On 2 August 2007, Bomjon addressed a large crowd in Hallori jungle in Bara district of southern Nepal. The Namo Buddha Tapoban Committee, which is devoted to looking after Bomjon, assembled the meeting. A notice about the boy's first-ever preaching was broadcast by a local FM radio station, and the committee also invited people by telephone. Around three thousand people gathered to listen to Bomjon's address. A video was made of the event.[13] According to Upendra Lamichhane, a blogger who wrote an article and took pictures of the meeting, Bomjon's message was, "The only way we can save this nation is through spirituality".[14] This was his speech:[15]
Murder, violence, greed, anger and temptation have made the human world a desperate place. A terrible storm has descended upon the human world, and this is carrying the world towards destruction. There is only one way to save the world and that is through dharma. When one doesn't walk the righteous path of spiritual practice, this desperate world will surely be destroyed. Therefore, follow the path of spirituality and spread this message to your fellows. Never put obstacles, anger and disbelief in the way of my meditation's mission. I am only showing you the way; you must seek it on your own. What I will be, what I will do, the coming days will reveal. Human salvation, the salvation of all living beings, and peace in the world are my goal and my path. "Namo Buddha sangaya, Namo Buddha sangaya, namo sangaya." I am contemplating on the release of this chaotic world from the ocean of emotion, on our detachment from anger and temptation, without straying from the path for even a moment, I am renouncing my own attachment to my life and my home forever. I am working to save all living beings. But in this undisciplined world, my life's practice is reduced to mere entertainment.
The practice and devotion of many Buddhas is directed at the world's betterment and happiness. It is essential, but very difficult, to understand that practice and devotion. But though it is easy to lead this ignorant existence, human beings don't understand that one day we must leave this uncertain world and go with the Lord of Death. Our long attachments with friends and family will dissolve into nothingness. We have to leave behind the wealth and property we have accumulated. What's the use of my happiness, when those who have loved me from the beginning, my mother, father, brothers, relatives are all unhappy? Therefore, to rescue all sentient beings, I have to be Buddha-mind, and emerge from my underground cave to do vajra meditation. To do this I have to realize the right path and knowledge, so do not disturb my practice. My practice detaches me from my body, my soul and this existence. In this situation there will be 72 goddess Kalis. Different gods will be present, along with the sounds of thunder and of "tangur", and all the celestial gods and goddesses will be doing puja (worship). So until I have sent a message, do not come here, and please explain this to others. Spread spiritual knowledge and spiritual messages throughout the world. Spread the message of world peace to all. Seek a righteous path and wisdom will be yours.
Second speech excerpt:
Prayers of Kunchu Suma – message of peace for all living creatures and for the spiritual prosperity of humankind. Salutations to all spiritual seekers, saints, religions and all organizations. After I was commanded by the spirit to save and uplift humankind and the creatures of the world, I have abided by the promise to save the ephemeral world from the ocean of emotions and to free the world from the worldly sins.
I have been contemplating single-mindedly (Dhyana) to free humankind and all living creatures. All sentient beings want to get freed from worldly sorrows and pains. But by birth, they are not equipped as humankind to seek after spirituality and get freed. They are also praying to God (the source/spirit). They are happy to be in this world. Humankind are creating traditions that will destroy the entire humanity and living creatures. In the name of religion, killings, violence, anger, jealousy and divisions are being promoted. There is only one source; the spirit has one form; the souls of all humans are the same, only the tradition and customs are different. Always embrace the path of mercy, compassion, non-violence, peace; this is the message I want to convey to our society and to all the citizens of the world. True spirituality, the true human spirit, will always search for truth. The search for truth is the only beneficial way of humans. Despite the existence of thousands of paths, chaos, greed, attachment, anger and jealousy have imprisoned our society and humankind. In this way the world is heading towards destruction. So, it is high time that the citizens of the world must think about it. Humans should never forget their ultimate spiritual duty and their society. Refrain from killings, violence, greed, jealousy, attachments and evil character. Shed the tears of mercy and compassion; show to the world the way of salvation. After we die it is extremely difficult to get back a human life. Everyone thinks that we don't reincarnate after death. No, we receive a human life due to our virtuous work. We earn the fruits due to the merits of our work. Now the world is governed by three forms. The first form is greed; the second form is anger; third form is attachment and jealousy that are ruling this world. May all the religious traditions change. All the religious people need to first find the Truth, and by cultivating mercy, compassion, non-violence, and peace in their hearts, they need to beautify the world with the way of salvation. I will continue to contemplate and meditate for the salvation of living beings by being focused in my path of wisdom until I find the ultimate form of enlightenment, the Samyak Sambodhi. Salute to the ultimate form of enlightenment and may peace be with everyone........from Wilipedia
Ram Tzu Speaks...
You believe in yourself.
You believe in
The power of positive thinking.
You attend seminars
To gain control of your life.
Once again you become pregnant
With visions of limitless opportunities,
All yours for the grabbing.
You need merely to
Set your goals
Define your wants
Establish priorities.
Then you can march off
To claim all
That is rightfully yours.
Ram Tzu has a question for you...
What went wrong this time?
- Ram Tzu
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
No Way for the Spiritually "Advanced"
Ram Tzu
Advaita Press, 1990
You believe in
The power of positive thinking.
You attend seminars
To gain control of your life.
Once again you become pregnant
With visions of limitless opportunities,
All yours for the grabbing.
You need merely to
Set your goals
Define your wants
Establish priorities.
Then you can march off
To claim all
That is rightfully yours.
Ram Tzu has a question for you...
What went wrong this time?
- Ram Tzu
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
No Way for the Spiritually "Advanced"
Ram Tzu
Advaita Press, 1990
Real and Unreal...
Things that seem real to an average person are unreal in the eyes of the mystic,
and the things that seem unreal in the eyes of the average person are real in
the eyes of the mystic. Little things that people take to heart will seem to him
of little importance; things that people become confused with will become clear
to him; things that matter so much to everyone will not matter to him; many
things that frighten and horrify people will not have the same effect upon
him; disappointments and failures will not take away his hope and courage. His
thought, speech, and action change: as his outlook becomes wide, so everything
he says or does will be different. In the first place mystical life is a puzzle,
in the second place a bewilderment, and in the third place a miracle. There
comes a time when all that he had accepted in his mind , all that he believed
in, appears to be quite the opposite of what they seemed. Imagine an evolved
person being more bewildered than an unevolved one. Ane yet it is so, for at
this stage a man begins to see that things are not as they seem.
From The Teachings Of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Selected & Arranged By
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
and the things that seem unreal in the eyes of the average person are real in
the eyes of the mystic. Little things that people take to heart will seem to him
of little importance; things that people become confused with will become clear
to him; things that matter so much to everyone will not matter to him; many
things that frighten and horrify people will not have the same effect upon
him; disappointments and failures will not take away his hope and courage. His
thought, speech, and action change: as his outlook becomes wide, so everything
he says or does will be different. In the first place mystical life is a puzzle,
in the second place a bewilderment, and in the third place a miracle. There
comes a time when all that he had accepted in his mind , all that he believed
in, appears to be quite the opposite of what they seemed. Imagine an evolved
person being more bewildered than an unevolved one. Ane yet it is so, for at
this stage a man begins to see that things are not as they seem.
From The Teachings Of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Selected & Arranged By
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
Love is Infinite...
Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity.
The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death.
Tomorrow, when resurrection comes,
The heart that is not in love will fail the test.
From Thief of Sleep
by Shahram Shiva
The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death.
Tomorrow, when resurrection comes,
The heart that is not in love will fail the test.
From Thief of Sleep
by Shahram Shiva
Alan Watts...
Alan Wilson Watts was born on the 6th of January, 1915 and died on the 16th of November, 1973. Alan Watts was born in Kent, England.
Published books by Alan Watts include "In My Own Way", "The Spirit of Zen" , "The Meaning of Happiness" and "The Two Hands of God."
To know that you are God is another way of saying that you feel completely one with this universe.
Alan Watts Quote - God - Knowledge - Universe Quotes
I submit that in our present knowledge of the human mind such power in the hands of psychiatrists is amazingly dangerous.
Alan Watts Quote - Knowledge - Human - Mind - Power - Dangerous Quotes
I would suggest that today, we know about as much concerning the human mind as we knew about the galaxy in 1300.
Alan Watts Quote - Suggestive - Concerning - Human - Mind Quotes
But in this theory God is not "an-other" person, there are no "victims" of God. He is never anything but His own victim.
Alan Watts Quote - God - Theory - Victim Quotes
You are resonsible, and if you want to stay in the state of illusion, stay in it, but you can always wake up.
Alan Watts Quote - Responsible - Choosing - illusion Quotes
You don't need to try to be God, you are! But if you try to be God it means you don't know you are.
Alan Watts Quote - God - Reality - illusion Quotes
And that's why, really, things like Astrology, although interesting, are rather ridiculous. Because if you know the future there's no surprise for you.......... from Ascentiongateway.com
Published books by Alan Watts include "In My Own Way", "The Spirit of Zen" , "The Meaning of Happiness" and "The Two Hands of God."
To know that you are God is another way of saying that you feel completely one with this universe.
Alan Watts Quote - God - Knowledge - Universe Quotes
I submit that in our present knowledge of the human mind such power in the hands of psychiatrists is amazingly dangerous.
Alan Watts Quote - Knowledge - Human - Mind - Power - Dangerous Quotes
I would suggest that today, we know about as much concerning the human mind as we knew about the galaxy in 1300.
Alan Watts Quote - Suggestive - Concerning - Human - Mind Quotes
But in this theory God is not "an-other" person, there are no "victims" of God. He is never anything but His own victim.
Alan Watts Quote - God - Theory - Victim Quotes
You are resonsible, and if you want to stay in the state of illusion, stay in it, but you can always wake up.
Alan Watts Quote - Responsible - Choosing - illusion Quotes
You don't need to try to be God, you are! But if you try to be God it means you don't know you are.
Alan Watts Quote - God - Reality - illusion Quotes
And that's why, really, things like Astrology, although interesting, are rather ridiculous. Because if you know the future there's no surprise for you.......... from Ascentiongateway.com
How to Meditate...
(Basic instructions as taught by Paramahansa Yogananda, with an exercise
in visualization)
INTRODUCTION
Meditation is the science of reuniting the soul with Spirit. The soul,
descending from God into flesh, manifests its consciousness and life
force through seven chakras, or centers of light, in man's cerebrospinal
axis. (These are the "seven stars" and "seven churches" spoken of by St.
John in the little-understood book of Revelation in the Bible.) Encased
in the bodily prison, the soul consciousness and life force become
identified with the physical vehicle and its mortal limitations.
Scientific meditation awakens the soul consciousness in the seven
cerebrospinal centers. In a state of divine recollectedness, the soul
intuitively realizes its immortal nature and origin. The various
progressive states of soul awakening are accompanied by an ever
increasing accession of inner peace and joy. In the most exalted states,
soul and Spirit become reunited in ecstatic, blissful communion, or
samadhi.
By meditation, then, we connect the little joy of the soul with the vast
joy of the Spirit. Meditation should not be confused with ordinary
concentration. Concentration consists in freeing the attention from
distractions and in focusing it on any thought in which one may be
interested. Meditation is that special form of concentration in which
the attention has been liberated from restlessness and is focused on
God. Meditation is concentration used to know God.
POSTURE
One of the first requisites for meditation is correct posture. The spine
should be erect. When the devotee is seeking to direct his mind and life
force upward through the cerebrospinal axis to the centers of higher
consciousness in the brain, he should avoid stricture or pinching of the
spinal nerves caused by improper posture.
Those persons whose legs are supple may prefer to meditate sitting
cross-legged on a cushion on the floor, or on a firm bed. However,
Paramahansa Yogananda recommended for most Westerners the following
meditation pose:
Sit on a straight armless chair with the feet resting flat on the floor.
Hold spine erect, abdomen in, chest out, shoulders back, chin parallel
to the ground. The hands, with palms upturned, should rest on the legs
at the juncture of the thighs and the abdominal region to prevent the
body from bending forward. The meditation chair should be of comfortable
height, otherwise there is a tendency to allow the torso to lean forward
or backward. If the correct posture has been assumed, the body will be
stable yet relaxed, so that it is easily possible to remain completely
still, without moving a muscle.
Each of the foregoing details is a contributing factor toward the chief
aim of the meditation posture-an erect spine, held stable without strain
or tension for the duration of the meditation period. If, because of bad
habits of posture or congenital defects of posture, you experience
difficulty or discomfort in maintaining the specified positions of feet,
hands, shoulders, chest, and abdomen, make whatever commonsense
adjustments are necessary to your individual need; but strive always
toward accomplishing the ideal posture recommended by Paramahansa
Yogananda.
When you are established in the meditation pose, inhale slowly and
deeply (through the nostrils) to a count of 20; hold the breath to a
count of 20; exhale slowly (through the mouth) to a count of 20.
Practice this six to twelve times. (A shorter count may be used,
provided it is the same count in each of the three parts.) Then inhale,
tensing the whole body and clenching the fists. Relax all the body parts
at once and, as you do so, expel the breath through the mouth in a
double exhalation, "huh, huh." Repeat this practice six times. Then
forget the breath. Let it flow in and out naturally, of its own accord,
as in ordinary breathing.
With the eyelids half closed (or completely closed, if this is more
comfortable to you), look upward, focusing the gaze and the attention as
though looking out through a point between the eyebrows. (A person deep
in concentration often "knits" his brows at this spot.) Do not cross the
eyes or strain them; the upward gaze comes naturally when one is relaxed
and calmly concentrated. What is important is fixing the whole attention
at the point between the eyebrows. This is the Christ Consciousness
center, the seat of the single eye spoken of by Christ: "The light of
the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body
shall be full of light" (Matthew 6:22). When the purpose of meditation
is fulfilled, the devotee finds his consciousness automatically
concentrated at the spiritual eye, and he experiences, according to his
inner spiritual capacity, a state of joyous divine union with Spirit.
Making a steadfast effort, the beginner may in time perceive light, or
even see the spiritual eye of three colors-a reflection of the actual
luminous eye in the medulla oblongata. (at the base of the skull where
it joins the neck). This single eye of light reflected in the forehead
is the astral eye of intuitive omnipresent perception. It takes deep
concentration and calmness to behold the spiritual eye; a golden halo
surrounding a circle of blue, in the center of which palpitates a
five-pointed white star. Those who do see the spiritual eye should
strive to penetrate it by deeper concentration and by devoted prayer to
God. The depth of calmness and concentration necessary for this are
naturally developed through steady practice of the scientific techniques
of concentration and meditation.
Whether you see the light of the spiritual eye or not, however, you
should continue to concentrate at the Christ Consciousness center
between the eyebrows, praying deeply to God and His great saints. In the
language of your heart invoke their presence and their blessings. A good
practice is to take an affirmation or a prayer from the Lessons, or from
Paramahansa Yoganandaji's "Whispers from Eternity" or "Metaphysical
Meditations," and spiritualize it with your own devotional yearning.
Silently chant and pray to God, keeping the attention at the point
between the eyebrows, until you feel God's response as calm, deep peace
and inner joy.
VISUALIZATION
Divine consciousness is omnipresent. In order to attune one's
consciousness to it, it is necessary first to expand the mind by
meditation on some aspect of God's infinite nature. Visualization is not
realization; but visualization is an effective aid in deepening one's
concentration, which is essential for the deep meditation that yields
realization. The following exercise in visualization and mental
expansion given by Paramahansa Yogananda will be found helpful in
preparing the mind to practice the scientific techniques of meditation
that are given in later Lessons:
"Sit upright. Focus your gaze and your mind at the Christ Consciousness
center between the eyebrows. Fill your heart with joy. Behold! the
sphere of darkness that you see with closed eyes is becoming a sphere of
light and joy. This sphere is enlarging. Now it is bigger than your
body. Go on expanding the sphere of joy and light. Your home and
everyone in it are present in the sphere of light that you are
beholding. Go on expanding it until you see your whole city in this
sphere of light and joy. Ever increasing, the sphere of light and joy is
encompassing the entire United States, and still it is expanding,
including Europe, Asia, the world! See the world bathed in the light of
this peaceful sphere of joy. The earth appears as a little ball moving
in the vast sphere of light and joy. The sphere is becoming even larger;
see! our planetary and stellar system, the Milky Way, and island
galaxies, like little bubbles, are floating in it.
"Expand the sphere of light and joy within you, in which all things are
moving, glimmering like the lights of a city. Meditate on and try to be
one with that joy. God is joy, and we must find Him through joy. The
scriptures say: 'Thou art That.' Your Self is one with this vast sphere
of light that is your Father. You are this sphere of light and joy!
Meditate on that. You have no boundaries-eternity above, below,
everywhere. In this eternal sphere of light and joy all things are
moving. Mentally affirm: 'In me worlds are floating like bubbles. I and
my Father are One. '
"Now open your eyes. Look at the body and see how little it is! Close
your eyes and realize again that you are not the body. You are the
eternal sphere of light and joy in which all things have their being. Go
on meditating, mentally affirming: 'I am the cosmic sphere of light, of
joy, of love, in which worlds and universes are floating like bubbles.
My Father is this cosmic sphere of light; my Father and I are One. I am
not the body; I am the eternal sphere of light. Aum. Aum. Amen.'"
(Paramahansa Yogananda cautioned devotees against the erroneous thought,
"I am God." One should realize, rather, "God has become myself." The
soul is like a wave on the sea-bosom of Spirit. The soul wave is one
with the Sea, but the wave is not the Sea.)
Through daily practice of the foregoing instructions, you can prepare
yourself for the practice of the basic techniques of concentration and
meditation that are given in later Lessons. These scientific techniques
will enable you to dive ever more deeply in the great ocean of God's
presence. We all exist at this very moment in that ocean of Spirit; but
only by steadfast, devoted, scientific meditation may we consciously
perceive that we are individualized soul waves on the vast ocean of
God's bliss.
The meditation period should last at least thirty minutes in the morning
and thirty minutes at night. The longer you sit, enjoying the state of
meditative calm, the faster you will progress spiritually. Carry into
your daily activities the calmness you feel in meditation/that calmness
will help you to bring harmony and happiness into every department of
your life.
Unending joy awaits the sincere truth seeker who conscientiously
meditates each day. Through the grace of God, through the blessings of
the Masters, and through your own devotional effort you can achieve the
state of divine joy experienced by all saints that have become
established in the Lord (that have become consciously aware of their
soul unity with Spirit).
KEY POINTS
1. Set aside a regular time and place for your daily practices of these
spiritual techniques. Try to find a quiet place where you can be free
from outside distractions and thus be able to concentrate with more
intensity. If possible, never use that place for any other purpose than
meditation. Thus you will impregnate the spot with spiritual vibrations
that will help you to make each day's meditation deeper than the
meditation of the preceding day.
2. Always begin and end your meditation with a prayer.
3. Early morning, upon arising, and the period just before retiring at
night are excellent times for meditation. Do not try to meditate just
after eating. Wait at least an hour if possible. The kind of food one
eats also has a definite bearing on one's health or ill health, not only
of the body but of the mind. Be sure the diet includes an abundance of
fresh vegetables and fruits. Eat nuts, cheese, eggs, and vegetable
proteins in preference to meat. Fruits are the most spiritually
beneficial of all foods.
4. It is good to use a woolen blanket or silk cloth (or both, with the
silk on top) to cover your meditation seat. Drape the cloth over the
back of the chair if a chair is used, and place one end of the cloth on
the floor under your feet. The cloth helps to insulate the body from
subtle earth currents. Their magnetic downward pull toward material
perceptions is undesirable for the meditating devotee. The yogis have
found, also, that facing East (the direction from which subtle spiritual
solar currents are always flowing) is helpful in meditation.
5. Bathing has a cleansing effect not only on the body but also on the
mind, and is therefore a beneficial practice before meditation. Bathing
opens the pores allowing toxins to escape; it also helps to distribute
life energy evenly throughout the body, quieting the nerves and inducing
calmness. One should also take a "mental bath" before meditation: put
aside all worries and problems. Completely give to God the time you have
set aside for meditation. Concentrate on one of His infinite aspects -
Peace, Joy, Wisdom, Love, Light, Beauty-or on one of the seven wisdoms.
Meditation in itself is an unequaled "spiritual bath"--a cleansing and
rejuvenation of body, mind, and soul.
Be regular in your meditations (whether they be deep, or, in the
beginning, restless). Be persistent if you would attract God's
attention. Remember that meditation should be practiced with devotion,
with real love for God. Love for God means craving for God. He cannot
resist the magnetic attraction of human soul yearning. Meditation
techniques help you to awaken and whet that divine craving which will
take you to the heights of realization, of soul union with God-Bliss.
Resolve that you will never give up until He comes to you. Whether you
realize it or not. He is listening to the cry of your heart. In His own
time He will bestow the supreme gift of Himself.
.......from Reluctant-messenger.com
in visualization)
INTRODUCTION
Meditation is the science of reuniting the soul with Spirit. The soul,
descending from God into flesh, manifests its consciousness and life
force through seven chakras, or centers of light, in man's cerebrospinal
axis. (These are the "seven stars" and "seven churches" spoken of by St.
John in the little-understood book of Revelation in the Bible.) Encased
in the bodily prison, the soul consciousness and life force become
identified with the physical vehicle and its mortal limitations.
Scientific meditation awakens the soul consciousness in the seven
cerebrospinal centers. In a state of divine recollectedness, the soul
intuitively realizes its immortal nature and origin. The various
progressive states of soul awakening are accompanied by an ever
increasing accession of inner peace and joy. In the most exalted states,
soul and Spirit become reunited in ecstatic, blissful communion, or
samadhi.
By meditation, then, we connect the little joy of the soul with the vast
joy of the Spirit. Meditation should not be confused with ordinary
concentration. Concentration consists in freeing the attention from
distractions and in focusing it on any thought in which one may be
interested. Meditation is that special form of concentration in which
the attention has been liberated from restlessness and is focused on
God. Meditation is concentration used to know God.
POSTURE
One of the first requisites for meditation is correct posture. The spine
should be erect. When the devotee is seeking to direct his mind and life
force upward through the cerebrospinal axis to the centers of higher
consciousness in the brain, he should avoid stricture or pinching of the
spinal nerves caused by improper posture.
Those persons whose legs are supple may prefer to meditate sitting
cross-legged on a cushion on the floor, or on a firm bed. However,
Paramahansa Yogananda recommended for most Westerners the following
meditation pose:
Sit on a straight armless chair with the feet resting flat on the floor.
Hold spine erect, abdomen in, chest out, shoulders back, chin parallel
to the ground. The hands, with palms upturned, should rest on the legs
at the juncture of the thighs and the abdominal region to prevent the
body from bending forward. The meditation chair should be of comfortable
height, otherwise there is a tendency to allow the torso to lean forward
or backward. If the correct posture has been assumed, the body will be
stable yet relaxed, so that it is easily possible to remain completely
still, without moving a muscle.
Each of the foregoing details is a contributing factor toward the chief
aim of the meditation posture-an erect spine, held stable without strain
or tension for the duration of the meditation period. If, because of bad
habits of posture or congenital defects of posture, you experience
difficulty or discomfort in maintaining the specified positions of feet,
hands, shoulders, chest, and abdomen, make whatever commonsense
adjustments are necessary to your individual need; but strive always
toward accomplishing the ideal posture recommended by Paramahansa
Yogananda.
When you are established in the meditation pose, inhale slowly and
deeply (through the nostrils) to a count of 20; hold the breath to a
count of 20; exhale slowly (through the mouth) to a count of 20.
Practice this six to twelve times. (A shorter count may be used,
provided it is the same count in each of the three parts.) Then inhale,
tensing the whole body and clenching the fists. Relax all the body parts
at once and, as you do so, expel the breath through the mouth in a
double exhalation, "huh, huh." Repeat this practice six times. Then
forget the breath. Let it flow in and out naturally, of its own accord,
as in ordinary breathing.
With the eyelids half closed (or completely closed, if this is more
comfortable to you), look upward, focusing the gaze and the attention as
though looking out through a point between the eyebrows. (A person deep
in concentration often "knits" his brows at this spot.) Do not cross the
eyes or strain them; the upward gaze comes naturally when one is relaxed
and calmly concentrated. What is important is fixing the whole attention
at the point between the eyebrows. This is the Christ Consciousness
center, the seat of the single eye spoken of by Christ: "The light of
the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body
shall be full of light" (Matthew 6:22). When the purpose of meditation
is fulfilled, the devotee finds his consciousness automatically
concentrated at the spiritual eye, and he experiences, according to his
inner spiritual capacity, a state of joyous divine union with Spirit.
Making a steadfast effort, the beginner may in time perceive light, or
even see the spiritual eye of three colors-a reflection of the actual
luminous eye in the medulla oblongata. (at the base of the skull where
it joins the neck). This single eye of light reflected in the forehead
is the astral eye of intuitive omnipresent perception. It takes deep
concentration and calmness to behold the spiritual eye; a golden halo
surrounding a circle of blue, in the center of which palpitates a
five-pointed white star. Those who do see the spiritual eye should
strive to penetrate it by deeper concentration and by devoted prayer to
God. The depth of calmness and concentration necessary for this are
naturally developed through steady practice of the scientific techniques
of concentration and meditation.
Whether you see the light of the spiritual eye or not, however, you
should continue to concentrate at the Christ Consciousness center
between the eyebrows, praying deeply to God and His great saints. In the
language of your heart invoke their presence and their blessings. A good
practice is to take an affirmation or a prayer from the Lessons, or from
Paramahansa Yoganandaji's "Whispers from Eternity" or "Metaphysical
Meditations," and spiritualize it with your own devotional yearning.
Silently chant and pray to God, keeping the attention at the point
between the eyebrows, until you feel God's response as calm, deep peace
and inner joy.
VISUALIZATION
Divine consciousness is omnipresent. In order to attune one's
consciousness to it, it is necessary first to expand the mind by
meditation on some aspect of God's infinite nature. Visualization is not
realization; but visualization is an effective aid in deepening one's
concentration, which is essential for the deep meditation that yields
realization. The following exercise in visualization and mental
expansion given by Paramahansa Yogananda will be found helpful in
preparing the mind to practice the scientific techniques of meditation
that are given in later Lessons:
"Sit upright. Focus your gaze and your mind at the Christ Consciousness
center between the eyebrows. Fill your heart with joy. Behold! the
sphere of darkness that you see with closed eyes is becoming a sphere of
light and joy. This sphere is enlarging. Now it is bigger than your
body. Go on expanding the sphere of joy and light. Your home and
everyone in it are present in the sphere of light that you are
beholding. Go on expanding it until you see your whole city in this
sphere of light and joy. Ever increasing, the sphere of light and joy is
encompassing the entire United States, and still it is expanding,
including Europe, Asia, the world! See the world bathed in the light of
this peaceful sphere of joy. The earth appears as a little ball moving
in the vast sphere of light and joy. The sphere is becoming even larger;
see! our planetary and stellar system, the Milky Way, and island
galaxies, like little bubbles, are floating in it.
"Expand the sphere of light and joy within you, in which all things are
moving, glimmering like the lights of a city. Meditate on and try to be
one with that joy. God is joy, and we must find Him through joy. The
scriptures say: 'Thou art That.' Your Self is one with this vast sphere
of light that is your Father. You are this sphere of light and joy!
Meditate on that. You have no boundaries-eternity above, below,
everywhere. In this eternal sphere of light and joy all things are
moving. Mentally affirm: 'In me worlds are floating like bubbles. I and
my Father are One. '
"Now open your eyes. Look at the body and see how little it is! Close
your eyes and realize again that you are not the body. You are the
eternal sphere of light and joy in which all things have their being. Go
on meditating, mentally affirming: 'I am the cosmic sphere of light, of
joy, of love, in which worlds and universes are floating like bubbles.
My Father is this cosmic sphere of light; my Father and I are One. I am
not the body; I am the eternal sphere of light. Aum. Aum. Amen.'"
(Paramahansa Yogananda cautioned devotees against the erroneous thought,
"I am God." One should realize, rather, "God has become myself." The
soul is like a wave on the sea-bosom of Spirit. The soul wave is one
with the Sea, but the wave is not the Sea.)
Through daily practice of the foregoing instructions, you can prepare
yourself for the practice of the basic techniques of concentration and
meditation that are given in later Lessons. These scientific techniques
will enable you to dive ever more deeply in the great ocean of God's
presence. We all exist at this very moment in that ocean of Spirit; but
only by steadfast, devoted, scientific meditation may we consciously
perceive that we are individualized soul waves on the vast ocean of
God's bliss.
The meditation period should last at least thirty minutes in the morning
and thirty minutes at night. The longer you sit, enjoying the state of
meditative calm, the faster you will progress spiritually. Carry into
your daily activities the calmness you feel in meditation/that calmness
will help you to bring harmony and happiness into every department of
your life.
Unending joy awaits the sincere truth seeker who conscientiously
meditates each day. Through the grace of God, through the blessings of
the Masters, and through your own devotional effort you can achieve the
state of divine joy experienced by all saints that have become
established in the Lord (that have become consciously aware of their
soul unity with Spirit).
KEY POINTS
1. Set aside a regular time and place for your daily practices of these
spiritual techniques. Try to find a quiet place where you can be free
from outside distractions and thus be able to concentrate with more
intensity. If possible, never use that place for any other purpose than
meditation. Thus you will impregnate the spot with spiritual vibrations
that will help you to make each day's meditation deeper than the
meditation of the preceding day.
2. Always begin and end your meditation with a prayer.
3. Early morning, upon arising, and the period just before retiring at
night are excellent times for meditation. Do not try to meditate just
after eating. Wait at least an hour if possible. The kind of food one
eats also has a definite bearing on one's health or ill health, not only
of the body but of the mind. Be sure the diet includes an abundance of
fresh vegetables and fruits. Eat nuts, cheese, eggs, and vegetable
proteins in preference to meat. Fruits are the most spiritually
beneficial of all foods.
4. It is good to use a woolen blanket or silk cloth (or both, with the
silk on top) to cover your meditation seat. Drape the cloth over the
back of the chair if a chair is used, and place one end of the cloth on
the floor under your feet. The cloth helps to insulate the body from
subtle earth currents. Their magnetic downward pull toward material
perceptions is undesirable for the meditating devotee. The yogis have
found, also, that facing East (the direction from which subtle spiritual
solar currents are always flowing) is helpful in meditation.
5. Bathing has a cleansing effect not only on the body but also on the
mind, and is therefore a beneficial practice before meditation. Bathing
opens the pores allowing toxins to escape; it also helps to distribute
life energy evenly throughout the body, quieting the nerves and inducing
calmness. One should also take a "mental bath" before meditation: put
aside all worries and problems. Completely give to God the time you have
set aside for meditation. Concentrate on one of His infinite aspects -
Peace, Joy, Wisdom, Love, Light, Beauty-or on one of the seven wisdoms.
Meditation in itself is an unequaled "spiritual bath"--a cleansing and
rejuvenation of body, mind, and soul.
Be regular in your meditations (whether they be deep, or, in the
beginning, restless). Be persistent if you would attract God's
attention. Remember that meditation should be practiced with devotion,
with real love for God. Love for God means craving for God. He cannot
resist the magnetic attraction of human soul yearning. Meditation
techniques help you to awaken and whet that divine craving which will
take you to the heights of realization, of soul union with God-Bliss.
Resolve that you will never give up until He comes to you. Whether you
realize it or not. He is listening to the cry of your heart. In His own
time He will bestow the supreme gift of Himself.
.......from Reluctant-messenger.com
When the soul is awakened// Murshid's Meditation...
When the soul is awakened, it is as if that person were to wake up in the middle
of the night among hundreds and thousands of people who were fast asleep. He is
sitting or standing among them, hearing about their sorrows and miseries and
their conditions, hundreds of them
moving about in their sleep, in their dreams, not awakened to his condition
although he is near them. They know little about him, as each one is absorbed in
his own trouble. This awakened soul, standing among them all, will listen to
everyone, will recognize all that they think and feel; but his language no one
understands; his thoughts he cannot explain to anyone; his feelings he cannot
expect anyone to feel. He feels lonely, but no doubt in this lonliness there is
also
the sense of perfection, for perfection is always lonely. Imagine living in a
world where nobody speaks our language. Yet he knows the world's language. The
experience of the matured soul is like the experience of the man who watched a
play performed on the stage at night, and in the morning he saw the same stage
again in the sun and saw that all the palaces and gardens and the actors'
costumes were unreal.
From The Teachings Of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Selected & Arranged By
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
of the night among hundreds and thousands of people who were fast asleep. He is
sitting or standing among them, hearing about their sorrows and miseries and
their conditions, hundreds of them
moving about in their sleep, in their dreams, not awakened to his condition
although he is near them. They know little about him, as each one is absorbed in
his own trouble. This awakened soul, standing among them all, will listen to
everyone, will recognize all that they think and feel; but his language no one
understands; his thoughts he cannot explain to anyone; his feelings he cannot
expect anyone to feel. He feels lonely, but no doubt in this lonliness there is
also
the sense of perfection, for perfection is always lonely. Imagine living in a
world where nobody speaks our language. Yet he knows the world's language. The
experience of the matured soul is like the experience of the man who watched a
play performed on the stage at night, and in the morning he saw the same stage
again in the sun and saw that all the palaces and gardens and the actors'
costumes were unreal.
From The Teachings Of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Selected & Arranged By
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
Paul Brunton...
Paul Brunton (1898-1981) was a British philosopher, mystic, and traveler. He left a successful journalistic career to live among yogis, mystics, and holy men, and studied a wide variety of Eastern and Western esoteric teachings. With his entire life dedicated to an inward and spiritual quest, Brunton felt charged with the task of communicating his experiences to others and, as the first person to write accounts of what he learned in the East from a Western perspective, his works had a major influence on the spread of Eastern mysticism to the West. Taking pains to express his thoughts in layperson's terms, Brunton was able to present what he learned from the Orient and from ancient tradition as a living wisdom. Paul Brunton's writings sum up his view that meditation and the inward quest are not exclusively for monks and hermits, but will also support those living normal, active lives in the Western world.
--From Paul Brunton: Essential Readings By Godwin, Cash and Smith
--From Paul Brunton: Essential Readings By Godwin, Cash and Smith
Father William McNamara...
William McNamara is one of the most influential spiritual writers and mystics of the 21st century. The founder of the Spiritual Life Institute in Crestone, Colorado and Sligo, Ireland, and the author of more than a dozen books on Christian mysticism, McNamara is an elusive, mysterious, controversial figure who has touched the lives of millions, over more than 50 years as a Catholic priest, through retreats, spiritual conferences, personal counseling, books and tapes.
This website is dedicated to McNamara’s unique brand of “earthy mysticism,” a soaring, Christian-based spirituality that nevertheless is inspired by such down-to-earth, life-affirming, passionate figures as Zorba the Greek. It is not affiliated with him nor does he endorse any of its contents. It is merely an attempt to preserve the legacy of a unique approach to Christian mysticism that resonates with many people today.
In 2001, after celebrating the 50th anniversary of his ordination as a Catholic priest at the community’s fourth foundation in Sligo, Ireland, McNamara collapsed and was rushed to the hospital with massive internal bleeding. He received seven units of blood yet the Irish doctors were unable to stop the bleeding. As a result, McNamara was transferred to a hospital in California where doctors were able to insert a shunt and perform what they termed a minor miracle to keep him alive. They gave him less than two years to live.
Two years after McNamara’s prolonged convalescence in the hospital, catastrophe occurred: the spiritual community he founded nearly 40 years earlier began to disintegrate. Factions developed. A new prior took over. Some members, including ordained priests, left the community. McNamara himself resigned as abbot, was allegedly laicized and is no longer publicly associated with the Spiritual Life Institute, which now has only a handful of members (although he still considers himself a member of the order he founded in 1960, the Community of Apostolic Hermits). Long-time members, such as co-founder Mother Tessa Bielecki and Fr. Dave Denny, also left, founding a new “circle of friends,” the Desert Foundation, to maintain the original Carmelite spirit and ideals. At this writing, McNamara himself — known simply as Abba Willie — lives alone as a hermit in a rugged mountain wilderness in southern Oregon. Now in his mid-80s and afflicted with numerous life-threatening ailments, he is struggling, alone, to build a new foundation to carry on his unique vision of Christian spiritual life.
Below is a mini-biography of William McNamara, written by one of his oldest associates, Fr. David Denny of the Desert Foundation:
Carmelite Pioneer: William McNamara
By Fr. David Denny
Until you’ve kept your eyes
And your wanting still for fifty years,
You don ‘t begin to cross over from confusion.
– Rumi
Reflecting recently on the future of Carmel, Superior General Camilo Maccise, O.C.D called for “risk,” “daring,” and “structural changes” in “an ever-valid charism and identity.” He challenged Carmelites to adopt a “creative fidelity” to the Teresian charism: “New wineskins are needed to express (our spirituality) in intelligible, relevant and existential language.” Carmel needs the “establishment of centers and institutes of spirituality,” “small praying communities” living “close to real life,” sharing their spirit with the larger lay community.
After an audience with Pope John XXIII in 1960, Abba William McNamara, received permission to risk founding such an institute of spirituality, a “new wineskin” that is at once a return to primitive Carmelite eremitical life and a creative contemporary response to the needs of what he calls a “waist- high culture” whose contemplative vision has atrophied. “Without vision, the people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18). Throughout his priestly life, this provocative thinker and playful man has quietly initiated deep visionary changes in Western spirituality. A review of these creative initiatives reveals that many of the Father General’s hopes for future may be found in the Spiritual Life Institute community. Such a review also confirms French Jesuit Louis Lallemant’s contention that a man of prayer accomplishes more in a year than most accomplish in a lifetime.
Renowned preacher and author of The Art of Being Human (1962), The Human Adventure (1974) Mystical Passion (1977) and Earthy Mysticism (1982), Fr. William celebrated 50 years of priesthood at his Holy Hill Hermitage in Skreen, Co. Sligo, Ireland in July 2001. A second Jubilee was celebrated at Nada Hermitage in Crestone, Colorado October 5-7.
Spiritual Life Magazine
Once described by Walter Burghardt, S.J. as a man of ”Isaian Woe and Irish wit,” Father William (Willie) founded Spiritual Life magazine in 1955, and served as its first editor. As subsequent editor Stephen Payne, O.C.D. once wrote, “If it weren’t for you, there wouldn’t be any magazine for us to edit. Every day I thank God for those who have gone before me, and remind myself that I stand on the shoulders of giants.”
Willie not only published groundbreaking authors, but also befriended them. He introduced British philosopher of mysticism E.I. Watkin to America readers and hosted Christian humanist Gerald Vann, O.P. during a lecture tour. Fr. William fondly recalls the absent-minded Dominican packing a half-empty open Coke bottle into his suitcase, along with his white habit! When the University Chaplain prevented Jacques Maritain from presenting his paper “Truth and Human Fellowship” at Princeton, Willie had the courage to print it.
At this stage, Fr. William was also deeply involved in the movement for liturgical renewal. But he grew dissatisfied with its direction and outlined his concern for Maritain, who subsequently articulated them in his Liturgy and Contemplation. Important as liturgy is for the health of the Christian community, these astute mystics both realized that the fundamental issue was not a crisis of ritual, but of contemplation.
Willie joined the Discalced Carmelites in 1939 at age thirteen. He traveled by train from Providence, Rhode Island to Holy Hill in Hubertus, Wisconsin. As confrere Richard Madden put it, young “Willie” was “usually in some kind of pain, somewhere or other in his body, but never complained about it. Rather, he continued to be a source of merriment that penetrated the deep cloak of monastic silence.” Ordained in 1951, Fr. William began giving retreats and parish missions immediately, traveling eventually to every state except Alaska, to Ireland, England, France, and Canada.
He changed the structure of parish missions by forming teams of priest, nuns, and lay people, and by shortening the missions to five days, making it easier to for busy families to participate. He also led retreats for extended families in their own homes, beginning in Arizona and Minnesota.
Earthy Mysticism
Shifting the emphasis of the parish mission from “hell-fire and brimstone” to a more positive, and always humorous, focus on Christian humanism, he preached the infinitely attractive beauty of Christ and called for conversion fundamentally motivated not by fear of hell but by worship and wonder. He insisted that the supernatural life is rooted in a healthy natural life. As St. Thomas Aquinas put it, grace perfects nature with out destroying it. The young Carmelite encouraged listeners and readers to seek Christ not only in Roman Catholic Christianity, but in Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism; and not merely in religion, but the novels of Dostoyevsky and Kazantzakis, in movies such as “Becket” and “Dr. Zhivago,” music as diverse as Cesar Franck’s “Symphony in D Minor” and the folk songs of the Kingston Trio, as well as in painting, poetry, and nature. “Our peak religious experiences are not always pious,” he insists, “but they may be our holiest acts.” Therefore we must be “earthly mystics” and find both human and Divine in ordinary earthy acts, in “the secret surprises of customary objects and the regular, repetitive commonplaces of life: cleaning the house, baking bread, weeding the garden, romping with the dogs, lying in the sun, running in the rain.”
Willie’s prophetic critiques of Western culture are not rooted in puritanical world denial; rather he bemoans the apathy of the majority, the vapidity of mass media, the pollution of language, and an unmystical Christianity that turns the drama of Jesus’ story into a pharisaical power structure. In short, he insists that we are not erotic enough. His notion of eros has nothing to do with pornography. It has to do with Plato and the Hebrew prophets. Accordingly, he describes eros as a “reaching and stretching of the whole-body person for the fullness of life and love.” Its end is not self-gratification but a free and ecstatic self-sacrifice for the sake of Christ, the divine Beloved.
Contemplation for Everyone
Contemplation, the highest human act, is not for an elite, but for everyone, and so for Willie, “The mystic is not a special kind of person; everyone is, or ought to be, a special kind of mystic.” Mysticism is not a peripheral anomaly, but the heart of Christianity. But after the great flowering of mystical life in the 16th century, the West lost its mystical moorings and caved in to an Empire driven more and more relentlessly by a “techno-barbaric juggernaut” that demands ever-larger profits and Machiavellian “rational bulldozer” that sweeps away the vestiges of mystical wisdom only to replace it with “mendacity, mediocrity, and manipulation.” Although this Empire may change its name and rearrange its priorities in various ages, it remains the same respectable conspiracy, the “pretty poison” that killed Christ.
Our desert monk developed the theme of contemplation for everyone by expanding the understanding of St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night. He coined the terms “dark night of the Church” and the “desert experience” and demonstrated that this threshold experiences applies not only to an individual’s prayer life, but to life in the family, the workplace, marriage, the priesthood, the church and society. For example, the sense of the loss of God, of nothingness (nada), the desert that John described, happens to married couples: the romance fades; we become acutely aware of our own brokenness and our spouse’s; natural means of communion and renewal no longer work; we may drift toward addictions or extramarital affairs; we are tempted to give up and divorce. Placed in this new context, people who may have been baffled by John’s exotic descriptions of what happens to the cloistered Carmelites begin to see that he describes something very familiar. Fully acknowledging the terror and disorienting loneliness of this night, both Fr. William and St. John nevertheless insist that it is a happy night, “more beautiful than the dawn” because in it lover and beloved are transformed into a higher communion that turns “death” into new life.
......from Earthymystic.com
This website is dedicated to McNamara’s unique brand of “earthy mysticism,” a soaring, Christian-based spirituality that nevertheless is inspired by such down-to-earth, life-affirming, passionate figures as Zorba the Greek. It is not affiliated with him nor does he endorse any of its contents. It is merely an attempt to preserve the legacy of a unique approach to Christian mysticism that resonates with many people today.
In 2001, after celebrating the 50th anniversary of his ordination as a Catholic priest at the community’s fourth foundation in Sligo, Ireland, McNamara collapsed and was rushed to the hospital with massive internal bleeding. He received seven units of blood yet the Irish doctors were unable to stop the bleeding. As a result, McNamara was transferred to a hospital in California where doctors were able to insert a shunt and perform what they termed a minor miracle to keep him alive. They gave him less than two years to live.
Two years after McNamara’s prolonged convalescence in the hospital, catastrophe occurred: the spiritual community he founded nearly 40 years earlier began to disintegrate. Factions developed. A new prior took over. Some members, including ordained priests, left the community. McNamara himself resigned as abbot, was allegedly laicized and is no longer publicly associated with the Spiritual Life Institute, which now has only a handful of members (although he still considers himself a member of the order he founded in 1960, the Community of Apostolic Hermits). Long-time members, such as co-founder Mother Tessa Bielecki and Fr. Dave Denny, also left, founding a new “circle of friends,” the Desert Foundation, to maintain the original Carmelite spirit and ideals. At this writing, McNamara himself — known simply as Abba Willie — lives alone as a hermit in a rugged mountain wilderness in southern Oregon. Now in his mid-80s and afflicted with numerous life-threatening ailments, he is struggling, alone, to build a new foundation to carry on his unique vision of Christian spiritual life.
Below is a mini-biography of William McNamara, written by one of his oldest associates, Fr. David Denny of the Desert Foundation:
Carmelite Pioneer: William McNamara
By Fr. David Denny
Until you’ve kept your eyes
And your wanting still for fifty years,
You don ‘t begin to cross over from confusion.
– Rumi
Reflecting recently on the future of Carmel, Superior General Camilo Maccise, O.C.D called for “risk,” “daring,” and “structural changes” in “an ever-valid charism and identity.” He challenged Carmelites to adopt a “creative fidelity” to the Teresian charism: “New wineskins are needed to express (our spirituality) in intelligible, relevant and existential language.” Carmel needs the “establishment of centers and institutes of spirituality,” “small praying communities” living “close to real life,” sharing their spirit with the larger lay community.
After an audience with Pope John XXIII in 1960, Abba William McNamara, received permission to risk founding such an institute of spirituality, a “new wineskin” that is at once a return to primitive Carmelite eremitical life and a creative contemporary response to the needs of what he calls a “waist- high culture” whose contemplative vision has atrophied. “Without vision, the people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18). Throughout his priestly life, this provocative thinker and playful man has quietly initiated deep visionary changes in Western spirituality. A review of these creative initiatives reveals that many of the Father General’s hopes for future may be found in the Spiritual Life Institute community. Such a review also confirms French Jesuit Louis Lallemant’s contention that a man of prayer accomplishes more in a year than most accomplish in a lifetime.
Renowned preacher and author of The Art of Being Human (1962), The Human Adventure (1974) Mystical Passion (1977) and Earthy Mysticism (1982), Fr. William celebrated 50 years of priesthood at his Holy Hill Hermitage in Skreen, Co. Sligo, Ireland in July 2001. A second Jubilee was celebrated at Nada Hermitage in Crestone, Colorado October 5-7.
Spiritual Life Magazine
Once described by Walter Burghardt, S.J. as a man of ”Isaian Woe and Irish wit,” Father William (Willie) founded Spiritual Life magazine in 1955, and served as its first editor. As subsequent editor Stephen Payne, O.C.D. once wrote, “If it weren’t for you, there wouldn’t be any magazine for us to edit. Every day I thank God for those who have gone before me, and remind myself that I stand on the shoulders of giants.”
Willie not only published groundbreaking authors, but also befriended them. He introduced British philosopher of mysticism E.I. Watkin to America readers and hosted Christian humanist Gerald Vann, O.P. during a lecture tour. Fr. William fondly recalls the absent-minded Dominican packing a half-empty open Coke bottle into his suitcase, along with his white habit! When the University Chaplain prevented Jacques Maritain from presenting his paper “Truth and Human Fellowship” at Princeton, Willie had the courage to print it.
At this stage, Fr. William was also deeply involved in the movement for liturgical renewal. But he grew dissatisfied with its direction and outlined his concern for Maritain, who subsequently articulated them in his Liturgy and Contemplation. Important as liturgy is for the health of the Christian community, these astute mystics both realized that the fundamental issue was not a crisis of ritual, but of contemplation.
Willie joined the Discalced Carmelites in 1939 at age thirteen. He traveled by train from Providence, Rhode Island to Holy Hill in Hubertus, Wisconsin. As confrere Richard Madden put it, young “Willie” was “usually in some kind of pain, somewhere or other in his body, but never complained about it. Rather, he continued to be a source of merriment that penetrated the deep cloak of monastic silence.” Ordained in 1951, Fr. William began giving retreats and parish missions immediately, traveling eventually to every state except Alaska, to Ireland, England, France, and Canada.
He changed the structure of parish missions by forming teams of priest, nuns, and lay people, and by shortening the missions to five days, making it easier to for busy families to participate. He also led retreats for extended families in their own homes, beginning in Arizona and Minnesota.
Earthy Mysticism
Shifting the emphasis of the parish mission from “hell-fire and brimstone” to a more positive, and always humorous, focus on Christian humanism, he preached the infinitely attractive beauty of Christ and called for conversion fundamentally motivated not by fear of hell but by worship and wonder. He insisted that the supernatural life is rooted in a healthy natural life. As St. Thomas Aquinas put it, grace perfects nature with out destroying it. The young Carmelite encouraged listeners and readers to seek Christ not only in Roman Catholic Christianity, but in Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism; and not merely in religion, but the novels of Dostoyevsky and Kazantzakis, in movies such as “Becket” and “Dr. Zhivago,” music as diverse as Cesar Franck’s “Symphony in D Minor” and the folk songs of the Kingston Trio, as well as in painting, poetry, and nature. “Our peak religious experiences are not always pious,” he insists, “but they may be our holiest acts.” Therefore we must be “earthly mystics” and find both human and Divine in ordinary earthy acts, in “the secret surprises of customary objects and the regular, repetitive commonplaces of life: cleaning the house, baking bread, weeding the garden, romping with the dogs, lying in the sun, running in the rain.”
Willie’s prophetic critiques of Western culture are not rooted in puritanical world denial; rather he bemoans the apathy of the majority, the vapidity of mass media, the pollution of language, and an unmystical Christianity that turns the drama of Jesus’ story into a pharisaical power structure. In short, he insists that we are not erotic enough. His notion of eros has nothing to do with pornography. It has to do with Plato and the Hebrew prophets. Accordingly, he describes eros as a “reaching and stretching of the whole-body person for the fullness of life and love.” Its end is not self-gratification but a free and ecstatic self-sacrifice for the sake of Christ, the divine Beloved.
Contemplation for Everyone
Contemplation, the highest human act, is not for an elite, but for everyone, and so for Willie, “The mystic is not a special kind of person; everyone is, or ought to be, a special kind of mystic.” Mysticism is not a peripheral anomaly, but the heart of Christianity. But after the great flowering of mystical life in the 16th century, the West lost its mystical moorings and caved in to an Empire driven more and more relentlessly by a “techno-barbaric juggernaut” that demands ever-larger profits and Machiavellian “rational bulldozer” that sweeps away the vestiges of mystical wisdom only to replace it with “mendacity, mediocrity, and manipulation.” Although this Empire may change its name and rearrange its priorities in various ages, it remains the same respectable conspiracy, the “pretty poison” that killed Christ.
Our desert monk developed the theme of contemplation for everyone by expanding the understanding of St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night. He coined the terms “dark night of the Church” and the “desert experience” and demonstrated that this threshold experiences applies not only to an individual’s prayer life, but to life in the family, the workplace, marriage, the priesthood, the church and society. For example, the sense of the loss of God, of nothingness (nada), the desert that John described, happens to married couples: the romance fades; we become acutely aware of our own brokenness and our spouse’s; natural means of communion and renewal no longer work; we may drift toward addictions or extramarital affairs; we are tempted to give up and divorce. Placed in this new context, people who may have been baffled by John’s exotic descriptions of what happens to the cloistered Carmelites begin to see that he describes something very familiar. Fully acknowledging the terror and disorienting loneliness of this night, both Fr. William and St. John nevertheless insist that it is a happy night, “more beautiful than the dawn” because in it lover and beloved are transformed into a higher communion that turns “death” into new life.
......from Earthymystic.com
Horizontal and Vertical...
What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically.....
Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel
Appearances...
There are those sleeping who are awake,
and others awake who are sound asleep.
Some of those bathing in sacred pools
will never get clean.
And there are others
doing household chores
who are free of any action.
- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
From "Naked Song"
Versions by Coleman Barks
Maypop 1992
and others awake who are sound asleep.
Some of those bathing in sacred pools
will never get clean.
And there are others
doing household chores
who are free of any action.
- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
From "Naked Song"
Versions by Coleman Barks
Maypop 1992
Experience...
“There is nothing but water in the holy pools. I know, I have been swimming there. All the gods sculpted of wood or ivory can’t say a word. I know, I have been crying out to them. The Sacred Books of the East are nothing but words. I looked through their covers one day sideways. What Kabir talks of is only what he has lived through. If you have not lived through something, it is not true.”...
Kabir Das
Kabir Das
Abide as That...
"Abide as That,
which is I as well as You,
as well as everyone else,
is the basis of All,
is one without anything else whatsoever,
is extremely pure and the undifferentiated Whole,
and with the firm conviction that you are That,
be always happy."
-Heart of the Ribhu Gita-
which is I as well as You,
as well as everyone else,
is the basis of All,
is one without anything else whatsoever,
is extremely pure and the undifferentiated Whole,
and with the firm conviction that you are That,
be always happy."
-Heart of the Ribhu Gita-
Awareness...
That we know this awareness exists means only that we have an idea of awareness. We do not see that awareness as itself an object, nor can we ever do so. If we are to know the awareness by itself, first we would have to drop knowing its objects, its reflections in thought, including the ego-thought, and then be it, not see it.
— Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 5: The Key To the Spiritual World > # 168.....Paul Brunton
— Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 5: The Key To the Spiritual World > # 168.....Paul Brunton
Attraction...
"A man attracts the kind of problems he has because of the
kind of person he is. His negative nature duplicates itself
outwardly, wherever he goes. A quarrelsome person inevitably
finds himself quarreling with others. A person feeling that
others will take advantage of him will actually find himself
being taken. Those who reject the psychic facts of life have
no choice but to encounter one rejection after another.
You do what you are. To change what you do, change who you are."
The Power of your Supermind, p. 119... Vernon Howard
kind of person he is. His negative nature duplicates itself
outwardly, wherever he goes. A quarrelsome person inevitably
finds himself quarreling with others. A person feeling that
others will take advantage of him will actually find himself
being taken. Those who reject the psychic facts of life have
no choice but to encounter one rejection after another.
You do what you are. To change what you do, change who you are."
The Power of your Supermind, p. 119... Vernon Howard
The Secret is Simplicity...
The secret is simplicity itself. It was written down by the Sufi poet Shams Tabriz in eight little words: "Keep God in remembrance till self is forgotten." If he keeps the declaration half-whispered on the tip of his tongue and joyously fondled in his mind, it will serve him well.
— Notebooks Category 4: Elementary Meditation > Chapter 6: Mantrams, Affirmations > # 211.......Paul Brunton
— Notebooks Category 4: Elementary Meditation > Chapter 6: Mantrams, Affirmations > # 211.......Paul Brunton
Oversoul...
History
The essay [Ralph Waldo Emerson/ 1841] includes the following passage:
The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only
prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest, as the
earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul,
within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all
other; that common heart. [1]
For Emerson the term denotes a supreme underlying unity which transcends duality
or plurality, much in keeping with the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. This
non-Abrahamic interpretation of Emerson's use of the term is further supported
by the fact that Emerson's Journal records in 1845 suggest that he was reading
the Bhagavad Gita and Henry Thomas Colebrooke's Essays on the Vedas. [2] Emerson
goes on in the same essay to further articulate his view of this dichotomy
between phenomenal plurality and transcendental unity:
We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man
is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every
part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in
which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only
self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing
seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see
the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the
whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul. [1]
Over-soul has more recently come to be used by Eastern philosophers such as
Meher Baba and others as the closest English language equivalent of the Vedic
concept of Paramatman.[3] (In Sanskrit the word param means "supreme" and atman
means "soul"; thus Paramatman literally means "Supreme-Soul".)[1] The term is
used frequently in discussion of Eastern metaphysics and has also entered
western vernacular. In this context, the term "Over-soul" is understood as the
collective indivisible Soul, of which all individual souls or identities are
included. The experience of this underlying reality of the indivisible "I am"
state of the Over-soul is said to be veiled from the human mind by sanskaras, or
impressions, acquired over the course of evolution and reincarnation. Such past
impressions form a kind of sheath between the Over-soul and its true identity,
as they give rise to the tendency of identification with the gross
differentiated body. Thus the world, as apperceived through the impressions of
the past appears plural, while reality experienced in the present, unencumbered
by past impressions (the unconditioned or liberated mind), perceives itself as
the One indivisible totality, i.e. the Over-soul......from Wikipedia
The essay [Ralph Waldo Emerson/ 1841] includes the following passage:
The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only
prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest, as the
earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul,
within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all
other; that common heart. [1]
For Emerson the term denotes a supreme underlying unity which transcends duality
or plurality, much in keeping with the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. This
non-Abrahamic interpretation of Emerson's use of the term is further supported
by the fact that Emerson's Journal records in 1845 suggest that he was reading
the Bhagavad Gita and Henry Thomas Colebrooke's Essays on the Vedas. [2] Emerson
goes on in the same essay to further articulate his view of this dichotomy
between phenomenal plurality and transcendental unity:
We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man
is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every
part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in
which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only
self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing
seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see
the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the
whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul. [1]
Over-soul has more recently come to be used by Eastern philosophers such as
Meher Baba and others as the closest English language equivalent of the Vedic
concept of Paramatman.[3] (In Sanskrit the word param means "supreme" and atman
means "soul"; thus Paramatman literally means "Supreme-Soul".)[1] The term is
used frequently in discussion of Eastern metaphysics and has also entered
western vernacular. In this context, the term "Over-soul" is understood as the
collective indivisible Soul, of which all individual souls or identities are
included. The experience of this underlying reality of the indivisible "I am"
state of the Over-soul is said to be veiled from the human mind by sanskaras, or
impressions, acquired over the course of evolution and reincarnation. Such past
impressions form a kind of sheath between the Over-soul and its true identity,
as they give rise to the tendency of identification with the gross
differentiated body. Thus the world, as apperceived through the impressions of
the past appears plural, while reality experienced in the present, unencumbered
by past impressions (the unconditioned or liberated mind), perceives itself as
the One indivisible totality, i.e. the Over-soul......from Wikipedia
What is Ego? Why & How to Dissolve it? – A Scientific Perspective...
Ego is an idiotic state of what could be a fully aware mind or consciousness. An idiom or ideology is the creation of the mind that limits its perceptive or intuitive capabilities via confining it within the boundaries of the idiom, ideologies, beliefs, rituals, and traditions. Such a confined state of the mind forms the ego or personality of the person.
From a scientific or Holistic Relativity, perspective, just as the mass of matter represents an amount of energy confined within the boundaries in fixed space and time the ego represents the consciousness or free will energy of life confined within the boundaries of fixed ideologies, beliefs, and convictions. Just as the mass of matter is afflicted with time, evolution, entropy, and increasing complexity/chaos the ego is afflicted with the same adversities and fate.
Just as a mass contained within its own boundaries is afflicted with the gravitational forces of attraction that bind or attach it to other bodies of mass, the ego is attached to other worldly things via forces of desires. Just as the attractive forces of gravity keeps the planets orbiting around the sun, the desires to possess its material things keeps the ego on a wild chase and attached to this world. The fear of the change mandated by the affliction of time and the uncertainty of the unknown future always hovers over the ego. Hence, strangely and ironically, the certainty of uncertainty law governs both the matter and ego.
While ego is necessary for worldly living and survival, in order to live a purposeful and meaningful life free from the adversities, the root cause – the ego, has to be eliminated. While the boundary walls of the ego may provide us a worldly identity as well as a security fence against evolutionary threats emanating from the struggles for survival (or dominance as some would call it), the same walls may also act as prison captivating our consciousness and keeping it from achieving a full realization of life potential.
A wholesome life consists of a balanced living encompassing the whole spectrum of consciousness states from ego to egoless-ness. A limited state of consciousness at either extreme is not a wholesome living. An ascetic who renounces the material world as an illusion and a materialist who renounces the un-manifested reality as non-existent are both limited in their awareness of the One Wholesome reality of the universe. However, most of us choose to live in the limited worldly awareness of the ego-self under the assumption that the worldly reality is all that there is. As Guru Nanak observed:
“In ego they come, and in ego they go.
In ego they are born, and in ego they die.
In ego they give, and in ego they take.
In ego they earn, and in ego they lose.
In ego they become truthful or false.
In ego they reflect on virtue and sin.
In ego they go to heaven or hell.
In ego they laugh, and in ego they weep.
In ego they become dirty, and in ego they are washed clean.
In ego they lose social status and class.
In ego they are ignorant, and in ego they are wise.
They do not know the value of salvation and liberation.
In ego they love Maya, and in ego they are kept in darkness by it.
Living in ego, mortal beings are created.
When one understands ego, then the Truth’s gate is known.
Without spiritual wisdom, they babble and argue.”
Why dissolve the ego? What are its pitfalls? Again, Nanak reveals:
“Indulging in egotistical actions, your thirst is not quenched. Your desires are not fulfilled, and you do not attain spiritual wisdom.
Religious rituals and actions performed in ego place the mortal in bondage.
In egotism, all must account for their actions. In this accounting, there is no peace.
By actions done in egotism, selfishness and conceit, the Truth is not obtained.
I am stuck in the filth of doubt and egotistical actions, and I try not to think of death.
Hence, dissolve ego and practice pure actions.
Ego is a chronic disease; but it contains its own cure as well; this realization becomes a panacea in itself.”
An ego would never like to dissolve itself. It will find tricky ways around to save itself. Ritualistic religion is one of the most prevalent way to maintain the ego, wherein God is consciously separated from the self or ego, which can call upon God at its own convenience and in the form which it likes. God then becomes subservient to the whims, beliefs, and convictions of the ego. In this sense, ego creates God of its own liking rather than the other way around. God proposes and the ego disposes. The moral deeds and religious rituals performed under the purview of the ego become the very source of ego-gratification and ego-enhancement leading to increased suffering. This is consistent with the real life experiences of common folks wherein a routine adherence to religious commands and rituals fail to provide meaning and contentment.
Consciousness or awareness of the universal laws or truth can dissolve or transform the ego. This, however, becomes a vicious circle. That is where an outside help and guidance from the True-Guru or master is needed to break this vicious circle by raising one’s awareness to the inner disease or enemy – the ego. Without such awareness, dissolution of the ego or even the realization that it is an enemy is as difficult as to lift oneself against gravity.
Our ego cannot control everything but only control our experiences, perceptions, conclusions in the present, and the way we choose to live. The masters never relied on the fate of time and the external forces of evolution to dissolve the veil of the ego and awaken the consciousness. They liberated the individual human being from the bodily clutches of the ego and its afflictions of entropy, time and environment – the other – the duality.........
Avtar Singh
From a scientific or Holistic Relativity, perspective, just as the mass of matter represents an amount of energy confined within the boundaries in fixed space and time the ego represents the consciousness or free will energy of life confined within the boundaries of fixed ideologies, beliefs, and convictions. Just as the mass of matter is afflicted with time, evolution, entropy, and increasing complexity/chaos the ego is afflicted with the same adversities and fate.
Just as a mass contained within its own boundaries is afflicted with the gravitational forces of attraction that bind or attach it to other bodies of mass, the ego is attached to other worldly things via forces of desires. Just as the attractive forces of gravity keeps the planets orbiting around the sun, the desires to possess its material things keeps the ego on a wild chase and attached to this world. The fear of the change mandated by the affliction of time and the uncertainty of the unknown future always hovers over the ego. Hence, strangely and ironically, the certainty of uncertainty law governs both the matter and ego.
While ego is necessary for worldly living and survival, in order to live a purposeful and meaningful life free from the adversities, the root cause – the ego, has to be eliminated. While the boundary walls of the ego may provide us a worldly identity as well as a security fence against evolutionary threats emanating from the struggles for survival (or dominance as some would call it), the same walls may also act as prison captivating our consciousness and keeping it from achieving a full realization of life potential.
A wholesome life consists of a balanced living encompassing the whole spectrum of consciousness states from ego to egoless-ness. A limited state of consciousness at either extreme is not a wholesome living. An ascetic who renounces the material world as an illusion and a materialist who renounces the un-manifested reality as non-existent are both limited in their awareness of the One Wholesome reality of the universe. However, most of us choose to live in the limited worldly awareness of the ego-self under the assumption that the worldly reality is all that there is. As Guru Nanak observed:
“In ego they come, and in ego they go.
In ego they are born, and in ego they die.
In ego they give, and in ego they take.
In ego they earn, and in ego they lose.
In ego they become truthful or false.
In ego they reflect on virtue and sin.
In ego they go to heaven or hell.
In ego they laugh, and in ego they weep.
In ego they become dirty, and in ego they are washed clean.
In ego they lose social status and class.
In ego they are ignorant, and in ego they are wise.
They do not know the value of salvation and liberation.
In ego they love Maya, and in ego they are kept in darkness by it.
Living in ego, mortal beings are created.
When one understands ego, then the Truth’s gate is known.
Without spiritual wisdom, they babble and argue.”
Why dissolve the ego? What are its pitfalls? Again, Nanak reveals:
“Indulging in egotistical actions, your thirst is not quenched. Your desires are not fulfilled, and you do not attain spiritual wisdom.
Religious rituals and actions performed in ego place the mortal in bondage.
In egotism, all must account for their actions. In this accounting, there is no peace.
By actions done in egotism, selfishness and conceit, the Truth is not obtained.
I am stuck in the filth of doubt and egotistical actions, and I try not to think of death.
Hence, dissolve ego and practice pure actions.
Ego is a chronic disease; but it contains its own cure as well; this realization becomes a panacea in itself.”
An ego would never like to dissolve itself. It will find tricky ways around to save itself. Ritualistic religion is one of the most prevalent way to maintain the ego, wherein God is consciously separated from the self or ego, which can call upon God at its own convenience and in the form which it likes. God then becomes subservient to the whims, beliefs, and convictions of the ego. In this sense, ego creates God of its own liking rather than the other way around. God proposes and the ego disposes. The moral deeds and religious rituals performed under the purview of the ego become the very source of ego-gratification and ego-enhancement leading to increased suffering. This is consistent with the real life experiences of common folks wherein a routine adherence to religious commands and rituals fail to provide meaning and contentment.
Consciousness or awareness of the universal laws or truth can dissolve or transform the ego. This, however, becomes a vicious circle. That is where an outside help and guidance from the True-Guru or master is needed to break this vicious circle by raising one’s awareness to the inner disease or enemy – the ego. Without such awareness, dissolution of the ego or even the realization that it is an enemy is as difficult as to lift oneself against gravity.
Our ego cannot control everything but only control our experiences, perceptions, conclusions in the present, and the way we choose to live. The masters never relied on the fate of time and the external forces of evolution to dissolve the veil of the ego and awaken the consciousness. They liberated the individual human being from the bodily clutches of the ego and its afflictions of entropy, time and environment – the other – the duality.........
Avtar Singh
Illusion of Ego...
What in us blocks our connection with the spiritual depths? If heaven is real, why am I not in contact with it? All religions and paths address this central question, under a variety of names, the most common today in the West being “ego.” The term ego, in this context, alludes to our deeply ingrained self-referential, self-seeking disposition, our well-hidden and highly adaptable attitude that life revolves around me and mine. Ego cuts us off from other people, from Nature, from God, from our authentic self, from our true responsibility, and from fulfilling our destiny. Our ego is the great usurper. It focuses on our local independence, falsely presuming it to be a global independence. The ego convinces us that we are truly separate beings with ultimately separate will, having no inherent connection with other people or with God.
Our ego installs us at the center of the universe, separate from all and enslaved by time. Dwelling on our past history, our conditioning, our grudges, our manufactured identity, our personality, or on our future hopes, dreams, fears, anxieties, desires, and pressures, ego creates a constant torrent of mental structures, each of which proclaim “This is me.” In childhood we become so involved and enamored with the growing arsenal of our ego, that we unquestioningly assume it is who we are. That insidious assumption constitutes the ego's iron grip on us.
This ego, this false pretender, whenever it arises grabs the seat of honor at the core of our being. It purports to speak for the whole of us, even though our various parts lack integration. It adopts the voice and desires of whatever part of us pushes itself temporarily to the top of the heap. So for example, our ego, under the influence of one part of us, “decides” to do something, but later under the influence of another part, we find ourselves doing just the opposite. I may think “I am going to quit smoking tomorrow.” But tomorrow my hand, not caring what my mind thought yesterday, reaches for a cigarette. The pretender to the throne does not bear the royal seal, does not have the power it ascribes to itself.
Why is it that the ego, or separate self, produces such a major difficulty in the spiritual path, indeed THE major difficulty? The answer can be found in the subtlety of the place occupied by ego and I. That place is not readily visible, even to our inner eye. It lies in the realm of Will, more interior than all our thought, emotion, and sensory experience, more interior than our awareness or consciousness itself, more interior than our mind. Ego and I reside in the place of who we are, that in us which chooses and decides, or abdicates choosing and deciding. A thought that says, “I will …,” masquerades as the source of decision. When this does represent an actual decision, the true source is will itself. Our will, however, usurped by the self-centered ego, an aberration of will, enters into a wrong and self-referential mode of working. Our true I, our true will, does not act by force, but rather by the cooperative assent of our various parts.. The uncooperative ego can thus come and stand in the place of the I, hiding and splitting off our authentic I from the rest of us. Under the influence of ego, we believe ourselves to be our own source. It turns out that, although we are indeed our own source, that very source is the Source of All.
Religions and paths portray the nature of our egoism and how to deal with it in one of two quite distinct modes. Usually, and to our misfortune, the ways reify and solidify ego into a something, an enemy, which must be overcome, which must die, which inherently resides in our tainted nature, which must be purified. True enough. One cannot argue with the accumulated wisdom of great religions. For our modern culture, though, the notion that our ego must die seems frightening. More importantly, the notion that we harbor inherent spiritual taints gets interpreted by our self-bashing, insecure psychology to mean that we are bad, or at least inadequate — something that we in the West are often trained to believe from childhood on. We believe we are not good enough. So we don the knowledge of being corrupt to our core as a mantle of supposed wisdom, and flock to those that teach it. Then the religious teaching about egoism simply gets co-opted by the self-denigrating side of our ego, eagerly adopted and accepted as yet another weakness. We hang our heads and beat our breasts and feel the better (or worse) for it. Unfortunately, all this only strengthens our egoism and leads us into an endless cycle, akin to a dog chasing its tail.
Casting our ego as the enemy in a holy war and winning that battle is an exceedingly difficult proposition, primarily because the ego proves to be a most subtle adversary. In fact, the ego will even join the battle against itself. It will take it on and say “this is wonderful, I’m going to battle against ego, I will become free, I will be wonderful, I will be better than I am now, and I will be better than other people, because I will be a highly evolved spiritual being.” The ego joins our forces. As an enemy, it infiltrates our lines, wearing our own uniform, its soldiers and officers indistinguishable from ours. How does one fight a battle against such a devious and resourceful enemy? For most of us, it comes to nothing but another heap of suffering as we merely fight ourselves in the name of spirituality and sink more deeply than ever into the morass of self-centeredness. Only the rarest of souls find a way through this conundrum.
An alternative, but also traditional view casts ego in an entirely different perspective, not as an enemy, but as an illusion, and invites us to see our ego for what it is: an empty, ephemeral sham, a hall of mirrors, a self-referential and insubstantial web. The rise of Buddhism in the West is, in no small part, due to this kinder yet no less incisive and perhaps more tractable formulation of the problem of egoism.
Our belief in our ego, or separate self, is to a large extent learned from society. All the people around us labor under a self-centered perspective on life, which naturally devolves to impressionable children. Repeatedly shining the light of awareness directly on this sense of separateness gradually disperses it. But i f we look carefully for our ego, for this separate self that we think we are, we shall not find it.
Am I my body? I can control my body, I can be aware of my body, and my awareness is greater than my body. So I am probably not my body.
Am I my feelings? I can be aware of my feelings and have some rudimentary influence on them, so I am probably not my feelings.
Am I my thoughts? My thoughts claim the title of I, thinking “I think,” “I am hungry.” But that “I” is just a thought, having no more substance than any other thought. It fools me though, this thought “I.” I believe in it. I believe it refers to something real and substantial, to the real me. But if I look at it clearly, I see it as only a thought with no real referent. At best, I may have a vague idea that I am some combination of my thoughts, feelings, and body. Again it proves empty to the insightful observer.
Am I my knowledge and experience, my habits and desires, my style - in short, my personality? But I can see all this at work in myself. And clearly, the one who sees seems closer to me than this whole complex of acquired patterns and inherited predispositions that I call my personality. So no, I am not my personality. I need my personality because only through it can I function in life, but I also need to remember that this personality is not who I am.
How about my awareness? Am I my awareness? Two problems here. First, I have some control over what I am aware of. So there must be something deeper. Second, the deeper I go into awareness, the less it is centered in me, so how can that be me as a separate entity, as an ego?
How about my attention? How about that in me that decides, my will? This is the subtlest of all. Yet again, the deeper I look into my will, the less it is centered in me, and the more it opens beyond me.
So wherever we look, we do not find this self, this separate person that takes our name, this self-important actor on the stage of our life. The more we engage in spiritual inner work, the more carefully and persistently we are able look into ourselves, and the more this once-compelling ego, this self disappears. Or perhaps we see that it never existed to begin with. Gradually, our belief in our ego assumes a porous quality, which rather than cutting us off from others, merely clouds our relationships intermittently. This separate self never was. Our devotion to it shrivels and we are left to truly be ourselves, to play our unique role in the larger story of our common life. When moments come in which we fall back into that trance of selfness, we feel uncomfortable, like in a shoe that no longer fits, and we let it go.
Our ego, this illusory pattern, however, endures with remarkable resilience and persistence. Complete freedom from ego comes only at a very high station of spiritual development, something to which we may aspire and work for with diligence. The best approach lies somewhere between the two outlined above. Seeing and letting go can only work insofar as we are able to see. The depth and subtlety of our seeing must increase. For this, efforts of various kinds are necessary. These efforts may include grappling with some of the propensities of our separate self. Doing so can illumine the tentacles of egoism, while creating energy for seeing more. Only we must not have the idea that such struggles will, by themselves, reform our recalcitrant self-centeredness. A project of reform by force is doomed to fail. Efforts at reform can only be useful to the extent that they help us to see. Sensing the energy body and working at presence also help us see. And seeing, it is said, leads to liberation: liberation from the illusion of the ego and into the freedom of interconnectedness..................
Joseph Naft
Our ego installs us at the center of the universe, separate from all and enslaved by time. Dwelling on our past history, our conditioning, our grudges, our manufactured identity, our personality, or on our future hopes, dreams, fears, anxieties, desires, and pressures, ego creates a constant torrent of mental structures, each of which proclaim “This is me.” In childhood we become so involved and enamored with the growing arsenal of our ego, that we unquestioningly assume it is who we are. That insidious assumption constitutes the ego's iron grip on us.
This ego, this false pretender, whenever it arises grabs the seat of honor at the core of our being. It purports to speak for the whole of us, even though our various parts lack integration. It adopts the voice and desires of whatever part of us pushes itself temporarily to the top of the heap. So for example, our ego, under the influence of one part of us, “decides” to do something, but later under the influence of another part, we find ourselves doing just the opposite. I may think “I am going to quit smoking tomorrow.” But tomorrow my hand, not caring what my mind thought yesterday, reaches for a cigarette. The pretender to the throne does not bear the royal seal, does not have the power it ascribes to itself.
Why is it that the ego, or separate self, produces such a major difficulty in the spiritual path, indeed THE major difficulty? The answer can be found in the subtlety of the place occupied by ego and I. That place is not readily visible, even to our inner eye. It lies in the realm of Will, more interior than all our thought, emotion, and sensory experience, more interior than our awareness or consciousness itself, more interior than our mind. Ego and I reside in the place of who we are, that in us which chooses and decides, or abdicates choosing and deciding. A thought that says, “I will …,” masquerades as the source of decision. When this does represent an actual decision, the true source is will itself. Our will, however, usurped by the self-centered ego, an aberration of will, enters into a wrong and self-referential mode of working. Our true I, our true will, does not act by force, but rather by the cooperative assent of our various parts.. The uncooperative ego can thus come and stand in the place of the I, hiding and splitting off our authentic I from the rest of us. Under the influence of ego, we believe ourselves to be our own source. It turns out that, although we are indeed our own source, that very source is the Source of All.
Religions and paths portray the nature of our egoism and how to deal with it in one of two quite distinct modes. Usually, and to our misfortune, the ways reify and solidify ego into a something, an enemy, which must be overcome, which must die, which inherently resides in our tainted nature, which must be purified. True enough. One cannot argue with the accumulated wisdom of great religions. For our modern culture, though, the notion that our ego must die seems frightening. More importantly, the notion that we harbor inherent spiritual taints gets interpreted by our self-bashing, insecure psychology to mean that we are bad, or at least inadequate — something that we in the West are often trained to believe from childhood on. We believe we are not good enough. So we don the knowledge of being corrupt to our core as a mantle of supposed wisdom, and flock to those that teach it. Then the religious teaching about egoism simply gets co-opted by the self-denigrating side of our ego, eagerly adopted and accepted as yet another weakness. We hang our heads and beat our breasts and feel the better (or worse) for it. Unfortunately, all this only strengthens our egoism and leads us into an endless cycle, akin to a dog chasing its tail.
Casting our ego as the enemy in a holy war and winning that battle is an exceedingly difficult proposition, primarily because the ego proves to be a most subtle adversary. In fact, the ego will even join the battle against itself. It will take it on and say “this is wonderful, I’m going to battle against ego, I will become free, I will be wonderful, I will be better than I am now, and I will be better than other people, because I will be a highly evolved spiritual being.” The ego joins our forces. As an enemy, it infiltrates our lines, wearing our own uniform, its soldiers and officers indistinguishable from ours. How does one fight a battle against such a devious and resourceful enemy? For most of us, it comes to nothing but another heap of suffering as we merely fight ourselves in the name of spirituality and sink more deeply than ever into the morass of self-centeredness. Only the rarest of souls find a way through this conundrum.
An alternative, but also traditional view casts ego in an entirely different perspective, not as an enemy, but as an illusion, and invites us to see our ego for what it is: an empty, ephemeral sham, a hall of mirrors, a self-referential and insubstantial web. The rise of Buddhism in the West is, in no small part, due to this kinder yet no less incisive and perhaps more tractable formulation of the problem of egoism.
Our belief in our ego, or separate self, is to a large extent learned from society. All the people around us labor under a self-centered perspective on life, which naturally devolves to impressionable children. Repeatedly shining the light of awareness directly on this sense of separateness gradually disperses it. But i f we look carefully for our ego, for this separate self that we think we are, we shall not find it.
Am I my body? I can control my body, I can be aware of my body, and my awareness is greater than my body. So I am probably not my body.
Am I my feelings? I can be aware of my feelings and have some rudimentary influence on them, so I am probably not my feelings.
Am I my thoughts? My thoughts claim the title of I, thinking “I think,” “I am hungry.” But that “I” is just a thought, having no more substance than any other thought. It fools me though, this thought “I.” I believe in it. I believe it refers to something real and substantial, to the real me. But if I look at it clearly, I see it as only a thought with no real referent. At best, I may have a vague idea that I am some combination of my thoughts, feelings, and body. Again it proves empty to the insightful observer.
Am I my knowledge and experience, my habits and desires, my style - in short, my personality? But I can see all this at work in myself. And clearly, the one who sees seems closer to me than this whole complex of acquired patterns and inherited predispositions that I call my personality. So no, I am not my personality. I need my personality because only through it can I function in life, but I also need to remember that this personality is not who I am.
How about my awareness? Am I my awareness? Two problems here. First, I have some control over what I am aware of. So there must be something deeper. Second, the deeper I go into awareness, the less it is centered in me, so how can that be me as a separate entity, as an ego?
How about my attention? How about that in me that decides, my will? This is the subtlest of all. Yet again, the deeper I look into my will, the less it is centered in me, and the more it opens beyond me.
So wherever we look, we do not find this self, this separate person that takes our name, this self-important actor on the stage of our life. The more we engage in spiritual inner work, the more carefully and persistently we are able look into ourselves, and the more this once-compelling ego, this self disappears. Or perhaps we see that it never existed to begin with. Gradually, our belief in our ego assumes a porous quality, which rather than cutting us off from others, merely clouds our relationships intermittently. This separate self never was. Our devotion to it shrivels and we are left to truly be ourselves, to play our unique role in the larger story of our common life. When moments come in which we fall back into that trance of selfness, we feel uncomfortable, like in a shoe that no longer fits, and we let it go.
Our ego, this illusory pattern, however, endures with remarkable resilience and persistence. Complete freedom from ego comes only at a very high station of spiritual development, something to which we may aspire and work for with diligence. The best approach lies somewhere between the two outlined above. Seeing and letting go can only work insofar as we are able to see. The depth and subtlety of our seeing must increase. For this, efforts of various kinds are necessary. These efforts may include grappling with some of the propensities of our separate self. Doing so can illumine the tentacles of egoism, while creating energy for seeing more. Only we must not have the idea that such struggles will, by themselves, reform our recalcitrant self-centeredness. A project of reform by force is doomed to fail. Efforts at reform can only be useful to the extent that they help us to see. Sensing the energy body and working at presence also help us see. And seeing, it is said, leads to liberation: liberation from the illusion of the ego and into the freedom of interconnectedness..................
Joseph Naft
Quiet Time...
We need quiet time to examine our lives openly and honestly. . . spending quiet time
alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order.
- Susan L. Taylor
alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order.
- Susan L. Taylor
Cross the Abyss...
What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.
Father Thomas Merton
Father Thomas Merton
Mind is Buddha...
In the teaching of the Three Vehicles it is clearly explained that
the ordinary and Enlightened minds are illusions. You don't
understand. All this clinging to the idea of things existing is to
mistake vacuity for the truth. How can such conceptions not be
illusory? Being illusory, they hide Mind from you.
If you would only rid yourselves of the concepts of ordinary and
Enlightened, you would find that there is no other Buddha than the
Buddha in your own Mind. When Bodhidharma came from the West, he
just pointed out that the substance of which all men are composed is
the Buddha. You people go on misunderstanding; you hold to concepts
such as "ordinary" and "Enlightened," directing your thoughts
outwards where they gallop about like horses! All this amounts to
beclouding your own minds!
So I tell you Mind is the Buddha. As soon as thought or sensation
arises, you fall into dualism. Beginningless time and the present
moment are the same. There is no this and no that. To understand
this truth is called complete and unexcelled Enlightenment.
~ Huang Po
the ordinary and Enlightened minds are illusions. You don't
understand. All this clinging to the idea of things existing is to
mistake vacuity for the truth. How can such conceptions not be
illusory? Being illusory, they hide Mind from you.
If you would only rid yourselves of the concepts of ordinary and
Enlightened, you would find that there is no other Buddha than the
Buddha in your own Mind. When Bodhidharma came from the West, he
just pointed out that the substance of which all men are composed is
the Buddha. You people go on misunderstanding; you hold to concepts
such as "ordinary" and "Enlightened," directing your thoughts
outwards where they gallop about like horses! All this amounts to
beclouding your own minds!
So I tell you Mind is the Buddha. As soon as thought or sensation
arises, you fall into dualism. Beginningless time and the present
moment are the same. There is no this and no that. To understand
this truth is called complete and unexcelled Enlightenment.
~ Huang Po
Awakening...
Every atom, every object, every condition, and every living being has a time of
awakening. Sometimes this is a gradual awakening and sometimes it is sudden. To
some people it comes in a moment's time by some blow or disappointment, or
because their heart has broken through
something that happened suddenly.
From The Teachings Of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Slected &Arranged By
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
awakening. Sometimes this is a gradual awakening and sometimes it is sudden. To
some people it comes in a moment's time by some blow or disappointment, or
because their heart has broken through
something that happened suddenly.
From The Teachings Of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Slected &Arranged By
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
To Be Free...
The raft across the ocean of samsara
is the strong decision to be free.
This intense desire is absolutely necessary.
The intensity of this desire is itself the Satguru,
the pain in the heart is the Self calling.
- Papaji
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"The Truth Is"
Sri H.W.L. Poonja
Yudhishtara, 1995
is the strong decision to be free.
This intense desire is absolutely necessary.
The intensity of this desire is itself the Satguru,
the pain in the heart is the Self calling.
- Papaji
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"The Truth Is"
Sri H.W.L. Poonja
Yudhishtara, 1995
The Spiritual Guide...
The kind of spiritual guide that most people want is
one who pats them encouragmgly on the shoulder,
flatters them constantly in speech or writing, and
habituates them to refer all their personal problems
to him for solution. The kind of guide they really
need is one who will critically point out their faults
and weaknesses and who will unhesitatingly throw them
back on their own resources. It is better to encourage
men in good conduct than to pamper their neurotic
religiosity.
— Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest >
Chapter 6: Student-Teacher > # 474.. Paul Brunton
one who pats them encouragmgly on the shoulder,
flatters them constantly in speech or writing, and
habituates them to refer all their personal problems
to him for solution. The kind of guide they really
need is one who will critically point out their faults
and weaknesses and who will unhesitatingly throw them
back on their own resources. It is better to encourage
men in good conduct than to pamper their neurotic
religiosity.
— Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest >
Chapter 6: Student-Teacher > # 474.. Paul Brunton
The Mind...
Control the mind as a slave and it will be very
helpful to you. Know this trick from the outer
Guru. Control the slave, love the slave, keep
it quiet. Don't trouble the mind and don't let it
trouble you. This is how to control the mind.
- Papaji
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"The Truth Is"
Sri H.W.L. Poonja
Yudhishtara, 1995
helpful to you. Know this trick from the outer
Guru. Control the slave, love the slave, keep
it quiet. Don't trouble the mind and don't let it
trouble you. This is how to control the mind.
- Papaji
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"The Truth Is"
Sri H.W.L. Poonja
Yudhishtara, 1995
The Crucifixion...
The real meaning of crucifixion is to crucify the false self, that the true self
may rise. As long as the false self is not crucified, the true self is not
realized.
Bowl of Saki, January 9, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
Those who rejoice in the joy of another, though at their own expense, have taken
the first step towards true life. If we are pleased by giving another a good
coat, which we would have liked to wear ourselves, if we enjoy that, we are on
the first step. If we enjoy a beautiful thing so much that we would like to have
it, and then give that joy to another, enjoying it through his experience, we
are dead. That is our death. Yet, we live more than he. Our life is much vaster,
deeper, greater.
Seemingly it is a renunciation, an annihilation, but in truth it is a mastery.
The real meaning of crucifixion is to crucify this false self, and so resurrect
the true self. As long as the false self is not crucified, the true self is
still not realized. By Sufis it is called Fana, annihilation.
There is a poem by the great Persian poet Iraqi in which he tells, 'When I went
to the gate of the divine Beloved and knocked at the door, a voice came and said
- Who art thou?' When he had told, 'I am so and so', the answer came, 'There is
no place for anyone else in this abode. Go back to whence thou hast come'. He
turned back and then, after a long time, after having gone through the process
of the cross and of crucifixion, he again went there - with the spirit of
selflessness. He knocked at the door; the word came, 'Who art thou?', and he
said, 'Thyself alone, for no one else exists save Thee'. And God said, 'Enter
into this abode for now it belongs to thee'. It is such selflessness, to the
extent that the thought of self is not there, it is being dead to the self,
which is the recognition of God.
may rise. As long as the false self is not crucified, the true self is not
realized.
Bowl of Saki, January 9, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
Those who rejoice in the joy of another, though at their own expense, have taken
the first step towards true life. If we are pleased by giving another a good
coat, which we would have liked to wear ourselves, if we enjoy that, we are on
the first step. If we enjoy a beautiful thing so much that we would like to have
it, and then give that joy to another, enjoying it through his experience, we
are dead. That is our death. Yet, we live more than he. Our life is much vaster,
deeper, greater.
Seemingly it is a renunciation, an annihilation, but in truth it is a mastery.
The real meaning of crucifixion is to crucify this false self, and so resurrect
the true self. As long as the false self is not crucified, the true self is
still not realized. By Sufis it is called Fana, annihilation.
There is a poem by the great Persian poet Iraqi in which he tells, 'When I went
to the gate of the divine Beloved and knocked at the door, a voice came and said
- Who art thou?' When he had told, 'I am so and so', the answer came, 'There is
no place for anyone else in this abode. Go back to whence thou hast come'. He
turned back and then, after a long time, after having gone through the process
of the cross and of crucifixion, he again went there - with the spirit of
selflessness. He knocked at the door; the word came, 'Who art thou?', and he
said, 'Thyself alone, for no one else exists save Thee'. And God said, 'Enter
into this abode for now it belongs to thee'. It is such selflessness, to the
extent that the thought of self is not there, it is being dead to the self,
which is the recognition of God.
The Three Marks of Existence...
by Pema Chödrön
Adapted from When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times.
There are three truths—traditionally called three marks—of our existence: impermanence, suffering, and egolessness. Even though they accurately describe the rock-bottom qualities of our existence, these words sound threatening. It’s easy to get the idea that there is something wrong with impermanence, suffering, and egolessness, which is like thinking that there is something wrong with our fundamental situation. But there’s nothing wrong with impermanence, suffering, and egolessness; they can be celebrated. Our fundamental situation is joyful.
Impermanence is the goodness of reality. Just as the four seasons are in continual flux, winter changing to spring to summer to autumn; just as day becomes night, light becoming dark becoming light again—in the same way, everything is constantly evolving. Impermanence is the essence of everything. It is babies becoming children, then teenagers, then adults, then old people, and somewhere along the way dropping dead. Impermanence is meeting and parting. It’s falling in love and falling out of love. Impermanence is bittersweet, like buying a new shirt and years later finding it as part of a patchwork quilt.
People have no respect for impermanence. We take no delight in it; in fact, we despair of it. We regard it as pain. We try to resist it by making things that will last—forever, we say—things that we don’t have to wash, things that we don’t have to iron. Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.
Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don’t struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality. Many cultures celebrate this connectedness. There are ceremonies marking all the transitions of life from birth to death, as well as meetings and partings, going into battle, losing the battle, and winning the battle. We too could acknowledge, respect, and celebrate impermanence.
But what about suffering? Why would we celebrate suffering? Doesn’t that sound masochistic? Our suffering is based so much on our fear of impermanence. Our pain is so rooted in our one-sided, lopsided view of reality. Whoever got the idea that we could have pleasure without pain? It’s promoted rather widely in this world, and we buy it. But pain and pleasure go together; they are inseparable. They can be celebrated. They are ordinary. Birth is painful and delightful. Death is painful and delightful. Everything that ends is also the beginning of something else. Pain is not a punishment; pleasure is not a reward.
Inspiration and wretchedness are inseparable. We always want to get rid of misery rather than see how it works together with joy. The point isn’t to cultivate one thing as opposed to another, but to relate properly to where we are. Inspiration and wretchedness complement each other. With only inspiration, we become arrogant. With only wretchedness, we lose our vision. Feeling inspired cheers us up, makes us realize how vast and wonderful our world is. Feeling wretched humbles us. The gloriousness of our inspiration connects us with the sacredness of the world. But when the tables are turned and we feel wretched, that softens us up. It ripens our hearts. It becomes the ground for understanding others. Both the inspiration and the wretchedness can be celebrated. We can be big and small at the same time.
Can we also celebrate egolessness? Often we think of egolessness as a great loss, but actually it’s a gain. The acknowledgment of egolessness, our natural state, is like regaining eyesight after having been blind or regaining hearing after having been deaf. Egolessness has been compared to the rays of the sun. With no solid sun, the rays just radiate outward. In the same way, wakefulness naturally radiates out when we’re not so concerned with ourselves. Egolessness is the same thing as basic goodness or buddha nature, our unconditional being. It’s what we always have and never really lose.
Ego could be defined as whatever covers up basic goodness. From an experiential point of view, what is ego covering up? It’s covering up our experience of just being here, just fully being where we are, so that we can relate with the immediacy of our experience. Egolessness is a state of mind that has complete confidence in the sacredness of the world. It is unconditional well-being, unconditional joy that includes all the different qualities of our experience.
So how do we celebrate impermanence, suffering, and egolessness in our everyday lives? When impermanence presents itself in our lives, we can recognize it as impermanence. We don’t have to look for opportunities to do this. When your pen runs out of ink in the middle of writing an important letter, recognize it as impermanence, part of the whole cycle of life. When someone’s born, recognize it as impermanence. When someone dies, recognize it as impermanence. When your car gets stolen, recognize it as impermanence. When you fall in love, recognize it as impermanence, and let that intensify the preciousness. When a relationship ends, recognize it as impermanence. There are countless examples of impermanence in our lives every day, from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep and even while we’re dreaming, all the time. This is a twenty-four-hour-a-day practice. Recognize impermanence as impermanence.
Then we can recognize our reaction to impermanence. This is where curiosity comes in. Usually we just react habitually to events in our lives. We become resentful or delighted, excited or disappointed. There’s no intelligence involved, no cheerfulness. But when we recognize impermanence as impermanence, we can also notice what our reaction to impermanence is. This is called mindfulness, awareness, curiosity, inquisitiveness, paying attention. Whatever we call it, it’s a very helpful practice, the practice of coming to know ourselves completely.
When suffering arises in our lives, we can recognize it as suffering. When we get what we don’t want, when we don’t get what we do want, when we become ill, when we’re getting old, when we’re dying—when we see any of these things in our lives, we can recognize suffering as suffering. Then we can be curious, notice, and be mindful of our reactions to that. Again, usually we’re either resentful and feel cheated somehow, or we’re delighted. But whatever our reaction is, it’s usually habitual. Instead, we could see the next impulse come up, and how we spin off from there. Spinning off is neither good nor bad; it’s just something that happens as a reaction to the pleasure and pain of our existence. We can simply see that, without judgment or the intention to clean up our act.
When egolessness arises, we can recognize it as egolessness—a fresh moment, a clear perception of a smell or a sight or a sound, a feeling of opening to emotions or thoughts rather than closing off into our narrow limited selves. When we perceive the spaciousness in our lives, when we sense a gap in the continual conversation we have with ourselves, when we suddenly notice what’s in front of us, when we take a fresh, clear, unedited look at reality, we can recognize it as egolessness. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. Egolessness is available all the time as freshness, openness, delight in our sense perceptions. Curiously enough, we also experience egolessness when we don’t know what’s happening, when we’ve lost our reference point, when we get a shock and our mind is stopped. We can notice our reactions to that. Sometimes we open further; sometimes we quickly shut down. In any case, when egolessness occurs in our lives, we can recognize it as egolessness. We can notice, be curious, be mindful of our reactions and of what happens next.
Often peace is taught as the fourth mark of existence. This isn’t the peace that’s the opposite of war. It’s the well-being that comes when we can see the infinite pairs of opposites as complementary. If there is beauty, there must be ugliness. If there is right, there is wrong. Wisdom and ignorance cannot be separated. This is an old truth—one that men and women like ourselves have been discovering for a long time. Cultivating moment-to-moment curiosity, we just might find that day by day this kind of peace dawns on us, and we begin to understand what all the books have been talking about.
So don’t take anything for granted, and don’t believe everything you’re told. Without being cynical or gullible, look for the living quality of the dharma. Recognize impermanence and suffering and egolessness at the kitchen-sink level, and be inquisitive about your reactions. Find out for yourself about peace and whether or not it’s true that our fundamental situation is joyful.
Adapted from When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times.
There are three truths—traditionally called three marks—of our existence: impermanence, suffering, and egolessness. Even though they accurately describe the rock-bottom qualities of our existence, these words sound threatening. It’s easy to get the idea that there is something wrong with impermanence, suffering, and egolessness, which is like thinking that there is something wrong with our fundamental situation. But there’s nothing wrong with impermanence, suffering, and egolessness; they can be celebrated. Our fundamental situation is joyful.
Impermanence is the goodness of reality. Just as the four seasons are in continual flux, winter changing to spring to summer to autumn; just as day becomes night, light becoming dark becoming light again—in the same way, everything is constantly evolving. Impermanence is the essence of everything. It is babies becoming children, then teenagers, then adults, then old people, and somewhere along the way dropping dead. Impermanence is meeting and parting. It’s falling in love and falling out of love. Impermanence is bittersweet, like buying a new shirt and years later finding it as part of a patchwork quilt.
People have no respect for impermanence. We take no delight in it; in fact, we despair of it. We regard it as pain. We try to resist it by making things that will last—forever, we say—things that we don’t have to wash, things that we don’t have to iron. Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.
Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don’t struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality. Many cultures celebrate this connectedness. There are ceremonies marking all the transitions of life from birth to death, as well as meetings and partings, going into battle, losing the battle, and winning the battle. We too could acknowledge, respect, and celebrate impermanence.
But what about suffering? Why would we celebrate suffering? Doesn’t that sound masochistic? Our suffering is based so much on our fear of impermanence. Our pain is so rooted in our one-sided, lopsided view of reality. Whoever got the idea that we could have pleasure without pain? It’s promoted rather widely in this world, and we buy it. But pain and pleasure go together; they are inseparable. They can be celebrated. They are ordinary. Birth is painful and delightful. Death is painful and delightful. Everything that ends is also the beginning of something else. Pain is not a punishment; pleasure is not a reward.
Inspiration and wretchedness are inseparable. We always want to get rid of misery rather than see how it works together with joy. The point isn’t to cultivate one thing as opposed to another, but to relate properly to where we are. Inspiration and wretchedness complement each other. With only inspiration, we become arrogant. With only wretchedness, we lose our vision. Feeling inspired cheers us up, makes us realize how vast and wonderful our world is. Feeling wretched humbles us. The gloriousness of our inspiration connects us with the sacredness of the world. But when the tables are turned and we feel wretched, that softens us up. It ripens our hearts. It becomes the ground for understanding others. Both the inspiration and the wretchedness can be celebrated. We can be big and small at the same time.
Can we also celebrate egolessness? Often we think of egolessness as a great loss, but actually it’s a gain. The acknowledgment of egolessness, our natural state, is like regaining eyesight after having been blind or regaining hearing after having been deaf. Egolessness has been compared to the rays of the sun. With no solid sun, the rays just radiate outward. In the same way, wakefulness naturally radiates out when we’re not so concerned with ourselves. Egolessness is the same thing as basic goodness or buddha nature, our unconditional being. It’s what we always have and never really lose.
Ego could be defined as whatever covers up basic goodness. From an experiential point of view, what is ego covering up? It’s covering up our experience of just being here, just fully being where we are, so that we can relate with the immediacy of our experience. Egolessness is a state of mind that has complete confidence in the sacredness of the world. It is unconditional well-being, unconditional joy that includes all the different qualities of our experience.
So how do we celebrate impermanence, suffering, and egolessness in our everyday lives? When impermanence presents itself in our lives, we can recognize it as impermanence. We don’t have to look for opportunities to do this. When your pen runs out of ink in the middle of writing an important letter, recognize it as impermanence, part of the whole cycle of life. When someone’s born, recognize it as impermanence. When someone dies, recognize it as impermanence. When your car gets stolen, recognize it as impermanence. When you fall in love, recognize it as impermanence, and let that intensify the preciousness. When a relationship ends, recognize it as impermanence. There are countless examples of impermanence in our lives every day, from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep and even while we’re dreaming, all the time. This is a twenty-four-hour-a-day practice. Recognize impermanence as impermanence.
Then we can recognize our reaction to impermanence. This is where curiosity comes in. Usually we just react habitually to events in our lives. We become resentful or delighted, excited or disappointed. There’s no intelligence involved, no cheerfulness. But when we recognize impermanence as impermanence, we can also notice what our reaction to impermanence is. This is called mindfulness, awareness, curiosity, inquisitiveness, paying attention. Whatever we call it, it’s a very helpful practice, the practice of coming to know ourselves completely.
When suffering arises in our lives, we can recognize it as suffering. When we get what we don’t want, when we don’t get what we do want, when we become ill, when we’re getting old, when we’re dying—when we see any of these things in our lives, we can recognize suffering as suffering. Then we can be curious, notice, and be mindful of our reactions to that. Again, usually we’re either resentful and feel cheated somehow, or we’re delighted. But whatever our reaction is, it’s usually habitual. Instead, we could see the next impulse come up, and how we spin off from there. Spinning off is neither good nor bad; it’s just something that happens as a reaction to the pleasure and pain of our existence. We can simply see that, without judgment or the intention to clean up our act.
When egolessness arises, we can recognize it as egolessness—a fresh moment, a clear perception of a smell or a sight or a sound, a feeling of opening to emotions or thoughts rather than closing off into our narrow limited selves. When we perceive the spaciousness in our lives, when we sense a gap in the continual conversation we have with ourselves, when we suddenly notice what’s in front of us, when we take a fresh, clear, unedited look at reality, we can recognize it as egolessness. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. Egolessness is available all the time as freshness, openness, delight in our sense perceptions. Curiously enough, we also experience egolessness when we don’t know what’s happening, when we’ve lost our reference point, when we get a shock and our mind is stopped. We can notice our reactions to that. Sometimes we open further; sometimes we quickly shut down. In any case, when egolessness occurs in our lives, we can recognize it as egolessness. We can notice, be curious, be mindful of our reactions and of what happens next.
Often peace is taught as the fourth mark of existence. This isn’t the peace that’s the opposite of war. It’s the well-being that comes when we can see the infinite pairs of opposites as complementary. If there is beauty, there must be ugliness. If there is right, there is wrong. Wisdom and ignorance cannot be separated. This is an old truth—one that men and women like ourselves have been discovering for a long time. Cultivating moment-to-moment curiosity, we just might find that day by day this kind of peace dawns on us, and we begin to understand what all the books have been talking about.
So don’t take anything for granted, and don’t believe everything you’re told. Without being cynical or gullible, look for the living quality of the dharma. Recognize impermanence and suffering and egolessness at the kitchen-sink level, and be inquisitive about your reactions. Find out for yourself about peace and whether or not it’s true that our fundamental situation is joyful.
Grace...
The notion of grace as given out in popular religion was helpful perhaps to
the masses but needs a large revision for the philosophic seekers. It is
not granted at the whim of a Personal God nor solely after deserving
labours for it. It is rather more like a steady permanent emanation from a
man's own Overself, always available, but of which he must partake by
himself. If at times it seems to intervene specially on his behalf, that is
an appearance due to the immense wisdom in timing the release of a
particular good karma.
— Notebooks Category 18: The Reverential Life > Chapter 5: Grace > # 77.......Paul Brunton
the masses but needs a large revision for the philosophic seekers. It is
not granted at the whim of a Personal God nor solely after deserving
labours for it. It is rather more like a steady permanent emanation from a
man's own Overself, always available, but of which he must partake by
himself. If at times it seems to intervene specially on his behalf, that is
an appearance due to the immense wisdom in timing the release of a
particular good karma.
— Notebooks Category 18: The Reverential Life > Chapter 5: Grace > # 77.......Paul Brunton
Ego ?...
Fight with all the strength at your disposal
against the idea that you are nameable and
describable. You are not. Refuse to think of
yourself in terms of this or that. There is no
other way out of misery, which you have
created for yourself through blind acceptance
without investigation. Suffering is a call for
enquiry, all pain needs investigation. Don't be
lazy to think.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"I Am That"
Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Acorn Press, 1973
against the idea that you are nameable and
describable. You are not. Refuse to think of
yourself in terms of this or that. There is no
other way out of misery, which you have
created for yourself through blind acceptance
without investigation. Suffering is a call for
enquiry, all pain needs investigation. Don't be
lazy to think.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"I Am That"
Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Acorn Press, 1973
Religious Tolerance...
If people but knew their own religion, how tolerant they would become, and how
free from any grudge against the religion of others.
Bowl of Saki, January 8, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
The (limited) happiness of this world is something we cannot keep; it is just
like the horizon - the nearer you go, the farther it goes. As soon as you get
it, you see it is not the thing you wanted. That discontent continues its work
till we have found and understood the manifestation of God, in which is hidden
the Divine Spirit. God cannot be found in temples, for God is Love; and love
does not live in temples, but in the heart of man, which is the temple of God.
The true religion would be to recognize it is so and to tolerate, to forgive and
to love each other.
There is a story told of Moses. One day he was passing through a farm, and he
saw a peasant boy sitting quietly and talking to himself, saying, 'O God, I love
you so; if I saw you here in these fields I would bring you soft bedding and
delicious dishes to eat, I would take care that no wild animals could come near
you. You are so dear to me, and I so long to see you; if you only knew how I
love you I am sure you would appear to me!'
Moses heard this, and said, 'Young man, how dare you speak of God in this way?
He is the formless God, and no wild beast or bird could injure Him who guards
and protects all.' The young man bent his head sorrowfully and wept. Something
was lost to him, and he felt most unhappy. And then a revelation came to Moses
as a voice from within which said, 'Moses, what have you done? You have
separated a sincere lover from Me. What does it matter what I am called or how I
am spoken to? Am I not in all forms?'
This story throws a great light on this question, and teaches that it is only
the ignorant who accuse one another of a wrong conception of God. It teaches us
how gentle we ought to be with the faith of another; as long as he has the spark
of the love of God, this spark should be slowly blown upon so that the flame may
rise; if not, that spark will be extinguished. How much the spiritual
development of mankind in general depends upon a religious man! He can either
spread the light or diminish it by forcing his belief on others.
Very often a person thinks that other people should believe in and worship his
God. But everyone has his own conception of God, and this conception becomes the
stepping-stone to the true ideal of God.
Nature teaches every soul to worship God in some way or other, and often
provides that which is suitable for each. Those who want one law to govern all
have lost sight of the spirit of their own religion. And it is in people who
have not yet learned their own religion that such ideas are commonly found. Did
they but know their own religion, how tolerant they would become, and how free
from any grudge against the religion of others!
free from any grudge against the religion of others.
Bowl of Saki, January 8, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
The (limited) happiness of this world is something we cannot keep; it is just
like the horizon - the nearer you go, the farther it goes. As soon as you get
it, you see it is not the thing you wanted. That discontent continues its work
till we have found and understood the manifestation of God, in which is hidden
the Divine Spirit. God cannot be found in temples, for God is Love; and love
does not live in temples, but in the heart of man, which is the temple of God.
The true religion would be to recognize it is so and to tolerate, to forgive and
to love each other.
There is a story told of Moses. One day he was passing through a farm, and he
saw a peasant boy sitting quietly and talking to himself, saying, 'O God, I love
you so; if I saw you here in these fields I would bring you soft bedding and
delicious dishes to eat, I would take care that no wild animals could come near
you. You are so dear to me, and I so long to see you; if you only knew how I
love you I am sure you would appear to me!'
Moses heard this, and said, 'Young man, how dare you speak of God in this way?
He is the formless God, and no wild beast or bird could injure Him who guards
and protects all.' The young man bent his head sorrowfully and wept. Something
was lost to him, and he felt most unhappy. And then a revelation came to Moses
as a voice from within which said, 'Moses, what have you done? You have
separated a sincere lover from Me. What does it matter what I am called or how I
am spoken to? Am I not in all forms?'
This story throws a great light on this question, and teaches that it is only
the ignorant who accuse one another of a wrong conception of God. It teaches us
how gentle we ought to be with the faith of another; as long as he has the spark
of the love of God, this spark should be slowly blown upon so that the flame may
rise; if not, that spark will be extinguished. How much the spiritual
development of mankind in general depends upon a religious man! He can either
spread the light or diminish it by forcing his belief on others.
Very often a person thinks that other people should believe in and worship his
God. But everyone has his own conception of God, and this conception becomes the
stepping-stone to the true ideal of God.
Nature teaches every soul to worship God in some way or other, and often
provides that which is suitable for each. Those who want one law to govern all
have lost sight of the spirit of their own religion. And it is in people who
have not yet learned their own religion that such ideas are commonly found. Did
they but know their own religion, how tolerant they would become, and how free
from any grudge against the religion of others!
The Mirror without Cloud...
“Place your mind before the mirror of eternity! Place your soul in the brilliance of glory! And transform your entire being into the image of the Godhead Itself through contemplation."
"He Christ is the splendor of eternal glory, "the brightness of eternal light, and the mirror without cloud."
"Gaze upon Him, consider Him, contemplate Him, as you desire to imitate Him."
.......Saint Clare of Assisi
"He Christ is the splendor of eternal glory, "the brightness of eternal light, and the mirror without cloud."
"Gaze upon Him, consider Him, contemplate Him, as you desire to imitate Him."
.......Saint Clare of Assisi
Be Still...
“Let nothing disturb thee; Let nothing dismay thee; All thing pass; God never changes. Patience attains All that it strives for. He who has God Finds he lacks nothing:God alone suffices.”
St. Teresa of Avila
St. Teresa of Avila
Truth...
The truth cannot be spoken; that which can be spoken is not the truth.
Bowl of Saki, January 6, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
Truth is that which can never be spoken in words and that which can be spoken in
words is not the truth. The ocean is the ocean; the ocean is not a few drops of
water that one puts in a bottle. Just so truth cannot be limited by words: truth
must be experienced...
...the truth cannot be put into words; all we can do is make an effort to render
the mystery of life intelligible to our minds.
Very often people ask, "What is the nature of truth, is it a theory, a
principle, a philosophy, or a doctrine?" All theories, philosophies, principles,
and doctrines are only a cover over the truth. The ultimate truth is that which
cannot spoken, for words are too inadequate to express it.
There is a well known Eastern legend giving the idea of a soul who had found
truth. There was a wall of laughter and of smiles. This wall existed for ages
and many tried to climb it, but few succeeded. Those who had climbed upon it saw
something beyond, and so interested were they that they smiled, climbed over the
wall and never returned. The people of the town began to wonder what magic could
there be and what attraction, that whoever climbed the wall never returned. So
they called it the wall of mystery. Then they said, 'We must make an enquiry and
send someone who can reach the top, but we must tie him with a rope to hold him
back.' When the man they had thus sent reached the top of the wall, he smiled
and tried to jump over it, but they pulled him back. Still he smiled, and when
the people eagerly asked, 'what did you see there?' he did not answer, he only
smiled.
This is the condition of the seer. The man who in the shrine of his heart has
seen the vision of God, the one who has the realization of truth, can only
smile, for words can never really explain what truth means.
Bowl of Saki, January 6, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
Truth is that which can never be spoken in words and that which can be spoken in
words is not the truth. The ocean is the ocean; the ocean is not a few drops of
water that one puts in a bottle. Just so truth cannot be limited by words: truth
must be experienced...
...the truth cannot be put into words; all we can do is make an effort to render
the mystery of life intelligible to our minds.
Very often people ask, "What is the nature of truth, is it a theory, a
principle, a philosophy, or a doctrine?" All theories, philosophies, principles,
and doctrines are only a cover over the truth. The ultimate truth is that which
cannot spoken, for words are too inadequate to express it.
There is a well known Eastern legend giving the idea of a soul who had found
truth. There was a wall of laughter and of smiles. This wall existed for ages
and many tried to climb it, but few succeeded. Those who had climbed upon it saw
something beyond, and so interested were they that they smiled, climbed over the
wall and never returned. The people of the town began to wonder what magic could
there be and what attraction, that whoever climbed the wall never returned. So
they called it the wall of mystery. Then they said, 'We must make an enquiry and
send someone who can reach the top, but we must tie him with a rope to hold him
back.' When the man they had thus sent reached the top of the wall, he smiled
and tried to jump over it, but they pulled him back. Still he smiled, and when
the people eagerly asked, 'what did you see there?' he did not answer, he only
smiled.
This is the condition of the seer. The man who in the shrine of his heart has
seen the vision of God, the one who has the realization of truth, can only
smile, for words can never really explain what truth means.
Grow Up...
It is said that the ego must die in order for you to truly live. But nothing need die, you simply need to grow up.
A child does not die in order to grow into an adult. The child simply grows up; it evolves and leaves behind what is no longer appropriate.
See that the ego is no longer useful or appropriate and leave it behind. Only the ego makes its own demise seem dramatic.
~ Adyashanti www.adyashanti.org
A child does not die in order to grow into an adult. The child simply grows up; it evolves and leaves behind what is no longer appropriate.
See that the ego is no longer useful or appropriate and leave it behind. Only the ego makes its own demise seem dramatic.
~ Adyashanti www.adyashanti.org
Advance Confidently...
I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Salvation...
Salvation is for all, the atheist and the devotee, the wicked and
good, the ignorant and learned, the indifferent and earnest. It is
only the time of its realization that is far off or near at hand but
realization itself is certain. "Let no one of Thy boundless Grace
despair"--thus Abu Said, an eleventh-century Persian mystic of high
degree, holds out the prayerful hope to all men of their impending or
eventual liberation. The New Testament parallels the Bhagavad Gita's
promise of ultimate salvation for all, sinners and good alike. It
says: "God willeth that all men should be saved and come to the
knowledge of the truth."--1 Tim. 2:4.
— Notebooks Category 17: The Religious Urge > Chapter 1: Origin,
Purpose of Religions > # 192....Paul Brunton
good, the ignorant and learned, the indifferent and earnest. It is
only the time of its realization that is far off or near at hand but
realization itself is certain. "Let no one of Thy boundless Grace
despair"--thus Abu Said, an eleventh-century Persian mystic of high
degree, holds out the prayerful hope to all men of their impending or
eventual liberation. The New Testament parallels the Bhagavad Gita's
promise of ultimate salvation for all, sinners and good alike. It
says: "God willeth that all men should be saved and come to the
knowledge of the truth."--1 Tim. 2:4.
— Notebooks Category 17: The Religious Urge > Chapter 1: Origin,
Purpose of Religions > # 192....Paul Brunton
The Heart Sutra...
Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, meditating deeply on Perfection
of Wisdom, saw clearly that the five aspects of human existence are empty*, and
so released himself from suffering. Answering the monk Sariputra, he said this:
Body is nothing more than emptiness,
emptiness is nothing more than body.
The body is exactly empty,
and emptiness is exactly body.
The other four aspects of human existence --
feeling, thought, will, and consciousness --
are likewise nothing more than emptiness,
and emptiness nothing more than they.
All things are empty:
Nothing is born, nothing dies,
nothing is pure, nothing is stained,
nothing increases and nothing decreases.
So, in emptiness, there is no body,
no feeling, no thought,
no will, no consciousness.
There are no eyes, no ears,
no nose, no tongue,
no body, no mind.
There is no seeing, no hearing,
no smelling, no tasting,
no touching, no imagining.
There is nothing seen, nor heard,
nor smelled, nor tasted,
nor touched, nor imagined.
There is no ignorance,
and no end to ignorance.
There is no old age and death,
and no end to old age and death.
There is no suffering, no cause of suffering,
no end to suffering, no path to follow.
There is no attainment of wisdom,
and no wisdom to attain.
The Bodhisattvas rely on the Perfection of Wisdom,
and so with no delusions,
they feel no fear,
and have Nirvana here and now.
All the Buddhas,
past, present, and future,
rely on the Perfection of Wisdom,
and live in full enlightenment.
The Perfection of Wisdom is the greatest mantra.
It is the clearest mantra,
the highest mantra,
the mantra that removes all suffering.
This is truth that cannot be doubted.
Say it so:
Gaté,
gaté,
paragaté,
parasamgaté.
Bodhi!
Svaha! Which means...
Gone,
gone,
gone over,
gone fully over.
Awakened!
So be it!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Emptiness is the usual translation for the Buddhist term Sunyata (or
Shunyata). It refers to the fact that no thing -- including human existence --
has ultimate substantiality, which in turn means that no thing is permanent and
no thing is totally independent of everything else. In other words, everything
in this world is interconnected and in constant flux. A deep appreciation of
this idea of emptiness thus saves us from the suffering caused by our egos, our
attachments, and our resistance to change and loss.
Note: Perfection of Wisdom is a translation of Prajnaparamita. The full title
of this sutra is The Heart of Prajnaparamita Sutra.
[This is an interpretation based on many others by George Boeree.]
of Wisdom, saw clearly that the five aspects of human existence are empty*, and
so released himself from suffering. Answering the monk Sariputra, he said this:
Body is nothing more than emptiness,
emptiness is nothing more than body.
The body is exactly empty,
and emptiness is exactly body.
The other four aspects of human existence --
feeling, thought, will, and consciousness --
are likewise nothing more than emptiness,
and emptiness nothing more than they.
All things are empty:
Nothing is born, nothing dies,
nothing is pure, nothing is stained,
nothing increases and nothing decreases.
So, in emptiness, there is no body,
no feeling, no thought,
no will, no consciousness.
There are no eyes, no ears,
no nose, no tongue,
no body, no mind.
There is no seeing, no hearing,
no smelling, no tasting,
no touching, no imagining.
There is nothing seen, nor heard,
nor smelled, nor tasted,
nor touched, nor imagined.
There is no ignorance,
and no end to ignorance.
There is no old age and death,
and no end to old age and death.
There is no suffering, no cause of suffering,
no end to suffering, no path to follow.
There is no attainment of wisdom,
and no wisdom to attain.
The Bodhisattvas rely on the Perfection of Wisdom,
and so with no delusions,
they feel no fear,
and have Nirvana here and now.
All the Buddhas,
past, present, and future,
rely on the Perfection of Wisdom,
and live in full enlightenment.
The Perfection of Wisdom is the greatest mantra.
It is the clearest mantra,
the highest mantra,
the mantra that removes all suffering.
This is truth that cannot be doubted.
Say it so:
Gaté,
gaté,
paragaté,
parasamgaté.
Bodhi!
Svaha! Which means...
Gone,
gone,
gone over,
gone fully over.
Awakened!
So be it!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Emptiness is the usual translation for the Buddhist term Sunyata (or
Shunyata). It refers to the fact that no thing -- including human existence --
has ultimate substantiality, which in turn means that no thing is permanent and
no thing is totally independent of everything else. In other words, everything
in this world is interconnected and in constant flux. A deep appreciation of
this idea of emptiness thus saves us from the suffering caused by our egos, our
attachments, and our resistance to change and loss.
Note: Perfection of Wisdom is a translation of Prajnaparamita. The full title
of this sutra is The Heart of Prajnaparamita Sutra.
[This is an interpretation based on many others by George Boeree.]
Philosopher...
He cannot be a philosopher part of the time and an unawakened unenlightened person the remainder (or most) of the time: but he can, for the sake of this exercise, imaginatively think that he is one. In the light of his antecedent personal history, the attempt may be an audacious one; but if his present longing, determination, and self-discipline are large enough, it may become a magical transforming one.
— Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation > Chapter 6: Advanced Meditation > # 141....Paul Brunton
— Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation > Chapter 6: Advanced Meditation > # 141....Paul Brunton
The Real Search...
The real search isn’t a search into tomorrow, or to anywhere other than now. It’s starting to look into the very nature of this moment. In order to do that, you have to “stand in your own two shoes,” as my teacher used to say. What she meant by “standing in your own two shoes” is you have to look clearly into your own experience. Stop trying to have someone else’s experience. Stop chasing freedom or happiness, or even spiritual enlightenment. Stand in your own shoes, and examine closely: What’s happening right here and right now? Is it possible to let go of trying to make anything happen? Even in this moment, there may be some suffering, there may be some unhappiness, but even if there is, is it possible to no longer push against it, to try to get rid of it, to try to get somewhere else?
I understand that our instinct is to move away from what’s not comfortable, to try to get somewhere better, but as my teacher used to say, “You need to take the backward step, not the forward step.” The forward step is always moving ahead, always trying to attain what you want, whether it’s a material possession or inner peace. The forward step is very familiar: seeking and more seeking, striving and more striving, always looking for peace, always looking for happiness, looking for love. To take the backward step means to just turn around, reverse the whole process of looking for satisfaction on the outside, and look at precisely the place where you are standing. See if what you are looking for isn’t already present in your experience.
So, again, to lay the groundwork for awakening, we must first let go of struggling. You let go by acknowledging that the end of struggle is actually present in your experience now. The end of struggle is peace. Even if your ego is struggling, even if you’re trying to figure this out and “do it right,” if you really look, you might just see that struggle is happening within a greater context of peace, within an inner stillness. But if you try to make stillness happen, you’ll miss it. If you try to make peace happen, you’ll miss it. This is more like a process of recognition, giving recognition to a stillness that is naturally present.
We’re not bringing struggle to an end. We’re not trying to not struggle anymore. We’re just noticing that there is a whole other dimension to consciousness that, in this very moment, isn’t struggling, isn’t resentful, isn’t trying to get somewhere. You can literally feel it in your body. You can’t think your way to not struggling. There isn’t a three–point plan of how not to struggle. It’s really a one–point plan: Notice that the peace, this end of struggling, is actually already present.
The process is therefore one of recognition. We recognize that there is peace now, even if your mind is confused. You may see that even when you touch upon peace now, the mind is so conditioned to move away from it that it will try to argue with the basic fact of peace’s existence within you: “I can’t be at peace yet because I have to do this, or that, or this question hasn’t been answered, or that question hasn’t been answered, or so–and–so hasn’t apologized to me.” There are all sorts of ways that the egoic mind can insist that something needs to happen, something needs to change, in order for you to be at peace. But this is part of the dream of the mind. We’re all taught that something needs to change for us to experience true peace and freedom.
Just imagine for a moment that this isn’t true. Even though you may believe that it’s true, just imagine for a moment: What would it be like if you didn’t need to struggle, if you didn’t need to make an effort to find peace and happiness? What would that feel like now? And just take a moment to be quiet and see if peace or stillness is with you in this moment.
Excerpted from Falling Into Grace: Insights on the End of Suffering
by Adyashanti
I understand that our instinct is to move away from what’s not comfortable, to try to get somewhere better, but as my teacher used to say, “You need to take the backward step, not the forward step.” The forward step is always moving ahead, always trying to attain what you want, whether it’s a material possession or inner peace. The forward step is very familiar: seeking and more seeking, striving and more striving, always looking for peace, always looking for happiness, looking for love. To take the backward step means to just turn around, reverse the whole process of looking for satisfaction on the outside, and look at precisely the place where you are standing. See if what you are looking for isn’t already present in your experience.
So, again, to lay the groundwork for awakening, we must first let go of struggling. You let go by acknowledging that the end of struggle is actually present in your experience now. The end of struggle is peace. Even if your ego is struggling, even if you’re trying to figure this out and “do it right,” if you really look, you might just see that struggle is happening within a greater context of peace, within an inner stillness. But if you try to make stillness happen, you’ll miss it. If you try to make peace happen, you’ll miss it. This is more like a process of recognition, giving recognition to a stillness that is naturally present.
We’re not bringing struggle to an end. We’re not trying to not struggle anymore. We’re just noticing that there is a whole other dimension to consciousness that, in this very moment, isn’t struggling, isn’t resentful, isn’t trying to get somewhere. You can literally feel it in your body. You can’t think your way to not struggling. There isn’t a three–point plan of how not to struggle. It’s really a one–point plan: Notice that the peace, this end of struggling, is actually already present.
The process is therefore one of recognition. We recognize that there is peace now, even if your mind is confused. You may see that even when you touch upon peace now, the mind is so conditioned to move away from it that it will try to argue with the basic fact of peace’s existence within you: “I can’t be at peace yet because I have to do this, or that, or this question hasn’t been answered, or that question hasn’t been answered, or so–and–so hasn’t apologized to me.” There are all sorts of ways that the egoic mind can insist that something needs to happen, something needs to change, in order for you to be at peace. But this is part of the dream of the mind. We’re all taught that something needs to change for us to experience true peace and freedom.
Just imagine for a moment that this isn’t true. Even though you may believe that it’s true, just imagine for a moment: What would it be like if you didn’t need to struggle, if you didn’t need to make an effort to find peace and happiness? What would that feel like now? And just take a moment to be quiet and see if peace or stillness is with you in this moment.
Excerpted from Falling Into Grace: Insights on the End of Suffering
by Adyashanti
Excluded...
"He was excluded the Kingdom of Heaven, where nothing can enter that hates God, and whence nothing can be excluded that loves him. The loss of that Love is Hell: the Sight and Possession of that Love is Heaven. Thus did sin exclude him Heaven."........Thomas Traherne
My religion...
"My heart has become capable of every form; it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks, and a temple for idols and the pilgrim's Ka'ba, and the tablets of the Torah and the book of the Koran. I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love's camels take, that is my religion and my faith."
- Ibn al-Arabi
- Ibn al-Arabi
Thomas Traherne...
Thomas Traherne (c.1636-74), an Anglican priest, was also a metaphysical poet. Born in Hereford in England, the son of a poor shoemaker, his finest work appeared in the 1670s but was lost until rediscovered and published as Poems (1903) and Centuries of Meditations (1908).
Traherne was alive to, and rapturous about the one 'thing' that every being in the universe has in common: the boundless space or 'Capacity' which is our innermost being. Nearer to each of us than our own breathing abides this Awareness. In appearance each of us is a limited 'thing' in the world, but in reality each of us is the Self - what Traherne in one of the above quotations calls his 'Soul'. In this Soul all of us live and move and have our being. We may of course choose other words for our innermost identity: Spirit, Godhead, True Nature, Buddha Nature, the Beloved. At this level of our being we can all truthfully say 'I am not in the world, the world is in me'.
When we awaken to Who we really are we find that nothing is distant from us. For Awareness is room for all things, includes all things. The furthest star is right here in one's being. Perceiving this inspires in Traherne profound wonder and joy.
Since all things are directly given in Awareness, all things belong to oneself - not the human self we see in the mirror which obviously does not possess the world, but our true self. Being 'Capacity' we contain - we are - all things. From a grain of sand or a flower in the hedgerow to the moon and stars - all these are one's own. Having no appearance at centre, we are clothed in the living universe.
Awakening to our full identity is not so hard as we might sometimes think. As the great Indian teacher Ramana Maharshi said, it is easier to see the Self than to see something you are holding in the palm of your hand. For any object is a complex thing, but the Subject is simplicity itself. Seeing the Self is seeing the No-thingness at the centre of one's being, the place we are looking out of right now, our Original Face, our no-face.
Until we awaken to the Self we 'do not enjoy the world aright'. We continue living the illusion of being separate from the world. No wonder we feel alienated. But when we are awake to our own 'no-thingness/everythingness', then, as Traherne puts it so beautifully, 'the sea itself floweth in your veins'. Awakening to our own infinite being, we stumble upon a profound and peaceful Aloneness - an Aloneness that is alone by including all things, not by excluding them. Not one atom of the whole cosmos is outside our being. And so, when we look up into the night sky we find - O wondrous thing - that we are crowned by the stars.
Richard Lang
Traherne was alive to, and rapturous about the one 'thing' that every being in the universe has in common: the boundless space or 'Capacity' which is our innermost being. Nearer to each of us than our own breathing abides this Awareness. In appearance each of us is a limited 'thing' in the world, but in reality each of us is the Self - what Traherne in one of the above quotations calls his 'Soul'. In this Soul all of us live and move and have our being. We may of course choose other words for our innermost identity: Spirit, Godhead, True Nature, Buddha Nature, the Beloved. At this level of our being we can all truthfully say 'I am not in the world, the world is in me'.
When we awaken to Who we really are we find that nothing is distant from us. For Awareness is room for all things, includes all things. The furthest star is right here in one's being. Perceiving this inspires in Traherne profound wonder and joy.
Since all things are directly given in Awareness, all things belong to oneself - not the human self we see in the mirror which obviously does not possess the world, but our true self. Being 'Capacity' we contain - we are - all things. From a grain of sand or a flower in the hedgerow to the moon and stars - all these are one's own. Having no appearance at centre, we are clothed in the living universe.
Awakening to our full identity is not so hard as we might sometimes think. As the great Indian teacher Ramana Maharshi said, it is easier to see the Self than to see something you are holding in the palm of your hand. For any object is a complex thing, but the Subject is simplicity itself. Seeing the Self is seeing the No-thingness at the centre of one's being, the place we are looking out of right now, our Original Face, our no-face.
Until we awaken to the Self we 'do not enjoy the world aright'. We continue living the illusion of being separate from the world. No wonder we feel alienated. But when we are awake to our own 'no-thingness/everythingness', then, as Traherne puts it so beautifully, 'the sea itself floweth in your veins'. Awakening to our own infinite being, we stumble upon a profound and peaceful Aloneness - an Aloneness that is alone by including all things, not by excluding them. Not one atom of the whole cosmos is outside our being. And so, when we look up into the night sky we find - O wondrous thing - that we are crowned by the stars.
Richard Lang
The path...
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
US essayist & poet (1803 - 1882)
Ralph Waldo Emerson
US essayist & poet (1803 - 1882)
Truth without Veil...
Truth without a veil is always uninteresting to the human mind.
Bowl of Saki, January 3, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
Can there be any truth which the human soul has not known? If the soul had not
known it, it could not be truth; for truth is not a knowledge, it is the very
self of man. The truth is not a newly invented theory, not a dogma, not an idea;
it is reality itself. At the back of it is the self of man; therefore it is
simple. But it is not simplicity that man seeks, he is longing for complexity.
Anything which will confuse he is glad to take interest in.
Man likes complexity. He does not want to take only one step; it is more
interesting to look forward to millions of steps. The man who is seeking the
truth gets into a maze, and that maze interests him. He wants to go through it a
thousand times more. It is just like children. Their whole interest is in
running about; they do not want to see the door and go in until they are very
tired. So it is with grown-up people. They all say that they are seeking truth,
but they like the maze.
Man is so fond of illusion that he, so to speak, revels in it. If someone
awakens a man who is having an interesting dream, that man will say, 'Oh, let me
sleep on!' He likes looking at his dream. He does not want to wake up to reality
because reality is not as interesting as the dream. Thus, amongst seekers of
truth, we find only one in a thousand courageous enough to look at the immensity
of truth.
Bowl of Saki, January 3, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
Can there be any truth which the human soul has not known? If the soul had not
known it, it could not be truth; for truth is not a knowledge, it is the very
self of man. The truth is not a newly invented theory, not a dogma, not an idea;
it is reality itself. At the back of it is the self of man; therefore it is
simple. But it is not simplicity that man seeks, he is longing for complexity.
Anything which will confuse he is glad to take interest in.
Man likes complexity. He does not want to take only one step; it is more
interesting to look forward to millions of steps. The man who is seeking the
truth gets into a maze, and that maze interests him. He wants to go through it a
thousand times more. It is just like children. Their whole interest is in
running about; they do not want to see the door and go in until they are very
tired. So it is with grown-up people. They all say that they are seeking truth,
but they like the maze.
Man is so fond of illusion that he, so to speak, revels in it. If someone
awakens a man who is having an interesting dream, that man will say, 'Oh, let me
sleep on!' He likes looking at his dream. He does not want to wake up to reality
because reality is not as interesting as the dream. Thus, amongst seekers of
truth, we find only one in a thousand courageous enough to look at the immensity
of truth.
Subject and Object...
If anyone proclaims it to be Truth, then it must be portrayed as living truth, something with a living God behind it.
As a man grows more aware of philosophy's truth, he grows more aware of the ephemeral nature of things.
Both the subject and object of consciousness are only one.
Man sees the world all right, but seldom sees himself in the act of seeing the world.
Which, amongst so many conflicting teachings, is the true one? Their effect upon the thoughtful seeker is to produce bewilderment. But he who understands the relativity of ideas may move through them all with unruffled detachment.
Man himself is an evolving and therefore a changing entity. His perceptions and his understanding are growing in range. How then dare he claim that any of his knowledge is final, any of his truths absolute?
— Notebooks Category 19: The Reign of Relativity > Chapter 2: The Cosmos of Change > #80 ........Paul Brunton
As a man grows more aware of philosophy's truth, he grows more aware of the ephemeral nature of things.
Both the subject and object of consciousness are only one.
Man sees the world all right, but seldom sees himself in the act of seeing the world.
Which, amongst so many conflicting teachings, is the true one? Their effect upon the thoughtful seeker is to produce bewilderment. But he who understands the relativity of ideas may move through them all with unruffled detachment.
Man himself is an evolving and therefore a changing entity. His perceptions and his understanding are growing in range. How then dare he claim that any of his knowledge is final, any of his truths absolute?
— Notebooks Category 19: The Reign of Relativity > Chapter 2: The Cosmos of Change > #80 ........Paul Brunton
Compared to Spirit...
Certainly we are living
compared to stones,
but compared to
Spirit
we are dead.
In a dream you think
you are seeing and observing
but those who are standing
outside you, awake,
know you are sleeping still.
The living ones
call the dead 'the dead'
and higher living Beings
call living ones the dead.
- Swami Amar Jyoti
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"In Light of Wisdom"
Swami Amar Jyoti
Truth Consciousness, Boulder, Colorado, 1983
compared to stones,
but compared to
Spirit
we are dead.
In a dream you think
you are seeing and observing
but those who are standing
outside you, awake,
know you are sleeping still.
The living ones
call the dead 'the dead'
and higher living Beings
call living ones the dead.
- Swami Amar Jyoti
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"In Light of Wisdom"
Swami Amar Jyoti
Truth Consciousness, Boulder, Colorado, 1983
Reality is One...
Reality is One, there are not two realities. Either
you are real or the "other" is. But "other" is based
on you and so you are the only Reality. This is why
you must reject even God, meaning: Reject your
separateness from God. Rejecting "other" means
to reject that you are separate from "other."
- Papaji
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"The Truth Is"
Sri H.W.L. Poonja
Yudhishtara, 1995
you are real or the "other" is. But "other" is based
on you and so you are the only Reality. This is why
you must reject even God, meaning: Reject your
separateness from God. Rejecting "other" means
to reject that you are separate from "other."
- Papaji
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"The Truth Is"
Sri H.W.L. Poonja
Yudhishtara, 1995
The Door...
We
are always our Real Self, but the door represents the barrier that ego is
composed of.. when we have gained Humility, which is lack of ego, we feel the
need to completely end this painful illusion of self.. the door is only opened
when non-self knocks.. this is called Enlightenment.. the other side of the door
is Reality.. It is called Enlightenment because You discover that You are
actually Light.. This Light is energized by the Power of Unconditional Love..
This combination of Light and Love is called God.. God is everything, there is
Nothing that is not God..We and God are One..this is why Jesus said;" I and the
Father are One".........namaste, thomas
are always our Real Self, but the door represents the barrier that ego is
composed of.. when we have gained Humility, which is lack of ego, we feel the
need to completely end this painful illusion of self.. the door is only opened
when non-self knocks.. this is called Enlightenment.. the other side of the door
is Reality.. It is called Enlightenment because You discover that You are
actually Light.. This Light is energized by the Power of Unconditional Love..
This combination of Light and Love is called God.. God is everything, there is
Nothing that is not God..We and God are One..this is why Jesus said;" I and the
Father are One".........namaste, thomas
"Knock, and the door will be opened"...
In Reality, there is no door.. We Are already What Is.. but, we have the power
to believe that we are part of the illusion of combining atoms into visual
objects.. this belief in the bonding of these elements and separate soul cause
the pain of ignorance.. This pain is placed within us by Divine Consciousness as
a warning device to tell us that we have left Truth.. When the pain becomes
strong, we look around for ways to end the pain.. usually, we try to find
happiness through objects or pleasure but we soon find that these are also false
paths, when the pain does not end.. this is why we are on the path of
Spirituality, as pain can only exist when we believe that we are the ego and
Spirituality is the path to non-ego.........namaste, thomas
to believe that we are part of the illusion of combining atoms into visual
objects.. this belief in the bonding of these elements and separate soul cause
the pain of ignorance.. This pain is placed within us by Divine Consciousness as
a warning device to tell us that we have left Truth.. When the pain becomes
strong, we look around for ways to end the pain.. usually, we try to find
happiness through objects or pleasure but we soon find that these are also false
paths, when the pain does not end.. this is why we are on the path of
Spirituality, as pain can only exist when we believe that we are the ego and
Spirituality is the path to non-ego.........namaste, thomas
Within and Without...
One cannot teach >akhlak-e Allah<, the divine manner. It comes when the heart is
focused on God, and then all that is in God becomes manifest in man. When this
realization comes, one cannot speak anymore of the God within. As soon as God is
realized, God does not remain within.
From The Teachings Of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Selected & Arranged By
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
focused on God, and then all that is in God becomes manifest in man. When this
realization comes, one cannot speak anymore of the God within. As soon as God is
realized, God does not remain within.
From The Teachings Of
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Selected & Arranged By
HAZRAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN
Reflection...
As I enter old age and the body begins to remind me that the time is getting closer to dust, I wonder if at the point of transition, will I Truly remember who I Am.. or will I just be another soul caught up in the schools of Knowledge awaiting for entrance back into the material worlds for futher learning.. Will the ego convince me that it is still alive and that this journey was for naught.. Is it only those that walk as Christs that finally enter Freedom.. "Many are called but few are chosen", rings in my ears.. The daily struggle for Complete Awareness is the job of the new year.. with no vacations and plenty of over-time.. Perhaps, Divine Consciousness will have Mercy and grant me an unlocked Door..........namaste, thomas
Affliction...
Don't complain of affliction,
for it's a smooth-paced horse
carrying you towards non-existence.
- Rumi
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance"
Threshold Books, 1996
for it's a smooth-paced horse
carrying you towards non-existence.
- Rumi
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance"
Threshold Books, 1996
Sometimes...
Sometimes I feel like a king,
sometimes I moan in my own prison.
Swaying between these states
I can't be proud of myself.
This "I" is a figment of my imagination.
- Rumi
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"Rumi - Whispers of the Beloved"
Selected and translated by
Azima Melita Kolin and Maryam Mafi
Thorsons, London 1999
sometimes I moan in my own prison.
Swaying between these states
I can't be proud of myself.
This "I" is a figment of my imagination.
- Rumi
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"Rumi - Whispers of the Beloved"
Selected and translated by
Azima Melita Kolin and Maryam Mafi
Thorsons, London 1999
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