Hi Heather, just found your channel yesterday " you" make so much sense..effortlessness sums it up for " me" i got a taste of the effortlessness while meditating one day just happened..just one no two everything was happening by itself..silly me writing this its impossible to put into words as we all know. .but thankyou love your channel ❤
This phrase has stuck with me throughout my life…”Wash the dishes to wash the dishes”. To this day, I can remember the exact moment this phrase clicked. I am enjoying your conversations, quite illuminating.
@@chemtrooper1 love it… the book title, “One Thing at a Time,” is in part a nod to Thich Nhat Han’s simple instruction to only do the dishes, only notice this step, this breath. 🙏
@@heatherralstonnonduality Miracle of Mindfulness was the first book I read on this subject! 😃. My current read is The Way of Zen by Alan Watts. Again, really enjoy your content ❤️
@RJGilman1967 the things we were told to believe that we never bought into; or little glimpses we saw of something before we were even knowingly on the path. Like growing up in a religious community but sensing there was something more, or getting the sense boundaries between bodies aren’t real
@@heatherralstonnonduality Yes, ok. I thought something like that. Thank you for responding. And yes I have experienced all of those. Much appreciated. "I am not a body..."
The candle that identifies with its own flame's light. But when it goes looking for its light by the power of that which it emits, there seems to be nothing. Water doesn't wet itself, light doesn't illumine itself, fire doesn't burn itself.
I started with the manifestation subject and I'm ending on being or to awaken subject. Read so many books these last 2 years. Many good, others not so much. Left my job, my friends. Would like to leave my family as well. Nonetheless I feel much better than before, when I was just going around following ego's orders and whims. Unfortunately, this path hasn't led me to a financial security. For one side I don't care if I have money or not. On the other, I would like to have my own life like a normal adult, away from family. Just rambling, I guess... Grateful for your videos, Heather. 🙏🏻🌺
@@evitapepperoni1980 I understand, truly. Sign up for emails on my website - I only email for real things. I anticipate facilitating greater community resources in the future. 🙏
I thought I replied to this. I understand this very well. Sign up for emails on my website. I don't send them often. Something is simmering about community.
I Look inside for happiness. It is a choice. I am truly greatful. Gratitude is a function of happiness. As Einstein said simplify everything down to it's simple essence but not further. Now going and experience life. ... Thank you blessings to you.
Happiness & joy occur when the mind is forgotten . Happiness is just one facet of humanity . Enlightenment is living with peace while in the heart of a hurricane Your mind is cluttered with words , it needs to clarify and simplify its message . Trauma needs to be mourned . Duality isn’t 2 entity’s it is 1 process of becoming
Thank you, Heather, yes I'm slowly learning to have both feet in different aspects of this. an apparent me, and an impossible, no way of manifesting any of it. Peace
I would like to share with you some reflections on my experiences in the Western approach to non-dualism, the traditional Zen approach, traditional Vipassana, Western yoga and the mindfulness method as it is applied in the West as a stress-reducing technique. I would like to use a metaphor. Let's assume we want to replace the paint on a car: For me, mindfulness and yoga were like washing the car paint with soap and water. The result is shiny and gives a nice feeling. Vipassana is sanding the paint, you go to the base layer, you can remove all imperfections and dull spots and start again by spraying a nice fresh paint. Zen...there is car paint. Western non-dualism...which car paint? What is car paint? I'm curious if you also feel the differences? There are of course overlaps, but I have focused my experience with it. The thing is, we have to pay bills, wash clothes, go to work, and maybe take care of kids too. Non-dualism brought me into a 2-dimensional world where there is nothing to name, nothing to say, nothing to think. I went to take a look, it is a breathtaking place that I continue to use as a reference and from which I build my life, but in my experience it is not a place from which we can participate in society. Nowadays I combine Zen and Vipassana, because of the culture around it, so that I have a guideline to live with love in truth. Zen is non-dualism, but it is the practically viable form. The Western approach to non-dualism is actually a bit like staring at the components of car paint. Everyone has to decide for themselves whether it makes them happy and loving.
__ "ones and zeros" says the teacher and an airplane chemtrails her. It seemed in perfect keeping with the wisdom of not needing good conditions or timing to get to awareness.
Thank you for this! I do have a few questions: Without having an awakening, how can one disentangle oneself from their ego? Also, without practicing, how can one ever have an awakening? Is it not true that most realized people were seeking realization at some point? I just practice and try to be open to it happening or not happening in any moment. After watching this vid, I’m not sure if that’s now something I should adjust.
@@HasItEverNotBeenNow don’t try to have an awakening 😊 you are already what you’re looking for, the belief that something has to happen to become yourself IS the illusion, is the thing preventing total relaxation as yourself
@@HasItEverNotBeenNow effortless is your true nature, mind is obscuring that. Trying is just a mental habit based on belief that something has to happen. Recognize that habit, and that it's not you.
@@YoolSea I recommend a really simple intro book to nonduality (wrote one), I made an intro video too. These are not in service of searching, but in breaking down misunderstandings and remaining detached from, ultimately trusting inner resonance. I haven’t read the essay but I read the Wikipedia summary, and it’s close but missing an important component. The mind trying to wrap around this is part of the illusion being experienced.
@@Leo-z1o5v true self-realization cannot be forgotten because it is prior to the mind, not subject to forgetting. However, in the experience it can be covered over, the attention can be absorbed in the illusion again, which can feel like forgetting. In my experience it continues like a game, with the feeling that one has forgotten, and walking oneself back, and realizing one never forgot. It's happened enough times that even in the experience of "forgetting," I know I haven't. Each time, more is understood.
I was rushing to re lease my first answer right now just after watching yours "what will i loose if i let go". So not to be very happy but i let myself to go to this trap i think for a long time. But i am recovering :). Thanks to your answers and you teaching very clearly i like it. I cant speak very good and dont like to be laud. Thank you once again
@@imaginaryreality1775 an illustration someone close to me said the other day: it’s like walking around carrying a heavy rock, and someone tells you you can put it down, and you say “yes, I’ve been reading many books and soon I’ll be ready.” In the end you find you had everything you needed
@@imaginaryreality1775 your natural state is as the Infinite, knowing even in the illusion that you are That, and using the human vessel in a clean way to act out Your Will. What this means, the implications, are what take so long to talk about; living without investment in outcomes, empathetic yet detached, effortlessly loving, not because it is morally superior, but because that's what automatically happens when there is realization that all things are animated by the same being, and that being is you. Read this multiple times.
@@heatherralstonnonduality yesterday I was faced with a situation that normally would have caused me intense anxiety and I fully had the option to avoid it 100% with no consequence to me. I would have been the only one who knew. My first thoughts were in fact to completely avoid it but then something strange happened. Instead I just let go and walked right up to it without any thought or prejudice and I just experienced it as it was. I was at peace. At the time I didn’t even realize I wasn’t stressed or looking for an excuse to leave. I just was being. Afterwards I did think about it and I wondered if that IS the state of being you and others are describing or was it just something similar? The thing is I’ve since reverted back to the state of suffering. It scares me to let go because I am afraid to “think” I’ve found peace only to have the rug pulled out from under me later because it was only a moment. Like how do you maintain that moment, that state? But then I don’t know if these questions are even helpful to ask. Where do you even go to find or talk to people who have awakened? The videos and the books are helpful but it just feels like if it’s left solely up to myself like I’m just chasing my own tail. Btw my cats tail is as fluffy as your cats tail. I know the words you’ll say that it’s already there within but why do I only have fleeting moments only to be dumped right back to where I started. I guess that’s more rhetorical thinking out loud than a question for you but any insight is appreciated. If not I understand
Recognizing that it is a human construct, originating in the mind, is enough to see that this idea didn’t come from “me.” Then we ask, is it true that searching leads to happiness? Of course not, it leads to effort, being tired, and more searching. If the answer is within, searching is definitely a detour (though in a way a necessary one, so we can learn that searching isn’t “it”). No other being on earth needs to search for happiness.
Please help me out. 🙏 If reaching out denies us the very thing we are reaching for, then how do we proceed? This ‘pretending’ we don’t want non-duality or playing some kind of spiritual ’hard-to-get’ doesn’t make sense to me. I completely understand that being so attached to non-attachment would be self defeating, but it all feels a bit like winning the lottery, either it happens or it doesn’t. There seems to be little advice on how to increase the chances of it happening other than ‘stop wanting it to happen.’ 🤷🏻♂️🙏❤️☯️
Absolutely. Feel free to keep reading if you want - it's all going to eventually click as one message - stop listening to the mind, the mind isn't you. Stop investing all attention in the preservation of only one body, you are animating all the bodies and you can't be injured in any way. The only reason this doesn't click is because of disbelief and conditioning, which need to be questioned and removed. The reading is for unlearning, but you could do that (eventually) on your own with sufficient will to train attention to it. Believing the solution is in the words is a misunderstanding. Maharaj is a good example - all he really tells you to do is to go inside and question, am I that? Who or what am I? All the other text is just to illustrate something that can't be fully described. That's how my book is laid out too, and these videos are really just for a sort of moral support, a reminder of the very same thing from a different perspective over and over.
I like the way you put it that “…as long as there is identification with the ego … reality is going to reflect that”.
I would love to spend a day with you. Someone who thinks exactly like I do. Thank you for the time I get with you!
🙏
That what you are seeking is seeking you. Spoken by the poet Rumi. Best Wishes
Hi Heather, just found your channel yesterday " you" make so much sense..effortlessness sums it up for " me" i got a taste of the effortlessness while meditating one day just happened..just one no two everything was happening by itself..silly me writing this its impossible to put into words as we all know. .but thankyou love your channel ❤
Everything happening by itself is the best :) it makes sense because I am you!
This phrase has stuck with me throughout my life…”Wash the dishes to wash the dishes”. To this day, I can remember the exact moment this phrase clicked.
I am enjoying your conversations, quite illuminating.
@@chemtrooper1 love it… the book title, “One Thing at a Time,” is in part a nod to Thich Nhat Han’s simple instruction to only do the dishes, only notice this step, this breath. 🙏
@@heatherralstonnonduality Miracle of Mindfulness was the first book I read on this subject! 😃. My current read is The Way of Zen by Alan Watts. Again, really enjoy your content ❤️
Here and now, yes. I was doing or experiencing the direct path before I ever heard of it and I just love it.
love hearing about the "holes" in the programming that brought us where we are
@@heatherralstonnonduality What holes? Not sure what that means.
@RJGilman1967 the things we were told to believe that we never bought into; or little glimpses we saw of something before we were even knowingly on the path. Like growing up in a religious community but sensing there was something more, or getting the sense boundaries between bodies aren’t real
@@heatherralstonnonduality Yes, ok. I thought something like that. Thank you for responding. And yes I have experienced all of those. Much appreciated. "I am not a body..."
I was almost enlightened but that motorcycle ruined it 😂
@brianarsenault8882 dang it! 😆
I’ll simply say thank you.💚
@@andreasgerden ❤️🙏
Tky
About halfway through this you said something that just clicked and I felt like something just shifted
Thank you
@@aaron-hatefi love hearing that 🙌
thank you 😍
The candle that identifies with its own flame's light. But when it goes looking for its light by the power of that which it emits, there seems to be nothing. Water doesn't wet itself, light doesn't illumine itself, fire doesn't burn itself.
I started with the manifestation subject and I'm ending on being or to awaken subject. Read so many books these last 2 years. Many good, others not so much. Left my job, my friends. Would like to leave my family as well. Nonetheless I feel much better than before, when I was just going around following ego's orders and whims. Unfortunately, this path hasn't led me to a financial security. For one side I don't care if I have money or not. On the other, I would like to have my own life like a normal adult, away from family. Just rambling, I guess... Grateful for your videos, Heather. 🙏🏻🌺
@@evitapepperoni1980 I understand, truly. Sign up for emails on my website - I only email for real things. I anticipate facilitating greater community resources in the future. 🙏
The ego wants, but the I AM? Thanks :D.
I thought I replied to this. I understand this very well. Sign up for emails on my website. I don't send them often. Something is simmering about community.
__
Ma used to say, in recognition of God in one and in another: deep calleth to deep.
Sending you a warm smile, Heather. Thank you for being here. 🙏🙏🙏
@@Diarrhyofmind 🙏
I Look inside for happiness. It is a choice. I am truly greatful. Gratitude is a function of happiness. As Einstein said simplify everything down to it's simple essence but not further. Now going and experience life. ... Thank you blessings to you.
@@TheDWZemke 🙏
Thank you 🙏
@@richardsnyder6413 🙏
💜
Happiness & joy occur when the mind is forgotten . Happiness is just one facet of humanity . Enlightenment is living with peace while in the heart of a hurricane
Your mind is cluttered with words , it needs to clarify and simplify its message .
Trauma needs to be mourned . Duality isn’t 2 entity’s it is 1 process of becoming
Thank you, Heather, yes I'm slowly learning to have both feet in different aspects of this. an apparent me, and an impossible, no way of manifesting any of it. Peace
I would like to share with you some reflections on my experiences in the Western approach to non-dualism, the traditional Zen approach, traditional Vipassana, Western yoga and the mindfulness method as it is applied in the West as a stress-reducing technique. I would like to use a metaphor. Let's assume we want to replace the paint on a car: For me, mindfulness and yoga were like washing the car paint with soap and water. The result is shiny and gives a nice feeling. Vipassana is sanding the paint, you go to the base layer, you can remove all imperfections and dull spots and start again by spraying a nice fresh paint. Zen...there is car paint. Western non-dualism...which car paint? What is car paint? I'm curious if you also feel the differences? There are of course overlaps, but I have focused my experience with it. The thing is, we have to pay bills, wash clothes, go to work, and maybe take care of kids too. Non-dualism brought me into a 2-dimensional world where there is nothing to name, nothing to say, nothing to think. I went to take a look, it is a breathtaking place that I continue to use as a reference and from which I build my life, but in my experience it is not a place from which we can participate in society. Nowadays I combine Zen and Vipassana, because of the culture around it, so that I have a guideline to live with love in truth. Zen is non-dualism, but it is the practically viable form. The Western approach to non-dualism is actually a bit like staring at the components of car paint. Everyone has to decide for themselves whether it makes them happy and loving.
🙂👍👍👍✌
@@alienoverlordsnow1786 ✨
You got me laughing at myself from this video. Also I am wondering can we refer to the mind as A.I.? In a way it seems like it is.
We could lightly use the concept to understand it... the original AI, now creating many mini games within the game...
Laughing at the constructed self is very powerful, carry on :)
@@heatherralstonnonduality 😆❤
__
Buddha under the bhodi tree [plus airplane and motorcycles]
Cat nature also noted. Hunting up the bhodi tree.
Awareness doesn't care about loud noises :)
__
"ones and zeros" says the teacher and an airplane chemtrails her. It seemed in perfect keeping with the wisdom of not needing good conditions or timing to get to awareness.
"The more we identify as human subject to matter." [motorcycles vibrate the air]
The irony is beautiful. And yes, it's perfect, we do not need perfect circumstances "to awaken." Nothing needs to change, and yet it all can
Thank you for this! I do have a few questions: Without having an awakening, how can one disentangle oneself from their ego? Also, without practicing, how can one ever have an awakening? Is it not true that most realized people were seeking realization at some point? I just practice and try to be open to it happening or not happening in any moment. After watching this vid, I’m not sure if that’s now something I should adjust.
@@HasItEverNotBeenNow don’t try to have an awakening 😊 you are already what you’re looking for, the belief that something has to happen to become yourself IS the illusion, is the thing preventing total relaxation as yourself
@@heatherralstonnonduality Now that I know it's a possibility, I don't know how to not "try." Any suggestions?
@@HasItEverNotBeenNow effortless is your true nature, mind is obscuring that. Trying is just a mental habit based on belief that something has to happen. Recognize that habit, and that it's not you.
Is this non duality that you teach, what Ralph Waldo Emerson was referring to in his essay "The Oversoul"? Thank you, I am trying to understand.
@@YoolSea I recommend a really simple intro book to nonduality (wrote one), I made an intro video too. These are not in service of searching, but in breaking down misunderstandings and remaining detached from, ultimately trusting inner resonance. I haven’t read the essay but I read the Wikipedia summary, and it’s close but missing an important component. The mind trying to wrap around this is part of the illusion being experienced.
@@heatherralstonnonduality thank you.
Are you considering possibility of the situation when you loose that quantum leep state?
Do I appear, as the character, to be in a quantum leap state? And, if I am fully detached from outcome, does loss of a temporary state matter?
Probably doesnt matter but its not my question. I am wondering is it possible to forget due to life circumstances
@@Leo-z1o5v true self-realization cannot be forgotten because it is prior to the mind, not subject to forgetting. However, in the experience it can be covered over, the attention can be absorbed in the illusion again, which can feel like forgetting. In my experience it continues like a game, with the feeling that one has forgotten, and walking oneself back, and realizing one never forgot. It's happened enough times that even in the experience of "forgetting," I know I haven't. Each time, more is understood.
I was rushing to re lease my first answer right now just after watching yours "what will i loose if i let go". So not to be very happy but i let myself to go to this trap i think for a long time.
But i am recovering :). Thanks to your answers and you teaching very clearly i like it. I cant speak very good and dont like to be laud. Thank you once again
You're welcome :)
I’m so lost
@@imaginaryreality1775 an illustration someone close to me said the other day: it’s like walking around carrying a heavy rock, and someone tells you you can put it down, and you say “yes, I’ve been reading many books and soon I’ll be ready.” In the end you find you had everything you needed
@@heatherralstonnonduality I don’t doubt that. That’s why it’s so frustrating.
@@imaginaryreality1775 your natural state is as the Infinite, knowing even in the illusion that you are That, and using the human vessel in a clean way to act out Your Will. What this means, the implications, are what take so long to talk about; living without investment in outcomes, empathetic yet detached, effortlessly loving, not because it is morally superior, but because that's what automatically happens when there is realization that all things are animated by the same being, and that being is you. Read this multiple times.
@@heatherralstonnonduality yesterday I was faced with a situation that normally would have caused me intense anxiety and I fully had the option to avoid it 100% with no consequence to me. I would have been the only one who knew. My first thoughts were in fact to completely avoid it but then something strange happened. Instead I just let go and walked right up to it without any thought or prejudice and I just experienced it as it was. I was at peace. At the time I didn’t even realize I wasn’t stressed or looking for an excuse to leave. I just was being. Afterwards I did think about it and I wondered if that IS the state of being you and others are describing or was it just something similar? The thing is I’ve since reverted back to the state of suffering. It scares me to let go because I am afraid to “think” I’ve found peace only to have the rug pulled out from under me later because it was only a moment. Like how do you maintain that moment, that state? But then I don’t know if these questions are even helpful to ask. Where do you even go to find or talk to people who have awakened? The videos and the books are helpful but it just feels like if it’s left solely up to myself like I’m just chasing my own tail. Btw my cats tail is as fluffy as your cats tail. I know the words you’ll say that it’s already there within but why do I only have fleeting moments only to be dumped right back to where I started. I guess that’s more rhetorical thinking out loud than a question for you but any insight is appreciated. If not I understand
🙏🤍💛🧡❤️🩷💜💙🩵💚🤎🩶
@@pilargarcia6724 ❤️
How to release the idea of searching? Thank you
Recognizing that it is a human construct, originating in the mind, is enough to see that this idea didn’t come from “me.” Then we ask, is it true that searching leads to happiness? Of course not, it leads to effort, being tired, and more searching. If the answer is within, searching is definitely a detour (though in a way a necessary one, so we can learn that searching isn’t “it”). No other being on earth needs to search for happiness.
She cooked
@@yungchedda5270 🙌
Please help me out. 🙏
If reaching out denies us the very thing we are reaching for, then how do we proceed? This ‘pretending’ we don’t want non-duality or playing some kind of spiritual ’hard-to-get’ doesn’t make sense to me. I completely understand that being so attached to non-attachment would be self defeating, but it all feels a bit like winning the lottery, either it happens or it doesn’t. There seems to be little advice on how to increase the chances of it happening other than ‘stop wanting it to happen.’ 🤷🏻♂️🙏❤️☯️
Absolutely.
Feel free to keep reading if you want - it's all going to eventually click as one message - stop listening to the mind, the mind isn't you. Stop investing all attention in the preservation of only one body, you are animating all the bodies and you can't be injured in any way. The only reason this doesn't click is because of disbelief and conditioning, which need to be questioned and removed.
The reading is for unlearning, but you could do that (eventually) on your own with sufficient will to train attention to it. Believing the solution is in the words is a misunderstanding. Maharaj is a good example - all he really tells you to do is to go inside and question, am I that? Who or what am I? All the other text is just to illustrate something that can't be fully described. That's how my book is laid out too, and these videos are really just for a sort of moral support, a reminder of the very same thing from a different perspective over and over.
@@heatherralstonnonduality
Thank you. Moral support much appreciated. 😉🙏
The Teal Swan giggling is a bit cringy.