new site

I have started a new website called OneWord.

I am very happy with how Eternal Awareness evolved from its modest beginnings on Blogspot/Blogger to its modest place here on WordPress. And I also like that my very first post is still here, because it helps give me perspective. I can go back and see how I’ve changed or improved, whether in terms of self development, writing style or focus.

It’s funny, because in starting another site, I found myself wondering if I had abandoned Eternal Awareness. Eternal awareness is not, however, something that stops or goes away.

Eternal awareness is something that grows. In the beginning it is like starting a fire by hand - you get a few sparks going and then carefully nurture those first, timid embers into a warm flame.

My awareness fire began with very small sparks, so small I swore they weren’t there. But they were, and as they grew I realized a flame called deeper awareness was actually coming into view.

I have never presented myself or this site as an authority on eternal awareness. The name came about from a class I took. My original blog was inspired by my teacher, but the name was changed after I took a class on the Bhagavad Gita.

In the Gita, Krishna tells the forlorn Arjuna that he simply doesn’t understand the nature of what’s going on. Arjuna is faced with a terrible dilemma: his small army is facing a larger army whose ranks are filled with old friends and relatives. In awful despair, Arjuna is caught in a spot where he is powerless to fight. Krishna reprimands him, telling Arjuna it is not only his duty to fight, but his eternal duty to fight - that there is something of a higher perspective that he is supposed to kill.

To paraphrase Krishna, “Arjuna, you need a change in perspective. And the first thing you have to do is to become aware that you are an eternal being.”

I started thinking about that, and decided to try to do my small piece out of respect for Krishna and Arjuna’s great story. So, one of the things I did was to change the name of my site to Eternal Awareness. It’s funny how something small like that can help focus you. Eternal Awareness became a daily, weekly and monthly meditation - a working, everyday life mantra.

This site will stay up, and it is likely that I will become active here again. In the meantime, and through all of time and beyond, I hope your sparks grow into deeper and deeper awareness.

direct transmission

There’s a mirror in your heart,

but you can’t endure the sight

of your face in it: you can bear to look

only when you’ve ceased to doubt.

— from Kabir: The Weaver’s Song

Retreat: we’re all in this together

Certain forms of retreat are fine: a general signals retreat, and the army falls back to prevent certain defeat; a spouse retracts an insult hurled in a moment of anger; a defendant backs off a statement in the face of perjury charges; a politician retreats from a position when opposing public opinion swells. These are the kinds of retreats and retractions we are familiar with.

There is a different kind of retreat.

When we encounter a deeper truth, about ourselves or about life, such truths can cause us to recoil from our new-found awareness. This is a form of retreat we often refuse to acknowledge. When we encounter an exceptionally deep truth, one characteristic of exceptional depth is that truth resonates in a manner that is undeniable. It is not, however, simply the resonance itself we can’t deny; it is the deeper truth itself that is undeniable. It is a case of undeniable, self evident truth.

When we experience deeper, self evident truth we have a choice to either accept it at face value or deny it. Obviously, it is very hard to deny something that is undeniably true. Yet we do. And that creates conflict.

Deeper inner conflict will not resolve itself until we accept the deeper inner truth that we are in conflict with.