The Practice

The combined effort involved in saving this little guy from certain death was nothing short of a miracle.

“What’s going on right now, and how can I be with it?”
-Eckhart Tolle… summing up his philosophy of life.

Mystic: “A person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with or absorption into the Absolute, or who believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths that are beyond the intellect.”

From the ancient mystics… Being attentive is at the core of their teaching. 

For example, the below five masters, from various eras and continents, are all directing us to be attentive.

“Turn your attention back upon yourself and observe.”
-Lin-chi

“Just be aware, mirror-like, right now.”
-Pai-chang

“You simply must pay attention.”
-Yunmen

“Keep watching whatever you do until this work becomes pure and refined to the point where in one moment you merge and see the original face, the scenery of the original ground.”
-Daio

“I spent all of my spare time looking at myself in silence.”
-Nisargadatta Maharaj

From those, we realize that the study of the Way does not include thinking.

You were not born thinking. Therefore every thought about how anything is, every concept you believe, was inherited from your environment. From your parents, teachers, culture, and so on.

Realizing the profound depth of that can leave you feeling a bit eerie. But on the good side—look at all the wonderful things we can do due solely to our ability to think. Or what we might call the right use of thought. When you cook some food for someone that is not feeling well, plan for a trip, repair something… The list is literally endless. So thinking is the greatest gift when appropriately applied.

At this point you might be wondering where I am going with this. 

“If in the deepest place within you, you want and desire Truth above all else, even though you go astray in a thousand different ways, you will find yourself somehow, again and again, being brought back to what is True. And if you do not want and desire Truth above all else, well, you already know what that leads to.”
-Adyashanti

“A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness inner energies wake up and work miracles without effort on your part.”
-Nisargadatta Maharaj

Make it a secret goal to never stop learning from being aware.