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Shining in Plain View
John Wheeler attracts a growing audience of seekers who are moving beyond traditional spiritual disciplines towards direct understanding. This book contains further dialogues and correspondence in the style of John's first book 'Awakening to the Natural State' (also published by Non-Duality Press). The emphasis is on pure non-duality (or Advaita), which points directly to the true nature of the one who is seeking. This approach reveals what is real and true about who we are and clearly exposes the false ideas and beliefs that generate doubts, problems and suffering. The result, as shown in the dialogues in this book, is that those who are willing to explore these pointers come to a direct experience of freedom and the end of seeking and suffering.
- GenresSpirituality
272 pages, Paperback
First published September 4, 2005
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December 24, 2011
This is I believe John Wheeler's second book. It's very similar to his first one, which cut through my mind like a Samurai sword. The whole book is conversations between Wheeler and various seekers. These conversations are very repetitive, but that fact itself is valuable. Wheeler is very determined to not make the issues more complicated than they need to be and as a natural result, he ends up mostly repeating a small set of core pointers; and repeating the fact that you need to just come back to these pointers when you get confused and you need nothing else. He uses no special terms to state these pointers, just simple daily language. Thus, his insistence has a positive effect on the seekers in terms of helping them give up searching in the mind. These pointers to nonduality have been described in more complicated ways (but still very beautifully and elegantly) by others, which is also nice but Wheeler's approach is much more direct (for examples of the former, see Alan Watts's "The Book..." and Robert Wolfe's "Living Nonduality...").
Most of the questions from the seekers in this book have the theme of losing one's awareness of one's being or true identity. Wheeler responds basically by stating that awareness does not depend on mental experiences. How can you get disconnected from or reconnect with something you are never apart from? Do the presence of clouds really stop the sun from shining? I read the book not so much to acquire any new knowledge but as reminders of these pointers. Especially if you find yourself having encountered nonduality and had special experiences which you then felt subsided and you retreated back to normal life and suffering, these conversations are reassuring. They bring you back to the basic fact that even those thoughts and suffering can only happen in the light of your presence-awareness, which is shining in plain view incessantly.
Most of the questions from the seekers in this book have the theme of losing one's awareness of one's being or true identity. Wheeler responds basically by stating that awareness does not depend on mental experiences. How can you get disconnected from or reconnect with something you are never apart from? Do the presence of clouds really stop the sun from shining? I read the book not so much to acquire any new knowledge but as reminders of these pointers. Especially if you find yourself having encountered nonduality and had special experiences which you then felt subsided and you retreated back to normal life and suffering, these conversations are reassuring. They bring you back to the basic fact that even those thoughts and suffering can only happen in the light of your presence-awareness, which is shining in plain view incessantly.
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