Please note that Paul's early material from which the "Slaps" were taken has been edited and is now available in his book "Escape To Everywhere" (February 2015) available directly from Paul at: https://www.createspace.com/5116702  


"You have not had awareness. Awareness has had you."

--- Paul Hedderman



The Bowl:

Take a bowl. Put things in it; make soup. Does the bowl change? No, no more than the bowl of sky does when the birds and stars move through.
No more than the mind does as thoughts flow in and out. This emptiness the mind is so afraid of --- this is really HOME.
You ARE that SPACE: The conscious awareness of what’s appearing each moment. But you identify with a mental process that says “I” am the soup.
“Why is life happening to me this way?” Because you’ve construed yourself as a part of the soup when you’re really the context, the bowl. Life seems to be happening TO you, as the soup; a whole drama of not enough spice and so on.
Freedom is the CONTEXT of life. What you incorrectly call "self'" is the CONTENT. You see life's content but miss the context in which it's held --- the freedom that is 'prior to' the self. You see the stars but give little attention to the sky in which they're held.
The ego uses seeking as a stratagem to hide your true identity. It knows you won't "find" what you already are!
Your life becomes a storage unit full of past and future thought --- though life is meant to be NOW, with thoughts passing each moment freely through.
You have not had awareness, awareness has had you. You're in the soup: Thinking that's what you are as you stir the thoughts and feelings that fill the bowl.
Your thoughts want you to believe you are a separate long-lasting independent entity. The body becomes the focal point of this ruse. My body. My this, my that. See how much heavier the thoughts become with the 'my' thrown in!

What happens when you stop taking marching orders from thought? Self is no longer in the center. There is a shift as the 'my' comes out.

Will you put Life into so small a cage, like a small bird? It’s the nature of the bird to fly. Then it becomes YOUR bird. So you have a caged bird; but is it a bird now anymore?

Out at the rim of the bowl (outside the content) life awaits, always available. There you realize the thoughts are not you. They are passing, like the birds.

Do you follow the birds home, to peer into the bowl of their nest? Then why do it with the thoughts?




Simple witnessing, as the eye would witness a passing bird: That’s conscious contact.

Being a self is an exhausting job! Why grasp at life? Release all that! Set attention free — to be a hawk high overhead. Attention spreads, one with its source.

/////////////

"People kick up dust, then complain that they can't see."

Thoughts:
Flypaper.
Buzzing a lot
but not going anywhere.
--- Paul Hedderman

A list of all the Short Slaps is at: http://paulheddermanslaps.blogspot.com/