So with deliberate intention look directly within. Experience what is actually there. Taste what you actually are. Meet what God actually is. See for yourself where God truly is found.

You don’t need teachers’ descriptions. Do you need to have the flavor of watermelon described in order to be able to taste it? Neither do you need to have your oneness with God described in order for you to be able to experience it.

We’ve been conned to believe we only can taste what we’re taught. But that’s not true. The only way to experience what’s real, is to taste it all by yourself on your own. There’s no other way it can happen, and no other way that it will.

The reason you can directly experience what God truly is, is because God truly is within you. He couldn’t be more immediate, intimate, available or closer. Never mind what you’ve been taught about God. Never mind what you’ve been taught about yourself. Watermelon descriptions are useless. What you want to do is intimately meet what you actually are. There’s no other way to experience what God actually is.

This is John Sherman’s “Vichara” - the practice of directly experiencing the reality that you are, your self-evident, unmistakable, certain, permanent, continuous and changeless Being.

All that’s required of us is that we have the intention to directly experience the reality that we are. If we have that intention, everything else takes care of itself.

Let’s go ahead and do it right now, let’s go ahead and intend to directly experience the reality that we are. Here is a list of items we can practice with. Just one item would really be enough, because they’re simply different ways of saying the same thing, but we’ll do the whole list this time. Don’t rush. Allow enough time to directly experience each and every item.

I experience the obvious fact that I am being.

I notice the feeling of simply existing.

I notice my direct immediate experience of being.

I notice the unchanging sense of presence that is always here and about which nothing can be said.

I’m aware of the simplicity of my presence.

I notice the light of awareness that is the invisible reality of what I am.

I feel the existence that I am.

I notice the pure feeling of being.

I experience the certainty of being that is ever-present and that never changes.

I feel what it feels like to be.

I know what it feels like to be certain that I’m here.

I experience the feeling of presence that’s always here, is never absent, is always the same, and never changes.

So you see, it really is quite possible for you to have the conscious, immediate, direct, experience of the reality you actually are. You can see that you can definitely do it. You can taste the watermelon for yourself, on your own.

And once the essential permanent conscious realization of your reality actually occurs, it’s freedom and magnificence is beyond what words can describe, a genuine love affair, rich, deep and subtle beyond anything you could dream of.

If you’ll do this as often as it occurs to you to do so, you’ll be engaging in a practice that will be of immensely greater benefit to you than anything else you can possibly do.

As you continue to do this, over a period of time, ego will dissolve, suffering will stop, intuition will increase, drama will weaken, problems will diminish, miracles will happen, falseness will vanish, and your life will fall into peace, harmony and ease.

But you’ll need to practice this for a while before that’ll become obvious. Until then you’ll not want to abandon your current array of spiritual practices. So continue with everything you’re currently doing – Rajpur, Eckhart Tolle, ACIM, Joel Goldsmith, Deepak Chopra, Ho’oponopono, David Wilcock, Drunvo Melchizadek, Adyashanti, Gangaji, Wicca, Gurdjeiff, Dan Millman, Right Use of Will, Meister Ekhart, Teilhard de Chardin, Emma Curtis Hopkins, Glenda Green, Carlos Casteneda, Anthony De Mello, Rajneesh, Nisargadatta, David Hawkins, Thomas Merton, Ramana Maharshi, Sai Baba, Byron Katie, Donald Walsch, D. T. Suzuki, Vivekananda, Tony Parsons, Susan Montag, Jonathan Harrison, Ramtha, Frank Sanders, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, Caroline Myss, Jacob Boehm, Al Ghazali, Sri Aurobindo, Meher Baba, Emanual Swedenborg, LaoTzu, Rollo May, Ramakrishna, Rudolf Steiner, Ram Dass, Abraham Maslow, Edgar Cayce, Kalu Rinpoche, Moses Maimonides, Thane Walker, Thich Nhat Hanh, Lester Levinson, Ramesh Balshekar, Brother Lawrence, Alan Watts, J. Krishnamurti, Ken Wilbur, Marcea Eliade, Rudolf Otto, Richard Bucke, Jed MkKenna, Benjamin Crème, Elbert Hubbard, Muktananda, Mary Baker Eddy, Urantia, Carl Jung, Douglas Harding, Albertus Magnus, Papaji, Yehuda Ashlag, Patanjali, Shankara, Traherne, Morrnah Simeona, Richard Rose, Vernon Howard, John Wheeler, P. D. Ouspenski, Andrew Cohen, Margo Anand, Ravi Shankar, Richard Moss, Sri Chinmoy, Larry Dossey, Matthew Fox, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Andrew Harvey, Jack Cornfield, Robert Thurman, David Spangler, Gary Zukav, Philip Goddard, Madame Blavatsky, Frithjof Schuon, James Twyman, Story Waters, Peter Russell, Brad Blanton, Stephen Wolinski, Michael James, Robert Anton Wilson, Arjuna Ardagh, Rupert Sheldrake, David Deida, Bernadette Roberts, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Paul Brunton, Hubert Benoit, Sri Aurobindo, Babaji, Harry Palmer, Alice Bailey, Trungpa Trogyem, Philip Kapleau, Scott Kiloby, Lahiri Mahasaya, Maitreya, Lawrence Kushner, Shaun McNiff, Patanjali, Jelaluddin Rumi, Satchidananda, Wei Wu Wei, Sri Yukteshwar, (just to name a few).

All that matters is that you add Sherman’s Vichara in addition to anything else that you do. Simply intend to directly experience the reality that you are, as often as it occurs to you to do so.

Within one to three months the Vichara will prove itself through your own direct experience. And then you might decide to give some other things up, if you want. It really doesn’t matter because nothing else that you do will interfere with the Vichara, nor will the Vichara interfere with anything else that you do. So you might as well have your cake and eat it too.

One final thing I’ll mention about the Vichara, is that the more deeply you experience what you’re actually Being, the more you’ll discover that you actually are all Being. As John Sherman recently put it, “The truth is that there is nothing but you. Always, everywhere in all cases your experience of Being is exactly the experience of all is one, of nothing but you. There is only one self. There are no two selves anywhere to be found. There is only you. Really. All you need to understand is that what you’re looking for is yourself. Find yourself. My only prayer is that all being know itself.”

If you’d like to learn more about John Sherman’s Vichara, you can download, free of charge, a substantial number of audio recordings of his teaching, and a smaller number of videos and transcripts from his website at http://www.riverganga.org

And/or check out my 45 minute talk about The Vichara, with an 8 point outline and YouTube Playlist:

http://www.miraclescenter.us/gilberti20.htm
http://www.miraclescenter.us/gilberti20.htm
http://www.miraclescenter.us/gilberti20.htm

Much Love,

Ben

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Vichara_Conversation/

Notice that our awareness has no shape, no size, no extension.  It doesn’t really seem to be a pinpoint.  And yet it doesn’t seem to have any size beyond that either.  It seems to extend to whatever it is that we’re aware of.

Notice that it really doesn’t seem to be a substance of any kind.  It doesn’t seem to be made of anything.  And yet it is more real than substance because without it we would never be aware of substance.

So it confounds the entire idea of materiality.  Matter is so prominently substantial, and yet without insubstantial awareness all the substance of matter would be pointless.

Notice how absolutely gentle awareness is.  Unless what it is aware of has something to do with force, awareness itself is absolutely gentle.

Now notice how our very existence would actually have no meaning at all were it not for the fact that we’re aware of existing.   Notice how we can’t even be aware of anything existing without awareness because we can’t be aware of anything existing without awareness without being aware of just that.

And now, notice that it actually in fact is the greatest thing we could ever know, because without it we wouldn’t be able to know anything.   Notice that it actually in fact is greater than any other experience we could possibly have because without it we wouldn’t be able to be aware of any experience.

And now consider this:  Awareness is greater than anything else we could possibly know about God, because without it God wouldn’t be aware of anything, which would nullify everything else about God that is grand and magnificent.  Try to imagine God not being aware of His own existence.  Without awareness, God would be nothing.  Just think about that for a moment.

So the greatest thing we can know about God is that God is awareness, because God would be nothing without awareness, just as we would.  So, awareness is the one thing that is clearly essential both to us, and to God.

Notice that if we weren’t awareness in the first place, we couldn’t imagine ourselves to be something other than awareness.  We have to BE awareness before we can think we’re something else.  That being the case, what’s the point in thinking we’re something else?

And now consider this, can there possibly be anything more true than awareness?  Just try to imagine something that is more true than awareness.  Everything we can possibly know about Truth could not be known unless there was awareness in the first place to be aware of it.

So Awareness is our True Identity.

And look at what the Course in Miracles says about our True Identity:

W-224.1. My true Identity is so secure, so lofty, sinless, glorious and great, wholly beneficent and free from guilt, that Heaven looks to It to give itself light.

“Heaven looks to It to give itself light!”

Of all the magnificent phenomena in the entire universe.  Of all the astounding miracles you could ever imagine.  None is more magnificent or astounding than our own awareness.  Imagine, “Heaven looks to It to give itself light!”

Much Love, 

Ben

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Vichara_Conversation/

Much Love, Ben

The vichara is the primal, wordless, direct experience of the reality that you are.  When you practice the vichara, to some extent that happens immediately.  But for me it’s come into far more evidence now that I’ve been practicing it for 18 months.

Though there are others who write and speak of the vichara, I’ve found that John Sherman offers the clearest and most practical description of it.

The practice itself is simple.  And here it is outlined it in nine simple points.  Though simple, they’re each one true, precise, proven, essential, and important:

1. There’s no need to change or avoid changing anything else you’re doing.

2. The only problem there is, is a false belief about what you are.

3. The only solution that will work, is to see the truth of what you are.

4. There’s no need to understand what you falsely believe yourself to be, nor is it possible to do so.

5. This false belief is entirely unconscious and cannot be seen.

6. There’s nothing you can do that can rid you of this false belief, other than directly seeing for yourself the truth of what you are.   It’s not seeing what you’ve been taught is the truth of what you are. It’s directly seeing for yourself the truth of what you are.  There’s a difference.  Here’s the way I look at it.  We don’t need to be taught the flavor of watermelon in order to be able to taste it, and neither do we need to be taught about reality in order to be able to experience it.  I think the only way to really experience what’s real is to taste it for yourself on your own.

7. All that you can know for sure about yourself is that you are here. All the rest is conjecture. This is similar to Translation’s axiomatic major premise.  But with the vichara, rather than think Truth is that which is so, you notice you are that which is here.

8. So to practice the vichara you just direct your attention to your hereness, presence, or being — and see for yourself how it’s so simple, obvious, certain, continuous, changeless and permanent.

9. As you continue to consistently practice the vichara, over time, false belief will dissolve, suffering will stop, intuition will increase, drama will weaken, problems will diminish, falseness will vanish, and your life will relax into peace, harmony and ease.  I know because that’s what happened to me. Plus, my Translations now say less, mean more, and work better.

Yet I still keep listening to John Sherman’s talks because they continue to further clarify and deepen my understanding and experience, both of the practice and the context within which it functions.  Hundreds of hours of John’s talks are available for download free of charge from his websites.  Here are the links: http://www.riverganga.org and http://johnsherman.org

Shifting gears a bit, let me share with you something that helped me to have a clearer experience of “this feeling of presence that is always the same.” It’s something that John mentions, yet he doesn’t elaborate on it as extensively as I wish to do now.

I was wanting to test this for myself, to experience whether this feeling of presence was truly always the same. I sensed that it was, but I wanted to make the discovery for myself.  So I proceeded to do the following: I would lie on my bed and scan every conceivable event in my life that I could think of, trying to conjure up as wide a variety of events as possible. I dug up events involving fear, guilt, suffering, meanness, praise, success, cruelty, pride, love, trauma, pleasure, happiness, joy, achievement, failure, tragedy, contentment, lust, hatred, grief, delight, shyness, discomfort, passion, shame, illness, cowardice, arrogance, skill, deceit, events of that nature.

It was fun to see that no matter how wonderful or horrible each memory happened to be, the feeling of presence was unquestionably there, completely unperturbed and always identical regardless of my age or the nature of the drama involved.

For instance, there was one scene, as a young child, where I was terribly humiliated and severely punished because I had done something that seriously injured a cousin with whom I was playing. I remembered that memory as something quite awful. But now it was simply fun to notice the feeling of presence that was perfectly intact in that little kid’s awareness. And, at the same time, I was still aware of the whole drama as I always remembered it, only now I was totally free and unaffected by it.

I also found it helpful to alternate between distant memories and my current, present self. In so doing I found it encouraging and fortifying to see how clear it was that there truly is a sense of self that’s exactly the same in five-year-old-Ben as in 59-year-old-Ben, and that this permanent, changeless, and untouched sense of self most certainly is the truth of what I am.

One thing that surprised me was that I enjoyed doing this as much as I did. I thought it was going to be something I’d have to discipline myself to work at. Instead I found the practice to be extremely interesting, lots of fun, very easy, and gently energizing in a way I don’t yet understand.

Thus I recommend you test this for yourself.  It’s a good way to discover a greater depth in your experience of the vichara.  No matter what you’ve experienced or when; no matter what you’ve ever thought, felt or done; no matter what has ever happened to you, test it and see. The one thing that will always remain the same for you throughout is this feeling of presence that’s always the same.

As John Sherman puts it:  “To look at yourself just once, and then again, and then again… is to move from the endless work of self-definition to the endless adventure of self-discovery, which is the vichara.”

In closing let me say this. It is possible for a good photograph of a watermelon to arouse enough interest to motivate a person to go ahead and actually taste the real thing.  I’ve tried to make this essay a good photograph.  But you all know of course that it can’t do more than be pathetic in comparison to the real taste of direct experience.

Much Love,

Ben Gilberti

B7gilberti@yahoo.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Vichara_Conversation/

http://www.johnsherman.org/john_sherman_podcast/

by John Sherman

If you’d like to join the conversation click on this —> Permalink

No matter what’s going on, you are here, and you are not affected by anything. Can you notice that? When pain is here, you are the same, when pain is gone, you are the same. No matter what else is going on, underneath it all is you, silent, unchanging, here, and absolutely certain that you are here.

If you will just look at that whenever you can, the idea that anything is at stake in this drama of your life will vanish. Maybe the drama will continue, but who cares. If you see a drama in the movies, no matter how skillfully it’s presented to you, no matter how evocative it is, or how well it creates terror and sorrow and so on, there’s never ever the sense that you are at stake in it.

Now look, you’re here. Just look at that every chance you get. Just look at the fact that you’re here. If you do that you will see that over time even though all kinds of drama may be going on, none of it will affect you; it gives you the revelation of eternal, permanent happiness that has actually always been here. If you get stuck, that’s ok because you’re still here whether you’re stuck or not. Nothing that happens within the dream can hurt or help you in any way whatsoever. Now, isn’t it sweet to be here? And you’re always here, regardless of anything.

So what we do is look at the reality of what we are, instead of trying to fix believing we’re something we are not. Stop and look at this feeling of presence that’s always here, but that is too subtle to speak about, that is never absent, that is always the same, and never changes. What does that feel like? Just look at what this presence feels like, and everything else will be taken care of. It is the secret to eternal happiness. And everything then becomes easy, falling-out-of-bed easy.

But if, instead of directly experiencing the truth about what you are as presence, you instead stay mesmerized within the belief that what you are is your life story. If instead of knowing you’re presence, you believe you’re your life, you plunge yourself into all the immense problems that life stories present to us.

Just notice what happens when you believe you’re your life story instead of your presence. You become obsessed with all kinds of things you want and don’t want. You have to work very hard and make all this effort to be good and true. You have to choose wisely, and avoid the temptation to deviate. You have to struggle for enlightenment with strenuous effort. You have to be very careful that you do the right thing. You have to be very careful that you avoid deception. You have to be very careful that you don’t deviate from the path or you’ll get into trouble. You have to choose well and stick to what you’ve chosen. And the list goes on.

Now what is all of that about? All of that is the total nonsense of a false self. Abject foolishness. Stupidity with which we beat ourselves. The only thing that gives rise to the dream is the idea that you’re the story about your life. The only thing that gives rise to misery and suffering is the belief that you are that story.

And that belief becomes the very lens through which you see everything, through which you see the story and the picture of you that you can relate to and understand and do something about. So you go on about your business of doing something about this story of yourself, this history and conglomeration of thought, trying to understand it, fix it, ignore it, accept it, get rid of it; trying to do something, trying to do anything; anything but hear that there is nothing to do.

Already, in this moment, just as you are, you are eternal freedom itself, permanent, untouched, untouchable, reality itself, no matter what the state of your story might be. Right now in this moment, in the midst of all the craziness, even in the midst of powerful feelings of being separate or alone or worthless, you are free, you are reality itself; and the totality of the story, the good, the bad, all of it, is utterly irrelevant, utterly bullshit. That’s precisely what the false belief is – utter bullshit. That’s what the word bullshit means – something that’s false. Ok, notice how clear it is now that the only solution has to be knowing the truth of what you are; with all the rest just being a story about yourself that’s totally irrelevant.

Much Love,

Ben

(If you want, you can learn more about this at http://www.riverganga.org)

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Vichara_Conversation/

“It doesn’t surprise me that spiritual people would reject this that we are offering and turn from it. This doesn’t mean that it doesn’t penetrate. It has nothing to say about the ultimate outcome in their own minds in regard to this. It is the natural movement of defense of the identity to reject this, especially you have a deep investment in spiritual understanding, spiritual practice and spiritual aspiration.” John Sherman

http://www.johnsherman.org/john_sherman_videos/page/2/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Vichara_Conversation/

No point in trying to imagine that because it’s almost incomprehensible.  But there before our very eyes are those fractal zooms in all their infinite complexity, detail and strange beauty, thumbing their noses at our inability to comprehend.  Go to full screen, turn up your speakers, kick back and enjoy. Just one or all nine, whatever feels best.  Afterward you’ll feel like all your neurons have been refreshed and re-vitalized (at least I always do).  Each zoom is different because of zooming into different parts of the same identical Fractal (the famous “Mandelbrot Set” fractal).  No zoom is more than 5 minutes, but the strangely beautiful detail would keep uniquely unfolding forever, even if the zoom continued for all eternity — so you’re beholding a tiny slice of “real infinity,” as Arthur Clarke puts it.

To see them, click on Fractal Zooms

To learn more about Fractals, click on Arthur Clarke – Fractals – The Colors of Infinity

For some spiritual speculations about Fractals, click on Fractalic Awakening

http://bengilberti.com