Keeping Quiet

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth

let's not speak in any language,

let's stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment

without rush, without engines,

we would all be together

in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea

would not harm whales

and the man gathering salt

would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,

wars with gas, wars with fire,

victory with no survivors,

would put on clean clothes

and walk about with their brothers

in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused

with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about;

I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded

about keeping our lives moving,

and for once could do nothing,

perhaps a huge silence

might interrupt this sadness

of never understanding ourselves

and of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us

as when everything seems dead

and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve

and you keep quiet and I will go.

~ Pablo Neruda

Silence Is All I Can Say

Rumi speaks:

Listen to presences inside poems,
Let them take you where they will.

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Silence is the root of everything.
If you spiral into its void,
a hundred voices will thunder
messages you long to hear.

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Heart is the one who calls.
The sound of Heart echoes
on the mountain of body.
O the one who hangs on sound,
Be silent.
Instead, embrace the place
from whence sound comes.

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The silence that Love would tell to Love,
That would be a narration
Which would feed the Soul
And have no end.

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

Be silent. That Heart speaks
without tongue or lips.

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

We listen to words
so we can silently
reach into the other.

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

“Keep silence,” be mute;
if you have not yet become
the tongue of God,
be an ear.

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

You..You...You...& Me too...

Why is there always music in this house?
Ask the owner.

Idols inside the Kaaba?
Beloved's light in a pagan temple?

Here is a treasure this world could not contain.
The house and its landlord
are all pretext and play.

Hands off this house, this talisman.
Don't argue with the landlord;
he's drunk every night.

The dirt and garbage are musk and rose.
The roof and door are music and verse.
In short, whoever finds this house,
is ruler of the world, Solomon of his time.

Look down, Lord, from the roof;
bless us with your glance.

I swear, since seeing Your face,
the whole world is a fraud and fantasy.
The garden is bewildered as to what is leaf
or blossom. The distracted birds
can't distinguish the birdseed from the snare.

A house of love with no limits,
a presence more beautiful than venus or the moon,
a beauty whose image fills the mirror of the heart.

Zulaikha's female friends,
beside themselves in Joseph's presence, sliced their wrists.
Maybe a curl of his hair brushed their hearts.

Come in. The Beloved is here. We are all drunk.
No one notices who enters or leaves.
Don't sit outside the door in the dark, wondering.

Those drunk with Beloved,
even if they are a thousand, live as One.
But drunk with lust, even one is double.

Enter the thicket of lions unafraid of any wounds.
The shadows you fear are just a child's fantasy.

There is no wound and nothing to be wounded;
all is mercy and love.

But you build up thought
like a massive wooden door.
Set fire to the wood.

Silence the noise of the heart.
Hold your harmful tongue.

No Agenda Needed

The Self is not attained by doing anything, but remaining still and being as we are.

~ Ramana Maharshi

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Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save: they just stand there, shining.

~ Anne Lamott

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I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in the silence, and the truth comes to me.

~ Albert Einstein

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Strenuously seeking truth
by investigation and concentration,
one will never appreciate
the unthinkable simplicity and bliss
that abide at the core.

To uncover this fertile ground,
cut through the roots of complexity
with the sharp gaze of naked awareness,
remaining entirely at peace,
transparent and content.

You need not expend great effort
nor store up extensive spiritual power.
Remain in the flow of sheer awareness.

~ Tilopa

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Listening, non-directed attention, is the natural, the inbuilt functioning of the brain.

~ Jean Klein

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The Truth is the only thing you’ll ever run into that has no agenda. Everything else will have an agenda. Everything. That is why the Truth is so powerful. Give up your agendas and continue to expose yourself, and harmonization will naturally occur.

~ Adyashanti

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Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.

~ Chogyam Trungpa

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When there is a wound deep inside a person, he will try to share that with other people. What else can he do? You just recognize: "Oh, he needs compassion." Compassion is the only medicine. Unconditional love is the only treatment.

~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

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Your purpose is to be at peace, to love all beings, and to know who you are. This is the purpose of life. Slowly you will know this and get through.

~ Papaji

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Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner -- what is it?
if not the intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The Most Important Thing

Words exist for meaning,
but once you understand the meaning,
you can throw away the words.

~ Chuang Tzu

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"A strange passion is moving in my head, My heart has become a bird which searches in the sky. Every part of me goes in different directions. Is it really so that the one I love is Everywhere?"

~ Jalal-Uddin Rumi

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"The most important thing is to find out what is the most important thing."

~ Shunryu Suzuki.

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"Saints and ordinary folks are the same from the start. Inquiring about a difference is like asking to borrow string when you've got a good strong rope. Every Dharma is known in the heart."

~ Hsu Yun

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"When we practice zazen [meditation] , all that exists is the movement of the breathing, but we are aware of this movement. You should not be absent-minded. But to be aware of the movement does not mean to be aware of your small self, but rather of your universal nature, or Buddha nature. This kind of awareness is very important, because we are usually so one-sided. Our usual understanding of life is dualistic: you and I, this and that, good and bad. But actually these discriminations are themselves the awareness of the universal existence. "You" means to be aware of the universe in the form of you, and "I" means to be aware of it in the form of I. You and I are just swinging doors.."

~ Shunryu Suzuki

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"Even when the light begins to dawn in zazen, we don't get attached to that either. If you start to see what the world is really made up of, if it comes apart in tiny glowing, luminous pieces for you, don't be attached to that either. It's important to just keep walking. It doesn't matter where you're at in the way--if you're at the beginning or far along-- the instructions are the same: Keep walking with an open heart while the wonder comes over you."

~ John Tarrant

No Thoughts, No Words - Benjamin Smythe

Find your mute button. Ben calls it "find the thinker". Others might call it something else. Does it really matter? When thinking ends, all that is left is the One looking at itself in the mirror, laughing. And then the mind starts up with a discussion about the proper word to use to describe it. Too funny! Enjoy these two videos, Ben really simplifies the whole business of awakening to its primary, primordial components. It ain't rocket science, folks!

Not For The Faint Of Heart - From the Council of 12

An excerpt from http://lightworkers.org/channeling/127630/not-faint-heart

"...We come to You today with this Message because it is time for the Truth and it is time that You awaken to the world of darkness You have created. There are dark forces of energy at work, playing in the realms of Your mind, and because You have allowed this to be so for so long, You have forgotten that You are only dreaming. There was a time, long ago, when most of You knew You were only dreaming this dream so that God could experience Itself as Love… but over time, corruption has happened, and so many of You have fallen into a deep, deep slumber.

The dark energies of this earth are being called into the Truth of The Light. They are being held accountable for what they have created. And now this can be seen as many of You are waking up to what has really been allowed to go on in Your world. You are all being held accountable. This is what karma is. You are not being punished, no, that is never a word a Being of Love would use. You are simply being held accountable, on every level, for every unloving thought You CHOOSE TO HOLD. This is the reality of what is happening on Your earth, in truth. There is nothing more or less going on here. You can sugar-coat this all You like, but the truth of the matter is this: what You are experiencing is as a direct result of the thoughts and feelings each and every one of You has individually and collectively chosen to hold in place of love. Plain and simple.

When You talk about Gaia and “Her” transition and “Her” shedding You take the heat and accountability off of Yourselves. You displace all of that and act once again as though You have no part in this. You seem to either look at this as being detached from Mother earth and what ‘She’ is going through… or You seem to feel You are being violently punished because ‘She’ is angry for what You have done to the earth. The truth is, neither of these are actually what is happening. You have created this all by Yourselves, and now when everything is coming back in reflection for You – in such a way You cannot run and hide—You all want to blame someone else. ‘It’s the Gov’t. It’s the greedy corporate people, it’s the people who don’t care about the environment.’

Let Us say now, there is not one of You who is completely innocent from what has now become of Mother earth. Why? Because all of You have feelings of negativity to overcome. That is why You came to the earth. You have created martyrs of Yourselves in many ways, rather than stopping to look at how You played a role in creating the current state of affairs.

Do not mistake Our speaking to You about dark energies as [if] We are blaming or judging. This is not true. We are pointing the finger at each and every person on the planet who has not taken a personal account of what he or she may have put out in terms of thoughts, words, and actions to create this state of destruction and chaos. And this finger isn’t an angry and condemning finger, it is simply to say, before You spend one more moment looking around Yourself for someone to cast blame and throw stones at, perhaps You should look at how You think and speak every day.

Because this is truly it, Dear Ones. This is where You are powerful and have given up Your power to the dark energies of which We speak. Every word You utter out of anger is an energy that strengthens the forces that seek to destroy this planet. You have the choice right here and now to make a change. You do not need to change the world, in fact, You shouldn’t even be focused on changing ANYTHING other than Your own thoughts. We mean this most seriously. The life of this planet and every living thing upon it is in a state of peril, let Us help You by illuminating, without question, where the real problem lies…within You-YOUR mind. The world You see is a world You have co-created. God, the Loving Being of Graciousness and Free Will has given all of You the ability to use the very gift of thought to create. It is with this thought You paint upon the canvas of Your individual and collective lives what You truly want to see.

Your thoughts, not aligned with God, produce hell on earth. Your thoughts, aligned with God and Love, create Heaven on earth. And all of this starts WITHIN. No one should be focused on any other living soul’s change until they have fully and completely mastered their own mind. If You are focused on Your brother’s negativity, and have not yet mastered Your own, then You are a hypocrite and nothing more. We want to release You all to Love, knowing that You ARE powerful enough to make this happen for the world, as a Whole. But, You must understand that You are sitting with the keys and do not know what to use them for. You have the power, but are just giving it away out of ignorance.

There doesn’t need to be any violence or protest, that again, re-enforces the power of the dark. So many of You do not get this. You think if You go out, highly charged with emotion You will create change. You are creating NOTHING more than more of the same. Do You hear Us? You are empowering what You do not want and giving Your energy over to the darkness You want so much to vanquish. That which You resist persists. If You say “NO!” the Universe doesn’t hear this. It just hears I want more of this please because I haven’t learned how to control my mind.

The greatest power You all have is stillness and turning within. If You were to stop the mental chatter for just one hour a day, Your world would change dramatically, if not over night. But instead, You chatter, chatter, chatter, feeding the ‘beast’ more of Your energy by sharing negative dreams all around the internet. This is not true for all of You, for We cannot make a blanket statement, but, for the most part, in an act to wake people from the dream, You are only empowering it. This is what We wish to illuminate here to day."

Click HERE to continue...

Another Great Video from Benjamin Smythe

Who Are You?

“It really doesn’t matter.
Here goes nothing.
It will be interesting to see what happens.”

~ Sloan Wilson – The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

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I mostly do not write on my own blog, because I figure everything that needs to be said has already been said a million times, and why add to the cacophony? But I’ve just come out of a rather intensive self-imposed retreat, and there is something that wishes to explore its findings to itself. After all, there’s only this One Thing talking to itself all the time, attempting to get its own attention, wanting to remind itself of its true nature.

There’s only one story ever told and it goes like this: first, there is harmony, then chaos ensues, and then there is a successful (or sometimes unsuccessful) attempt to resolve the chaos in order to return to harmony. All stories have this same central theme, though the details vary.

This is the story that all of Life is telling itself, as it attempts to resolve the appearance of separation. What has been forgotten is why this world was created in the first place.

Consider a vast nothingness, an infinite womb, and then out of nowhere, an idea, a spark of creativity appears, the possibility of nothing knowing itself as something. The essence of this appearance could be called love, this sudden desire for nothing to become something and look upon itself. And Life begins to multiply upon itself in its vastness and create more and more diverse and fantastic depictions of itself.

Fast forward to this moment. The experiment has turned in on itself, so successful in its degrees of otherness that it no longer recognizes itself as one. The story has become so vast and complex that the One is completely distracted from the only story, which is the one that returns it to harmony. This is your story. Everything and everyone who you seek out to help you resolve your lack of harmony, every teacher, book, workshop, whatever, is you looking in a mirror to find yourself. The trick is to turn around and look at who is looking.

The battles within and without are an attempt to continue the story of separation. Why? Why do you want to continue to live a fragmented version of yourself? You say you want wholeness and healing, peace and freedom, love and harmony, but who are you kidding? If you truly wanted it you would have it. You are still somewhat entertained by all the craziness and chaos, admit it. All the loneliness, all the suffering, all the pathos, you’re making it up as you go along.

On the other hand, this story has been played out in so many versions over the millennia, in some ways it has become tiresome and rather ho-hum. Really, I mean how much more violence and mayhem, the self against the self, this holding onto a concept of otherness, how much longer do you want to hold out? Aren’t you tired of it all? Maybe not…..

Because the ET’s might come, and the Ascended Masters will show up, and there will be heaven on earth, and no more struggle for survival, and yada, yada, yada. More story, keep it going, play some more. That’s OK. It’s all perfect. It’s your story (satori).

Well, in my version of this story, the One finally recognizes itself as Not Two, never was never will be. And in the final gazing, One into the eyes of the One, the love is so huge and tremendous that it bursts the boundaries of creation and dissolves back into absolute Nothingness from which it all arose in the first place. End of story. Wow!

And then I woke up this morning, and the cats were meowing to get in, and the phone rang, and I made coffee, and I sat and watched the wind blow the leaves and branches of this giant tree in my backyard, and this idea began to form in my brain as to writing something on my blog. Go figure.

So will this little missive change anything? Probably not. Maybe. I think there are only two people in the entire known Universe who read this thing, who knows?. In turning to look upon what is inherently true in one's consciousness, perhaps what arises is a sense of responsibility for everything, a realization that outside is only a projection of what has become unacceptable inside, and even the very idea of inside and outside becomes erroneous. The enemy is whatever you have said no to. Neti, neti, not this, not that. But how can that be, when everything that exists is you? Everything! Even the idea of an enemy exists because we wish to annihilate whatever stands in the way of Oneness, we just made the mistake of thinking it was out there! As if that were possible…

Every conflict is the resurrecting of the same story, over and over, countless scenarios, one after the other, always seeking something more. I guess resting in sublime contentment seems rather blasé in comparison. But not for this one. I can’t seem to find anything that wants something other than what’s right here. The addictions have fallen away. I know where it all leads. It no longer interests me. My attention keeps turning to what is looking through these eyes and stopping there. Even food is a distraction. I don’t even care why this is so. This questioner has no questions left.

There is still a narrative playing in this mind, but it is its own merry-go-round of entertainment, slowly winding down because the ticket booth is closed. It’s closing in on itself, no where to go but a leap into the void. Like a caged animal it paces, the mind seeking some escape, but all the avenues are shut down and there’s no place left to land.

Why am I writing this? The invitation is for all parts of myself to enter this exploration of what has always been and forever will be the only truth, and that is YOU ARE IT!

Got it? Good.

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One of the strange properties of being me
is I don’t want to be ignored,
but I don’t want to be seen either.
Sometimes I am my only witness.
I AM a mirror within which
I reflect myself;
my own mind and consciousness
a vast and fascinating playground
where I dance for myself
and engage myself
in scintillating conversation.

I argue with my ghostly
and mostly imaginary past,
shaking my fist at the inner critic
who boasted its way
into becoming a feature of my brain,
and while I drag my neural sea
for the anchoring point,
and practice eroding new paths
into presently pristine fields,
my own voice narrates.
Each corner turned, each breath taken,
each mundane and extraordinary task is
noted, verified, examined, reiterated,
some flushed, some filed,
some deified, others exiled.
It is constant,
my rambling and eloquent
talk with myself.

If I found a way
to package, publish, and exhibit
this artistic performance and
masterpiece of life,
I would be no different
than all the other needy, greedy
children crying for worldly attention,
and I would miss the lone applause
that only I can gift myself.
I would forget that
in closing my outer eyes
I see everything,
have everything,
am everything,
and opening them again
just brings into sharp focus
the state of the romantic interlude
I’m having with me.

I remember now.
The rest doesn’t matter.
Solid things are more ephemeral than
soap bubbles
when the attention shifts.
Only looking closely
makes it real and tangible,
brings it to human life,
a form through which I may
caress my skin,
kiss my lips and breasts,
and make my heart pound wildly
until passion, exhausted,
closes again my eyes,
and I surrender, smiling,
into luxurious sleep.

I dream of new ways to awaken
while the old familiar faces/places
appear once again on the horizon,
imploring me to continue my line of thought
for one more day.

I comply.
If only to follow the story line
and take in the surprise ending.
For as many things I think I know
I don’t.
As far as I may have come,
every point in eternity is
a beginning place.
I might as well be a child forever,
in wonderment at my own fingers
and the timeless pace of snails.
Today I am fresh as tears,
watching from the center of everything,
and no one is here but me.

~ Suzen

Authentic Inquiry

What is inquiry, really? This is a good question. And like most really good questions, it is very basic. Authentic inquiry is allowing yourself to care, to take on the weightless burden of caring. Everyone knows what it’s like to inquire out of intellectual interest—asking for the sake of asking or because you think you should. This is not caring. When you care about something, it gets inside of you. It gets inside the shell that keeps you from being affected or bothered, the shell that keeps anything really new from happening.

So in the beginning, to deeply inquire about anything, you have to care about it. You have to care enough to allow it to get inside that shell. What do you really care about? What pulls you into here and now, this minute? What is the most important thing to you? For real inquiry, it is important to be asking about something you sincerely care about. The question needs to be personal, not about a spiritual teaching or something that’s outside of your experience. It needs to be something that’s coming from the inside.

When you care, you care from the inside. Many people impose ideas from the outside upon themselves, but this isn’t inquiry. When you really care, you enter a love affair with what you care about. Sometimes it draws you into bliss, sometimes into confusion. You don’t know what to do. You don’t know where you are going. You feel a bit out of control. You’re letting this caring get under your skin. To find out that you care like this is the most important thing; otherwise you can spend your whole life caring about what someone else says you should care about.

Like many people, you may be afraid to find out how much you care because that caring could just steal you away. What is the one thing that will matter the most at the end of your life? Without it, you would say: “That’s what it was all about and I missed it.” If you had the best job, lots of money, the perfect lover, or whatever your ideal is, and suddenly your life was over, what would still be left undone? That’s what it’s all about.

When you find that kind of caring, inquiry has some power behind it. You also find your own inner integrity. You find something inside that’s stable. There’s a place inside you that is willing to be a little crazy—crazy enough to take inquiry seriously and hold nothing sacred. Holding nothing sacred means that nothing is assumed to be true and all of your assumptions are fair game. The more spiritual they are, the more they are fair game. Ultimately it is your most sacred and unquestioned assumptions about yourself, others, and life that are most important to question.

Many people find their spirituality taking them outward. They think they are going inward because they have heard the spiritual teaching, “Inquire and look within.” Meanwhile, they are out in the stars somewhere looking for someone else’s experience, looking for the right experience, or looking for the experience they believe they are supposed to have. This is spirituality going entirely in the wrong direction. Inquiry is a means of taking you back to yourself, back to your experience.

When inquiry is authentic, it brings you into the experience of here and now, bringing you to the full depth of it, pulling you into it. The question pulls you back into the mystery of your experience. “What am I?” takes you right back into the mystery. If your mind is honest, it knows it doesn’t have the answer. You ask, “What am I?” and instantly, there is silence. Your mind doesn’t know. And when it doesn’t know, there is an experience right here, right now, that is alive. You bump into nothingness inside—that no-thing, that absolute nothingness which your mind can’t know.

The answer does not come in the form of a description or phrase; it is a direct experience. And this experience, your livingness, always transcends any words or intellectual answer. In fact, the truth of your being is eternally transcending itself. As soon as it projects itself out as something, even as a profound insight, it has already transcended it. So eventually the inquiry wears itself out. You wear yourself out. You wear your ego self out. You wear your spiritual self out. You wear it all out. You’ve inquired yourself out of this whole thing, and you’re disappearing faster than you can put yourself together.

As Nisargadatta Maharaj said so brilliantly and beautifully, “The ultimate understanding is that there is no ultimate understanding.” When it’s in the head, it’s an impressive piece of understanding; when it’s in the heart, as the Buddha said, it’s extinguished. You find a living experience of being, empty of content, empty of you. This is where spiritual awakening begins. This is the living answer of authentic inquiry.

© Adyashanti 2007

http://www.adyashan ti.org/index. php?file= writings_ inner&writingid= 32

"The Heart Jewel of the Fortunate" Dudjom Rimpoche's Personal Advice on Dzogchen Praxis

"The Great Master of Oddiyana once said:
Don’t investigate the root of things,
Investigate the root of Mind!
Once the mind’s root has been found,
You’ll know one thing, yet all is thereby freed.
But if the root of Mind you fail to find,
You will know everything but nothing understand."

When you start to meditate on your mind, sit up with your body straight, allowing your breath to come and go naturally. Gaze into the space in front of you with eyes neither closed nor wide open. Think to yourself that for the sake of all beings who have been your mothers, you will watch awareness, the face of Samantabhadra. Pray strongly to your root teacher, who is inseparable from Padmasambhava, the Guru from Oddiyana, and then mingle your mind with his. Settle in a balanced, meditative state.

Once you are settled, however, you will not stay long in this empty, clear state of awareness. Your mind will start to move and become agitated. It will fidget and run here, there, and everywhere, like a monkey. What you are experiencing at this point is not the nature of the mind but only thoughts. If you stick with them and follow them, you will find yourself recalling all sorts of things, thinking about all sorts of needs, planning all sorts of activities. It is precisely this kind of mental activity that has hurled you into the dark ocean of samsara in the past, and there’s no doubt it will do so in the future. It would be so much better if you could cut through the ever spreading, black delusion of your thoughts.

What if you are able to break out of your chain of thoughts? What is awareness like? It is empty, limpid stunning, light, free, joyful! It is not something bounded or demarcated by its own set of attributes. There is nothing in the whole of samsara and nirvana that it does not embrace. From time without beginning, it is within us, inborn. We have never been without it, yet it is wholly outside the range of action, effort, and imagination.

But what, you will ask, is it like to recognize awareness, the face of rigpa? Although you experience it, you simply cannot describe it – it would be like a dumb man trying to describe his dreams! It is impossible to distinguish between yourself resting in awareness and the awareness you are experiencing. When you rest quite naturally, nakedly, in the boundless state of awareness, all those speedy, pestering thoughts that would not stay quiet even for an instant – all those memories, all those plans that cause you so much trouble – lose their power. They disappear in the spacious, cloudless sky of awareness. They shatter, collapse, vanish. All their strength is lost in awareness.

You actually have this awareness within you. It is the clear, naked wisdom of dharmakaya. But who can introduce you to it? On what should you take your stand? What should you be certain of? To begin with, it is your teacher who shows you the state of your awareness. And when you recognize it for yourself, it is then that you are introduced to your own nature. All the appearances of both samsara and nirvana are but the display of your own awareness; take your stand upon awareness alone. Just like the waves that rise up out of the sea and sink back into it, all thoughts that appear sink back into awareness. Be certain of their dissolution, and as a result you will find yourself in a state utterly devoid of both meditator and something meditated upon - completely beyond the meditating mind.

"Oh, in that case," you might think, "there’s no need for meditation." Well, I can assure you that there is a need! The mere recognition of awareness will not liberate you. Throughout your lives from beginningless time, you have been enveloped in false beliefs and deluded habits. From then till now you have spent every moment as a miserable, pathetic slave of your thoughts! And when you die, it’s not at all certain where you will go. You will follow your karma, and you will have to suffer. This is the reason why you must meditate, continuously preserving the sate of awareness you have been introduced to. The omniscient Longchenpa has said, "You may recognize your own nature, but if you do not meditate and get used to it, you will be like a baby left on a battlefield: you’ll be carried off by the enemy, the hostile army of your own thoughts!" In general terms, meditation means becoming famiIiar with the state of resting in the primordial uncontrived nature, through being spontaneously, naturally, constantly mindful. It means getting used to leaving the state of awareness alone, divested of all distraction and clinging.

How do we get used to remaining in the nature of the mind? When thoughts come while you are meditating, let them come; there’s no need to regard them as your enemies. When they arise, relax in their arising. On the other hand, if they don’s arise, don’t be nervously wondering whether or not they will. Just rest in their absence. If big, well-defined thoughts suddenly appear during your meditation, it is easy to recognize them. But when slight, subtle movements occur, it is hard to realize that they are there until much later. This is what we call namtok wogyu, the undercurrent of mental wandering. This is the thief of your meditation, so it is important for you to keep a close watch. If you can be constantly mindful, both in meditation and afterward, when you are eating, sleeping, walking, or sitting, that’s it – you’ve got it right!

"The great master Guru Rinpoche has said:
A hundred things may be explained, a thousand told,
But one thing only should you grasp.
Know one thing and everything is freed-
Remain within your inner nature, your awareness!"

It is also said that if you do not meditate, you will not gain certainty: if you do, you will. But what sort of certainty? If you meditate with a strong, joyful endeavor, signs will appear showing that you have become used to staying in your nature. The fierce, tight clinging that you have to dualistically experienced phenomena will gradually loosen up, and your obsession with happiness and suffering, hopes and fears, and so on, will slowly weaken. Your devotion to the teacher and your sincere trust in his instructions will grow. After a time, your tense, dualistic attitudes will evaporate and you will get to the point where gold and pebbles, food and filth, gods and demons, virtue and nonvirtue, are all the same for you-you’ll be at a loss to choose between paradise and hell! But until you reach that point (while you are still caught in the experiences of dualistic perception), virtue and nonvirtue, buddhafields and hells, happiness and pain, actions and their results – all this is reality for you. As the Great Guru has said, "My view is higher than the sky, but my attention to actions and their results is finer than flour."

So don’t go around claiming to be some great Dzogchen meditator when in fact you are nothing but a farting lout, stinking of alcohol and rank with lust!

It is essential for you to have a stable foundation of pure devotion and samaya, together with a strong, joyful endeavor that is well balanced, neither too tense nor too loose. If you are able to meditate, completely turning aside from the activities and concerns of this life, it is certain that you will gain the extraordinary qualities of the profound path of Dzogchen. Why wait for future lives? You can capture the primordial citadel right now, in the present.

This advice is the very blood of my heart. Hold it close and never let it go!

~ Taken from Counsels from My Heart by Dudjom Rinpoche, Chapter 7
Shambhala: Boston, 2001

(Thank you, Jeannie!)

The Nature of Silence

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

~Wendell Berry

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There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.

In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.

~Rumi

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The beauty of the heart
is the lasting beauty:
its lips give to drink
of the water of life.
Truly it is the water,
that which pours,
and the one who drinks.
All three become one when
your talisman is shattered.
That oneness you can't know
by reasoning.

~Rumi

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"Deep in my looking, the last words vanished.
Joyous and silent, the waking that met me there."

~Lalla (India, 14th Century)

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Our hands imbibe like roots, so I place them on what is beautiful in this world. I fold them in prayer, and they draw from the heavens light.

~St. Francis of Assisi

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If I spent enough time with the tiniest of creatures, even a caterpillar, I would never have to prepare a sermon, so full of God is every creature.

~Meister Eckhart

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Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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"If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark."

~St. John of the Cross

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The Sowing of Meanings

See the high birds! Is their’s the song
That dies among the wood-light
Wounding the listener with such bright arrows?
Or do they play in wheeling silences
Defining in the perfect sky
The bounds of (here below) our solitude,

Where spring has generated lights of green
To glow in clouds upon the somber branches?
Ponds full of sky and stillnesses
What heavy summer songs still sleep
Under the tawny rushes at your brim?

More than a season will be born here, nature,
In your world of gravid mirrors!
The quiet air awaits one note,
One light, one ray and it will be the angels’ spring:
One flash, one glance upon the shiny pond, and then
Asperges me! sweet wilderness, and lo! we are redeemed!

For, like a grain of fire
Smoldering in the heart of every living essence
God plants His undivided power –
Buries His thought too vast for worlds
In seed and root and blade and flower,

Until, in the amazing light of April,
Surcharging the religious silence of the spring,
Creation finds the pressure of His everlasting secret
Too terrible to bear.

Then every way we look, lo! rocks and trees
Pastures and hills and streams and birds and firmament
And our own souls within us flash, and shower us with light,
While the wild countryside, unknown, unvisited of men,
Bears sheaves of clean, transforming fire.

And then, oh then the written image, schooled in sacrifice,
The deep united threeness printed in our being,
Shot by the brilliant syllable of such an intuition, turns within,
And plants that light far down into the heart of darkness and
oblivion,
Dives after, and discovers flame.

~ Thomas Merton

Of Black Hats, White Hats, and Mad Hatters

Excuse me while I slip outta this old paradigm and into something more comfortable.

The first law of wingwalking is: Never leave hold of one branch before taking hold of another. I now declare the first law of wingwalking null and void.

Again, the first law of paradigm shifts, as Thomas Kuhn suggests in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (or did he not suggest it and I just made it up?), is to allow cognitive dissonance to build until the old paradigm breaks under the weight of it, revealing the new.

I now declare the first law of paradigm shift as having itself been superseded. No new paradigm is visible; none has emerged; I look for none to emerge. We are the new paradigm.

Here I am, left without a dime, a paradigm or even a plugged nickel. Just as we cannot take anything with us into the afterlife, so we also cannot take anything of the old into the new world we face today, brave or otherwise. But I can laugh!

As a sovereign citizen of Planet Earth and a conscious co-creator, I let go of the branch called the old paradigm without having a hold on anything else. I know not truth or space. I am truth and space.

The new paradigm is to have no new paradigm – not if it’s conceptual, explanatory, a belief or a framework. It’s none of these.

Conceptual framework is superseded. Belief system is abandoned. Explanations have become outmoded..”

The new paradigm can only be lived and I can only describe it, dropping all pretense to “knowledge” and “explanation

Nothing I knew before can explain anything I will meet hereafter.

Wittgenstein said, “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” But he then stepped away from the mystery and entered an everyday world of which he doubtless felt he could speak. I face an everyday world that is rapidly becoming the mystery itself, whereof I cannot speak.

Ah, but my suffering is illusory! Goodbye to all that. I gladly take up the challenge.

Mad hatter, indeed!

Let novelty reign! The old strangeness is dead! Long live the new strangeness!

~ Steve Beckow - The 2012 Scenario

What is Beyond Consciousness?

The water of the mind, how clear it is!
Gazing at it, the boundaries are invisible.
But as soon as even a slight thought arises,
ten thousand images crowd it.
Attach to them, and they become real.
Be carried by them, and it will be difficult to return.
How painful to see a person trapped in the ten-fold delusions.

~Ryokan

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Watch yourself closely and you will see that whatever be the content of consciousness, the witnessing of it does not depend on the content. Awareness is itself and does not change with the event. The event may be pleasant or unpleasant, minor or important, awareness is the same. Take note of the peculiar nature of pure awareness, its natural self-identity, without the least trace of self-consciousness, and go to the root of it and you will soon realize that awareness is your true nature, and nothing you may be aware of, you can call your own.

When the content is viewed without likes and dislikes, the consciousness of it is awareness. But still there is a difference between awareness as reflected in consciousness and pure awareness beyond consciousness. Reflected awareness, the sense "I am aware" is the witness, while pure awareness is the essence of reality. Reflection of the sun in a drop of water is a reflection of the sun, no doubt, but not the sun itself. Between awareness reflected in consciousness as the witness and pure awareness there is a gap, which the mind cannot cross.

~Sri Nisargadatta

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The next time you feel extreme anger, anxiety, jealousy, or sadness, just notice each thought that is feeding that state. Let each thought fall away quickly, one after the other, like flashes of light. Then just rest with the full sensory and emotional experience in the body, without placing any agenda on it, without trying to think yourself out of it. In that moment, you stop mentally running from suffering.

~Scott Kiloby

~ ~ ~

Our personal viewpoints (self, other, world, duality) and impersonal viewpoints (no self, no other, no world, nonduality), are equal in that they arise and fall, leaving no trace. They only leave a trace if we follow one, thinking it is closer to truth or closer to our present experience. But nothing can bring us closer to our present experience. It's already here, appearing as the present viewpoint.

~Scott Kiloby

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Breath is Truth

Some people practice throughout their entire lives just by paying attention to breathing. Everything that is true about anything is true about breath: it's impermanent; it arises and it passes away. Yet if you didn't breathe, you would become uncomfortable; so then you would take in a big inhalation and feel comfortable again. But if you hold onto the breath, it's no longer
comfortable, so you have to breathe out again. All the time shifting, shifting.

Sylvia Boorstein

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POEMS by Alan Larus

Suddenly

Woke up in a play,
on a crooked way

Comedy from start
Much too big, my part
And in awe I am too small
Got a little light, that's all

Life's impossible to swallow
Like a closed door,
what may follow?
A coming oh so handily,
transformation of the alchemy.

I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.

http://www.ferryfee .com/bluesky/ Suddenly. html


In life to realise

At the end of winding road,
such a gift you gave to me
Tumbling down the mighty load,
in a white house by the sea

But my maker saved this spark
It is shining in the dark

Lesson learnt
Getting burnt,
where no shelter is

To the rays of bliss.

http://www.ferryfee .com/bluesky/ The_gift. htm

IN SILENCE

Be still
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your
Name.
Listen
To the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
Are you (as these stones
Are quiet). Do not
Think of what you are
Still less of
What you may one day be.
Rather
Be what you are (but who?) be
The unthinkable one
You do not know.

O be still, while
You are still alive,
And all things live around you
Speaking (I do not hear)
To your own being,
Speaking by the Unknown
That is in you and in themselves.
“I will try, like them
To be my own silence:
And this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
Burn, even the stones
They burn me. How can a man be still or
Listen to all things burning? How can he dare
To sit with them when
All their silence
Is on fire?”

From In the Dark Before Dawn, by Thomas Merton

http://www.innerdirections.org/journal/poetry/the-poetry-of-thomas-merton/

Thanksgiving Prayer

GREETINGS TO THE NATURAL WORLD!

Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as People.

Now our minds are one.

We are all thankful to our Mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time. To our Mother, we send greetings and thanks.

Now our minds are one.

We give thanks to all the Waters of the world for quenching our thirst and providing us with strength. Water is life. We know its power in many forms - waterfalls and rain, mists and streams, rivers and oceans. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to the spirit of water.

Now our minds are one.

We turn our minds to all the Fish life in the water. They were instructed to cleanse and purify the water. They also give themselves to us as food. We are grateful that we can still find pure water. So, we turn now to the Fish and send our greetings and thanks.

Now our minds are one.

Now we turn toward the vast fields of Plant life. As far as the eye can see, the Plants grow, working many wonders. They sustain many life forms. With our minds gathered together, we give thanks and look forward to seeing Plant life for many generations to come.

Now our minds are one.

With one mind, we turn to honor and thank all the Food Plants we harvest from the garden. Since the beginning of time, the grains, vegetables, beans and berries have helped the people survive. Many other living things draw strength from them too. We gather all the Plant Foods together as one and send them a greeting and thanks.

Now our minds are one.

Now we turn to all the Medicine herbs of the world. From the beginning, they were instructed to take away sickness. They are always waiting and ready to heal us. We are happy there are still among us those special few who remember how to use these plants for healing. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to the Medicines and to the keepers of the Medicines.

Now our minds are one.

We gather our minds together to send greetings and thanks to all the Animal life in the world. They have many things to teach us as people. We see them near our homes and in the deep forests. We are glad they are still here and we hope that it will always be so.

Now our minds are one.

We now turn our thoughts to the Trees. The Earth has many families of Trees who have their own instructions and uses. Some provide us with shelter and shade, others with fruit, beauty and other useful things. Many peoples of the world use a Tree as a symbol of peace and strength. With one mind, we greet and thank the Tree life.

Now our minds are one.

We put our minds together as one and thank all the Birds who move and fly about over our heads. The Creator gave them beautiful songs. Each day they remind us to enjoy and appreciate life. The Eagle was chosen to be their leader. To all the Birds - from the smallest to the largest - we send our joyful greetings and thanks.

Now our minds are one.

We are all thankful to the powers we know as the Four Winds. We hear their voices in the moving air as they refresh us and purify the air we breathe. They help to bring the change of seasons. From the four directions they come, bringing us messages and giving us strength. With one mind, we send our greetings and thanks to the Four Winds.

Now our minds are one.

Now we turn to the west where our Grandfathers, the Thunder Beings, live. With lightning and thundering voices, they bring with them the water that renews life. We bring our minds together as one to send greetings and thanks to our Grandfathers, the Thunderers.

Now our minds are one.

We now send greetings and thanks to our eldest Brother, the Sun. Each day without fail he travels the sky from east to west, bringing the light of a new day. He is the source of all the fires of life. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to our Brother, the Sun.

Now our minds are one.

We put our minds together and give thanks to our oldest grandmother, the Moon, who lights the night-time sky. She is the leader of women all over the world, and she governs the movement of the ocean tides. By her changing face we measure time, and it is the Moon who watches over the arrival of children here on Earth. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to our Grandmother, the Moon.

Now our minds are one.

We give thanks to the Stars who are spread across the sky like jewelry. We see them in the night, helping the Moon to light the darkness and bringing dew to the gardens and growing things. When we travel at night, they guide us home. With our minds gathered together as one, we send greetings and thanks to all the Stars.

Now our minds are one.

We gather our minds to greet and thank the enlightened Teachers who have come to help throughout the ages. When we forget how to live in harmony, they remind us of the way we were instructed to live as people. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to these caring Teachers.

Now our minds are one.

Now we turn our thoughts to the Creator, or Great Spirit, and send greetings and thanks for the gifts of Creation. Everything we need to live a good life is here on this Mother Earth. For all the love that is still around us, we gather our minds together as one and send our choicest words of greetings and thanks to the Creator.

Now our minds are one.

We have now arrived at the place where we end our words. Of all the things we have named, it was not our intention to leave anything out. If something was forgotten, we leave it to each individual to send such greetings and thanks in their own way.

Now our minds are one.


~ A Haudenosaunee "Thanksgiving" Prayer
http://www.firstpeople.us/html/A-Haudenosaunee-Thanksgiving-Prayer.html

Neither Nothing Nor Something - Robert Adams

What do you have to be to become nothing? What do you have to know to be nothing? To be nothing is a misnomer, for you make the nothing into some thing. If you're trying to be nothing, then you're trying to be something, aren't you? Because the nothing is something, that you're trying to become. Consequently, you should never strive to be nothing and you should never strive to be something, for they're both erroneous concepts. None of them really exist.

The question therefore is, "If something doesn't exist, and nothing doesn't exist, well what is?" And the answer is silence. Absolute silence. For the human mind and the human thinking, the human thoughts, can never comprehend what silence is. You try to put it into words, and you spoil it. There are no words that can interpret the silence, for when you go into the true silence, you go beyond nothing and something. Yet everyone has experienced this true silence who has gone beyond nothing and something, and appeared to have to first become something and nothing, in order to be silent.

There's something you have to know: No. 1. Nothing is as it appears. You have to feel this deep in your heart. Nothing in this whole universe is as it appears. So do not be fooled by appearances. You do not allow the appearance to get to you, to make you feel this way or that way, no matter what the appearance may be. You are to look at the appearance as you would look at a mirage. And this is scientific, for the appearance will change sooner or later anyway. Therefore when you feel something from an experience, it is subject to change. You'll not be the same again. This is why the average person keeps going up and down like a yo-yo. They respond to a condition, then the condition changes and they respond in a different way to the same condition, and this changes and you respond again to the condition. They keep responding again and again to what they see as a condition.

No. 2. Do not say that the world is maya, for if you say the world is maya, that's a concept you have. And this is a non-duality concept, but nevertheless it's a concept, for you're holding on to the fact that the world is maya. In reality maya does not exist. There is no maya. Therefore everything that appears to come from maya, must also not exist. Do you follow this?

Whatever you think does not exist, is a concept. It becomes a thing, something to hold on to. You go around saying, "Everything is maya, everything is maya, the universe does not exist." But that maya exists, and this is the biggest mistake you're making, for you think maya exists. What is maya? An illusion. To whom comes the illusion? To the one who believes maya as a concept, maya as a thing, a belief. In other words, everything that you believe up to this point is erroneous, and it should be dropped.

The same is true with the words of absolute reality, pure awareness, Brahman, sat-chit-ananda. These things become a safe haven for you, and they keep you back from your full realization, for you are holding on to these beliefs that there is absolute reality, there is sat-chit-ananda, there is nirvana. Where would these things come from except from your own mind? It is you who gave these things names. We have given names to something we do not understand. We call it reality. What is reality? Something that never changes. And the something that never changes, becomes a concept and you hold on to that.

Is it any wonder such few people are self-realized? Is it any wonder that certain people only are liberated, very few people liberated? For we have simply exchanged terms. We say the world does not exist but maya exists. We say everything comes from consciousness, everything comes from the absolute reality. We merely change words, change terms.

There is no absolute reality. There is no sat-chit-ananda. There is no Brahman. It is we who made these terms up, and we feel safe and secure by holding on to them. At one time we used to say, "God is with me." Now we say, "Consciousness is with me," or, "I am the absolute reality." We've just changed the names. That's all we've done.

No. 3 is: you are not even the silence, for as long as you can express the word silence, that's not it. You have to get to the place where you have absolutely nothing to hold on to, nothing to lean against. Even when Buddha said to take refuge in the Buddha, take refuge in the sangha, take refuge in the eight fold path, this again is a mistake. I'm not saying the Buddha made a mistake. What I'm saying is the reason he said this, is because he was speaking to ignorant people who had to hold on to something. But the Buddha realized there's nothing to hold on to. There never was anything to hold on to. Even when you’re told you're total freedom, the word freedom becomes a concept for you. As long as you can lean on to it, as long as you can hold on to it, and you feel good in it, it's a mistake.

Again, this is the reason so few people are self-realized. You're holding on to something. You're attached to something. Whether it's a teaching, or a person, or a satsang, or a sangha, you can never become free while you're attached to something.

So the question is, what shall I do? You do exactly what you're doing now, but do not think about it. This is the important point. Do not try to find some new profound teaching, that will give you new words, or new methods, or new rules and regulations. You merely do what you're doing now and you do not think about it, you do not attempt to analyze it, you do not think this teaching is higher than any other teaching. You leave yourself alone. When you learn to leave yourself alone, in body and in mind, you have arrived. Do not ask, "Where have I arrived? To what have I arrived?"

This spoils the whole thing. That's what I'm trying to explain to you. Do not look at something that I say, and attempt to analyze it, tear it apart, try to make something out of it, or take refuge in it. Just be. Be neither this nor that.

If you were only able to do what I tell you, you would immediately feel a tremendous happiness, a tremendous bliss inside of you. You would feel a tremendous joy welling up within yourself. This happiness, this bliss and this joy is your very nature. It has nothing to do with words, places or things. It is what you are when you let go of everything that you've been holding on to.

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The True Master

The world is full of half-enlightened masters. Overly clever, too “sensitive” to live in the real world, they surround themselves with selfish pleasures and bestow their grandiose teachings upon the unwary. Prematurely publicizing themselves, intent upon reaching some spiritual climax, they constantly sacrifice the truth and deviate from the Tao. What they really offer the world is their own confusion. The true master understands that enlightenment is not the end, but the means. Realizing that virtue is her goal, she accepts the long and often arduous cultivation that is necessary to attain it. She doesn’t scheme to become a leader, but quietly shoulders whatever responsibilities fall to her. Unattached to her accomplishments, taking credit for nothing at all, she guides the whole world by guiding the individuals who come to her. She shares her divine energy with her students, encouraging them, creating trials to strengthen them, scolding them to awaken them, directing the streams of their lives toward the infinite ocean of the Tao.

L a o – T z u

Quotes from Adyashanti

Ego is basically the movement of the mind toward objects of perception in the form of grasping and away from objects in the form of aversion.

This fundamentally is all the ego is.

This movement of grasping and aversion gives rise to a sense of a separate "me," and in turn the sense of "me" strengthens itself this way.

It is this continuous loop of causation that tricks consciousness into a trance of identification.

Identification with what?

Identification with the continuous loop of suffering.

After all, who is suffering?

The "me" is suffering.

And "who" is this me?

It is nothing more than a sense of self caused by identification with grasping and aversion.

You see, it's all a creation of the mind, an endless movie, a terrible dream.

Don't try to change the dream -- trying to change it is just another movement in the dream.

Look at the dream. Be aware of the dream.

That awareness is It.

Become more interested in the awareness of the dream than in the dream itself.

What is that awareness? Who is that awareness?

Don't go spouting out an answer, just be the answer.

Be It.

~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~

One of the most beautiful inquiries is, “What does my life serve?” This is a big question. It’s not asking, “What form is my service taking?” It doesn’t particularly matter what form our service takes when we are serving the silence of the heart. The only thing that’s important is, “What is my life really serving?

~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~

"If you are a true seeker of liberation you've got to be willing to stand alone. At the moment of Liberation everything falls away...everything. Suddenly the ground beneath your feet is gone, and you are alone. You are alone because you have directly realized that there is no other, there is no separation. There is only you, only Self, only limitless emptiness, pure consciousness.

To the mind, the ego, this appears terrifying. When the mind looks at limitlessness and infinity, it projects meaninglessness and despair. To the ego Absolute Freedom can look terrifying. But when the mind is let go of, the view changes from meaningless despair and fear to the unending joy and wonder of Liberation.

In Liberation, you stand alone. You stand alone because you need no supports of any kind. You need no supports because you have realized that the very notion of a separate you no longer exists; that there is nothing to support; that the whole ego experience was a flimsy illusion. So you stand alone but never, never lonely because everywhere you look, all you see is That, and You are That."

~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~

This innocence waking up, realizing that everything is itself, even all the confusion and all the ignorance and everything....this is the dissolving of confusion, of ignorance, of karma.

~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~

Enlightenment is perceiving not through the lens of ego. It is not an unending satori experience, unending awakening experience. This misunderstanding will create
more tail chasing than it is dreamed possible.

It is not the quality of "aha" that will sustain because it will not sustain itself. Next week you may be going to have another "aha" that is bigger.

True practices or useful spiritual disciplines, if there is any, is a way not fueling the egoic consciousness.

The liberating truth is not static; it is alive. It cannot be put into concepts and be understood by the mind. The truth lies beyond all forms of conceptual fundamentalism. What you are is the beyond—awake and present, here and now already.

To be here, all you have to do is let go of who you think you are. That’s all! And then you realize, "I’m here." Here is where thoughts aren’t believed. Every time you
come here, you are nothing. Radiantly nothing. Absolutely and eternally zero. Emptiness that is awake. Emptiness that is full. Emptiness that is everything.

http://www.adyashanti.org

The Simplicity of What IS - Joan Tollifson

Liberation is not about having the answers or having an experience. It has nothing to do with belief, but is rather the absence (or transparency, or seeing through) of belief. Waking up does not happen in the past or the future, only Now. Liberation or enlightenment is not something you find or acquire like a new car. It is not some dazzling or exotic experience like being permanently high on ecstasy or LSD. Liberation is seeing through the ubiquitous fabrications and mirages of conceptual thought, including the whole idea of liberation and the one who supposedly needs to be liberated.

Ultimate Reality is hidden right in front of our eyes in plain view. It is showing up as breakfast dishes, laundry, sunlight on leaves, the barking of a dog, sound of traffic or rain, the humming of the computer, the taste of tea, the shapes of these words, and the awareness being and beholding it all. And only when we describe all of this in words does it seem as if "awareness" is one thing and "the taste of tea" is something else. The non-conceptual actuality of this breathing-hearing-seeing-being is undivided, without center or periphery. No inside, no outside. No subject, no object. Simply this, just as it is.

And then perhaps a thought: "There must be more to life than this," or "What is the meaning of it all?" or "What about final enlightenment?" or "Isn't this all just the phenomenal manifestation, and isn't that an illusion?" Thought creates imaginary problems and tries to solve them. The complex human brain has an astonishing ability to conceptualize, imagine, remember, project, and think about things that have no actual reality. Yet even these thoughts are nothing but a momentary dream-like shape or expression of the One, undivided, boundless Whole.

Thought labels, categorizes, evaluates, and reifies the ever-changing perceptions that appear. Conceptual thought creates the hypnotic, mirage-like illusion of solid, persisting, independent things (including "me" and "you") -- the illusion of duality and separation. Thought imagines "me" as a separate character on a journey through time. It conjures up goals and stories of success and failure. It even creates the image of "me" as a serious spiritual person dedicated to getting rid of the "me." But without thinking, where is the "me"? What am I, really?

***

Is it possible that the peace and well-being we seek (that longing at the root of all our more superficial desires), cannot be found or satisfied by answers or attainments or experiences of any kind? Is it possible that the very search for it "out there" is precisely what prevents us from noticing that what we are seeking is the very essence of Here and Now?

And what is that?

It is nothing you can take hold of conceptually, and it's not any particular experience (as opposed to any other experience). It is the beingness, the groundlessness, the IS-ness of this moment -- this that is undeniably present beyond all doubt, requiring no proof or belief, impossible to deny -- before and after and even during all the grasping and searching and experience-seeking. The words (beingness, groundlessness, IS-ness) are only pointers. What they point to is nothing you can get hold of as an object. In fact, there really are no solid objects because everything is thorough-going flux. This no-thing-ness (or emptiness) is all there really is.

And this no-thing-ness is vibrantly alive, aware, conscious, awake, present. The grasping, searching and thinking may seem to destroy the wholeness of being or the spaciousness of presence-awareness, but can anything really destroy awareness, or the present moment, or beingness? Doesn't everything appear Here and Now, in awareness? And doesn't everything appear altogether at once as one diverse but seamless whole?

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The Wisdom of Nisargadatta Maharaj

"Either you remain forever hungry and thirsty, longing, searching, grabbing, holding, ever losing and sorrowing, or go out wholeheartedly in search of the state of timeless perfection to which nothing can be added, from which nothing - taken away.

... In it all desires and fears are absent, not because they were given up, but because they have lost their meaning."

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

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"Once the illusion that the body-mind as oneself is abandoned, death loses its terror, it becomes a part of living ... All happiness comes from awareness. The more we are conscious, the deeper the joy. Acceptance of pain, non-resistance, courage and endurance - these open deep and perennial sources of real happiness, true bliss."

"Forget the known, but remember that you are the knower. Don't be all the time immersed in your experiences. Remember that you are beyond the experiencer, ever unborn and deathless. In remembering it, the quality of pure knowledge will emerge, the light of unconditional awareness."

"But why worry so much about causation? What do causes matter, when things themselves are transient? Let come what comes and let go what goes - why catch hold of things and inquire about their causes?"

"If you could only keep quiet, clear of memories and expectations, you would be able to discern the beautiful pattern of events. It is your restlessness that causes chaos."

"Discard every self-seeking motive as soon as it is seen and you need not search for truth; truth will find you."

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"Spiritual maturity is being ready to let go everything. Giving up is a first step, but real giving-up is the insight that there's nothing to be given up, since nothing is your property."

"Having realized that I am one with, and yet beyond the world, I became free from all desire and fear. I did not reason out that I should be free, I found myself free, unexpectedly, without the least effort."

"Meet your own self. Be with your own self, listen to it, obey it, cherish it, keep it in mind ceaselessly. You need no other guide. As long as your urge for truth affects your daily life, all is well with you. Live your life without hurting anybody. Harmlessness is a most powerful form of Yoga and it will take you speedily to your goal. This is what I call nisarga yoga, the Natural yoga. It is the art of living in peace and harmony, in friendliness and love. The fruit of it is happiness, uncaused and endless."

"You must find your own way. Unless you find it yourself, it will not be your own way and will take you nowhere. Earnestly live your truth as you have found it, act on the little you have understood. It is earnestness that will take you through, not cleverness - your own or another's."

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