“A Conversation on Non-Duality with Sundance Burke”

“An Interview with Sundance Burke”

Author, “Free Spirit”

From the newly released book by Cherry Red Books “Conversations on Non-duality: Twenty-six Awakenings,” edited by Eleonara Gilbert, this is another new release by Conscious TV with Sundance Burke, author of the book Free Spirit, who is interviewed by Iain McNay of Conscious TV in an MP3 downloadable format.

IN THE FOLLOWING INTERVIEW with Iain McNay, Sundance paradoxically shares the personal story of how he realized his formless Spirit, the essence of his and all being. Just the fact of being given the birth-name, Donald the Third, seemed to catalyze his lifelong quest for Self-realization. Graced by a chance encounter with an enlightened stranger, a multitude of synchronistic events, his own out of body experiences and fears of an early death, Sundance came face to face with life’s most profound questions: who or what am I and why am I here? As it turned out, this kind of adventure appealed to Sundance’s innate curiosity more than anything else, so at the age of 32 his life-path was inexorably altered. After many years of seeking, Sundance’s inner quest culminated. Without apparent reason, the seeking just stopped and never returned, revealing the conscious calm-joy that we truly are.

SUNDANCE BURKE, Spiritual Teacher and Author, was born in Seattle, Washington under the given name, Donald Russell Burke III. He is a graduate of the University of Washington and the Gonzaga School of Law. Sundance is a former practicing lawyer and businessman. He is the father of two children and the grandfather of three more.

Sundance Burke is the author of Free Spirit, A Guide to Enlightened Being, published in 2008. He offers public talks, video recordings, private meetings, intensive workshops and retreats for those who long to awaken to their true nature.

While traveling for law business in 1982, Sundance was graced with the profound spiritual experience of being the loving witness to the
mind’s dream of personal existence. This awareness of impersonal being completely shattered his former understanding of self-identity and the nature of the world. In the years that followed, he found himself undertaking an intense inward journey into the heart of this realization.

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This search is often objective in that most still believe that their happiness depends on other people, life circumstances, professions, possessions or some other.

When the ego gets what it wants, it is relatively happier. For just one moment, it senses the illusion of completion and it finally rests free of desire. Yet, true fulfillment is not a possibility for a fraction. For the ego, completion is a delusion, since partiality can never be whole.

For the mind-made self, happiness soon wanes. Sooner or later, discontentment in the form of desire once again arises, since it still senses lack and the life situation within time is in constant change.

Further, the ego senses that it is separate from “those” people and its life circumstances. It is therefore under constant threat of loss or hoping for future gain. Most every moment is used as a means to some ego end.

When the ego does not get what it wants, it judges the situation and then blames someone else. The result is usually disappointment from false expectations or personal intention. My will vs. your will consistently ends in pain and suffering for all involved. Once again, we have the delusion of separation and its inherent opposition.

Of course, stable unhappiness is just as impossible as enduring relative happiness, since within time the life situation changes. When our happiness depends on other situations, our emotions fluctuate and follow our judgment.

Virtually everything within the world of form comes and goes. Everything is impermanent. When we seek permanence within impermanence, we suffer; whether we are seeking pleasure or trying to avoid pain.

Again, the life situation is in constant flux. Happiness will surely cycle to unhappiness and after certain duration, we will cycle to happiness. Furthermore, both polarities are dependent upon something or someone externally. In this manner, we are subject to the unending push and pull of ever changing emotions.

With certain maturity, we at last begin taking responsibility for our emotions. Our attention shifts to what is genuinely going on within us. When we watch carefully, we note that it is actually our judgment of people and situations that is causing our emotional changes.

That judgment is based on past experience and our conditioned likes and dislikes. In other words, the negativity is based on time and the suffering is actually self-inflicted. For the ego, everything would be alright, if only everyone else would just change.

This is an opportunity to be gentle and allow compassion, love and deeper understanding through watching our thoughts and how they are directly related to our emotions.

Unfortunately, the ego is more likely to cast its judgment and guilt upon itself. In resistance, it tries to change its thoughts into better ones in the hope that happiness will improve somewhat. For the ego “I,” love and joy are always in the future, however never possible right now.

Even with positive thinking, within time everything changes. Nonetheless, this self-improvement project is actually quite important, since it is finally exhausted! Patience and tolerance emerge and we begin realizing that the emotional highs and lows are actually one continuum and only time separates them. In this, we begin waking up out of time.

Resistance transforms into surrender and acceptance as we begin allowing what is. The joy of being consciously emerges and spiritual awakening may be drawing near.

Every positive and negative emotion is based on the mind’s idea of time and separation. By merely noticing, you will realize that all emotion is the result of memory, imagination and anticipation. All are factors of the time-based mind, that still believes that its identity is separate and exists within the mind’s time.

It is not that we are attempting to avoid emotion or escape. That would be the mind’s resistance and fear. In fact, by welcoming them, feeling them fully, observing how they operate in relationship to the mind that we are able to transcend psychological pain. You might in fact perceive that most of the suffering is within the resistance and in your imagination of how deep that emptiness might be. When we inquire into the depth of these emotions, it is the birthing of true compassion. It is also the realization of what lies beneath.

Of course, you are always welcome to continue surfing the waves of emotion, while the mind assists the spin or … rest as the abode of wise love. 

The resolution is to realize the perfection that you are genuinely right now. You are completely beyond the mind and its emotional aspect; human emotion.

Unconditional love and pure joy are here right now and they are absolutely indestructible. They are dependent on nothing and caused by nothing. It is essentially who you timelessly are. The extraordinary opportunity is to realize what is already deep within, without trying to change a single thing.

You are the silence of the Heart that makes all things possible. This realization is complete fulfillment and effortlessly transforms the life situation. Rather, we are able to directly realize what truly is right now. You are inseparable from the Heart this very moment.

There is nothing wrong with you.

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When we shift attention from compulsive thinking in the head into the physical body, we become more aware of how the body is feeling. This feeling is what we call human emotion. The emotion that we are currently feeling is always a perfect reflection of our thinking.

The mind is more than our superficial thoughts on the surface. It also includes unconscious patterns, mindsets and tendencies. They may never surface in the form of an observable thought, so it may seem difficult or even impossible to bring them into consciousness.

Yet, the body is the perfect tool. If you are willing to feel the body, it never lies. We bring the feeling or emotion into the light of consciousness and simply allow it to be. I am not suggesting that you try to change anything. That is resistance and just another form of violence that will perpetuate more negativity.

Neither do we need to analyze or interpret “why” the feeling is here or “what” the feeling means. The analyzing and interpreting mind is a good tool for many things, yet not the right tool for Self-realization.

When the emotion is allowed, we are no longer controlled by it, just like when we are watching our thoughts, they can no longer use us. We no longer have emotional takeovers. Instead, we are the witnessing presence that allows everything to be as it is.

This witnessing is a harmonizing and unifying factor. In the light of attention, the darkness of negativity cannot prevail.

I am not proposing that you act the emotion out. That is the emotional takeover that will more likely than not cause another emotional reaction causing more suffering for yourself and others. Nor am I speaking of repression. Repression is a form of resistance that perpetuates suffering. I am only suggesting that you consciously feel the emotion in the body and allow it to be. Be the space within which it is appearing.

In your willingness to fully feel the body, all that remains unconscious within you will be revealed until all that remains is the simple joy of being … and that is love.

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Free articles on being now, presence, spiritual awakening, Advaita, Non-duality, Enlightenment and Self-realization by Katie Davis, author, “Awake Joy: The Essence of Enlightenment” and Sundance Burke, author, “Free Spirit: A Guide to Enlightened Being.”

Enjoy!

Happy Holidays to All Friends of the Heart!

Love ~ Katie Davis and Sundance Burke

 (New Google Translator in blog right hand column)

As this year drifts by in clock time, I would like to take a moment to express this gratitude.

You have shared so much beauty!

I am grateful for the visionary art, the photos that have reflected not only this love, but also stirred compassion for the seeming reality. You have creatively written poems, notes and blogs and even vigorously debated.

The shared videos have generated love and laughter with such beautiful music that sometimes it seems like the Heart is singing. It is fun getting to know you, through your event invitations, groups and pages.

There is such wonderment in that we have somehow ‘connected the dots’;  these relative points in consciousness that I call Heart Friends, family and friends. I look at “My Friends’ Map” and you are everywhere! 

Though most I have never physically met directly, I greet you as love during every Maui sunset.

I see you at midnight sparkling as moonbeams over the ocean as the full moon sets over the island of Lanai.

I sense the power of love in the breech of the whales, as they are now arriving to mate and calve their young.

Even the Monarch butterflies are joyfully dancing and whispering the language of love.

May we leave no footprints ~ All Love ~ Katie Davis

Saints Bowing in Mountains by Hafiz

From the Book I Heard God Laughing, Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Do you know how beautiful you are?

I think not, my dear

For as you talk of God,

I see great parades with wildly colorful bands

Streaming from your mind and heart,

Carrying wonderful and secret messages

To every corner of the world.

I see Saints Bowing in the Mountains

Hundreds of miles away

To the wonder of sounds

That break into light

From your most common words.

Speak to me of your mother, your cousins and your friends.

Tell me of squirrels and birds you know.

Awaken your legion of nightingales ~

Let them soar wild and free in the sky.

And begin to sing to God.

Let us all begin to sing to God!

Do you know how beautiful you are?

I think not, my dear.

Yet Hafiz

Can set you upon a Stage

And worship you forever!

May “Arunachala Dhyanam” be this morning’s resting meditation and in simply allowing the heartsong …

All Love ~ Katie Davis

“This video is a meditation on Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi’s teachings and the Holy Mountain, Arunachala. Verses are from Ramana’s devotional, “Five Hymns to Arunachala”. Produced by James Clark.”

Above Photo: Beloved Mount Rainier, Washington State

Now over 23 years ago after the spontaneous and radical awakening, I sat at her feet every week at the base of the glacier. Sometimes, I spent weeks in the solitude and quietude of the wilderness as radiant stillness. At the time in 1986, I had never heard of awakening, enlightenment or Self-realization. I simply named it “the call of the wild.”

The Holy Mountain Arunchala has not yet appeared in this dream, yet I thank James Clark for making “her presence” in this devotional video available to everyone today. Oh Beloved Ramana …

As always, when we use a word such as “witness” or even the words “I am,” one can never be certain where those words are actually pointing. Likewise, when someone reads them from their present reference point, they may “think” that the words are pointing to something altogether different.

For instance, the self-observer is generally watching its thoughts, feelings and body. It may even open to a personal “I am” and recognize that it is neither this nor that. Yet, it is still looking from within the dream body … within the dream of form.

When I speak of the “I am the witness only,” the witnessing consciousness, generally speaking a profound and spontaneous detachment occurs. The world of form, including the former reference point “I am the dream body,” seems somewhat remote and almost like heat haze.

Having realized that it cannot find itself ANYWHERE within form, it surrenders deeper; the only thing that seems true is the subject-witness. Some are teaching from this reference point.

It is profound since being-consciousness-bliss is dynamically at the forefront, yet the dream body and its life situation have not yet fully transformed. Suffering is still possible for the dream body, but there is no one there to suffer. This is the witness, enlightenment has not yet “happened” and neither has Self-realization.

Detachment is not separation. It actually allows the energetic beauty of oneness which is why I call it the Beauty Trap. One does not have as much incentive to continue the inquiry when everything seems beautiful … yet the dream body continues suffering … and no one suffers!

For the witness, generally the personal “I am” of the self-observer has transcended to the impersonal “AM” of the witness.

The witness study is generally one of formlessness, hence that feeling of being “between two worlds.” It witnesses a remote dream body and its dream but is more fascinated with witnessing formlessness. Its purpose is to eradicate the collective pain body. In other words, it still has an object of observation.. either “Heart” or “world of form.”
 

The witness is meant to be only a bridge to cross over from form into formlessness. After all, in deep sleep, there is no witness and no objects. So for the witnessing consciousness, the inquiry continues.

Enlightenment is the disappearance of the universe and it is beyond consciousness and unconsciousness. The realization of Non-duality.

Self-realization is the CONSCIOUS recognition that “I AM THAT!” It is the complete integration of formlessness as all form.

YOU are beyond all and without contradiction ALL.

Yet first things first. One can only realize who one is … and in due time, one will then realize what all else is.

Katie Davis, Author, “Awake Joy”

Ramana Mahrshi is one of the most revered sages of modern day India. This beautiful and compassionate video, Abide As The Self,  by Inner Directions is well worth the one hour viewing time. Even if you watched this before, you will find that it is well worth reviewing. This free advaita video highlights the essential teachings of Ramana Maharshi.

Here is the free Abide As The Self video description offered by Inner Directions: