Gold Heart & Mind

22/07/2025

Ctrl-Alt-Del - A complete Reboot - restore and refresh❤️‍🔥

Having worked in IT for over 40 years, yes even before Windows & PC DOS, I am very familiar with the ‘reboot’ often required when a PC Desktop or laptop gets it’s processing in a twist e.g. memory leaks or multi threaded processes taking up all the resources of CPU & MEM.

We are not too dissimilar, inasmuch as we need a reboot to refresh our system, so how does this refreshing reboot occur and who is the restorer and the operator?

Grace, Grace & even more Grace……..

Once we have learned or practiced various methods to guide the mind back to it’s silent storehouse, in the stillness of our Being, then there is the inevitable question, ‘This ego/Maya/dance of Lila is still appearing and disappearing, when will it end’.?

Well it’s not going to completely disappear, but by loving and accepting, everything exactly as it’s appearing (wisdom and common sense must prevail here) and this power for loving and accepting must be more powerful than the false imagination of reflected images i.e. the personal self, so what is this loving Divine power and how does one obtain this?

You don’t obtain it, you are IT, and for some mysterious reason, we have covered ourselves in garments of dream and despair, like a goldfish in a bowl, looking for the very water that makes it alive, with POWER, you are this Power, feel it, know it, pay attention to it, cry your eyes out longing for freedom, and this Grace and tender hearted compassion of The Divine will come, like a trickling spring and then like a mighty everlasting flood, and we know we are swimming in Spirit when in the midst of ‘turbulent waters’ we know deeply, ‘All is well’ and as is written in the ancient text, ‘A peace that passes understanding (The Mind)’ will be your felt sense of presence, not an intellectual understanding, but a love that is so tangibly real, you can almost taste it.

Taste and see, this Divine Presence is making you alive as a living Being, right here and right now, only thoughts deny this Self evident pre-sense of Divine Presence, look and listen deeply and closely, you exist don’t you, what gives you power to exist? Tat Tvam Asi = I Am That, only by Grace, not by human effort.

Lots of love and grace
Raymond❤️‍🔥

11/07/2025

The Returning to the Presence of Awareness - A free Session on Zoom, every Sunday 3:30pm UK (GMT) - starting this Sunday 13th July 2025

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89153839731?pwd=nUFzzZ1BwffAbsXKi0yfvrtwc6z7rt.1

The Agenda for these free sessions is as follows

20-30 mins guided awareness session led by Raymond Collins
30-60 Minutes open discussion on any aspects of Non-Dual teachings and methods

These are not counselling sessions, so not trying to fix, change or judge anything, just a safe space to soak in Awareness and maybe learn from each other about Sat Chit Ananda.

Lots of Love & Grace
Raymond❤️‍🔥

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27/06/2024

The following is a response I gave on an Eckhart Tolle Practitioners & Students group when someone expressed they felt lost and sensed they were too late to change their ‘inner’ life, maybe you too can relate, I certainly could. As a Mindfulness practitioner I start of course as I meant to go on. Taking a well intentioned breather. Hope it helps someone❤️‍🔥🫶🪷🫶❤️‍🔥

Firstly, and trust me here, breathe in and out very gently, focus on the entrance and exit of breath and even if there’s mental and emotional pain, be tender towards your experience and use gratitude e.g. I have eyes to see and ears to hear maybe, anything just cultivate thankfulness, it’s the greatest portal for clearing and manifesting your Highest Self. Now, in terms of being lost, the ego is full of opposites, lost & found, up and down, love and hate, ad infinitum, do nothing about this fact, just notice that without opposites there would be ‘no experience’ nothing to compare too. Those lost feelings, feel them deeply, like tasting with your emotional heart, but for the moment, that’s enough, don’t pay any attention to the thought based storyline, no matter how much ‘the mind’ tries to convince you, just feeling and watching, for now, zero attention to thoughts, accept their appearance, but don’t wear them, this practice takes some time, but I promise you, keep on practicing and the mind will gradually ‘stop spinning’ and when the mind stops ‘naturally, not with resisting’ you can sense yourself as the ‘background’ presence where everything appears, like the blank canvas before any painting, you and I are the alive empty space of pure awareness. You are not late and cannot ‘f**k this up’ as even the desire for freedom and awakening is pure grace, and you are reading this now, because the Universal One (or whatever names or forms you are comfortable with) loves you with a love that cannot be described in any form of communication, but must be sensed directly, as you are now, feel the felt sense of this presence, as if you’ve been wrapped comfy in a safety blanket, yes, you can feel safe in the arms of tender loving grace, it’s real, don’t listen to anyone or any thought that says this love and power is not real, as anyone who knows, true love is actually ‘the only reality’ everything else is illusion. You are loved and lovely and no other power can stop this love, it’s constantly and permanently flowing, right now, to you and through you, don’t try and do this, it’s already getting done, you are very very precious.
P.S. I have experienced very deep traumatic events, and nothing has stopped this love, helping, holding and healing me, it’s really true, cry out with all your being for Grace, which is simply to have the longing to be free, from the tyranny, not the function, of the personal thinking image, truthfully, you are already free, it just takes a wee bit of time to unwind
Much love and grace
Raymond❤️‍🔥

04/05/2024

A comforting word🫶

Sometimes with all the negative noise (or voices, as I experience thoughts, like a voice in my head), there is a longing within us to hear ‘another voice’, one that soothes and comforts, that makes us feel safe, loved, and secure. This other voice, does not ‘sound like the mind’, its more gentle than mental, it’s very tender and sympathetic, towards our ‘normal’ human experiences of what we call ‘troubled thoughts’. This ‘intuitive’ voice doesn’t originate in ‘head space’, it’s always present in ‘heart space’, but a bit like a radio signal, we need to practice ‘tuning in’ and learn to recognize the very clear differences of the qualities between these seemingly ‘competing for attention’ voices. For one, the voice of thought can be very judgmental towards our self and others, whereas the ‘inner heart voice’ is unconditionally accepting and loving, it’s sometimes referred to as equanimity. Secondly, the voice of thought is often from a regretful past or an anxious future, and the tender hearted inner voice, always speaks, very gently, almost silently, of the present moment of right here and right now, as you read these words on your screen, if you can hear this inner voice ‘now’, then the comforting word has already arrived and simply wants to let you know for sure, ‘you are loved and you are lovely’, how do I know this, it’s self evident, true love is always lovely and lovingly fresh, it’s your very own present moment, presence.
Love
Raymond❤️‍🔥

21/04/2024

Musings on Mindful Awareness

For most people (including myself) the subject of Mindfulness can have an air of mysticism around it, and some like to keep it that way, maybe it makes some feel more ‘enlightened’ or ‘awake’ than others, I find that type of comparing, not helpful, as there’s always someone at a different stage of life. In a nutshell, Mindfulness or Awareness, is something all of us experience, as a natural sense of ‘being alert’ and ‘curious’ about this present moment, and knowing or becoming aware, that ‘you’ are the watcher or witness, of all your thoughts and feelings, as they pass ‘through’, and you notice that everything is coming and going, and here’s the Gold, what remains, before, during and after a difficult thought or feeling, passes by? You, the seeing and knowing ‘knower’ or ‘Seer’ of what can be seen and known. There is the practice of ‘tuning in’ to our Human ‘Being’, that which doesn’t come and go, and this is where ‘a guide’ can help point us, to internalize, not externalize, this presence in the present moment is always ‘brand new and fresh’, it’s only thought and feelings that seem old, and when we turn inside and tune into the stillness and the silence, beneath the ‘churning waves of normal human experience’ we find out ‘what am I’, not what I think ‘am I’, and the more we tune into our inner sense of ‘being the watcher’ the more this present moment presence expands, as we all know, whatever we focus our attention on ‘expands’, so as best as we can, with tenderness and gentleness, surrender and accept (not necessarily agree) to what is passing by, and you remain ‘still and silent’, it takes some time, don’t give up, give in!

Much love and grace❤️‍🔥

02/12/2023

Become what you already are

"It has been said that the highest wisdom lies in detachment, or, in the words of Chung-Tzu, ‘The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror; it grasps nothing; it refuses nothing; it receives, but does not keep.’

Detachment means to have neither regrets for the past nor fears for the future; to let life take its course without attempting to interfere with its movement and change, neither trying to prolong the stay of something pleasant nor to hasten the departure of things unpleasant. To do this is to move in time with life, to be in perfect accord with its changing music, and this is called Enlightenment.

In short, it is to be detached from both the past and future and to live in the eternal Now. For in truth neither past nor future have any existence apart from this Now; by themselves they are illusions. Life exists only at this very moment...

You may believe yourself out of harmony with life and its eternal Now; but you cannot be, for you are life and exist Now—otherwise you would not be here. Hence the infinite Tao is something which you can neither escape by flight nor catch by pursuit; there is no coming toward it or going away from it; it is, and you are it. So become what you are."

~Alan Watts~

23/11/2023

One of my favorite expositions on Love

Unconditional Love / the sacred Heart

Excerpted from Be Love Now by Ram Dass

Imagine feeling more love from someone than you have ever known. You’re being loved even more than your mother loved you when you were an infant, more than you were ever loved by your father, your child, or your most intimate lover—anyone. This lover doesn’t need anything from you, isn’t looking for personal gratification, and only wants your complete fulfillment.

You are loved just for being who you are, just for existing. You don’t have to do anything to earn it. Your shortcomings, your lack of self-esteem, physical perfection, or social and economic success— none of that matters. No one can take this love away from you, and it will always be here.

Imagine that being in this love is like relaxing endlessly into a warm bath that surrounds and supports your every movement, so that every thought and feeling is permeated by it. You feel as though you are dissolving into love.

This love is actually part of you; it is always flowing through you. It’s like the subatomic texture of the universe, the dark matter that connects everything. When you tune in to that flow, you will feel it in your own heart—not your physical heart or your emotional heart, but your spiritual heart, the place you point to in your chest when you say, "I am."

This is your deeper heart, your intuitive heart. It is the place where the higher mind, pure awareness, the subtler emotions, and your soul identity all come together and you connect to the universe, where presence and love are.

Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It’s not “I love you” for this or that reason, not “I love you if you love me.” It’s love for no reason, love without an object. It’s just sitting in love, a love that incorporates the chair and the room and permeates everything around. The thinking mind is extinguished in love.

If I go into the place in myself that is love and you go into the place in yourself that is love, we are together in love. Then you and I are truly in love, the state of being love. That’s the entrance to Oneness.

09/11/2023

Morning Beautiful people, I've been contemplating the depth of awareness, in a light hearted way, and I want to share that with you, as it ultimately relates to the daily practice of mindfulness. You may want to read this more than once, I did 😁Awareness means 'full of the state or qualities of being aware' much in the same way that kindness means 'full of the state or qualities of being kind'. Why is awareness so important to notice? Simply because you are 'made of awareness, an unseen, spacious and unconditionally loving essence and presence', the knowledge of this knowing awareness is already known in your knower, you are not made of thoughts, and that's how it works, our knower (that intuitive, inside our inner heart teacher, filled with insight) uses knowing to see and know objects (thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations) and obtains true knowledge. Thoughts and feelings are not solid,reliable, stable, predictable or secure, why would they be, they are temporary, they come and go, whilst you 'the knower' are silently watching from a constant space of stillness, endowed with the eternal qualities of unconditional acceptance and everlasting life. So today if you notice this notice you may notice that this notice is not worth noticing, but just notice your noticing❤️‍🔥 Please don't take any thoughts too seriously, let them come, notice them without any judgement, and let them be, and then they will just go, don't hold onto past or future thinking, stay present, where every moment is brand new and fresh.

02/11/2023

Never mind!

One of the most important aspects of the Practice of 'deep' Mindfulness meditation, is to understand the 'Nature of the Mind'. So in my own journey and learning from various teachers I understand and accept that 'The Mind' is just a bundle of thoughts (mostly from memory of the past and imagination of the future, both of which are not in the present moment, manifest reality), and this can be observed from the centre of your inner Being. So the nature of Mind is 'to think', but the real important pointing here is, 'Your real self is not made of thoughts'! If you and I were made of thoughts and mind (the mind based person which says in thought me, my, mine, I), then surely every time a thought disappears you would not be there, but no, in the space of presence between all thoughts (and this is where we direct our attention in Mindful awareness) you are this spacious aware being, that remains unseen, because it is the 'inner eye of all seeing and knowing' i.e. your insight or intuition, this is also a major paradigm shift, from most of our collective Human conditioning i.e. most people, including myself at one point think they are made of thoughts, so practice and enjoy some Mindful Awareness, that will show you clearly, how to become deeply present in your own presence in the present moment, which is actually 'right now' as you read these words, without thought, just seeing them on the screen........

30/10/2023

There is a voice, not made of thought of mind, nor is it made of speech of mouth, this is the voice of real peace and inner consciousness, that sounds silent but feels louder than thunder when it needs to be heard. To my human soul, this voice is my Saviour, my inner guru, my beloved and the lover of my soul. This voice never leaves my soul or rejects my being, or punishes nor torments me (that is Maya or Satan, the tempting ones, we all know them well, as we’ve been listening to their strange voice most of our lives) but this voice of The Absolute is the only constant and permanent essence of my true Being, Spirit made manifest, this voice soothes and comforts all my pain and gives me courage to stand right in the face of fear, and this voice is always loving and powerful, today, tomorrow and forever, this voice is in you, speaking to yourself in the present moment of Now.
Love and Grace be yours in abundance
Raymond❤️‍🔥🔥🪷🔥❤️‍🔥

09/09/2023

https://www.facebook.com/reel/824146292488878?fs=e&s=TIeQ9V

05/08/2023

You are not made of thoughts! Thoughts appear to the real ‘You’ which is conscious of thought, thought needs the conscious light of awareness to be seen and know, Pure Awareness does not need thought to know, its yer knower, go figure❤️‍🔥

🌹You are not your thoughts. And you are not your emotions. Thoughts and emotions just pop up, they come and go like clouds in the sky. They are like the weather. Sometimes it’s sunny; sometimes it rains — sometimes you feel happy and motivated; sometimes you feel sad and depressed.

You didn’t author these thoughts — they just popped up out of nowhere. That’s what thoughts (and emotions!) do. That’s their nature. They pop up and then they disappear. They come and go. You are not what comes and goes, arises and cases. You are the Unchanging Self.
———

🌹Remain the sky (the awareness) & allow the clouds (the thoughts and emotions ) to come & go. You are the awareness noticing the thoughts. Suffering arises when we identify with the thought ~ Eckhart Tolle
🙏💖💖