Scott Kiloby - Reflections of the One Life: Daily Pointers to Enlightenment

Reflections of the
One Life

Daily Pointers to Enlightenment

Scott Kiloby

NON-DUALITY PRESS

REFLECTIONS OF THE ONE LIFE

First edition published 2009

This edition published October 2014 by N ON- D UALITY P RESS

Scott Kiloby 2014

Non-Duality Press 2014

Edited by Kevin Prince

Scott Kiloby has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work.

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the Publisher.

N ON- D UALITY P RESS | PO Box 2228 | Salisbury | SP2 2GZ United Kingdom

ISBN: 978-1-908664-47-1

www.non-dualitypress.org

This book is written from love to love. It is a daily reminder of what you already know. Everything is a perfect expression of nothing, which is to say that the boundary between everything and nothing is not real. There is only what is. That is love.

Special thanks to

Chad, Jolinda, Mom, Dad, Mark, Teri, John, Jeff, Kevin, Laura, Mandi, Candice, and Ken and for so many others that have contributedtoo many to name.

JANUARY

There is no greater mystery than this, that we keep seeking reality though in fact we are reality. We think that there is something hiding reality and that this must be destroyed before reality is gained. How ridiculous! A day will dawn when you will laugh at all your past efforts. That which will be the day you laugh is also here and now.

Sri Ramana Maharshi

This moment is ever fresh and new

A s this New Year begins, it is tempting to actually believe that you are entering a New Year or that this is the end of something and the beginning of something else. That is a wonderful story, but is it truly real?

The human mind has been telling quite a story. The notions of minute, hour, week, month, and year are conceptual. Time is a movie being projected from the mind. No matter how hard you look, you will never walk outside your door and pick up or touch anything called, hour, week, month, year, new year, past, future, or time.

The existence of the thought-based, time-bound self is dependent on the illusion of time continuing to be supported through incessant psychological identification with thoughts of past, present, and future. Although the mind has a tendency to go into time for a sense of self, do you notice that past and future are merely presently-arising thoughts? In fact, even the word now is a thought. Do you see that you are here regardless of whether these thoughts are arising or not?

This moment is ever fresh and newwhere the concepts of beginning and ending, me and my life, and my past and my future are seen as stories. There is only the timeless space in which concepts about time arise and fall.

The story of you

Y esterdays reflection stated that the story of you is a time-bound, thought-based illusion. What does that mean?

The story is thought-based in the sense that its content is purely conceptual. When there is no thinking, there is no story of you.

The story is time-bound in the sense that it lives in time only. Your identity is determined by whatever thoughts of past arise in present awareness. Your name, job title, family role, childhood memories, and every other aspect of your history are determined solely through memory. Thought is memory (past).

That story of past is incomplete by its very nature. Because it exists in time (past), it relies on more time for its completion (future). As long as there is dependence on memory (past) for your sense of self, there will be projection towards a future completion of that story. This keeps you locked in the cycle of seeking.

Living solely through time is essentially the same as living solely through thought. Time is thought. You cannot touch past or future except through thinking.

Presence is the timeless awareness that sees the story of you. Past and future are merely thoughts arising in present awareness. If you can see something, it isnt you. It is an object appearing in awareness, an illusion you take to be you. Realize the awareness in which the story of you arises. Seeing the story as it arises frees you from its grip.

The false idea of future awakening

I f the story of you is a thought-based, time-bound illusion, the natural tendency is to devise ways to be free of it. Many spiritual practices are undertaken in the name of getting rid of the ego. But only the story of you would be interested in getting rid of the story of you. The entire movement to get rid of or be free of ego is a movement towards future. Whenever there is effort towards future, the time-bound story is running the show. The cycle of seeking continues.

In discovering that the movement towards future awakening is just more bondage to the time-bound ego, the possibility for a timeless seeing arises. This timeless seeing emanates from awareness, which cannot be sought in the future because it is what is awake right now. Future is merely a thought arising in it. It can be quite a blow to the time-bound story to realize that all its grand plans for future enlightenment are just self-centered thought patterns. In those patterns, the underlying plot is, When will my enlightenment arrive?

Your enlightenment will never arrive. No time-bound story ever reaches enlightenment. Enlightenment is realized to be the timeless awareness that sees the time-bound story arising and falling. In that effortless noticing, the story is seen to be a dream that was never real. There is nothing to get rid of. Only that seeing is needed.

Timeless awareness (conceptuality v. actuality)

N o matter what words are used to point to timeless awareness, the pointers are only concepts. What is being pointed to is not conceptual.

These reflections are not inviting you to start buying into a new set of enlightened concepts. It is easy to go around thinking and talking a lot about presence or this moment while missing completely the immediately accessible non-conceptual awareness that is being pointed to here. In that case, presence becomes the new conceptual story of the dream self. The script in this story is I am present or I am working towards being present.

But the words timeless awareness are pointing to the fact that there is no person to be, or work towards being, present or aware. The person is a conceptual, time-bound story arising in the timeless awareness that is awake now.

Timeless awareness is also only a concept and, as such, the mind can confuse the concept with the actuality to which it is pointing. The words are not that which they describe. So, although timeless awareness is a concept, it is pointing sharply to an actuality. The pointer timeless awareness is pointing to the actual, non-conceptual space in which all concepts (including time and self) arise and fall. It points to that which is looking in (and as) the space of this moment before an interpretation about the moment appears. The catch is that every concept is an interpretation.

The self-centered nature of thought

T he self-centered nature of thought remains unseen for most people. If it is seen, it is often taken for granted and considered normal. But as awareness becomes aware of the content of thought, it becomes increasingly obvious that the content is largely self-centered and that this self is ultimately a fiction.

The mind filters every experience through the question, What does this mean for me? It interprets reality and its surroundings in a way that places the self at the center. Dont believe what is being said here. Simply notice thoughts. Notice that, according to the mind, everything centers around you: your wife, your pet, your job, your house, your friends, your bad day, your good day, your feelings, your street, your city, your country, your religion, your race, your experiences, and even your God or your enlightenment.