This blog is only about awakening, nothing more, nothing less. Anything that will contribute to the possibility of complete liberation from the dream, or from the mass hallucination of humanity, or from the mental matrix, or from the false self, or from the lie, or any other label you want to call it, is welcome here. The key words are FREEDOM and JOY. Sometimes I think this reporting about stuff just keeps the false story going and only adds to the insanity, and there's too much of that already. But something is trying to pry the lid off still, something awaits to be seen. We are all in this boat together, so here we go......have fun!


Showing posts with label surrender. Show all posts
Showing posts with label surrender. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 2, 2020

“STOP the Manipulation, Masks, Lies, Fear…”- international collective of healthcare professionals



COVIDINFOS.NET

A collective of healthcare professionals today (ER: August 28) launched an “International Alert Message” addressed to governments and citizens around the world.

Among the signatories are physicians from many countries and several medical professors, including microbiologist Martin Haditsh.
The collective discusses the real danger of the virus, the manipulation of numbers, the role of the WHO, the consequences of confinement or wearing masks, and calls on governments to “lift all restrictions and obligations on citizens”. You can download the full letter here in French, or here in English.

Healthcare professionals who wish to do so are invited to join the “United Health Professionals” collective at:

join.unitedhealthprofessionals@gmail.com.

****
We, healthcare professionals, across several countries in the world:
1. We say: STOP to all the crazy and disproportionate measures that have been taken since the beginning to fight SARS-CoV-2 (containment, blocking the economy and education, social distancing, masks for all, etc.) because they are totally unjustified, they are not based on any scientific evidence and they violate the basic principles of evidence-based medicine. On the other hand, of course, we support reasonable measures such as recommendations for hand washing, sneezing or coughing into one’s elbow, use of a single-use handkerchief, etc.
This is not the first time that mankind has faced a new virus: it was H2N2 in 1957, H3N2 in 1968, SARS-CoV in 2003, H5N1 in 2004, H1N1 in 2009, MERS-CoV in 2012 and faces the seasonal flu virus every year. However, none of the measures taken for SARS-CoV-2 have been taken for these viruses.

We are told :

“But, SARS-CoV-2 is highly contagious” and we say: This is FALSE, a statement that is rejected by internationally renowned experts. A simple comparison with other viruses shows that the contagiousness of SARS-CoV-2 is moderate. Diseases such as measles can be described as highly contagious. For example, a person infected with measles can infect up to 20 people, whereas a person infected with this coronavirus only infects 2 or 3, which is 10 times less than measles.


– “But, it’s a new virus” and we reply: H1N1 and the other viruses that were mentioned were also new viruses. Yet: we did not confine countries, we did not block the world economy, we did not paralyze the education system, we did not make social distancing and we did not tell healthy people to wear masks. Moreover, some experts say that it is possible that this virus was already circulating before, but that we did not realize it.
– “But, we don’t have a vaccine” and we answer: at the beginning of H1N1 we didn’t have a vaccine either, like in the time of SARS-CoV. Yet: we didn’t confine countries, we didn’t block the world economy, we didn’t paralyze the education system, we didn’t make social distancing and we didn’t tell healthy people to wear masks.
– But, this virus is much more deadly” and we answer: FALSE, because just compared to the flu and if we take into account the period between November 1 and March 31, there have been worldwide -when these measures were taken: 860,000 cases and 40,000 deaths, while the flu in the same period of 5 months infects, on average, 420 million people and kills 270,000. Moreover, the case-fatality rate announced by the WHO (3.4%) was largely overestimated and was rejected from the outset by eminent experts in epidemiology. However, even taking this case-fatality rate, we can see that this coronavirus is three times less lethal than the 2003 rate (10%) and 10 times less lethal than the 2012 rate (35%).
– “But, COVID-19 is a serious disease” and we say, “That’s not true. The SARS-CoV-2 is a benign virus for the general population because it gives 85% of benign forms, 99% of infected subjects recover, it is not a danger for pregnant women and children (unlike influenza), it spreads less rapidly than influenza and 90% of those who die are elderly (who must, of course, be protected like other populations at risk). This is why experts have called the claim that it is a serious disease “delusional” and stated, on August 19th, that “it is no worse than the flu”.
– “But, there are asymptomatic people” and we answer: in the flu too, 77% of infected people are asymptomatic and they can also transmit the virus. Yet: healthy people are not told to wear masks every year and there is no social distancing despite the fact that the flu infects 1 billion people and kills 650,000.
– “But, this virus causes saturation of hospitals” and we answer: It’s FALSE. The saturation only concerns a few hospitals but people are made to believe that the whole hospital system is saturated or that saturation is imminent, whereas there are thousands of hospitals in some countries. Is it reasonable and true to attribute, for example, to 1,000 or 2,000 hospitals a situation that concerns only 4 or 5 hospitals? It is also not surprising that some hospitals are saturated because they were epidemic outbreaks (such as Lombardy in Italy or New York in the USA). It should not be forgotten that hospitals in many countries have been overwhelmed (including intensive care units) during previous flu epidemics and that at that time there was even talk of : “tsunami” of patients in hospitals, “saturated hospitals”, tents erected outside hospitals, “war zones”, “collapsed hospitals” and a “state of emergency”. […]




Saturday, April 6, 2013

We're All In This Together




by Ryan Moore

I need to know you're with me


It seems a simple choice -
succumb, or overcome?
Succeed, or fail?
Winner, or loser?

The english language is riddled with dualities,
each one of them cheapening
the fascinating variegated integrity
of creation itself.
(I.E., us.)

Many of us are force-fed these notions
and our mind, fulfilling it's function, digests them -
integrating yes/no understandings into our identity.

Are you fat, or skinny?
Stupid, or smart?
If you're not pretty you must be ugly,
and if you're not a 'have'
you must be one of the unfortunate 'have-nots.'

Are you good at dancing? Bad at sports? Can you sing, or not?
Do you have your shit together, or don't you?

Are you living up to your potential? Yes or no?

Think positive!
(Don't think negative, don't think negative, don't think negative.)

Be courageous!
(But what if I'm afraid?)

Happy people are successful!
(Great, now I'm sad and unsuccessful.)

Truth is not an either/or,
truth is terrifyingly brave
and grievously joyful.

Life is radiantly monstrous
and perfectly, perfectly fucked up.

I have been depressed for the past 24 hours,
and in my depression have found hope unconquerable -
for it has already been conquered, has already surrendered.

I would see humanity expand,
and slip loose of all the dualistic shackles
attendant to the experience
of being consciousness incarnate.

We are a phenomenon of consciousness itself, and so innately unconstrained.
We do not succumb or overcome, win or lose.

It may appear that way to those taken in by the scoreboard's simple illusion:

"Oh well, good game... we lost."

Did you?

It can be a horrifyingly ecstatic sensation, to surrender to the truths that lie beyond the boundaries of either/or.

As I commit more and more fully to abandoning myself to what is, something new seems to be happening. I sense the subtle emergence of a crystalline quality in myself, a quality that seems to suffuse everyday life with a moment-to-moment ability to be peacefully, attentively, alertly, and contemplatively present.

I don't find it easy, I find it a challenge to completely surrender the widely-held belief system which insists that there's a right way and a wrong way to do, a right way and a wrong way to be.

Often I find myself desperate for some evaluative criteria the same way I'd be desperate for air underwater - there is a similar sense of losing myself.

Often I race back to dualistic standards like a child fleeing back to mom and dad - the playground is too noisy, too confusing, too chaotic and I don't know what to do, don't know how to play, don't know what the rules are... at least with mom and dad I know if I'm doing it right or not.

When this happens, I can be pretty hard on myself - I've had a lot of practice establishing unrealistically high expectations and then berating myself when I fall short.

I find it hardest when I feel isolated.
Although I can be quite articulate here in blog-world,
in the face-to-face interactions of everyday life I'm often at a loss
when asked to speak about what I'm doing with my life.

People ask me questions like:

"What did you do today?"

or

"What are you working on?"

and I don't know how to answer. Once I tried saying:

"I'm intentionally outgrowing the dichotomy of polarity, because I'm utterly inspired by the vision of what humanity will inevitably collectively accomplish once we all do the same."

...and the conversation sort of stalled at that point.

To continue reading CLICK HERE.


Friday, March 15, 2013

Dharamsala by Dean Henderson




(excerpted from Chapter 7: Trekking with God: The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries)
 
As a butterfly lost in a flower. As a bird settled in a tree. As a child fondling mother’s breast. For 67 years of this world I have played with God - Sasaki Roshi

In search of a hotel, I wander down a side street and notice a sign that says “Tibetan Guest House”. I walk up a narrow staircase and a pudgy 14-year-old girl comes to the door. Her pleasant demeanor captures my imagination. She and her six brothers and sisters are huddled around a television watching Bill Cosby. I take a room.

The girl brings me a huge bowl of vegetables and noodles with chopsticks, followed by the best coffee I’ve had in India. Her little brother climbs up on a chair, grabs of pack of Four Square cigarettes from atop the refrigerator and offers me one. Their mother brings me a soda. Their father walks in with fluorescent bulbs for the whole house, as if my arrival has brought them spirited rejuvenation. The kids surround him and wait for their turn at a hug. Some are content with a pat on the head. These are people who know intimately the secrets to happiness. I need to stay awhile.

I wonder if praise is not one of our biggest mistakes. When an Ituri Pygmy hunter comes home from having killed a springbuck, he gets no praise from his fellow tribesmen and is the last to receive his portion of meat. Out of this silence the hunter learns humility. He learns that his fate and that of his tribe are one. Praise for his efforts would only create a schism of the whole and fill the hunter with arrogance. In America, when one praises a friend exceedingly, that friend often begins to mistreat his or her admirer. To praise someone is to put them on a pedestal – separate from the masses of un-praised others. It is a product of dualistic thinking athe root of scores of flawed Western philosophical underpinnings.

This conundrum may explain why I always feel that I need to leave America where I treat everyone as if they are intrinsically good. Westerners, trained in dualistic thinking, take this as weakness on my part. They see my kindness as a green light to take, to gain some emotional advantage. I do not find such a dilemma in India or for that matter any other Third World nations I have visited. Here kindness is greeted by reciprocation.

I guess Reagan and his supply-siders are right in one sense about their trickle-down theories. An evil government imparts its paranoid set of values to its citizenry, whose collective denial of a bloody colonial history only reinforces the “taker” mindset. To stop and question the rules of this rigged game would be to risk losing one’s television or VCR or, God forbid, one’s cherished automobile. Westerners live in a state of guilt, shame and fear – knowing in their guts, but never acknowledging, the trail of tears they have left in their wake. Their penance is their work, their half-hearted daily grind, their boring monotonous meaningless assignment from the cruel Great White teacher. Their weekends are spent indulging in a swirl of contradictions that, by gosh, they deserve after spending all week doing penance. They break out their speedboats, gorge at fine restaurants, guzzle copious amounts of alcohol and throw their hard-earned money back into the whirling cogs of the system. They do not deserve freedom. They must repent. They are the system.

No one’s heart is sad at birth. No one is filled with gloom when their tiny eyes first awaken to the world outside their mother’s womb. No amount of phony social Darwinist propaganda can make it so. Charles Darwin, whose “survival of the fittest” terminology is often invoked by wealthy fat Republicans as justification for their callous journey through this life, actually argued that the most important key to human and animal survival was “cooperation within species”. The entire debate over whether man is naturally good or evil is itself a dualistic windstorm that could only take place within the simplistic minds of the colonial West.

Surely man has the ability to do both good and evil. He must choose which path to embark upon – one of fear and greed, or one of love and compassion. Yet his circumstances greatly influence the nature of his soul. His environment plays a much greater role than his DNA. Most pit bulls are socialized to be family protectors or worse – stone cold killers. But some pit bulls are not instructed so, and are as gentle as lambs. A grizzly bear in Kodiak, Alaska – well-fed on salmon and unused to human interaction – is much less likely to maul a person than one in Yellowstone National Park, where his habitat is a tiny island of government protection and where ignorant humans are constantly pestering him for photographs.

While the Aryans have a lock on colonization, there were rapists among the Zulu and murderers among the Lakota. These bad apples likely were impacted by negative events in their childhood and the like. But Aryan history books exaggerate these anomalies in an attempt to justify colonial endeavors. Tribal peoples treated their offenders much more compassionately. Wrongdoers in tribal cultures were shunned and sent away for a period of time. Wrongdoers in colonial cultures are executed, upsetting the cosmic balance and reinforcing the dualistic thinking that alienates industrialized man from both earth and other cultures. We can kill criminals because we believe in the dualism that they are the bad people and we the good. The fact that tribal cultures did not kill their criminals speaks volumes to their humility, to their lack of dualism-driven fear and to their earth-inspired wisdom. By all accounts the shunning of offenders worked. Recidivism among Lakota offenders was virtually non-existent. The person knew he did wrong, but he also discovered that his life was too valuable to be taken. Thus, the value of all life was reinforced in both his mind and in the collective mind of the culture.

Modern-day prisoners in South Africa, Israel, the US or China – all subject to death at the whim of their governments – hold no such respect for human life. Nor do the people who live in those countries. The nature of human existence holds no relevance in arguments for or against the death penalty. Nor does it matter in any discussion of social policy. Our decision is one of which path we shall take from right here and now. Will we choose a path of darkness and nihilism, or will we choose one that restores balance and harmony to earth and its inhabitants? When we feel good about who we are we do good things. Happiness and justice are two results of harmony – one and the same thing.

McLeod Ganje sits above Dharamsala, which is perched at 6,400’ above sea level. McLeod is a refuge for Tibetans who fled their homes following the 1949 Chinese Revolution. Their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama led them to this new mountain home, also a refuge for travelers to India who grow weary of the hot crowded hassle-ridden lowlands. Here there is much compassion and deafening silence, echoing cheerfully off snow-capped peaks.

Today the 14th Dalai Lama speaks at a three-day celebration of Tibetan culture. His presence is gentle power to an open heart. His message is compassion, which is the central tenet of Tibetan Buddhism. This ideal emerged from the philosophies of Ghautama Buddha, who centuries earlier in northern India, recognized that of all the values revered in his native Hinduism, compassion was the only one that really mattered. The Dalai Lama does not blame the invasion by Chairman Mao’s Red Army for his people’s tribulations. He attributes the act to the karma of the Tibetan people themselves. He discourages divisive language of any kind since it creates a reality where dualistic thought becomes the paradigm. Without duality there can be no enemies. He encourages compassionate living as the path to good karma and nirvana. To en-courage is to be courageous. To dis-courage is cowardice.

This tiny village is living peace – heaven on earth. I have not seen a happier, more content or more compassionate people. I feel it in the simple gourmet food, in the sparse spotless hotel rooms that you pay for when you leave, in the suddenly smiling Westerners taken aback by the joy of the place, and in the Himalayan foothills that surround the village and remind me of my smallness – peaks now shrouded in gray-white billowy clouds through which even more remote villages come into view. This evening the sound of Tibetan gongs mingles with the chattering of rhesus monkeys and macaques playing in the surrounding forest. The few cars here carry Indian tourists back down the mountain, leaving in their wake a silence so profound that I feel every dry swallow and breath of air. The sun lays itself to rest over the Changra Valley and the gentle hand of the Buddha blankets McLeod Ganje in starry darkness.

After my usual breakfast of lemon curd cake and mint tea at the Toepa Restaurant, I begin my ascent towards the Tibetan children’s village, where a festival is in its second day. I pass dancing monks in outrageous costumes and a monastery where young monks debate with the fire of Fidel Castro. I can’t stop walking. Soon I arrive at Dal Lake. I turn left on a road heading up into the Daula Dar range. I pass through the village of Niddi, where Gadi nomadic herder girls tend their sheep and goats. At the next village of Talanu the pavement ends. I take a narrow winding dirt path around the side of a majestic mountain and suddenly, I am struck with awe.

To read more, CLICK HERE.


Saturday, February 9, 2013

17 Krishnamurti Quotes That Will Turn Your World View Outside In




Dylan Charles, Editor
Waking Times 
 
A sage is someone who can put into words the aspects of our mysterious nature that most of us can only feel.

At times in my life I have been overwhelmed by the world and confused about the purpose of it all. I spent much time in anguish, behaving in self-destructive ways, wondering why happiness was so elusive.
In this struggle, I passed many years looking outward for the source of turmoil in my world, trying to tweak, upgrade and replace parts of my life that seemed culpable for my sorrows; a different job, new friends, more education, better stuff. This always led me back, of course, to where I started, still confused, still unsatisfied, still searching for someone and something to blame.

Words are more than just the sum of their meaning, they are powerful incantations, capable of conjuring up great inspiration or of casting damning spells. Philosophy is something that can heal, yet no doctor can prescribe it and no one can predict which words a person must hear to break through to a better place in life.

The potent words of the great Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti fell into my life at precisely the right time, ringing true enough in my mind and in my heart to carry me to brighter days.

Until then, no other spokesman of truth had challenged me so bluntly to take personal responsibility for everything that is wrong in my life and everything that is misaligned in the world, pointing out so truthfully that the world is as we create it. None other had demanded so fervently that I look deep within for the answers to suffering, pointing out the inattention I was giving to my own life. No one else had challenged everything I thought I knew about my personal history and my culture, exposing the conditioning of my own mind, compelling me to change.

And for this I share with you these 17 Krishnamurti quotes that will turn your world view outside in, urging you to reconsider your culture religion, politics and family, guiding you towards a new awareness, intelligence and the truest freedom.

Mostly taken from his public talks in the late 1960’s, these quotes have the power to unleash us from our chains and set us free into a powerful new present where our humanity can finally reign supreme over our fearfulness.

I hope you find solace in them as I have, and that you share them with those whom you love, stirring within them the deep truths that can liberate us from the pitfalls of our own consciousness and the fabrications of our culture.

1. Our minds are conditioned – that is an obvious fact – conditioned by a particular culture or society, influenced by various impressions, by the strains and stresses of relationships, by economic, climatic, educational factors, by religious conformity and so on. Our minds are trained to accept fear and to escape, if we can, from that fear, never being able to resolve, totally and completely, the whole nature and structure of fear. So our first question is: can the mind, so heavily burdened, resolve completely, not only its conditioning, but also its fears? Because it is fear that makes us accept conditioning.

2. I wonder why we divide life into fragments, the business life, social life, family life, religious life, the life of sport and so on? Why is there this division, not only in ourselves but also socially – we they, you and me, love and hate, dying and living? I think we ought to go into this question rather deeply to find out if there is a way of life in which there is no division at all between living and dying, between the conscious and the unconscious, the business and social life, the family life and the individual life.
These divisions between nationalities, religions, classes, all this separation in oneself in which there is so much contradiction – why do we live that way? It breeds such turmoil, conflict, war; it brings about real insecurity, outwardly as well as inwardly. There is so much division, as God and the devil, the good and the bad, ‘what should be’ and ‘what is.’

3. Man has always sought immortality; he paints a picture, puts his name on it, that is a form of immortality; leaving a name behind, man always wants to leave something of himself behind. What has he got to give – apart from technical knowledge – what has he of himself to give? What is he? You and I, what are we, psychologically? You may have a bigger bank account, be cleverer than I am, or this and that; but psychologically, what are we? – a lot of words, memories, experiences, and these we want to hand over to a son, put in a book, or paint in a picture, ‘me’. The ‘me’ becomes extremely important, the ‘me’ opposed to the community, the ‘me’, wanting to identify itself, wanting to fulfill itself, wanting to become something great – you know, all the rest of it. When you observe that ‘me’, you see that it is a bundle of memories, empty words: that is what we cling to; that is the very essence of the separation between you and me, they and we.

4. How is the mind, the brain included to be completely quiet? Some say breathe properly, take deep breaths, that is, get more oxygen into your blood; a shoddy little mind breathing very deeply, day after day, can be fairly quiet; but it is still a shoddy little mind.

5. We look at conditions prevailing in the world and observe what is happening there – the student’s riots, the class prejudices, the conflict of black against white, the wars, the political confusion, the divisions caused by nationalities and religions. We are also aware of conflict, struggle, anxiety, loneliness, despair, lack of love, and fear. Why do we accept all this? Why do we accept the moral, social environment knowing very well that it is utterly immoral; knowing this for ourselves – not merely emotionally or sentimentally but looking at the world and at ourselves – why do we live this way? Why is it that our educational system does not turn out real human beings but mechanical entities trained to accept certain jobs and finally die? Education, science and religion have not solved our problems at all.

Looking at all this confusion, why does each one of us accept and conform, instead of shattering the whole process in ourselves?

6. This is a very human, ordinary problem, which touches the life of everyone of us, rich and poor, young and old, why do we live this monotonous, meaningless life, going to the office or working in a laboratory or a factory for forty years, breeding a few children, educating them in absurd ways, and then dying? I think you should ask this question with all your being, in order to find out. Then you can ask the next question: whether human beings can ever change radically, fundamentally, so that they look at the world anew with different eyes, with a different heart, no longer filled with hatred, antagonism, racial prejudices, but with a mind that is very clear, that has tremendous energy.

Seeing all this – the wars, the absurd divisions which religions have brought about, the separation between the individual and the community, the family opposed to the rest of the world, each human being clinging to some peculiar ideal, dividing himself into ‘me’ and ‘you’, ‘we’ and ‘they’ – seeing all this, both objectively and psychologically, there remains only one question, one fundamental problem and this is whether the human mind, which is so heavily conditioned, can change. Not in some future incarnation, nor at the end of life, but change radically now, so that the mind becomes new, fresh, young, innocent, unburdened, so that we may know what it means to love and to live in peace.

7. To deny conventional morality completely is to be highly moral, because what we call social morality, the morality of respectability, is utterly immoral; we are competitive, greedy, envious, seeking our own way – you know how we behave. We call this social morality; religious people talk about a different kind of morality, but their life, their whole attitude, the hierarchical structure of religious organization and belief, is immoral. To deny that is not to react, because when you react, this is another form of dissenting through one’s own resistance. But when you deny it because you understand it, there is the highest form of morality.

In the same way, to negate social morality, to negate the way we are living – our petty little lives, our shallow thinking and existence, the satisfaction at a superficial level with our accumulated things – to deny all that, not as a reaction but seeing the utter stupidity and the destructive nature of this way of living – to negate all that is to live. To see the false as the false – this seeing is the true.

8. If people who say they love their children meant it, would there be war? And would there be division of nationalities – would there be these separations?

9. If the mind is unconditioned it is free. So we are going to find out, examine very closely, what makes the mind so conditioned, what are the influences that have brought about this conditioning, and why we accept it. First of all, tradition plays an enormous part in life. In that tradition the brain has developed so that it can find physical security. One cannot live without security, that is the very first, primary animal demand, that there be physical security; one must have a house, food, clothing. But the psychological way in which we use this necessity for security brings about chaos within and without. The psyche, which is the very structure of thought, also wants to be secure inwardly, in all its relationships. Then the trouble begins. There must be physical security for everybody, not only for the few; but that physical security for everybody is denied when psychological security is sought through nations, through religions, through the family.

10. Then there is the question of dying, which we have carefully put far away from us, as something that is going to happen in the future – the future may be fifty years off or tomorrow. We are afraid of coming to an end, coming physically to an end and being separated from the things we have possessed, worked for, experienced – wife, husband, the house, the furniture, the little garden, the books and the poems we have written or hoped to write. And we are afraid to let all that go because we are the furniture, we are the picture that we possess; when we have the capacity to play the violin, we are that violin. Because we have identified ourselves with those things – we are all that and nothing else. Have you ever looked at it that way? You are the house – with the shutters, the bedroom, the furniture which you have very carefully polished for years, which you own – that is what you are. If you remove all that you are nothing.

And that is what you are afraid of – of being nothing. Isn’t it very strange how you spend forty years going to the office and when you stop doing these things you have heart trouble and die? You are the office, the files, the manager or the clerk or whatever your position is; you are that and nothing else. And you have a lot of ideas about God, goodness, truth, what society should be – that is all. Therein lies sorrow. To realize for yourself that you are that is great sorrow, but the greatest sorrow is that you do not realize it. To see that and find out what it means is to die.

11. Can you observe anything – a tree, your wife, your neighbor, the politician, the priest, a beautiful face – without any movement of the mind? The images of your wife, of your husband, of your neighbor, the knowledge of the cloud or of pleasure, all that interferes, doesn’t it? So when there is interference by an image of any kind, subtle or obvious, then there is no observation, there is no real, total awareness – there is only partial awareness. To observe clearly there must be no image coming in between the observer and the thing observed. When you look at a tree, can you look at it without the knowledge of that tree in botanical terms, or the knowledge of your pleasure or desire concerning it? Can you look at it so completely that the space between you – the observer – and the thing observed disappears? That doesn’t mean that you become the tree! But when that space disappears, there is the cessation of the observer, and only the thing which is observed remains. In that observation there is perception, seeing the thing with extraordinary vitality, its color, its shape, the beauty of the leaf or trunk; when there is not the center of the ‘me’ who is observing, you are intimately in contact with that which you observe.

12. If I think I am very beautiful and you tell me I am not, which may be a fact, do I like it? If I think I am very intelligent, very clever, and you point out that I am actually a rather silly person, it is very unpalatable to me. And your pointing out my stupidity gives you a sense of pleasure, does it not? It flatters your vanity, it shows you how clever you are. But you do not want to look at your own stupidity; you want to run away from what you are, you want to hide from yourself, you want to cover up your own emptiness, your own loneliness. So you seek out friends who never tell you what you are. You want to show others what they are; but when others show you what you are, you do not like it. You avoid that which exposes your own inner nature.

13. Real freedom is not something to be acquired, it is the outcome of intelligence. You cannot go out and buy freedom in the market. You cannot get it by reading a book, or by listening to someone talk. Freedom comes with intelligence.

But what is intelligence? Can there be intelligence when there is fear, or when the mind is conditioned? When your mind is prejudiced, or when you think you are a marvelous human being, or when you are very ambitious and want to climb the ladder of success, worldly or spiritual, can there be intelligence? When you are concerned about yourself, when you follow or worship somebody, can there be intelligence? Surely, intelligence comes when you understand and break away from all this stupidity. So you have to set about it; and the first thing is to be aware that your mind is not free. You have to observe how your mind is bound by all these things, and then there is the beginning of intelligence, which brings freedom. You have to find the answer for yourself. What is the use of someone else being free when you are not, or of someone else having food when you are hungry?
To be creative, which is to have real initiative, there must be freedom; and for freedom there must be intelligence. So you have to inquire and find out what is preventing intelligence. You have to investigate life, you have to question social values, everything, and not accept anything because you are frightened.

14. Have you ever thought about why you are being educated, why you are learning history, mathematics, geography, or what else? Have you ever thought why you go to schools and colleges? Is it information, with knowledge? What is all this so-called education? Your parents send you here, perhaps because they themselves have passed certain examinations and taken various degrees. Have you ever asked yourselves why you are here, and have the teachers asked why you are here? Do the teachers know why they are here? Should you not try to find out what all this struggle is about – this struggle to study, to pass examinations, to live in a certain place away from home and not be frightened, to play games well and so on? Should your teachers not help you to inquire into all this and not merely prepare you to pass examinations?

15. So religion becomes a matter of belief, and belief acts as a limitation on the mind; and the mind then is never free. But it is only in freedom that you can find out what is true, what is God, not through any belief; because your belief projects what you think God ought to be, what you think ought to be true. If you believe God is love, God is good, God is this or that, your very belief prevents you from understanding what is God, what is true.

16. A conditioned mind is not free because it can never go beyond its own borders, beyond the barriers it has built around itself; that is obvious. And it is very difficult for such a mind to free itself from its conditioning and go beyond, because this conditioning is imposed upon it, not only by society, but by itself. You like your conditioning because you dare not go beyond. You are frightened of what your father and mother would say, of what society and the priest would say; therefore you help to create the barriers which hold you. This is the prison in which most of us are caught, and that is why your parents are always telling you – as you in turn will tell your children – to do this and not do that.

17. Now, there are many people who will tell you the purpose of life; they will tell you what the sacred books say. Clever people will go on inventing various purposes of life. The political group will have one purpose, the religious group will have another, and so on and on. And how are you to find out what is the purpose of life when you yourself are confused? Surely, as long as you are confused, you can only receive an answer which is also confused. If your mind is disturbed, if it is not really quiet, whatever answer you receive will be through this screen of confusion, anxiety, fear; therefore the answer will be perverted. So the important thing is not to ask what is the purpose of life, but to clear away the confusion that is within you. It is like a blind man asking, “What is light?” If I try to tell him what light is, he will listen according to his blindness, according to his darkness; but from the moment he is able to see, he will never ask what is light. It is there.

Please support this article by voting for it on Reddit.com, here.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

TEMPLATE PORTAL


Watch and listen....what is happening is an organic process....there is nothing you need "do" but allow your own transformation. You were born for this.



Template Portal from Jiva & Juliet Carter on Vimeo.


Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Waking Up Hurts




by Robert Cinque, Contributor

Finding out that my life has been based upon lie after lie is sickening and painful.  I threw up, like Neo in the movie The Matrix, when he discovered that his so called life was a dream, a nightmare of horrors, lie upon lie.

His awakening was bloody and painful. He did not greet it with a smile, he had to recover from it, his own awakening!  The truth is so massive, so crushing, no one can endure its weight.

The Truth literally crushes you to death, and that is why Awakening is about It, not “me”.   Your identity as a separate entity will not survive the journey to enlightenment. The Truth hurts, but it’s still the Truth, still Life Giving. There is no need for beliefs when you have the Truth, or rather, when It has you.

In our world, it’s not only the tyrants who lie their asses off, it’s the priests and doctors too, unwitting administrators of torture and falsehood.  They promote lies they sincerely believe.

But does the truth care about my beliefs about it? No. Do my ideas affect the truth?  No.

Maps are not the Territory.  Menus are not the Meal.

Eat the Real, Live the Territory.

The Territory is the Radiant Conscious Field of Intelligent Light, the Impossible Wonder of the Presence of Life.  The Meal is the ecstatic Whole Body Enjoyment of this undeniable Truth: the entirety of Reality Itself is your most fundamental identity now, we are absolutely inherently identical to Whatever the Fuck It Is that became us, little ole you and me, go figure.  When we finally come to grips with the mind shattering reality of our Actual Condition, now, we will be able to manage our lives and this planet without conflict.

The Map is a compilation of our scientifically materialistic, religiously psychotic, politically constipated, culturally anemic ideas about It. Our job is to move from the Map to the Territory.

In my last essay, Whatever Destroyed the Towers Could Power the Planet, I identified 3 lies, 3 social memes that infect the body of Humanity and regulate its behavior just as surely as our genes rule our bodies.

Here is one more, the most basic lie of all, the one that most enables our domination by the Matrix.

Ego.

The so-called ego is born from an assumption.  It is not an entity, but a belief in one, a belief in a separate self, one that is marooned on an island of flesh.  Belief in the ego is the result of a confusion about uniqueness, where individuation becomes the equivalent of separation. The ego is a belief, a primitive superstition, a cult of one, an emotional recoil dramatized as abandonment and betrayal.  Every ego is a fundamentalist, a fascist, and a tyrant in a drama of perpetrator/victim.  I call it the Poor me/Fuck you syndrome.

The truth is, I don’t have an ego and neither do you!  We have a belief in ego, an assumption about our state that has no basis in Reality itself. A belief in something doesn’t make it true, no matter how devout we are, no matter how dedicated we may be to that belief.  Pious devotion to falsehood turns people into fools.  When you unpack your “self” and all its contents, it turns out to be just a pile of old books and dirty laundry.

The One who did the unpacking, That’s Who I Am. You too.

There is only one Reality, not two. The One became the “two”.  Still, no “objects” actually exist, only Consciousness Exists.  You are That, showing up like a Fish in the Ocean.

You are the Ocean, the Fish, and the Observer, all at once.  How can this be?  No one knows.

It just is.

To continue reading CLICK HERE .


Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Peace, Love, Compassion


Nothing I say can explain to you Divine Love
Yet all of creation cannot seem to stop talking about it.

~ Rumi

*******  ***  *******  ***  *******   ***

Love is seeing
the unity
under
the imaginary
diversity.

~ Nisargadatta

*******  ***  *******  ***  *******   ***

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.

So instead of loving what you think is peace, love other [people] and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmongers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed – but hate these things in yourself, not in another.

~ Thomas Merton

*******  ***  *******  ***  *******   ***

Don't look for peace. Don't look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance.

Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender.

When you accept what is, every moment is the best moment. That is enlightenment.

~ Eckhart Tolle

*******  ***  *******  ***  *******   ***

The truth is that a whole new state of consciousness already exists, that every part of your experience that’s unfolding right now is already enclosed within absolute stillness, absolute ease. And so there really isn’t
anywhere to go or anything for which to search. Struggle only gets us deeper into the very thing we’re trying to escape. This is a very important thing to know about egoic consciousness: The harder we try to get out, the deeper we dig ourselves in.

~ Adyashanti

*******  ***  *******  ***  *******   ***

We try to grasp something strange and mysterious because we believe happiness lies elsewhere. This is the mistake. The Self is all-pervading. Our real nature is liberation, but we imagine that we are bound, we make strenuous efforts to become free, although all the while we are free. Birth and death pertain only to the body, they are superimposed upon the Self, giving rise to the delusion that birth and death relate to the Self. The universe exists within the Self. Discover the undying Self and be immortal and happy. Be yourself and nothing more. Thoughts change but not you. There is neither past nor future; there is only the present. Yesterday was the present when you experienced it; tomorrow will also be the present when you experience it, therefore, experience takes place only in the present, and even the present is mere imagination, for the sense of time is purely mental.

All that is required to realize the Self is to be still. What can be easier than that? Your true nature is that of infinite spirit.

~ Ramana Maharshi

*******  ***  *******  ***  *******   ***

Enlighten your desires.
Meditate on who you are.
Quit imagining.

What you want is profoundly expensive,
and difficult to find,
yet closeby.

Don't search for it. It is nothing,
and a nothing within nothing.

~ Lalla - 14th Century North Indian mystic

*******  ***  *******  ***  *******   ***

The Ineffable Mystery of Being

What I have discovered through my spiritual practice is an increasing self-intimacy. ..a sense of authenticity and real-ness, that has become the cornerstone of my daily life. I cannot imagine how I could have lived without this living presence and sense of emerging fullness.

Our awareness is incredibly powerful at enabling the unveiling of ourselves, revealing a fuller picture, illuminating our experience, but only if we are willing and committed to knowing the fullness of what we are.

I find as I continue noticing and encountering this awareness in my life what comes into view is both particular and vast, discordant yet harmonious, life sustaining yet challenging and not necessarily easy. This active engagement demands my courage and honesty, this is no walk in the park.

As I continue, the sense of congruence and authenticity begins to sprout and this self-intimacy becomes the rule, in time. Although it is not as though there is one mode of being, that of self-intimacy, no, it is more like that a dance has begun.

This dance, fueled and enabled by the openness and desire of wanting to know myself, is both exhilarating and liberating and, as I develop trust in the unfolding, I soon begin to recognize that any ideas or desires for Awakening need not concern me....it no longer is of interest as my life has filled up with a delicious fragrance of authenticity.

I no longer care for anything other than supporting what has taken root within me…if the self concept or ego continues I don't care, the teachers and teachings tell me this and that and I don't care, life is its usual mix of struggle and strife, joy and love, and I no longer care...why would I care when I know the golden key is within? Why search for anything when the very fabric of experience is the path of unfolding. Everyday experience reveals this once we get a little more familiar with ourselves and stop trying to awaken, stop meddling with our experience long enough to notice what is.

At some stage there was a key realization, one among many, when I realized I can let go of all concepts about the teaching and just feel comfortable in everyday experience without any framework or concepts about how it ought to be. Is their a doer? Is there an ego? Is there an awakening? Are we perfect? None of these conceptual frames of reference are important. Instead I relax and notice that all that stuff is just ideas about...about the ineffable mystery of being.

~ Rob Matthews

Friday, October 14, 2011

Freedom "To" vs. Freedom "From"


...And this myth that I can rest in some assuredness. That I will  never again feel insecure or feel fear, or feel doubt, or feel those emotions we don’t want to feel. If I'm truly enlightened I will never feel those emotions.
Forget it. That’s not it. That's the pipe dream. That is the opium that is sold to the masses. And they eat it up and they never get there and they end up disillusioned.

Freedom is never freedom "from." If it's freedom "from" anything, it's not freedom at all. It's freedom "to." Are you free enough to be afraid? Are you free enough to feel insecure? Are you free enough not to know? Are you free enough to know that you can't know? Are you free enough to be totally comfortable, to know that you can't know what's around the next corner? How you will feel about it? How you will respond to it? That you literally can't know? Are you free enough to be totally at ease and comfort with the way things actually are? That's freedom.
 
~ Adyashanti

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- 

You are not "in the now"; you are the now. That is your essential identity--the only thing that never changes. Life is always now. Now is consciousness. And consciousness is who you are. That's the equation.
 
~ Eckhart Tolle

If this were your only spiritual practice, it would be enough: to withdraw identification from opinions, positions, thoughts.

~ Eckhart Tolle

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- 

Not to know is profound; to know is shallow. Not to know is internal; to know is external. 

~ Chuang-tzu

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------

To one who knows naught it is clearly revealed. 

~Meister Eckhart

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment; Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition. 

~Rumi

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------

Rejoicing in nothing and knowing nothing are the true rejoicing and the true knowledge. 

~ Lao-tzu
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------

All I know is that I know nothing. 

~ Socrates

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

When you’re blind to your own nature, the Buddha is an ordinary being. When you’re aware of your own nature, an ordinary being is the Buddha.
 
~ Hui Neng

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------

Enlightenment is not about becoming divine. Instead it's about becoming more fully human. . . . It is the end of ignorance. 

~Lama Surya Das

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Marked Eternal: There Is NO SELF



This is the simplest, most logical; most obvious truth- there is no such entity as self. There is no self at all, no nothing, but life flowing freely, all is one reality, one life. Life just IS.

It is so simple, that it's most difficult to see. Thinking that we all have a special separate self that is in charge of our lives it's nothing else, but unquestioned assumption. It's a core belief, through which a human sees life. The feeling of separation persists in everyday life, making one always stressed, depressed or seeking for more. There is deep constant feeling that something is wrong, that there is something to find out, that life is not full, not abundant, stressful.

Of course there is something wrong! There is this feeling that something is wrong. It rises up from deep and keeps us searching for answers.

The answer is simple- there is no self! There never was. We are not doing anything in life, life is happening as us. There is no manager involved that decides what, when, with who, why. Life just happens, by itself, for no other reason. It's life alive. It's Life-ing.

The big question is how to see that there is really no self in reality at all. If you accept this as a belief, without testing, nothing will change. You will have one more belief running in the system creating more conflicts than before. To see the truth of it you need to look.

Looking is also very simple- one just needs a clear intention to finally see the truth, no matter what distractions stand in a way. It's not scary, it is not magic. One just needs to start thinking for himself and answer some precise questions with whole honesty like never before. 

When you start looking first thing to do is clear the path. This can be done by writing. You can have somebody guiding you or just do it yourself! Take nothing for granted, question everything. There is nothing at all that you need to know to start digging. Just begin writing and clarify stuff for yourself. No one can do the looking for you. Don't even think about that.

(Don’t start just yet. Read the whole thing to the end, then start)

I came up with these steps as a result of seeing what really works for most people. 

CLICK HERE to continue reading......


Thursday, September 29, 2011

The Myth of Yoga or Integration


The Oxford English Dictionary gives the following definitions:

Yoga - System of meditation and asceticism designed to effect reunion with the universal spirit.

Integration - The combination of parts into a whole.

Common questions that one sees are 'how to integrate self-realization into one's day to day life?' or 'how to achieve yoga - union?'. However, both of these questions are based on a false premise which is that there is something separate which needs to be reunited, or combined, into the universal wholeness. Now it can be readily seen, on the experiential level, that each moment is just an experience consisting of thoughts/mental- images and sensations appearing in Awareness (I.e. we are aware of them). So that deeper than this flow of objects (thoughts/mental- images and sensations) we are this constant conscious subjective presence - Awareness. For a more detailed exposition of this see chapter two of Beyond The Separate Self or chapter one of A Light Unto Your Self.

Once this self-realization has occurred one sees that there never was any separation, as that which one truly is - pure Awareness, consciousness at rest - can never be separate from the Totality of consciousness. In the same way it can be seen that nothing is ever separate from This (consciousness) which exists in two states, at rest as pure Awareness, and in motion as cosmic energy. Every thing in existence is a configuration of this energy for modern physics has shown that matter is equivalent to energy, and the string theory posits that all matter is composed of strings of energy vibrating at different frequencies.

Now all motion arises in stillness, exists in stillness, is known by its comparison with stillness, and eventually subsides back into stillness. For example, if you walk across a room, before you start there is stillness, as you walk the room is still and you know you are moving relative to this stillness, and when you stop once again there is stillness. In the same way every 'thing' (consciousness in motion) arises in Awareness (consciousness at rest), exists in Awareness, is known in Awareness and subsides back into Awareness. Awareness is still, but is the container of all potential energy which is continually bubbling up into manifestation (physical energy) and then subsiding back into stillness.

Therefore pure Awareness, that which we truly are at the deepest level, is the substratum of all existence, the source, ground, seer and dissolution of all things. So there is, and never was, any thing that needed to be reunited, or combined, with the universal wholeness; for no separation is possible. In the same way our 'day to day existence' is never separate from This (pure Awareness) and thus no integration is necessary. For when examined living is seen to be a series of momentary experiences that seem to merge together to form something we call my life. As previously stated, it can be readily seen on the experiential level that each moment is just an experience consisting of thoughts/mental- images and sensations appearing in Awareness (i.e. we are aware of them).

So we need to be very careful when contemplating reality not to fall into the trap of assuming that we need to integrate ourselves, or achieve yoga (union), as there never was any separation. Any mode of thought that seems to posit a separate self which needs to be integrated, or united, subtly reinforces the myth of separation, and thus should be avoided or treated with care.

~ Colin Drake

Order Colin Drake's books as ebooks or in hard copy at

http://nonduality.com/colindrake.htm

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Effortless Freedom



Enlightenment absorbs this universe of qualities.
When that merging occurs, there is nothing
but God. This is the only doctrine.

There is no word for it, no mind
to understand it with, no categories
of transcendence or non-transcendence,
no vow of silence, no mystical attitude.

There is no Shiva and no Shakti
in enlightenment, and if there is something
that remains, that whatever-it- is
is the only teaching.

~ Lalla

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

"If you want God and you chase God, God will be out of your reach. If you stop and drop every concept of God, you are enfolded in the Living Presence of God."

~ Gangaji

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

seeker of truth

follow no path
all paths lead where

truth is here

~ ee cummings

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

Acceptance is your inherent state, non-acceptance is artificial, fabricated.

~ Jean Klein

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

There is no island of bliss to which we finally arrive post-awakening. The experience of Silence is always available, of course, and it is the background of all experience, but it does not REPLACE or NEGATE experience. It remains the birthplace of personal experience, which goes on just like before but without the personal attachment that used to make it so joyful or painful. We must keep our eyes open and move forward into whatever life presents from moment to moment, even as we rest as that Creative Silence. Such radical courage is what reveals that we are also Life Itself.

~ Richard Young

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

There is another, sweeter power available to us all, regardless of how many words we know. It starts in the heart and is effortlessly spoken through the eyes. Sometimes, just for perspective, take a break and hear the music.

~ Gangaji

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

Listen to your life.
See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.
In the boredom and pain of it
no less than in the excitement and gladness:
touch, taste, smell your way
into the holy and hidden heart of it,
because in the last analysis
all moments are key moments,
and life itself is grace.

~ Frederick Buechner

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

The Treasure Chest of the Body

Everything we have ever fled from, as separated consciousness, is here, right here in our body, in our nervous system. We don't have to travel far to know ourselves, to meet ourselves.

This fleeing the body is what keeps us bound. And now we have an even more sophisticated form of leaving ourselves - the use of spiritual concepts. How frequently the mind tries to chew on these , in one more valiant, exhausting effort to get away from the 'ouch' of life, from what we are actually feeling, from the discomfort, the waves of angst that rise in the body.

Discomfort arising is a gift. It is the body's way of defrosting itself, of integrating the massive amount of old shock, separation energy that is stored there.

Don't deny your experience, even if you know at some level it's not real. Imagine telling an upset baby it doesn't exist. Where and how could that land. Let your experience become truly unreal by giving it the reality
and attention it first needs. It is through this body of ours that we come to realize we are not the body.

Presence and sensation with no ownership of any of it. Our sanctuary, our favorite resting place, our true resting ground.

~ Mags Deane

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

in time of daffodils

in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me

~ ee cummings

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Your Own Heart Is Waiting For You


There are still many gifts unopened from your birthday.

~ Hafiz

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

Late Ripeness

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing,
like ships, together with their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than they were before.

I was not separated from people,
grief and pity joined us.
We forget -- I kept saying --
that we are all children of the King.

For where we come from there is no division
into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.

We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.

Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago -
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef -- they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.

~ Czeslaw Milosz

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

"Immobility and silence are not inactive. The flower fills the space with perfume, the candle -- with light. They do nothing yet they change everything by their mere presence."

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

"This pure mind... shines forever with the radiance of its own perfection. But most people are not aware of it, and think that mind is just the faculty that sees, hears, feels, and knows. Blinded by their own sight, hearing, feeling, and knowing, they don't perceive the radiance of the source. If they could eliminate all conceptual thinking, this source would appear, like the sun rising..."

~ Huang-po

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

Whatever you've been doing, you're using your mind to do it. And your mind will always fool you. It will make you believe you're getting somewhere. You're becoming something great. But it's really the ego. It is the ego that is controlling the mind.

~ Robert Adams

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

The entire conversation around awakening, awareness, satsang, advaita, enlightenment, nonduality, etc. was a huge distraction from Love. It is only when I saw, very recently, the pride of "wanting to be special" that I realized how lost I was. I cannot be special. I can only be kind, loving, generous, honest, loyal, humble and diligent in my effort to distinguish the difference between Love and fear.

~ Benjamin Smythe

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

Your own Heart is waiting for you when you're sick and tired and done scouring the landscape of illusion for the substance and love it can never give you.

~Mags Deane

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

Oh lovers, where are you going?
Who are you looking for?
Your beloved is right here.

She lives in your own neighborhood.
Her face is veiled.
She hides behind screens calling for you,
While you search and lose yourself
In the wilderness and the desert.

Cease looking for flowers,
There blooms a garden in your own home.
While you go looking for trinkets,
Your treasure house awaits you
In your own being

There is no need for suffering, God is here!

~ Rumi