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    From Here To Here: Turning Toward Enlightenment
    From Here To Here: Turning Toward Enlightenment
    From Here To Here: Turning Toward Enlightenment
    Ebook77 pages1 hour

    From Here To Here: Turning Toward Enlightenment

    By Gary Crowley

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    About this ebook

    From Here To Here is a guidebook for the spiritual seeker. It invites you to look at your spiritual path from a perspective that few consider and gives you the keys to understanding what few will ever realize. Its underlying message is that enlightenment's only complication is its devastating simplicity. Rich with metaphors, examples, and teaching stories, the book also offers important, easy-to-understand concepts from psychology, brain science, and common sense.

    From Here to Here is written for the earnest spiritual seeker who yearns to see through their illusions and encounter what already is. It guides you to a place where you can experience a message that is simple, yet profound; unique, but also ancient. It is a little book with a clear and powerful message.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAVAIYA
    Release dateApr 20, 2015
    ISBN9781310128165
    From Here To Here: Turning Toward Enlightenment
    Author

    Gary Crowley

    Gary Crowley is featured in the nondualistic movie Leap! and the film, From Here To Here To There.

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      Book preview

      From Here To Here - Gary Crowley

      From Here To Here: Turning Toward Enlightenment, 1st Edition

      Copyright 2006 by Gary Crowley

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

      Published by

      AVAIYA

      www.AVAIYA.com

      Cover Photo by: Gilles Cohen

      Table of Contents

      A Note to the Reader

      Chapter 1 - Understanding What Is

      Chapter 2 - The Science of What Is

      Chapter 3 - Illusions of What Is

      Chapter 4 - Illusion of Conscious Will

      Chapter 5 - Understanding Made Good

      Chapter 6 - Re-Orientation: I Am Awareness

      Chapter 7 - Re-Integration: Awakening to Enlightenment

      Chapter 8 - From Here to Here

      Afterword

      Endnotes

      A Note to the Reader

      Dear Reader,

      This little book on enlightenment is intentionally concise. Yet, many past readers have urged that I might encourage you to make sure and read the entire text. The slight sting of facing what is in the first half of the book lays the necessary foundation for the joy and freedom that is realized in the second half of the book--I wouldn’t want you to miss out.

      Yours,

      Gary Crowley

      Chapter 1 - Understanding What Is

      Enlightenment is devastatingly simple. Although questions regarding enlightenment often become complicated, the answer always remains simple: Awakening to enlightenment is the direct result of freedom from the illusion of a separate volitional self. A profound understanding of this ultimate simplicity provides all that is required for an awakening to enlightenment.

      Enlightenment is what we are. There is nothing to gain, only its recognition. Enlightenment’s simplicity has been expressed in many ways:

      I am, but there is no ‘me.’ Wei Wu Wei

      You are the perceiving, not the perceiver. Ch’an

      You are looking for what is looking. St. Francis of Assisi

      That which is seeking, is the sought. Buddhic Scripture

      The above quotations all express enlightenment’s simplicity.

      The possible examples are endless; I just happen to like those that do it in seven words. As you will soon discover, understanding the essence of these statements is all that is required for the spiritual seeker because you are always already enlightened.

      Your illusionary self is never the same once it is seen through. After decades of spiritual seeking, I read one footnote by Wei Wu Wei that changed everything:

      Free, we are not the number One, the first of all our objects,

      but Zero – their universal and Absolute Subject.¹

      This footnote caused a shift in orientation that cannot be shifted back. It was devastatingly simple and understanding was the only requirement.

      Understanding is recognition, clear seeing. It is not the same as knowledge. In daily life, the words understanding and knowledge are often used interchangeably, but throughout this book understanding refers to a direct recognition of what is. We all can think of times when we had knowledge of something in our head, but it was not integrated, and therefore, was only a theoretical notion. As a child you may have been given knowledge that fire was hot, but until you ran your hand over a flame, no true understanding could exist. Now, whenever you see a fire, an understanding occurs, a direct recognition that fire is hot, without any need for abstract concepts about what is.

      Without understanding, enlightenment’s simplicity is missed. With understanding, enlightenment’s simplicity cannot be ignored. The poet Rumi expressed this sentiment as:

      I lived on the lip,

      of insanity, wanting to know reasons,

      knocking on a door. It opens.

      I’ve been knocking from the inside! ²

      Awakening to enlightenment is a journey from here to here, not from here to there. There is nowhere to go and nothing to be attained. Enlightenment is simply an awakening to what has always been the case. There is only the seeing through of our own ignorance. The journey becomes a circle because it finishes where it started, but at the finish, one experiences the same world from an entirely different perspective. As a result, your case of mistaken identity effortlessly dissolves.

      The release of an illusionary separate self occurs effortlessly through understanding what was never really there. The false self, though not ultimately real, is thereby devastated. In its wake remains only what we are, which is enlightenment.

      What if awakening to enlightenment requires only understanding? What if this understanding causes the release of an illusionary self, something you never even were? Would you be willing to let go of something you never were if it allowed an awakening to enlightenment?

      The masterpiece of enlightenment is already here. There is only the awakening to it. Innumerable masters have affirmed it is so. Upon awakening, one sage purportedly exclaimed, "Is that all it is?" He then laughed and went

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