You Are What You Seek - Nonduality and the Awakening You Are

pfeldtman@gmail.com

We're All In This Together

by Ryan Moore

I need to know you're with me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life is radiantly monstrous
and perfectly, perfectly fucked up.

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

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

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

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

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

Did you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

I find it hardest when I feel isolated.

Although I can be quite articulate here in blog-world,

in the face-to-face interactions of everyday life I'm often at a loss

when asked to speak about what I'm doing with my life.

People ask me questions like:

"What did you do today?"

or

"What are you working on?"

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

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

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

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There is Nothing for the Ego in Enlightenment

If I was to translate the enlightened state down into human terms, I'd have to describe it as contentment. Being nobody, going nowhere, needing no reason to exist. To the ego, that probably sounds a little boring, and of course to an ego it is. But then again, there's really nothing for the ego in enlightenment. In enlightenment, the egoic false self is rendered an irrelevant illusion, a mask, a character that nothingness wears while pretending to be human.

Not only is there nothing in enlightenment for the ego, the ego is really nothing but a defense against enlightenment. I'm not saying that ego is bad or evil because its not. I'm saying that ego is a social and personal construct and therefore an illusion. But there's nothing wrong with an illusion. A painting is an illusion; a movie is an illusion; a good novel is an illusion. The problem isn't with illusion; the problem is with the emotional attachments and addictions of ego.

~ Adyashanti

The Philosophy of Anon

Anon
1 : archaic : at once : immediately
2 : soon, presently /tomorrow will be here anon - Nathaniel Hawthorne/
3 : after a while : later /more of that anon/

You live in a Universe

that exceeds your perception of it
You may see it, taste it
hear it or feel it
And while it contains all those things
It is more

To name the Universe

is an attempt to limit

limitlessness
Yet there is a part of us
that speaks
And that part needs names
So let us call this Universe,
Reality
with the understanding
there is more to it
Then we can ever name

There is also a part of us
that wants to be free of naming
Wants to be free of detail
free of manifestation
A part that only wants
the underlying mystery and magic
of Reality

The historical conflict between these two parts
these two engines of the mind
Is perhaps the result of a misunderstanding
We often feel it would be best
to be one and destroy the other
But who would cut off his right hand
because he wants to be left handed?
Who would willingly blind himself in one eye
or deliberately destroy one foot?
Who wants eternal Daylight
or forever Darkness
Why then should we seek only to name Reality
or to end all naming?
It is in the balance
that we find the universal harmony

Perhaps this dichotomy
is part of the natural human heritage because
We perceive this Reality
through the filters of our human brains
the Left and the Right minds
The Left brain understands
Logic and Language
The Right brain understands
Love, Magic and Religion
The Left analyzes and dissects
The Right synthesizes and creates
But who would want only one or the other?
Who would want rainbows of only one color?
All mystery and manifestation within us
arises from our perception and reflection
of the Universe
But the Cosmos is not obliged to reside
only within our grasp of it
Who can truly say
there is no more?
Who can limit the limitless?

You have been told there are
Three dimensions, perhaps Four
Things are not Black or White but Grey
such dogma denotes limited thinking

Believing thus you bleed
all color, texture and taste from Reality
We live in a multi-dimensional Universe
Unbound in its responses

to our eyes
hands and pallet
Our waking and dreaming mind
And still extending beyond

Perhaps when you name a thing ugly
you limit the beauty you can find in it
Perhaps when you name a thing bad
you limit the good that you can see in it
Is this a really balanced perception?
We may limit our perception
but we can not limit the Universe

Living is balanced by Non-living
Arduous is balanced by Easy
Day by Night
Love by Fear
Light by Darkness
Hope by Despair
Heat by Coolness
Earth by Fire by Water by Air by Earth . . .

None of us can expect an endlessly easy life
we all must touch Reality
Or spend our lives trying to hide from it
But when overwhelmed by one extreme
remember the other is not far away
You will discover that Reality is balanced
but not perfectly symmetrical
Such Cycles are a means of Balance
Everything happens
It just doesn't happen all at once
That's why we have Time

Let us consider for a moment
the two aspects of Balance
There is static Balance
where all things stop
all motion stops
no sound, no heat, no matter . . .
Nothingness
And there is dynamic balance
such as a man walking
the middle of a curving road
Know the difference
You can not control a thing
by only stopping it
Control comes from directing the motion
of things

When Balance is achieved
Is it possible to act
without doing anything?
To dance without moving?

Is it possible to be taught
without a teacher?
To have without holding?
To Act outside of Fear or Anticipation of reward?

Is it possible
to let things appear in the distance
move to this place
and let them go
While perceiving the balance
of this motion within Reality?

It is said that our current aspect of Universe
Began in a great explosion
or rending of nothingness into which
one tiny seed of energy became everything
The speaking side of the mind
sees the Wonder of this
The mysterious side of the mind
sees God

A beginning
a middle
what of the end?
Is this not in keeping with Balance?
The Past and the Future
fuse in this Instant
Anon

While the Matter/Energy of this Cosmos
remains balanced
The possibilities are without limit
The Universe is
the Well of first things
A storehouse of new and old things
ever evolving, growing, changing
The Universe is an ever opening flower
And You are part of the Dance
You are not divorced from it
how can you be an unnatural thing?
Are your atoms from somewhere else?
Is your pattern so bizarre?
You are human and share
in the heritage of human beginning
middle and end
How could it be otherwise?

Inside of You . . .
you are a universe
There is the infinite circular ring of You
surrounded the receding
Great out-there
and filled with the vast
Great In-here
The Universe touches your universe
at every points
and all points beyond
You can paint your walls
any way you like
Or you can learn
to see the subtle colors
already there

Hold to the center of the Universe
If you talk of it
and do not dance with it
you will become confused
If you paint it with all the pigments known
and do not reflect it
you will become murky
If you follow the rituals of others
with infinite attention to detail
you will become disillusioned

But if you face each moment
with an open hand
an open heart
an open mind
You will be the Master
of the Moment
And a life is built
of such moments

It is said that the Universe
is running down
But is in this degradation of energy
lies the integration of Life
Human life is the water
that runs uphill
Notice how beautifully
Order arises out of Chaos
without breaking any of the True Rules

The vast open spaces within the Universe
contain an indeterminate number of worlds
The Universe is always pregnant
giving birth to the New
This birthing is the rising up
from the ashes
The fresh breeze of Spring
within the depths of Winter
It is always present within you
How will you use it?

It is said
That which is not born can not die
Is that wisdom?
Is that eternal?
Perhaps . . .
But each moment is born
used
and passed to the past
If these moments are of no use
why do we build them?
Each is special, different
unique
Not a thing to be wasted
If you waste the moments of your life
you will end up
with a bunch of wasted moments

The Past touches the Future
As this moment
this instant
this Now
Anon
Right now
The waters of the Sea
are transformed into the mist
And in this same instant
the clouds are congealing and twisting
And in this same instant
the rains are nourishing all things
And passing through caverns
creek and riverbeds
Running away
away to the Sea
All in Motion
all in Balance
as it should be

There are myriad other examples
of this balance in process
and you should take time
to name them and see them in your mind
Do this and you will never grow bored
You must keep you mind ductile

In living
remember the Earth, the Air, the Fire
and the Rain
I know we have much fancier names than these
But you get my drift

Keep things simple
in your mind
Children have such complicated minds
to be truly simple
you must be older

Confront your adversaries
with your understanding of the Truth
Examine your own motives
seek counsel in wise people
Be Fair and Just
They are people too
and people generally will not do
things that they feel are wrong

If a person does a bad thing
he will have to lie to himself
Saying
"I have the right to . . ."
Or
"He hurt me and my honor demands . . ."
This is an attempt to avoid responsibility
to make the other an object
which can be destroyed with impunity
It is a lie

Try to avoid making such lies
But when the Truth is manifest
as it always must be
Forgive your opponents
forgive your friends
forgive yourself
Odds are its all non-sense
though it wont seem so at the time

Chose a vocation that you enjoy
Avoid over zealous competition
Commerce, like Life, is a process
not a means to an end
Avoid comparing yourself to others
Each of us has many attributes
and envy is not a nice one to have

Father and Mother your Children well
Any civilization
which does not prepare a place for
the children
Has about one generation
to realize its mistake


William C. Burns, Jr.
chyfrin437@yahoo.com

Infinite Self – Reclaiming Your Inner Power

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Soren Dreier

Author: Stuart Wilde

Twenty-five thousand people were attracted to my spiritual teacher over the few years that he taught, and at each level of progress, the teachings and disciplines got harder and harder.

After a period of about three years, almost everyone had dropped out; near the end, there were only 72 people left – one of which was yours truly. Eventually there were only three of us left. It was that tough.

The disciplines imposed by our teacher were difficult because they required you to be extremely spontaneous. So my teacher would phone and say, “There is a meeting next Wednesday evening in southern Spain at seven o’clock. Be there!”

There was no question of: could you afford the travel expenses, get the time off work, were you happy with the idea, or was it convenient for you? It was a matter of “be there”! If you were even one minute late for a meeting, you got tossed out forever. There were no ifs, buts, or maybes; we were cut no slack.

I remember a session that was held in California, at Big Sur. The meeting was called for six in the morning. A number of us flew from London, including two South African friends of mine. We got to the hotel the day before and checked in. My pals were up early next morning and decided to go for a little walk before the meeting started. They arrived back at the meeting room at three minutes past six.

They were not allowed to enter – in spite of the fact that they had flown all the way from London. That was the last I saw of them – on that particular path anyway.

What I learned from those experiences was that spiritual growth and the getting of a higher awareness is not necessarily convenient. That’s why most never make it. They want to reach a higher place from within the considerations of the ego and its limited consciousness – which often defines life into self-righteous, cozy little boxes, creating a self-indulgent energy that has the potential of a slug in a puddle.

The ego likes little boxes it is familiar with. But when considering an infinite consciousness, the first thing you have to do is burn the boxes. Lao-Tzu talks about it in the first few lines of the Tao Te Ching – when talking about the Infinite Self, the Christ consciousness, the God Force, the Tao, the Buddhahood, whatever you care to call it – is that it runs through all things, its everywhere, so it has no definitions.

Only the ego needs to define, discriminate, quantify, and measure things in order to create an edge or framework to life so it can feel secure and comfortable with what little it knows and comprehends. But the eternity of the grace of God flows through the life force of plants, trees, animals, humans, and all things. It doesn’t have a boundary or definition.

You can define the position of a tree because there is a definite space around the tree where it is not. Here’s the tree, and there’s the space around it where it is not. But the God Force is omnipresent, meaning it’s everywhere, it can’t be defined. It is the “nameless” from which everything flows. If the God Force is omnipresent, it must also be God, because God is everywhere. The God Force and God must be one and the same.

You can work it out. There is a law in physics that states that no two particles can occupy the same space. 

So, if the God Forces is everywhere, and God (He, She, or It) is everywhere, then God must be the God Force, and the God Force must be God – because you can’t have a particle of God existing in the same place as a particle of God Force.

Either you’d have to have a particle of God Force and a particle of God side-by-side, and then both of them are not omnipresent, or they would have to be superimposed upon each other, which is not possible. 

So the God Force and God are one and the same.

The act of defining life limits your perception of it. In the Tao, nothing is considered high or low, short or long. One could say, a journey is long because it takes you four hours to drive from A to B, but it’s not long when compared to sending a satellite to Mars. And that isn’t long compared to the distance from earth to the Andromeda galaxy.

Tossing our definitions of high, low, good, and bad is the first step towards grasping the indefinable nature of the Infinite Self. This can be a little unnerving for the ego because it likes the idea of my body, my people, my house, my car; I am here, and I’m not everywhere else. Of course, that is true in a strict physical sense, but in the realm of consciousness, your energy is bigger that mere concepts of my body, my life, my car.

As you expand your heart and go past your resistance to letting go, you comprehend yourself as an omnipresent, eternal being – one that dwells in a multidimensional state, timeless and immortal. Meaning, you existed before you came to the earth plane, you exist now in a physical form, and you will exist after you leave the earth place – after your body quits in the earth place.

The idea of the Infinite Self is beautiful, but it’s hard for the ego and the personality to grasp. If I say to you, “Think about Infinity,” you can try to imagine something going on forever. But if I ask what does infinity feel like, you will probably not have a precise feeling you can identify with. You might say, “Oh, yes, Stu, I think I know what infinity is like.” But thinking you know is only the first run on the ladder.

First you sell the ego-personality the idea as an intellectual principle. Then through discipline, meditation, opening yourself up, moving beyond fear – through coming to a more compassionate understanding of this planet – you finally comprehend the Infinite Self as feeling. Then you’ll be able to say, “Yep, I feel eternal, immortal, and infinite. I feel I am everywhere and nowhere, I dwell in the realm of spirit.”

Next, it’s important to grasp, early on, that spiritual growth is not necessarily convenient or comfortable. 

This is not only because you have to discard an awful lot of your beliefs and definitions – things you hold sacrosanct – but also because your can’t get to the Infinite Self without traveling back through the psychological and metaphysical reality of who you are and the memories of what you have done in this lifetime.

Looking at yourself can be uncomfortable. It’s difficult to learn to control the ego and discipline the mind without it reacting. However, it’s a vital part of the journey, and you have to raise your energy gradually, over a period of time.

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The Enlightenment

THE ENLIGHTENMENT.PDF

Click on the link above ...
 
Remember who you are, dear friends...

Walk As a Universal Being on Earth

by Eileen Meyer

Angelic Transmission in 2004, Published in Sedona Journal 2009

People say that they want to transcend, that they want to meet and know God. And then when God begins to rattle around in their consciousness the fear erupts, for there is no “known” identification with this frequency. There has been a loss of memory. For most have been invested for so long, for so many cycles, in the human world – in this disconnected state from the rest of themselves.

This is the cycle that is ending. And in this process, in order to stay in form and rejoin with Creation, or the Universal, there is a complete loss of identity - a complete surrender, as you say, to allow the form to be governed by the Universal Self. It does not mean that all relationships perish - all of your persons, places and things - it does not mean that they all perish, never to be seen again. It is that you press the restart button, and from that point forward you are relating in actuality with others, versus to relating to an image that you have designed within this human construct.

Why would one want to resist becoming Universal? There is no marker; there is no book; there is no story on your planet that prepares one for the actual meeting of the Unknown. Therefore, it is feared and resisted. There is no way to prepare for this, except gradually. And even those who have been preparing for years to allow this transformation – the full reversal from separation to Universal – even with these persons there can be resistance in the end, for they have had but glimpses of the Universal. For some it has been longer than glimpses - but the primary foundation of their life, in order to keep consistency with those around them, was to be focused in the conditioned world with the memory and the understanding that this is not all there is.

You see, they carry that knowing for a time. And you call these people "enlightened", by the way. They know, yet they still primarily operate within the human construct. They may pass on what they learn… report on what they have learned of the More, but your next step in your evolution is to BE that MORE – in all ways – including in physicality, in relationship with the earth, in relationship with what is actual.

The guidance at this time is to continue in your present-moment interactions, whatever that may be for you. Whether it is in words in this way or in a strictly feeling experience of it, you will be guided through this process to actual demonstration. Some of you have been consciously requesting and recalling portions of your overall intention for the life – to demonstrate the Universal on Earth… to be That Which You Are in form. In the past this has been theory, strictly theory, for how many examples have you experienced of the Universal Consciousness awakened on Earth? You have your stories about those characters long, long ago who seemed to have achieved this. This is not sufficient for you obviously, to make the transition yourself. For you have your examples embedded in your stories, icons, archetypes, but how often have you thought... how often have you wondered about That which is in you? How often have you asked to become That which you have projected onto others as beautiful; as loving; as powerful; as compassionate? That is the next leap for all of humanity and the opportunity, as we have said many times in the past, is to achieve and integrate this consciousness while in form; while maintaining your physicality. It is possible. And the possibilities are growing due to the willingness of some humans on Earth to take this next evolutionary step. Your dramas that you are experiencing now on the various stages throughout your human world, they will dissolve and there will be little memory of them when this choice is acted upon - to become That Which You Are - Heaven on Earth as you say.

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FREE YOUR MIND!

washyourbrain.org

Morpheus: I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it.

Sovereignty (noun)

• supreme power or authority • a self-governing state

Sovereignty is the quality or authority of being independent and in charge of the conditions you live under.

Please note: that sovereignty carries with it responsibility. Meaning... if you take your life in your own hands you also take upon yourself to act responsibly and with integrity in regards to your own life... your family, your community, your fellow human beings and the planet as a whole.

We have been courageous in our choice to enter this level of density with complete AMNESIA!

Our collective consciousness on the planet creates a thought field that is very dense. The resulting density of these thought patterns carries a level of frequency equivalent to a force or object with mass.

Bill Hicks: All matter is merely energy condensed into a slow vibration.

It is the collective consciousness that holds this holographic/virtual reality in its present existence. Human thoughts trapped within lower frequency waves results in human confinement to this matrix.

Put away those bad feelings. Prevent those bad thoughts from happening. Please. They are the bars of your prison. Or more simply, the 'bad' in your bad days.

Running here and there to find freedom is a sign that we have not grasped the true understanding of sovereignty. When we continue to find ourselves plagued by fear, jealousy, guilt, shame, doubt, attachment and all the adverse emotions that prey on the mind, it is evidence that we are not free. We are ultimately held captive within our own minds.

We exist in our minds. So free your mind and the rest will follow.

Bruce Lee: Knowing is not enough we must apply, Willing is not enough we must do.

To simply be aware of the illusion of separation will not be sufficient. We must passionately invoke the will to move beyond the illusion. Should we fail to invoke this level of passion, we will continue to exist based solely on the old experiences being stored in the brain. All thoughts are then formed from the old programming. Why not hack into your mind... and re-write your program? It is of great significance that we focus on our own transition and uphold the understanding that every moment is divine. In doing so, we can begin to rid ourselves of the lingering judgment of others as well as of ourselves.

Morpheus: It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes, to blind you from the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell, or taste, or touch... a prison for your mind.

As we stumble through this game with amnesia for the event...the key to remember is that transcendence requires sovereignty of mind.

Agent Smith: I must get free, and in this mind is the key, my key.

If we stand in certainty of our connection with source and detach from the need for a go-between or third party... we would discover truth. And through this realignment we let go of the dependency on guides, religion and gurus, and know...All things are you.

Until we can consciously reclaim this hidden knowledge and transform our minds, we will remain imprisoned to all things external to us.

We spend so much time struggling to achieve freedom in an external manner, but true freedom can only come from within, through freeing the mind... and TO GET OUT WE MUST GO IN.

As long as human beings continue to return on the wheel of reincarnation they can easily be redirected to new experiments (times, civilizations, races, etc...) within an old game. If all souls were to awaken to their greatness there would be no souls to participate in these experiments. The overpopulation of Earth is evidence of the many souls locked into the karmic wheel. Karma means cause and effect, not fate.

For those who believe that they are here for a grand reason, such as assisting in ascension or to hold the energy... realize that becoming all that you can will greatly assist the evolution of this species. In so doing, we impart to the whole the energy of alignment through the process of our personal alignment.

BE ALL YOU CAN BE!

What is the only thing that could keep you from doing that? What is the number one tool for keeping us bound and controlling and entire population? Fear.

Frank Herbert: I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

For the controllers, fear is the real black gold.Fear does one thing... it denies freedom. Fear is the result of imagined lack. It's the manipulative emotion witnessed in attitudes reflective of jealousy, hatred, anger, envy, doubt, distrust and the enslavement of and to all things, people and places.

Morpheus: You have to let it all go, Neo. Fear, doubt, and disbelief. Free your mind!

War. Poverty. Violence. Human misery. Fear and uncertainty have become ways of life.You may argue that it is society that needs fixing, not you... don’t treat the symptoms, cure the disease. But you alone can’t solve the world... it's a collective effort... and it must first START WITH YOU.

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The Looking Glass: Language as Mirror

by Fred Davis

Notice that you are already awake. 

Right now, this moment, the only reason you can read these words is that you're awake. You're already awake. You're as awake as it gets. You're already fully awake.

 

Given that you're already fully awake, how then could you wake up further? Since you're already awake, does that idea even make sense? You can't wake up more from where you are right now. And you can't wake up again.

 

If you want to read a book through that body, or watch a video, or send it to a retreat for further clarity or to get some context that has the potential to open to the door to further clarity, that's great. But before you do, notice that you don't need to read another book, watch a video, or go to a retreat in order to wake up, because you're already awake. 

 

If you want to do meditation, drum, dance, chant, or what have you, for the sake of grounding yourself in that present human experience you're having, or calming that unit's mind so that you can better hear yourself talk to yourself, and better watch yourself dance for yourself, terrific. Have at it. But, be absolutely aware that you can't practice yourself into awakening. You can't achieve what you already are.

 

You're just not who you think you are; that's the only issue here. You're undergoing a case of mistaken identity, and all you need today is a little light reflected from this mirror, this mirror of clear language that is also you. There is only you, but you tend to get a bit cloudy sometimes, and forget that. It comes with the territory when your spaciousness contracts around human beings, and it's no big deal. It's fine. When you're ready to be clear you find a bright mirror, so here you are, back in front of the vanity mirror.

Vanity, vanity, all is vanity! This is all you, every bit of it--you dancing for you, you preening for you, just you showing off for yourself, to yourself and loving it.

You think you're the human being reading these words. 

You're not. Well, you actually are that human also, but you're not that person exclusively. You're the awareness that's reading these words through that human being. The human is not reading the words; you are. The human is a reading tool for you just as reading glasses are a tool for the human. Reading glasses never mistake themselves for being the reader; humans almost always do. 

 

You think you need to wake up. You don't. All that has to occur is for you to recognize yourself as what you are. "Awaken" makes it sound like something really new and different needs to happen. It doesn't. Recognition, on the other hand, is simply about noticing what already is. See how much lighter the idea of recognition is versus the idea of waking up? Why make it hard on yourself, when you're clearing longing to see/be your true nature again.

 

Be easy on yourself. How much effort does it take for that human to recognize itself in a mirror? None. The same is true for you. You just have to be willing to look in the mirror and see the reflection instead of the projection.

~ ~ ~

Read the rest of Fred's article here:

http://awakeningcla rity.blogspot. ca/2013/03/ the-looking- glass-language- as-mirror. html

Dharamsala by Dean Henderson

(excerpted from Chapter 7: Trekking with God: The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries)

 

As a butterfly lost in a flower. As a bird settled in a tree. As a child fondling mother’s breast. For 67 years of this world I have played with God - Sasaki Roshi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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