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When I was a practicing acupuncturist in the ’90s, working in a clinic, I regularly contemplated “What is healing?” In the context of Chinese medicine, I routinely considered how to support energy and its flow, direction, and resilience.

I was new to Adya’s teachings and studying them very actively also at that time. I contemplated the nature of awareness and consciousness and the various states it would flow into and out of . . . flow that also revealed directionality and health or lack thereof. In both the body and mind, when energy and consciousness pulls inwards toward stagnation or contraction, it becomes stuck and blocked. The mental correlation would be concretized and identified.

What I encourage is your own exploration of states of mind as states of conscious energy, energy that can be spacious, fluid, and dynamic as much as it can be contracted, stagnant, and corrosive. This activity of witnessing and exploring states of mind and energy can shift consciousness from a sense of being that’s compulsively personal to a sense of being outside of the conditioned push and pull of desire and aversion.

Now, consider that these pushes and pulls are imbued with a consciousness of their own. A consciousness that insists “Pull!” or “Push!” “Get this!” or “Reject that!” By introducing these directional states to stillness and space, the energies of assertion and denial are supported to entrain and repattern to greater ease, flow, and health  . . a health in which the body thrives and in which the mind clarifies and brightens.

We are conditioned beings. All of life is. Our innate conditioning is patterned to organic rhythms of nature. A primary task of a spiritual practitioner is to steward the conditioning that they experience and express away from ego-identification and toward greater integration with the inherent, organic rhythms and intelligence of life.

One can do so by sensing the space in which patterns arise and take shape and then return to space  . . and through recognizing aware space as the very essence of this life, of this moment.*

In the context of sensing or abiding as aware space, stuck patterns of ego can reharmonize and return to organic rhythms. The release of contracted patterns can even brighten in recognition of aware space. Aware space can be known as the essence forming all patterns and the essence from which all life expressions are never apart.

Meditation is an arena that is conducive to returning to essential being. It can reveal that you are fundamentally aware space appearing as a human being. Over time, meditation can also reveal how aware space can shift from contracting into overly identified, egoic states (of division and separation) to gathering anew in the potency of an incarnation consciously lived. This ever-present opportunity is calling.

*In order to get a sense of aware space, Mukti invites you to read, or reread, a previous teaching that she wrote about meditating on global awareness, called Embodied Awareness.

© Mukti Gray 2023

I once was asked in an interview, “What is an emotion?” Spontaneously, a wide grin spread across my face, and I responded, “That’s a mystery!” I went on to share how I feel emotions very deeply, but what they are remains a mystery, a mystery to be encountered.

I’ll say more about encountering the mystery of emotion soon. Now I invite you to draw upon your direct experience of emotion and to compare my observations with your own. Emotion seems to arise first as a constellation of energy, that is then sensed and registered as feeling. Often the word “emotion” is used when the atmosphere of sensation and feeling become a state. Frequently, the state is then identified with, shaping consciousness; “I feel sadness” becomes “I am sad.” In states of identification, the senses of experience and experiencer are intertwined. In movements toward liberation, this intertwining becomes unlinked.

Inquiries like “Who is sad?” or “Who feels sadness?” are commonly asked to allow the mind to shift focus from the experience and to displace the sense of experiencer (if no experiencer is found) or to encounter presence, free of identity. As identification is relinquished, it is possible to clearly see and observe the remaining emotion (if any does remain) and to intimately encounter it.

In observing emotion, one may come up short when trying to locate who is experiencing emotion. Yet even without a sense of subject, there can still be a host of thoughts that create a narrative about the emotion. Most narratives either stoke or mitigate the emotion, or do some of both.

I clearly remember a statement that Adya made to me not long after we met, while at a café on one of our early dates. I was sharing with him about a shock I’d received at work that day. A boss that I was very close to and a true mentor was let go, despite the person who let him go telling me two weeks earlier what a wonderful salesman my boss was and how I should pay close attention to all that he had to teach me. This same person’s decision to replace my boss with a V.P. of Sales more well-known in the industry, landed as “wrong” in me. Adya asked if he could share something that might help, and when I gladly agreed he said, “In Zen we are taught not to see things in terms of right or wrong.”

I had never heard, or truly heard, such a statement before. I felt the ground shifting out from under my conclusion of “wrong” and my whole narrative coming to a halt. I could sense unknown, open possibility. In that openness, I was available to join in a new direction of conversation and to listen to more of Adya’s sharing. Looking back, it was upon hearing his statement that I became a student of Zen.

Studying emotion involves clearly seeing through labels and narratives overlaid upon feelings. These overlays need not be rejected out of hand, but it can be helpful to suspend them in order to look afresh. Encountering emotion often begins simply with acknowledging that feelings are present and with allowing oneself to feel what is felt without indulgence or resistance. In my conversation with Adya in the café, I was indulging (stoking) and resisting the feeling of “wrong.” Even if the feeling that’s present is noted to be resistance itself, it is possible to allow that feeling without resisting its occurring and with an openness to seeing it anew.

Bearing witness is to see through what I like to call “the eyes of Spirit.” It is to observe with the sense of what has been silently looking through your eyes and witnessing all of the experiences of your life with constancy and without reference to time, preferences, or conclusions.

When narrative is set aside and when feelings are witnessed and regarded with care and love, they are supported to energetically unfold and to express of their own accord. This is how feelings and emotion move toward their own liberation, without interference. Adya modeled and stated a path to emotional transformation that night in the café many years ago. Through willingness and care, you too can be a model for others by engaging this transformation within yourself, in the here and now.

© Mukti Gray 2022

When I speak about optional suffering, I’m speaking about our relationship to difficulty and hardship. It’s largely the inner narrative and stance, like an energetic posturing with what is happening. It can manifest as a push and pull of resistance and aversion, a kind of organizing dualistically with respect to what should or shouldn’t be—this is right or this is wrong, this is good or this is bad. At one level, that perspective may have relative value. As it concretizes in our system, these narratives or conclusions can often become rigid or be on overdrive to a point where they start to create a great sense of division with life or others, or division within ourselves and different parts of ourselves.

That concretization goes counter to our movement toward well-being, our movement to embrace life and to really live life to the best that we can in a vitally engaging, embracing way. That inner division can also bring about a sense of separation and isolation, and a kind of forgetting of our nature that is of oneness, that is indicative of the whole of humanity. Even larger, our nature is the whole of this play of consciousness that we see before us, which includes the seer and the seeing itself—not only through these eyes that have been bearing witness to our whole life, but also through the seeing eyes of the heart, and that which would want to always say yes to the embrace of life.

Some of the optional suffering is based on two primary movements. One is the forgetting of our nature as Spirit, especially in times when we concretize around events in our lives and move into dualistic positions that are for or against, pushing and pulling, toward right or wrong or good or bad. This forgetting can feel like it leaves us bereft of the inherent fullness and repleteness of our nature as the divine, and it can lead to greater entrenchment in an ego identification that’s really founded upon a sense of lack and something being wrong, and our view being that of problem.

In large part, one of the two movements that this optional suffering revolves around is this forgetting of our Self that is always and ever okay, that nature of what you are that is eternally present. It’s been eternally present, bearing witness to your whole life, but even more deeply to become known and realized is this nature of the eternal that has the capacity of the unconditional that is present and shows up, you could say to personify it, for every expression and event of our lives. It has never been harmed at that level of our essential being. It’s sometimes called the unborn or the undying, the uncreated, in the sense that it’s not defined by our narrative of birth, life, suffering, death.

This forgetting of our nature is not your typical forgetting, like forgetting your keys or something of material value. It can be an entering into the identification of our nature as a separate ego or as something that’s lacking, and it can be a departure from being firmly rooted in our essential being that has never been lacking.

There have been parts of this teaching series where I’ve been pointing back and back and back to the sense of what is prior to the narrative, the words—what is even behind the sense of witness, or that sense of witness softening its position into a general awareness. As our bodies become more still, inquiry or meditation may seem to open and fill out our body awareness, the awareness of our entire being, and in a sense, anchor this pure unboundaried consciousness into boundaried form and give it a home here in our incarnation.

The second movement that I believe largely contributes to this optional suffering isn’t so much a forgetting of our essential nature and that knowingness of being of our nature as Spirit, but it’s a tendency to not act upon our knowingness of being, our inner knowings, those tugs on our conscience, those tugs at our heart that are guiding us or trying to get our attention to attend to things that we’re not attending to. Some of this optional suffering is a kind of pushing aside or giving second place—or third or fourth place—to some of these things that we know are deeply important, and yet we might be choosing other things first.

It can be just daily things on the smallest level. Let’s say it’s physical suffering that we might be going through, and there are those little tugs on our conscience to get up and stretch in the morning, or hydrate more, or not eat this particular thing, or not be on our devices so much, or to connect more with people, or whatever it might be. We may have many knowings of what would bring us greater physical well-being, for example, that we may keep setting aside and not paying heed to. And that can bring about a lot of unnecessary difficulty that could be avoided if we acted on what we are conscious of—even if it seems to be just outside the forefront of our consciousness—when there’s a commitment to listen more deeply in life and to act upon these movements to guide us. Then things can go a lot better.

This is not only something that plays out on this basic simple level of self-care, but also, navigating in this way really leads us to a greater sense that when we care for ourselves, we’re caring for the whole. And when we care for things outside of ourselves, it also is supportive to our own nature, in its myriad of levels of expression—of Spirit, of soul, of purpose.

From the May 26, 2020 Mukti Teaching Series Re-Visioning Suffering, Part 4.

© Mukti Gray 2020

Tijdens een interview kreeg ik eens de vraag: ‘Wat is een emotie?’ Er verscheen een brede glimlach op mijn gezicht, en ik antwoordde: “Dat is een raadsel!” Daarna begon ik uit te leggen dat ik emoties heel sterk voel, maar dat het voor mij een raadsel blijft wat ze zijn, een mysterie dat omarmd moet worden.

Zo dadelijk zal ik meer zeggen over het omarmen van het mysterie van de emotie.Voor nu nodig ik je uit om af te gaan op je rechtstreekse ervaring van emotie en mijn observaties te vergelijken met die van jezelf. Een emotie lijkt zich in het begin aan te dienen als een samenballing van energie, die vervolgens waargenomen en geregistreerd wordt als een gevoel. Het woord ‘emotie’ wordt vaak gebruikt als dat waarnemen en voelen een toestand wordt.Vaak vindt er dan een identificatie met die toestand plaats waar bewustzijn zich naar voegt; ‘Ik voel verdriet’ wordt dan ‘Ik ben bedroefd’. Als er sprake is van identificatie raken de ervaring en het gevoel de ervaarder te zijn met elkaar verstrengeld. Als er toegewerkt wordt naar bevrijding, wordt die verstrengeling weer opgeheven.

Onderzoekende vragen als ‘Wie is er dan bedroefd?’ of ‘Wie voelt er dan verdriet?’ worden meestal gesteld om de aandacht weg te halen bij de ervaring en het gevoel de ervaarder te zijn te vervangen (als er geen ervaarder wordt gevonden) of de eigen aanwezigheid te omarmen, vrij van identiteit. Als de identificatie wordt losgelaten, kan de emotie die overblijft helder gezien en geobserveerd worden (als die nog aanwezig is) en kan die innig omarmd worden. Bij het observeren van een emotie kan het zijn dat je er niet uit komt als je probeert vast te stellen wie het is die de emotie ervaart. Maar zelfs zonder subjectgevoel kan er toch sprake zijn van een hele hoop gedachten die tezamen een verhaal vertellen over de emotie. De meeste verhalen versterken de emotie of brengen haar juist tot bedaren, of ze doen het allebei een beetje.

GOED OF FOUT
Ik herinner me nog heel goed hoe Adya mij niet lang nadat we elkaar hadden ontmoet iets duidelijk maakte in een café op een van onze eerste afspraakjes. Ik vertelde hem dat ik die dag nogal geschrok- ken was op het werk. Een leidinggevende met wie ik heel goed door één deur kon en die een soort mentor voor me was werd ontslagen, ondanks het feit dat degene die hem ontsloeg me twee weken daarvoor had verteld wat een goede verkoper mijn leidinggevende was en dat ik heel veel van hem kon leren. Het besluit van die persoon om mijn leidinggevende te vervangen door iemand met meer naamsbekendheid kwam als ‘fout’ op me over. Adya vroeg of hij iets mocht inbrengen dat zou kunnen helpen, en toen ik aangaf dat ik dat fijn zou vinden, zei hij: “In zen wordt ons geleerd om de dingen niet te bekijken in termen van goed of fout.”

Ik had zoiets nog nooit gehoord, of nooit werkelijk gehoord. Ik voelde de onderbouwing van mijn conclusie dat het ‘fout’ was onder me vandaan glijden, en mijn hele verhaal stilvallen. Ik kwam open te staan voor onbekende mogelijkheden. In die open- heid was ik bereid een nieuwe weg in te slaan in het gesprek en te luisteren naar wat Adya nog meer te vertellen had. Als ik erop terugkijk, werd ik een zenleerling op het moment dat ik hoorde wat hij toen zei.

Onderzoeken wat emoties zijn vraagt om een helder doorzien van de etiketten en verhalen die over gevoelens heen gelegd worden. Die overdekkingen hoeven niet meteen afgewezen te worden, maar het kan handig zijn om ze tijdelijk terzijde te leggen om zo een frisse blik te kunnen hanteren. Een emotie omarmen begint vaak bij de eenvoudige erkenning dat er gevoelens aanwezig zijn en jezelf de ruimte geven om te voelen wat er gevoeld wordt zonder dat te koesteren of je ertegen te verzetten. In mijn gesprek met Adya in het café koesterde (versterkte) ik het gevoel van ‘fout’ en verzette ik me ertegen. Zelfs als je merkt dat het een gevoel van verzet is waar het om gaat, kun je ruimte maken voor dat gevoel zonder je te verzetten tegen het feit dat het er is en ervoor openstaan om het met nieuwe ogen te bekijken.

Getuige zijn is kijken door wat ik graag ‘de ogen van de Levenskracht’ noem. Het gaat dan om observeren vanuit dat wat altijd in stilte door jouw ogen heeft gekeken en onophoudelijk getuige is geweest van alle ervaringen in je leven zonder ze in te kaderen in de tijd, voorkeuren of conclusies. Als het verhaal terzijde wordt geschoven en gevoe-lens met zorg en liefde worden waargenomen en beschouwd, krijgen ze de kans om zich energetisch te ontvouwen en uit zichzelf tot uitdrukking te ko-men. Op die manier werken gevoelens en emoties toe naar hun eigen bevrijding, zonder inmenging. Die avond in het café, vele jaren geleden, gaf Adya een weg aan naar emotionele transformatie. Door je bereidheid te tonen en om hen te geven, kan ook jij een model zijn voor anderen door die transformatie in jezelf teweeg te brengen, in het hier en nu.

Change. No change. Both are the comforts and challenges of life. Both can drive the spiritual search, in which permanence and impermanence can be resolved in the knowledge of one’s true nature, in the knowledge of the ground of being, all being.

Open Gate Sangha is amidst change as Adyashanti retires at the end of October and as I come forward as head teacher. For some this change is not so significant. Perhaps because what calls them to Open Gate teachings sounds louder and shines brighter than any particular voice or face of this teaching; perhaps because they’ve solely known Adya from his recorded talks, which continue to remain available; perhaps because they’ve internalized his presence in their minds and hearts so completely that he is more near and alive than he ever has been. Yet for others, this change feels monumental. For them, and perhaps for you, Adya has been their one true teacher, with a connection so exceptional that it can never be replaced. I, myself, have called him “the liberator of my soul” and others have described him like a north star who has changed the course of their life, their destiny.

From wherever you are, I ask you to join me in paying special tribute to Adya at this juncture, to take a tremendous pause and to accede space in your heart, mind, and being in order to deeply feel, honor, and celebrate the brilliance that Adya has been and will forever be.

For myself, Adya is given primary place in my heart, and I bless him going forward. And each heart has capacity for many, with every person or being who finds its place in one’s heart doing so uniquely. As you may know, I was born to two Catholic parents who became interested in the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda when I was quite young. Yogananda had passed on from his body a couple of decades prior. When my exposure to Yogananda’s teachings was new, I told my mother that I did not feel particularly close to him. She told me that I could develop a relationship with Yogananda like I had developed a relationship with Jesus, by speaking to him in my heart and by listening to his words and stories of his life. I followed her advice, and before too long, I associated Yogananda with a felt sense of inner guidance, blessing, and sacred presence. For a good many years, I ascribed the divine presence within me to be Yogananda, and by doing so this presence held my attention, my devotion, and my heart. And the presence within flowered and grew stronger, especially as I attended the ground of peace within.

I share this because I feel the sense of spirit within can often come alight in relationship to a face without—a teacher, a guru, a guide, a lover, a friend. And we can find teachers everywhere, even in some of the people who challenge us most. But a true teacher without, always points to the eternal and essential presence within that has no face, even as it wears many faces. To borrow a sentiment of Yogananda’s, the spiritual aspirant’s task is to discover that the One within you and the One within the guru (or spiritual teacher) is the same One in all of life.

The task of orienting to oneness remains the focus of Open Gate Sangha teachings. Open Gate will continue to make Adyashanti’s and my teachings available to those who are called to peace, truth, and oneness. Our staff and organization continue to be rooted in principles of integrity, sincerity, and loving awareness, and welcome those whose lives are founded in these same principles, and who dedicate themselves to spiritual practice and cultivating depth and clarity.

While the underlying focus and principles at Open Gate Sangha continue, we also begin a new chapter. I envision this next chapter to present the legacy of Adyashanti’s teachings in both similar and new ways. Please read on to learn more about how you can participate. What I’m most excited about is to see how these next years with Open Gate Sangha will contribute to your lives and to the changes occurring in our world.

I encourage you to remain engaged and to dive deeply into spiritual practice. By way of support, we will continue to offer free Wednesday broadcasts and also the Sunday Community Practice program twice a month. One free Wednesday broadcast each month will be a replay of a previous talk by Adyashanti, others will be talks of my own and responses to submitted questions. And during one Sunday Community Practice each month I plan to bring forward a written or spoken teaching of Adyashanti’s and delve into it further by giving commentary and sharings.

We will continue to make Adya’s talks available via our subscription services on YouTube and The Stream. Periodically we will also offer special programs, such as online retreats or talk series, and interviews. And at some point, I would like to offer a light sprinkling of some in-person programs, including retreats.

A deep commitment of my own has been caring for both Adyashanti and this sangha (i.e., community members). Of great importance to me is how Open Gate Sangha’s teachings will carry you and others going forward. Behind the scenes we have been working, as we are able, on a Living Legacy project. Previously unreleased audio and video from our archives are being digitally formatted, making them ready for downloading or streaming. Talks are continuing to be catalogued—described and identified by subject and keywords for greater searchability. We are visioning ways to curate the material for students and practitioners who want to explore specific topics and territories of awakening and embodiment. By building our active library and presenting Adya’s teachings in new ways, we very much hope to keep his presence near and dear, living and potent.

You can be of great support in keeping Open Gate Sangha’s teachings alive. Most important is how you receive and live the teachings, and join others in doing so. And you can join our work by volunteering or by making a donation to the our Living Legacy Fund. We would greatly appreciate your support in making this vision a reality.

Please know that you can continue to send messages to us here . . . perhaps to love bomb Adya, or to share how Open Gate Sangha is making a difference in your life. Thank you for being a part of our circle of community and conscious living, now and ever forward.

© Mukti Gray 2023

Each of us is unique in our journey of awakening and in how we express Spirit. Our individual temperaments and varied life experiences make us one of a kind. I once heard Adya say, “In all of history, in all of time, there will only and ever be one of you. Eternity only expresses uniquely as you this once.”

Adya has also encouraged us to question, to ask, “Who or what is living this life?”

One way of approaching this inquiry is to turn toward the foundation of your uniqueness, toward the inner atmosphere of your personal depth . . . whether that be in your heart, your core, or your mysterious body form.

As your inner gaze and attention resides in this atmosphere of depth, become curious: “What is this ‘I am’?” or “What is it to intimately know this depth, this essential being?”

Our essential being registers each unique and sincere call, each whole-hearted offering of devoted attention and present availability. As we carry such attention inward and offer our consciousness to depth, our call or query ripples through essential being, awakening the unconscious to its consciousness in form.

Realization is entering the doorway of your own uniqueness to discover the totality and to be seated in the One. Embodiment is the totality, the One, coming home to its seat in personhood, to be known and expressed uniquely as you. The one and the One return home.

© Mukti Gray 2022

A participant writes:
In meditation I am often drawn to movement. I am familiar with kundalini release, although not conversant in it. I feel energy rising, uncoiling from the root, and my head and neck tend to sway with the gentle motion of its rising. In contrast, I think of Adya’s teachings on stillness, and I once heard you speak of others who experience your presence in mediation like a mountain. My gut tells me that there is no right or wrong way to meditate, but when the movement is happening, I wonder if I would be better served to be still.

I have a second question about a different topic. I am estranged from my mother. I often reach out to her in writing, expressing love and gratitude, but she does not respond. Do you think it is possible to cleanse and release the suffering I experience around our relationship and to accept and forgive a lifetime’s worth of hurt to an extent that can heal our relationship from a distance?

Dear Friend,

I very much appreciate the engaged insights and contemplations that you’ve shared during this course, and I thank you.

When you speak of your being drawn to movement in meditation and wondering if you would be better served to be still, I think you’ve captured both sides of a whole: motion in stillness, and stillness in motion.

My experience has been that kundalini moving upward in the body is greatly served by a strong and simultaneous presence of stillness. Like the idea of balancing softness with strength, rooted stillness complements the fiery quality of rising kundalini, causing it to travel more smoothly and easefully in the body, offsetting the possibility of the kundalini becoming more frenetic and moving in a forceful or jagged way.

My experience has also been that the energetic movement of kundalini, in the presence of stillness, seems to amplify the stillness, as though thickening how the quality of stillness is registered in one’s body and environment. Energy at rest and in movement inform a union (that we grossly divide in reference, but not actually).

Meditations on the hara, such as I’ve mentioned in past Q&A, as well as qi gong, hara breathing, and hara chanting can be ways to develop the presence of stillness and knowledge of one’s nature as permanence.

In regard to your second question, I do believe it is possible for your past and present experience of relating to your mother to shift, release, and cleanse. It is my sense that such a process occurs, in large part, when one’s perspectives shift—perspectives of oneself, another, and of what was and is. These shifts can be small or great and are more than I would address here, but I can offer a couple of general broad strokes.

When one contemplates and senses into one’s identity as Spirit, ego identification may cease to predominate. Ego identification can bring about senses of wrong, missing, lack, problem, division, and often draws these conclusions by referencing past experience to inform the present. 

Spirit, which is not inherently defined by or identified with time, does not organize like ego, and knowing oneself as Spirit brings one's state more and more toward what is now vs. what was then. This is not to say that the human experience of past is forgotten or that the experience of hurt is never to occur again, but ideally there is a great transparency of being through which experience generally flows (vs. predominantly sticks).

When the past arises, it is brought to present, enfolded into the care and flow of presence. This enfolding and healing can take time, as the mind, body, and energetics that are based in finite form assimilate and shift the past. However, this time can seem to reduce as the timeless gaze of awareness bears witness to the energies and holdings of past. As perspectives of identity and time shift, wrongness and malcontent can be replaced with a sense of that which is complete unto itself, in all its forms and phases. One is less identified as a fixed person that life is happening “to” and known more as an expression of a dynamic whole that life is expressing “in” and “as.”

A mysterious aspect in all of this is that one may not need to even accept and forgive what happened, as one’s identity aligns with a sense of what is. It’s as though one's sense of oneself as Spirit transmits a state of wholeness that overpowers the momentum of division (against the past, oneself, another). One’s transmission of permanence stills the mind’s movement to reference narratives that lock the past in present. What happened is clearly known as “what did happen” vs. held as “what should or shouldn’t have happened” (or “who someone should or shouldn’t have been”). The held energy is freed to respond to what did happen and to whom, and to be the healing agent.

Some inquiries for you to consider include “Who am I without referring to the past? Who is my mother without referring to the past? Who am I that does not hold the past? What is it to orient as wholeness? Might I rest the still light of undivided and unidentified awareness (simply awareness, not ‘my’ awareness) on energies of holding and division, so they might join?”

When offering wholeness, wholeness is furthered; when offering division, division is furthered.

From Mukti’s Got Juice? Online Course

© Mukti Gray 2018

“Be here now” was a big catch phrase and powerful spiritual pointer in the ’70s, made popular from the title of a book by Ram Dass published at the time. I remember Adya having a chuckle about the phrase during a talk he gave about 25 years ago, after which he said, “As if there was anywhere else you could be!” It is funny, and not so funny, how we can have the experience of not being “here,” but “there”—caught up in our mind, in the past, or in the future—all the while missing what we are and what’s before us. Sometimes it can feel like we must journey back to where we already are, back to finding a greater appreciation of arriving and being present, without the pulls to “there.”

A sense of “rightness” registers when being both conscious of the present (personally unifying) and being the consciousness of the present (universally unifying). This is true alignment.

A powerful pointer that Adya uses to this end, is to “Allow what is.” He is speaking of meeting the actuality of what’s unfolding (within or without). When our attention narrows and is pulled into thought or emotion and you recognize what is happening, you can then orient out of resistance and into allowance.

Refraining from resisting our experience (even resisting resistance) can be like dropping your end of the rope in a game of tug of war.

To allow what we don’t like to be happening is not to condone it, but to take a step toward peace. What is happening is no longer fueled by unconscious or reflexive resistance, and energy is freed up to mobilize toward more fully meeting the moment, and toward effective response.

Meeting the moment offers a fresh perspective of what is before us, and also of what is perceiving. In its fundamental essence, what is perceiving is free of resistance and is always and ever allowing, simply because it cannot function otherwise. Being conscious of this fundamental expression of unconditional allowance opens one to both a wider field of possibility and to one’s nature as the eternal, that only ever dwells in the here and now: true home.

© Mukti Gray 2022

I invite you to reflect upon and sense into expressing “spiritual autonomy.” Adya has defined spiritual autonomy for us beautifully in his Taking the One Seat course.

Definition by Adyashanti: Spiritual Autonomy ~ “To be a simple force of nature, a selfless and creative expression of the whole, possessing an independence of spirit capable of manifesting the enlightened condition in daily living for the highest possible good.”

Presently, please take a moment to call forward any images, sensations, or orientations of mind and body that come forward as you read his definition and step into its expression—in whatever ways it is known to you. And please continue to sense what you’ve just called forward as you read on.

To express spiritual autonomy, you must fully occupy your own life, even consciously consent to inhabiting your incarnation. And you must intend to align with life as a whole. Engaging these actions (occupying, consenting, aligning) begs several questions, such as those below. As you sense into expressing spiritual autonomy, see if exploring any of the following questions shift or deepen your sense of it.

• In what ways am I avoiding, rejecting, and resisting my experience of myself and the moment?
• What comes forward, once avoiding, rejecting and resisting are at rest? What remains?
• What becomes revealed that I might now orient to? . . . be nurtured by? . . . rest into?
• How does what I orient to change my perception?
• What is perceiving this life? How might I sense what is looking through my eyes, listening through my ears, feeling with my body?
• As I become more still and cease referring to myself or asserting myself as a perceiver, how might the moment be sensed? Can I sense what arises within (thoughts, heartbeat, breath) and what arises without (sounds, vibrations, temperature) arising in a shared moment, a shared space from which each thing appears and into which it returns?

To express spiritual autonomy, it is not necessary to be perfect, but it is necessary to consciously reside within your own person and within being. Being is the primordial expression of what you are, what life is, what the moment is.

Autonomy in general, spiritual or not, is expressed well by those who have a healthy ego, or a quiescent ego—certainly one that is free of a sense of inflation or lack. When lack is sensed and believed, a person is often under the illusion that lack can be put to rest by acquiring from the outer world—whether the acquisition be material or emotional (as in the seeking of love, attention, and approval). Inflation often occurs when one presumes or takes undue personal pride in possessing or outwardly displaying strength, wealth, or social position. Often simultaneously their inner life (where true power, wealth and identity lie) is being dismissed or avoided. In each case, the person is disconnected from their inner worth and is preoccupied externally.

When you assume that you are “more than” or “less than,” you will feel a push-pull relationship with life. Whether in overly asserting or displaying yourself (push) or grasping to fill yourself (pull), to be enslaved in a push-pull relationship with the external world for your happiness is inherently dissatisfying. Freedom in spirit as well as fulfillment arise from a deep connection with your self, especially with the inner peace that develops from withdrawing from the overdrive of push-pull and turning your interest and consciousness toward primordial being. Such peace makes it possible to perceive and know the real. Without this peace, perceptions are forever filtered through what is to be acquired and displayed. With this peace, autonomy expresses as spiritual autonomy.

If not peace, what do you experience when you suspend belief in lack and suspend movements to reject or resist? What remains? Whether it be quiet, stillness, openness, clarity, or even disorientation . . . how might you encounter what remains? How might your steady, intimate attention touch into, even fall into what arises?

What I now speak of does not sound like the independence typically associated with autonomy; it likely sounds and feels more like joining, like orienting toward unity. I propose that unity be one of the aims and hallmarks of spiritual autonomy, differentiating it from other expressions of autonomy. In such a union, the separate self may give way and be fundamentally changed by its return to and recognition of the ground of being. This ground, which is the space from which all things arise, upon which all things take shape, and to which all things return, may then become conscious of Itself through you—through your senses, your body and mind, and your heart and soul.

In this union, realization of the interrelated self that is conscious of the oneness of reality becomes possible—perhaps even dominant . . . until it integrates with its co-arising expression of the autonomous, individuated self. In this integration of the One as wholeness as well as specificity, autonomy of the individual is established in spirit. Such establishment in the Way of things, offers a “place” so primary it has the power to subplant ego-centricity and to bring division and lack to a remembrance of wholeness, to true healing.

Copyright © 2021 Mukti Gray.

By Margaret Brownlie. Originally published by The Sentient Times of Ashland, OR.

If you are reading this article, most likely there is something in you seeking Liberation. Recently, I had the opportunity to meet and spend some time talking with Mukti, a teacher of the non-dual path to Awakening, whose name itself means Liberation. Like most, I knew her primarily as Adyashanti’s wife. I was inspired. I found true beauty, abiding gentleness, deep, deep kindness, authentic humbleness, wide-openness, easy humor, depthful clarity, and gentle authority—the kind that comes from Knowing. She has only been formally teaching for a few years, she has published no books, yet she is also not just the new kid on the spiritual circuit. She has spent her life studying the work of Christ, Paramahansa Yogananda, and the Zen nondual teachings of Adyashanti, following her own path to Liberation, and ripening that for its own sake, until her teaching is instantly recognizable as a true compass for others.

Your teaching is growing really rapidly right now, but to many you’re a new name and a new face. What can you tell us about your teaching about how you came to it?

I find the teaching to be fairly simple, in the sense that the same underlying message seems to come through over and over: that it’s possible to live without a sense of inner division when one’s willing to be willing, and to be curious, and question what is true, what is real, what is living this life. This attitude of receptivity can be facilitated by letting the familiar positions and knowings of the thinking mind rest and relax out of the center, and by sensing into a knowing of a greater order. So, this is the message I come back to over and over again, because many people experience this sense of inner division as conflicting parts of themselves, or they have feelings about how they view things on the inside and then how life is presenting on the outside, and things not jiving with something deep in them that has a love of wholeness and harmony. This sense of division, or lack of harmony, can cause great suffering. There’s a tremendous opportunity that I’ve discovered in my own experience: to really come to know what wholeness is or harmony is, or what intelligence is when not divided.

And how did you come to that?

From as early as I can remember, I had this great desire for people to be kind to one another. I had this sense, somehow, that there was the capacity within us to have a sense of what brotherhood or sisterhood or living in harmony could be. As a little child, I remember watching people and they would do unkind things to other people. I could see that they themselves were in pain and something in me felt that there’s just got to be a more loving way. Later, when I was exposed through my family to Christianity, it really took the form of desiring to know the path of Christ in Christianity. He seemed to be this exemplary person who was able to unite people and to heal, not only physically, but more to heal a sense of ignorance of not knowing their Godliness or their Divinity. And then I think it matured. Through my exposure to Zen or non-dual teachings, I came to an interest in knowing what is Undivided, what is Unmoving, what is Stillness, what is Constancy. So, I would say, those were the main factors that propelled me along. And there was this deep knowing that I wouldn’t be satisfied until I gave everything to This that my heart longed to know and to see.

You mentioned that Christ was one of the influences on your path, what others still influence where you come from now?

In my formative years I was very drawn to the life of Christ and stories of Christ and I went to Catholic schools from grade school all the way through university so it was an influence. At the same time I had a parent, and later both parents, who became very interested in eastern teachings, and particularly the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda. So, while I was attending Catholic schools, I was also attending services where I began to be introduced to eastern thought and to meditation. I think that’s where I very first heard about self-realization or realization, and that it was possible.

I had exemplary teachers in Yogananda’s lineage that lived that realization, and I found that incredibly inspiring. I saw that it wasn’t all about Christ being the only son of God but that there’s all of these great beings who lived that Christ Consciousness or God Realization. That began to open up this window, and even got me to think more on a global stage, of how, all over the world, there were people like me who were seeking these deep truths, and seeking ways to open to the best within them. I saw, “Oh, it’s not just limited to one path. These great traditions are happening everywhere.” As a young person that was rather revolutionary I was exposed to different forms of meditation in that practice, and also Hatha Yoga. I began to have more of a relationship with sitting still and quietness and letting the mind settle to some degree or another. I can’t say I was great at it. But also, through Hatha Yoga I was able to let my energies be more redirected to the body and its wisdom. Those were tremendous influences on me. Studying Chinese medicine also began to open my mind and to restructure the way I perceived the world in a way that was far less linear and much more holistic. And the other greatest influence in my life was Adyashanti. His nondual teachings and the flavor of his Zen background has deeply fed me in the last decade or more.

You have been influenced by body practices in your own life, yoga and acupuncture. When you speak of loving both the form and the formless, how does that relate for you?

The most intimate form we have, that we’re most intimately connected with, is our own body, and if one has the eyes to really see, it’s constantly teaching us and showing us. It’s a great meter of what’s true, what begets Wholeness, or what feels harmonious. Often it’s overridden by the thinking mind, but with practices in which one is willing to set the thinking mind aside for a while and devote time to nurturing one’s body, one can develop a tremendous relationship with that wisdom that the body so affectively and directly communicates.

How does that relate to the Formless?

I don’t see Form and Formlessness as two different things. Formlessness is the greatest mystery that we can encounter and this mystery moves into expression and form as everything that our senses can perceive. It’s not so much that they relate to one another but that they really are one and the same. The One as form is registered in the senses and the One as formlessness can only be known through consciously being the mystery that we are. This is not a knowing of thought but a knowing through conscious being.

I notice that, when I speak of you and Adyashanti, sometimes, there’s a wariness of a western teacher having a non-western name. How did you come to go by Mukti?

Originally I was given the name by Adyashanti. He had an inspiration one day, early on, to come to the group that he was teaching and give everybody a name. This is so typical of the spontaneous nature of Adya. So, he came with names for about ten people, some of which were Sanskrit and some of them were not. I can’t speak to his reasoning, if any, but I do know that for many people I’ve talked to who’ve been given a name, they sit with the meaning of it, and often they have a curiosity to realize the meaning of that name. Let’s say, the meaning might be the name for a quality or an aspect of the Divine. They sit with that name, almost like a koan, to actualize it within themselves.

When he gave me the name Mukti, which is often translated as Liberation, or The Great Release, it was very much a gift for me, and I was very private with it. I just held it in my heart. Very few people knew that I was ever given a name, and I didn’t have any desire to use it publicly. For eight years or so, I did not. Probably the reason I didn’t is because I didn’t want to create any barrier with people who I would meet who may feel like it was strange or foreign, or unfamiliar, or off-putting or something. Being a person, I mentioned earlier, who very much had an appetite for harmony, I didn’t want anything that might cause division. However, when Adya asked me to teach, it just came to me in an instant, “You will go by the name Mukti.” I had no resistance. And I know well enough from different life experiences that when that type of knowing comes, with that type of nonnegotiable, factual, this-is-the-way-it-is feeling, that there is nothing within me that has any desire to do anything otherwise. I had no story about whether I should or shouldn’t do that. It was just a given.

This Liberation that is your namesake, it seems that’s what we all really want. What does that mean, and how do we get it?

What does liberation really mean? This is the golden question and this is a tremendous inquiry for anyone who truly wants to know that. I don’t know that everyone wants liberation. A lot of people want their idea of what it is. Perhaps, they view it as a state that will feel great all the time, or like a “get-out-of-jail-free card,” as Adya says. But liberation—it doesn’t answer to our desire to feel better. There’s this overwhelming tendency for people to assert what it is that they want and in that assertion they are denying what is already here, what is already present. There is no being free of what is. One might even say liberation, by its nature, affirms reality as it is.

And you ask, “How do you get it?” The best way I know how to point the Way is to invite or even challenge people to cease those efforts to deny what is present and to withdraw the en-ergies that feed this sense of “me” that has this incredible, desirous appetite to seek. By reinvesting one’s energy, by seeing what is present already, what is here already, what is actually living this life, one can come to realize the true nature of Self, the true nature of reality.

How do we cease those efforts? Well, ultimately there is no “how” to ceasing; ceasing is the result of no longer striving and seeking. People strive and seek because they believe that they will be fulfilled by what they are seeking. Very few people consider that fulfillment, often brief, comes when things are attained because for that moment, seeking ceases. So, first one must see how seeking itself can cause suffering. Once that is seen clearly, one loses the appetite to seek. For some time, seeking may continue to varying degrees, but eventually the energy for it runs out. Seeking can take different forms. For example, it can manifest as accumulation of possessions or as accumulation of beliefs and concepts that one identifies with. The beliefs and concepts that cause great suffering are those which divide up experience and argue with reality. For example, “This is right, and this is wrong,” or “This shouldn’t be” are concepts that we cannot know to be true outside a thought that says they are. Few people question the real truth of these judgments, opinions, and beliefs or consider what their experience is when such positions are suspended or dropped.

You spoke about reinvesting your energy. We often think of this kind of shift we call Liberation as something that takes place in seclusion or on retreat, but is awakening in any way different for a contemporary person in a mainstream culture? Does it require withdrawing?

Awakening is awakening, regardless of time. If one finds within him or herself an impulse toward liberation, toward knowing and being what is real, that person will experience that movement of Consciousness and have the opportunity to stop and be consumed by that, regardless of what society or historical age they live in. Perhaps one’s path prior to awakening is different for a contemporary person. We do have some interesting factors in this age with all the worldwide communications, and the scope of what the contemporary person has being input into their consciousness.

There’s a lot of news and things that are understandably disturbing that people might fixate on or become identified with in ways that create tremendous suffering. This might be quite different than a life of a monastic up in the high mountains where the scope of input that they receive is of a whole different scale, lesser scale. Most contemporary persons don’t have the support of, let’s say a monastery. And yet, monastics have their own challenges—different societies, different challenges, just different sets of parameters. Somebody in a different age and time may have searched or walked or traveled across countries to find someone who could point the way. Now they can just Google and get to know teachers on the web. So it’s a different ball game, same ball. As to being in seclusion, awakening doesn’t require physically withdrawing, but it does require a willingness to live a life that’s not centered around grasping for what one wants and pushing away what one doesn’t want. That push-pull movement of desire draws us into illusion and is what obscures our true nature.

And your own Liberation, how did that unfold?

I suppose there are infinite factors but my story has some themes. From very early on I made choices at different junctures that were informed by this great sense of wanting to know that which is Whole or Harmonious, Without Judgment, that which is Undivided. So, when I look back over my life, continually, through different relationships or different jobs, I would choose over and over again by following something deep within me that I could just sense was steer-ing me towards the discovery of that. At different times I might have called it my Inner Guru or my Deepest Knowing. And so, that’s an overall theme. And then also, just a sense of deep listening: truly wanting to know the way, and listening deeply to that inner wisdom and my body wisdom to show me more and more how to act in the world, how to be in the world as a person, but also how to come to know myself more deeply. I can’t even say that I can take credit for those things. It was just something moving me to be that way. Ultimately, I think it was a willingness to stop, to stop even the searching, to stop thinking I knew anything and just being willing to get in the back seat.

More specifically, on the day when I had the most significant identity shift I was listening to Adya speak about Stillness and that inner knowing that was seeking to know itself lit up, like a heat seeking missile, with this question that didn’t come from my mind but was deep within me: “What is Stillness?” I sat in meditation to really open myself up to discovering what Stillness might be. It wasn’t an answer to be offered to the mind, but the question delivered me to direct experience of what always is, what is ever present, what is unmoving. In the days to follow, that flowered into that which is forever unchanging and unmoving expressing itself as everything that changes and moves and births itself as form. Since then, there’s been ever more seeing of how that comes into form, and how it forgets itself. There’s been more and more welcoming into remembrance of all of that which has forgotten its True Nature, and in that remembering there’s been a welcoming of all those parts of myself, and in turn of others, that feel separate due to a forgetting that they are the Whole.

There’s stillness that comes from you speaking about all that, and then there is life. On your web site there’s this wonderful picture of you and Adya at Disneyland and you both look like you’re having so much fun. When I first saw that it was such a contrast to most ‘spiritual’ websites—it was a delight. Is this where Liberation leads? To that joy?

Liberation leads to far less and far more than people can imagine. It can be very ordinary, and yet in that ordinariness it has an exquisite beauty, and it includes everything. So, it includes the joyous times. It includes the bitter-sweet times. It includes the difficult times, and there is an overwhelming sense that none of it is to be missed, that you wouldn’t miss any of it for the world. So in that sense, there’s very much a dearness to things—which might bubble up as joy or may be very quiet. There’s no longer a sense of someone who needs to have a say in that. It’s all an expression of our True Nature. The knowing is that what you are is enough in and of itself—that no experience, joyous or not, can add to or take away from what you are. You are quite enough as you are.

Some have a great interest in discovering their nature as vast, limitless being, and in transcending heavenward, away from the difficulties associated with this earth. 

Contrarily, others have an interest in feeling at home in themselves, in what it is to land, rest, and no longer run away or strive. But they are not sure how to effect change.

Most have both interests, which can create an inner division: “I’d really love to be at home here, but actually I’d love to be out of here.” In both cases, the perspective is often “I am in state A, and there’s something else I want: state B.”

So what is it like to simply be and sense afresh, without striving for a new state? You can sense the energies of seeking stirring in your body and be curious about them. Ask: What is the felt sense of seeking? How does it appear? And from where? Then be still and continue to sense. Let the energetics that you feel change, shift, and convey.

By shining the still gaze of your attention upon energies of restlessness and discontent, the energies, or one’s experience and perception of them, change. With true investment of attention, such change can be greatly transformative.

I’m speaking of a different way of aligning with what is, than that of deconstructing beliefs or questioning what is true or not true. This approach is kinesthetic and utilizes perception. Many find it helpful, direct, and a complement to questioning thought or emotion. Such a way is a departure from resisting one’s state and invites an openness to look anew at what is informing states, and what is informing our sense of self that feels defined by states. Moreover, it allows an opportunity to see both states, and our sense of self, shift and redefine, or un-define.   

As the light of awareness, through directed attention, is brought to a contracted state and resulting limited sense of self, the limits and contractions gradually soften. As the holding of both self and state become imbued with awareness, both can become more spacious, conscious, and liberated.

I encourage you to turn within, to how you sense the energies of seeking, restlessness, and resistance, and to shine the light of awareness through your attention on their very shape, texture, movement, and color, and on the very space and clarity in their midst—as an ever-open sky amidst currents and clouds, conveying the substance of transcendent heaven right here, within.

© Mukti Gray 2018.

Mukti originally wrote this piece for Open Gate Sangha Gathering groups around the world,* but is extending it here to you and to all as an invitation to join others in nurturing realization of universal being.

“We stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us,” I have heard Adya say when speaking of spiritual lineage. His words conjure connection to sincere practitioners throughout history who have nurtured and embodied spirit, keeping it alive and well in themselves, each other, and in the coming generations.

Attunement to their dedication and its fruiting can bolster each one of us—as we practice together or in seeming solitude—and can knit us into universal consciousness as it echoes within and beyond us as individuals. The great mystic and sage Paramahansa Yogananda, one of my beloved teachers, puts the following words to this echo in his poem “I Am He”:

I am He, I am He, blessed Spirit, I am He!

When we gather together to attune to Spirit in its expression as “I am,” with sincere intention to recognize and embody this as our essential nature, the “I am” echoing in each individual reverberates more loudly, joining a chorus of “I am” to carry in greater strength and transformative power. Such transformative power is no small thing, for it liberates separation and division, ushering in wholeness.

In stopping and abiding as aware space, the Spirit that animates the silent room, the brook’s burble, and the bird’s chirping can ever more deeply be known as the “I am” that animates our essential being.

When we gather in the spirit of “I am,” we make it a priority to allow oneself and others to be as they are. Moreover, we can endeavor to recognize essential being in each other and to nurture it by offering wordless listening, open seeing, and intuitive sensing, which are all essential expressions of being.

Expressing in these ways could be summarized as “recognizing,” but also “realizing.” In other words, when we truly see, hear, and know another, it is not only immensely valuable to them and to the vitality of their expression as Spirit, but it is also tremendously beneficial to oneself, especially to one’s own realization—a realization that can be nurtured through actualizing our nature as essential being by expressing its capacities.

In time, the “I am” can more firmly take up residence in the heart, animating its capacity to more keenly recognize life’s movements of great intelligence, resilience, beauty, and love. This recognition nourishes Spirit, keeping it alive and well—and even more so when we gather together and stand in recognition, not only on the shoulders of our prior lineage, but also side by side in the present.

Bless you in your gathering, for your gatherings in themselves, like each of you, are a true blessing.

*Open Gate Sangha Gatherings

Copyright © 2020 Mukti Gray.