whole being, the whole content of myself and not just one or two layers, then there obviously must be no condemnation. Then I must be open to every thought, to every feeling, to all the moods, to all the suppressions; and as there is more and more expansive awareness, there is greater and greater freedom from all the hidden movement of thoughts, motives and pursuits. Awareness is freedom, it brings freedom, it yields freedom, whereas introspection cultivates conflict, the process of self-enclosure; therefore there is always frustration and fear in it.

The questioner also wants to know who is aware. When you have a profound experience of any kind, what is taking place? When there is such an experience, are you aware that you are experiencing? When you are angry, at the split second of anger or of jealousy or of joy, are you aware that you are joyous or that you are angry? It is only when the experience is over that there is the experiencer and the experienced. Then the experiencer observes the experienced, the object of experience. At the moment of experience, there is neither the observer nor the observed: there is only the experiencing. Most of us are not experiencing. We are always outside the state of experiencing and therefore we ask this question as to who is the observer, who is it that is aware? Surely such a question is a wrong question, is it not? The moment there is experiencing, there is neither the person who is aware nor the object of which he is aware. There is neither the observer nor the observed but only a state of experiencing.

Most of us find it is extremely difficult to live in a state of experiencing, because that demands an extraordinary pliability, a quickness, a high degree of sensitivity; and that is denied when we are pursuing a result, when we want to succeed, when we have an end in view, when we are calculating - all of which brings frustration. A man who does not demand anything, who is not seeking an end, who is not searching out a result with all its implications, such a man is in a state of constant experiencing. Everything then has a movement, a meaning; nothing is old, nothing is charred, nothing is repetitive, because what is, is never old. The challenge is always new. It is only the response to the challenge that is old; the old creates further residue, which is memory, the observer, who separates himself from the observed, from the challenge, from the experience.

You can experiment with this for yourself very simply and very easily. Next time you are angry or jealous or greedy or violent or whatever it may be, watch yourself. In that state, `you' are not. There is only that state of being. The moment, the second afterwards, you term it, you name it, you call it jealousy, anger, greed; so you have created immediately the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experienced. When there is the experiencer and the experienced, then the experiencer tries to modify the experience, change it, remember things about it and so on, and therefore maintains the division between himself and the experienced. If you don't name that feeling - which means you are not seeking a result, you are not condemning, you are merely silently aware of the feeling - then you will see that in that state of feeling, of experiencing, there is no observer and no observed, because the observer and the observed are a joint phenomenon and so there is only experiencing. Therefore introspection and awareness are entirely different. Introspection leads to frustration, to further conflict, for in it is implied the desire for change and change is merely a modified continuity.

Awareness is a state in which there is no condemnation, no justification or identification, and therefore there is understanding; in that state of passive, alert awareness there is neither the experiencer nor the experienced.

Introspection, which is a form of self-improvement, of self-expansion, can never lead to truth, because it is always a process of self-enclosure; whereas awareness is a state in which truth can come into being, the truth of what is, the simple truth of daily existence. It is only when we understand the truth of daily existence that we can go far. You must begin near to go far but most of us want to jump, to begin far without understanding what is close. As we understand the near, we shall find the distance between the near and the far is not. There is no distance - the beginning and the end are one.

By Jiddu Krishnamurti – Excerpt from Book “The First and Last Freedom”