This excerpt from Elijah Crow's Silence of the Mind is just a taste of a tome so absolutely clear.....well....you'll just have to read the whole thing yourself. Beautiful....
The book can be downloaded and read here:
http://www.scribd. com/doc/34607176 /Elijah-Crow- The-Silence- of-the-Mind
Enjoy!
The Power of Emptiness
The "void" or " psychological emptiness" is a strange phenomenon,
It appears spontaneously, in the pause between two thoughts,
As the old thought ends its course and disappears,
Its end is the gate, natural silence ensues.
Insist in being with it, as much as you can,
The mind is completely silent, we are attentive – a clear consciousness,
All meanings, boundaries disappear – us and the Infinite are "One";
Practically, we have a new mind – always fresh.
Being in the pause – I become infinite!
It separates two worlds. I leave the limited world
And enter Boundlessness, through total melting;
The whole being is calm – a constant sparkle.
There is no time, no space – just everlasting Eternity;
I move in direct contact with life, in a permanent present.
I am Pure Energy, without motivations,
The simplicity of existence integrates us completely.
We really encounter Life only through this "now",
Free from the old, we are able to embrace the new.
All this beauty vanishes, when another thought appears,
It comes from the knowing mind – an old recording.
Let it play its game, do not oppose any resistance,
Encounter it as it is, without any purpose,
It will certainly disappear, and "emptiness" ensues again,
Another opportunity to encounter it practically.
We find the real meaning of Life through this "void",
It is a boundary line between the two worlds:
On the one side the limited, where the "ego" is the master.
On the other, the Infinite, where Love is the master.
Emptiness also separates Light from the darkness,
The permanent chaos through struggle, contradictions and conflicts,
From the harmonious being, equilibrium and joy;
The whole egocentrism perishes, by encountering the void.
Peace, divine order becomes our nature
It changes our way of being, without effort or will,
Only through this psychological void, we become honest and humane,
The Purity of the Energy – makes titans out of pigmies .
Let this "psychological emptiness" be your guide,
In everything you encounter on your spiritual path.
If it is not the starting point, we easily get deceived,
Only through emptiness – we become Love!
Showing posts with label silence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label silence. Show all posts
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
OSHO - On Meditation
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My whole life I have been talking about meditation. There are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation; I have gone through all those methods—and not intellectually. It took me years to go through
each method and to find out its very essence, and after going through one hundred and twelve methods I was amazed that the essence is witnessing. The methods' non-essentials are different, but the center of each method is witnessing. Hence I can say to you, there is only one meditation in the whole world and that is the art of witnessing. It will do everything—the whole transformation of your being.
Whatever I am doing, my meditation continues. It is not something that I have to do it separately; it is just an art of witnessing. Speaking to you, I'm also witnessing myself speaking to you. So here are three persons: you are listening, one person is speaking, and there is one behind who is watching and that is my real me. And to keep constant contact with it is meditation.
So whatever you do does not matter, you just keep contact with your witness. I have reduced religion to its very fundamental essence. Now everything else is just ritual. This much is enough. And this does not need you to become a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan or anybody, and this can be done by an atheist, by a communist, by anybody, because it needs no kind of theology, no kind of belief system. It is simply a scientific method of slowly moving inwards. A point comes when you reach to your innermost core, the very center of the cyclone.
The basic element running through all the methods of meditation is witnessing. You ask me: What is witnessing? Whatever you are doing. For example, right now you are writing. You can write in two ways. The ordinary way that you always write. You can try another method: you can write it and you can also inside witness that you are writing it. And you ask: Does that mean some kind of detachment? A detachment. You are a little distant, away, watching yourself writing. So any act, just moving my whatever you are doing, just remain a witness. If you have any ego, it will destroy it, because this watching is very much poisonous to the ego. It is not ego that watches. The ego is absolutely blind. It cannot watch anything. You can watch your ego. For example, somebody insults you and you feel hurt, and your ego feels hurt. You can watch it. You can watch that you are feeling hurt, your ego is feeling hurt, that you are angry. And you can still remain aloof, detached, just a watcher on the hills. Whatever goes on in the valley you can see.
So all the methods are basically different ways of witnessing. I have condensed them in a very simple way: First, watch your actions of the body. Second, watch your actions of the mind: thoughts, imaginations. And if you can succeed in watching all these three, and as your witnessing grows deeper and deeper, a moment comes that there is only witnessing but nothing to witness. The mind is empty, the heart is empty, the body is relaxed. In that moment happens something like a quantum leap. Your whole witnessing jumps upon itself. It witnesses itself, because there is nothing else to witness. And this is the revolution which I call enlightenment, self-realization. Or you can give it any name, but this is the ultimate experience of bliss. You cannot go beyond it.
This is the simplest. And because it can be done without in any way interfering with your everyday life, because it is something that you can go on doing the whole day. Any other method you have to take some time apart for it. And any method that needs one hour or half an hour to sit and do it is not going to help much, because twenty-three hours you will be doing just the opposite. And whatever you have gained in one hour will be washed away in twenty-three hours. This is the only method that you can continue around the clock. While falling asleep you can go on witnessing, witnessing, that the sleep is coming, coming, coming, that it is getting darker and the body is relaxing. And a moment comes when you can watch that you are asleep. And still there is a corner, a space in you which is awake.
When you can watch yourself twenty-four hours, you have arrived. Now there is nothing to be done. Then witnessing has become natural to you. You don't have to do it. It will be simply like breathing, happening to you.
This is my basic method. But there are other methods. If people feel that this is difficult for them, they can try other methods. All are available. I have returned from a movie show. It is surprising to see how much the light and shade photos projected on the screen captivate people. Where there is really nothing, everything happens! I watched the audience there and it felt as if they had forgotten themselves, as if they were not there, but the flow of electrically projected pictures was everything. A blank screen is in front and from the back the pictures are being projected. Those who are watching it have their eyes fixed in front, and no
one is aware of what is happening behind their backs. This is how leela, the play, is born. This is what happens within and without. There is a projector at the back of the human mind. Psychology calls this back side the unconscious. The longings, the passions, the conditionings accumulated in this unconscious are being continuously projected onto the mind's screen. This flow of mental projections goes on every moment, non-stop. The consciousness is a seer, a witness, and it forgets itself in this flow of the pictures of desires. This forgetfulness is ignorance. This ignorance is the root cause of maya, illusions, and the endless cycle of birth and death. Waking up from this ignorance happens in the cessation of the mind. When the mind is devoid of thoughts, when the flow of pictures on the screen stops, only then the onlooker remembers himself and returns to his home.
Patanjali calls this cessation of the activities of the mind Yoga. If this is achieved, all is achieved. To understand the mind, there are the three points: The first thing is tremendous fearlessness in encountering the mind; the second thing is no restrictions, no conditions on the mind; the third point is no judgments about whatever thoughts and longings arise in the mind, no feelings of good or bad. Your attitude should simply be indifferent. These three points are necessary to understand the perversions of the mind. Then we will talk about what can be done to get rid of these perversions, and go further. But these three basic points have to be kept in mind.
This is my observation of thousands of people: I see them carrying such great psychological luggage, and for no reason at all. They go on gathering anything they come across. They read the newspaper and they will gather some crap from it. They will talk to people and they will gather some crap. And they go on gathering. And if they start stinking, no wonder!
I used to live with a man for a few years. His house was so full of unnecessary luggage that I had to tell him "Now, where are you going to live?" And he would go on collecting any kind of thing. Somebody would be
selling his old furniture, and he would purchase it, and he already had enough. He had no time to use that furniture, and he had no friends to call. His whole house was full of furniture: old radio sets, and all kinds
of things. And I said "But, I don't see the point why you collect all this." He said "Who knows, any time it may be useful." One day we went for a walk and on the road. By the side of the road, somebody had thrown a cycle handle. He picked it up. I said "What are you doing?" He said "But, it must be worth twenty rupees at least, and I have picked up a few other things also—sooner or later I am going to make a bicycle!" And he showed me. He had one wheel, one pedal, that he had picked up from the roads. And he said "What are you saying? Soon you will see!" This man died. The cycle remained incomplete. And when he died, everybody who came to look was puzzled by what he was doing in this house—there was no space even to move.
But this is the situation of your head. I see cycle-handles, and pedals, and strange things that you have gathered from everywhere. Such a small head, and no space to live in! And that rubbish goes on moving in your head; your head goes on spinning and weaving—it keeps you occupied. Just think what kind of thoughts go on inside your mind.
Sometimes, sitting under the stars, you feel a bliss arising within your heart. It seems not of this world. You are surprised. You cannot believe it. I have come across simple people who have known many moments in their life which are Buddha-like, which belong to Christ consciousness, but they have never talked about them to anybody because they themselves don't believe that they were possible. They have in fact suppressed them. They have been thinking that they must have imagined them: How can it happen without any effort of my own? How is it possible that suddenly one becomes blissful? You can remember them in your own life—and in such moments when you were never expecting them—just going to the office, in the daily routine, the sun is high and you are perspiring, and suddenly something strikes home, and for a moment you are not the old you. Paradise is regained. And then it is lost again. You forget about it because it is not part of your style of life. You don't even talk about it, you think 'I must have imagined it. How are these things possible? And I have not done anything so how can it happen? It must have been hallucinatory, an illusion or a dream.' You don't talk about it. As I have observed thousands of people deeply I have not come across many people who have not found such certain moments in their life. But they have never talked of them to anybody. Even if they tried to, people laughed and they thought: You are foolish, stupid. They don't believe, they repress.
Not only has humanity repressed sex, has humanity repressed death, humanity has repressed all that is beautiful in life. Man has been forced to become like an automaton, a robot. All clues, all doors, have been closed towards the unknown. It is my continual experience of thousands of people that when they come for the first time to meditate, meditation happens so easily because they don't have any idea what it is. Once it has happened, then the real problem arises—then they want it, they know what it is, they desire it. They are greedy for it; it is happening to others and it is not happening to them. Then jealousy, envy, all kinds of wrong things surround them.
The inner world is a new world where you have not even looked, where you have never taken a single step. So I have to teach you how, slowly, you can step inwards. Even when I say to people to go inwards, immediately they ask questions which show how focused on the outside things they are. I say to them, "Sit silently." And they will ask me, "Can I do gayatri mantra?" Whether you do gayatri mantra or you read the newspaper does not matter, both are outside. I am telling you, "Sit silently." They say, "That is right, but at least I can repeat omkar…" It is pitiable. I feel sad for them, that I am telling them to be silent but they are asking me to fill their silence with something. They don't want to be silent. If nothing else, then omkar will do—anything will do.
In India people go on doing all kinds of things. They concentrate, they chant mantras, they fast, they torture their bodies, and they hope that through all these masochistic practices they will realize God. As if God is a sadist! As if God loves you to torture yourself! As if he demands that the more you torture yourself, the more worthy you become. God is not a sadist; you need not be a masochist. I have come across people who think
that without long fasting there is no possibility of meditation. Now, fasting has nothing to do with meditation. Fasting will only make you obsessed with food. And there are people who think celibacy will help them into meditation. Meditation brings a kind of celibacy, but not vice versa. A celibacy without meditation is nothing but sexual repression. And your mind will become more and more sexual, so whenever you sit to meditate your mind will become full of fantasies, sexual fantasies. These two things have been the greatest problems for the so-called meditators: fasting and celibacy. They think these two things are going to help—they are the
greatest disturbances!
Eat in right proportions. Buddha calls it "the middle way": neither too much nor too little. He is against fasting, and he knows it through hard experience. For six years he fasted and could not attain to anything. So when he says, "Be in the middle," he means it. About celibacy also: don't enforce it upon yourself. It is a by-product of meditation, hence it cannot be enforced before meditation. Be in the middle there too, neither too much indulgence nor too much renunciation. Just keep a balance. A balanced person will be more healthy, at ease, at home. And when you are at home, meditation is easier.
What then is meditation? Just sitting silently doing nothing, witnessing whatsoever is happening all around; just watching it with no prejudice, no conclusion, no idea what is wrong and what is right.
~ Osho
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
My whole life I have been talking about meditation. There are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation; I have gone through all those methods—and not intellectually. It took me years to go through
each method and to find out its very essence, and after going through one hundred and twelve methods I was amazed that the essence is witnessing. The methods' non-essentials are different, but the center of each method is witnessing. Hence I can say to you, there is only one meditation in the whole world and that is the art of witnessing. It will do everything—the whole transformation of your being.
Whatever I am doing, my meditation continues. It is not something that I have to do it separately; it is just an art of witnessing. Speaking to you, I'm also witnessing myself speaking to you. So here are three persons: you are listening, one person is speaking, and there is one behind who is watching and that is my real me. And to keep constant contact with it is meditation.
So whatever you do does not matter, you just keep contact with your witness. I have reduced religion to its very fundamental essence. Now everything else is just ritual. This much is enough. And this does not need you to become a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan or anybody, and this can be done by an atheist, by a communist, by anybody, because it needs no kind of theology, no kind of belief system. It is simply a scientific method of slowly moving inwards. A point comes when you reach to your innermost core, the very center of the cyclone.
The basic element running through all the methods of meditation is witnessing. You ask me: What is witnessing? Whatever you are doing. For example, right now you are writing. You can write in two ways. The ordinary way that you always write. You can try another method: you can write it and you can also inside witness that you are writing it. And you ask: Does that mean some kind of detachment? A detachment. You are a little distant, away, watching yourself writing. So any act, just moving my whatever you are doing, just remain a witness. If you have any ego, it will destroy it, because this watching is very much poisonous to the ego. It is not ego that watches. The ego is absolutely blind. It cannot watch anything. You can watch your ego. For example, somebody insults you and you feel hurt, and your ego feels hurt. You can watch it. You can watch that you are feeling hurt, your ego is feeling hurt, that you are angry. And you can still remain aloof, detached, just a watcher on the hills. Whatever goes on in the valley you can see.
So all the methods are basically different ways of witnessing. I have condensed them in a very simple way: First, watch your actions of the body. Second, watch your actions of the mind: thoughts, imaginations. And if you can succeed in watching all these three, and as your witnessing grows deeper and deeper, a moment comes that there is only witnessing but nothing to witness. The mind is empty, the heart is empty, the body is relaxed. In that moment happens something like a quantum leap. Your whole witnessing jumps upon itself. It witnesses itself, because there is nothing else to witness. And this is the revolution which I call enlightenment, self-realization. Or you can give it any name, but this is the ultimate experience of bliss. You cannot go beyond it.
This is the simplest. And because it can be done without in any way interfering with your everyday life, because it is something that you can go on doing the whole day. Any other method you have to take some time apart for it. And any method that needs one hour or half an hour to sit and do it is not going to help much, because twenty-three hours you will be doing just the opposite. And whatever you have gained in one hour will be washed away in twenty-three hours. This is the only method that you can continue around the clock. While falling asleep you can go on witnessing, witnessing, that the sleep is coming, coming, coming, that it is getting darker and the body is relaxing. And a moment comes when you can watch that you are asleep. And still there is a corner, a space in you which is awake.
When you can watch yourself twenty-four hours, you have arrived. Now there is nothing to be done. Then witnessing has become natural to you. You don't have to do it. It will be simply like breathing, happening to you.
This is my basic method. But there are other methods. If people feel that this is difficult for them, they can try other methods. All are available. I have returned from a movie show. It is surprising to see how much the light and shade photos projected on the screen captivate people. Where there is really nothing, everything happens! I watched the audience there and it felt as if they had forgotten themselves, as if they were not there, but the flow of electrically projected pictures was everything. A blank screen is in front and from the back the pictures are being projected. Those who are watching it have their eyes fixed in front, and no
one is aware of what is happening behind their backs. This is how leela, the play, is born. This is what happens within and without. There is a projector at the back of the human mind. Psychology calls this back side the unconscious. The longings, the passions, the conditionings accumulated in this unconscious are being continuously projected onto the mind's screen. This flow of mental projections goes on every moment, non-stop. The consciousness is a seer, a witness, and it forgets itself in this flow of the pictures of desires. This forgetfulness is ignorance. This ignorance is the root cause of maya, illusions, and the endless cycle of birth and death. Waking up from this ignorance happens in the cessation of the mind. When the mind is devoid of thoughts, when the flow of pictures on the screen stops, only then the onlooker remembers himself and returns to his home.
Patanjali calls this cessation of the activities of the mind Yoga. If this is achieved, all is achieved. To understand the mind, there are the three points: The first thing is tremendous fearlessness in encountering the mind; the second thing is no restrictions, no conditions on the mind; the third point is no judgments about whatever thoughts and longings arise in the mind, no feelings of good or bad. Your attitude should simply be indifferent. These three points are necessary to understand the perversions of the mind. Then we will talk about what can be done to get rid of these perversions, and go further. But these three basic points have to be kept in mind.
This is my observation of thousands of people: I see them carrying such great psychological luggage, and for no reason at all. They go on gathering anything they come across. They read the newspaper and they will gather some crap from it. They will talk to people and they will gather some crap. And they go on gathering. And if they start stinking, no wonder!
I used to live with a man for a few years. His house was so full of unnecessary luggage that I had to tell him "Now, where are you going to live?" And he would go on collecting any kind of thing. Somebody would be
selling his old furniture, and he would purchase it, and he already had enough. He had no time to use that furniture, and he had no friends to call. His whole house was full of furniture: old radio sets, and all kinds
of things. And I said "But, I don't see the point why you collect all this." He said "Who knows, any time it may be useful." One day we went for a walk and on the road. By the side of the road, somebody had thrown a cycle handle. He picked it up. I said "What are you doing?" He said "But, it must be worth twenty rupees at least, and I have picked up a few other things also—sooner or later I am going to make a bicycle!" And he showed me. He had one wheel, one pedal, that he had picked up from the roads. And he said "What are you saying? Soon you will see!" This man died. The cycle remained incomplete. And when he died, everybody who came to look was puzzled by what he was doing in this house—there was no space even to move.
But this is the situation of your head. I see cycle-handles, and pedals, and strange things that you have gathered from everywhere. Such a small head, and no space to live in! And that rubbish goes on moving in your head; your head goes on spinning and weaving—it keeps you occupied. Just think what kind of thoughts go on inside your mind.
Sometimes, sitting under the stars, you feel a bliss arising within your heart. It seems not of this world. You are surprised. You cannot believe it. I have come across simple people who have known many moments in their life which are Buddha-like, which belong to Christ consciousness, but they have never talked about them to anybody because they themselves don't believe that they were possible. They have in fact suppressed them. They have been thinking that they must have imagined them: How can it happen without any effort of my own? How is it possible that suddenly one becomes blissful? You can remember them in your own life—and in such moments when you were never expecting them—just going to the office, in the daily routine, the sun is high and you are perspiring, and suddenly something strikes home, and for a moment you are not the old you. Paradise is regained. And then it is lost again. You forget about it because it is not part of your style of life. You don't even talk about it, you think 'I must have imagined it. How are these things possible? And I have not done anything so how can it happen? It must have been hallucinatory, an illusion or a dream.' You don't talk about it. As I have observed thousands of people deeply I have not come across many people who have not found such certain moments in their life. But they have never talked of them to anybody. Even if they tried to, people laughed and they thought: You are foolish, stupid. They don't believe, they repress.
Not only has humanity repressed sex, has humanity repressed death, humanity has repressed all that is beautiful in life. Man has been forced to become like an automaton, a robot. All clues, all doors, have been closed towards the unknown. It is my continual experience of thousands of people that when they come for the first time to meditate, meditation happens so easily because they don't have any idea what it is. Once it has happened, then the real problem arises—then they want it, they know what it is, they desire it. They are greedy for it; it is happening to others and it is not happening to them. Then jealousy, envy, all kinds of wrong things surround them.
The inner world is a new world where you have not even looked, where you have never taken a single step. So I have to teach you how, slowly, you can step inwards. Even when I say to people to go inwards, immediately they ask questions which show how focused on the outside things they are. I say to them, "Sit silently." And they will ask me, "Can I do gayatri mantra?" Whether you do gayatri mantra or you read the newspaper does not matter, both are outside. I am telling you, "Sit silently." They say, "That is right, but at least I can repeat omkar…" It is pitiable. I feel sad for them, that I am telling them to be silent but they are asking me to fill their silence with something. They don't want to be silent. If nothing else, then omkar will do—anything will do.
In India people go on doing all kinds of things. They concentrate, they chant mantras, they fast, they torture their bodies, and they hope that through all these masochistic practices they will realize God. As if God is a sadist! As if God loves you to torture yourself! As if he demands that the more you torture yourself, the more worthy you become. God is not a sadist; you need not be a masochist. I have come across people who think
that without long fasting there is no possibility of meditation. Now, fasting has nothing to do with meditation. Fasting will only make you obsessed with food. And there are people who think celibacy will help them into meditation. Meditation brings a kind of celibacy, but not vice versa. A celibacy without meditation is nothing but sexual repression. And your mind will become more and more sexual, so whenever you sit to meditate your mind will become full of fantasies, sexual fantasies. These two things have been the greatest problems for the so-called meditators: fasting and celibacy. They think these two things are going to help—they are the
greatest disturbances!
Eat in right proportions. Buddha calls it "the middle way": neither too much nor too little. He is against fasting, and he knows it through hard experience. For six years he fasted and could not attain to anything. So when he says, "Be in the middle," he means it. About celibacy also: don't enforce it upon yourself. It is a by-product of meditation, hence it cannot be enforced before meditation. Be in the middle there too, neither too much indulgence nor too much renunciation. Just keep a balance. A balanced person will be more healthy, at ease, at home. And when you are at home, meditation is easier.
What then is meditation? Just sitting silently doing nothing, witnessing whatsoever is happening all around; just watching it with no prejudice, no conclusion, no idea what is wrong and what is right.
~ Osho
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Friday, February 12, 2010
Be at Peace
I have been reluctant to write anything for a long time....so many are so much more articulate than I and I am a horrible typist as well. Every time I have a revolutionary thought, it is swept clean so quickly, and I am back to no-mind before I know it...
If there was anything of value that I could say, it would be that whatever you are thinking is true, let go of it as quickly as possible and come back to HERE. All of thought is a secondary notion, a borrowed contrivance, a story believed. Awakening is an unraveling, an undoing of all that was and is, a return to the delight of pure emptiness.
And this is exactly what is happening in the world, and it is so interesting to watch the scrambling for position, the attempt to hold on to the melting icicle of an illusionary world with no substance. It is like an actor who has so succumbed to his role that at the end of the movie he cannot remember the truth of who he was before the story began. YOU ARE NOT YOUR STORY!
The fear and tension only comes because you have so identified with this earthly coil that the Truth of you seems to be a fantasy...but there was a time not so long ago that you saw through the veil clearly and let it fall away. The dream is fading now....just let it, allow it to go....you came here to awaken so let it happen!
The events in the world are the natural result of humanity's decision to be free....like the butterfly breaking from the chrysalis, or a child being born, there is discomfort and struggle. But the result is inevitable and ultimately joyous. Find a quiet place to sit with a few good friends and enjoy the ride!
We are here in Costa Rica, evolving community, allowing it all to unfold....
There is no way to define this by any prior definitions as the moment unfolds itself...and here words fail and I am again rendered speechless....
Be at Peace, All is Well...
Suzen
If there was anything of value that I could say, it would be that whatever you are thinking is true, let go of it as quickly as possible and come back to HERE. All of thought is a secondary notion, a borrowed contrivance, a story believed. Awakening is an unraveling, an undoing of all that was and is, a return to the delight of pure emptiness.
And this is exactly what is happening in the world, and it is so interesting to watch the scrambling for position, the attempt to hold on to the melting icicle of an illusionary world with no substance. It is like an actor who has so succumbed to his role that at the end of the movie he cannot remember the truth of who he was before the story began. YOU ARE NOT YOUR STORY!
The fear and tension only comes because you have so identified with this earthly coil that the Truth of you seems to be a fantasy...but there was a time not so long ago that you saw through the veil clearly and let it fall away. The dream is fading now....just let it, allow it to go....you came here to awaken so let it happen!
The events in the world are the natural result of humanity's decision to be free....like the butterfly breaking from the chrysalis, or a child being born, there is discomfort and struggle. But the result is inevitable and ultimately joyous. Find a quiet place to sit with a few good friends and enjoy the ride!
We are here in Costa Rica, evolving community, allowing it all to unfold....
There is no way to define this by any prior definitions as the moment unfolds itself...and here words fail and I am again rendered speechless....
Be at Peace, All is Well...
Suzen
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
YOU ARE ALREADY THAT
Because you were never unclear there is no change required. You simply instinctively recognize that you have always been clear. The term 'lack of clarity' becomes meaningless. Lack of clarity is recognized to be impossible.... "
Indestructible Clarity
www.greatfreedom. org
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The Nature of Things
Seeing the emptiness of the phenomenal world relieves us of the heavy notion of things being solid or intrinsic. When we understand that nothing exists independently, everything that does arise seems more dreamlike and less threatening. This brings a deep sense of relaxation, and we feel less need to control our mind and circumstances. Because the nature of everything is emptiness, it is possible to view our life the way we would view a movie. We can relax and enjoy the show.
~ Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, from "The Theater of Reflection"
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Nisargadatta
Questioner: Why so much insistence on relinquishing all desires and fears? Are they not natural?
Maharaj: They are not. They are entirely mind-made. You have to give up everything to know that you need nothing, not even your body. Your needs are unreal, and your efforts are meaningless. You imagine that your possessions protect you. In reality they make you vulnerable. Realise yourself as away from all that can be pointed at as 'this' or 'that'.
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I recall meeting a spiritual teacher once. She complimented on my necklace. Without thinking I took it off to offer it to her. She quickly stopped me, but did something I will always remember... She had us hold the gift of intention, and release it to God, to Consciousness that surrounds everything. All was suddenly experienced as the Love of Gratitude, even though no physical gift was given.
~ Cathy Rosewell Jonas
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Student: Letting go of our egocentricity so we can experience awakening -- do you suppose it is peeled off us the way we peel an orange?
Adyashanti: Peeling is like having a dream at night in which you dream you are going to a therapist, and you start feeling better and better, and you feel like you are getting somewhere.
Awakening is as if you are sitting on the couch telling your story, and you are still a mess -- haven't gotten very far. Then all of a sudden you realize this is a dream, this isn't real, you're making it up. That's awakening. There's a big difference.
Student: I've made up all of it?
Adyashanti: The whole thing. But the awakeness in you is not dreaming. Only the mind is dreaming. It tells itself stories and wants to know if you're progressing. When you shift into wakefulness, you realize, "Wait, it's a dream. The mind is creating an altered state of reality, a virtual reality, but it's not true -- it's just thought." Thought can tell a million stories inside of awareness, and it's not going to change awareness one bit. The only thing that's going to change is the way the body feels. If you tell yourself a sad story, the body reacts to that. And if you tell yourself a self-agrandizing story, the body feels puffed up, confident. But when you realize it's all stories, there can be a vast waking up out of the mind, out of the dream. You don't awaken, what has eternally been awake realizes itself. That which is eternally awake is what you are.
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
After Forty Years
After forty years
A few quietly spoken words
Have led me irrefutably to know
That hidden in the constellation I call
Mind, or
Heart
There truly is
The home
I never dared believe
Could be.
~ Jack Cain
Friday, December 25, 2009
Return to Silence
Silence is the language of God, all else is translation
-- Rumi
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
"I have a capacity in my soul for taking in God entirely.
I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God.
God is nearer to me than I am to myself..."
-- Meister Eckhart
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
"The silence of a quiet mind is the essence of that beauty. Because it is silent and because it is not the plaything of thought, then in that silence there comes that which is indestructible, which is sacred. In the coming of that which is sacred then life becomes sacred, your life becomes sacred, our relationship becomes sacred, everything becomes sacred."
--Krishnamurti
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
You are not what happens; you are the space in which it happens. You are not your thoughts; they come and go. You are the vastness in which these thoughts appear and disappear because underneath all your thinking there is the stillness of pure being,... pure consciousness, the timeless dimension of yourself.
- Eckhart Tolle
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
"Choose silence, and love is apparent.
When we choose silence, we choose to give up the reasons not to love,
which are the reasons for going to war, or continuing war, or separating,
or being a victim, or being right. In a moment of silence, in a moment of
no thought, no mind, we choose to give those up.
This is what my teacher invited me to.
Just choose silence. Don't even choose love. Choose silence, and love is
apparent. If we choose love we already have an idea of what love is.
But if you choose silence, that is the end of ideas. You are willing to
have no idea, to see what is present when there is no idea, past,
present, future. No idea of love, no idea of truth, no idea of you, no
idea of me. Love is apparent."
--Ganga Ji
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
When we are empty of ego we, too, can carry on in calm acceptance of
life's varying events. When we cease making prejudicial distinctions -
gentle or harsh, beautiful or ugly, good or bad - a peaceful stillness
will permeate our mind. If there is no ego, there is no agitation.
-- Master Han Shan
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
Live in your Unborn Buddha-Mind. Then there's no regression. No need for advancement. Any idea of wanting to make progress is already a regression from the place of the Unborn. A man of the Unborn has nothing to do with advancing or backsliding. He's always beyond them both.
Since the Buddha-Mind takes care of everything by means of the Unborn, it has nothing to do with Samsara or Nirvana. Seen from the place of the Unborn, both are like shadows in a dream. There can be no death for what was never born.
The marvelous brightness of the Buddha-Mind, by means of words, is able to enlighten people and deliver them from their illusions one by one. And when someone hears these words, understands and affirms them, he will know for himself that the Buddha-Mind' s wonderful brightness surpasses even the brightness of the sun and moon.
What an incalculable treasure is your Buddha-Mind!
--Writing: The Unborn: The Life and Teachings of Zen Master Bankei
Translated by Norman Waddell
-- Rumi
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
"I have a capacity in my soul for taking in God entirely.
I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God.
God is nearer to me than I am to myself..."
-- Meister Eckhart
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
"The silence of a quiet mind is the essence of that beauty. Because it is silent and because it is not the plaything of thought, then in that silence there comes that which is indestructible, which is sacred. In the coming of that which is sacred then life becomes sacred, your life becomes sacred, our relationship becomes sacred, everything becomes sacred."
--Krishnamurti
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
You are not what happens; you are the space in which it happens. You are not your thoughts; they come and go. You are the vastness in which these thoughts appear and disappear because underneath all your thinking there is the stillness of pure being,... pure consciousness, the timeless dimension of yourself.
- Eckhart Tolle
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
"Choose silence, and love is apparent.
When we choose silence, we choose to give up the reasons not to love,
which are the reasons for going to war, or continuing war, or separating,
or being a victim, or being right. In a moment of silence, in a moment of
no thought, no mind, we choose to give those up.
This is what my teacher invited me to.
Just choose silence. Don't even choose love. Choose silence, and love is
apparent. If we choose love we already have an idea of what love is.
But if you choose silence, that is the end of ideas. You are willing to
have no idea, to see what is present when there is no idea, past,
present, future. No idea of love, no idea of truth, no idea of you, no
idea of me. Love is apparent."
--Ganga Ji
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
When we are empty of ego we, too, can carry on in calm acceptance of
life's varying events. When we cease making prejudicial distinctions -
gentle or harsh, beautiful or ugly, good or bad - a peaceful stillness
will permeate our mind. If there is no ego, there is no agitation.
-- Master Han Shan
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
Live in your Unborn Buddha-Mind. Then there's no regression. No need for advancement. Any idea of wanting to make progress is already a regression from the place of the Unborn. A man of the Unborn has nothing to do with advancing or backsliding. He's always beyond them both.
Since the Buddha-Mind takes care of everything by means of the Unborn, it has nothing to do with Samsara or Nirvana. Seen from the place of the Unborn, both are like shadows in a dream. There can be no death for what was never born.
The marvelous brightness of the Buddha-Mind, by means of words, is able to enlighten people and deliver them from their illusions one by one. And when someone hears these words, understands and affirms them, he will know for himself that the Buddha-Mind' s wonderful brightness surpasses even the brightness of the sun and moon.
What an incalculable treasure is your Buddha-Mind!
--Writing: The Unborn: The Life and Teachings of Zen Master Bankei
Translated by Norman Waddell
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Stranded on the Bridge
Sanai: BUT I AM FRIGHTENED
LEST YOUR IGNORANCE AND STUPIDITY
LEAVE YOU STRANDED ON THE BRIDGE.
Osho: But remember one thing... Each and every master has said it, because the problem is there on both the paths. The problem is, one can be stranded on the bridge. The meditator may become so addicted to meditation that he may be stranded on the bridge. The lover may become too much addicted to love, then he will be stranded on the bridge. Love is a bridge, meditation is a bridge. And you have to go beyond the bridge.
In the ultimate state, the meditator has to drop his meditation and the lover has to forget all about his love. Otherwise you will just be close to the door but you will not be able to enter into the temple. The method has to be forgotten.
Buddha said that each method is like a raft, like a boat: use it to go to the other shore, but then leave it there and forget all about it and go on your way. There is no need to carry the raft on your head. If you carry the raft on your head you are just stupid. But this is what is happening: millions of people become too addicted to their method. And the method CAN be addictive because it gives such beautiful experiences. The last barrier is the method, the last barrier is the bridge.
Just see the point -- it is very paradoxical. The bridge takes you to the other shore: certainly it is a help, and you should be grateful to it, and you should be thankful to it. But it can become a problem.
You may fall in love with the bridge and you may make your house on the bridge. And if you start living on the bridge, you are neither of this shore nor of that shore; you are in a kind of limbo. And many so-called religious practitioners live in a kind of limbo -- they are neither of this world nor of that. They have become addicted to the bridge.
And the bridge IS beautiful! Hence the fear of Sanai. Sanai says:
I AM FRIGHTENED
LEST YOUR IGNORANCE AND STUPIDITY
LEAVE YOU STRANDED ON THE BRIDGE.
ALL methods are methods, all means are means. And if you want to reach the end you will have to drop all means and all methods. That is the only way to enter into the ultimate. The lover will have to forget all about love, and the meditator will have to forget all about meditation. Yes, there comes a moment when the meditator does not meditate, because he has become meditation himself; now meditation is not a separate activity. And there comes a moment when the lover does not love, because he is love himself.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
The Will to Truth
"When you went to a Zen temple and you wanted to go to a retreat or become a monk or something, they would make you sit at the temple gate, like the gate outside here. Imagine you come to a retreat at Garrison, and they say "No! We don't really want you here, you don't want to be here. You're not serious. Forget about it. Go home. Go back to your life. You don't want this." And 90% of the people would just go, "Well, screw that!' and just go home. And then there's 10% of the people who would kind of just sit at that gate and go 'I really do want to be here.' They go, 'No you don't.' So that's what they used to do. So they would come out occasionally and try to convince you to leave. But another thing, as they were convincing you to leave they would make sure you were well fed. A little breakfast, a little lunch, a little dinner. So they would take care of you, not abusing you, right? They were seeing what you were made of. Seeing if your ego was in control here. If you actually had the will to truth or you had the will to have it your way. And after about a week or so, can you imagine? a week! At the gates! Just to get in to see what's happening! Good Lord! Then they might go, 'Okay come on in. We like you anyway. We were just fooling around.' They'd let you in.
Not that I want to do it that way of course but this "will to truth" which means 'I really want to see things differently. ' I am really willing to see that the way I see things may not be the way they are. I'm willing to see that I was wrong.' That's what enlightenment showed me. Basically I was wrong about everything. But only everything. I viewed things the way they weren't. But pretty much everything. I had this will to truth. This kind of yearning and this irrational impulse as I called it earlier, to truth and that was beautiful but basically what awakening showed me is that the world is not what I thought it was. I am not what I thought I was. The views I had on almost everything have been turned upside down, inside out, washed out, hung up to dry. And that's something that alot of people don't realize, is that what we want? Do we actually want change? I mean every one would want to change, I want to become enlightened. It's not about becoming enlightened. That's not what it's about. It's not about having a greater glow or halo around your head. It's about just the truth. Is that what we want? It's no different than anything else in life, is it? You know if you're an addict, the only thing that matters is do you really want to change. You know as they say in addiction, most people have to hit bottom before they really want to change. And then they hit bottom and maybe some of them are willing to change. They are willing to. Before they wanted to but now they are willing to. They are really willing to change and when they are willing to change then they tend to start to change, don't they? All of us are like that. Most of us are addicted to our mind and ourself and our viewpoint. And of course the idea isn't to take on somebody else's viewpoint. Mine or anybody else's. It's not to take on someone else's belief structure. It's not to take on someone else's teaching. That's not the point.
The point is to discover it for yourself. That immeasurable reality. What you really are. And it's right there, what you really are. It's right there. It's right there. And something that can really start to happen when you just want what's real. Because it's never what we think it is. It's never what we think it is. It's never the image, it's never the idea. It comes from that innocence. Do you know that innocence inside you? You now that innocence. It's kind of like the innocence of the child looking into the sky and wondering, how far is that star away? That innocence, how far? It's just like that. What's real? What am I? It's that quality.
It's not, "Who am I, What am I? I want to find that out because I want to wake up, etc, etc. That's very sort of adult. Very goal oriented, ego acquiring the Great Pearl Beyond Price. But the child thing is like, 'What is that?' How far away is that star in the sky? Who am I really? Really? What's really true? See it's an innocent thing. In the innocence is a beautiful quality. And it comes from the intuition which everybody has. Some of you, of course, have the full realization, but others of you it comes from the intuition. That's what brings us to spirituality in the first place. Some intuition there's a greater truth, there's harmony, there's unity somehow, somewhere. There's something that's real amongst this insanity. There's something that's real and pure and true. Whatever it is, that's the intuition that brings you. That subtle intuition. Hopefully that's there in you, that pulls you. Hopefully it's not the ego just desiring. 'I read about it and I want that. I want truth because it'll be good for me. I want truth and I want a house and I want a million bucks'
So when you start to feel that thread in you, not so much like I want, I want, I want, please God! Not so much like that. But just that simple quiet sincerity, that will to what's real, to what's harmonious, unity...however you would think about it in your own being. That which reaches out in that direction. That thread. That's why the great teacher Nisargadatta, when someone would say, 'What's the most important ingredient to self-realization? ' And he would just say, 'Earnestness. ' And if you got to know his teachings you realize he wasn't saying, you've got to just really. really. really want it. It sounds like it but what he meant by earnestness was much more like this will to truth. You actually got to want what's real. It's the most important thing. Without that, forget it. But with that, there it is. It's that thread that probably has brought you here. That's the thread. That's the thread that brings all of us here, right?
And it's not a once-and-for- all-thing. I can guarantee you that. Truth is a living thing. It's permanently impermanent. It always is and it's always on the move. It's not that thing that you realize and that you hold on to, 'I have realized.' It's a thing that is discovered fresh and anew, now and now and now. Otherwise it dies in your hands. Your great realization can become so much dust in your hands, if you grab hold of it and say 'I've got it and I'll hold on to it and I'll bring this into my life .' You may try that but sooner or later you discover truth is not that thing. Truth is a living thing. Truth is something that's living in a continuous state of openness. All the real teachings are trying to point us in that direction. Teachings are trying to point us there. Sadly we tend to grab on to the teachings. That's the tendency. Whether it's a Buddhist teaching or Hindu or Christian or Advaitic teaching. Whatever it is, the teachings are pointers. They are trying to get you to realize this truth that the truth is not the teachings. Even the teachings that I am speaking right now. This is not the truth. I will never be telling you the truth. I cannot tell you the truth. My job is simply to fail well. To fail as well as I possibly can. The truth is not something that can be communicated. Not something that can be given from one to the other. It's a living thing. It's a revelation. And it's not a onetime revelation. If it reveals itself to you and you try to hold on to it , you'll see it die in your hand. It will wither. But if all that grasping dies, then that flow, that revelation, it's always anew. It's always anew. It's the same thing but it's always anew. It's always the same but it's always anew. It's always fresh. It's always alive.
Adyashanti - Garrision Institute 2008 disk 6
Not that I want to do it that way of course but this "will to truth" which means 'I really want to see things differently. ' I am really willing to see that the way I see things may not be the way they are. I'm willing to see that I was wrong.' That's what enlightenment showed me. Basically I was wrong about everything. But only everything. I viewed things the way they weren't. But pretty much everything. I had this will to truth. This kind of yearning and this irrational impulse as I called it earlier, to truth and that was beautiful but basically what awakening showed me is that the world is not what I thought it was. I am not what I thought I was. The views I had on almost everything have been turned upside down, inside out, washed out, hung up to dry. And that's something that alot of people don't realize, is that what we want? Do we actually want change? I mean every one would want to change, I want to become enlightened. It's not about becoming enlightened. That's not what it's about. It's not about having a greater glow or halo around your head. It's about just the truth. Is that what we want? It's no different than anything else in life, is it? You know if you're an addict, the only thing that matters is do you really want to change. You know as they say in addiction, most people have to hit bottom before they really want to change. And then they hit bottom and maybe some of them are willing to change. They are willing to. Before they wanted to but now they are willing to. They are really willing to change and when they are willing to change then they tend to start to change, don't they? All of us are like that. Most of us are addicted to our mind and ourself and our viewpoint. And of course the idea isn't to take on somebody else's viewpoint. Mine or anybody else's. It's not to take on someone else's belief structure. It's not to take on someone else's teaching. That's not the point.
The point is to discover it for yourself. That immeasurable reality. What you really are. And it's right there, what you really are. It's right there. It's right there. And something that can really start to happen when you just want what's real. Because it's never what we think it is. It's never what we think it is. It's never the image, it's never the idea. It comes from that innocence. Do you know that innocence inside you? You now that innocence. It's kind of like the innocence of the child looking into the sky and wondering, how far is that star away? That innocence, how far? It's just like that. What's real? What am I? It's that quality.
It's not, "Who am I, What am I? I want to find that out because I want to wake up, etc, etc. That's very sort of adult. Very goal oriented, ego acquiring the Great Pearl Beyond Price. But the child thing is like, 'What is that?' How far away is that star in the sky? Who am I really? Really? What's really true? See it's an innocent thing. In the innocence is a beautiful quality. And it comes from the intuition which everybody has. Some of you, of course, have the full realization, but others of you it comes from the intuition. That's what brings us to spirituality in the first place. Some intuition there's a greater truth, there's harmony, there's unity somehow, somewhere. There's something that's real amongst this insanity. There's something that's real and pure and true. Whatever it is, that's the intuition that brings you. That subtle intuition. Hopefully that's there in you, that pulls you. Hopefully it's not the ego just desiring. 'I read about it and I want that. I want truth because it'll be good for me. I want truth and I want a house and I want a million bucks'
So when you start to feel that thread in you, not so much like I want, I want, I want, please God! Not so much like that. But just that simple quiet sincerity, that will to what's real, to what's harmonious, unity...however you would think about it in your own being. That which reaches out in that direction. That thread. That's why the great teacher Nisargadatta, when someone would say, 'What's the most important ingredient to self-realization? ' And he would just say, 'Earnestness. ' And if you got to know his teachings you realize he wasn't saying, you've got to just really. really. really want it. It sounds like it but what he meant by earnestness was much more like this will to truth. You actually got to want what's real. It's the most important thing. Without that, forget it. But with that, there it is. It's that thread that probably has brought you here. That's the thread. That's the thread that brings all of us here, right?
And it's not a once-and-for- all-thing. I can guarantee you that. Truth is a living thing. It's permanently impermanent. It always is and it's always on the move. It's not that thing that you realize and that you hold on to, 'I have realized.' It's a thing that is discovered fresh and anew, now and now and now. Otherwise it dies in your hands. Your great realization can become so much dust in your hands, if you grab hold of it and say 'I've got it and I'll hold on to it and I'll bring this into my life .' You may try that but sooner or later you discover truth is not that thing. Truth is a living thing. Truth is something that's living in a continuous state of openness. All the real teachings are trying to point us in that direction. Teachings are trying to point us there. Sadly we tend to grab on to the teachings. That's the tendency. Whether it's a Buddhist teaching or Hindu or Christian or Advaitic teaching. Whatever it is, the teachings are pointers. They are trying to get you to realize this truth that the truth is not the teachings. Even the teachings that I am speaking right now. This is not the truth. I will never be telling you the truth. I cannot tell you the truth. My job is simply to fail well. To fail as well as I possibly can. The truth is not something that can be communicated. Not something that can be given from one to the other. It's a living thing. It's a revelation. And it's not a onetime revelation. If it reveals itself to you and you try to hold on to it , you'll see it die in your hand. It will wither. But if all that grasping dies, then that flow, that revelation, it's always anew. It's always anew. It's the same thing but it's always anew. It's always the same but it's always anew. It's always fresh. It's always alive.
Adyashanti - Garrision Institute 2008 disk 6
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
There is Only This
When the great Chinese Zen master Ta-mei was dying, his students asked him for a final helpful word. "When it comes, don't try to avoid it; when it goes, don't run after it," he said. Just then, a squirrel chattered on the roof. "There is only this, there is nothing else," said Ta-mei, and then he died.
Can we conceive of what this is? Can this be enough for us? Is there another reality more real or more wonderful than this? To know that there is only this is to, as Hui-neng put it, "see the original nature and not become confused."
~ Francis Dojun Cook, How to Raise an Ox
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
Silently and serenely one forgets all words;
Clearly and vividly That appears
When one realizes it, it is vast and without edges;
In its Essence, one is clearly aware.
Singularly reflecting is this bright awareness,
Full of wonder is this pure reflection.
Dew and moon,
Stars and streams,
Snow on pine trees,
And clouds hovering on the mountain peaks.
In this reflection all intentional efforts vanish.
Serenity is the final word of all the teachings;
Reflection is the response to all manifestations.
~ Hung Chih of the Tsao Tung School
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
Rest in Natural Great Peace
Rest in natural great peace
This exhausted mind
Beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thought,
Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves
In the infinite ocean of samsara.
Rest in natural great peace.
Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature. Think of your ordinary emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation. Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing. And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature.
~ Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
"In the mind of natural perfection, certainly, moral discrimination and moral causality do not exist, yet what remains in nondual 'bodhichitta' , both the ground and the emanation of pure mind, which can only ever be pure vision and perfect conduct. .... there is no fall from grace, and there never has been a fall, and in the realization of that reality where the golden age lies just beneath an insubstantial, fragile surface of dualistic belief, any moral dualism becomes a problem rather than the solution.
So stay here, you lucky people,
Let go and be happy in the natural state.
Let your complicated life and everyday confusion alone
And out of quietude, doing nothing, watch the nature of mind.
This piece of advice is from the bottom of my heart:
Fully engage in contemplation and understanding is born;
Cherish non-attachment and delusion dissolves;
And forming no agenda at all reality dawns.
Whatever occurs, whatever it may be, that itself is the key,
And without stopping it or nourishing it, in an even flow,
Freely resting, surrendering to ultimate contemplation,
In naked pristine purity we reach consummation. "
~Longchepa, translated by Keith Downman
--from "Old Man Basking in the Sun."
"You'll laugh on the day of awakening, so you might as well laugh now!"
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
A Fisherman
By Ikkyu (Ikkyu Sojun)
(1394 - 1481)
Studying texts and stiff meditation can make you lose your Original Mind.
A solitary tune by a fisherman, though, can be an invaluable treasure.
Dusk rain on the river, the moon peeking in and out of the clouds;
Elegant beyond words, he chants his songs night after night.
-- from Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu, Translated by John Stevens
Monday, May 4, 2009
Reveries on Awakening
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
I had always had a sense of 'innerness', a sense of a 'center' within. Then at one point it struck me that my sense of center could be an "assumption", not a fact. I suddenly realized that that assumption created a sense of inner/outer, of a 'me' inside and of a 'world' outside. With that realization I was able to 'let go' of that assumption. With that letting go consciousness became as a point that was everywhere at once. There was no longer an 'outside'. Everything was included in that expanded sense of spaceless presence. It was as if the 'subjective geometry' of experience became radically simpler, indeed as if there were no geometry at all!
~Peter Dziuban in Consciousness is All
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
The gate was opened to me ... in one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together at a University ... I saw it as in a great deep in the internal; for I had a thorough view of the Universe, as a complex moving fullness wherein all things are couched and wrapped up.
~Jacob Boehme
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
If I were to spend years and years imagining how to invent anything so beautiful, I could not do it, and I do not even know how I should try, for, even in its whiteness and radiance alone, it exceeds all that we can imagine.
~Saint Teresa of Avila
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
Our true nature is not limited ... it is like the vast ocean. ... When we touch Supreme Consciousness through meditation, then we are boundless, we are everywhere, we are eternal.
~Amma Karunamayi
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
At midnight I abruptly awakened. At first my mind was foggy, then suddenly that quotation flashed into my consciousness: "I came to realize clearly that Mind is no other than mountains, rivers, and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars." And I repeated it. Then all at once I was struck as though by lightning, and the next instant heaven and earth crumbled and disappeared. Instantaneously, like surging waves, a tremendous delight welled up in me, a veritable hurricane of delight, as I laughed loudly and wildly: "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! There's no reasoning here, no reasoning at all! Ha, ha, ha!" the empty sky split in two, then opened its enormous mouth and began to laugh uproariously ... Shakyamuni and the patriarchs haven't deceived me!"
~from "The Three Pillars of Zen" by Phillip Kapleau
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
Behold what wonderful rest is in the Supreme Spirit
! and he enjoys it; who makes himself meet for it.
Held by the cords of love, the swing of the Ocean of Joy
sways to and fro; and a mighty sound breaks forth in song.
See what a lotus blooms there without water !
and Kabir says"My heart's bee drinks its nectar."
What a wonderful lotus it is,
that blooms at the heart of the spinning wheel of the universe!
Only a few pure souls know of its true delight.
Music is all around it,
and there the heart partakes of the joy of the Infinite Sea.
Kabir says: " Dive thou into that Ocean of sweetness:
thus let all errors of life and of death fiee away."
~Kabir
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
These spiritual windowshoppers,
who idly ask, "How much is that?" "Oh, I'm just looking."
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.
What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.
Where did you go? "Nowhere."
What did you have to eat? "Nothing much."
Even if you don't know what you want,
buy something, to be part of the exchanging flow.
Start a huge, foolish, project,
like Noah.
It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.
~Rumi, version by Coleman Barks, from "We Are Three"
I had always had a sense of 'innerness', a sense of a 'center' within. Then at one point it struck me that my sense of center could be an "assumption", not a fact. I suddenly realized that that assumption created a sense of inner/outer, of a 'me' inside and of a 'world' outside. With that realization I was able to 'let go' of that assumption. With that letting go consciousness became as a point that was everywhere at once. There was no longer an 'outside'. Everything was included in that expanded sense of spaceless presence. It was as if the 'subjective geometry' of experience became radically simpler, indeed as if there were no geometry at all!
~Peter Dziuban in Consciousness is All
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The gate was opened to me ... in one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together at a University ... I saw it as in a great deep in the internal; for I had a thorough view of the Universe, as a complex moving fullness wherein all things are couched and wrapped up.
~Jacob Boehme
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If I were to spend years and years imagining how to invent anything so beautiful, I could not do it, and I do not even know how I should try, for, even in its whiteness and radiance alone, it exceeds all that we can imagine.
~Saint Teresa of Avila
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Our true nature is not limited ... it is like the vast ocean. ... When we touch Supreme Consciousness through meditation, then we are boundless, we are everywhere, we are eternal.
~Amma Karunamayi
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At midnight I abruptly awakened. At first my mind was foggy, then suddenly that quotation flashed into my consciousness: "I came to realize clearly that Mind is no other than mountains, rivers, and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars." And I repeated it. Then all at once I was struck as though by lightning, and the next instant heaven and earth crumbled and disappeared. Instantaneously, like surging waves, a tremendous delight welled up in me, a veritable hurricane of delight, as I laughed loudly and wildly: "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! There's no reasoning here, no reasoning at all! Ha, ha, ha!" the empty sky split in two, then opened its enormous mouth and began to laugh uproariously ... Shakyamuni and the patriarchs haven't deceived me!"
~from "The Three Pillars of Zen" by Phillip Kapleau
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Behold what wonderful rest is in the Supreme Spirit
! and he enjoys it; who makes himself meet for it.
Held by the cords of love, the swing of the Ocean of Joy
sways to and fro; and a mighty sound breaks forth in song.
See what a lotus blooms there without water !
and Kabir says"My heart's bee drinks its nectar."
What a wonderful lotus it is,
that blooms at the heart of the spinning wheel of the universe!
Only a few pure souls know of its true delight.
Music is all around it,
and there the heart partakes of the joy of the Infinite Sea.
Kabir says: " Dive thou into that Ocean of sweetness:
thus let all errors of life and of death fiee away."
~Kabir
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These spiritual windowshoppers,
who idly ask, "How much is that?" "Oh, I'm just looking."
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.
What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.
Where did you go? "Nowhere."
What did you have to eat? "Nothing much."
Even if you don't know what you want,
buy something, to be part of the exchanging flow.
Start a huge, foolish, project,
like Noah.
It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.
~Rumi, version by Coleman Barks, from "We Are Three"
Various Pointers to Non-Duality
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There is no attainment and no cultivation
of original nature. You are Consciousness,
not a farmer! Why work for that which you
already are? Do not mentate, do not stir a
thought. Trying to get out of superimposed
bondage, which is the notion that you are
separate from Existence, you will land in
superimposed freedom.
- From "The Truth Is" by Sri H.W.L. Poonja
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"When you become more sensitive to the body you have the impression that the inhalation-exhalation is no longer localized. It is all around you. It is important to see how we live mainly in our heads. Think with your whole body, feel with your whole body.
In the whole feeling, the global sensation, you go into your room and touch your whole room. You go outside and touch the clouds, the trees, the water. You do not live in isolation.
In your radiation you are in communion with all things. In this expansion there is no place for the ego because the ego is a contraction. Love is expansion, a feeling of spaciousness. "
- Jean Klein
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This is from New Seeds of Contemplation, pg 226, in the chapter called "The Gift of Understanding"
"A door swings open in the center of our being and we seem to fall through it into immense depths which, although they are infinite, are all accessible to us; all eternity seems to have become ours in this one placid and breathless contact. Where already, supernatural instinct teaches us that the function of this abyss of freedom, which has been open within our midst, is to draw us utterly out of our own selfhood and into its own immensity of liberation."
- Thomas Merton
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The Trap of Meaninglessness
There are other traps that are inherent within this process of going from the initial glimpse of awakening to real abiding awakening. There are several of them that come up and again these traps or these cul-de-sacs, these delusions aren't inherent to awakening itself but they arise with the mind's relationship with the awakened view because the awakened view is so far beyond the mind that the mind truly can't contain it but the mind's inherent nature is to try to contain everything that it sees. And so one of these very common traps that people can get into is a sense of meaninglessness.
Now this can arise because from the stand point of reality we are free from the egoic desire to find meaning. We see that the ego's desire to find meaning in its life is actually a surrogate, a substitute for having a direct connection with life, for having the perception of 'you are life itself.' But if we don't feel that, if we don't know that, we don't experience that, then we need surrogates, we need something to stand in to fill the gap as it were. And as egos, what the ego uses is meaning, 'I'm trying to find the meaning in my life, what's the meaning to my life.' Only someone who is disconnected from life itself will seek meaning. Only someone that's disconnected from life will look for purpose. I'm not saying that people shouldn't look for meaning or shouldn't look for purpose. Actually they are probably wise strategies that are used to help people cope with life. But remember that these egoic yearnings for 'what's the meaning of my life?, what's the meaning of my existence?, what's the purpose of my existence?' are ultimately derived from a state where we have no real knowledge of what we are, where we're disconnected from our true nature. I don't mean actually disconnected, I mean unconscious of.
So when there's a true realization, when we wake up from the dream state, when we wake up from the ego, what is realized, part of the realization is the search for meaning is now no longer appropriate. When one has a direct connection with life, all of a sudden to find one's meaning, to find one's purpose seems to be a rather paltry thing, to be a small thing, to be insignificant. It's no longer really a drive in our life. The drive for meaning and purpose falls out of our life because we are literally in a different perspective. In a perspective where such things don't really exist or certainly they don't exist in the old way, they don't exist from the egoic standpoint.
Now the mind will perceive this, this truth, this truth that when we wake up from the dream state we see that the dream state is a dream state. How could a dream state have meaning? How could a dream state have purpose. It's a dream. And that's very true but as I say over and over, there's still a human being and there's still a human mind. And the mind is trying to make sense of all this. The mind is even trying to make sense of awakening itself. It's trying to make sense of the view of awakening. And as I have also said, for most people there's not a total disappearance of the ego, of that which is the experience of division. And so the mind is in relationship with the insights of reality, at times. And the mind will start to say, 'Oh God, there's no meaning!' And what's left of the ego will say, "There's no meaning! I now have no purpose or meaning! It's like you've seen too much of Reality to believe in purpose or meaning.
From "The End of Your World" - Adyashanti
There is no attainment and no cultivation
of original nature. You are Consciousness,
not a farmer! Why work for that which you
already are? Do not mentate, do not stir a
thought. Trying to get out of superimposed
bondage, which is the notion that you are
separate from Existence, you will land in
superimposed freedom.
- From "The Truth Is" by Sri H.W.L. Poonja
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
"When you become more sensitive to the body you have the impression that the inhalation-exhalation is no longer localized. It is all around you. It is important to see how we live mainly in our heads. Think with your whole body, feel with your whole body.
In the whole feeling, the global sensation, you go into your room and touch your whole room. You go outside and touch the clouds, the trees, the water. You do not live in isolation.
In your radiation you are in communion with all things. In this expansion there is no place for the ego because the ego is a contraction. Love is expansion, a feeling of spaciousness. "
- Jean Klein
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
This is from New Seeds of Contemplation, pg 226, in the chapter called "The Gift of Understanding"
"A door swings open in the center of our being and we seem to fall through it into immense depths which, although they are infinite, are all accessible to us; all eternity seems to have become ours in this one placid and breathless contact. Where already, supernatural instinct teaches us that the function of this abyss of freedom, which has been open within our midst, is to draw us utterly out of our own selfhood and into its own immensity of liberation."
- Thomas Merton
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
The Trap of Meaninglessness
There are other traps that are inherent within this process of going from the initial glimpse of awakening to real abiding awakening. There are several of them that come up and again these traps or these cul-de-sacs, these delusions aren't inherent to awakening itself but they arise with the mind's relationship with the awakened view because the awakened view is so far beyond the mind that the mind truly can't contain it but the mind's inherent nature is to try to contain everything that it sees. And so one of these very common traps that people can get into is a sense of meaninglessness.
Now this can arise because from the stand point of reality we are free from the egoic desire to find meaning. We see that the ego's desire to find meaning in its life is actually a surrogate, a substitute for having a direct connection with life, for having the perception of 'you are life itself.' But if we don't feel that, if we don't know that, we don't experience that, then we need surrogates, we need something to stand in to fill the gap as it were. And as egos, what the ego uses is meaning, 'I'm trying to find the meaning in my life, what's the meaning to my life.' Only someone who is disconnected from life itself will seek meaning. Only someone that's disconnected from life will look for purpose. I'm not saying that people shouldn't look for meaning or shouldn't look for purpose. Actually they are probably wise strategies that are used to help people cope with life. But remember that these egoic yearnings for 'what's the meaning of my life?, what's the meaning of my existence?, what's the purpose of my existence?' are ultimately derived from a state where we have no real knowledge of what we are, where we're disconnected from our true nature. I don't mean actually disconnected, I mean unconscious of.
So when there's a true realization, when we wake up from the dream state, when we wake up from the ego, what is realized, part of the realization is the search for meaning is now no longer appropriate. When one has a direct connection with life, all of a sudden to find one's meaning, to find one's purpose seems to be a rather paltry thing, to be a small thing, to be insignificant. It's no longer really a drive in our life. The drive for meaning and purpose falls out of our life because we are literally in a different perspective. In a perspective where such things don't really exist or certainly they don't exist in the old way, they don't exist from the egoic standpoint.
Now the mind will perceive this, this truth, this truth that when we wake up from the dream state we see that the dream state is a dream state. How could a dream state have meaning? How could a dream state have purpose. It's a dream. And that's very true but as I say over and over, there's still a human being and there's still a human mind. And the mind is trying to make sense of all this. The mind is even trying to make sense of awakening itself. It's trying to make sense of the view of awakening. And as I have also said, for most people there's not a total disappearance of the ego, of that which is the experience of division. And so the mind is in relationship with the insights of reality, at times. And the mind will start to say, 'Oh God, there's no meaning!' And what's left of the ego will say, "There's no meaning! I now have no purpose or meaning! It's like you've seen too much of Reality to believe in purpose or meaning.
From "The End of Your World" - Adyashanti
Monday, February 2, 2009
First 3-Day Silent Retreat in Costa Rica
0Our first silent retreat is finally complete with glowing results, at least it seemed so from the look on participants faces. It was small and intimate, only 5 of us and all women.
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| Our Zendo |
We began on a beautiful, sunny Wednesday afternoon, with plenty of time to settle in private rooms, tour the grounds, and go over the schedule before dinner. After a meal of fresh fish, whole grains, and salad, we gathered for questions and answers in preparation for 3 days of silence. Everyone was ready to enter that now moment arising when we give our full attention to the Source of our Being.
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| Our Daily Focus |
The schedule was very precise, incorporating three 40 minute sittings in the morning, a 2 1/2 hour break for lunch, and another 3 sittings in the afternoon. Sittings were alternated with 20 minute breaks for stretching and personal care. Following the evening meal, there was another sitting followed by a short satsang and & A session. Our only concern was the variable winds that sometimes are very strong in the mountains of Atenas. In fact, our first morning was punctuated by a gust that knocked down and shattered a small vase that held a bundle of sage. So we moved indoors for all of Thursday, only to realize in the evening that we preferred being out of+doors, even with the periodic blusters.
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| The Buddha Watches.... |
Though some were certain that maintaining silence would be difficult, each were dedicated to respect it as the medium for realization. We recognized collectively that every Master has pointed to the power of Silence as the gateway beyond concepts and beliefs and into experiential Oneness. Though 3 days is really the minimal amount of time within which the veil of thought becomes noticeable, everyone had a taste of that deep peace pre-existing before the mind takes one step.
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| Reflecting Stillness... |
Saturday, the quiet was so compelling, no one wanted to leave. In silence, we discovered what is behind the rattling of our endless thoughts....just awareness. We used the Awareness Watching Awareness Method as a tool to help us focus our attention on Awareness itself, not easy when the mind is busy narrating everything you do. But all it takes is a glimpse....
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| Beauty Is... |
Thank you to Juan Enrique and Unity of Costa Rica for your continuing support, and thank you M.S., S.V., C.M., and S.C. for your courage, sincerity, and willingness to trust me as your guide. It was truly wonderful to share this with you. Namaste.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
If You Must, Take Action!
There is no point waiting for someone else to fix the problems in the world. YOU must take a hard and unwavering look at how YOU have facilitated the madness. Where is your mind, where are your thoughts? Do you waste endless hours in escapist fantasies and tactics while your world is crashing around you? Are you waiting for rescue? Do you think space ships will come next month and take you home? Do you know who you are?
If you must take action, do it NOW. If you must speak up, do it NOW! Are you working for the corporate fascists because you're afraid that if you quit you will not be able to pay your bills? Are you watching FOX, sipping a beer, waiting for your guru to call? Are you sitting in a room meditating on forgiveness while your Mac & Cheese heats up in the microwave?Are you mindlessly sucking up to what they tell you? You are cutting off your own air supply, you have given over your life and are committing slow suicide. This is no time to succumb to fear. It is either sink or swim time, and no one will escape.
Stop eating their junk food. Stop shopping at their stores. Stop taking their cancer drugs. Stop paying their salaries. Stop paying taxes. Stop using their banks. Stop funding their charities. Stop sending your kids to their schools. Stop watching their TV programs. Stop watching their movies. Stop pretending that it's all normal. Stop talking about stupid shit. Stop talking.
Listen. Listen to what they are really telling you. Listen to how much bullshit surrounds you. Listen to how they tell you how to be. Listen to how they tell you who you are. Is it true? Are you a suit, a skirt, a mask, a bit player, a role, a concept, an idea, a belief system, an ideology, a religion, a political party, a nation, a skin color, a race, a product, a feeling, an emotion, an ego, a thought? Are you an original or a copy?
What is true? What is it that is always true? What is it that DOESN'T change? If you are going to ask questions, they ought to be good ones!
If you must take action, do it NOW. If you must speak up, do it NOW! Are you working for the corporate fascists because you're afraid that if you quit you will not be able to pay your bills? Are you watching FOX, sipping a beer, waiting for your guru to call? Are you sitting in a room meditating on forgiveness while your Mac & Cheese heats up in the microwave?Are you mindlessly sucking up to what they tell you? You are cutting off your own air supply, you have given over your life and are committing slow suicide. This is no time to succumb to fear. It is either sink or swim time, and no one will escape.
Stop eating their junk food. Stop shopping at their stores. Stop taking their cancer drugs. Stop paying their salaries. Stop paying taxes. Stop using their banks. Stop funding their charities. Stop sending your kids to their schools. Stop watching their TV programs. Stop watching their movies. Stop pretending that it's all normal. Stop talking about stupid shit. Stop talking.
Listen. Listen to what they are really telling you. Listen to how much bullshit surrounds you. Listen to how they tell you how to be. Listen to how they tell you who you are. Is it true? Are you a suit, a skirt, a mask, a bit player, a role, a concept, an idea, a belief system, an ideology, a religion, a political party, a nation, a skin color, a race, a product, a feeling, an emotion, an ego, a thought? Are you an original or a copy?
What is true? What is it that is always true? What is it that DOESN'T change? If you are going to ask questions, they ought to be good ones!
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
He Who Hesitates is Lost
Well, there aren't hundreds stampeding to view my site. Am I too radical? How can this be? It's just the truth as I see it, and the possibility of CHANGE. Maybe there are few who really want to change...
I guess people still believe if they pray, chant, meditate, march, and talk enough, the change will take care of itself. Well, it will, in one sense. Whatever will happen, will happen. Maybe Ron Paul will be President and global warming will not cause any problems for the next 100 years (but I'm not holding my breath!) It would be nice to believe we have all the time necessary so we can continue living the lives we've worked so hard to create so far. So much easier to be on automatic, to continue to believe in a God who will save us, to think clicking away at the internet will do some good. I mean, why make waves?
Maybe your life is basically good, and you are relatively content. You are able to pay the bills, you have a little in savings for a rainy day, your children are doing well in school. It's nice to come home, put up your feet, watch your favorite show on TV, pop something in the microwave. Maybe you have a satisfying relationship with someone who likes similar activities. Maybe your sex life is improving. It's just so much easier to not look around too much, not read too much, not be too aware of the rest of the world. Just keep keeping on making the mortgage and car payments, paying taxes, accumulating more gadgets to make life easier. I mean isn't that what it's all about?
You look around you and everyone else is pretty much doing the same thing. It's interesting to get together and talk about the insanity that is happening, how Joe can't sell his house and it may go into foreclosure, how Bill lost his job at the Company, how the price of gas keeps going higher, how you might not be able to send Billy to soccer camp this year. You join in the communal venting for a bit, then go home to continue the routine. Maybe you only put a dollar in the collection plate instead of five, but you have hope. You have faith that someone will fix it.
The Truth is that there is no one "out there", no separate something that will save you. YOU are the answer you seek, YOU are the one to make the changes. That undercurrent of doubt and fear you keep hidden is trying to get your attention so that you will ACT. The wolf is at YOUR door, and ignoring that fact will not keep you from getting eaten.
The engineers in New Orleans knew for many years that the levees were inadequate, but failed to act on that knowledge. The cost has been immeasurable, so many freedoms and lives lost, so much profiteering taking place. Humans have a predilection for procrastination, but remember, he who hesitates is lost. Do you think it can't happen again, that it can't happen to you?
Your government has sold you down the river. It only cares about itself and its agenda for expansion. Those with money get the life rafts while the rest go down. It is beyond borders, it is a global corporate elite calling the shots, and they don't care if they have to sacrifice America to get what they want. The game is World Domination, and our Constitutionally protected sovereign rights are the last hurdle. They are evaporating as we speak. What to do, what to do....?
I can't really answer that question. YOU know what you need to do, the question is will you do it? And I'm not talking about all the ways you distract yourself so you don't have to deal with the Truth another day. Part of the problem is the numerous ways we can distract ourselves - drinking, smoking, shopping, TV, working, sex, etc. Is any of it helping to alleviate your growing anxiety? Wake up, stop dreaming, grieve for your broken illusions if you must, and then get moving.
I guess people still believe if they pray, chant, meditate, march, and talk enough, the change will take care of itself. Well, it will, in one sense. Whatever will happen, will happen. Maybe Ron Paul will be President and global warming will not cause any problems for the next 100 years (but I'm not holding my breath!) It would be nice to believe we have all the time necessary so we can continue living the lives we've worked so hard to create so far. So much easier to be on automatic, to continue to believe in a God who will save us, to think clicking away at the internet will do some good. I mean, why make waves?
Maybe your life is basically good, and you are relatively content. You are able to pay the bills, you have a little in savings for a rainy day, your children are doing well in school. It's nice to come home, put up your feet, watch your favorite show on TV, pop something in the microwave. Maybe you have a satisfying relationship with someone who likes similar activities. Maybe your sex life is improving. It's just so much easier to not look around too much, not read too much, not be too aware of the rest of the world. Just keep keeping on making the mortgage and car payments, paying taxes, accumulating more gadgets to make life easier. I mean isn't that what it's all about?
You look around you and everyone else is pretty much doing the same thing. It's interesting to get together and talk about the insanity that is happening, how Joe can't sell his house and it may go into foreclosure, how Bill lost his job at the Company, how the price of gas keeps going higher, how you might not be able to send Billy to soccer camp this year. You join in the communal venting for a bit, then go home to continue the routine. Maybe you only put a dollar in the collection plate instead of five, but you have hope. You have faith that someone will fix it.
The Truth is that there is no one "out there", no separate something that will save you. YOU are the answer you seek, YOU are the one to make the changes. That undercurrent of doubt and fear you keep hidden is trying to get your attention so that you will ACT. The wolf is at YOUR door, and ignoring that fact will not keep you from getting eaten.
The engineers in New Orleans knew for many years that the levees were inadequate, but failed to act on that knowledge. The cost has been immeasurable, so many freedoms and lives lost, so much profiteering taking place. Humans have a predilection for procrastination, but remember, he who hesitates is lost. Do you think it can't happen again, that it can't happen to you?
Your government has sold you down the river. It only cares about itself and its agenda for expansion. Those with money get the life rafts while the rest go down. It is beyond borders, it is a global corporate elite calling the shots, and they don't care if they have to sacrifice America to get what they want. The game is World Domination, and our Constitutionally protected sovereign rights are the last hurdle. They are evaporating as we speak. What to do, what to do....?
I can't really answer that question. YOU know what you need to do, the question is will you do it? And I'm not talking about all the ways you distract yourself so you don't have to deal with the Truth another day. Part of the problem is the numerous ways we can distract ourselves - drinking, smoking, shopping, TV, working, sex, etc. Is any of it helping to alleviate your growing anxiety? Wake up, stop dreaming, grieve for your broken illusions if you must, and then get moving.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
A PROPOSAL...
There are dozens of organizations and web sites that discuss the possibility of awakening in this life time as a precursor to any real change occurring on the planet at large and most of them I agree with. However, few offer any real practical way to create a lifestyle that supports this on an ongoing basis. There are definitely some retreats that give one a taste of what it is to be awake and I highly recommend them (please check out some of my links), but most people come away finding themselves still immersed in a lifestyle not really conducive to growing further in embodying this awakening. It is to those who are seeking a viable way to incorporate their realization into a mode of action that I offer this proposal.
I have done much research concerning patterns of earth change and its impact on the countries of the world, and presently have chosen Costa Rica as one of the places where we can implement our plan of creating a haven for awakening individuals that is self-supporting. We aim to attract investors who wish to remove themselves from the insanity being played out by the industrial/military/pharmaceutical corporations wishing to dominate our lives, and want to support awakening consciousness while still making a living. We believe that if only a handful step forward with the initial financial help needed, we can make it worth their while by offering an ongoing income plus land upon which to build a home, making it an investment that will increase in equity and help others who seek to deepen in this process of awakening.
Consider the many ways your money is now spent that works only to continue a system that is obviously unsustainable and no longer serves anyone. One only has to look at the world stage, with its wars of aggression, trade agreements that end up impoverishing nations, and corporate greed, to see how out of control things are. Though there are precious few ways in the physical realm to completely step away from what is currently in place, it is plausible to consider that one can reduce one's reliance on governments or other authorities whose aim is to eliminate sovereignty and keep us compliant and enslaved to their agendas. But governments are working overtime to close any loopholes that allow us to live freely, so time is of the essence. The escalating fear that has most people in denial is gathering strength; the outcome of this is unknown, but it does not bode well for human beings as a whole. So I am calling out to men and women of integrity to put your money where your mouth is and make an uncompromising decision to to jump from the sinking ship of life as we once believed it, and to create something new and life-promoting.
We are drafting an executive summary that explains thoroughly how the money will be used to create a center for awakening that offers silent retreats, as well as an opportunity to continue to live and work together to help this continue. Investors will receive a share of profits plus land to develop. We will create organically a community that has only one agenda: to assist in the awakening of consciousness by allowing those who are ready to not only step out of the box, but to stay out of the box. We do not promote any complicated processes, ideologies, or particular individuals. We do realize that there is one way most conducive to the awakening that caters to all individuals, and that is silent sitting. It cuts through all the myriad concepts and puts one immediately in touch with the thought processes that have one hypnotized and unrealized. And by continued sitting, these are seen for what they are, and one has the possibility of release.
I know there are many that feel stymied as to what they can actually do to help create change. They browse the internet daily, signing up for newsletters and clicking on petitions. They do their best to buy organic and live more simply. They gather at places of worship, in each others homes, and out on the streets to discuss, organize, and protest. But still the big wheels are turning. And they turn because still we buy gas for our SUV's, still we pay taxes, still we sign driver's and marriage licenses, still we go to work for the corporate machine. Our daily lives are monopolized by the very system we are raging against. This is an inner conflict that can only be resolved by walking one's talk. There's no getting away from it in even the minutest detail of our lives. It's no different than surrendering to an abusive relationship, where you are getting beat up every day, but continue to live as if everything were OK, putting on makeup to hide the bruises.
The Truth is difficult to bear at first. We go through stages with it. Denial is the first stage, but one can't stop there. Anger is next, the body's signal that an injustice is perceived, but ineffective anger often turns into depression unless there is an outlet for action. To act effectively is important, but it is to our own hearts we must turn to discover the way. No one else has the answers you seek, or knows the secrets you keep. You are the one to be the change you want in the world.
So if your path has you feeling more beat up than free, consider an alternative. Dialogue with us, explore the possibility, see if it fits. The heart will leap towards freedom, if given a chance to. How many more times will you plow it over with excuses? I'm sorry I can't soften this message with lovey-dovey, airy-fairy, New Age-speak, but that is just more pablum for the masses. This is only for those warriors who have the courage to SEE what is True and ACT on it.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Riding the Merry-go-Round....
This is how it looks to me...
Life as we know it in the human thought-realm matrix is like being on a merry-go-round. It looks like there is movement, the horses go up and down, and from a child-like perspective, it actually seems as if one is getting somewhere. But that's only if you're on the merry-go-round. For someone standing on the ground, it is obvious that the merry-go-round is just revolving in a small, circular orbit. Now for those riding the merry-go-round, there can be endless discussion on whether or not the merry-go-round has any purpose, if it is functioning correctly, the rules and regulations regarding being on the merry-go-round, who gets to ride the horses, lions, tigers, bears, or whatever, ad nauseum. Some will complain about the revolution speed, the need for an upgrade, new leadership (a merry-go-round czar?) or whatever. Some may even say we should stop the merry-go-round and get off, a very progressive stance indeed. But in the meantime, the merry-go-round continues to turn in it's little circle, around and around and around....
Now while you're riding the merry-go-round, you may notice others who are standing on the ground as you whizz by. They wave to you, indicating the possibility of you joining them on the ground, but you move by so fast you can't quite catch what they're saying. Maybe you'll catch "If you want to get off the merry-go-round..." before you've already passed them by on another revolution. Maybe you'll hear the words "...you've got to jump!" So you turn to your fellow riders to point out that there are some who are not on the merry-go-round, and isn't that interesting, and maybe jumping is an option, but very often it leads to endless discussions about the rationale of jumping, how is it accomplished, the possibility of injury, etc., etc. More questions beget more answers beget more discussions and on and on the merry-go-round turns, a thousand viewpoints and opinions endlessly expressed. It is comfortably beguiling in its familiarity, its hypnotic sameness, its apparent safety. It reinforces inaction by settling for ongoing debate between this, that, and the other.
The questions are unsolvable as long as you remain on the merry-go-round. That's why it's called a merry-go-round, it never really goes anywhere. There's only ONE way to get off a merry-go-round, my friend, and that is to JUMP!
Remember the first time you went off the high dive, how long it took you to get even to the bottom of the stairs because that first step was a commitment you couldn't back down from? And then standing up there, looking down at the water, how far it seemed, crazy even? And you were scared, whether you showed it or not, perhaps even terrified, because you could, after all, get killed? But in the end, when you got past all the debate and fear and actually JUMPED it was the most exhilarating, amazing, FREEING experience, and you wanted to do it again and again?
It is the same every time we approach the unknown. For some reason, as we get older, we tend to veer away from taking chances with our lives, unlike the toddler, who though falling every second step, is determined to discover walking. When very young, we were unconcerned about the opinions of others; the imperative to be mobile was paramount and there was no doubt in our ability to master it. But also back then we were undistracted, focussed, undeterred. Then came television...and round and round we go...
It is easy to ride a merry-go-round, lulled into a false sense of momentum and change. On the merry-go-round, you can change your seat and believe you have done something radical. But you might as well finally admit that you are on a merry-go-round and you're getting nowhere. There are no saviors on the merry-go-round, because once you're on it's more of the same. A pretty costume and innovative delivery doesn't change the fact that you're still on the merry-go-round.
So you better be clear...do you want to keep riding or do you want to get off?
Life as we know it in the human thought-realm matrix is like being on a merry-go-round. It looks like there is movement, the horses go up and down, and from a child-like perspective, it actually seems as if one is getting somewhere. But that's only if you're on the merry-go-round. For someone standing on the ground, it is obvious that the merry-go-round is just revolving in a small, circular orbit. Now for those riding the merry-go-round, there can be endless discussion on whether or not the merry-go-round has any purpose, if it is functioning correctly, the rules and regulations regarding being on the merry-go-round, who gets to ride the horses, lions, tigers, bears, or whatever, ad nauseum. Some will complain about the revolution speed, the need for an upgrade, new leadership (a merry-go-round czar?) or whatever. Some may even say we should stop the merry-go-round and get off, a very progressive stance indeed. But in the meantime, the merry-go-round continues to turn in it's little circle, around and around and around....
Now while you're riding the merry-go-round, you may notice others who are standing on the ground as you whizz by. They wave to you, indicating the possibility of you joining them on the ground, but you move by so fast you can't quite catch what they're saying. Maybe you'll catch "If you want to get off the merry-go-round..." before you've already passed them by on another revolution. Maybe you'll hear the words "...you've got to jump!" So you turn to your fellow riders to point out that there are some who are not on the merry-go-round, and isn't that interesting, and maybe jumping is an option, but very often it leads to endless discussions about the rationale of jumping, how is it accomplished, the possibility of injury, etc., etc. More questions beget more answers beget more discussions and on and on the merry-go-round turns, a thousand viewpoints and opinions endlessly expressed. It is comfortably beguiling in its familiarity, its hypnotic sameness, its apparent safety. It reinforces inaction by settling for ongoing debate between this, that, and the other.
The questions are unsolvable as long as you remain on the merry-go-round. That's why it's called a merry-go-round, it never really goes anywhere. There's only ONE way to get off a merry-go-round, my friend, and that is to JUMP!
Remember the first time you went off the high dive, how long it took you to get even to the bottom of the stairs because that first step was a commitment you couldn't back down from? And then standing up there, looking down at the water, how far it seemed, crazy even? And you were scared, whether you showed it or not, perhaps even terrified, because you could, after all, get killed? But in the end, when you got past all the debate and fear and actually JUMPED it was the most exhilarating, amazing, FREEING experience, and you wanted to do it again and again?
It is the same every time we approach the unknown. For some reason, as we get older, we tend to veer away from taking chances with our lives, unlike the toddler, who though falling every second step, is determined to discover walking. When very young, we were unconcerned about the opinions of others; the imperative to be mobile was paramount and there was no doubt in our ability to master it. But also back then we were undistracted, focussed, undeterred. Then came television...and round and round we go...
It is easy to ride a merry-go-round, lulled into a false sense of momentum and change. On the merry-go-round, you can change your seat and believe you have done something radical. But you might as well finally admit that you are on a merry-go-round and you're getting nowhere. There are no saviors on the merry-go-round, because once you're on it's more of the same. A pretty costume and innovative delivery doesn't change the fact that you're still on the merry-go-round.
So you better be clear...do you want to keep riding or do you want to get off?
Monday, May 7, 2007
Is There Anybody Out There?
Ever since I was a little girl, I have been in wonderment at the craziness of human beings. I never could understand how they could subscribe to the highest ideologies on the one hand and yet indulge in such horrid behavior towards each other. It was so hypocritical, so bizarre, and so obviously detrimental. Our society is sick, neurotic, and completely unnatural when it comes to just being able to live a happy, free life. How did we get so off the track?
Over the years I have been studying the alternative media for clues and there is a plethora of information available on the internet describing how our so-called leaders have sold us out to corporate interests through the use of the most insidious of mind control techniques. Check out www.davidicke.com or www.commondreams.org for examples.
As soon as we are born, the programming begins. Our parents, already having been completely absorbed into the corporate-think, begin the process by telling us what they expect from "good" little "boys" and "girls". We watch TV and find out more about what we are expected to believe is important, how we are meant to fit into the system. It's all about consuming the products that the corporations tell us are fundamental to the good life we are supposed to want, and because everyone around us is plugged into the same cycle of working to acquire more of these objects of desire, we go along with it like sheep. The so-called educational system only teaches us to be good little worker bees and tax payers, not to think for ourselves. Even if we are unsatisfied enough to seek alternatives, they are just more of the same dressed up in prettier clothes.
I have had some pretty amazing experiences of jumping so far out of the system through using meditation, drugs, and alternative lifestyles that re-integration is no longer a possibility for me. But I am still in this human body and must somehow find a way to continue, and there are precious few options that have any attraction for me any longer. I can't bring myself to be a part of the machine that poses as the American Dream - it is a sham that is falling apart at the seams. And I can't be a part of any group that is in direct opposition to it either as it merely feeds the problem. The closest activities to any basic sanity are those labeled "spiritual", but that has also become a marketplace filled with personality cults, endless, and expensive, processes and programs, and maybe in the future, if you do it the "right" way, some possibility of enlightenment.
Now this enlightenment "business" really has started to bug me, because most of the time it is couched in such esoteric terms that no one understands at all how it is accomplished. I've met people who have been doing yoga, meditation, positive thinking, chanting, oming for world peace, and a kazillion other practices supposedly designed to bring one to self-realization. But very few actually reach this goal. I find that this striving to "get" somewhere is just another bottomless pit that is no different than any other material goal. Calling it "spiritual" just puts it on some lofty plane where you get to be more cool than those who are merely striving for more materialistic gain. But it is really the same old story that puts you right back where you started as far as being programmed to believe in some glorious future that will come about if you work hard enough. It is Bogus!
As long as you seek for your happiness in some outward activity or manifestation, it will not last. All outer phenomenon is transient at best. Change is the nature of things in this 3-dimensional universe. The question is: What is it that does NOT change, that is eternally present, that hums in the background as we scurry around trying to accumulate more "stuff"? How can we just rest within the great Isness of Life itself?
Well, the meditators start off on the right track, since it is in SILENCE that one can actually make contact with one's eternal nature. But you can't compartmentalize the infinite, can't fit it into the finite world. Many try to do so, I mean look at all the books that have been written and are gobbled up by the disillusioned in hopes of getting a taste. But it is just taking up room on your bookshelf and you are still unsatisfied. This all works to the advantage of a social system that wants you to be dissatisfied, always wanting MORE and MORE. There's only one way to step off this endless treadmill. And that is to JUST STOP IT. Stop participating in the hallucination. Take the big plunge!
In Zen, you go to a sesshin and sit, sit, sit. You sit in silence until it dawns on you that YOU are what you seek, YOU are the ONE. And then you sit some more. Silent sitting takes you out of the loop and allows the Truth to reveal itself, and if it really catches you, you would rather sit than just about anything else. And there comes a point when this fabrication, this story that you've been telling yourself about yourself falls away, and you are just HERE, present, much like a child who is happy just watching the grass grow. And for most this engenders great fear as if one was facing one's death. Because all you have known is what you have been conditioned to believe by society, and you discover it has NOTHING TO DO WITH WHO YOU ARE, it begins to fall away. This is always the point that is the greatest challenge to people, and this is when they often get up and run out of the room. But all the masters that ever were went through this dark night, this death of the conditioned SELF, before they woke up and achieved complete liberation. That's what LIBERATION is, freedom from ALL the conditioning and programming, right down to even thinking you're male or female. And the mind fights it because it looks like death. Real death is the same thing and we will all face it one day. But if you want liberation in this lifetime, there's only one way. Walk away from the dream long enough and JUST STOP.
Since I still am in the body, and need to feed, clothe, and shelter it, and because I left behind any desire to participate in the current nightmare playing out on the international stage, I have minimized my physical needs such that I have no debt, no obligations to others, no appointments to keep, no clock to watch. Just simple Being is enough. Yet the idea still comes...are there others, like me, who would create a sane life away from the maelstrom, where Truth can flower, and new, original ideas flourish? Is there anybody out there?
Bottom line is I would like to create a retreat center here in Costa Rica where the focus is on living an awakened life, where serious folks can actually STOP being a part of the growing insanity. This world is changing so fast, the earth changes are not going to get any better, and it's time to find a quiet place to rest. This isn't some airy, fairy lah-de-dah new age loopy groupy sales pitch, just a real possibility to step off the treadmill, hang with some cool folks who have no agenda whatsoever, grow some bananas, mangoes, and papayas, and let the rest of the world finish playing out this madness so we can start anew. Or maybe we'll be in paradise watching it all fall apart around us. In that case, I'll raise a glass to Life's amazing persistence that there IS a way to evolve and awaken, even if mankind has screwed it up once again.
If this post has you the least bit interested, drop us a line at iamgodsjoy@yahoo.com . We would love to hear from you.
Over the years I have been studying the alternative media for clues and there is a plethora of information available on the internet describing how our so-called leaders have sold us out to corporate interests through the use of the most insidious of mind control techniques. Check out www.davidicke.com or www.commondreams.org for examples.
As soon as we are born, the programming begins. Our parents, already having been completely absorbed into the corporate-think, begin the process by telling us what they expect from "good" little "boys" and "girls". We watch TV and find out more about what we are expected to believe is important, how we are meant to fit into the system. It's all about consuming the products that the corporations tell us are fundamental to the good life we are supposed to want, and because everyone around us is plugged into the same cycle of working to acquire more of these objects of desire, we go along with it like sheep. The so-called educational system only teaches us to be good little worker bees and tax payers, not to think for ourselves. Even if we are unsatisfied enough to seek alternatives, they are just more of the same dressed up in prettier clothes.
I have had some pretty amazing experiences of jumping so far out of the system through using meditation, drugs, and alternative lifestyles that re-integration is no longer a possibility for me. But I am still in this human body and must somehow find a way to continue, and there are precious few options that have any attraction for me any longer. I can't bring myself to be a part of the machine that poses as the American Dream - it is a sham that is falling apart at the seams. And I can't be a part of any group that is in direct opposition to it either as it merely feeds the problem. The closest activities to any basic sanity are those labeled "spiritual", but that has also become a marketplace filled with personality cults, endless, and expensive, processes and programs, and maybe in the future, if you do it the "right" way, some possibility of enlightenment.
Now this enlightenment "business" really has started to bug me, because most of the time it is couched in such esoteric terms that no one understands at all how it is accomplished. I've met people who have been doing yoga, meditation, positive thinking, chanting, oming for world peace, and a kazillion other practices supposedly designed to bring one to self-realization. But very few actually reach this goal. I find that this striving to "get" somewhere is just another bottomless pit that is no different than any other material goal. Calling it "spiritual" just puts it on some lofty plane where you get to be more cool than those who are merely striving for more materialistic gain. But it is really the same old story that puts you right back where you started as far as being programmed to believe in some glorious future that will come about if you work hard enough. It is Bogus!
As long as you seek for your happiness in some outward activity or manifestation, it will not last. All outer phenomenon is transient at best. Change is the nature of things in this 3-dimensional universe. The question is: What is it that does NOT change, that is eternally present, that hums in the background as we scurry around trying to accumulate more "stuff"? How can we just rest within the great Isness of Life itself?
Well, the meditators start off on the right track, since it is in SILENCE that one can actually make contact with one's eternal nature. But you can't compartmentalize the infinite, can't fit it into the finite world. Many try to do so, I mean look at all the books that have been written and are gobbled up by the disillusioned in hopes of getting a taste. But it is just taking up room on your bookshelf and you are still unsatisfied. This all works to the advantage of a social system that wants you to be dissatisfied, always wanting MORE and MORE. There's only one way to step off this endless treadmill. And that is to JUST STOP IT. Stop participating in the hallucination. Take the big plunge!
In Zen, you go to a sesshin and sit, sit, sit. You sit in silence until it dawns on you that YOU are what you seek, YOU are the ONE. And then you sit some more. Silent sitting takes you out of the loop and allows the Truth to reveal itself, and if it really catches you, you would rather sit than just about anything else. And there comes a point when this fabrication, this story that you've been telling yourself about yourself falls away, and you are just HERE, present, much like a child who is happy just watching the grass grow. And for most this engenders great fear as if one was facing one's death. Because all you have known is what you have been conditioned to believe by society, and you discover it has NOTHING TO DO WITH WHO YOU ARE, it begins to fall away. This is always the point that is the greatest challenge to people, and this is when they often get up and run out of the room. But all the masters that ever were went through this dark night, this death of the conditioned SELF, before they woke up and achieved complete liberation. That's what LIBERATION is, freedom from ALL the conditioning and programming, right down to even thinking you're male or female. And the mind fights it because it looks like death. Real death is the same thing and we will all face it one day. But if you want liberation in this lifetime, there's only one way. Walk away from the dream long enough and JUST STOP.
Since I still am in the body, and need to feed, clothe, and shelter it, and because I left behind any desire to participate in the current nightmare playing out on the international stage, I have minimized my physical needs such that I have no debt, no obligations to others, no appointments to keep, no clock to watch. Just simple Being is enough. Yet the idea still comes...are there others, like me, who would create a sane life away from the maelstrom, where Truth can flower, and new, original ideas flourish? Is there anybody out there?
Bottom line is I would like to create a retreat center here in Costa Rica where the focus is on living an awakened life, where serious folks can actually STOP being a part of the growing insanity. This world is changing so fast, the earth changes are not going to get any better, and it's time to find a quiet place to rest. This isn't some airy, fairy lah-de-dah new age loopy groupy sales pitch, just a real possibility to step off the treadmill, hang with some cool folks who have no agenda whatsoever, grow some bananas, mangoes, and papayas, and let the rest of the world finish playing out this madness so we can start anew. Or maybe we'll be in paradise watching it all fall apart around us. In that case, I'll raise a glass to Life's amazing persistence that there IS a way to evolve and awaken, even if mankind has screwed it up once again.
If this post has you the least bit interested, drop us a line at iamgodsjoy@yahoo.com . We would love to hear from you.
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