In this clip Gangaji points to that which has been ignored in favor of suffering. Ignorance is not bliss. The open mind is bliss.
GF Topic: Essential Teaching
To Be Utterly Simple Is to Be Yourself
August 15, 2019 PM, San Rafael, CA
Does your mind tend to seek out simplicity? Or is it more preoccupied with finding and solving complication? Regardless of the complexity of what’s being presented in this meeting, Gangaji points each person back to the utter simplicity of being.
“I love a good book with a complicated plot, or the complicated action of a bustling city, or a walk in the forest among the exquisite complications of nature. But if we get caught up in complication, we continually overlook the utterly simple fulfillment that is the root and source of all life. To be utterly simple is actually to be yourself.”
Give Your Burden to the Ganga
January 27, 1994, Varanasi, India
This video from Gangaji’s visit to India in 1994 was filmed on a sandbar in the middle of the Holy River Ganges (Ganga). With the river and the ancient city of Varanasi as backdrop, Gangaji answers questions about the desire to be present in the moment, the desire to simply be, the desire to give up this game of up and down that we take so seriously.
“Relax. Stop chasing any thought that you are not already present, not already being. Stop separating yourself out. You are that which is always present. Presence is eternal. To try to ‘be present’ already assumes that you are not. This assumption is a lie, and this lying is exhausting. Rest in ‘I am,’ and see if there is any lack of presence.”
So Not What I Thought
We cling to control as a survival strategy. The opportunity of a lifetime is to embrace totality. Then you’re embracing yourself. We are deeply, profoundly conditioned to only embrace what is pertinent to the survival of the body. Or if we are emotional creatures, what is pleasurable. Or if we’re social creatures, what gives us power. But to embrace the totality, whether that’s chaos or harmony is irrelevant at any one point because you’re embracing yourself.
The Language of Effortlessness
June 5, 1994, Boulder, CO
This video from the archives includes many lively interactions, the heart of which is the topic of effort and effortlessness. If you feel that realizing the truth of your being requires effort, then eventually you will find yourself exhausted and disillusioned. Are you efforting to know who you are?
“Effort is what we are taught, it’s what we do, it’s what we believe is necessary. We are most afraid to stop effort because that would be the unknown. What I am speaking about cannot be ‘done’ and cannot be ‘known.’ You are never separate from it; it is already the truth of who you are—pure pristine awareness, effortlessly as it is, limitless and un-findable as a particular entity.
Live Zoom Meeting from March 22
While we are keeping our physical distance from each other all over the globe, we can still offer each other our loving support. Gangaji offered a free online meeting on March 22, a time to come together, to share our heartfelt reports and questions, and open to what is here. We are in this together.
I Am not Here to Fix You
In this clip, Gangaji speaks to why she has appeared in your consciousness: not to fix you or teach you or convert you in any way. “My only function is to invite your individual consciousness to reflect back into the spaciousness that it arises from.” She goes on to examine the challenges to this that arise from the addiction of following thought as reality, and the remedy that her teacher Papaji gave her
There is No Obstacle Between You and Yourself
I am inviting you to stop imagining what it is you need to get fixed, or what obstacle you need to get rid of, or how you need to get deeper, or how you need to be awake a hundred percent of the time. All of that is still within the realm of imagining a problem, imagining that there are certain benchmark measurements. Problems do appear in lives and there are measurements. But I am inviting you to engage in an experiment and investigation of really, really just immediately being at home.
Today that is heresy. It is called the “spiritual bypass,” and it is heresy. In our current secular/spiritual dogma, you are not allowed to take the bypass. You have to go into the garbage dump, and you have to dig through, to go through all the ancestry. But I am here to tell you that you are allowed to take the bypass. You are free to go digging wherever you would like to go, but you aren’t required to. You can go immediately home, because home is where you are. It is what is always here.
The Simple Truth About Lasting Fulfillment
11.12.2014
Santa Monica, California
Is there a secret to discovering true and lasting fulfillment, here and now and forevermore? Gangaji shares her experience of her teacher’s astonishingly simple instruction that revealed the truth of lasting fulfillment.
“It’s so simple! I was always considering: what can I get here, what can I keep here, or what can I keep away from here. When he said find out what is already and always here. It was shocking to me.”
Discover for yourself the fulfillment that is always here, no matter what comes and goes.
You Have a Chance to Be at Peace
What is your responsibility to peace? Is peace in the world ever separate from peace within your own mind? When you stop waiting for them, whoever they may be, to get it together so that you can live in peace, and shift your attention to your own mind, then you have a chance to be at peace. Gangaji offers each and everyone one of us the support to live from love and peace rather than fear and hatred. She shows us how to end our unnecessary suffering, and in that, be more fully available. This essential message can shift the human perspective to openness, compassion, and inclusion. Doesn’t it seem like now is a very good time to send a message of peace to the world?
Send a message of peace to those you may never meet in other parts of the world, to those living behind prison walls, and those who share the same deep desire for lasting freedom and peace. Please consider becoming a new or returning pledge donor or make a one-time donation this year. Every gift matters. If you have benefitted from any of Gangaji’s programs, it was because community members like you made it possible. Learn More