Stage

There is a stage in the beginning, when you identify yourself with the body, when you are still having the body-consciousness. At that stage, you have the feeling you are different from the reality or God, and then it is, you think of yourself as a devotee of God or as a servant or lover of God. This is the first stage. The second stage is when you think of yourself as a spark of the divine fire or a ray from the divine Sun. Even then there is still that sense of difference and the body-consciousness. The third stage will come when all such difference ceases to exist, and you realise that the Self alone exists.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

...from 'Day by Day with Bhagavan', 24-11-46

Awareness

Unless one looks upon death as
a thing that is very near and might happen at any moment,
one will not be aware of the Self. This means that the ego
must die, must vanish, along with the inherent vasanas. If
the ego vanishes thus, the Self will shine as the luminous
Self. Such people will be on a high spiritual plane, free from
births and deaths.”
With that Bhagavan stopped his discourse.

Relax ,you are not doer

"RELAX, YOU ARE NOT THE DOER"

What is stress?

Stress is the tension between this moment and your mental image of how this moment 'should be'.

Stress is your narrow focus on a mental list of 'things to do', the imaginary burden of 'all the things that haven't been done yet'.

Stress always involves future-thinking, a forgetting of your true Ground - this moment, here, now.

When your focus shifts from what is NOT present, to what IS present, from 'lack' to what is abundantly here, and instead of trying to complete a list of a thousand things, you simply do the next thing, the one thing that presents itself now, with your full attention and passion and presence, lists get completed effortlessly - and even if they don't, creative solutions are found, without stress.

Relax. You are not the doer.

- Jeff Foster