Spiritual Doorway Beyond Death

Question:  The other night, what did you mean by enter death while living?

Adonis:  You are full of questions, for most of us we are not curious at all. Now when we ask a question are we really interested in an answer or the validation of our own opinions, ideas and beliefs?  What is important is not to look for a particular experience, spiritual or mundane.  The mind has the ability to create any illusion it desires.  Now, when I say you must die, perhaps I need to explain that further. What is death?  Realize the self can never exist in the present moment, ever!  Therefore, through the power of projection, it creates the illusion that it is in the present moment, the here and now which is the doorway to the sacred essence of life.  Now this projection is a falsity in which the self covers the door that is free of time, space and causation.  To see this, the self must die to all its continuity.  When you look with your whole being, you will see that the self cannot live in the moment because there is no ground for it to exist in the here and now.  This divisive entity called self, ego, the thinker, the me; is not the real.  It is not an actuality, but it thinks it is!  The thing is we want to be conscious of life. We want to be in the present moment.  In the present moment, ‘you’ can never enter.  It is holy ground.  The conscious thinking self cannot tread the present moment of life.  Ones self is darkness.  You can never step out of the darkness of this world, because ‘you’ are the darkness.

When at once the self realizes this fact, there is no need to try to purify, cleanse or become anything other than what you are.  You discover factually, that you are darkness and there is no way out.  In the instant you see the truth of this for yourself it is all finished.  This illusionary self and all its movement must come to an abrupt end.  After all, you created this self through ignorance, the lack of clear perception.  To dissolve this false entity, you simply correct the faultiness. 

If you are truly listening to all this deeply you may discover the importance of meditation.  Without spiritual meditation, I doubt if you will ever awaken to the fullness of perception.  It is up to you to see the full meaning into all this and intelligently explore the essence of meditation.  Now from the time you rise from bed in the morning, you simply observe all your actions, internal and external actions, without trying to change what you perceive.  Simply observe yourself; your thoughts, feelings, emotions; the way you walk, talk, sit and whatever else you do in your life.  Simply watch with keen perception.  By watching and listening to yourself, there is a transformation that may take place without your doing, without your interference.  Without effort, this self is realized as a false thing.  It is a falsity because it cannot exist in the present moment.  Therefore, it projects itself into the drama of life to cloud, confuse and distort perception.  When you are still and completely quiet, the self is not there.  When the self is not there, I cannot tell you what comes, you must see for yourself.

I notice you have a tendency of expressing yourself with the word, spirit.  I do not know about using the word ‘spirit’ because if it is something sacred, can the self as thought have any business with it.  You may be using the word spirit completely different from how I would.  For me spirituality means there is attention, awareness, total perception.  Nevertheless, to awaken to this effortless perception, the self must be wiped cleaned from every facet of your being and then you will discover spirituality, factually and not as some flight of fancy.

Spirituality And Doorway Of Compassion

Question:  I was going into life issues with my brother and I really do not have the patience or tenacity to give any kind of guidance to another, even if they are my close relatives.  I have no idea of how you dedicated your life to helping others.  How do you do it?

Adonis:  See the irony of it all is that now you get to see what it is like on the other side.  It takes great patience and compassion to face ignorance. You have to be very careful not to take it personally.  When someone does not understand your intent to help them, realize that at one point you were also in their dilemma.  To be honest, it takes a great deal of energy, sensitivity and perseverance to reach a point where it does not destroy me.  Perhaps, that was one of the greatest lessons for me to learn to be completely resilient to the ridicule and distrust.  You have to realize and rejoice in the fact that, 'Once I was blind but now I see.'  However, the thing is, the clear seeing also comes with a price because everything no matter what it is has its advantages and disadvantages.  Now that you have begun to drop all the false things in your life, others may not.  They are blinded by their beliefs, ideas, hopes, fears and desires.  At times, it may seem heartbreaking.  You have to see others as they are and understand that they do not see.  What is vital is to understand that the problem may not be in your pointing, but may be within their distorted perception.  This has been my burden alone.  What can I do other than point and walk on or else it will torture and discourage me.  You have to detach yourself from the desire of a particular result.  It is like planting a seed and walking away from it without looking back.  Letting the seed germinate and spring forth, according to its own nature.  If you sit there brooding over a particular result and waiting to see and direct the outcome, it will torment you because of your own selfish desires for a particular conclusion. 

Within our everyday life, we often times are not slapped with reality, in the immediacy and so we fail to see, what negligence is.  All I can do is share that compassion and let go without looking for a result or reward.  The love you share will create its own affect.  It is up to you to realize, as the world turns, we must live, listen and learn with the wholeness of our being.

Through your own attempts of helping others, now you can truly get a glimpse of how much I simply love.  It takes great patience and true passion to walk with another through their suffering.  You must see their suffering as if it is your very own.  Actually, it is your own. 

I see clearly, the necessity to point this out to others is essential and paramount.  So much has been lost because of our failure to point out valuable, perennial knowledge to others during our lifetime.  Look at the state of the world and realize how lost we are.  Psychologically, we are embryonic in our present existence.  At the same time, we as human beings on the only known planet that we have our mortal being possess great technological power that can destroy us all.  The urgency to awaken all of humanity is this, ‘if man destroys the earth, what becomes of man?’ 

So it takes great diligence to penetrate the very depths of this horrendous problem of chaotic living in which we are all facing.  You have been placed on a course in which you must reach the source and the end of all life.  If not for oneself then for the whole of humanity.  It is paramount that you reach the furthest shore and then return to this side of ordinary humanity and point the way to others.  At least that is my primary concern.

Question:  I have another question and hopefully I am not repeating myself with all these issues.  However, I am going to give you a setting.   Suppose you are in front of a small group of people, perhaps in a private quiet room, ready to give a lesson on life, self, spirituality.  These individuals have no clue of your Sayings or spiritual prowess, they are completely new to this, have no type of understanding of the inward life.  Now, what techniques or advice will you give to these individuals to use when beginning to explore the spirituality of life?  Do you understand my question? 

Adonis:  Yes, go on.

Question:  As a master of insight, what measures would you take in teaching this?  Because you cannot just tell them, drop the 'self.'  I understand where you are coming from, but the average person would not understand and would probably get up from your session and walk out because humanity is so stuck on the physical plane.  What technique can that individual take home and apply in order to educate this so-called 'self?' 

Adonis:  Perhaps, it is alright to repeat oneself for clarity.  There is some meaning in all this questioning. The hammering and hacking away at the self with keen perception is paramount and essential.

Let us look deeper into your inquiry.  Well, I doubt if I would tell them to drop the self.  That is not what I mean.  Primarily because they cannot demolish the self.  The self drops of its own accord when it realizes its own demise and illusory nature.  What is important is to understand the self, which is the only way of being free of it.  By watching and listening to ones thoughts and feelings, the dissolution takes place out of the light of understanding.  Realize, there is nothing for you to do.  Simply being in silent watchfulness is the death defying action that will end the self and all its darkness.

If anyone should offer you a fixed structure of the truth, know that it is false.  Truth has no form, no structure, and no path.  That is why no one can offer a step-by-step program to enlightenment.

Now, when you ask how I would start if I was teaching someone, anew, that is rather simple.  I have no fixed teaching.  Within me, there is only this silence, and when you question me, there is this endless listening, this all-seeing perception that is taking place.  There is a certain guidance to point this out to others so that the discussions have a logical flow.  The answers, if you can call them that, are not thought about but come intuitively when you ask me a question or posit a problem to be examined. The Sayings point directly into the facts of life and not theorize about life.  One cannot be concerned whether those facts are pleasant or unpleasant.  They are facts in which you must face and that is all. 

It is up to you to realize that less knowledge or more knowledge has no meaning in the seeking of the truth.  Knowledge is materialism and measurement.  All knowledge is limited, you can expand and subtract from your knowledge, so that is what indicates its limitation, which can never lead you to the eternal.  

Learning is truly holy, for it is the movement of the timeless.  Therefore, the whole business of chasing more or less knowledge is without meaning.  In the moment you realize, 'I do not know,' then you are no longer seeking the truth in the field of knowledge.  This means, the self must dissolve in order to go beyond itself. (Actually, it discovers it does not exist in the present moment in the first place.)  When the self ends, one can discover something beyond its reach, beyond its grasp, outside its boundaries.  The fact is, all while the self pretends interest in discovering the truth, in actuality it knows in order for truth to come, 'you' must psychologically die of the known. Knowing this fact, the self plays its little game of continuity.  It wants to be conscious in the movement of life while hoping it can stay when the glory beyond this life comes, knowing it cannot.  

[Adonis spontaneously creates a poem.]

The self remains

Playing its games

Pretending to be gone

While it’s hiding all along

Waiting for the unknown

To take its throne

But the sacred is the purest light

And the self  the darkest night.

SPIRITUAL TEACHER ADONIS ALEXANDER
go to next page on spiritual counseling.