NDhighlights : Messages : 4150-4179 of 4921

#4150

From: "Gloria Lee" <editglo@...>
Date: Tue Feb 1, 2011 8:01 pm
Subject: #4150 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

glee_be

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#4150 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

As in most Buddhist teachings, the point of Mara is not to "believe in" Mara
but to understand what Mara represents in your own practice and
experience of life.

"Mara's army is just as real to us today as it was to the Buddha," Jnana Sipe
said. "Mara stands for those patterns of behavior that long for the security
of clinging to something real and permanent rather than facing the question
posed by being a transient and contingent creature. 'It makes no difference
what you grasp', said Buddha, 'when someone grasps, Mara stands beside
him.' The tempestuous longings and fears that assail us, as well as the views
and opinions that confine us are sufficient evidence of this. Whether we talk
of succumbing to irresistible urges and addictions or being paralyzed by
neurotic obsessions, both are psychological ways of articulating our current
cohabitation with the devil."

from somewhere on the internet ,^)

posted to Daily Dharma by Amrita Nadi

Ed Note: Article here: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma8/mara.html

Work, Watch, Wait by Art Ticknor

So Jesus said to those Jews who believed in him, "If you live by what I say,
you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you
free." John 8:31-32

Chela-A: What does it mean to know the truth? Teacher: Knowing the truth
is not a knowing in any form you're familiar with. It's seeing what is as
opposed to what seems. "What is" is what you truly are. Do you know what
you are? Do you see the truth?

A : Apparently not. I don't really know what I am, and I certainly don't feel
free. So I must not see the truth.

T : What do you tell yourself the reason for the non-seeing is? Do you feel
   it's because the truth is in the dark and when light reveals it you'll be able
   to see it? Because a new "eye" has to open in order to see it? Something
   else?

A : I keep seeing my personal self! It's annoying. It's just a damned notion,
   but I take it to be so real. No, no other light, or new eye, just a stupid
   conviction that needs to stop happening. "Unclenching" sounds kind of like
   what's needed.

T : Yes, the personal self is a clenched fist. A fist has no sight. Only the
   Truth/Self sees, and only the Truth/Self sees itself. Reflecting back on
   my life, I could say: "I looked away and saw a projection of myself. I
   looked back and saw my real self."

Teacher to Chela-B: Do you feel you currently see the Truth, or that it's
hidden from you? If you do see it: do you recognize it or admit the
implications of what you see; if not, how do you explain to yourself the
non-recognition or non-admission?

B : I feel that I can see the Truth. I can see that all things arise and
disappear in the view, including every single aspect of I/me. I/me is not-I,
yet all not-I are contained in I.

I tell myself that there must be something I'm NOT seeing clearly, which is
   why I persist in craving, seeking and trying to become something. I don't
   know which of the two categories this explanation falls in, since the
   explanation probably contains aspects of both. I am tending toward the
   interpretation that if I notice what I haven't yet noticed, then the
   unbelief or non-admission would be impossible to sustain.

T : "As a child, I held on to childish beliefs."

Chela-C: Hidden. The mind is attached to the mental drama and pretend
              ego-building but could tire of this and begin to turn its inquiry to
              the observer truthand over time somehow the resistance would
              wear out and a vision would happen that hasn't yet. I've also been
              assuming, since what I see isn't me I need to see something I
              haven't yet, when the observation is part of the truth too. It's that
              kind of mental blinders (in this case a misinterpretation perhaps)
              that keep the view focused on the parts rather than the whole and
              I don't know how many are left and how long it'll take to see them.
              T: "I was in love with sorrow."

Chela-D: I often feel like I see the Truth. I don't fully accept it because I
still have attachments to untruth. Some of these attachments I'm
not seeing yet. Some I'm not willing to let go of yet.

T: "I concocted elaborate stories to try to still the troubled waters."

Chela-E: It feels like it's hidden. I tell myself it's not seen because I'm not
              ready yet due to continued strength of the ego (individuality sense)
              and all its attachments. I can hypothetically understand that Truth
              may be perfectly obvious and I'm just ignoring it because of this.
              Also, the Truth as expressed by those reporting back feels
              extremely right, but somehow seems too good to be true. T: "I
              prayed to my Self, imploring my Self to show me the way, to reveal
              the truth of myself to myself. But when my Self asked me if I were
              ready, I said: 'Not just yet.'"

Chela-D: I've been working hard, writing down my observations, learning new
things, etc. Is all this an elaborate story I've invented to avoid the Truth?

T: That's a question you'll have to answer for yourself. You're the only
authority to gauge whether my response ("I concocted elaborate stories
to try to still the troubled waters.") fits your situation.

D: Is despair a valid strategy?

T: Despair (loss of hope) is not a strategy. It's a feeling-reaction that
     generates a belief or conviction. The feeling is a fact; the belief or
     conviction is an interpretation that may be more or less valid. The
     existentialists like Sartre and the popular crop of today's advaitins (who
     share the view that "you're already enlightened � just admit there's no
     self," etc.) represent exhausted seekers who stop short of realization by
     latching onto the belief that there's nothing to be done. That's a
     premature interpretation of hopelessness. Of course some people never
     start seeking due to an adolescent interpretation of hopelessness
     ("there's no answer" or "it's too big for me to tackle," and so on). A
     valid strategy is to make our life a laboratory for finding the truth of
     what we are and to feel our way intuitively, allowing intuition to refine
     the strategy as we go along. Mental clarity increases as we "back up"
     within the mind ... as more and more of the mind's activity comes into
     view. Final mental clarity is only possible if we can see mind from a
     higher perspective.

Chela-B: There was a deflating effect of your statement that endures to
right now. Thing is, we've done this before. The affliction, the response, the
story, the forgetting � and repeat the cycle. Perhaps there is a bit more
honesty, a bit more acceptance of my complete ignorance, than the last cycle.
What is it that your question and feedback was designed to do? Is there a
better way for me to approach this? To show that it's time that I let go of
mental forms that have been repeating since childhood? But if I am
convinced I am those mental forms then how is that necessary higher
perspective achieved?

T: What I said was a statement reflecting my life-experience triggered by
     your answer to the question. You might take a look at whether your
     prolonged focus on your balloon's frequent deflation is a possible
     defense mechanism that allows you to avoid looking at the facts that life
     is trying to present to you � and therefore allows a reinflating of the
     balloon (ego, self-belief) to prevent its collapse.

Chela-E: Had a big blow to the seeker ego this past week by realizing that
I'm the same old unenlightened schleb I've always been. It's like there was a
house of cards being built up represented by hours of meditation, retreat
attendance, doctrine study, etc., which was severely shaken and damaged if
not toppled. This resulted in being distraught and a lingering feeling of
gloominess. Seeking activities will continue, but I feel the grandiose ideals of
Enlightenment need to be replaced with practicality, simplicity and realism.

~ ~ ~

Recognizing what you truly are takes work � possibly years or a lifetime of
work. I doubt if anyone puts in the necessary effort unless they come to see
(i.e., intuit) that it's the only solution to their deepest question, desire or
dissatisfaction.

What obstructs our clear view is a field of faulty beliefs about what we are.
Life erodes those beliefs over time, sometimes providing traumas that knock
them down. We can speed up the process by intentionally looking for them
and consciously doubting them. Introspection � watching the mind's activity
and looking for patterns � provides the data to challenge the validity of
self-beliefs. We work then relax; pray then listen; push then wait.

We can't force a breakthrough to self-knowing. The pins have to line up
properly for the lock to open, and we don't know what key will do that.

If you have any questions or comments of your own, email Art Ticknor .

http://tatfoundation.org/forum2011-02.htm#4

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#4151

From: "Jerry Katz" <umbada@...>
Date: Wed Feb 2, 2011 7:23 am
Subject: #4151- Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

nondualguy

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#4151- Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

DOES AWARENESS ARISE FROM THE BRAIN?

by Greg Goode

It is never our experience that witnessing awareness is not present. Therefore it is never our direct experience that witnessing awareness comes into existence based on a causal process. The process itself must appear in witnessing awareness, which was there �first.� Awareness is always and already.

There is no contradiction between nonduality and neuroscience. Neuroscience measures a subtle object. This subtle object is a kind of sentience, a local reactivity associated with a biological organism. This sentience is an arising in the witnessing awareness that is your true nature, your direct experience, infinite sweetness and unconditional love.

Nonduality and neuroscience � you can think of them as different songs.

This article is a topic taken from [Greg Goode's] upcoming Nonduality Press book called Direct Inquiry: A User Guide, Foreword by Chris Hebard. The book will feature lots of experiments in awareness, and even some diagrams of many of the unhelpful yet common ways we interpret our experience -- ways which cause alienation and separation.

This part on the brain is taken from a large section dealing with the body. The body is not often dealt with in nondual teachings, writings and gatherings. But it is just as much a part of experience as emotions, thoughts and feelings!

Actually, your direct experience can show you directly, in the here-and-now, that:

The "body" is not a physical object.
The "body� is not a separate object endowed with a separate sentience.
The "body" is not a container of awareness.
Rather, the body, like the world, is awareness itself.

That is, in direct experience you can discover that the �body� is actually the body of love and the world of light: pure clarity and unconditional openness. The body is actually the world � there is no difference to be found. It is the global world of experience in which there is no inside/outside, no here/there, no separation and no suffering.

But what about the brain? Many credible scientists say that awareness is a produce of brain chemistry. What about that??

Here is a preview.

�the pinkish gray meat between our ears produces the richness of experiential awareness. -- Science and Nonduality Conference website

In college I dissected brains. As an undergrad student, I was a physiological psychology major. Many people, even folks attracted to nondualism, think that the brain is what gives rise to awareness. But is that our direct experience? --Greg

The World

When looked at very closely, physical objects are not to be found. They melt directly into awareness. Your direct experience of a physical object is nothing more than colors, sounds, textures, sensations of hardness, softness, moistness or dryness. Each of these sensations is inseparable from its exclusive sensory modality. In other words,

colors are inseparable from vision,
sounds are inseparable from hearing
sensations of texture, hardness, softness, moisture or dryness are inseparable from touch
flavors are inseparable from taste
fragrances are inseparable from smell

Even in imagination, �sense objects� cannot appear apart from �sense faculties.� This is shocking if it is �grokked.� For example, if it is deeply understood how a color can never be experienced separately from seeing, then it simply makes no sense to believe that you can �see a color.� Colors aren�t objects hanging around outside awareness, waiting to be seen. Rather, the arising of color is what we mean by �seeing.� The way we ordinarily speak of seeing in the everyday sense, we allow that an object is present whether currently seen or not. In the everyday sense, if your cat runs out of the bedroom, you think of the cat as existing, but momentarily unseen. The cat can be seen, and it can be unseen. When it is unseen, it is simply �somewhere else.�

But of course in our direct experience of color, an unseen color is never experienced. The absence of a color is never experienced. If a color is not something experienced as absent, then it can�t be the kind of thing that is experienced to be present. A color, like any other �arising,� is not the kind of thing that can alternate between being present and absent. You can�t have a one-sided coin. If you can�t have one side of a pair of opposites, then you can�t have the other side either. So neither �present� nor �absent� applies to an arising.

This is our direct experience �of the world.� Neither present nor absent, but experienced as awareness itself.

~ ~ ~

This has been only half the article by Greg Goode. Please read the rest of the article at

http://greggoode.stillnessspeaks.com/ssblog/awareness_and_brain/

While you are on the Stillness Speaks site, sign-up for their newsletter and receive your choice of a DVD for only postage and handling charges. It's a very good deal:

http://www.stillnessspeaks.com/newsletter_signup

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#4152

From: "Jerry Katz" <umbada@...>
Date: Thu Feb 3, 2011 10:07 am
Subject: #4152- Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

nondualguy

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#4152- Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

I was booking a space for our Nonduality Satsang Meetup group to meet and was told that our group could follow a Dances of Universal Peace group. And I thought, what the heck is that? Turns out there are Dances of Universal Peace groups around the world.

Quoting from the article below, "The Dances of Universal Peace are simple, meditative, joyous, multi-cultural circle dances that use sacred phrases, chants, music and movements from the many spiritual traditions of the earth to touch the spiritual essence within ourselves and recognize it in others. ... There are no performers nor audience: new arrivals and old hands form the circle as everyone sings and dances together."

Everything you need to get started is in today's issue of the Highlights.

The Dances of Universal Peace

http://www.dancesofuniversalpeacena.org/

From the beginning of time, sacred movement, song and story have brought people together - at times of seasonal ceremony and celebration, as part of everyday life and life passages, in daily renewal and meditation. The Dances of Universal Peace are part of this timeless tradition of sacred movement, song and story.

The Dances of Universal Peace are simple, meditative, joyous, multi-cultural circle dances that use sacred phrases, chants, music and movements from the many spiritual traditions of the earth to touch the spiritual essence within ourselves and recognize it in others. Building on the work begun by Samuel L. Lewis in the 1960s, they promote peace and integration within individuals and understanding and connection within groups worldwide. There are no performers nor audience: new arrivals and old hands form the circle as everyone sings and dances together.

A Brief Dance History

The Dances of Universal Peace were first presented to the world in the late 1960's by Samuel L. Lewis (1896-1971), a Sufi Murshid (teacher) and Rinzai Zen Master, who also studied deeply in the mystical traditions of Hinduism, Judaism, and Christianity. Lewis was deeply influenced by his contact and spiritual apprenticeship with two people: Hazrat Inayat Khan, who first brought the message of universal Sufism to the West in 1910, and Ruth St. Denis, a feminist pioneer in the modern dance movement in America and Europe.

From his rich life experiences, Lewis, then in his early 70's, began to envision and create the Dances and the associated walking practices, as a dynamic method to promote "Peace through the Arts." Since those early days with Murshid SAM's original 50 or so dances, the collection has grown after his passing to more than 500 dances which celebrate the sacred heart of Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, as well as the Aramaic, Native American, Native Middle Eastern, Celtic, Native African, and Goddess traditions.

Since their beginning, the Dances have spread throughout the world, touching more than a half million people in North and South America, Europe, the former Soviet Union, Japan, India, Pakistan, Israel, Australia, Africa and New Zealand. New grass-roots Dance circles are continually springing up around the globe, with about 200 circles meeting weekly or monthly in North America alone.

The Dances Today

In addition to the Dance circles that meet regularly, the Dances of Universal Peace continue to evolve and expand to more areas: these Dances are led in schools, spiritual centers, churches, therapy groups, prisons, hospice houses, drug rehabilitation centers, homes for the developmentally disabled, retirement villages, holistic health centers, psychological conventions, weddings, other personal celebrations, peace gatherings and ecumenical worship celebrations. They have been presented at the Olympics, the World Parliament of Religions, and other ecumenical gatherings and conferences around the world.

The Mentor Teachers Guild, with spiritual guidance from Pir Shabda Kahn, serves to guide the development and growth of dance leaders and to steward the transmission of the rich legacy Murshid Samuel Lewis left to the world.

Eat Dance and Pray Together

Samuel Lewis believed that when people �eat, dance and pray together,� the world finds peace. The Dances continue to be, as Samuel Lewis envisioned them, a way to make life-energy and deep peace a reality for all who come in contact with them, and to bring a joyous spiritual center to those who commit to deepening in them.

Find a Dances of Universal Peace event near you:

http://www.dancesofuniversalpeace.org/wwmap.shtm

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#4153

From: "Gloria Lee" <editglo@...>
Date: Fri Feb 4, 2011 5:20 am
Subject: #4153 - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

glee_be

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#4153 - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

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

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

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

~Rumi

by Sarah Hughes on Facebook

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

by Enea Bozeglav on Facebook

"Deep in my looking,
the last words vanished.
Joyous and silent,
the waking that met me there."
~Lalla (India, 14th Century)

Poetry Chaikhana

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

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

by Kia Pierce on Facebook

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

by Nita Prem on Facebook

"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

by Bill Lindley on Facebook

photo by Alan Larus

The Sowing of Meanings
by Thomas Merton

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 sombre 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
Smouldering 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.

from Selected Poems of Thomas Merton, by Thomas Merton

Poetry Chaikhana

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#4154

From: "Jerry Katz" <umbada@...>
Date: Fri Feb 4, 2011 11:14 pm
Subject: #4154- Friday, February 4, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

nondualguy

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#4154- Friday, February 4, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

Nondual Consciousness in Shakespeare's King Lear

by James Traverse

Shakespeare [or Bacon] intuited nondual consciousness, as his works demonstrate that he had a profound understanding of the human condition.

I feel that King Lear is Shakespeare's greatest work because it is about Love which is nondual consciousness by another name. I especially appreciate the role of the Fool in King Lear and his use of the word 'nothing' throughout the play. The whole play is the tragedy of a king who suffers the greatest tragedy because he mistakes flattery for Love and allows his actions to be governed by this false understanding.

The question that the play presents is, 'Who is truly the Fool as determined by his/her behaviour?' Is it Cordelia, King Lear or his Fool? - the art and beauty of this play is the process of engaging the audience in experientially answering this question as the play unfolds... and as that happens we see that Cordelia, who is the only daughter who truly loved her father, understood that 'nothing' could be said to communicate her love, and we also see that Cordelia and the character playing 'the Fool' never appear on stage at the same time [historians say that the same actor sometimes played both roles]... at the end of the play when Cordelia has been hanged and Lear is holding her dead body in his arms, he declares that 'my poor fool is dead' [here's the quote: in the last scene of the play Lear says, "And my poore Foole is hang'd: no, no, no life?..." - then he dies] ....

In this light Lear is the true fool for mistaking flattery for Love and in addition to Cordelia as 'the fool' that he is holding in his arms, he also sees himself as 'the fool' for not having seen clearly up to this point - thus he as 'the fool' is also dead; having been killed by the light of 'Right Understanding'.

The character called 'the Fool' in the play is anything but a fool as he sees clearly and he is the only person who can, and does, openly speak the truth to the king... and essentially what he says is that if one does not truthfully understand Love, then you behave like a fool, your life and actions amount to 'nothing' even if you happen to hold the seat of the highest power and human authority as 'the king'.

The play tells the story of nature as:

1) the nature of Love [one's true nature]
2) human nature
3) nature [as in Mother Nature]
4) the tragic nature of being when true nature is not understood

A highly significant point is a notable character absence in King Lear. There are the father characters of Lear and Gloucester together with Lear's daughters and Gloucester's sons yet there is no mother character. That missing character is present as Mother Nature and Lear's [and other character's] relationship with nature [Lear in the storm and the wanderings through nature of key characters]...

This representation of Presence via Absence is a masterful means of speaking the unspeakable as it is a situation wherein Silence speaks. I feel that this is the feeling space of the play and that in addition to the missing character being present as 'Mother Nature' that we, the audience, play the role of the mother character because the play speaks to our true nature. We are moved to be passionately [motherly] involved because we know that authentic Love is available, yet what we witness is the extremes of cruelty, deception, suffering and the ultimate tragedy of a king, a human being, who is a fool that does not understand true 'nature'.

In this light the play is an exquisite portrayal of Nonduality/Love as this art work facilitates an experiential understanding of the true nature of being and the horrific and tragic consequences of lacking this understanding.

To render the play as a masterpiece of Nonduality - substitute the term 'nondual consciousness' for 'Love'.

~ ~ ~

James Traverse's website is http://beingyoga.com.

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#4155

From: "Mark" <markwotter704@...>
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2011 6:59 am
Subject: #4155 - Saturday, February 5, 2011

markwotter704

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Archived issues of the NDHighlights are available online: http://nonduality.com/hlhome.htm

Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4155, Saturday, February 5, 2011

Ed note: The following is a conversation recently held on NondualitySalon. I've changed the names to protect ME...(as if there was one...)

I gotta' tell you, at this point, the overriding characteristic of my "quest" is fatigue. Having run the gamut from Nisargadatta to Wei Wu Wei to Douglas Harding (and countless others) and back literally dozens of times, any and all suggestions are welcome. As my dad used to say, "Jonathan, if you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" Good one, Pop!

Jon

____________________

Hi Jon -

Fatigue may lead to letting go your hold.

The body-mind's sense of reality is based around its set of reactive responses and associated memory-chains - which are projected as past/present/future and the sense of a subjective being confronting an external world of objects and experiences.

This sense of reality is held in place by a kind of self-reflexive tensioning that maintains loops of perception/response.

Thus, energy is involved.

To let go, to have nothing to base the sense of reality upon - is a deep psychological fear.

This fear of disorientation and loss is likely to maintain the sense of reality until the repeating loop engenders enough frustration/futility/fatigue to be released.

The other side of fear is trust.

So, there is trust in letting go - even if there is fatigue as well.

Best wishes,

Jan

______________________________

Hi Jan,

Your comments reflect my dilemma very succinctly. When I became sober in AA almost three decades ago, the general guideline was to "Let go and let God". Many people who diligently followed the AA program failed to achieve sobriety whereas I, despite lacking due diligence was, to paraphrase Wayne Liquorman, "struck sober". I don't truly recall any sense of relinquishment or loss; it was almost as if sobriety "happened" to me with little focussed effort or striving. Perhaps I'm hoping for a similar outcome with regard to self-realization. As they say, "the readiness is all", soooooo------

With Thanks,

Jon

_______________________

Yes, Jon -it's a matter of readiness - whatever that is supposed to mean.

I suppose that it's open to your interpretation - whenever you're ready to interpret it.

:-)

Readiness can involve fatigue - and/or having exhausted all other options ...

-- J --

Enlightenment, Realization, or Gnosis is nothing that can be attained through any of our conventional ways of knowing. This is because conventional knowledge is based on imaginary distinctions, which we take to represent reality. The Reality that Gnosis reveals, however, is non-dual, and without distinctions. To the extent that we reify the distinctions of conventional knowledge as inherently existing entities and objects, they act as veils to our Realization of this Non-dual Reality. Thus, to attain Gnosis we must surrender our belief that conventional knowledge gives us knowledge of Reality. This is why the Taoist sage, Lao Tzu, asks:

When your discernment penetrates to the four quarters Are you capable of not knowing anything?

And why the great Sufi poet, Rumi, writes:

Where should I seek knowledge? In the abandonment of knowledge.

Because as Zen Master, Suzuki Roshi, explains:

If you want to understand it, you cannot understand it. When you give up trying to understand it, true understanding is always there.

Now many seekers take such teachings to mean that, in order to attain Gnosis, we must stop trying to grasp reality through formal philosophical modes of thinking. This is certainly true, as far as it goes. The trouble is, it does not go far enough. What Gnosis demands is something much more radical. The Christian mystic, St. John of the Cross, explains:

Those are decidedly hindered, then, from attainment of this high state of union with God who are attached to any understanding, feeling, imagining, opinion, desire, or way of their own, or to any other of their works or affairs, and know not how to detach and denude themselves of these impediments. Their goal transcends all of this, even the loftiest object that can be known or experienced. Consequently, they must pass beyond everything to unknowing.

In other words, it is not just our philosophical knowledge that must be surrendered. We must surrender belief in any of our conventional ways of knowing - including those everyday, `common sense' ways of knowing we take so much for granted.

This is easier said than done for two reasons. The first is that our most primitive forms of knowledge are based on elementary distinctions which, under normal circumstances, we are not even aware we are making. Consequently, before we can surrender our belief in all forms of knowledge, we must first become mindful of those subliminal mental processes on which knowledge itself is founded.

The second reason is that even the creation and acquisition of our most sophisticated forms of knowledge is by no means a dispassionate affair. Except in the rarest of cases, it is motivated by a desire to in some way enhance and protect ourselves. The more we think we know about the world, the more we feel we can control and manipulate it to our own ends. By the same token, the less we think we know, the more we feel lost and vulnerable. Consequently, the prospect of surrendering our belief in all forms of knowledge is quite frightening, for it means we must be willing to enter a state of such profound unknowing that we literally no longer have the slightest idea of who we are, or where!

- Joel Morwood

But of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.

- Jesus Christ, quoted in Mark 13:32

But even a seeker who gets a genuine glimpse into his or her own selflessness is still not necessarily out of the woods. So attached are we to conventional ways of knowing, that our minds are apt to seize on this very insight with the thought, "Aha! Now I know that I am nothing!" But knowing that you are nothing is not at all the same as not knowing anything. Only if you can allow all thoughts - even the thought "I am nothing" to dissolve away without a trace will you be able to enter the gate of true unknowing. This is the state of emptiness or kenosis in which all conventional knowledge is wiped out, for as the Hindu saint, Lalleshwari, says:

Neither silence nor yogic postures
enable you to enter there.
In that state there is no knowledge,
no meditation, no Shiva or Shakti.
All that remains is That.
O Lalli, you are That.
Attain That.

Kenosis, however, is not the same as Gnosis. There remains one last barrier to full Enlightenment. We might call this the First Distinction, and compare it to the sensation of our bare skin. Even though we have shed all our clothes, we still feel a nameless, primordial sense of separation. This is how the anonymous Christian author of the Cloud of Unknowing expresses it:

Long after you have successfully forgotten every creature and its works, you will find that a naked knowing and feeling of your own being still remains between you and your God. And believe me, you will not be perfect in love until this, too, is destroyed.

The trouble with this First Distinction is that it is prior to thought, language, and all other forms of distinction. As such, it is not something that you create. In fact, it creates you - or rather, the First Distinction is that very experience of being a `you.' Consequently, there is no way `you' can surrender it. In fact, any effort `you' make to do so simply serves to keep this distinction in place. This is why Enlightenment always comes spontaneously as an act of grace. And this grace acts only in a state in which, not only has all your knowledge been erased, but even your attempts to attain knowledge have fallen away. Thus, Zen master, Hakuin, writes:

When all the effort you can muster has been exhausted and you have reached a total impasse...it will suddenly come and you will break free. The phoenix will get through the golden net. The crane will fly free of the cage.

Here is how the Christian mystic, Dionysius the Areopagite, describes the seeker who suddenly finds that the Primal Distinction has been shattered:

He breaks free...away from what sees and is seen, and he plunges into the truly mysterious darkness of unknowing. Here, renouncing all that the mind may conceive, wrapped entirely in the intangible and the invisible, he belongs completely to him who is beyond everything. Here, being neither oneself nor someone else, one is supremely united by a completely unknowing inactivity of all knowledge, and knows beyond the mind by knowing nothing.

This is also why the Sufis insist that the spiritual path leads, not to greater and greater knowledge, but to greater and greater bewilderment.

- Joel Morwood

The gift we have been given is the one called possibility, whose intent offers to tie all together, creating strands of a whole life rather than a disintegrated one. The gift we have been granted is what throws light into dark places. The gift held out to us has always been present. But accepting the gift has a price - courage. It is an undying courage that allows any of us to whip the dream horse and startle awakening.

- Carla Woody, from Standing Stark: The Willingness to Engage

It is false to speak of realization. What is there to realize? The real is as it is always. We are not creating anything new or achieving something which we did not have before. The illustration given in books is this. We dig a well and create a huge pit. The space in the pit or well has not been created by us. We have just removed the earth which was filling the space there. The space was there then and is also there now. Similarly we have simply to throw out all the age-long samskaras [innate tendencies] which are inside us. When all of them have been given up, the Self will shine alone.

- Sri Ramana Maharshi, posted to AlongTheWay

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#4156

From: "Mark" <markwotter704@...>
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2011 7:14 am
Subject: #4156 - Sunday, February 6, 2011

markwotter704

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Archived issues of the NDHighlights are available online: http://nonduality.com/hlhome.htm

Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4156, Sunday, February 6, 2011

As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.

- Eckhart Tolle, posted to The_Now2

Life can be really and truly simple if we don't fight it.

- Ramesh S. Balsekar, from A Net of Jewels, posted to AlongTheWay

When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.

- The Buddha, posted to DailyDharma

We make a pretty Quilt
only to find no need of warmth.

- Mace Mealer

If you wish your misery to end,
seek also to lose your wisdom -
the wisdom born of human illusion,
that which lacks the light
of God's overflowing grace.
The wisdom of this world increases doubt;
the wisdom of Faith releases you into the sky.

- Rumi, Mathnawi, II: 3200-3203, from Rumi: Daylight, posted to Sunlight

So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger. One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.

~ Eckhart Tolle, posted to The_Now2

If this me is not I, then
who am I?
If I am not the one who speaks, then
who does?
If this me is only a robe then
who is
the one I am covering?

- Rumi, translation by Azima Melita Kolin and Maryam Mafi, from Rumi: Whispers of the Beloved, posted to Sunlight

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#4157

From: "Gloria Lee" <editglo@...>
Date: Tue Feb 8, 2011 6:51 pm
Subject: #4157 - Monday, February 7, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

glee_be

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#4157 - Monday, February 7, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

"EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every
minute?"
STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some."
� Thornton Wilder (Our Town)

Life is precious
by Christine Wushke on Wednesday, February 2, 2011 on Facebook

Several years ago I was going through a really tough time. During this period
of difficulty, I had a dream that I will never forget.

I remember going to bed feeling hopeless and drained one night, and falling
asleep in a state of despair and exhaustion.

I had a dream that I was dead. In the dream there was someone beside me
that I couldn�t see, but I could hear a voice and feel a loving presence. I
remember feeling really sad and full of remorse that I had died, and wishing
that I could go back to earth, if even for just two minutes.

The voice beside me offered to fulfill my wish, and sent me back for two
minutes. In a blink I was dropped back down to earth in my familiar body,
but surrounded by totally different circumstances. In this new scenario I
had just found out that the love of my life was having an affair with another
woman and I was feeling heartbroken and alone.

Elated with being back, I didn�t even care about the �scene� going on around
me, I felt relieved and grateful just to be back. Knowing my two minutes
would be up soon I soaked in every precious second of heartbreak, sorrow,
betrayal and loss.

After getting pulled out of this scene and back to the �dead� state, I asked
again if I could please please be allowed to go back for just two minutes
more. The voice agreed and I was allowed to go back.

This time I was dropped into yet another totally different scenario. In this
scene I was happily married but we were going bankrupt and losing
everything. Knowing that the two minutes were very fleeting, I soaked in
every second of financial distress, worry and uncertainty.

Once more I was pulled out, floating in deadness with the loving voice. Again
I asked to go back, and again I was given that wish.

This time I became aware of an interesting time distortion, in the scene
around me everything was falling apart, I was feeling the impossibility of
'holding it together'. Knowing the two minutes would end soon I drank in
'falling apart' and the feeling of losing control. I noticed that what felt to me
like two minutes was different than the time line playing out in the scene
around me. Hours were racing by in the situation around me, while my two
minutes were very slowly ticking by.

At some point I became aware that I was dreaming and a very lucid thought,
'OK you have made your point' shattered the dream. I found myself lying in
bed starting at the ceiling. For a few minutes I drank in the sensation of
being alive, really alive. I drank in what it means to be human, and the
sweetness of all the things we experience here. Something about this dream
had given me a glimpse of just how rare and precious it is to be human.

The memory of the dream has faded somewhat over the years, but the feeling
of life being fleeting and precious has never really left. I am often reminded
of this dream during times of overwhelm or strong emotional responses to
situations. I am often reminded to take the time and drink in sorrow,
overwhelm, or heartbreak; knowing that the whole thing is so very fleeting.
Our humanity is truly a gift to be cherished.

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.

~William Blake

There is no way into presence

except through a Love exchange.

If someone asks,

"But what is Love ? "

answer, "Dissolving the will."

~Rumi

Belle Heywood on Facebook

Meher Baba has said, "If you can't love, at least give in"....!!!

When we Love God, the Absolute, or another, and we know that we and God,
or another are "mind stuff"; simply "non-existent" nouns, then we realize we
ARE the verb of Love that appears to be between the two. The Love is all
that exists. No Me, No God, just the Love. Love in action is everything.

~The Bhakti of Nisargadatta Maharaj

by Bill Lindley on Facebook

Bury the Flowers, Burn the Flowers

(For Kabir)

by Robert Kirbo � Sept 2009

Bury the flowers, burn the flowers, do you not see I am gone?

What you believe was me was never me, no more than the earth or sea

I was the ocean and the fish, the forest and the fawn

I was never the person you thought I was, of worldly things

Nor was I just a dreamer to ignore or cast aspersions by the score

I said to love, and always love, to love what love brings

You walked my streets but not my path, wore my robe but not my crown

You whispered my words, in the dark but never in a daylit park

And now you wonder how my words remain when my body is down

It's simple really, and perhaps a greater mystery

The spirit moves in each of us, the breath of God inspires us

And yet we think we earn our laurels from our own history

Bury the flowers, burn the flowers, that was never the meter of mine

Speak the 99 names of God, whisper Kabir and know

That I never was, but never left, and am forever thine.

(The title is actually what Kabir told his followers when they asked what his
wishes were for them to do upon his death. This really moved me...it was so
pure! ~Bob Kirbo)

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#4158

From: "Jerry Katz" <umbada@...>
Date: Wed Feb 9, 2011 12:44 pm
Subject: #4158- Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

nondualguy

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#4158- Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

The following is from Advaita Academy

http://advaita-academy.org/talks/The-Experience-and-The-Meaning-%281-of-2%29.ashx

Douglas Harding

Look at anyone in the room or at your face in the mirror, and check that you are Empty for it, that at this moment you experience yourself as the Space that's taking it in.

...check that, on present evidence, the set-up is altogether asymmetrical. Notice how his or her face over there is presented to your No-face here, those two little eyes to your single and immense 'Eye' here, that coloured and textured and patterned opacity to this colourless and untextured and patternless Transparency, that smallness to this Immensity.

Notice how you can never for a moment confront anyone, never get face-to-face with anyone. Notice how you aren't a bit what you look like to them-people over there being too far off and in no position to see What you really are where you really are. Notice how you can not only see what you are looking at but also (and much more clearly) What you are looking out of.

Some call It your Original Face, others your Buddha Eye, others the Light that lights all who come into the world, yet others your No-head. But whatever you happen to call It, This is no passing impression or replica of It but the real article, exactly as the Buddha and all the other Seers experienced It.

Go on looking in, as well as out, a few more moments, please...

Why should you bother?

Why because this is the most momentous Experience you or anyone ever had. Because-in spite of its dreadfully boring plainness (you can see It has nothing whatever to recommend it) -this is the sight of a lifetime, of all lifetimes.

'It's a sight that leaves me cold,' I hear you replying. 'All it means to me is that of course I can't see my own eyes and face and head. So what? What has it to do with the Buddha's full and perfect enlightenment? Or with the enlightenment I'm working towards and hope to arrive at one day-perhaps many years from now, but more likely many lifetimes from now?' Yes of course I see exactly what you mean. But again, SO WHAT?

So there you are! That's it! There's your meaningless Experience for you!

We live in a democracy. Put to the vote, your reaction is the right one. Subject to minor variations, it's what the majority of the population as well as the majority of serious seekers-meditators, disciples of the Masters, followers of the great spiritual disciplines-have been telling me over the past few decades. Whenever I got them to reverse their attention and examine the Spot they occupy (only to discover it's not they who occupy it but the others), their comment has been the equivalent of SO WHAT? I should say that, at a guess, of a hundred who are persuaded to look in and briefly lose track of themselves, not more than five find that their discovery is so surprising and meaningful that it merits cultivation. Even fewer go on valuing and renewing this Insight till it occurs naturally and without prompting, and its life-changing power-its incredible know-how and resourcefulness-are revealed.

But no wonder the essential Experience is dismissed so cavalierly, is so unwelcome and so distrusted. The famous Diamond Sutra has good reason to warn us that, below the surface, we are all terrified of our Emptiness. Till its inexhaustible and breathtaking beneficence and fertility begin to take shape it must seem (to many of us if not to all) not just meaningless but suicidal, mere annihilation.

~ ~ ~

Read the entire article at

http://advaita-academy.org/talks/The-Experience-and-The-Meaning-%281-of-2%29.ashx

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#4159

From: "Jerry Katz" <umbada@...>
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2011 1:48 am
Subject: #4159- Wednesday, February 9, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

nondualguy

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#4159- Wednesday, February 9, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

This is a "cult" edition. Is nonduality a cult? What it is? As long as no one knows, we're doing okay.

This was posted to the Rick Ross Forum:

http://forum.rickross.com/read.php?12,97602,97602

Hi. Well i saw threads on "recovering NOWists" and all that and i'm just wondering if it's possible to recover from nondualism, ie. to feel like a separate self again, with body and mind in time, a little me (if anyone knows what i mean) and all that. The reason i ask is because a lot of areas of life, in my case, being a student require a "little me" and a sense of time, ie. being in time and a mind in time i.e. i have to do this, that etc which is largely absent in nondualism. It's just that with this state i feel it's quite tedious annoying getting things done i.e. studying, it takes much longer for me for some reason to read articles, study etc, like your mind isn't totally focused for some reason (and maybe less intelectually inclined) and there's nothing really pushing you anyway to do anything. Like it's just always "now" and time has lost all meaning ie you don't feel like you're in time so it's hard to budget it etc.

Is there a way undo all this or no? I read eckhart's the power of now.

Respond at

http://forum.rickross.com/read.php?12,97602,97602

(You will have to register.)

Here are a couple of responses sent to the Nonduality Salon email forum:

Jan Barendrecht

It is quite funny that the author claims to have difficulty focusing on tasks and blames it on nondualism.
As long as suffering is possible, there is a sense of "me" (with its counterpart "you") and most issues
about which thoughts "automatically" are popping up have "I" or "you" (with all possible conjugations)
as the subject. IOW when that mental patchwork has disappeared, focusing / concentration has
become natural (default). However, a large area of former interests has disappeared as well so one
might arrive at a situation where no more incentive exists to continue with certain activities.
A proper practice results in (neuro)physical changes so there is no undo.

Hence the better idea would be several years of practices like meditation / contemplation before starting
with a study that will have to earn a living for the major part of one's life. In that case, it is unlikely any stage
"on the path" will interfere with it.

Jan

Gene Poole

Tolle should know; 'there is no time like the present'.

But to the point, the above user-complaint
vis a vis 'nonduality'.

This entry has something to say, and it references
Jan's recent comment here:

""Almost every major cult and cult-like group
we came upon teaches some form of not thinking
or `mind control' as part of its regular program
of activity. The process may take the form of
repetitive prayer, chanting, speaking in tongues,
self-hypnosis or diverse methods of meditation�.

Such techniques, when practiced in moderation,
may yield real physical and mental health benefits�.
Prolonged stilling of the mind, however, may wear
on the brain physically until it readjusts, suddenly
and sharply, to its new condition of not thinking.

When that happens, we have found, the brain's
information-processing capacities may be disrupted
or enter a state of complete suspension�disorientation, detachment�hallucinations, delusions and,
in extreme instances, total withdrawal."

http://www.cultnews.com/

==GP==

Gary writes...

There's absolutely no compulsion to stay in our group [NDS or Nonduality Salon email forum] and you are perfectly free to leave whenever you want.

Just be aware that should you decide to leave our group know that you have surrendered to the Negative Forces and that you have left the safe confines of your heart and are now firmly entrenched in the malicious mind, whose main function is sway you from the true path.

You are totally free to leave at any time, however, you can be certain that if you do you will be thwarting your own spiritual progress and it will take you many many incarnations just to get back to the level you have attained by being a member of our group.

Not only that but if you do decide to leave your soul will curse you for having blown this unique opportunity that has been granted to you by no less a divine personage than God Him or Herself.

You are free to leave our group if you want to but don't blame us
when you're hungry and cold and suffering from some horrible disease next incarnation.

Or maybe even later on in this one, who knows?

Whatever you do, don't say we didn't warn you.

Aum Shanti.

Gary
Co-Chair
Committee for the Preservation of NDS

Enlightenment Blues

by Vicki Woodyard

All of you bleeping people are sitting around waiting to be enlightened. Like they�re gonna call your table any minute. �Fickleman, Enlightenment for Four, your table�s waiting.�

And some bored waitron asks �What kind of whine would you like with that?�

And you say , �I want to be enlightened.�

�Why?�

�So I can hang out my shingle online and give the shingles to other people.�

�What an ass you are. You want to give people shingles?�

�Yes. Like Papaji. I want to spread enlightenment around like the butter on this roll.�

�Papaji? What language do you speak, for chrissakes?�

�It�s Advaitaspeak, sir. I learned it online at enlightenednincompoops.com.�

�Let�s just call you an ass and be done with it. Let�s just call you shitonashingle.com and get you out of here.�

And that�s when the brawl started.

�There is no here, sir. There is no you and there is no me. There is only the Self.�

Bam. Teeth fly out of the Self�s mouth.

The waiter pumps his fist. �Yes! I got it! There is no such thing as enlightenment. There are only idiots waiting to be served up a plate of horse hockey so they can sell it to other idiots wanting to be enlightened.�

And suddenly the room grew quiet and Papaji himself materialized from a disco ball hanging low. He stood there grinning from ear to ear.

�Namaste, Papaji.�

He said nothing. He didn�t have to.

Vicki Woodyard
Author, Life With A Hole In It: That�s How the Light Gets In
http://www.booklocker.com/books/4931.html

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#4160

From: "Gloria Lee" <editglo@...>
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2011 7:07 pm
Subject: #4160 - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

glee_be

Send Email

#4160 - Thursday, February 10, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

"Free at last, free at last..." Egypt, February 11, 2011

Congratulations to the people of Egypt for winning their freedom

by peaceful means. Best wishes for a future worthy of their courage.

This issue is dedicated to them and to all forms of true freedom.

"You need to train yourself so that at any time and any moment
you choose, you can free yourself inwardly from your world,
from others, from the past, from the future, from the previous
thought and the next thought. This is to find freedom. Yet if
you then think you are free and have some wisdom, this is not
so. You should not be attached to solitude or to experiences of
relative freedom. When you are neither attached to independence
nor to company then wisdom will manifest."

~Chan Master Sheng-Yen

posted by Gill Eardley to Allspirit

You can also untrain yourself from all the conditioning that has implied
feelings are bad, thoughts are bad, body sensations are bad and attachments
are not spiritual. you can find freedom in welcoming every aspect of your
life, in allowing yourself to hold nothing back from what is -in- your life,
from what -is- your life. As more women find their voices, it may become
clearer and clearer that while clarity and detachment are one aspect of
experiencing the whole, it does not deny coming from the inside out to include
connection.

Connection that becomes so intimate, so breathable, that it is seen all the
pushing away from anything was what sustained the feeling of separation.
Yes, we can know freedom from everything, and we can also know the
freedom in everything. In deeply loving and caring about every person and
event with whole mixtures of feelings from currents of desire to frustration
to anger to inspiration, and indeed, amidst all these swirls, the truth is just
as radiant. Just as radiantly this. It is just as possible to love and be free.

posted by Josie Kane to Allspirit

The Indian Parrot
Rumi

There was a merchant setting out for India.

He asked each male and female servant
what they wanted to be brought as a gift.

Each told him a different exotic object:
A piece of silk, a brass figurine,
a pearl necklace.

Then he asked his beautiful caged parrot,
the one with such a lovely voice,
and she said,
"When you see the Indian parrots,
describe my cage. Say that I need guidance
here in my separation from them. Ask how
our friendship can continue with me so confined
and them flying about freely in the meadow mist.

Tell them that I remember well our mornings
moving together from tree to tree.

Tell them to drink one cup of ecstatic wine
in honor of me here in the dregs of my life.

Tell them that the sound of their quarrelling
high in the trees would be sweeter
to hear than any music."

This parrot is the spirit-bird in all of us,
that part that wants to return to freedom,
and is the freedom. What she wants
from India is herself!

So this parrot gave her message to the merchant,
and when he reached India, he saw a field
full of parrots. He stopped
and called out what she had told him.

One of the nearest parrots shivered
and stiffened and fell down dead.

The merchant said, "This one is surely kin
to my parrot. I shouldn't have spoken."

He finished his trading and returned home
with the presents for his workers.

When he got to the parrot, she demanded her gift.
"What happened when you told my story
to the Indian parrots?"

"I'm afraid to say."
"Master, you must!"

"When I spoke your complaint to the field
of chattering parrots, it broke
one of their hearts.

She must have been a close companion,
or a relative, for when she heard about you
she grew quiet and trembled, and died."

As the caged parrot heard this, she herself
quivered and sank to the cage floor.

This merchant was a good man.
He grieved deeply for his parrot, murmuring
distracted phrases, self-contradictory -
cold, then loving - clear, then
murky with symbolism.

A drowning man reaches for anything!
The Friend loves this flailing about
better than any lying still.

The One who lives inside existence
stays constantly in motion,
and whatever you do, that king
watches through the window.

When the merchant threw the "dead" parrot
out of the cage, it spread its wings
and glided to a nearby tree!

The merchant suddenly understood the mystery.
"Sweet singer, what was in the message
that taught you this trick?"

"She told me that it was the charm
of my voice that kept me caged.
Give it up, and be released!"

The parrot told the merchant one or two more
spiritual truths. Then a tender goodbye.

"God protect you," said the merchant
"as you go on your new way.
I hope to follow you!"

~Rumi 'One-Handed Basket Weaving'
Versions by Coleman Barks

posted by Gill Eardley to Allspirit

Habitually conditioned to avoid fear and insecurity, most people
compulsively cling to what is familiar, even if it is very painful and
confusing. I have witnessed countless people turn away from the experience
and revelation of freedom because in that freedom there is nowhere to hide
and nothing to hold onto. As they begin to awaken to a freedom that is
profound, many turn back to a familiar condition of struggle and confusion in
an unconscious effort to avoid stepping completely into the ungraspable and
indefinable mystery of liberation. Why? Because in that mystery there is
absolutely nothing for the personal ego to attain or define itself by.

This is not the liberation that most people envision when they start out.
Consciously or unconsciously most people envision a freedom that they can
attain and possess. So many who glimpse the enlightened condition tell me
that it is so much bigger than they ever could have imagined. To realize that
freedom is not something that you possess, but something that possesses you,
is often experienced as shocking, frightening, and unbelievably liberating. It
is a revelation that swallows up the dream of a separate you and reveals Self
to be a limitless expanse. What I am describing is the experience of Self
void of any sense of selfhood, a timeless and uncaused condition which is
constantly birthing manifest existence into form.

To have a glimpse of this profound freedom requires very little, but to live
it requires the destruction of every concept of self you have ever held or
will ever hold. This freedom is a flame that burns the need to struggle to ash
and reveals one's Self to be all there is.

- from The Impact of Awakening: Excerpts from the Teachings of
Adyashanti, published by Open Gate Sangha.

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#4161

From: "Jerry Katz" <umbada@...>
Date: Sat Feb 12, 2011 2:12 am
Subject: #4161- Friday, February 11, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

nondualguy

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#4161- Friday, February 11, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

Quotes from 'Consciousness and the Absolute'

by Nisargadatta Maharaj

from http://nisargadatta.co.cc/pages/quotes_consciousness_and_absolute.html

-- All these activities go on, but they are only entertainment. The waking and deep sleep states come and go spontaneously. Through the sense of "I", you spontaneously feel like working. But find out if this sense of "I" is real or unreal, permanent or impermanent --

-- The Ultimate state in spirituality is that state where no needs are felt at any time, where nothing is useful for anything. That state is called Nirvana, Nirguna, that which is the Eternal and Ultimate Truth. The essence and sum total of this whole talk is called Sat-guru Parabrahman, that state in which there are no requirements --

-- People identify me with their concepts and they do what their concepts tell them. It is consciousness which is manifest, nothing else. Who is talking, who is walking, who is sitting? These are the expressions of that chemical "I Am". Are you that chemical? You talk about heaven and hell, this Mahatma or that one, but how about you? Who are you? In meditation, one sees a lot of visions. They are in the chemical, the realm of your consciousness, are they not? All these things are connected only to that birth-chemical. You are not this chemical "I Am" --

-- The essence of the body is the essence of the foodstuff, and this consciousness lies dormant in it from the very beginning. In that state of consciousness is the entire universe. Having seen this, whoever has understood is bound to be quiet, knowing that this is only a transient happening. An enormous structure of concepts being taught to us as knowledge is based on the simple appearance of consciousness --

-- Recite the sacred name, that is all right, but the important thing is to recognize and understand what is the presiding principle by which you know you are and by which you perceive everything else. You must look at yourself, get to know yourself. The riddle of spirituality cannot be solved by your intellect. At the most, your intellect can provide you with livelihood --

-- Any thought that you have reached or are going to reach that state is false. Whatever happens in consciousness is purely imaginary, an hallucination; therefore, keep in mind the knowledge that it is consciousness in which everything is happening. With that knowledge, be still, do not pursue any other thoughts which arise in consciousness. What is necessary is to understand with sure conviction is that all is temporary, and does not reflect your true state --

-- You are afraid because you have assumed something as �I am�, which actually you are not. Suppose you find a diamond ring on the road and you pocket it. Since it is not yours, a fear overcomes you. When you put on an identity that is not yours, you are afraid. When you are the pure �I amness� only, there is no fear. Presently you are this �I am�, but this �I am� is not the truth. Whatever you are prior to the appearance of �I am�, that is your real nature --

~ ~ ~

For more about Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, visit this new website:

http://nisargadatta.co.cc

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#4162

From: "Mark" <markwotter704@...>
Date: Sun Feb 13, 2011 6:14 pm
Subject: #4162 - Saturday, February 12, 2011

markwotter704

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Archived issues of the NDHighlights are available online: http://nonduality.com/hlhome.htm

Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4162, Saturday, February 12, 2011

Ram Tzu know this...

You are willing
To take limitless blame,
So long as you
Can keep getting
A little credit.

- Ram Tzu, from No Way for the Spiritually "Advanced", posted to AlongTheWay

Out beyond ideas of
Wrong-doing and Right-doing
There is a field, I'll meet you there.

This moment, this Love comes to rest in me,
Many beings in one being.
In one wheat-grain
A thousand sheaf stacks.
Inside the needles eye,
A turning night of stars.

- Rumi, from The Illuminated Rumi, posted to DailyDharma

The ego isn't wrong; it's just unconscious. When you observe the ego in yourself, you are beginning to go beyond it. Don't take the ego too seriously. When you detect egoic behavior in yourself, smile. At times you may even laugh. How could humanity have been taken in by this for so long? Above all, know that the ego isn't personal. It isn't who you are. If you consider the ego to be your personal problem, that's just more ego.

- Eckhart Tolle, posted to The_Now2

There are some demons dangerous
to your soul: lust, anger.
But there's a way to kill them.

Feed them meditation only,
and clear awareness, and you'll see
the illusion of what they control.

- Lalla, posted to Distillation

When you make the present moment the focal point of your attention - instead of using it as a means to an end - you go beyond the ego and beyond the unconscious compulsion to use people as a means to an end, the end being self-enhancement at the cost of others.

When you give your fullest attention to whoever you are interacting with, you take past and future out of the relationship, except for practical matters. When you are fully present with everyone you meet, you relinquish the conceptual identity you made for them - your interpretation of who they are and what they did in the past - and are able to interact without the egoic movements of desire and fear. Attention, which is alert stillness, is the key.

- Eckhart Tolle, posted to The_Now2

It is disclosure of one's own spirit that unveils all things.

From the Teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan, selected and arranged by Hazrat Pir Vilayat Khan, posted to SufiMystic

Where is the word of God heard? In silence. The seers, the saints, the sages, the prophets, the masters, they have heard that voice which comes from within by making themselves silent. I do not mean by this that because one has silence one will be spoken to; I mean that once one is silent one will hear the word, which is constantly coming from within. When the mind has been made still, a person also communicates with everyone he meets. He does not need many words: when the glance meets he understands. Two persons may talk and discuss all their lives and yet never understand one another. Two others with still minds look at one another and in one moment a communication is established between them.

Where do the differences between people come from? From within. From their activity. And how does agreement come? By the stillness of the mind. It is noise which hinders a voice that we hear from a distance, and it is the troubled waters of a pool which hinder us seeing our own image reflected in the water. When the water is still it takes a clear reflection; and when our atmosphere is still then we hear that voice which is constantly coming to the heart of every person.

- Hazrat Inayat Khan

A Great Silence overcomes me,
and I wonder why I ever thought to use language.

- Rumi

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#4163

From: "Mark" <markwotter704@...>
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2011 4:49 am
Subject: #4163 - Sunday, February 13, 2011

markwotter704

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Archived issues of the NDHighlights are available online: http://nonduality.com/hlhome.htm

Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4163, Sunday, February 13, 2011

Commonsense too will tell you that to fulfill a desire you must keep your mind on it. If you want to know your true nature, you must have yourself in mind all the time, until the secret of your being stands revealed.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to AlongTheWay

Awareness becomes consciousness when it has an object. The object changes all the time. In consciousness there is movement; awareness by itself is motionless and timeless, here and now.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels

Learn to watch both your experience and your reactions to your experience. This process of observant attention and witnessing will enable you to see that your fundamental and essential sense of identity exists as an unchanging point of Awareness within the heart of all changing conditions and circumstance.

This Awareness is grounded in the present moment and never exists outside of Now. It is always accessible and never exists somewhere other than Here. It is the immediate and undeniable Center of who you imagine yourself to be.

Reside in this Center, and realize that the essence of this Awareness is not separate from That which manifests before, around and within you.

- Metta Zetty

A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.

- Meister Eckhart

We can thank these hard-working, seldom-resting, always on alert, over-taxed minds, we can thank them for their hard work on our behalf and kiss their little heads and say, "Nice try sweetheart, trying to stand in for the All, nice try, boy did you really do an amazing job considering. Now let me take the remote away from you sweetheart.

- Jeannie Zandi

Holiness is falling in love with your own self.
This is devotion, and it is not different from love!
What you love you are devoted to and
what you are devoted to you love.

When this love has no object, and goes nowhere
but to itself, it will reveal itself to you in whatever
form you desire; manifest or unmanifest.

If you desire this love don't try to love a particular
person because this love has no personality, no
form, and no name. God is this love.

- Papaji, from The Truth Is, posted to AlongTheWay

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#4164

From: "Gloria Lee" <editglo@...>
Date: Tue Feb 15, 2011 3:07 am
Subject: #4164 - Monday, February 14, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

glee_be

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#4164 - Monday, February 14, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

I unpetalled you, like a rose,
to see your soul,
and I didn't see it.

But everything around
--horizons of lands and of seas--
everything, out to the infinite,
was filled with a fragrance,
enormous and alive.

~ Juan Ramon Jimenez, translated by Stephen Mitchell

posted by Kia Pierce to Facebook

My soul is naked.
It wears the transparent garment of love.
~Rumi

.................

Isn�t it the secret intent of this taciturn earth,
when it forces lovers together, that inside
their boundless emotion all things may
shudder with joy?
~ R.M. Rilke

posted by Enea Bozeglav to Facebook

"If you want connection, it's because you are connection.
Be what you want, and then it happens all around you.
If you want love, be it.
You'll have more love than you know what to do with.
Whatever you are inside, you receive a thousandfold on the outside."

~ Adyashanti

"The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,
they're in each other all along."
~Rumi

The Ball

As long as nothing can be known for sure
(no signals have been picked up yet),
as long as Earth is still unlike
the nearer and more distant planets,

as long as there's neither hide nor hair
of other grasses graced by other winds,
of other treetops bearing other crowns,
other animals as well-grounded as our own,

as long as only the local echo
has been known to speak in syllables,

as long as we still haven't heard word
of better or worse mozarts,
platos, edisons somewhere,

as long as our inhuman crimes
are still committed only between humans,

as long as our kindness
is still incomparable,
peerless even in its imperfection,

as long as our heads packed with illusions
still pass for the only heads so packed,

as long as the roofs of our mouths alone
still raise voices to high heavens--

let's act like very special guests of honor
at the district-firemen's ball
dance to the beat of the local oompah band,
and pretend that it's the ball
to end all balls.

I can't speak for others--
for me this is
misery and happiness enough:

just this sleepy backwater
where even the stars have time to burn
while winking at us
unintentionally.

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

(View with a Grain of Sand, translated by S. Baranczak and C. Cavanagh)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/The_Ball.html

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#4165

From: "Gloria Lee" <editglo@...>
Date: Wed Feb 16, 2011 5:35 am
Subject: #4165 - Tuesday, February 14, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

glee_be

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#4165 - Tuesday, February 14, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

Where can I find a man who has forgotten words?
He is the one I would like to talk to.
~Chuang Tzu

.......................

Wanting to reform the world without discovering one's true self is like
trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones
and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.

~Ramana Maharshi

posted by Sandra Ma to Facebook

"Popularity among the soundly alseep may not be the best criterion by which
to judge a method for waking up." ~Jed McKenna

posted by Jill Richling-Thesman to Facebook

Yellow_tulips_at_Keukenhof
Image by Lisa Ploughman

"Speaking of Self-realization is a delusion. It is only because people have
been under the delusion that the non-Self is the Self and the unreal the Real
that they have to be weaned out of it by the other delusion called
Self-realization; because actually the Self always is the Self and there is no
such thing as realizing it." �Ramana Maharshi

Nothing is Gained with Enlightenment

I once lived in an apartment so small I had to step outside into the adjacent
hallway to open my oven door. There was room only for a bed, a radio, and a
cardboard carton of books. I kept my clothes in a closet down the hall. Even
in this confined space, there was housework to be done. Indeed, the demands
of maintenance follow us wherever we find ourselves, from palaces to prison
cells.

The Italian poet Cesare Pavese wrote in his journal that we never remember
days, we remember only moments. And Zen teachers tell us that this moment
is the only one we�ll ever have. Perhaps this is a better way of looking at
enlightenment. It�s not achieving or gathering something. Nor is it losing or
overcoming something else. It�s simply stepping outside of the room you�re in
and allowing the oven door to open. It�s checking the ceiling overhead and
cleaning up the spills beneath your feet.

- Gary Thorp, "The Dust Beyond the Cushion"

"In Kisagata,
The flowering cherry trees
Vanish under waves ---
Until an old fisherman
Rows out across blossoms.

Whatever it is,
I cannot understand it,
Although gratitude
Stubbornly overcomes me
Until I'm reduced to tears.

My final desire ---
That I be allowed to die
Under flowering cherries,
On the fifteenth evening
Of the second month."
~Saigyo

From: "The Poetry of Zen," published by Shambhala

posted to Daily Dharma by Dainen Kelly

So really what it comes down to, it's God. Wherever you look, it's God
appearing as this, that, and what you really love and appreciate in each form
is the divine formless out of which each form comes. But to be able to sense
that you have to sense it in yourself first. And that is seeing the beauty in
everything, that's really what it means.
~Eckhart Tolle

A Message from Space

Everything that happens is the message:
you read an event and be one and wait,
like breasting a wave, all the while knowing
by living, though not knowing how to live.

Or workers built an antenna -- a dish
aimed at stars -- and they themselves are its message,
crawling in and out, being worlds that loom,
dot-dash, and sirens, and sustaining beams.

And sometimes no one is calling but we turn up
eye and ear -- suddenly we fall into
sound before it begins, the breathing
so still it waits there under the breath --

And then the green of leaves calls out, hills
where they wait or turn, clouds in their frenzied
stillness unfolding their careful words:
"Everything counts. The message is the world."

~ William Stafford ~

(The Way It Is)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/A_Message_from_Space.html

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#4166

From: "Jerry K" <umbada@...>
Date: Thu Feb 17, 2011 5:42 pm
Subject: #4166 - Wednesday, February 16, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

nondualguy

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#4166 - Wednesday, February 16, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

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

The Boomerang Inquiry

by Scott Kiloby

http://www.kiloby.com/writings.php?offset=0&writingid=288

I've been looking into more innovative ways of helping people see through separation. You can read about the Unfindable Object Inquiry (the one-two punch) on this Writings page.

I've also developed something I call the Boomerang Inquiry that works with respect to relationships (i.e., seeing through the sense of separation in relationships).

Through the years, I've met many people (teachers, students, seekers of all kinds) who experience awareness as a stabilized recognition yet still buy into separation in one form or another. This separation often shows up in relationships. Repeatedly, I kept meeting with people who had a nondual recognition, but who still bought into conflict and other old ego patterns in relationship (e.g., control, resentment, victimization, family relationship conflict, defend/attack energy, marriage troubles).

Certainly, non-duality is not a self-improvement plan. However, the root of suffering and conflict in relationships is the belief in separation. Therefore, the seeing through of that belief obviously releases some of these deeply rooted patterns. This release naturally harmonizes relationships.

Meeting with people who were still struggling in the belief in separation prompted me to go deeper into inquiry with them.

Recognizing awareness as the "background" to one's experience certainly goes a long way, but it doesn't always help one see through separation entirely. I kept noticing that people were reporting the recognition of presence but still experiencing this oscillation, or movement, between the recognition of freedom and the sense of separation. This is a drawback or backlash from some of the modern approaches to non-duality that focus on "being present" but that do not go far enough to reveal an absence of separation. Non-duality, after all, means "not two." It doesn't mean "be present."

Perhaps the most important thing any of us can do while on this earth is see through the belief in separation. When we do this for ourselves, we do it for humanity. We do it for every relationship on earth. Yet, if we only intellectualize non-duality and stick only to catchy phrases like "There is only Oneness," or "be present," we are not actually looking deeply into our experience. We are leaving it in the head only. And so we end up with something less than a full, experiential recognition of non-duality. We may talk of experiencing freedom or even seeing there is "no self," yet we may find ourselves very much locked into old patterns of conflict and separation in relationship.

In the last few years, I've seen a sort of fast food "nonduality" where one experiences non-conceptual awareness and "presto" liberation is supposedly realized. I've been guilty of it myself, in my message. It's great if you have realized that when there are no thoughts, there is no separation. There is only simple presence. It is great if you have realized that "all there is, is what is happening right now." But we can utter catchy nondual phrases millions of times and still believe in separation. If one is still buying into separation in any way is that nonduality? Non-duality means "not two." It means seeing through separation wherever that appears, in any and every relationship. It means seeing that there is no separation whether you are thinking or not thinking.

Relationship is really where the rubber meets the road in spirituality. One can talk of being realized or enlightened while still acting out old egoic patterns in relationships. The true test, in my view, is this: how do you move and act in relationship? That reveals everything about how deeply the belief in separation has been seen through. Merely saying there is "no self" doesn't cut it, not if you have reduced that to a mental conclusion. It's just a fancy one-liner in that case. It won't bring you one bit closer to real freedom. "No self" has to be realized, through and through. And that includes seeing that there is no separate other in relationship.

The Boomerang Inquiry uses the mind to go beyond the mind, so to speak. It doesn't ask you to withdraw from concepts. It invites you to see through your belief in them. It invites you to look specifically at a relationship in which there is a strong sense of separation or conflict (e.g., with a boss, co-worker, spouse, boyfriend, friend, family member). It then invites you to see that we, as people, only exist in relationship. This means that each object you see mirrors back to you, in some way, who you think you are. The point of the inquiry is to see that you do not see others objectively. You do not see separate others at all. You see whatever your thoughts reveal.

We do not experience each other the way we really are. We experience objects, or others, through a conceptual and emotional filter. Thought and emotion actually create the objects (people, etc) we see.

For example, you cannot see your mother the way she really is. You see her only through your own thoughts and emotions. The grocery store clerk does not see the same object when she looks at your mother. Your father does not see the same object when he sees your mother. Your mothers' friends do not see the same object that you see when they look at your mother.

We suffer in relationships because we falsely believe that we see each other objectively. This lie of objectivity is exactly what the Boomerang Inquiry helps us see through.

Here are a few notes about what the Boomerang Inquiry is and what it is not

What the Boomerang Inquiry Is Not

1. The Boomerang Inquiry is not a method to change yourself or others in relationship. It is not a self-improvement plan.

2. It is not an inquiry designed to help you get a romantic partner or win friends.

3. It is not a way to avoid conflict (in fact, it invites you to use conflict to "wake up" out of the sense of being a separate self in relationship to a separate other).

4. It is not a method to improve your relationship (or, at least, that is not its goal; the goal of the inquiry is to see through the sense of separation in relationship; coincidentally relationships do improve but not through actively trying to change the relationship).

What the Boomerang Inquiry Is

The Boomerang Inquiry is a set of questions that Scott takes you through. He firsts asks you to get a real sense of the separation between you and an other in relationship. The "other" can be a person, place, or other thing. It can be the court system, a disease, your father, an object of obsession. It can be any object whatsoever. Scott then asks you to find the other through looking a individual arisings of thought, emotion, and sensation. In not finding the other, the other appears "empty" or lacking a separate nature. The other is seen to be thought, emotion, and sensation arising inseparably within awareness. Scott also asks you to look at the particular self that gets created in this relationship with the other. For example, if the other is a victimizer, the self is a victim. Once the self that is created in this relationship is identified, Scott invites you to find that self by looking at individual arisings of thought, emotion, and sensation. In not finding the self, the sense of separation between self and other falls away, leaving non-dual awareness.

We believe we see others the way they really are. We fail to see the filter of thought and emotion through which we view others. Seeing this filter for what it is is helpful in seeing through the sense of separation in our relationships.

This is why the Boomerang Inquiry has been so powerful in one-on-one sessions with people. The inquiry is content-specific. In other words, it is not a dry, one-size fits all teaching that has no relevance to your relationships. Its strength lies in the fact that it is directed precisely towards the relationships in your own life. It starts out with the assumption that there are two separate individuals�you and an other. It asks you to picture and characterize the "other" in your life. And through picturing that other, the inquiry invites you to see who you think you are in relationship to the other. And then the inquiry cuts through the belief in objectivity (the idea that you see the other objectively). It cuts through the notion of separation itself, the belief that you are looking at a separate object.

The inquiry cuts both ways. This is what Buddha meant when he said "emptiness is none other than form and form is none other than emptiness." The emptiness of all forms (including self and other) is one of highest Sutras in Buddhism. The Boomerang Inquiry reveals that there is no separation there in the relationship in either direction (subject or object). It reveals that love is already here in every relationship, under the false belief in separation and under the lie of objectivity. This is when we take "no self" into its real depths, instead of leaving it as a catchy spiritual one-liner. At the end of the inquiry, you are still able to use labels like self and other, conventionally. This means that you see that self and other are conceptual only. This allows you to use the labels, without believing in separation any longer.

If you are interested in doing this Boomerang Inquiry, email me at Scottkiloby@... . I also highly recommend you read the Living Realization text at www.livingrealization.org before meeting with me. That text helps tremendously in giving you context for the Boomerang Inquiry. You can also join the Living Realization online meetings, coming soon, to enjoy the inquiry in a small group setting.

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#4167

From: "Gloria Lee" <editglo@...>
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2011 7:22 pm
Subject: #4167 - Thursday, February 17, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

glee_be

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#4167 - Thursday, February 17, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

"If you must begin, then go all the way,
because if you begin and quit,
the unfinished business you have
left behind begins to haunt
you all the time."

~Trungpa Rinpoche

posted to Daily Dharma by Amrita Nadi

by Alan Larus

http://www.ferryfee.com/Bluesky/Beautys_way.htm

http://www.ferryfee.com/Bluesky/Down_in_the_river.htm

http://www.ferryfee.com/Bluesky/To_Victory.html

The following is excerpted from Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality
Disconnects Us from What Really Matters, by Robert Augustus Masters,
available from North Atlantic Books.

Avoidance in Holy Drag: An Introduction to Spiritual Bypassing

Spiritual bypassing, a term first coined by psychologist John Welwood in
1984, is the use of spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with our
painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs. It is much more
common than we might think and, in fact, is so pervasive as to go largely
unnoticed, except in its more obvious extremes.

Part of the reason for this is that we tend not to have very much tolerance,
either personally or collectively, for facing, entering, and working through our
pain, strongly preferring pain-numbing "solutions," regardless of how much
suffering such "remedies" may catalyze. Because this preference has so deeply
and thoroughly infiltrated our culture that it has become all but normalized,
spiritual bypassing fits almost seamlessly into our collective habit of turning
away from what is painful, as a kind of higher analgesic with seemingly minimal
side effects. It is a spiritualized strategy not only for avoiding pain but also
for legitimizing such avoidance, in ways ranging from the blatantly obvious to
the extremely subtle.

Spiritual bypassing is a very persistent shadow of spirituality, manifesting in
many forms, often without being acknowledged as such. Aspects of spiritual
bypassing include exaggerated detachment, emotional numbing and repression,
overemphasis on the positive, anger-phobia, blind or overly tolerant compassion,
weak or too porous boundaries, lopsided development (cognitive intelligence
often being far ahead of emotional and moral intelligence), debilitating
judgment about one's negativity or shadow side, devaluation of the personal
relative to the spiritual, and delusions of having arrived at a higher level of
being.

The explosion of interest in spirituality since the mid-1960s, especially
Eastern spirituality, has been accompanied by a corresponding interest and
immersion in spiritual bypassing -- which has, however, not very often been
named, let alone viewed, as such. It has been easier to frame spiritual
bypassing as a religion -- transcending, spiritually advanced practice or
perspective, especially in the fast-food spirituality epitomized by faddish
phenomena like The Secret. Some of the more glaringly facile features, such as
drive-through servings of reheated wisdom like "Don't take it personally" or
"Whatever bothers you about someone is really only about you" or "It's all
just an illusion," are available for consumption and parroting by just about
anyone.

Happily, the honeymoon with false or superficial notions of spirituality is
starting to wane. Enough bubbles have been burst; enough spiritual teachers,
Eastern and Western, have been caught with pants or halo down; enough cults
have come and gone; enough time has been spent with spiritual baubles,
credentials, energy transmissions, and gurucentrism to sense deeper treasures.
But valuable as the desire for a more authentic spirituality is, such change will
not occur on any significant scale and really take root until spiritual bypassing
is outgrown, and that is not as easy as it might sound, for it asks that we cease
turning away from our pain, numbing ourselves, and expecting spirituality to
make us feel better.

True spirituality is not a high, not a rush, not an altered state. It has been fine
to romance it for a while, but our times call for something far more real,
grounded, and responsible; something radically alive and naturally integral;
something that shakes us to our very core until we stop treating spiritual
deepening as something to dabble in here and there. Authentic spirituality is
not some little flicker or buzz of knowingness, not a psychedelic blast-through
or a mellow hanging-out on some exalted plane of consciousness, not a bubble of
immunity, but a vast fire of liberation, an exquisitely fitting crucible and
sanctuary, providing both heat and light for the healing and awakening we need.

Most of the time when we're immersed in spiritual bypassing, we like the light
but not the heat. And when we're caught up in the grosser forms of spiritual
bypassing, we'd usually much rather theorize about the frontiers of
consciousness than actually go there, suppressing the fire rather than breathing
it even more alive, espousing the ideal of unconditional love but not permitting
love to show up in its more challenging, personal dimensions. To do so would be
too hot, too scary, and too out-of-control, bringing things to the surface that
we have long disowned or suppressed.

But if we really want the light, we cannot afford to flee the heat. As Victor
Frankl said, "What gives light must endure burning." And being with the fire's
heat doesn't just mean sitting with the difficult stuff in meditation, but also
going into it, trekking to its core, facing and entering and getting intimate with
whatever is there, however scary or traumatic or sad or raw.

We have had quite an affair with Eastern spiritual pathways, but now it is time
to go deeper. We must do this not only to get more intimate with the essence of
these wisdom traditions beyond ritual and belief and dogma but also to make
room for the healthy evolution, not just the necessary Westernization, of these
traditions so that their presentation ceases encouraging spiritual bypassing
(however indirectly) and, in fact, consciously and actively ceases giving it soil
to flower. These changes won't happen to any significant degree, however,
unless we work in-depth and integratively with our physical, emotional,
psychological, spiritual, and social dimensions to generate an everdeeper sense
of wholeness, vitality, and basic sanity.

full article: http://www.realitysandwich.com/spiritual_bypassing

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#4168

From: "Jerry K" <umbada@...>
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2011 7:15 am
Subject: #4168 - Friday, February 18, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

nondualguy

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#4168 - Friday, February 18, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

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

Nonduality: Enumerating Being

-James Traverse

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

Dear Jerry,

Thank you again for the highlights. I enjoy them daily.

After reading James Traverse's interpretation of King Lear, I was remembering some insight I wrote to those calling for guidance, regarding the notion of being a "fool". I have pasted it below

To your deepest peace, joy, and unconditional fulfillment.

Love and namaste,

Ellen Davis
www.ellendavis.org

5-2-10

Looking now I see that fools are the figments of a judgmental imagination. Stepping into the shoes of a fool is stepping into freedom from those judgments. It is finding yourself in a suit that has finally lost its hook and turns into all of those magical colors.

;-)

The fool is our feared future or what we look back upon with judgment. Standing here as we are, one with all, nottwo, no matter how broken we might have thought ourselves to be, who separate is there to judge?

~~~

Today I got an essay by Scott Morrison. At one point he said, "If you truly give yourself up completely, it will shock your whole system. It will suddenly dawn on you, "Oh my God, what a fool I've been! What was I thinking?""

That is the feeling. Yet, if you are still with that, and give yourself up really completely, there is no one left to judge the fool or the ignorance... and if you keep your heart open, there is compassion for that ignorance.

The vision of the fool is also the fear of death .. of your death....of the identity that you have held to so tightly. Let yourself be the fool and it will be the death of what hooks you and your shackles. The fool or joker's garb is the colors of the charade they have given up - but that they can wear proudly without embarrassment because they themselves are not fixed to their own identity, nor do they believe the thoughts about it; it is a brightly colorful reflection to all that see it of all that they fear. The fool laughs knowing that there is no fool but for the one who fears being one.

Here is something i wrote in 1999 about being a fool:

One must be willing to be a fool. Only fools take risks. What do you think jumping into the unknown is, reasonable? Actually, when you know that the mind is a circuitous trap, it is reasonable. Fool is a term coming out of what other people think. So being willing to be a fool is being willing to sacrifice your appearance to the world. A very courageous thing to do.

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

Jerry,

Thank you and other editors for producing NDhighilghts. It's a sanity-touchstone and frequently a source of delight for me.

When I was in engineering school more than 50 years ago, a vague but persistent impulse led me to buy and keep books about philosophy, psychology, and history , among them Science and Sanity by Alfred Korzybski. For the past 30 years my path has led thru deeper layers of mind � personal crisis and recovery, long vipassana meditation retreats, Jungian analysis, hypnosis, travel to India to be with Poonja, and connection with Ramana and Nisargadatta by reading. Many of my books mysteriously survived and traveled with me. Gradually I have reconnected with the human drama without being absorbed by it; that has been accompanied by turning to my old library and continuing reading with a changed perspective.

A thought arose in my mind about Science and Sanity, which I had not finished nor thought about for decades. I immediately found the book on a shelf within arm's reach. My interest went to Chapter XIX "Mathematics as a Language of a Structure Similar to the Structure of the Human Nervous System"; the apparent correspondence between mathematics and the "outside" world has puzzled me since engineering school. The following statement by Korzsybski jumped off the page for me:

The problems of "formalism" are of serious and neglected psycho-logical importance, and are connected with great semantic dangers in daily life if associated with the lack of consciousness of abstracting; or, in other words when we confuse the orders of abstractions. Indeed, the majority of "mentally" ill are too formal in their psych-logical, one-, two- or few-valued processes and so cannot adjust themselves to the ∞-valued experiences of life. Formalism is only useful in the search for, and test of, structure; but, in that case, the consciousness of abstracting makes the attitude behind formal reasoning ∞-valued and probable, so that semantic disturbances and shocks in life are avoided. Let us be simple about it: the mechanism of the semantic disturbance , called "identification", or "the confusion of orders of abstractions" in general, and "objectification" in particular, is, to a large extent, dependent on two-valued formalism without the consciousness of abstracting.

Alfred Korzybski
Science and Sanity, 1933, Chapter V, Mathematics a Non-Aristotelian Language, p 276

That struck me as an elegant description of being lost in dualism; and the inverse implies non-dual awareness. An impulse arose to share this with you, probably because of your interest in science and non-dualism.

Kind regards,

BF

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#4169

From: "Mark" <markwotter704@...>
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2011 6:31 am
Subject: #4169 - Saturday, February 19, 2011

markwotter704

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Archived issues of the NDHighlights are available online: http://nonduality.com/hlhome.htm

Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4169, Saturday, February 19, 2011

Why We Don't Die

In late September many voices
Tell you you will die.
That leaf says it. That coolness.
All of them are right.

Our many souls - what
Can they do about it?
Nothing. They're already
Part of the invisible.

Our souls have been
Longing to go home
Anyway. "It's late," they say.
"Lock the door, let's go."

The body doesn't agree. It says,
"We buried a little iron
Ball under that tree.
Let's go get it."

- Robert Bly, from Morning Poems, posted to allspirit

Freedom means letting go. People just do not care to let go of everything. They do not know that the finite is the price of the infinite, as death is the price of immortality. Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go of everything. The giving up is the final step. But the real giving up is in realizing that there is nothing to give up, for nothing is your own. It is like deep sleep - you do not give up your bed when you fall asleep - you just forget it.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, from I Am That - Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to AlongTheWay

Surrender is to surrender your concept of separateness, your ego. Surrender is to submit your stupidness, your wickedness, to the will of Existence. That's all. You must surrender like a river discharging into the Ocean. Surrender is to discharge your river of separateness into the Ocean of Being, losing your limitations, and allowing to happen what happens.

- Papaji, posted to AlongTheWay

In reality only the Ultimate is. The rest is a matter of name and form. And as long as you cling to the idea that only what has name and shape exists, the Supreme will appear to you non-existing. When you understand that names and shapes are hollow shells without any content whatsoever, and what is real is nameless and formless, pure energy of life and light of consciousness, you will be at peace - immersed in the deep silence of reality.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels

The true understanding comes from outside. It is not of the space-time dimension. Therefore, we can only call it Grace. Keeping your being open and receptive to that other dimension is a matter of Grace.

- Ramesh S. Balsekar, posted to Distillation

Iblis asked, "Can you tell a lie from the truth,
you who are filled with illusion?"
Mu`awiyah answered, "The Prophet has given a clue,
a touchstone to know
the base coin from the true.
He has said, "That which is false troubles the heart,
but Truth brings joyous tranquility."

- Rumi, Mathnawi II: 2732-2734, version by Camille and Kabir Helminski, from Rumi: Daylight, posted to Sunlight

The creative force produces the universe.
When I surrender, I enjoy the playing of the game.

Isn't it wonderful...
when you surrender yourself
to the workings of the universe?

I love the idea of being grounded
in the space in which I have my being.

Try as I may I can't escape
the universal power
that has brought me into being.

Why should I want to, and how impossible it is.

- John, posted to The_Now2

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#4170

From: "Mark" <markwotter704@...>
Date: Mon Feb 21, 2011 6:23 am
Subject: #4170 - Sunday, February 20, 2011

markwotter704

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Archived issues of the NDHighlights are available online: http://nonduality.com/hlhome.htm

Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4170, Sunday, February 20, 2011

God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.

Paul Valery, posted to Distillation

Consciousness simply is. It is energy manifesting without any interest in any of the concepts that our minds have about good or bad, purpose or meaning. It is absolutely impersonal and has no particular direction. It is playing the game of creation and destruction.

- Tony Parsons, from As It Is - The Open Secret of Spiritual Awakening, posted to AlongTheWay

A visual interpretation of the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwyuQbIb0Xs&feature=related

Allan Watts on The Unsettling Truth About Life:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dtixs0UhkI&feature=related

Tony Parsons- Awakening from the dream pt1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpUAKFpVqkg&feature=related

... and because I admit I found it funny:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx-zaXGNSMg

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#4171

From: "Gloria Lee" <editglo@...>
Date: Tue Feb 22, 2011 5:15 pm
Subject: #4171 - Monday, February 21, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

glee_be

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#4171 - Monday, February 21, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

"The connections we make in the course of a life--maybe that's what heaven is."
� Fred Rogers

Surely there must be truth in this, for how could Mr. Rogers be mistaken?
Indeed, I would count him as one of the "great-hearted souls along the way, the
great beings who have graced our lives", to quote my dear friend, Susan Lucey.
Susan herself is one of those special connections, a gift to me, met through
doing these Nonduality Highlights. Along with some others met in person, there
must be hundreds known only online, who have brought some heaven into my life.
What connects us all is a love of the myriad ways of expressing what is really.
un-nameable, yet always finds a way to provide that connection. Whatever it is
we have in common draws us into community. So many names come to mind, that
the thought of beginning overwhelms me with gratitude. If possible, I would
want to name everyone ever quoted here. I must say thanks to Jerry and Mark
for keeping me on the team and making it "still crazy after all these years",
too. And thanks to all of you who read us, you give us a reason to carry on.

"Let your love flow outward through the universe,
To its height, its depth, its broad extent,
A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.
Then as you stand or walk,
Sit or lie down,
As long as you are awake,
Strive for this with a one-pointed mind;
Your life will bring heaven to earth."
~The Buddha

posted to Daily Dharma by Amrita Nadi

Sabbaths 1999, II

I dream of a quiet man
who explains nothing and defends
nothing, but only knows
where the rarest wildflowers
are blooming, and who goes,
and finds that he is smiling
not by his own will.

~ Wendell Berry ~

(Given)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Sabbaths_1999_II.html

StillnessSpeaks announces new microsite authors Greg Goode, Michael
Jeffreys, Robert Wolfe and Chuck Surface, whose new articles appear this
week on the website. Jerry Katz, Mark Scorelle and Peter Dziuban appear
next week.

An all new, free, rare and unpublicized video interview with Jean Klein by Drs.
Paul and Evelyn Moschetta on Love and Marriage appears this week. See the all
new trailer by Tom Shadyac from his movie, I AM.

This email highlights new material available at StillnessSpeaks.com. You may
wish to visit our site at StillnessSpeaks.com.

http://www.stillnessspeaks.com/

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#4172

From: "markwotter704" <markwotter704@...>
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2011 4:00 am
Subject: #4172 - Tuesday, February 22, 2011

markwotter704

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Archived issues of the NDHighlights are available online: http://nonduality.com/hlhome.htm

Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4172, Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

- Wendell Berry, from Collected Poems, posted to The_Now2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmmgqBBSxbk&feature=related

What Did We See Today?

Some days we are passive, listening to the incoming waves.
On other days, we are like a light that sweeps
Out over the husky soybean fields all night.

What did we see today? Horses at the end Of their tethering ropes, the wing of affection going over,
Flying bulls glimpsed passing the moon disc.

Rather than arguing about whether Giordano Bruno
Was right or not, it might be better to fall silent
And lose ourselves in the curved energy.

We know how many men live alone in their twenties,
And how many women are married to the wrong person,
And how many father and sons are strangers to each
other.

It's all right if we keep forgetting the way home.
It's all right if we don't remember when we were born.
It's all right if we write the same poem over and over.

Robert, I don't know why you talk so confidently
About yourself in this way. There are a lot of shady
Characters in this town, and you are one of them.

- Robert Bly, from Talking Into the Ear of a Donkey, posted to The_Now2

I wondered for a long time why God has preferences, why all souls don't receive an equal amount of graces. I was surprised when I saw Him shower His extraordinary favors on saints who had offended Him, for instance, St. Paul and St. Augustine, and whom He forced, so to speak, to accept his graces. I was puzzled at seeing how Our Lord was pleased to caress certain ones from the cradle to the grave, allowing no obstacle in their way when coming to Him.

Jesus deigned to teach me this mystery. He set before me the book of nature; I understood how all the flowers He has created are beautiful, how the splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the Lily do not take away from the perfume of the little violet or the delightful simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty, and the fields would no longer be decked out with little wild flowers.

And so it is in the world of souls, Jesus' garden. He willed to create great souls comparable to Lilies and roses, but He has created smaller ones and these must be content to be daisies or violets destined to give joy to God's glances when He looks down at his feet. Perfection consists in doing His will, in being what He wills us to be.

It is with great happiness, then, that I come to sing the mercies of the Lord with you, dear Mother. It is for "you alone" I am writing the story of the "little flower" gathered by Jesus.

St. Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, posted to allspirit

Beware
Don't say, "Mind you, so and so sowed seed,
and then the locusts devoured it;
why should I bother sowing with such a risk?
Why should I let go of this corn-seed in my hand?"
Meanwhile, to your bewilderment,
one who did sow and labor
fills his barn with grain.
Since the lover patiently continued knocking at the door,
at last one day he gained an intimate meeting.

- Rumi, Mathnawi III: 4800-4803, version by Camille and Kabir Helminskim,from Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance, posted to Sunlight

God brought the earth and the heavenly spheres into existence
through the deliberation of six days -
even though He was able through "Be, and it is"
to bring forth a hundred earths and heavens.
Little by little until forty years of age
that Sovereign raises the human being to completion,
although in a single moment He was able
to send fifty flying up from nonexistence.
Jesus by means of one prayer could make the dead spring to life:
is the Creator of Jesus unable
to suddenly bring full-grown human beings
fold by fold into existence?
This deliberation is for the purpose of teaching you
that you must seek God slowly, without any break.
A little stream which moves continually
doesn't become tainted or foul.
From this deliberation are born felicity and joy:
this deliberation is the egg;
good fortune is the bird that comes forth.

- Rumi, Mathnawi III: 3500-3508, version by Camille and Kabir Helminski, from Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance, posted to Sunlight

I burst into laughter
whenever I hear
that the fish is thirsty in water.

Without the knowledge of Self
people just wander to Mathura or to Kashi
like the musk-deer unaware
of the scent in his navel,
goes on running forest to forest.

In water is the lotus plant
and the plant bears flowers
and on the flowers are the bees buzzing.
Likewise all yogis and mendicants
and all those who have renounced comforts,
are on here and hereafter and the nether world -
contemplating.

Friend, the Supreme Indestructible Being,
on whom thousands of sages meditate
and even Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh,
really resides within one's self.

Though He is near, He appears far away -
and that is what makes one disturbed;
says Kabir, listen, O wise one,
by Guru alone is the confusion curbed.

- Kabir

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#4173

From: "Jerry K" <umbada@...>
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2011 3:06 pm
Subject: #4173 - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

nondualguy

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#4173 - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

The Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

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

Dustin LindenSmith sends today's contribution.

Ezra Bayda on "What Blocks Happiness"

An exclusive excerpt from Ezra Bayda's new book, Beyond Happiness: The Zen Way to True Contentment:

The real question we need to ask ourselves is: why do we continue to follow behaviors that don't bring us real happiness? The answer lies in the basic human condition: that is, we are born with the innate craving for safety, security, and control�this is an integral part of our survival mechanism. We are also born with an aversion to discomfort and a natural desire for comfort and pleasure. Given these basic human predispositions, it makes sense that our learned strategies of behavior are geared to ensure that our cravings and desires are met.

On the surface, there's nothing wrong with trying to be safe or comfortable. The problem begins when our survival mode takes over and becomes our main motivation. When that happens, our other natural urges�curiosity, appreciation, and living from our true openhearted nature�are pushed aside, and consequently, our lives become narrower and increasingly less satisfying. Paradoxically, we continue to believe that our survival-based control strategies will make us happy, so we keep on trying harder or seeking approval; yet these very behaviors often bring us the most dissatisfaction.

Opening our eyes to what we're doing is not always easy. Our habits of behavior, like trying harder and seeking approval, can become so deeply conditioned that we can hardly see them. Even when our behaviors don't make us happy, we often don't notice because we so firmly believe that they will! One very effective way to cut through our usual blindness is to ask the following questions: "Am I truly happy right now?" and "What blocks happiness?" To reflect on these two questions only takes a few moments, and if you do it several times a day, over a period of time you will begin to observe, very specifically, all the behaviors that directly block genuine happiness.

Trying harder and seeking approval are two of the most widespread conditioned behaviors for achieving happiness.. Almost equally common are our many addictive behaviors, starting with our addictions to pleasure and diversions. In themselves, pleasure and diversions are fine, and they can certainly make us feel good. But whenever we have addictive behaviors�whether to food, alcohol, sex, or working out�we are driven by the compulsion to keep returning to whatever we're addicted to, in the promise that it will continue to make us feel good.

Pursuing our addictive behaviors highlights the very essence of the human tendency to misunderstand happiness. We follow these seductive behaviors because they seem to promise us happiness. And to some degree, they fulfill their promise, in that we feel personally happy when we experience sensual pleasure or the hit of endorphins. But the fulfillment of that promise is always temporary, and it is always based on a temporarily benevolent external environment. As long as the environment doesn't turn against us, we think our life is okay, and we don't do anything to change the situation. Nor do we address the underlying unease out of which the addictive behaviors arise: why upset the applecart when things seem to be okay? Thus, we remain on the treadmill of personal happiness/unhappiness. When we don't feel so good, we find a fix, and then we think we are happy again. The cycle goes on and on; meanwhile, genuine happiness eludes us.

We will continue to pursue the conditioned strategies of behavior that we hope will bring us happiness as long as we believe they are working. And because they sometimes do bring us some degree of personal happiness, these behaviors can get reinforced for a long time. That's how people get caught on the treadmill of their attachments and routines for a lifetime without making any effort to change. Paradoxically, we're actually fortunate if life occasionally serves us a big dose of disappointment, because it forces us to question whether our attachments and strategies really serve us. When we truly see that what we've been doing simply isn't effective in bringing us genuine happiness, we may be motivated enough to take the next step.

Each of us has to examine where and how we get in our own way, observing all the ways we block fundamental happiness. Specifically, we need to look at all of our conditioned behaviors�our strategies of control and our addictive tendencies. We've spent our whole life believing these things would give us happiness, when in fact if we look deeply, they've done just the opposite. But until we see this clearly�until we've seen the many things we do to get in our own way�we won't be motivated to go beyond our small measures of personal happiness, toward cultivating the roots of true contentment.

~ ~ ~

Ezra Bayda lives and teaches at the Zen Center of San Diego. He is the author of Being Zen, At Home in the Muddy Water, Saying Yes to Life (Even the Hard Parts), and Zen Heart. Initially trained in the Gurdjieff tradition, Ezra has practiced Zen meditation since 1970 and has been teaching Zen since 1995. He is also the founder of the Santa Rosa Zen Group in Santa Rosa, California. For more information, please visit www.zencentersandiego.org .

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#4174

From: "Gloria Lee" <editglo@...>
Date: Fri Feb 25, 2011 12:36 am
Subject: #4174 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

glee_be

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#4174 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

Thanks to all who wrote in response to "connections", Saved all
your sweet notes in my Valentine box. Feeling a bit giddy and
silly, so this is what you get next. ~Gloria

Take the whole kit
with the caboodle
Experience life
don't deplore it
Shake hands with time
don't kill it
Open a lookout
Dance on a brink
Run with your wildfire
You are closer to glory
leaping an abyss
than upholstering a rut

~ James Broughton ~

(Little Sermons of the Big Joy)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Take_the_whole_kit.html

It sings

Came up to shake the shining drops

and plunged again into the cold �

a leaping fish

rain phoenix

ancient child

wild boy of the waters

half-heard echo

unheard shout

Grey hair dripping

dance of the wild bone

tears of hilarity

Worn boots grin, gap-toed

content to drowse

in the spring grass

old head nodding

Murmurs of ancient dirt

texture of mossy stones

Silence singing to itself

~George Jisho Robertson on Facebook

Start a huge, foolish, project, like Noah. It makes absolutely no
difference what people think of you.

~Jellaluddin Rumi

by Tommy McFerran on Facebook

Benjamin Smythe holds up a sign in front of Sather Gate in an
attempt to fulfill his personal quota of making one person smile
every day.

Adam Romero/Photo

You're perfect.

At least that is what Berkeley resident Benjamin Smythe tells
people every day - and he believes it.

Since August, Smythe, 35, has sat on the bridge by Sather Gate
on the UC Berkeley campus, holding his cardboard sign and
smiling at passersby. He has no agenda, only a quota of making
one person smile every day.

The idea came to him eight years ago from a homeless man in
Laguna Beach who told everyone who walked by that they were
perfect. Smythe never forgot that man, and when he was having a
bad day five years later, he decided to deliver the message
himself by holding a sign reading "you're perfect" while
meditating.

"It just felt so great to tell the truth," he said.

Smythe, who spent his childhood in the suburbs in Connecticut,
said he has not always had confidence in himself. But through any
struggles he has faced, he has remembered how his mother, his
role model, raised him to believe he could not only do whatever
he wants, but that he deserves to be happy.

"She told me that my whole life, so I don't really have any doubt,"
he said. "I'm a normal person, I go through ups and downs, but
this is my life, too."

Smythe admits holding the sign did - and still does - make him
feel vulnerable, but he has learned to embrace the uncertainty of
how others will react.

"I got to burn through all kinds of judgments and stereotypes," he
said. "I never know who's going to say something or smile. I look
at somebody now, and I just see them."

Smythe does not limit himself to campus. In fact, nearly each day
he goes around the city and sits on street corners, often holding
his sign beside rush hour traffic because that's when "the
message makes the most sense." [...]

For the next year, Smythe is taking a yearlong break from work -
previous jobs include working as a yoga instructor, a teacher and
a cook - to go on tour after he posted a video saying he would
visit anyone who paid for his travel expenses. Within 24 hours,
Smythe said he had to turn down offers.

He plans to spend the year in various cities in the United States,
Australia and countries across Europe, spending a week with
each family, and together they will hold his sign.

Smythe explains his outlook on life with an analogy: Everyone
jumped out of a plane when they were born. There is no
parachute, and everyone will hit the ground, when they die.

"I can either laugh the whole way down, or I can cry the whole way
down," Smythe said. "I think that loving myself is part of that
laughing the whole way down."

By Mary Susman
Daily Cal Staff Writer
Thursday, February 24, 2011

Meet Benjamin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDfwKOONsLo

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#4175

From: "Gloria Lee" <editglo@...>
Date: Sat Feb 26, 2011 8:08 pm
Subject: #4175 - Friday, February 25, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

glee_be

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#4175 - Friday, February 25, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

Psalm 121

I look deep into my heart,
to the core where wisdom arises.
Wisdom comes from the Unnamable
...and unifies heaven and earth.
The Unnamable is always with you,
shining from the depths of your heart.

~ (A Book of Psalms, trans. and adapted by Stephen Mitchell)

posted by Belle Heywood to Facebook

Playfully, you hid from me.
All day I looked.

Then I discovered
I was you,

and the celebration
of That began.

- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic

posted to Along The way

Do realize that it is not you who moves from dream to dream, but the dreams
flow before you, and you are the immutable witness. No happening affects your
real being - that is the absolute truth.
~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

"The sensations in the mind that we explain at such length are on the level of
labels. Only when there is awareness right at awareness will you really know
that the mind that's aware of awareness doesn't send its knowing outside this
awareness. There are no issues. Nothing can be concocted in the mind when it
knows in this way."
~Upasika Kee Nanayon

From the book: "Pure and Simple," published by Wisdom Books.

posted to Daily Dharma by Dainen Kelley

THE VINTAGE MAN

The
Difference
Between a good artist
And a great one

Is:

The novice
Will often lay down his tool
Or brush

Then pick up an invisible club
On the mind's table

And helplessly smash the easels and
Jade.

Whereas the vintage man
No longer hurts himself or anyone

And keeps on
Sculpting

Light.

- Hafiz

` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `

"The Gift"
Translations by Daniel Ladinsky
posted to Along The way

�In the heart of a human being,
emptiness becomes love.
When we touch that Source,
instantly the love is present.
Literally, the divine becomes human
and the human becomes divine.�
~ Adyashanti

The Existential Drive to Truth.wmv

In this essential satsang, Adyashanti explores two fundamentally different
motivations that human beings bring to spirituality. He first shows how the
psychological desire to feel better and be constantly happy only leads to
persistent suffering. He then reveals how the existential drive to see what's
really true regardless of our emotional state can free us to discover the
simplicity and happiness of what we already are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SJACtHSL_s&feature=uploademail

For more information about Adyashanti and his teachings, events, and publications, visit www.adyashanti.org.

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#4176

From: "Mark" <markwotter704@...>
Date: Sun Feb 27, 2011 5:19 pm
Subject: #4176 - Saturday, February 26, 2011

markwotter704

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Archived issues of the NDHighlights are available online: http://nonduality.com/hlhome.htm

Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4176, Saturday, February 26, 2011

Nothing in life is to be feared,
it is only to be understood.
Now is the time to understand more,
so that we may fear less.

- Maria Sklodowska-Curie, posted to The_Now2

What begins must end. What appears must disappear. The duration of appearance is a matter of relativity, but the inviolable principle is that whatever is subject to time and duration must end and is therefore not Real.

- Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels

Ascetics wander shrine to shine,
looking for what can only come
from visiting the soul.

Study the mystery you embody.
When you look up from that,
the dub grass looks fresher
a little ways off, and even more
green farther on. Stay here.

- Lalla, posted to Distillation

By its very nature, the mind is outward turned; it always tends to seek for the source of things among the things themselves; to be told to look for the source within, is, in a way, the beginning of a new life. Awareness takes the place of consciousness; in consciousness there is the "I", who is conscious, while awareness is undivided; awareness is aware of itself. The "I am" is a thought, while awareness is not a thought; there is no "I am aware" in awareness. Consciousness is an attribute while awareness is not; one can be aware of being conscious, but not conscious of awareness. God is the totality of consciousness, but awareness is beyond all - being as well as not-being.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to SufiMystic

In the physical world, you are here and everything else is without you. You are contained in space. In the dream, all that you see is contained within you.

From The Teachings Of Hazrat Inayat Khan, selected and arranged by Hazrat Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, posted to SufiMystic

When you are free of the world, you can do something about it.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels

CRACK DOWN

You knelt in the street
unbuttoned your shirts
& invited them to shoot to kill

When I heard the recording
of the machine gun fire
I burst into tears & left the room

Let that be my prayer
for all the names I don't know
Nothing can stop you after this

Tyrants are a dying breed
Nothing can keep them in power now
Life itself is cracking down

A transfer of energy is taking place
You've awakened the instinct for freedom
The fire you've started will burn forever

- Steve Toth, posted to allspirit

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#4177

From: "Mark" <markwotter704@...>
Date: Mon Feb 28, 2011 3:32 pm
Subject: #4177 - Sunday, February 27, 2011

markwotter704

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Archived issues of the NDHighlights are available online: http://nonduality.com/hlhome.htm

Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4177, Sunday, February 27, 2011

Nothing of value can happen to a mind, which knows exactly what it wants.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels

Thought is absent in seeing things intuitively. When you perceive directly, there is no thinking. When you think you understand, you don't. You do not think that you are alive, you know that you are alive.

- Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels

Good morning, darlin's!

A fine young woman came to me last night to inquire about whether she should quit her job or not.. the one she presently had provided security .. but she was bored.. and full of fear what the unknown might hold.... so she asked me, "Old Hag, what should i do?" (well ok, she did not call me old hag)

Reminded me of long-ago tale: "The Three Answers":

"One evening, Neem Karoli Baba came to call. He gave me one of his famous bear hugs....ummmm, so delicious! Was all snuggled up in his arms, but knew i had only a few moments with him, so quickly began to ask some questions. Was considering moving to California, so asked him, "Where should i go?" And he said, "Go anywhere!"

Was thinking of leaving where i was working, so rushed on, "Well, what should i do? Quit my job? " And he answered, "Do nothing!"

Thought i would get some advice about my love life, so quickly asked, "Who should i love, Rob or Fred?" And he said, "Love Everybody!"

So i call this, The Three Answers:

"Go Anywhere!
Do Nothing!'
Love Everybody!"

egads! that was over thirty years ago!
and what has old hag learned?
nothing!

celebrate with me darlin's...
finally, finally, i know nothing!
there is nothing to "do".. ever..
the world arises... the world
falls back..there is just nothin'
going on except what our attention
creates.

that dear girl who came last night ... has nothing to fear...
what job she holds means nothing 'cept fodder for
angst... oh, oh what should i "do"? The sustenance
of our egos....

Whether you go with this partner or that...
egad! who were Rob and Fred anyway?
,^)) nothing matters...

a few weeks ago, a beautiful being came
to see old hag once again..
this time in form of one who said two words
before he passed away.. .
that shored up three answer theme
for all these years...

which i have shared with you ...
and which cries as the answer to all our "problems"

Devotee is crying at his bedside, and he touches
the devotee's head and says:
"Nothing happens."

Thank you dear old man, thank you dear young ones who
come with why's and wherefore's that bring back
such wonderful memories of times with young hag...

had questions...

And what should "you" do today, darlin?
Snip!
cut that load on your back! tumble, tumble...
now, go out and bake cookies, make snow angels...
move to Tunisia - wait! they have problems there! ,^))
Cause you know, really know, that nothing is happening!

i love you.

- dg, posted to DailyDharma

Let your actions be like clouds going by; the clouds going by are mindless. Let your stillness be as the valley spirit; the valley spirit is undying. When action accompanies stillness and stillness combines with action, then the duality of action and stillness no longer arises.

- Pei-chien, posted to Distillation

Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go of everything. The giving up is the final step. But the real giving up is in realising that there is nothing to give up, for nothing is your own. It is like deep sleep - you do not give up your bed when you fall asleep - you just forget it.

Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to Distillation

Playfully, you hid from me.
All day I looked.

Then I discovered
I was you,

and the celebration
of That began.

- Lalla, posted to AlongTheWay

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#4178

From: "Gloria Lee" <editglo@...>
Date: Tue Mar 1, 2011 5:18 am
Subject: #4178 - Monday, February 28, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

glee_be

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#4178 - Monday, February 28, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

Moment after moment, completely devote yourself to listening to your inner voice.
~ Shunryu Suzuki

posted by Jill Richling-Thesman to Facebook

Loving old priceless things,
I've scorned those seeking
Truth outside themselves:
Here, on the tip of the nose.

~ Layman Makusho

__________________

When the desire for the Friend became real,
all existence fell behind.
The Beloved wasn't interested in my reasoning,
I threw it away and became silent.
The sanity I had been taught became a bore,
it had to be ushered off.
Insane, silent and in bliss,
I spend my days with my head
at the feet of My Beloved.

~ Abu-Said Abil-Kheir, Nobody,Son of Nobody

posted by Kia Pierce to Facebook

There seem to two kinds of searchers: those who seek to make their ego something
other than it is, i.e. holy, happy, unselfish (as though you could make a fish unfish),
and those who understand that all such attempts are just gesticulation and
play-acting, that there is only one thing that can be done, which is to disidentify
themselves with the ego, by realising its unreality, and by becoming aware of their
eternal identity with pure being.

~Wei Wu Wei

posted by Diane Verpoest to Facebook

Peter Schefler photo

What happens when the god of spring
meets spring? He thinks for a moment
of great whales traveling from the bottom
to the top of the earth, the day the voyage
began seven million years ago
when spring last changed its season.
He enters himself, emptiness
desiring emptiness. He sleeps
and his sleep is the dance of all the birds
on earth flying north.

~Jim Harrison

posted by Kia Pierce to Facebook

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#4179

From: "Jerry Katz" <umbada@...>
Date: Wed Mar 2, 2011 6:53 pm
Subject: #4179 - Wednesday, March 2, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

nondualguy

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#4179 - Wednesday, March 2, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

In this issue you'll hear about three teachers you can visit or interact with in coming weeks: one on the east coast of the U.S., one on the west coast, and one in cyberspace: Peter Fenner, Scott Kiloby, and Bentinho Massaro.

PETER FENNER INTERACTIVE VIDEO

Dear Friend,

Maurizio and Zaya Benazzo, the organizers of SANDs Conference and Neti Neti Media have invited me to facilitate a live video interactive webcast*. I am very excited about this. I invite you to join me in a live setting in which we can be in real-time communication with each other using webcams. You can participate in any of the four dialogues or the whole series.

In these live video interactive webcast we will come together in the space of nondual awareness. We will engage in incisive dialogue that dissolves the experience that anything is wrong or missing. You will go beyond dualistic notions of better or worse, and "getting it" or "losing it."

TIMES: 9.00 am PST, 10.00 am MST, 11 am CST, 12.00 pm EST - 18.00 in Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and France.

DATES: March 27th, April 10, April 24.

REGISTRATION: http://netinetimedia.com/event_peter_fenner.shtml

I look forward to being with you.

Love,
Peter

* We recommend that you have a video camera connected to your computer prior to the meeting so you can fully participate and experience the conversation.
System Requirements Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6 or Windows 2000, 32-bit XP, 2003 and 32-bit/64-bit Vista,32-bit/64-bit Windows7.

The dialogues will be in English.

SCOTT KILOBY ON TOUR

Narragansett, Rhode Island

March 2, 2011
7 - 9 pm
For details, contact Willi Tetelbaum
wilitee@...
401-789-9184

Westerly, Rhode Island

March 3, 2011
7 - 9 pm
Artists Cooperative Gallery of Westerly
7 Canal Street
Westerly, RI
Contact Julianne Eanniello
401-315-0254
julenlo@...

New York City

Friday, March 4th, 7pm
Arlene's Place
RSVP (Arlene) 212-222-7450
She can give details and directions

Hempstead, NY

Saturday, March 5th
Center for Inner Healing
26 St. Pauls Place
Hempstead, NY 11550
Two sessions
10am to 1pm
2pm to 5pm
(lunch break from 1pm to 2pm)
Contact Ted@... for details and costs
516-248-5346
Visit www.centerforinnerhealing.com

Montclair, New Jersey

Sunday, Mar 6, 2011
Unity of Montclair
@ the Montclair Women's Club
82 Union Street Montclair, NJ 07042
11 am Sunday service & afternoon workshop from 1-3pm
Phone: (973) 746-8417
www.unityofmontclair.org

UPCOMING TOUR OF BENTINHO MASSARO

Bentinho Massaro will start his USA Tour of Free Awareness gatherings from March to May in the San Francisco Bay Area from Santa Cruz to Sacramento. We kick off this series in Santa Cruz on March 4th at The Pacific Cultural Center..... (see all locations through the links below and a general description below that)...

To see and be Free Awareness with Bentinho Massaro and a schedule with links to his facebook schedule too.....

http://www.free-awareness.com - for free books, audio, videos and schedule with Bentinho Massaro

We also have a meetup.com page... hosting all types of nondual and other spiritual oriented events�.

http://www.meetup.com/THE-OPEN-WAY-NONDUALITY-SPIRITUAL-EVENTS-AND-HOSTING/

To see the USA schedule and also get automatic reminders "only if you choose" to rsvp,

- highly recommended place to be to see and be reminded of, all types of future related events!! Go to:

www.theopenway.org

- IMPORTANT DISTINCTION � The Open Way website is a HOST for this and other similar events in the USA and does not represent Free Awareness Teachings

There are many ways and varieties of expression that have arisen which can be a blessing as some like more structure and others less so.....

well, Bentinho..... an amazing young sharer from The Netherlands, shares with essentially no dogma, directly as "this".... free awareness.

A living example that one need not necessarily practice for 30 years for clear awareness to arise... awesome to see

It is not so much that he talks about awareness ...... as he sees he is the awareness that arises and shares as him/that!!... You will enjoy the clear, happy way as one who really sees can share....

Bentinho Massaro started seeking for Enlightenment around the age of 16. He did so by intensely seeking for some kind of permanent state and hoped to attain that through reading a lot of books, meeting teachers, going to India and practicing all kinds of meditations. In a sense he never succeeded in his quest for 'enlightenment', and yet he discovered exactly what he was actually looking for... He noticed directly more so every single day, that every single one of his experiences never really left a mark anywhere. Nothing ever sticks in this natural space of being. Every experience was recognized to be an effortless, translucent coming and going within awareness. Even 'enlightenment' turned out to be an idea coming and going intermittently, with no actual reality to it other than being a thought arising in what is truly always present... Awareness.

The freedom that this recognition released, became more self-evident by the day, and so continuously subtle ideas and mis-perceptions started to dissolve in this clear light of awareness. The seeking-tendency relaxed as well, since it was now obvious that there had never been any other place, state or experience, than this natural presence of awareness. Nothing is ever known outside of this moment, and so there was nothing to achieve outside of this moment. The imaginary sense of separation, also dissolved. Now every experience is naturally pervaded by the loving presence of free awareness. Website: http://www.free-awareness.com

While I'm at it, if anyone lives in Nova Scotia, you are invited to our Nonduality Satsang meetup on March 6, 2011. For details, please visit

http://www.meetup.com/NondualitySatsang/

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