Thandie Newton: There Is No Self

Now this is what I'm talking about! Beautiful!

Your Own Heart Is Waiting For You

There are still many gifts unopened from your birthday.

~ Hafiz

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Late Ripeness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ Czeslaw Milosz

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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."

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

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

~ Huang-po

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

~ Robert Adams

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

~ Benjamin Smythe

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

~Mags Deane

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

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

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

There is no need for suffering, God is here!

~ Rumi

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.

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Be silent. That Heart speaks
without tongue or lips.

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

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

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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.

Unstructured, Contentless and Ineffable

An Interview of Peter Fenner, Ph.D. by Alex Dijk for BewustZijn magazine

.....We set standards for our physical wellbeing that place a huge cost on the environment. We spend enormous amounts of money on our appearance: wearing the right clothes, trying to look young and attractive. In some weird way we want to be in optimum health, right up until the moment of our death! Globally, we expend vast amounts of energy and spend huge sums of money trying to retard the aging process and prolong life.

What a great asset it would be if we could just let ourselves age, for example, without holding on to some notion of agelessness or immortality. No one really believes that we can remain young forever, and still the illusion motivates us to spend enormous resources on trying to forestall the aging process.

The ecological alternative here is to discover how we already have everything that's needed to be fulfilled in the most comprehensive way possible. This isn't just a fanciful idea. There are hundreds of thousands of great spiritual masters throughout the ages that have shown us that this is possible. There are sages who lived in 'great bliss' in severe environments without any heating or air-conditioning, without the latest gadgets, and without the security of knowing that quality medical care was close at hand.

The ultimate benchmark that these sages offer us is the possibility of making the journey through aging and dying without losing a connection with the supernal bliss of unconditioned awareness. For these sages, death itself was a non-event. As the 16th Karmapa of Tibet said on his deathbed in 1981, 'nothing happens.'

....But more significantly, we can make our own experiment right now. Here we are. We've come together in this moment. How do we discover, first-hand, the very same reality that allowed the sages of the past and present to remain unperturbed in the face of the very same experiences that throw us into confusion, obsession, anger or fear.

The remarkable news is that nothing is needed in order to make this discovery. We don't need 'more time,' to be somewhere else, to receive a superior teaching, or engage in a special practice. All that's required is to see that we can be-that we are, in fact-already fulfilled. In this moment we don't need anything more. We don't need more money, a different body, a different partner-not in this very instant.

This moment-right now-is giving us everything we need just to be here; unassumingly, effortlessly, being 'no one' in particular, and with no need to be anywhere else. That's the magic of this moment. This moment is perfect. Why? Because don't need anything more. Here we are-you and me-in this tight, quite unique, perhaps slightly weird, but effortless conversation. We started with my observations about Buddhism and it's relevance to ecology, and here we are, not asking for anything more. This moment is giving us everything we need just to be here, in the simplest way possible. We don't need to be entertained, right now-enough is happening. We don't need a flashy car-we're not in it! In this moment, we don't need a different standard of living, or a better return on our investments- we are clothed, fed and comfortable. We have everything we need, in order to rest with 'what is.'

The beauty of this moment is that it's effortless and uncontrived. The magic of this moment is that it's ungraspable and ineffable. We can't say what 'this' moment is. It leaves without a trace or history. In the very same moment that it arises, it disappears. We can't say where it comes from, or where it goes. We can't even say 'where' this is, except that 'this' is where it is: where ever that is! We can't think about 'this' because there is nothing to think about. This is exactly what the sages mean when they say that 'this' is ineffable.

And now we can also see that if we are 'here' at the moment of our death, we have no fear. If we were to remain in this state, our death would be uneventful. The process of dying is nothing more than a continual letting go of everything at the conditioned level: our body, our friends, our possessions, our memories-in fact, the entire known world. At our death we say goodbye forever, to everything that we know and we never return. If we are here-resting in unconditioned awareness-everything can drop away with no grasping or attachment.

Read more of the article here:
http://www.nondualt raining.com/ nondual-ecology- interview- of-peter- fenner/

Listen to Your Life

If someone says, “To be enlightened you must fast and pray all night,”
Have dinner and go to bed.

If you see a sign, “This way to salvation,”
run the other way.

If someone says, "This book is the truth, you can buy it from me,"
Take your money and buy grapes and roses.

If someone says, "He’s talking tonight, thousands will be saved,"
Go for a walk… listen to the birds and watch the clouds, and leave your backpack, your Bible and your Buddha under a tree and hope they will be gone when you return.

Where we are going you can't carry anything, not even your name.

~ John Squadra

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

~ Frederick Buechner

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Mysteriously they entered, those few minutes.
Mysteriously, they left.
As if the great dog of confusion guarding my heart,
who is always sleepless, suddenly slept.
It was not any awakening of the large, not so much as that,
only a stepping back from the petty.
I gazed at the range of blue mountains,
I drank from the stream. Tossed in a small stone from the bank.
Whatever direction the fates of my life might travel, I trusted.
Even the greedy direction, even the grieving, trusted.
There was nothing left to be saved from, bliss nor danger.
The dog's tail wagged a little in his dream.

~ Jane Hirshfield

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Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.

~ Henry Miller

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As soon as the non-dual language becomes a strategy to manipulate, to try and get away from something, it has become something else. It is no longer on behalf of Truth. Content is nothing. The words are nothing without the Love they spring from. Love has no formulas. It can say anything or nothing, a little smile. It is not about the words.

~ Ramana Spencer

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You made me without name or trace, like the heart and soul.
And You made me hand-clapping without hands, like joy.
I said, "Where am I going, since my soul is in no place?"
You made me without "place" and moving like the spirit.

~ Rumi

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We are, what are we?
We know not, what we are!
For a moment we are blessed
For a moment we are accursed
Some moment we pray and fast
Some moment we are free spirits
Now we declare, 'Only we exist'
Now we declare, 'We don't exist'
For a bit, our heart is calm
In a bit, we weep rivers
Now we say, 'We are self-realized'
Now we ask, 'Who are we?'
'Sachal' we are only That eternally
What other contracts can we make here?

~ Sachal Sarmast

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

Be Silent

Sit quietly and listen for a voice that says, 'Be more silent.'

~ Rumi

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The role you play on the world's stage has no meaning other than the clear-sightedness with which you play it. Don't lose yourself in your performance - this only blurs the vision of your inner being.

~ Jean Klein

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Student: How did I end up with this role?

Master: No one else wanted it.

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In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight.

~ Ram Dass

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I wish I could show you,
when you are lonely or in darkness,
the astonishing Light of your own Being.

~ Hafiz

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When I was the stream, when I was the
forest, when I was still the field,
when I was every hoof, foot
fin and wing, when I
was the sky
itself,

no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, no one ever
wondered was there anything I might need,
for there was nothing
I could not
love

It was when I left all we once where that
the agony began, the fear and questions came,
and I wept, I wept, And tears
I had never known
before.

So I returned to the river, I returned to
the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again,
I begged – I begged to wed every object
and creature,

and when they accepted,
God was ever present in my arms.
And he did not say,
'where have you
been?'

for then I knew my soul – every soul -
has always held him.

~ Meister Eckhart

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Walking Out the Door

Has someone ever come up to you, thinking they know you, and started chatting away about people and events you have no knowledge of. You wonder who they're speaking to. Suddenly, they wake up and realize that they don't know you, that you only looked like someone they know or knew.

This is happening to me now. People are writing and speaking to me as if they know me. They don't. I wonder who they think I am. I wonder who they're speaking to. I wonder why they aren't more present with themselves, and me.

It is quite common, isn't it, to assume that we know people, because their name and face and voice are familiar. But we have to be careful, because something may have happened in their hypocenter, the place where earthquakes start. Without our noticing, their entire identity, history, and being may have shifted so suddenly and totally as to make them a new person. Not the old person with new ideas, experiences, and beliefs, but a new person, one we've never met. This can happen to anyone, to all of us. It's often why we undertake personal and spiritual growth work - to become something utterly new.

If we are to serve and support each other in our growth, change and transformation, then we must approach each other with care, especially those closest to us, those we think we know. If we are not careful, our knowing will create a prison for them and us.

Can we approach each other with this level of care, being willing to both know and not know, suspending easy and habitual projections, in order that we may all truly have the opportunity to grow, change, and transform?

Whatever the answer to this question may be, we each ought to be true to who we are, who we've become, who we're becoming. You know as well as I do what it feels like to pretend to be someone you're not, to accept and cooperate with the projections of others. It makes you feel sick, doesn't it? Self-betrayal leaves a bitter taste in one's mouth.

I love Rainer Maria Rilke's poem, "Sometimes a Man":

Sometimes a man stands up during supper

and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,

because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,

dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,

so that his children have to go far out into the world

toward that same church, which he forgot.

A few months ago, I stood up during supper and walked out the door. The children of my past do not know me.

On August 7, 1974, Philippe Petit, the French high-wire artist, walked across a wire he had strung between the two World Trade Center towers. He was on that wire, a quarter mile above ground, for 45 minutes. It was such a catastrophic enterprise, so beyond imagining, a feat of such daring that he walked from one life to another. When he was finished, he left his past. No one could follow him. He had become someone else on that wire.

I wonder what might happen if we were to truly let go of the self we were, and let go of the images we hold of others? I wonder what might happen if we stood up at supper, or breakfast, and walked out the door. I wonder what might happen in 45 minutes, a quarter mile above ground, with nothing but self-surrender to steady us and keep us safe, if never the same.

~ Robert Rabbin

Jean Klein: The Seeker IS the Sought

Student: And during this stay there was a moment of enlightenment?

Jean Klein: Yes, it was a total switch-over from the residual conditioned state to the unconditioned state. Awareness expanded completely and I felt myself in globality.

Student: Had this ever happened before?

Jean Klein: No. There had been glimpses, but this was more than a glimpse. There was no going back. I had found my real ground.

Student: Did you know in the moment that it would be permanent or did you discover this in the days that followed?

Jean Klein: Because of the quality of the switch-over there was no doubt that I could be taken again by duality, and this was confirmed in the days and weeks that followed. I felt a rectification in my body and in my brain, as if all the parts had found their right place, their most comfortable position. I saw all events spontaneously appearing in the non-state, in my total Absence, real Presence.

Student: Could you say what were the exact conditions, physical and mental, before this moment?

Jean Klein: There had been, for two years, a retreat of all the energy commonly used in becoming, so that when some birds crossed my horizon, instead of becoming lost in them, they were lost in me and I found myself in awareness free from all objects. This time, what I admired, the birds, dissolved in my admiring, in Presence. And admiring dissolved in the Admired. Before the birds appeared, I had been in a profound and prolonged state of being open to openness. Now I found myself AS the openness, identical with the openness. Openness was my being. There was no more duality.

Student: Was there any other difference between this time and other times when you had looked at birds?

Jean Klein: Before, there was a looker looking at something. This was a moment when there was simply looking without a looker. Previously, it had been my nature to live in pure perception with objects, not living in the divided mind. I had for a long time ignored the arising of all qualifications.

Student: Ignored?

Jean Klein: It belongs to the traditional approach, and so that of my teacher, never to refuse or indulge in the coming up of qualifications, but simply to ignore, and eventually forget about them. neither to look for freedom nor avoid non-freedom. The mind simply ceased to play a role except in a purely functional way.

Student: How is life different now?

Jean Klein: There is no more identification with time and space, body, senses, and mind. All events simply happen in awareness.

Student: Did your relationships change?

Jean Klein: There was no more relationship. As there's no longer an "I", there is not another.

Student: Can this non-dual state be described at all?

Jean Klein: It is love where the mind is dissolved in love. The seeker IS the sought, and is always so very, very near.

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True detachment comes when things leave us of themselves. And they leave us as soon as we have really understood that they never keep their promises.

~ Jean Klein

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The natural state of the relaxed brain is multidimensional attention. It does not need viewpoints, data, opinions, memory to be alert. When all the directions cease, an organic, non-directed watchfulness remain.
This is the threshold of "I am."

~ Jean Klein

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"Taking oneself to be a person is a habit just like any other. It is the desire to be distinct from one's surroundings, different from others. The person exists when it is formulated as a thought, so we can see that it is nothing but a memory. Repetition gives it a hold, a locality in which to situate itself."

~ Jean Klein

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"Where there's an ego there is purpose. And when there is no sense of "I" there is no purpose. Life is purposeless. There's only beauty in living in the eternal. If you believe you are the individual "I" you are isolated from your surroundings, and this isolation brings feelings of insecurity, fear and anxiety. Then you look for goals. You worry and anticipate. Life doesn't need a reason to be. That is it's beauty."

~ Jean Klein

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"What any desire really aims at, is a state of non-desire. This non-desire is a state in which we demand absolutely nothing. Thus it is a state of extreme abundance, fullness."

~ Jean Klein

Charisma Does Not Equal Enlightenment

Selling Water by the River

In speaking regularly with spiritual seekers, it dawned on me one day how addicted so many of them are to the power of charisma. They swap stories about how powerful this or that teacher is and compare experiences. They get a charge from it, many mistaking charisma for enlightenment. Charisma attracts at all levels: political, sexual, spiritual, etc., and it feeds the ego's desire to feel special. The ego loves getting hits of power—it's like a form of spiritual candy. The candy may be sweet but can you live on it? Does it make you free?

Freedom is not necessarily exciting; it's just free. Very peaceful and quiet, so very quiet. Of course, it is also filled with joy and wonder, but it is not what you imagine. It is much, much less. Many mistake the intoxicating power of otherworldly charisma for enlightenment. More often than not it is simply otherworldly, and not necessarily free or enlightened. In order to be truly free, you must desire to know the truth more than you want to feel good. Because if feeling good is your goal, then as soon as you feel better you will lose interest in what is true. This does not mean that feeling good or experiencing love and bliss is a bad thing. Given the choice, anyone would choose to feel bliss rather than sorrow. It simply means that if this desire to feel good is stronger than the yearning to see, know, and experience Truth, then this desire will always be distorting the perception of what is Real, while corrupting one's deepest integrity.

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Enlightenment has nothing to do with states of consciousness. Whether you are in ego consciousness or unity consciousness is not really the point. I have met many people who have easy access to advanced states of consciousness. Though for some people this may come very easily, I also notice that many of these people are no freer than anyone else. If you don't believe that the ego can exist in very advanced states of consciousness, think again. The point isn't the state of consciousness, even very advanced ones, but an awake mystery that is the source of all states of consciousness. It is even the source of presence and beingness. It is beyond all perception and all experience. I call it "awakeness." To find out that you are empty of emptiness is to die into an aware mystery, which is the source of all existence. It just so happens that that mystery is in love with all of its manifestation and non-manifestation. You find your Self by stepping back out of yourself.

~ Adyashanti

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Today I Awoke

Today I awoke, finally I see the Self has re-turned to the Self.
The Self is none other than the Self.
I am deathless. I am endless. I am free.
The birds outside sing…
The birds outside sing and there am I.
The seeing of leaves on the trees, that seeing am I.
The body breathes, breathing am I.
I am awake and I know that I am awake.
Seen from the old eyes, everything is asleep, a game, a delusion.
But now I am awake. I am the play. I am the game. I am the
delusion.
I am the enlightenment I sought, looking everywhere.
Nothing is separate, nothing is alone.
I am all that I see. All that I smell, taste, touch, feel, think
and know.
I am awake and this awakeness is the same as Shyakyamuni Buddha’s.
Today the leaf has returned to the root.
I am all name and form and beyond all name and form.
I am Spirit, no longer trapped in a body.
I am free. I am free because I am awake.
So ordinary. Who would have thought ? Who could have guessed?
I am home. I am really home. Ten thousand life times.
Ten thousand life times but today I am home.
Ten thousand life times but today I am home.
This is not an experience. This is me.
I am awake. Finally, I am awake.
Nothing has changed, but I am awake.
Before I tasted the root many times and felt, how delicious.
Today I became the root. How ordinary.

~ Adyashanti: My Secret is Silence: Poetry and Sayings of Adyashanti

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Rest and Be Taken

When there is deep abundance
there is nowhere to abide.
There is nowhere to rest
or grasp onto
and yet there is rest

The sky abides
yet it never rests.
Neither can we say that
the sky is not always at rest.
We talk about the sky
as if it were something
as if it actually exists -
and yet we cannot say that
the sky does not exist.
The sky is nothing but
coming and going.

Everything is perfectly spontaneous.
The coming and going arise mutually
instantaneously.
If the true I is asleep
you will miss the point entirely
and you will continue to dwell
in the world of opposites.

So see the two as one
and the one as empty
and be liberated
within the world of duality.

At first it seems
as if begoing follows becoming.
But look even closer
and you will see
that there are only
flashes of lightning
illuminating the empty sky.

Life and death
becoming and begoing
are only words.
In order to save your life
you must see that you die
instantaneously
moment to moment
instant to instant.

Now where are you going to abide?
And where are you not abiding already?

Indeed there is nowhere
to rest your head
and there is nothing but rest.
So let go of all ideas
about permanence and impermanence
about cause and effect
and about no cause and no effect.
All such notions are dualistic concepts.

The Truth of what you are
is completely beyond all duality
and all notions of non-duality,
and yet it includes duality
and non-duality alike.
Like an ocean
that is both waves and stillness
and yet un-definable
as waves or stillness.

The truth of being
cannot be grasped by ideas
or experiences.
Both waves and stillness
are the manifest activity
or your own self.
But self cannot be defined
by its activity
nor by its non-activity.
The truth is
all-transcendent
ungraspable, all-inclusive
and closer than your own skin.

A single thought about it
obscures its essence.
The perfume of true life
is right in your nose.
There is nothing you can do
to perceive it
and yet you must do something.
I say:
Rest and be taken.
Rest and be taken.

~ Adyashanti: My Secret is Silence: Poetry and Sayings of Adyashanti

To read more poems:
http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/A/Adyashanti /index.htm#PoemList

http://www.adyashanti.org

HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE - June 21, 2011

Here are some astrological observations from Barbara Hand Clow.....Enjoy!

"The Summer Solstice has arrived north of the Equator where it is time to breathe, relax, be sensual, and to become fully embodied. South of the Equator, it is the Winter Solstice where it is time to assess what you've created during the year, especially to consider your Spring Equinox intentions made during September 2010. [This site is written for readers who live north of the Equator, so those down south will need to switch your comprehension of the influences of the solstices accordingly.]

For those of us living in the north, our spring coincided with the opening stages of the Universal Underworld on March 9 (hereinafter the Universal). Experiencing the Days and Nights of the Universal during only 18 days is causing great changes in our personal and collective lives. Thus, letting go and relaxing will be difficult this summer. For most people, it's been hard not to be totally distracted with so much going on, so it could be easy to miss this summer's potential to flesh out and deepen what we've been creating since March. Yet, remember, you create your own reality, and the events in the outer world are deeply connected and inspired by what's in your minds. Please take a look at your Spring Equinox intentions to assess how you are doing now, and also take note of the things that are popping into your life that you didn't even plan on. During such intense time acceleration, chaos is breaking out everywhere, since chaos is always part of new creation: The reorganization of the fractal fields creates exceedingly unexpected new things in your life.

We are in the middle of three eclipses from June 1 through July 1, 2011. The June 1 eclipse occurred during the Day Three sprouting phase of the Universal. In the reading for the June 1 Gemini New Moon-which was an eclipse during Day Three-I summarized the progress of three key events that were seeded during Day One of the Universal. I will not be constantly repeating this material as I follow it through to October 28, 2011, so you should print out or save a copy of the reading for the June 1 Moon in Gemini to make it easier to follow the unfolding events.

Events since the Gemini New Moon have continued to verify the critical nature of these three themes: a crisis over the use of nuclear power, chaos in the Middle East, and global financial instability. During this Day Three sprouting phase, three Fukushima reactors are in meltdown, Syria is afflicted with a civil war, and the Americans are opening a fourth war front in Yemen. Regarding the financial crisis, on June 1 (the first eclipse), the European Union Times published an astonishing story about the real reason the president of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested by the Federal Security Bureau in New York on May 14 for supposedly having attacked a hotel maid. Apparently, Strauss-Kahn discovered that Fort Knox has been emptied of all its gold bars, which are the basis of US drawing rights in international banks, and he was trying to fly back immediately to Europe to meet with the German President, Angela Merkel! The real story about what he was doing from the European Union Times is posted on http://2012patriot.wordpress.com

My reading for the March equinox suggested that the Universal would unfold amid an explosion of chaos: The equinox Sun in 0 Aries moved right to Uranus in 1 Aries soon after the equinox. Many planets were in Aries throughout the spring, so this hot astrological influence was right in tandem with the Mayan Calendar as usual. Many of you are feeling quite disturbed and distressed right now, and during such great change, I find that deep reflection on personal growth in light of events in the collective world is essential. As humans, we keep our sanity by maintaining some kind of logical explanation for what's going on in our world, and Carl Calleman's thesis on the Mayan Calendar certainly helps. [I, for one, cannot imagine comprehending our times right now without Calleman's idea! I'm going to continue this site through the Winter Solstice 2012 mostly to reflect upon the nature of the new world that will be emerging after the end of the tun-based Calendar, October 28, 2011.] Right now, we are in the end of Night Three (Day Four opens June 25), and we are beginning to see the real implications of the Day Three sprouting: The Middle East is being totally reshaped by revolution; many countries, besides Japan, are seeking ways to shut down their nuclear reactors; and the world's financial systems are tottering. Arresting one key player after another for sexual peccadilloes will not hide the truth.

Meanwhile, the only thing that matters is how you live your life. Who do you love now? Are you faithful and devoted to each person you are connected to? Are you ready, at a moment's notice, to go right to those who need assistance from you? Do you trust the grand plan that is unfolding no matter what will happen in your personal life? During times like 2011, heroes are made. Or, are you sitting around groaning and waiting for the end of the world while you are doing nothing in your own life? I suppose if I could make a film that would characterize the current scene, it would be titled Waiting for Nibiru. Ironically, in the middle of silly apocalyptical fear, a popular film is popping up titled Tree of Life, and my dear friend Brian Swimme has announced his monumental film, The Universe Story, which premieres in September 2011! Surely we are living in a time of miracles! We are all invited to observe in wonder, breathe deeply, and enjoy the show!

This Summer Solstice chart is very musical, like an early medieval madrigal; when the theme of one planet is played, all the other planets sing along. This is because many planets are in a 0 to 10 degree range causing many more multiple aspects than usual. The Sun in 0 Cancer, for example, is exactly 30 degrees from Mars, while sextiling Jupiter; squaring Uranus; trining Neptune, Chiron, and Moon; and opposing Pluto! Quite a potent entry into summer, wouldn't you agree? The other notable character in this chart is its director-Saturn; he stands alone by the rising of the Washington, DC chart, while the other bodies are in a wide "bucket" with Saturn as the handle. Saturn directs the field of an impressive Grand Square involving Mercury/Sun in Cancer, Uranus in Aries, and Pluto in Capricorn. Saturn went direct on June 12 and is now moving forward to cross the 1776 USA Saturn on August 28 (see the USA chart at the end of this reading).

In late August, the world will be deeply immersed in the Night Five, the destruction phase of the universal. I have to wonder who set up this game? Often I wonder if the US could have avoided being central player in the National and Planetary Underworld game called Empire? But, it's not really about the US during the summer season-it's about a global emotional-body cleansing with Saturn in 10 Libra exactly quincunx the Moon in 10 Pisces. The Moon passes over Neptune/Chiron just before the Solstice, which means that we all will be experiencing acute emotional healing crises while the structures of the last 5,125 years crash and burn. Since Saturn is in Libra, this is the grand balancing, the grand culling. What could this be? For me, if we are in our hearts and coming from our hearts, we will exist in universal peace and joy. Those who are hard-hearted will be part of the culling. We are moving out of Homo Agressus into Homo Pacem; you are either a warrior or a peacemaker. It is each person's choice, it always was, yet now the field is shifting to peace and harmony.

We begin with the Sun moving into Cancer as a focus. Engaged in multiple aspects, its agenda is to seek comfort, joy, security, and nurturance. Mercury is 10 degrees just past the Sun, and so the Sun in Cancer comprehends itself and knows it wants total and enveloping nurturance. The Sun feels its power because it resonates freely with Mars in 0 Gemini, and the Sun is expanded and stabilized by a sextile from Jupiter in 3 Taurus (exact on June 25). Jupiter in Taurus is grounded and wise, so this sextile to the Sun (with Mars activating their midpoint) is like the song, "Don't Worry, Be Happy" by Bobby McFerrin. Yet, as the Sun in Cancer sextiling Jupiter in Taurus lilts along, the Sun is kicked in the butt by a square from Uranus in 4 Aries (exact on June 26). Since the Sun in Cancer opposes Pluto in 6 Capricorn (exact on June 27), Uranus sits at the top of a T-square to Sun opposite Pluto. This tense T-square occurs while Uranus-square-Pluto is in close orb, so this summer will express the early stages of seven Uranus squares to Pluto that will come in 2012 and last until 2015. Described simply, this T-square suggests that this summer is when everyone on the planet will realize that the classic old ways are not coming back. Then Saturn in Libra opposing Uranus in Aries makes this T-square into a cardinal Grand Square, which anchors the shift into new realities. The exact aspects to the Sun and other planets go off like time-released capsules through June 27, so the new themes will be complex as well as very apparent-since Mercury is a strong player in the Grand Square.

As our species evolves with new cultural ways, old security blankets have to go. The most amazing thing about this Solstice chart is that it even indicates what the new patterns may be. The Sun in 0 Cancer exactly trines Neptune retrograde in 1 Pisces, which is close to Chiron in 5 Pisces; and the Moon in 10 Pisces has just passed over Neptune and Chiron. This is an exquisitely subtle planetary and lunar dance, like a sweet little Irish jig that dangles our future right in front of our noses. This Cancer/Pisces trine says it's time to heal (Chiron) our separation from spirit (Neptune), and the way to do it is to open our hearts (Sun/Mercury trine Moon). The most profound Cherokee teaching is in the stories about the "Two-Hearted's." From these stories, I learned that my people (Cherokee and Celtic) have endured because we live in our hearts no matter what the two-hearted ones-the conquerors-did to our people. We have endured; they never penetrated and split our hearts. And now, during this beautiful summer season, the end of dominant cruelty is coming for all of us...."

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