To go beyond appropriation is to recognize that the individual soul is the vessel through which reality manifests. To truly understand how practice is realization is to recognize that practice is not the practice of the self. Recognizing that true practice is Living Being practicing is central to understanding how practice is realization. Or, put another way that is more accurate, you as an individual practicing are Living Being practicing. And as it perfects its practice, Living Being pervades the individual soul with its luminosity and truth, which appears as nondoing and realization. – Runaway Realization: Living a Life of Ceaseless Discovery, ch. 6
We have considered many formulations of the paradox we are exploring. Here, we see it as the paradox of practice—how to recognize what we know and be open to what we don’t know. This is not an easy dilemma to work through. It requires utmost sincerity, courage, and autonomy. We know and we recognize that we know, but we are still completely open to the new, to what we haven’t yet experienced or haven’t yet recognized for ourselves in our experience. This is another iteration of the paradox of realization. What is the relationship between our contribution of individual effort and work—putting into practice what we know—and being open to what we don’t know, to the spontaneous manifestation of Being? How can we be responsible and dedicated and earnest and, at the same time, be completely open to grace? How can we harmonize the necessity of our own responsibility and application with the fact that true realization is a spontaneous eruption of reality? – Runaway Realization: Living a Life of Ceaseless Discovery, ch. 11
Techniques and practices on their own are not that effective. Merely having a method or technique for accessing Being is not going to be very effective because the unfoldment has to do with love. At some point, which practice we use is not that important if we don’t have the devotional energy. Some practices might help open the heart and put us more in touch with that love of truth, such as prayers and invocations. But whatever practices we do, what’s needed is to develop our love for the truth. This is something innate, inherent in us, not something we impose on ourselves. It is something we discover, nurture, and allow to grow. The heart is love, and love means appreciating what is real. – Spacecruiser Inquiry: True Guidance for the Inner Journey, Ch. 9
So from the perspective of realization, we see that true practice is continual and total. Our sincere devotion to living a real life infuses everything we do with the luminosity of reality. When our practice embodies the value of realization, we understand that there are no interruptions to reality revealing itself. Reality does not take breaks. And when we put everything we’ve got into the engagement with life and with reality, the totality of the universe is practicing, and that practice is realization. When we practice with total openness, we are not trying to get someplace, not trying to find anything in particular. We practice, we engage, because that is how reality lives. That is how reality does its thing. That is how reality manifests itself. That is how reality becomes luminous and self-illuminating. – Runaway Realization, Ch. 1
Just as there are degrees of realization, there are degrees of practice. If our practice has to be perfect all the time for it to be practice, then we might never begin. Even if our practice is not as complete as it can be, it can still happen. Practice can be continual without having to be perfect; practice can express realization without having to be perfect. The continuity itself will further perfect the practice—perfect not in the moral sense but in the sense of more completely expressing realization. When practice expresses realization fully, then practice is realization. – Runaway Realization: Living a Life of Ceaseless Discovery, Ch. 1
When I say that living our realization means continual practice, I don’t mean that we have to be meditating all the time or inquiring every minute. Our formal practices are important because that is when practice is concentrated, but practice continues in our life. We are practicing when we talk to each other. Before we are engaged on the path of discovery, we relate to each other unconsciously—we say what we say and do what we do automatically. When we relate to each other after we are on the path for a while, we don’t relate only to each other. When practice becomes important, the interaction and the conversation have an added dimension of value, a dimension of truth, an interest in authenticity for ourselves and for the other and for the situation. – Runaway Realization: Living a Life of Ceaseless Discovery, Ch. 1
Understanding the orientation of continual practice, the attitude of devotion to what is real, gets us closer to the mystery of the relationship between practice and realization. When we first learn to practice, we usually have an experience of ourselves practicing. As we come to more thoroughly understand the nature of the self and of reality, our sense of self transforms until, at some point, we realize that when one is practicing, when one is meditating, when one is inquiring, when one is chanting, it is not one particular individual that is practicing, it is the totality of all that there is that is practicing. The more continual our practice and the more unflagging our orientation toward reality, the more our understanding of who or what practices can shift from an identified self to the totality of reality. – Runaway Realization: Living a Life of Ceaseless Discovery, Ch. 1
Living our realization will bring about the recognition of continual practice from the perspective of realization. In the condition of realization, we discover that whenever we truly practice, our practice expresses realization even when we are not in the condition of realization, even before we consider ourselves realized, even before we have understood or recognized realization. This is the mystery at the heart of the relationship between the one who inquires and meditates and the beingness that simply erupts and says, “Here I am. – ”Runaway Realization: Living a Life of Ceaseless Discovery, Ch. 1
Meditation can be seen as nothing but the spontaneous and passive awareness of the movement of rejection and desire. The awareness of the rejection is the meditation. You can be aware of this truth all the time; in fact meditation is actually needed all the time. Meditation is awareness of the truth, so we sense, look, and listen all the time to be aware of the simple truth of what is now. If you want anything else, it is a rejection. If you do anything beyond the awareness and the understanding, there is rejection, and then you’re compounding the problem. We can only see the truth, we can only understand. If we see the movement of the mind, we will realize that even our understanding, even our awareness at the beginning is motivated by desire, hope and rejection. It cannot be helped. But what we can do is to be aware of that, and not pretend otherwise. – Diamond Heart Book Two: The Freedom to Be, Ch. 6
Practice and realization are one dynamism manifesting in different ways. One is manifesting as the action of the soul, and the other is manifesting as the arising of true nature. But it is one indivisible process. Neither one causes the other. The more I recognized that, the more I had a deeper understanding of how practice is realization and how realization is practice. So we are seeing that there is a force, there is a power, there is a dynamism that manifests. Looking at it from the perspective of the individual soul, this dynamism manifests as the interest, the longing, the yearning, the orientation, and the practice. Looking at it from the perspective of reality, this dynamism manifests as Being unfolding spontaneously as grace. They are both part of one process, two complementary expressions of one force, whose intensifying feedback loop culminates in conscious insight or realization. This unitary process appears in the locus of the soul as individual practice and in the locus beyond the soul as the spontaneous functioning of Being. – A. H. Almaas, Runaway Realization: Living a Life of Ceaseless Discovery, Ch. 5
If our practice is going to be experiential, if it is concerned with true awakening, with a true encounter with reality, we can’t work on the cognitive delusions without also dealing with the emotional obstacles. It is important to be aware of this dimension and to feel it arising in our experience because this is part of the practice, part of how true nature is revealing itself. So even though I am only mentioning in passing some specific issues—such as the possible narcissism that can arise in recognizing ourselves as the majesty of true nature—it is important to acknowledge and work with these kinds of emotional obstacles as they arise. – A. H. Almaas, The Alchemy of Freedom: The Philosophers’ Stone and the Secrets of Existence, Ch. 6