thoughts on a monday night...
The thought of Jesus appeared within my mind tonight..
As the readers of this blog know, the real hebrew name of Jesus is Yeshua ben Yosef..
A young man that still held the knowledge of Reality from a previous life..
This is called an Avatar..
What did He try to accomplish ?..
the answer is simple.. to awaken the souls of those that slept..
We walk in hypnosis and believe that We are a manifestation of dreams..
To play this game of duality correctly, we must forget who We really are..
We play the game so well that We become the game..
Thus, We spend many lifetimes trapped within the game..
When We tire of the game, We begin the search for Home..
Therefore, Reality hits us in the face like cold water..
This Reality is the action of Waking Up..
Is this the night that You Wake Up ?...
namaste, thomas
more about the Satguru...
As Poonja has just stated, the Satguru is You as Bliss, Awareness,and Truth..
The concept of God is the egoic illusion seeing duality..
In Reality, there is only the Satguru..
you as an individual consciousness soon fades next to Truth..
Truth dissolves division and misconceptions..
You, as the state of Reality will contain no egoic You..
There is only Reality..
This is where the fear of non-existence arises within the mind..
existence, itself is a Dream..
In Reality, There is only Pure Awareness without a personality..
God is the Energy of Light, Love, and Consciousness,
God does not need a name to individualize Itself..
All is Consciousness without a claimant..
namaste, thomas
the Satguru...
"The Self is the Satguru,
you will get help from Within.
Here your true Guide is,
Here all wisdom and knowledge is,
but due to your preoccupations you do not see it.
The Satguru is Within,
meditate only on That."
"The Satguru is greater than all else, even God.
The Satguru is Truth-Awareness-Bliss,
and is like the sun;
you no longer need a torch to see."
Poonja
God is All...
“To be pure of heart means to love God above all things,
and at the same time to see him everywhere in all things.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
_Hymn of the Universe_
NY: Harper & Row Perennial Library, 1965 (1961), p. 127
Our sentient state...
There is only one state of being.
There is not
a single moment when one is not conscious
of being.
What we are in our sentient state is
the consciousness of being present.
When
this conscious awareness is aware of sensory
forms, it operates as witnessing.
When it
identifies itself with a witnessing organism as
a separate entity,
it operates as an individual
person who suffers and enjoys.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"A Net of Jewels"
Ramesh S. Balsekar
Advaita Press, 1996
the heart is a mirror...
The heart of man, as Sufis say, is a mirror.
All that is reflected in this mirror is projected upon other mirrors.
When man has doubt in his heart,
that doubt is reflected upon every heart with which he comes in contact;
when he has faith,
that faith is reflected in every heart.
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
so simple...
"Even faith in God is only a stage on the way.
Ultimately, you abandon
all,
for you come to something so simple,
that there are no words to
express it."
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Thirst for Unity...
No sound of clapping comes from only one hand.
The thirsty man is moaning, "O delicious water!"
The water is calling,
"Where is the one who will drink me?"
This thirst in our souls is the magnetism of the Water:
We are Its, and It is ours.
- Rumi
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance"
Threshold Books, 1996
Realization requires Yearning...
Only if a man falls in love with his soul as deeply as he has ever done with a woman will he even stand a chance of finding it.
Incessant yearning for the higher self, in a spirit of religious devotion, is one of the indispensable aspects of the fourfold integral quest.
The note of yearning for this realization must sound through all his prayer and worship, concentration and meditation.
Sometimes the longing for God may affect him even physically with abrupt dynamic force, shaking his whole body, and agitating his whole nervous system.
A merely formal practice of meditation is quite insufficient although not quite useless.
For without the yearning the advent of Grace is unlikely, and without Grace there can never be any realization of the Overself.
— Notebooks Category 2: Overview of Practicies Involved > Chapter 9: Conclusion > # 67
Paul Brunton
how many feel it ?...
Uwais was asked: "How do you feel?"
He said:
"Like one who has risen in the morning and does not know
whether he will be dead in the evening."
The other man said:
"But this is the condition of all men."
Iwais said: "Yes.
But how many of them feel it?"
as collected by Idries Shah
What is Love ?...
Love is the state of non-egoic consciousness...
The understanding of Love is that simple...
namaste, thomas
kindness of the Truth...
"You are to put off concerning the former behaviour the old man,
that is corrupt according to the desires of the deceit,
and to be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and to put on the new man,
which, according to God,
was created in righteousness and kindness of the truth."
St. Paul
Ephesians 4:22-24
Young's Literal Translation
the life of life...
To fall beneath one's ideal is to lose one's share of life.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
If anyone asked me what is the life of life, and what is the light of life, what gives one interest in life, I should answer him in one word, and that is: the ideal. A man with wealth, with qualifications, with learning, with comfort, but without ideal to me is a corpse; but a man without learning, without qualifications, without wealth or rank, but with an ideal is a living man. If a man does not live for an ideal what else does he live for? He lives for himself, which is nothing. The man who lives and does not know an ideal is powerless and without light. The greater the ideal, the greater the person. The wider the ideal the broader the person. The deeper the ideal the deeper the person, the higher the ideal the higher the person. Without an ideal, whatever a man may be in life, life for him is worthless.
The Sufi Message gives to the world the religion of the day; and that is to make one's life a religion, to turn one's occupation or profession into a religion, to make one's ideal a religious ideal. The object of Sufism is the uniting of life and religion, which so far seem to have been kept apart. When a man goes to church once a week, and devotes all the other days of the week to his business, how can he benefit from religion? Therefore the teaching of Sufism is to transform everyday life into a religion, so that every action may bear some spiritual fruit.
We, with our narrowness of faith or belief, accuse others of belonging to another religion, another chapel or church. We say, 'This temple is better, that faith is better.' The whole world has kept on fighting and devastating itself just because it can not understand that each form of religion is peculiar to itself. Therefore, the ideal life is in following one's own ideal. It is not in checking other people's ideals.
The man who has never had an ideal may hope to find one. He is in a better state than the man who allows the circumstances of life to break his ideal. To fall beneath one's ideal is to lose one's track in life. Then confusion rises in the mind, and that light which one should hold high becomes covered and obscured, so that it cannot shine out to light one's path.
An ideal is something to hope for and to hold on to, and in the absence of an ideal hope has nothing to look forward to. It is the lack of idealism which accounts for the present degeneration of humanity in spite of all the progress it has made in other directions. There are many kinds of ideals: principles, virtues, objects of devotion; but the greatest and highest of all ideals is the God-ideal. And when this God-ideal upon which all other ideals are based is lost, then the very notion of ideal is ignored. Man needs many things in life, but his greatest need is an ideal.
happiness...
Laugh when you can,
apologize when you should,
and let go of what you can't change.
Life's too short to be anything... but happy.
- Anonymous
Divine Consciousness Creates...
The Ocean cannot stay alone
and so the notion of wave is created.
When waves rise Ocean loses nothing
and when waves fall Ocean gains nothing.
Samsara, the illusion, Maya, the play,
is the wave on the Ocean of Nirvana.
Waves are not separate from the Ocean,
rays are not separate from the Sun,
You are not separate from
Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.
This is a reflection of That.
- Papaji
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"The Truth Is"
Sri H.W.L. Poonja
Yudhishtara, 1995
You as Overself...
Every man who does not feel this close intimate fellowship with his Overself is necessarily a pilgrim,
most probably an unconscious one,
but still in everything and everywhere he is in search of his soul.
— Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest > Chapter 2: Its Choice > # 1
Paul Brunton
the mirror of Consciousness...
When the mirror of my consciousness became clear,
I saw that my family and others I
love are the same as me.
The "you" and "I" thought
does not occur.
The entire world is God.
- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic
based on change...
Deeply understanding and accepting that life
and living is based on change,
whether one likes
it or not,
is a great step ahead.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"A Net of Jewels"
Ramesh S. Balsekar
Advaita Press, 1996
Contemplation of Vision...
Well—in the play of this very moment am I engaged in the act of Contemplation?
Yes; I and all that enter this play are in Contemplation:
our play aims at
Vision;
and there is every reason to believe that child or man, in sport or earnest,
is playing or working only towards Vision,
that every act is an effort towards
Vision;
the compulsory act, which tends rather to bring the Vision down to
outward things,
and the act thought of as voluntary, less concerned with the
outer, originate alike in the effort towards Vision.
Plotinus, Enneads, III.8.1
See your face everywhere...
Q: Would you please speak again of how the Buddha's face is on every sand grain.
R: "In every sand grain you can see the face of Buddha. Everyone can do it. Everywhere you can see your own face. The face of Buddha means the face of your own Wisdom, your own Self, your own Atma.
Then you will see the Atman living in all atoms of the universe. But you must first introduce yourself to this grain of sand, to this most minute particle on earth. First of all, remove all desires to see anything anywhere.
Then you will see your face everywhere because where are you not present? I cannot speak of this, but is an experience that every Enlightened person has."
"Everybody will have this experience if they only give up their desire for any object, any person and any idea.
When you do it, instantly you will see .
Don't have the desire to meet with any person because every person belongs to past. Any object or concept that you speak about all belong to the past. If you don't touch the past, then you will see your face everywhere. Otherwise you will think that you are a donkey."
Poonja
' I am ' Itself is God...
"Which God are you talking about?
What is God?
Is he not the very light by
which you ask the question?..
'I am"' itself is God.
The seeking itself is
God.
In seeking you discover that you are neither the body nor mind,
and
the love of self in you is for the self in all.
The two are one..
The
consciousness in you and the consciousness in me,
apparently two, really
one, seek unity and that is love."
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Ramana Maharshi...
Ramana Maharshi 1879 - 1950
Mind is consciousness, which has limitations. We are originally unlimited and perfect. Later on we take on limitations and become the mind.
Meditation depends upon the strength of mind. It must be unceasing even when one is engaged in work. Particular time for it is meant for novices.
When one makes the mind stick to one thought, the mind becomes rock-steady and the energy is conserved.
The mind is only a bundle of thoughts. The thoughts have their root in the I-thought. Whoever investigates the True "I" enjoys the stillness of bliss.
When the mind is left without anything to cling to, it becomes still.
The inquiry "who am I" turns the mind introvert and makes it calm.
There is no mind to control if you realize the self. The mind having vanished, the self shines forth. In the realized man, the mind may be active or inactive, the self remains for him.
Meditation helps concentration of the mind. Then the mind is free from thoughts and is in the meditated form.
Meditation is sticking to one thought. That single thought keeps away other thoughts; distraction of mind is a sign of its weakness; by constant meditation it gains strength.
When we turn the mind inwards, God manifests as the inner consciousness.
See who is the doubter, who is the thinker. It is the ego. Hold it; the other thoughts will die away - the ego will be left pure. See the source from where the ego arises and abide in it. That is pure consciousness.
The "I" thought is said to be the sum total of all thoughts. The source of the "I" thought has to be enquired into.
The mind of one meditating on a single object becomes one-pointed. And one-pointedness of mind leads to abidance in the self.
Real attainment is to be fully conscious, to be aware of surroundings and the people around, to move among them all, but not to merge consciousness in the environment. One should remain in inner independent awareness.
Once the current of awareness of the self is set afoot, it becomes everlasting and continuous by intensification.
Realization is to get rid of the delusion that you have not realized.
Good thoughts keep off bad thoughts. They must themselves disappear before the state of realization.
Realization is our true nature. It is nothing new to be gained. What is new cannot be eternal. Therefore there is no need to be doubting whether we would gain or lose the self.
A realized one sends out waves of spiritual influence in his aura, which draw many people towards him. Yet he may sit in a cave and maintain complete silence.
Turn the mind inward and cease thinking of yourself as the body; thereby you will come to know that the self is ever happy. Neither grief nor misery is experienced in this state.
Sri Ramana Maharshi Quotes
Reclaim Consciousness...
To be conscious of Being,
you need to reclaim consciousness from the mind.
This is one of the most essential tasks on your spiritual journey.
Eckhart Tolle
Oneness...
Oneness is like the clear blue sky -
everything arises, unfolds, and subsides within its all-compassionate love...
Everything is an aspect of Oneness.
And our quest to know this comes from Oneness.
Abhinavagupta
Thoughts on a wednesday night...
I read of politicians that refer to themselves as Christian and speak of killing and abortion as a normal activity of life..
Is wealth, power, and fame, so important ?..
We are the Consciousness within the illusion of separate body and yet, we speak as though we are only the body and life ends at death..
Such fools we are..
Is the possession of the body by an earthbound spirit responsible for this activity ?..
Jesus would often force these spirits from the bodies of those afflicted..
As Mystics, you should be able to see these spirits of negativity within the body possessed..
Look closely, look into their eyes, do they turn away from your gaze ?..
Our eyes blink seldom and thus cause discomfort to the spirits of egoic consciousness..
These spirits have been trapped by the energy field of duality called the prince of lies..
Jesus would sometimes send these spirits into animals, but I believe that sending them into the Light is more beneficial for all..
I am not advanced enough to question the motives of Jesus in his sending these souls to the state of hellish pain, therefore, I will not comment on the decisions that have been written on His behalf..
These are earthbound spirits that can be released by just their observance of the Light..
They feel as though, they are melting and turn their gaze away from the Light..
As all of us, they will melt into the non-egoic consciousness called Love..
They will at first feel fear, and they will then experience the bliss of Unconditional Love and merge within this Energy..
There is much that is unknown to the reader of this blog, but continue to read, as it is important to your soul...
namaste, thomas
Nothingness by Alan Watts...
When I consider the weirdest of all things I can think of, do you know what it is? Nothing. The whole idea of nothing is something that has bugged people for centuries, especially in the Western world. We have a saying in Latin, Ex nihilo nihil fit, which means, "Out of nothing comes nothing." In other words, you can't get something out of nothing. It's occurred to me that this is a fallacy of tremendous proportions. It lies at the root of all our common sense, not only in the West, but in many parts of the East as well.
It manifests as a kind of terror of nothing, a putdown on nothing, a putdown on everything associated with nothing such as sleep, passivity, rest, and even the feminine principle which is often equated with the negative principle (although women's lib people don't like that kind of thing, when they understand what I'm saying I don't think they'll object). To me, nothing—the negative, the empty—is exceedingly powerful. I would say, not Ex nihilo nihil fit, but, "You can't have something without nothing."
How do we basically begin to think about the difference between something and nothing? When I say there is a cigar in my right hand and there is no cigar in my left hand, we get the idea of is, something, and isn't, nothing. At the basis of this reasoning lies the far more obvious contrast of solid and space. We tend to think of space as nothing; when we talk about the conquest of space there's a little element of hostility. But actually, we're talking about the conquest of distance. Space or whatever it is that lies between the earth and the moon, and the earth and the sun, is considered to be just nothing at all.
But to suggest how very powerful and important this nothing at all is, let me point out that if you didn't have space, you couldn't have anything solid. Without space outside the solid you wouldn't know where the solid's edges were. For example, you can see me in a photograph because you see a background and that background shows up my outline. But if it weren't there, then I and everything around me would merge into a single, rather peculiar mass. You always have to have a background of space to see a figure. The figure and the background, the solid and the space, are inseparable and go together.
We find this very commonly in the phenomenon of magnetism. A magnet has a north pole and a south pole— there is no such thing as a magnet with one pole only. Supposing we equate north with is and south with isn't. You can chop the magnet into two pieces, if it's a bar magnet, and just get another north pole and south pole, another is and isn't, on the end of each piece.
What I am trying to get into basic logic is that there isn't a sort of fight between something and nothing. Everyone is familiar with the famous words of Hamlet, "To be or not to be, that is the question." It isn't; to be or not to be is not the question. Because you can't have a solid without space. You can't have an is without an isn't, a something without a nothing, a figure without a background. And we can turn that round, and say, "You can't have space without solid."
Imagine nothing but space, space, space, space with nothing in it, forever. But there you are imagining it and you're something in it. The whole idea of there being only space, and nothing else at all, is not only inconceivable but perfectly meaningless, because we always know what we mean by contrast.
We know what we mean by white in comparison with black. We know life in comparison with death. We know pleasure in comparison with pain, up in comparison with down. But all these things must come into being together. You don't have first something and then nothing or first nothing and then something. Something and nothing are two sides of the same coin. If you file away the tails side of a coin completely, the heads side of it will disappear as well. So in this sense, the positive and negative, the something and the nothing, are inseparable—they go together. The nothing is the force whereby the something can be manifested.
We think that matter is basic to the physical world. And matter has various shapes. We think of tables as made of wood as we think of pots as made of clay. But is a tree made of wood in the same way a table is? No, a tree is wood; it isn't made of wood. Wood and tree are two different names for the same thing.
But there is in the back of our mind, the notion, as a root of common sense, that everything in the world is made of some kind of basic stuff. Physicists, through centuries, have wanted to know what that was. Indeed, physics began as a quest to discover the basic stuff out of which the world is made. And with all our advances in physics we've never found it. What we have found is not stuff but form. We have found shapes. We have found structures.
When you turn up the microscope and look at things expecting to see some sort of stuff, you find instead form, pattern, structure. You find the shape of crystals, beyond the shapes of crystals you find molecules, beyond molecules you find atoms, beyond atoms you find electrons and positrons between which there are vast spaces. We can't decide whether these electrons are waves or particles and so we call them wavicles.
What we will come up with will never be stuff, it will always be a pattern. This pattern can be described, measured, but we never get to any stuff for the simple reason there isn't any. Actually, stuff is when you see something unclearly or out of focus, fuzzy. When we look at it with the naked eye it looks just like goo. We can't make out any significant shape to it. But when you put it under the microscope, you suddenly see shapes. It comes into clear focus as shape.
And you can go on and on, looking into the nature of the world and you will never find anything except form. Think of stuff; basic substance. You wouldn't know how to talk '' about it; even if you found it, how would you describe what it was like? You couldn't say anything about a structure in it, you couldn't say anything about a pattern or a process in it, because it would be absolute, primordial goo.
What else is there besides form in the world? Obviously, between the significant shapes of any form there is space. And space and form go together as the fundamental things we're dealing with in this universe. The whole of Buddhism is based on a saying, "That which is void is precisely form, and that which is form is precisely void." Let me illustrate this to you in an extremely simple way. When you use the word clarity, what do you mean? It might mean a perfectly polished lens, or mirror, or a clear day when there's no smog and the air is perfectly transparent like space.
What's the next thing clarity makes you think of? You think of form in clear focus, all the details articulate and perfect. So the one word clarity suggests to you these two apparently completely different things: the clarity of the lens or the mirror, and the clarity of articulate form. In this sense, we can take the saying "Form is void, void is form" and instead of saying is, say implies, or the word that I invented, goeswith. Form always goeswith void. And there really isn't, in this whole universe, any substance.
Form, indeed, is inseparable from the idea of energy, and form, especially when it's moving in a very circumscribed area, appears to us as solid. For example, when you spin an electric fan the empty spaces between the blades sort of disappear into a blur, and you can't push a pencil, much less your finger, through the fan. So in the same way, you can't push your finger through the floor because the floor's going too fast. Basically, what you have down there is nothing and form in motion.
I knew of a physicist at the University of Chicago who was rather crazy like some scientists, and the idea of the insolidity, the instability of the physcial world, impressed him so much that he used to go around in enormous padded slippers for fear he should fall through the floor. So this commonsense notion that the world is made of some kind of substance is a nonsense idea—it isn't there at all but is, instead, form and emptiness.
Most forms of energy are vibration, pulsation. The energy of light or the energy of sound are always on and off. In the case of very fast light, very strong light, even with alternating current you don't notice the discontinuity because your retina retains the impression of the on pulse and you can't notice the off pulse except in very slow light like an arc lamp. It's exactly the same thing with sound. A high note seems more continuous because the vibrations are faster than a low note. In the low note you hear a kind of graininess because of the slower alternations of on and off.
All wave motion is this process, and when we think of waves, we think about crests. The crests stand out from the underlying, uniform bed of water. These crests are perceived as the things, the forms, the waves. But you cannot have the emphasis called a crest, the concave, without the de-emphasis, or convex, called the trough. So to have anything standing out, there must be something standing down or standing back. We must realize that if you had this part alone, the up part, that would not excite your senses because there would be no contrast.
The same thing is true of all life together. We shouldn't really contrast existence with nonexistence, because actually, existence is the alternation of now-you-see-it/now-you-don't, now-you-see-it/now-you-don't, now-you-see-it/now-you-don't. It is that contrast that presents the sensation of there being anything at all.
Now, in light and sound the waves are extraordinarily rapid so that we don't hear or see the interval between them. But there are other circumstances in which the waves are extraordinarily slow, as in the alternation of day and night, light and darkness, and the much vaster alternations of life and death. But these alternations are just as necessary to the being of the universe as in the very fast motions of light and sound, and in the sense of solid contact when it's going so rapidly that we notice only continuity or the is side. We ignore the intervention of the isn't side, but it's there just the same, just as there are vast spaces within the very heart of the atom.
Another thing that goes along with all this is that it's perfectly obvious that the universe is a system which is aware of itself. In other words, we, as living organisms, are forms of the energy of the universe just as much as the stars and the galaxies, and, through our sense organs, this system of energy becomes aware of itself.
But to understand this we must again relate back to our basic contrast between on and off, something and nothing, which is that the aspect of the universe which is aware of itself, which does the awaring, does not see itself. In other words, you can't look at your eyes with your eyes. You can't observe yourself in the act of observing. You can't touch the tip of a finger with the tip of the same finger no matter how hard you try. Therefore, there is on the reverse side of all observation a blank spot; for example, behind your eyes from the point of view of your eyes. However you look around there is blankness behind them. That's unknown. That's the part of the universe which does not see itself because it is seeing.
We always get this division of experience into one-half known, one-half unknown. We would like to know, if we could, this always unknown. If we examine the brain and the structure of the nerves behind the eyes, we're always looking at somebody else's brain. We're never able to look at our own brain at the same time we're investigating somebody else's brain.
So there is always this blank side of experience. What I'm suggesting is that the blank side of experience has the same relationship to the conscious side as the off principle of vibration has to the on principle. There's a fundamental division. The Chinese call them the yang, the positive side, and the yin, the negative side. This corresponds to the idea of one and zero. All numbers can be made of one and zero as in the binary system of numbers which is used for computers.
And so it's all made up of off and on, and conscious and unconscious. But the unconscious is the part of experience which is doing consciousness, just as the trough manifests the wave, the space manifests the solid, the background manifests the figure. And so all that side of life which you call unconscious, unknown, impenetrable, is unconscious, unknown, impenetrable because it's really you. In other words, the deepest you is the nothing side, is the side which you don't know.
So, don't be afraid of nothing. I could say, "There's nothing in nothing to be afraid of." But people in our culture are terrified of nothing. They're terrified of death; they are uneasy about sleep, because they think it's a waste of time. They have a lurking fear in the back of their minds that the universe is eventually going to run down and end in nothing, and it will all be forgotten, buried and dead. But this is a completely unreasonable fear, because it is just precisely this nothing which is always the source of something.
Think once again of the image of clarity, crystal clear. Nothing is what brings something into focus. This nothing, symbolized by the crystal, is your own eyeball, your own consciousness.
the Dream...
"The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory.
Why go
anywhere?
Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world,
and stop looking for ways out.
The dream is not your problem.
Your
problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another.
Love
all, or none of it, and stop complaining.
When you have seen the dream as
a dream,
you have done all that need be done."
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
desires...
Actually, this ocean of samsara does not exist.
It is only your desires and when they subside
there is nothing which has ever existed.
If you
know this ocean is dreadful and filled with
alligators and sharks this is enough.
These
alligators are your desires for objects,
for
persons, for some enjoyment!
Once you forget
them, you are very safe.
- Papaji
I will not forsake them...
"I will lead the blind by a road they do not know;
by paths they have not known , I will guide them.
I will turn the darkness before them into light,
the rough places into level ground.
These are the things I will do, and I will not forsake them."
Isaiah 42:16
New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
active and passive...
One thing that struck my mind forcibly on my return to the Western hemisphere after an absence of several years in the Orient,
was the way we busied and over-busied ourselves, whether in work, pleasure, or movement.
Few take life easily; most take it uneasily.
Few go through its daily business serenely;
most go through it nervously, hurriedly, and agitatedly.
Our activities are so numerous they suffocate us.
It is a life without emotional poise, bereft of intellectual perspective.
We are intoxicated by action.
We moderns give ourselves too much to activity and movement, too little to passivity and stillness.
If we are to find a way out of the troubles which beset us,
we must find a middle way between these two attitudes.
— Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest > Chapter 2: Its Choice > # 1
Paul Brunton
Let's talk about secrets...
To the entities of other planets, this is called the 'prison planet'..
Souls are sent here because they do not fit into their societies..
A soul is the sub-conscious mind belief in separate identity..
There is a grid around the earth that prevents souls from escaping into other bodies that are born on other planets..
The soul is also an aspect of egoic consciousness and is an illusion of Consciousness..
It is not Real..
It is a Dream and often a Nightmare..
The Soul is always seeking freedom from being a soul..
This is called 'returning Home'..
The map Home is placed within the soul as a gift from Divine Consciousness..
This map is called Unconditional Love..
This is why Love is sought by almost all earth entities, and usually sought from other entities,
as the Knowledge of the Source of Love is not remembered..
The trap of this world is called 'reincarnation'..
It is the trap that sends the soul back into the illusion to learn how to become God..
There is only God..
There is no school to become what You already Are..
Dispose of all that is not Love and You will Realize that You are already God..
Remember, God is the Energy called Love and is the Divine Consciousness that creates the Dreams that we call reality but are actually only holograms..
This is how Jesus was able to appear and disappear at will, He knew that He was the Master of the Holograms..
From this Realization that We are Divine Consciousness, We can then proceed to completely surrender all egoic consciousness even that of God and return to the no-thingness of Pure Awareness...
namaste, thomas
Illumination...
"When you know that you have become this perfect work,
when you are self-gathered in the purity of your being,
nothing now remaining that can shatter that inner unity,
nothing from without clinging to the authentic man,
when you find yourself wholly true to your essential nature,
wholly that only veritable Light which is not measured by space,
not narrowed to any circumscribed form nor again diffused as a thing void of term,
but ever unmeasurable as something greater than all measure and more than all quantity-
when you perceive that you have grown to this,
you are now become that very vision:
now call up all your confidence, strike forward yet a step-
you need a guide no longer- strain, and see."
Plotinus
Ennead I.6 [9], On Beauty
Translated by Stephen MacKenna
Liberation...
Liberation - Jackson Peterson
For many who are attempting to understand what the state of "rigpa" means in Dzogchen, let me share a few words that may clarify: The purpose of the Dzogchen teachings is to help people to discover their true nature. At a certain time for various reasons, a clear and certain realization of that "true nature" will occur. In Zen they call that "satori" or "kensho". In Dzogchen and Essence Mahamudra we call that wisdom moment of realization "rigpa". Its a state of gnosis or wisdom that erupts suddenly into consciousness.
It is NOT just a very clear and profound "here and now" awareness devoid of dualistic mind. The authentic moment is suffused with a new non-conceptual perspective that is more like shifting from seeing the view from the bottom of a mountain to suddenly seeing the full panorama from the mountain peak. Its a bit "breath taking" at first. Its a different way of seeing not some new knowledge or information. The field of experience is "seen" and known differently.
What does this new vista appear like?
First of all, the entire sense of presence is one of transparency, almost like being an open window without a window frame. The body seems transparent, especially the area of the head. The "outer" dimension is fully manifesting as usual but somehow inseparable from the presence of total transparency, empty of solidity and more like a field of colorful consciousness. The Buddhist phrase of "emptiness is form and form is emptiness" is fully understood and experienced for the first time. Its seems so obvious now. The entire dimension is more like a 3D hologram floating in a space of total consciousness.
You recognize that "you" are this total field of consciousness that can't be considered to be any one thing as existing nor as anything as not existing, but right in the middle between existing and not-existing, as the freedom from the extremes of separate and independently existing "things" and "selves" and the total non-existence of all things and selves. And this can't be conceptualized, as its a completely non-conceptual knowing, yet is vividly obvious.
The state of "certainty" of self-being beyond all descriptions is completely penetrating and obvious as well.
So when authentic "rigpa" arises as just described it may be very profound in future moments or just very natural and ordinary, but never missing the essential fragrance of the transparent and empty nature of self-presence. Having known the authentic nature of reality, one simply rests in the state of knowing presence and continues in total spontaneity.
Most people don't "see" or experience reality this way, not even most practitioners of Dzogchen or other similar approaches. The reason is because their practice and insights are too shallow. The most common error is substituting a very clear and profound intellectual insight for "rigpa" and then trying to "remember" that conceptual view again and again. What is really needed is a "shift" in the contracted energy state that produces the dimming or dullness of clarity that prevents real "seeing". Conceptualizing and intellectual insight only clarifies the "thought" aspect on the most superficial level of energy and actually blocks the spontaneous wisdom from arising naturally. The mind needs to be in a "topic free" condition in order for this enlightening wisdom to arise.
There is a dimensionless point of "awareness-wisdom-consciousness" that resides in the center of the crown chakra in our skull. It is what we call our personal and individual "point of view" or consciousness. Its a point of pure emptiness that is surrounded by its various fields of energy emanation. When it is in a contracted state it experiences its field of perception as being "solid" and made up of separate "things". When its not contracted upon itself it experiences its field as a vast colorful dimension of transparent consciousness without borders or limits... just as I described "rigpa" above. It is this empty point of awareness that experiences "rigpa" or not. It is a point of pure Consciousness.
In kundalini yoga and other tantric systems of India and Tibet, they describe this point of pure consciousness as being enfolded within a lotus flower, where the petals are folded over the central point of consciousness in the center. The purpose of energy practices is to trigger the "petals" of the crown chakra to open fully which reveals the center point of pure consciousness in the center. When this occurs the state of "rigpa" is obvious and not needed to be produced by some "understanding". We are blocking our own state of "rigpa" by the our contracted state that locks us solidly within our web or cocoon of thoughts and mental energy.
Its interesting that whenever rigpa arises it feels like the top of the head is wide open to the sky and the solidity of the skull has become transparent. If this isn't one's inner experience, I would question the depth of the state. There is an undeniable "vastness" and "openness" present in every moment of rigpa as well as the tone of sheer delight.
In the appendix of my book I share the instructions for triggering this "opening" event to occur. For some just receiving the "pointing out" instructions from a teacher of Dzogchen or Mahamudra is sufficient to bring this "crown chakra" opening to occur without any meditation or energy yoga practice. But only very few have a deep experience from the pointing out method alone, yet the "pointing out" is vital in triggering the inner transformations that will eventually develop.
For most, if not all, I recommend taking a look at the energy practices that do produce profound insights and "opening" swiftly... Once you "see" all this for yourself, then you can share this with others as well.
I have one of the "recognition" exercises posted on my website that can be a good starting point... www.wayoflight.net
no-mind...
Q: It seems easy to miss the beauty of ordinary no-mind!
R: "There is no ordinary no-mind. No-mind is no-mind. No-mind is where you don't think about anyone. Not about you, not about anyone else!"
Q: Where words and language disappear?
R: "This is no-mind. Let the mind sleep; there is no-mind, Freedom, Enlightenment. But when the mind is awake then you are bound. Let the mind sleep and you stay awake."
--
Poonja
the Quest...
For him there must exist something more than merely being a member of the herd;
there must be a higher direction leading to truth to satisfy the mind,
to a nobler character to satisfy the conscience,
to refined beautiful and gentler moods inspired by the arts, music, literature, and reverence.
For him there must be a Quest.
— Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest > Chapter 1: What the Quest Is > # 105
Paul Brunton
The Living Light...
"The light that I see is not spatial, yet it is far brighter than a cloud surrounding the sun. I cannot discern height or breadth in it, and I call it "the shadow of the Living Light.... At one and the same time I see and I hear and I know, and in an instant I learn what I know....
"In the same light I sometimes, not often, see another light, which I call "the Living Light." I can say much less about how I see it that in the case of the other light, and while I am gazing at it all sadness and all pain are taken from me, so that I am like an innocent girl and not an old woman.... My soul drinks in as from a fountain what I see and hear at that time in the vision, and that fountain remains always full and inexhaustible.
"My soul never lacks the first kind of light, what I call the shadow of the Living Light. I see it like the dome of heaven in a bright cloud and I behold it without stars. In this light I see what I often speak about, and from the flash of the Living LIght, I give answer to those who ask questions of me...."
Saint Hildegarde of Bingen
in Bernard McGinn, Ed.
The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism
NY: Modern Library, 2006, p. 333-334
Love is the only religion...
"'Tis not in religion I believe,
'Tis love I live in.
When love comes to you.
Say Amen!"
Sachal Sarmast
Translated from Sindhi by Jethmal Parsram Gulrajani
Grace is the Final Reality...
As Paul Brunton has spoken about in the previous quote, Grace is necessary for Final Reality..
What is Grace ?..
Grace is Eternal Love that absorbs all other Love..
You can call this Energy, God, or Pure Awareness or any other name that brings clarity to your mind..
The egoic consciousness, being the idea of separation and selfishness is anti-love..
Nothing exists outside of this Energy called Grace,
All else is a dream and an illusion..
Grace is the Reality of non-egoic consciousness and contains no personality..
When I found myself within the Light of Divine Consciousness,
there was no separation from this Light
of Creative Consciousness and therefore,
I existed as this Light, Love, and Consciousness..
This is the Reality that Jesus spoke of when He said; " I and the Father are One"..
But, this God state is also an egoic construct and must also be left behind for progession into
complete freedom..
This also must be surrendered to the Universe..
In Reality, there is no "I", there is only God, Grace, Pure Awareness or any number of names to denote Complete Singularity without individual personality..
Thus the Energy that is You, that is Divine Consciousness must be absorbed into Pure Awareness ( Grace) by
becoming No-thing..
This Final State is You, when there is no longer a You..
This Final State is called Unconditional Love...
namaste, thomas
Grace dissolves ego...
The limitation of the Long Path is that it is concerned only with thinning down, weakening, and reducing the ego's strength.
It is not concerned with totally deflating the ego.
Since this can be done only by studying the ego's nature metaphysically, seeing its falsity, and recognizing its illusoriness, which is not even done by the Short Path, then all the endeavours of the Short Path to practise self-identification with the Overself are merely using imagination and suggestion to create a new mental state that, while imitating the Overself's state, does not actually transcend the ego-mind but exists within it still.
So a third phase becomes necessary,
the phase of getting rid of the ego altogether;
this can be done only by the final dissolving operation of Grace, which the man has to request and to which he has to give his consent.
To summarize the entire process, the Long Path leads to the Short Path, and the Short Path leads to the Grace of an unbroken egoless consciousness...
— Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation > Chapter 5: Balancing the Paths > # 206
Paul Brunton
The Ocean of Consciousness...
Q: You say I am God. Is the drop the same as the ocean?
R: "There is no difference between the drop and the ocean. It is the totality of drops that make the ocean. Endless drops are the ocean."
Q: Are they of the same quality? Is your no-mind the same as mine?
R: "Yes, they have the same quality. One grain of sugar and one pound of sugar taste the same. And yes, your no-mind is the same as mine."
Poonja
duality...
"As long as individuality survives,
that is,
as long as you continue to see others as separate from you,
a feeling of hostility towards them cannot fail to prevail."
- Swami Prajnanpad
Everything is Consciousness...
Everything is God..
We have to discuss this issue of spiritual addiction because, unless you understand it, the second point I am going to make will just be another fancy spiritual concept.
But if you get the first part -- that spiritual awakening is not about any particular high experience -- then the second part becomes much more meaningful and interesting.
The second part is that everything is consciousness. Everything is God. Everything is One. Seeing that everything is One shoots a hole in trying to pin the pendulum swing of experience in any particular place.
If it's all One, it's no more One when the pendulum is in the high state than when the pendulum is over in some other state.
~ From: Emptiness Dancing, by Adyashanti.
compassion...
"If we pick up the handle, we pick up the pot.
Similarly, if we meditate on and develop compassion -
the wish that all others be without suffering -
we hold within the essence of all other Dharma practices."
Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey
God and man...
Man is not made by God as the wood is cut by the carpenter,
for the carpenter and the wood are different,
while God and man are the same.
He creates of Himself;
consequently His manifestation is also God.
Man is made of the substance of God;
man is in God, and all that is in God is in man.
From The Teachings Of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Selected & Arranged By
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
the bright core...
If the divine presence is dwelling at the core of his mind, then the divine bliss, peace, and strength are dwelling at the core of his mind too.
Why then should he let outward troubles rob him of the chance to share them?
Why should he let only the troubles enter his consciousness, and withdraw all attention from the bliss and peace and strength?
The conditions of this world are subject to the cosmic law of change.
They are temporary.
But the bright core within him is not.
Why then give a permanent meaning to those conditions by a total surrender to the sadness they cause?
— Notebooks Category 24: The Peace within You > Chapter 1: The Search for Happiness > # 106
Paul Brunton
All Dreams End...
They end, when we wake up..
This Dream will also end, when We wake up..
It is this simple..
What is the Waking State ?..
In the Dream , It is the re-entry into the illusion of body by Consciousness..
In True Reality, It is the re-entry into Consciousness, Itself..
We are the Waves of the Ocean of Consciousness..
We fall back into the Ocean of Consciousness, when the Dream has ended..
In the Dream, we feel the pain of body and mind..
In Awakening as Consciousness, All We feel is Love..
All We have to do is Awaken and Remember...
namaste, thomas
a quiet mind...
A quiet mind is all you need.
All else will happen
rightly, once your mind is quiet.
As the sun on
rising makes the world active,
so does self-awareness
affect changes in the mind.
In the light of calm and
steady self-awareness,
inner energies wake up and
work miracles without any effort on your part.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
Presence / Awareness...
Presence/Awareness is always here.
All the appearances are created from it, by it, in it.
If the attention/focus is more on the Presence, there is a rest...
if the focus is on the character/story, there are thoughts and emotions.
Both are not done by anyone,
its a creative play of the Presence itself..
Elena Nezhinsky
Zen Poetry...
If there is beauty, there must be ugliness;
If there is right, there must be wrong.
Wisdom and ignorance are complementary,
And illusion and enlightenment cannot be separated.
This is an old truth, don't think it was discovered recently.
"I want this, I want that"
Is nothing but foolishness.
I'll tell you a secret -
"All things are impermanent!".
- Ryokan
[From 'One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryokan'. Translated by John Stevens.]
The Tao...
Truthful words are not beautiful.
Beautiful words are not truthful.
Good men do not argue.
Those who argue are not good.
Those who know are not learned.
The learned do not know.
The sage never tries to store things up.
The more he does for others, the more he has.
Ther more he gives to others, the greater his abundance.
The Tao of heaven is pointed but does no harm.
The Tao of the sage is work without effort.
- Lao-tzu
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
Tao Te Ching
Translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English
Vintage Books Edition, September 1989
The Lover and the Beloved...
"Bhai Sahib means elder brother, because traditionally the Sufi sheikh is 'without a face, without a name.'
Sufis do not believe in personality worship, or in idealizing the teacher.
The teacher is just a guide, a stepping stone from the world of illusion to the world of reality."
"Sufis are lovers of God;
they live the truth that in the whole of the universe there are only two,
the lover and the Beloved:
'He loves them and they love Him."
Excerpts from Love is a Fire - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
All roads lead to OM...
Great teachers and philosophies are like special
portals that point you into the infinite vastness of
Consciousness.
However, most seekers get stuck at these doorways
whenever they begin to worship the portal itself
instead of looking into what they're being pointed
towards.
Unless you find the inner courage to eventually walk
through these Gateways - and be destroyed - you'll
spend your life teetering at the edge of your own
emptiness.
Stop seeking outside of you for something that only
lies within.
Portals are not the Truth.
Portals only point out the Truth.
But be still. Be patient.
Sooner or later, all roads lead to OM.
- Chuck Hillig
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
Seeds for the Soul
Chuck Hillig
Black Dot Publications, 2003
The Gospel of Thomas...
The "Scholars' Translation" of the Gospel of Thomas
by Stephen Patterson and Marvin Meyer
These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded.
1 And he said, "Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death."
2 Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. [And after they have reigned they will rest.]"
3 Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside you.
When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."
4 Jesus said, "The person old in days won't hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live.
For many of the first will be last, and will become a single one."
5 Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you.
For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed. [And there is nothing buried that will not be raised."]
6 His disciples asked him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?"
Jesus said, "Don't lie, and don't do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed."
7 Jesus said, "Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human."
8 And he said, The person is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of little fish. Among them the wise fisherman discovered a fine large fish. He threw all the little fish back into the sea, and easily chose the large fish. Anyone here with two good ears had better listen!
9 Jesus said, Look, the sower went out, took a handful (of seeds), and scattered (them). Some fell on the road, and the birds came and gathered them. Others fell on rock, and they didn't take root in the soil and didn't produce heads of grain. Others fell on thorns, and they choked the seeds and worms ate them. And others fell on good soil, and it produced a good crop: it yielded sixty per measure and one hundred twenty per measure.
10 Jesus said, "I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I'm guarding it until it blazes."
11 Jesus said, "This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away.
The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. During the days when you ate what is dead, you made it come alive. When you are in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one, you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?"
12 The disciples said to Jesus, "We know that you are going to leave us. Who will be our leader?"
Jesus said to them, "No matter where you are you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being."
13 Jesus said to his disciples, "Compare me to something and tell me what I am like."
Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a just messenger."
Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher."
Thomas said to him, "Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like."
Jesus said, "I am not your teacher. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended."
And he took him, and withdrew, and spoke three sayings to him. When Thomas came back to his friends they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?"
Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come from the rocks and devour you."
Scholars Version translation of the Gospel of Thomas taken from *The Complete Gospels: Annotated Scholars Version.* Copyright 1992, 1994 by Polebridge Press.
the Self of All...
"There is no creature which is not destined for the supreme goal,
as there is no river which is not winding its way towards the sea.
But only in the human form is consciousness so developed that it is capable of expressing the perfection of its own true self,
which is the Self of all."
Meher Baba
Listen, Humanity
Narrated and Edited by D.E. Stevens
NY: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1957, p. xiii
Go as deep as you can...
Ramana Maharshi had no Long Path experience at all;
he practised no techniques;
yet he was permanently enlightened at an early age.
There are two lessons in this event.
First, without either a Long or Short Path previous history a man may still find himself in the higher consciousness.
This shows that Grace alone is a sufficient cause.
Second, aside from the feeling of disgust with the world through failure to pass his school examinations, the only preparation which Maharshi underwent was falling involuntarily and profoundly into the trance state for three days.
Here he was "pulled in" away from the senses and outer awareness by a strong force.
This shows that depth of inner penetration of the mind's layers and length of period that contact is held with the Overself are the two important governors of the result attained.
Go as deep as you can; stay there as long as you can; this seems to be the silent message of the Maharshi's own experience.
— Notebooks Category 25: World-Mind in Individual Mind > Chapter 3: The Sage > # 76
Paul Brunton
fearing and wanting...
A Mind-Made "Me."
What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention? A dash -- one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone.
To the egoic self, this is a depressing thought. To you, it is liberating.
When each thought absorbs your attention completely, it means you identify with the voice in your head. Thought then becomes invested with a sense of self. This is the ego, a mind-made "me." That mentally constructed self feels incomplete and precarious.
That's why fearing and wanting are its predominant emotions and motivating forces.
~ From: Stillness Speaks, by Eckhart Tolle
Inner Sight...
Q: Yes, I see! I see Nothing!
R: "Excellent! If you see, this seeing is Being. When you see through the eyes at objects that may be distortion, but this seeing is Being. There are different eyes to see. It depends on you, which eyes you want to use, and are using. This sight has nothing to do with eyes. It is inner Being, inner sight and if you do it, you will see always with the same eyes inside or outside. There will no difference between nirvana and samsara. (laughs) Whatever you will see will be inside. All beauty, all wisdom. That Eye has no limitation; not inside or outside, you see."
"When you give up looking through these eyes on your head, the other eyes will open. So pick up the thought as you have done now, return back and that sight will open. When you said 'I see nothing,' Nothingness is the beauty of That sight, that Divine Sight. You will get it and you will see everything as being beautiful."
"When you see a pig or a dog, why not see God? God is the seer in you! When you see a dog, know it is God seeing the dog. That much faith you should have, and you must do it by yourself. Everybody is going to cheat you by telling you that what you are doing is stupidness! So, I am happy that you are a strong person. Stick to your path, even if there is no body. Then you walk alone!"
Poonja
live at ease...
Don't pursue actions that can be repudiated, but don't resent it if people repudiate you.
Cultivate virtues worthy of praise, but don't expect people to praise you.
You cannot cause calamity not to occur, but trust in yourself not to beckon it.
You cannot cause fortune to arrive, but trust in yourself not to reject it.
When calamity occurs, since it is not your doing you do not grieve when in straits.
When fortune comes, since it is not your achievement you are not conceited when successful.
In this way you live at ease and enjoy effortlessness, yet there is order.
- Lao Tzu
You are the Beloved...
“I have loved in life and I have been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of poison from the hands of love as nectar,
and have been raised above life's joy and sorrow.
My heart, aflame in love, set afire every heart that came in touch with it.
My heart has been rent and joined again;
My heart has been broken and again made whole;
My heart has been wounded and healed again;
A thousand deaths my heart has died, and thanks be to love, it lives yet.
I went through hell and saw there love's raging fire,
and I entered heaven illumined with the light of love.
I wept in love and made all weep with me;
I mourned in love and pierced the hearts of men;
And when my fiery glance fell on the rocks, the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.
The whole world sank in the flood caused by my one tear;
With my deep sigh the earth trembled, and when I cried aloud the name of my beloved,
I shook the throne of God in heaven.
I bowed my head low in humility, and on my knees I begged of love,
"Disclose to me, I pray thee, O love, thy secret."
She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the earth, and spoke softly in my ear,
"My dear one, thou thyself art love, art lover,
and thyself art the beloved whom thou hast adored.”
― Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Dance of the Soul
have no fear...
"The whole secret of existence is,
to have no fear.
Never fear what will become of you,
depend on no one.
Only the moment you reject all help are you freed"
Gautama the Buddha
Excerpts from Love is a Fire --- Llewellyn
"In the outer world we are so caught in duality, in separation from God, that we don't even know how we hunger for oneness.
We have forgotten that we belong to God and that He is our own essential nature, the core of our being."
"The path of love is a fire within the heart that burns away the veils of separation, emptying us of our-self so that we can come to experience our innermost state of union…The mystery of 'He loves them and they love Him' is so simple, so pure, so much a part of us and yet so easily forgotten."
Come, Come...
Come, come, whoever you are.
Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow
a thousand times
Come, yet again, come, come.
Rumi
The Fleeting "I"...
The mind is incessantly looking not only for food for thought; it is looking for food for its identity, its sense of self. This is how the ego comes into existence and continuously re-creates itself.
When you think or speak about yourself, when you say, "I," what you usually refer to is "me and my story." This is the "I" of your likes and dislikes, fears and desires, the "I" that is never satisfied for long. It is a mind-made sense of who you are, conditioned by the past and seeking to find its fulfillment in the future.
Can you see that this "I" is fleeting, a temporary formation, like a wave pattern on the surface of the water?
Who is it that sees this? Who is it that is aware of the fleetingness of your physical and psychological form? I Am. This is the deeper 'I' that has nothing to do with past and future.
~ From: Stillness Speaks, by Eckhart Tolle
This is eternal life...
Q: I still cannot believe it is possible.
R: "When the river enters the ocean, does it ask the question;
'Will I be forever like this?' (laughs) That is the previous fear that is leaving now.
All the experiences get lost because they were not perpetual, they were not permanent. They were only imaginations, only hallucinations, therefore, they get lost. This is beyond concept, perceptions, imagination.
Where will it be lost?
The wave is afraid: 'I want to remain a wave.' Fear is in the mind of the wave, 'I will be lost, I will be lost.' Wave is now fearing 'I will be lost.' Where will it be lost? Where will it go? (laughs) Whenever lost, what will it become? When the wave is lost, no more wave, it returns back to its source: the ocean. The ocean she was, the ocean she it, and the ocean she will be. Where? Forever! There is no time concept at all."
"Time is in the mind of an ignorant person. Ignorant because in Light, in Wisdom, there is no such notion that 'I am separate from all or separate from Fullness, from Vastness.' That was a notion before, in the mind of an ignorant person.
In Wisdom, no such notions arise. No separation. All is unity and love and beauty. There is no escape! Ignorance is gone! This is eternal Life, this is nectar!"
--
Pooja
God is the Energy called Love...
God alone deserves all love, and the freedom of love is in giving it to God.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
The one thing to rely upon is God's favor. Do not build either on your study or on your meditation, although they both help you. But you are dependent on God, not even on your murshid. Seek Him, trust Him. In Him lies your life's purpose, and (in) Him is hidden the rest of your soul.
Whom should one love, how should one love? Whatever one loves -- whether duty, human beings, art, friends, an ideal, or one's fellow-creatures -- one has certainly opened that door through which to pass in order to reach that love which is God. The beginning of love is an excuse; it leads to that ideal of love which is God alone.
We must remember the teaching of Christ, how He says, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that belong to God." In other words, give to the world that which belongs to the world, and give to God what belongs to God, namely: love, worship, reverence, devotion, trust, confidence. All those are due to God; so give them to God.
Love has the power to open the door of Eternal Life. By contemplation how far can we pierce through life? One, two, or three planes, then we must stop, but the nearest way of all is by Love and Devotion, for it is God's way, and God is Love. God cannot be deceived -- God will not be deceived. When anyone has taken this way it is by the God in him. And as we give all things they come back to us through Love. The more we give, the more comes back. Love has its limitations when it is directed to limited beings, but love that is directed to God has no limitations, God alone deserves all love, and the freedom of Love is in giving it to God.
Solitude...
You ask why I live
alone in the mountain forest,
and I smile and am silent,
until even my soul grows quiet.
It lives in the other world,
one that no one owns.
The peach trees blossom.
The water continues to flow.
- Li Po [Li Bai]
the long and short path...
Most people who start the short path have usually had a glimpse of the Overself, because otherwise they find it too difficult to understand what the short path is about.
The long path, through its studies and practices, is the period of preparation for the advanced quest. It is called the long path because there is much work to be done on it and much development of character and emotions to go through. After some measure of this preparation the aspirants enter the short path to complete this work.
This takes a comparatively much shorter time and, as it has the possibility of yielding the full self-enlightenment at any moment, it ends suddenly. What they are trying to do on the long path continues by itself once they have entered fully on the short path.
On the long path they are concerned with the personal ego and as a result give the negative thoughts their attention. On the short path they refuse to accept these negatives and instead look to the Overself. Thus the struggles will disappear.
This change of attitude is called "voiding" them.
The moment such negative ideas and feelings appear, then instead of using the long path method of concentrating on the opposite kind of thought, such as calmness instead of anger, the short path way simply drops the negative idea into the Void, the Nothingness, and forgets it. Now such a change can only be brought about by doing it quickly and firmly and turning to the Overself.
Constant remembrance of the Overself has to be done all the way through the short path. The long path works on the ego; but the short path uses the result of that work, which prepared them to come into communion with the Overself and become receptive to its presence, which includes its grace.
In order to understand the short path, it might be helpful to compare it to the long path which consists of a series of exercises and efforts which gradually develops concentration and character and knowledge. But the long path does not lead to the goal.
On the long path you often measure your own progress. It is an endless path because there will always be new circumstances which bring new temptations and trials and confront the aspirant with new challenges. No matter how spiritual the ego becomes it does not enter the whitest light, but remains in the greyish light.
On the long path you must deal with the urges of interference arising from the lower self and the negativity which enters from the surrounding environment. But the efforts on the long path will at last invoke the grace, which opens the perspective of the short path.
The short path is not an exercise but an inner standpoint to invoke, a state of consciousness where one comes closer or finds peace in the Overself.
There are, however, two exercises which can be of help to lead to the short path, but they have quite a different character than the exercises on the long path. The short path takes less time because the aspirant turns around and faces the goal directly.
The short path means that you begin to try to remember to live in the rarefied atmosphere of the Overself instead of worrying about the ego and measuring its spiritual development. You learn to trust more and more in the Higher Power.
On the short path you ignore negativity and turn around 180 degrees, from the ego to the Overself. The visitations of the Overself are heralded through devotional feeling, but also through intuitive thought and action. Often the two paths can be treaded simultaneously, but not necessarily equally.
Often the aspirant is not ready to start these two exercises until after one or several glimpses of the Overself.
The "remembrance exercise" consists of trying to recall the glimpse of the Overself, not only during the set meditation periods but also in each moment during the whole working span of the day--in the same way as a mother who has lost her child can not let go of the thought of it no matter what she is doing outwardly, or as a lover who constantly holds the vivid image of the beloved in the back of his mind. In a similar way, you keep the memory of the Overself alive during this exercise and let it shine in the background while you go about your daily work. But the spirit of the exercise is not to be lost. It must not be mechanical and cold. The time may come later when the remembrance will cease as a consciously and deliberately willed exercise and pass by itself into a state which will be maintained without the help of the ego's will.
The remembrance is a necessary preparation for the second exercise, in which you try to obtain an immediate identification with the Overself. Just as an actor identifies with the role he plays on the stage, you act think and live during the daily life "as if" you were the Overself. This exercise is not merely intellectual but also includes feeling and intuitive action. It is an act of creative imagination in which by turning directly to playing the part of the Overself you make it possible for its grace to come more and more into your life.
— Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation > Chapter 5: Balancing the Paths > # 2
Paul Brunton
He is single...
"His love entered,
and removed all besides Him,
and left no trace of anything else,
so that it remained single even as He is single."
Bayazid al Bistami
in Reynold A. Nicholson
_The Mystics Of Islam_
London: Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1914, p. 115, at sacred-texts.com
What is Love ?...
The main subject of spiritual learning is the raising of the consciousness of the meaning of Love..
Many say; " Be Loving",,"Become Love"..
But, we remain stuck in the daily life of selfish egoic thoughts..
Love brings Joy and ego brings pain..
How do we raise our consciousness to the level of Unconditional Love and still exist within the life and dream of egoic self ?..
When you hold open a door for another human,
for a brief moment, You are existing as 'Love'.
If you hold the door without expecting a 'thank you' or a smile,
then you are existing as 'Unconditional Love'..
When You think of others and not yourself, You are existing as Love..
Love is the state of non-egoic consciousness..
This is why Divine Consciousness (God) is Love..
Divine Consciousness is the Consciousness of 'Mass Unity',and is not a separate entity from that Mass Unity..
When You have Realized that You are Divine Consciousness, You can then surrender this 'Self' into the Final Reality of 'Pure Awareness',
which is the finality of any egoic consciousness and therefore, Complete Love...
namaste, thomas
You cannot escape Love...
Q: I want this forever.
R: "This experience you did not have before, and all the experiences which you had, they have left, they are gone. Therefore, we still want this forever! This will not leave you!"
"Before things were leaving you. Now here you will not be left.
You are in the grip of a very supreme power.
You will not be allowed to be left.
It's not your fear now. You can't escape, Now you cannot escape.
You cannot escape Love, you cannot escape Love. (laughs) Once you touch it, you get lost.
Nothing ever exists that can come out again. Everything is discharged and becomes That itself.
When the river enters into the ocean, it will turn instantly into the ocean."
Poonja
It will emerge...
Relax and watch the 'I am'.
Reality is just behind it.
Keep quiet,
keep silent,
it will emerge,
or, rather,
it will take you in.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Live from Self...
Q: You have urged us to see ourselves as we are, not as we like to
picture ourselves. What are most people like?
A: Like a thermometer.
Their feelings rise or fall according to the
social atmosphere.
Never living from themselves, they remain at the
mercy of exterior events.
Everything outside tells them how to feel
inside.
They are slaves to bad news, or an angry look, or an unexpected
change of plans.
And, of course, the more a man is influenced
by exterior events, the more he will angrily insist that no one tells
him what to do.
It is not necessary to live like a mindless thermometer,
Any man can learn to live from himself."
The Esoteric Path to a New Life, p. 39
Vernon Howard
the Eternal Screen...
"You don't have to control anything; don't desire anything to happen.
You are the Space: Everything is 'I,' everything is You.
Everything is Itself and this is your Nature. You don't have to do anything about it. Keep things open and see now the Emptiness, see the screen on which all is projected."
"When you go to the theater you see pictures projected on a screen. Some are of mountains and rivers, some of romance, and some are people being attacked by robbers. When the move is over the screen has no wetness from the river, nor smell from the romance, nor bullet holes from the robbers' guns. The screen is immaculately clean.
This manifestation is all a projection of your desires which fall across your mind and cause you to identify yourself as the projected watcher of the picture.
You are not these projections, you are the screen.
If you identify yourself with the immaculate, unchanging, eternal screen itself, which is the same before, during and after the show, you will not change and so you will not suffer the changes but enjoy them."
"All Beings are this one immaculate screen. There is no need for practice to clean the dust off it because it is beyond everything.
The teachers who want you to do lifetimes of practice can clean this dust off their own minds."
Poonja
attached to roles...
No guru can lead anyone to enlightenment if he himself is attached to the role of guru, nor can any disciple ever receive enlightenment if he wants to play the role of disciple forever.
Both are suffering from attachments which prevent enlightenment.
This is why the whole thing becomes a stage play, whether serious or comical, in which the actors are performing their personal parts.
Even if they babble about the necessity of not getting attached to the world, they are still attached to what they are supposed to be, that is, questing.
A truly enlightened man has no such attachment and unless he is invested by the Higher Power with a special apostleship, or with a special mission, he would not consider himself a guru, nor anyone else as a disciple.
— Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest > Chapter 6: Student-Teacher > # 590
Paul Brunton
Light Breeze of Spirit...
As regards feeling pain, like a hand cut in battle,
consider the body a robe
you wear.
When you meet someone you love, do you kiss their clothes?
Search out
who's inside.
Union with God is sweeter than body comforts.
We have hands and feet
different from these.
Sometimes in dream we see them.
That is not
illusion.
It's seeing truly.
You do have a spirit body;
don't dread leaving the
physical one.
Sometimes someone feels this truth so strongly
that he or she can live in
mountain solitude totally refreshed.
The worried, heroic
doings of men and women seem weary
and futile to dervishes enjoying the light breeze of spirit.
From Soul of Rumi
by Coleman Barks
The cat that saved my life...
When I was young and on my own, I shared an apartment on the top of a house that was a hundred and fifty years old..
It had stained glass windows and spoke words to me of once being a house of opulence..
They was the days of the "Woodstock years"..
Candles and incense were always burning..
A poor family, living on welfare lived below us on the first floor.
My friend and myself had separate bedrooms on the third floor attic.
As was our custom, we drank wine and celebrated life often..
I smoked camel cigarettes at that time and would occasionally irritate my cat by blowing smoke into his face, only to see him scurry away in dismay..
I picked this cat out of a group of cats because, he was the only one that was not afraid to walk up to me on first meeting.
One time in meditation, I received the name that I should give to this cat..
The name was 'Chanda'.
Why, this name was given to me is unknown..
Chanda became my best friend and had no reason to be housebroken, as he always went outside to comply with nature..
Being poor, we had no heat in the attic and slept covered with a few blankets..
One night, I was awakened by a strong scratching and meowing at my door..
I opened the door to see Chanda amid the smoke of a fire that was within the room of my fellow tenant..
I opened the door to my roommate to see the blanket on him was ablaze and he was still asleep..
I grabed the blanket and ran downstairs to dose it with water from the tub..
Chanda saved our lives, even though he feared smoke..
He thought of me over himself..
This is the definition of Love...
namaste, thomas
Saturday night musings...
The world is in turmoil..
ego against ego..
Laughing at this game of illusion is easy..
Such fools that kill and wage war are the leaders of humanity..
Does humanity stand up and say "enough is enough"..
We are now..
We are being Awakened by Divine Consciousness..
God has declared that the experiment is over..
Duality is finished..
We return back to non-duality and Love..
this is why, you are here..
you are the first to Awaken..
Fear not the death that many will encounter..
It is a dream of evil and pain that will soon become a distant memory..
You are Reality and cannot be killed..
We will leave this dream and Awaken as the energy of Peace..
It is not so far away..
Do not fear death, it is only part of the dream..
Fall into the surrender of Nothingness that is Reality..
The only thing that is Real is that which does not change..
We are Light, Love, and Consciousness,
anything else is a dream..
namaste, thomas
a unique state of consciousness...
"To arrive at true Self-knowledge is to arrive at God-realization.
God-realization is a unique state of consciousness.
It is different from all the other states of consciousness because all the other states of consciousness are experienced through the medium of individual mind.
Whereas the state of God-consciousness is in no way dependent upon the individual mind or any other medium.
A medium is necessary for knowing something other than one's own Self.
For knowing one's own Self no medium is necessary."
Meher Baba
_Discourses_
Myrtle Beach, SC: Sheriar Press, 2nd revised edition, 1987, p. 141
neither coming nor going...
The Great Way is embracing and spacious -
to live in it is neither easy nor difficult.
Those who rely on limited views are fearful and irresolute:
The faster they hurry, the slower they go.
To have a narrow mind,
and to be attached to getting enlightenment
is to lose one's center and go astray.
When one is free from attachment,
all things are as they are,
and there is neither coming nor going.
- Seng-ts'an, Third Zen Patriarch
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
Hsin Hsin Ming
Translated by Richard B. Clarke
Death is the Door...
In reference to the previous quote from Paul Brunton about going beyond the mind to Enlightenment,
He states that you must empty the mind to Awaken as Divine Consciousness..
The mind is also the base of egoic consciousness and is the creator of false self or ego..
My method and the method of many other Mystics is to surrender the false self (ego) to the Universe and enter into the death of ego and the entrance into No-thingness..
This method not only empties the mind but upon the complete surrender of the illusion of ego and life, You Awaken into Reality,
Known as Divine Consciousness, Overself, Creator God, or any other name that you wish to give to Reality..
this is the State of no separate ego but the merged ego of Love, Light, and Consciousness..
this is our Natural State of Existence..
The illusion of separate self and the illusions called life are just a Dream that We are experiencing as Divine Consciousness..
A Mystic called Jesus, once said;
" you must die, to be born"
The death of the ego is the birth of Awakening into Reality...
namaste, thomas
Beyond mind to Enlightenment...
Thinking must stop,
but if it stops at the level of the little ego only a psychical experience or a mediumistic possession may result.
If, however,
it stops at a deeper level after right preparation and sufficient purification,
the mind's emptiness may be filled by a realization of identity with the Overself.
— Notebooks Category 4: Elementary Meditation > Chapter 1: Preparatory > # 280
Paul Brunton
living in the moment...
What I do every day
Is nothing special:
I simply stumble around.
What I do is not thought out,
Where I go is unplanned.
No matter who tries to leave their mark,
The hills and dales are not impressed.
Collecting firewood and carrying water
Are prayers that reach the gods.
- Layman P'ang
the chainsaw...
Do you really want to erase all your deluded beliefs,
memories, stories, tendencies and identities one by one,
or would you prefer to find the factory where they are
produced, and blow the whole thing up?
I say this because right now, I don’t have time for all
this tiny pruning.
You hold on to your little nail clipper,
but I am giving you a great chainsaw to bring down this
old tree of suffering.
This chainsaw is self-inquiry.
This
is your good fortune.
- Mooji
the real student...
People seek teachers and teaching in order to find something that they
do not know already.
In reality, however, teachers and teachings exist
to help people to apply and practise, not to amuse or give experience
that must be new.
Since men in general do not know this, it is not surprising that
they do not know what they have found, and try to find what is of no
use to them.
It is also possible that things which seem "new" to people are the
last things that they need for the purpose of improving them.
You will know the seeker of sensations because he is attracted by
the new or mysterious.
You will know the real student because he seeks
whatever there is to be found.
as collected by Idries Shah
Merging..
You are not the doer anymore, you never were.
You have no form, no shape, you are like the sky.
The vital breath which you take in --
will it feel pain when you die?
It will just merge into the air again, as it was before.
Nisargadatta.
The buddha is inside...
Talking about food won't make you full.
talking about clothes won't make you warm.
only eating food will make you full.
only wearing clothes will keep you warm.
people who don't know how to reason
just say a buddha is hard to find,
look inside your mind there's the buddha,
don't look around outside
- Hanshan (Cold Mountain)
Translated by Red Pine
Desires...
"Desires gives you suffering.
Whenever any desire arises, you want to go near it, you want to achieve it, and you do, then you are happy, isn't it?
You may think that the object made you happy, but really it is the absence of desire, that moment of Emptiness that makes you happy."
"Being empty of desire is happiness.
Return to your own Source and you are happy.
This is the trick of happiness."
"To get rid of all suffering and all deaths stay as Source.
There Nothing exists, all is perfection, fullness, and that is your nature.
You are already that and will always be That.
All these notions like 'I am the body' and 'I am ego' give you suffering.
These notions you have been told and there was a time when all these notions did not exist.
You were perfect and even now you are perfect.
Get rid of all these notions that have been dumped on your head.
Shake them off!
Shake them off and you will see who you are at this present moment.
What notion is your mind right now?"
Poonja
Speaking with the Father...
Once within the Light, Love, and Consciousness,
I spoke to the Light..
Although I was Light, somehow I thought that I could speak to the Light..
What a strange idea..
Yet, a Voice answered my plea..
Who was this Voice of wisdom ?..
Was it actually, myself as Divine Consciousness ?..
Was it the Father that Jesus spoke of ?..
The Voice had the answers to my questions..
Therefore, the Voice was wiser than I..
The Voice answered my questions about Reality but would not answer my question of finality..
I asked the Voice;
"Is this the Final Reality ?"
This is the only question that the Voice would not answer..
Divine Consciousness is not aware that It is an Illusion..
Pure Awareness has no egoic consciousness to ask or answer any questions..
Therefore, We must dissolve all egoic consciousness, even that of God...
namaste, thomas
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