Relaxing into Clear Seeing: Interactive Tools in the Service of Self-Awakening - Softcover

Arjuna Ardagh

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1890909157 ISBN 13: 9781890909154

Publisher: Self X Pr, 2005

Synopsis

Why are these people so excited?

Relaxing into Clear Seeing is a long awaited text. It is a work of brilliance, love, clarity and humility, giving us the tools we so deeply need for Self-realization in the 21st century. I believe it will become classic for all times.
Barbara Marx Hubbard, author of "Revelation."

With skillfulness and clarity Arjuna co-joins the teachings of non-duality with the personal healing journey, using deep relaxation for opening the body and mind. Clear Seeing offers an invitation to readers to do the work of the Heart and to discover natural joy and wisdom in themselves.
Jack Kornfield, author of "A Path with a Heart."

An excellent introduction to the brilliant clarity of ever-present awareness, the nature of the already enlightened mind.
Ken Wilber, author of "A Brief History of Everything and The Eye of Spirit."

A very fine teaching from a Heart refined by its practice. Excellent material! Read this one next, you'll be glad you did!
Stephen and Ondrea Levine, authors of "Embracing the Beloved."

One of those rare books that not only gets to the essence of spiritual awakening, but also offers practical tools and guidance.
Peter Russell, author of The Global Brain Awakens and "The Brain Book."

At once deeply spiritual and eminently practical, this remarkable new book presents a powerful integration of Western psychospiritual technologies and the enduring wisdom of the East. Arjuna Nick Ardagh, who has studied with some of the great spiritual adepts of our age, articulates the essential view common to all mysticism: By seeing through our false identification with a separate self, we can awaken to our real nature as awareness itself.

Drawing from a variety of spiritual traditions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Advaita Vedanta (the primary source of his own inspiration), Ardagh skillfully and authoritatively persuades even the most skeptical reader that there really is only one universal Truth.

Yet Relaxing into "Clear Seeing" is not just another inspiring text filled with lofty but inaccessible ideals. It is actually a highly practical guidebook for experiencing, deepening, and stabilizing the direct realization of our essential nature, which is the source of all peace, wisdom, and love. To this end, it features more than 20 exercises for guiding a friend (or client) back into a state of natural presence and wakefulness, which Ardagh calls "Clear Seeing."

The book applies the nondual view of "Clear Seeing" to every aspect of life and demonstrates how so-called problems evaporate as we challenge the conditioned habits of the mind. Ardagh's penetrating insights into the human experience offer a fresh look at the realms of relationship, emotion, money, belief systems, and spiritual practice.

Ardagh, who has spent many years in India with his guru, H.W.L. Poonja, writes with an intoxicating blend of inspired certainty and deep humility. Compelling, uplifting, yet down-to-earth, this book is simply a must-read for everyone who seeks to hasten their journey home to the Self.

Arjuna Nick Ardagh teaches his unique blend of hypnotherapy and nondualism in trainings throughout the United States and in Europe. These teachings are also available on the Living Essence tape series, which he designed and created.

About this title

About the Author

Arjuna Nick Ardagh is a teacher in the tradition of H.W.L. Poonjaji and Ramana Maharshi. After graduating with a Masters degree from Cambridge University in England in 1979, Arjuna trained in a variety of styles of hypnotherapy and bodywork. He has been practicing and teaching since then, and is an examiner for the American Council of Hypnotist Examiners. He founded the Alchemical Hypnotherapy Institute of Seattle in 1988, and created the Alchemical Journeys tape series.

Arjuna has maintained an unbroken passion for spiritual awakening since 1971, and has lived and studied with teachers from a number of different traditions and backgrounds. In 1991 he met his true Teacher, H.W.L. Poonjaji, who pointed Arjunas attention back to the immediate availability of the Self in this very moment. Arjuna lived with his Teacher for a year, and returned to the West to teach in 1992, at Poonjaji's request.

Arjuna is the founding director of the Living Essence Foundation, and the creator of the Living Essence tapes series, and the Living Essence training. He conducts Satsang, weekend seminars and the Living Essence training in many locations both in the U.S. and elsewhere. He maintains a private practice in Marin County, and is the father of two sons.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Chapter 1, The Road to Here
Here is a book about you. This book is about who you really are, prior to the habits of identification with thought, feeling and physical sensation. This book is about awakening from the illusion of separation and the dream of the person you have taken yourself to be, and how this awakening can become more and more stable in your life. The suchness of things revealed in this awakening is not a truth that belongs to me, or to my teacher, or to my teacher's teacher. It is what your Heart already knows to be true. It is not something that needs to be remembered or forgotten. It is what has been wisely called the "natural state," which can be directly seen and realized by every human being as soon as we cease to pay attention, even for one moment, to the eternally changing whirlpool of thoughts and emotions. The testimony to this realization has been at the core of all mystical teachings throughout recorded history.

This is not one of those books that is guaranteed to solve all of your problems (although it well may!). It will probably not fulfill the mind's desire to manipulate reality and give it what it says "I want." You will not find here a set of tools to make more money, have better sex with more people, or heal every disease known to man. This will not teach you how to channel ascended masters, or even promise you advancement along your spiritual path. To the person you have taken yourself to be, this book promises no gold at the end of the rainbow.

Instead here is an invitation, right now, to recognize the Heart's one and true longing: to come home to Peace, Silence, Love, and an acceptance of the perfection already inherent within life. This book invites you to sit down, right where you are in the midst of your path, to look up at the trees, feel the sunshine on your face, and ask yourself, perhaps for the first time, "What's wrong with this moment right here? Where do I feel I need to go? What proof do I really have that anything is wrong with me or this life as it is?" And most important, "Who is this person advancing down a path and dreaming of a spiritual goal in an imagined future?"

From Chapter Five: "Who am I?"

For as long as we can remember, we have been obsessed with things that are born and die, that have a beginning and an end. We've been obsessed with relationships with "other people" that arise in time and demand solutions in an apparent future. We've been obsessed with "getting ahead," achieving material success, fulfilling our potential. We've been obsessed with thoughts, beliefs and emotions. Every one of our obsessions has a duration in time: they begin, they last for a while, and then they die. Every experience we have ever had is characterized by change. In fact, change is the only unchanging constant that all experiences share in common. Yet throughout all these experiences that arise and fall, we have overlooked the experiencer. Who is it that experiences thoughts and emotions coming and going? Who is it that experiences situations constantly changing?

Even in this moment right now, as you hold this book in your hands, who is it that registers the meaning of these words? It is possible to respond with an intellectual or verbal answer that has been stored in memory, to say, "Well, I am the one in all things," or "I am me," or even "I am the mind." But this answer is only words and concepts. The question still remains: Who is it that is aware of these words and concepts, which are also events in time? Who is it that understands the meaning of the words? Whatever arises with name or form and limitation as an answer to this question immediately becomes another object of experience itself. The question still remains: Who is the experiencer? What is the medium in which thought is moving?

To know the answer to this question, beyond conceptual understanding, beyond thought, beyond what has been read in books or heard on tapes can be called Self-realization. It is not an experience, and it does not belong to the eternal kaleidoscope of changing phenomena. Rather than being another wave in the ocean, it is the ocean itself. Rather than being yet another image flickering on the movie screen, it is the white canvas on which all movies are projected. It is not an object to grasp, not something that can be held or remembered or forgotten. You can only be this, for this is who you are.

Edition details

• Publisher: Self X Pr
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1890909157
• ISBN 13: 9781890909154
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 366