30 Day Challenge

Day 4: Abiding as I AM

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Day Four of 30 Day Wake-Up challenge

with Adya (Solana’s insights)


Day four begins with a reminder that these teachings are meant to be experienced, to experience the truth of your Being, not just thought about.(This again is emphasized because it can be a turning point to realize that for us to really get it, we need to get if from within ourselves as an insight, as our own realizations. Otherwise it does not go very deep and we are missing the pointer. Also when we realize this, it can help us to realize that this is also true for others, in case you are spending a lot of energy trying to get someone else to realize something.)


Today’s practice we are deciding to Abide in the I Am, before all its personal identities. We generally define ourselves through our thoughts. Remember thoughts are just thoughts, they are not who we are, even though they may create feelings that make us believe that we are those feelings.
(I have heard this many times, but it is only recently that I actually looked to see what it means. When we have feelings, especially intense feelings, we feel them and we naturally associate them as our feelings, that they belong to us, or they are my feelings. That sense of mine, is what makes us believe there is an individual ( I )connected to the feelings, rather than realizing the feelings are just present in a space of awareness. If we realize this it can give us a sense of distance, which can give us some space to see the reality of the truth. People also talk about people can use this as a spiritual bypass of feelings. That is not what we are discussing here, you can realize, yes these feelings are present, and be fully present with them. If you are feeling angry about something it is good to acknowledge that the anger is present. Then it can be released, rather than allowing it to be suppressed in the subconscious, which will rear its head in other ways if it is not acknowledged. The way I deal with these emotions is to acknowledge their presence, and see them as small hurt children that are abandoned, so I welcome them into my heart. That welcoming, that sense of acceptance, is what dissolves them. When we do this, it does benefit the Whole.)

How could a mere thought or collection of thoughts be who you are?

So say to yourself, I Am and feel the stillness afterwards, and again I AM, notice how quiet and silent the experience of I AM. Stay with that for a while.
(There is also a proverb in the Old Testament that says BE Still and know I AM God, that has the same purpose if one contemplates it, and one can drop the word God and say Be still and Know I AM if the word God does not agree with your mind).

The rest of the practice is to notice that thoughts are just thoughts, abstract ephemeral creations of your mind. When the mind has moments of silence you still are, but not as a thought, not as a someone or something to be evaluated or judged. Then to rest in that pure still Sense of I AM, the key word is Sense. Remember we are feeling this to have the sense of experience. Again just I AM, prior to thoughts.

Just rest in the direct awareness of I Am


The I am is awareness’s recognition of itself as awareness. So just rest in this recognition of your true being, of your formless being
And Enjoy!

All of these practices are so powerful, and any one of them can be life transforming. Even just the reminder to Enjoy the practices. It is extremely enjoyable for the Presence to recognize itself. Sometimes I move into great feelings of ecstasy when this happens. So Enjoy.

Many Blessings to you All,

Solana Tara

Day 3: The Presence of Being

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Day 3: The presence of Being

Again we are invited to start by the simple acknowledgment of awareness (notice the power of just that invitation)

Then bring awareness to the feeling sense of awareness (another important pointer- FEEL the sense of awareness, there is great power in the Feeling)

And with that feeling sense, notice that awareness is always present, you don’t have to understand it or capture it, just notice it is already there. (again very powerful to notice, and this in itself could be very life-transforming, when I notice it at first, quite often an immense feeling of gratitude arises for the feeling of this Presence)

    So notice that the spacious and open nature of awareness has a Presence to it, meaning that there is a subtle intuitive felt sense of how awareness is experienced, a subtle feeling of aliveness. Simply by awareness beginning to recognize itself, this recognition has a correspondent effect on the body-mind and that a fact of awareness becoming aware of itself is the feeling sense, that subtle sense of Presence or aliveness.

I Am Safe

Awareness does evoke the experience of Presence, in your body, both your physical body and your subtle body or senses. Notice how your body kind of relaxes like Presence is almost like a safe space that you can kind of let go, you can relax into it, it feels kind of inviting and safe. (I have experienced doing this, after an upsetting situation, and the awareness of Presence created a shift in feeling like everything was okay with that awareness of Presence, what Adya is calling a feeling of being safe.)

We are exploring Who We Are

Adya then reminds us, again, we are not just doing a spiritual practice for a future pay off (this pointer has been very helpful for me, it is an amazing realization to see that what we are really doing is exploring who we are. I sometimes say to myself, this is who I am, and there is a joyous response in me when that is recognized).

I’m not the thoughts in my mind.

A radical understanding from doing this simple practice can occur that can give to rise as an insight, an intuitive recognition that, “ I’m not the thoughts in my mind, there are thoughts in my mind, but all that is just momentary content that arises, and passes away and even when it passes away you still have the sense of being 

There is only an idea, I am doing it!

Awareness isn’t something that you’re doing, when you look for who’s doing this thing called awareness, you find there’s nothing there, there’s no one there except an idea, I’m doing it. But when you let go of that idea, awareness is conscious of itself, it’s doing itself, it’s literally more you than all the thoughts you’ve ever had about yourself in your entire life.

 They are nothing but thoughts in your head!

All those thoughts, all those descriptions of what people told you were, good, bad or indifferent, all those self-judgments, all of that, are nothing but thoughts in your head.

And we’re just waking up from identifying with those, we are not even trying to get rid of those thoughts. We are just seeing those thoughts are not you.

Who are you?

You are awareness of being, invisible awareness. Abide in that felt sense of awareness with the possibility that maybe when I do this, I’m actually experiencing the formless nature of my being, of who I am. So in essence you’re hanging out with who and what you really are, a formless aspect of being.

May we all have awareness of our meeting in the One.

Many Blessings,

Solana Tara

 

Day Two 30-Day Wake-up Challenge

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Day Two – 30-Day Wake-up Challenge with Adya

Day 2: The spacious and empty nature of awareness

Today Adya asks us to look at the nature of awareness as being spacious and empty.

The practice begins by releasing hold of what is in the mind, just letting what it there be, not trying to figure things out.

I have noticed in the past the mind wanting to figure things out, this has been a powerful pointer for me, because it helps to bring consciousness to what was unconscious before. 

Rest in the knowing that everything is happening in expansive awareness. Notice awareness is effortless.

YOU do NOT need to do anything to make awareness more aware. This seems like common sense, but when I hear this pointer, I realize on some level I have felt like I needed to make awareness more aware, I guess that is like trying to make water wetter.

·       Rest in awareness and notice it is open,

·        Notice felt sense (this is a pointer that has been very helpful, to notice there is a feeling sense)

·       You are not trying to do anything to change content

(what is happening in the mind, this is also helpful to notice because usually if I notice there is an upset feeling, I want to change that)

·       Notice awareness has open feeling, let yourself rest in this spacious, sense and feel the it, that is what we call Presence.

·        Take a moment to rest into this observation it’s knowing that all of your thoughts and feelings  is happening within expansive awareness

You are resting in the fundamental sense of your own being.

So this one pointer has made a huge shift, the noticing that this is really who I am. I notice that it is very helpful to remind myself of this often.

Adya says, That it is important to understand otherwise you will relate to this as sort of a spiritual practice and you will forget that, “wait a minute I am actually EXPLORING my Being, I am exploring who and what I Am.  I am not just doing a technique, I am actually exploring and experiencing my own true nature.”

Again to emphasize, that this pointer has been extremely helpful and I hope to continue to use it, because I can feel the power of the potential for the continuing deepening of realizing, I AM.

So many things that Adya points out in these pointers are so potentially powerfully, that I could continue on but in the name of blogging, I offer this to you today in the hopes it touches something within you.

Many Blessings to you All,

Solana Tara

Spiritual Awakening

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Are you ready and willing?

Introduction to Adyashanti's 30 day Awakening Challenge

Adyashanti and Tami Simon from Sounds True introduced the 30-Day Wake Up Challenge. When I heard it, I knew I wanted to do it. Some of the highlights of the video that I noted were:

  • What people wanted the most were teachings that people could take into themselves, that were short and daily.

 

  • There is incredible power to some skillfully put together pointers that point to parts of our own experiences that we tend to overlook.

 

  • These pointers tend to be the most revelatory, transformative aspects of our whole Being. Having our attention drawn to these certain areas can be as powerful as our regular spiritual practices.

 

  • The purpose of these pointers is to call forth a domain of consciousness that we tend to overlook.

 

  • Awakening is more like a recognition of what was always present.

 

  • When someone does two things:

  • 1) Points out, says look here, this is what it is like, this is how to intuitively sense what is already there and

  •  2) Articulates it in a way that can evoke a realization that we knew it, but we did not know we knew it until someone articulated it and brought it to our attention in a very specific way.

 

  • Awakening is an essential and relatively spontaneous shift of our identity, of how we feel, sense, think about our self.

 

  • We feel and sense, we are not an individual moving through life, we feel a deep connection to the totality of life itself, we feel more of life itself, appearing as a particular person, also as a particular individual as well but also we feel as if we are the whole of life. We feel it not just as an experience, but we feel and know it is essentially what I AM. That is a shift of identity.

  • A shift of identity is the hallmark of what any awakening experience is all about.