Saturday, January 26, 2013

Jelaluddin Rumi - A Garden Beyond Paradise

Picture source  The Huntington
A Garden Beyond Paradise

Everything you see has its roots
    in the unseen world.
The forms may change,
    yet the essence remains the same.

Every wondrous sight will vanish,
every sweet word will fade.
    But do not be disheartened,
The Source they come from is eternal—
growing, branching out,
    giving new life and new joy.

Why do you weep?—
That Source is within you,
and this whole world
    is springing up from it.

The Source is full,
its waters are ever-flowing;
    Do not grieve,
    drink your fill!
Don't think it will ever run dry—
This is the endless Ocean!

From the moment you came into this world,
a ladder was placed in front of you
    that you might transcend it.

From earth, you became plant,
from plant you became animal.
Afterwards you became a human being,
endowed with knowledge, intellect and faith.

Behold the body, born of dust—
    how perfect it has become!

Why should you fear its end?
When were you ever made less by dying?

When you pass beyond this human form,
no doubt you will become an angel
and soar through the heavens!

But don't stop there.
Even heavenly bodies grow old.

Pass again from the heavenly realm
    and plunge into the ocean of Consciousness.
Let the drop of water that is you
    become a hundred mighty seas.

But do not think that the drop alone
becomes the Ocean—
    the Ocean, too, becomes the drop!

Uradiance: Be Space, Teach Meditation

Uradiance: Be Space, Teach Meditation: Be Space This time around, we're not here to focus on the content. We're here to focus on the space that contains it. In meditation, t...

Friday, January 25, 2013

Wei Wu Wei - Freewill and Reality



Freewill and Reality

Our reactions are our own, and free; our actions are determined - their apparent freedom is illusory.

Owing to our conditioning we have the illusion that our actions are free, that is we are unable to avoid behaving as though we had freedom of choice in our behaviour. But we are not constrained to believe in this apparent liberty in the execution of our will. We observe that we can often do as we will, but we have no reason to suppose that we can influence that will. Presumably that will itself is subject to determination the mechanism of which we are unable to perceive.

Just as we are apt to believe that our actions are free, so we tend to suppose that our reactions are determined, since we feel unable to control them. At most we recognise a power of suppression, but that is not control.

Since the ego is the subject of these processes the ego is unfree. As long as we remain identified with the ego we remain unfree - purely mechanical beings reacting to stimuli, as Gurdjieff said. It follows that in so far as we become detached from the illusory ego to that degree we attain freedom to act as we will.

But such freedom is not the arbitrary exercise of caprice that the term suggests according to our normal manner of reasoning. The Jivan Mukta, the man of satori, he who has transcended his ego, does not act as a result of choice: he acts as he must, intuitively as we call it, without reasoning, in accordance with cosmic necessity, and his action is always correct (or adequate) action.

That alone is Freedom of will in terms of Reality.


Nirmala - Love Is for Giving


Love Is for Giving

What is love and where is it found? We search for love and try to get love, and yet it seems like we never get enough. Even when we've found it, it can slip away as time passes. What if there is a source of love that never fades and is always available? What if love is as near and easy as breathing? What if you have been "looking for love in all the wrong places" instead of actually lacking love?

Love is both simpler and more mysterious and subtle than we imagine it to be. Love is simply the spacious, open attention of our awareness, which is the gentlest, kindest, and most intimate force in the world. It touches things without impinging on them. It holds all of our experience but doesn't hold it down or hold it back. And yet, inherent in awareness is a pull to connect and even merge with the object of your awareness.

It's this seemingly contradictory nature of awareness-the completely open and allowing nature of it and its passionate pull to blend with and even become the object of its attention-that gives life its depth and sweetness. There is nothing more satisfying than this delicious dilemma of being both apart from and, at the same time, connected to something you see, hear, or feel.

Awareness is the beginning of all separation. Prior to awareness, there is just oneness or "is-ness," with nothing separate from the oneness that would be able to experience it. With the birth of awareness comes the subtle distinction of two things: that which is aware and the object of awareness. And yet, those two are connected by this mysterious force we are calling awareness, or love.

This flow of awareness and love that connects you to all you experience is the true source of satisfaction and joy. We have all experienced it to some degree. Whenever you fall in love with a person, pet, piece of music, beautiful object, or anything else, you have felt this flow of intimate, connected awareness. Unfortunately, we've been taught to believe that the source of this good feeling was the object of our affection. So we suffered whenever we lost our apparent source. When your lover leaves, your beloved pet dies, the concert ends, or your dream home is repossessed, you feel bereft of that loving, connected feeling.

YOU ARE THE SOURCE

But what if you are the source of the awareness that connects you to everything? What if the love you have been seeking has always been right here inside your own Heart? What if it doesn't matter what your awareness touches, but only that awareness is flowing? That would profoundly simplify the search for love. Anything or any experience would be a suitable object for your love.

The sweetness of love is in the flow of awareness itself. The completely allowing openness and freedom you might look for from a perfect lover is already here in your own awareness. It doesn't have to try to be accepting because awareness is, by nature, open and allowing. By itself, awareness can't do anything but touch. It can't push or pull or demand something from or limit the freedom of what it touches. And yet, it is not an aloof, distant observer. It is deeply and intimately connected to the object of awareness. In fact, awareness and the object of awareness come from the same source and are ultimately the same thing.

This connection and intimacy that is natural in awareness is satisfying and fulfilling regardless of the object of awareness. In other words, whatever you are experiencing right now is your true love. Whatever you are experiencing is an opportunity to also experience the depth of your true nature as open, loving awareness. Your true nature is true love. It is the perfect lover you have been seeking, and not only is it always here, but it is who you really are.

Read more  HERE

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Mooji - Oasis


What is That which is not the mind?
It is not the thinking faculty.
It is not time, memory nor the powers of imagination.
It is not the form. It is not the senses.
It is not even the dynamic consciousness,
because it is without limitation.
When it is referred to 'It', that which refers to 'it', what is that?
And where is it?
And who are you?
Are they two different components?
That which says ' Only this is' and that which effortlessly Is, are they different?
You must contemplate these things time and again.
Such contemplation is going to turn the mind into a desert and the heart into an Oasis.

Papaji - Self


Self is what you are.
You are that Fathomlessness
in which experience and concepts appear.

Self is the Moment that has no coming or going.
It is the Heart, Atman, Emptiness.
It shines to Itself, by Itself, in Itself.

Self is what gives breath to Life.
You need not search for It, It is Here.
You are That through which you would search.
You are what you are looking for!
And That is All it is.

Only Self is


Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj - about "I Am That"

Nisarga Yoga

In the humble abode of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, but for the
electric lights and the noises of the street traffic, one would not
know in which period of human history one dwells. There is an
atmosphere of timelessness about his tiny room; the subjects
discussed are timeless — valid for all times; the way they are
expounded and examined is also timeless; the centuries, mil-
lennia and yugas fall off and one deals with matters immensely
ancient and eternally new.
The discussions held and teachings given would have been
the same ten thousand years ago and will be the same ten
thousand years hence. There will always be conscious beings
wondering about the fact of their being conscious and enquiring
into its cause and aim. Whence am I? Who am I? Whither am I?
Such questions have no beginning and no end. And it is crucial to
know the answers, for without a full understanding of oneself,
both in time and in timelessness, life is but a dream, imposed on
us by powers we do not know, for purposes we cannot grasp.
Maharaj is not a learned man. There is no erudition behind his
homely Marathi; authorities he does not quote, scriptures are
rarely mentioned; the astonishingly rich spiritual heritage of India
is implicit in him rather than explicit. No rich Ashram was ever
built round him and most of his followers are humble working
people cherishing the opportunity of spending an hour with him
from time to time.
Simplicity and humility are the keynotes of his life and teach-
ings; physically and inwardly he never takes the higher seat; the
essence of being on which he talks, he sees in others as clearly
as he sees it in himself. He admits that while he is aware of it,
others are not yet, but this difference is temporary and of little
importance, except to the mind and its ever-changing content.
When asked about his Yoga, he says he has none to offer, no
system to propound, no theology, cosmogony, psychology or
philosophy. He knows the real nature — his own and his listeners’
— and he points it out. The listener cannot see it because he
cannot see the obvious, simply and directly. All he knows, he
knows with his mind, stimulated by the senses. That the mind is a
sense in itself, he does not even suspect.
The *Nisarga Yoga, the ‘natural’ Yoga of Maharaj, is discon-
certingly simple — the mind, which is all-becoming, must recog-
nize and penetrate its own being, not as being this or that, here or
there, then or now, but just timeless being.
This timeless being is the source of both life and conscious-
ness. In terms of time, space and causation it is all-powerful,
being the causeless cause; all-pervading, eternal, in the sense of
being beginningless, endless and ever-present. Uncaused, it is
free; all-pervading, it knows; undivided, it is happy. It lives, it
loves, and it has endless fun, shaping and re-shaping the uni-
verse. Every man has it, every man is it, but not all know them-
selves as they are, and therefore identify themselves with the
name and shape of their bodies and the contents of their consciousness.
To rectify this misunderstanding of one’s reality, the only way is
to take full cognizance of the ways of one’s mind and to turn it into
an instrument of self-discovery. The mind was originally a tool in
the struggle for biological survival. It had to learn the laws and
ways of Nature in order to conquer it. That it did, and is doing, for
mind and Nature working hand-in-hand can raise life to a higher
level. But, in the process the mind acquired the art of symbolic
thinking and communication, the art and skill of language. Words
became important. Ideas and abstractions acquired an appear-
ance of reality, the conceptual replaced the real, with the result
that man now lives in a verbal world, crowded with words and
dominated by words.
Obviously, for dealing with things and people words are ex-
ceedingly useful. But they make us live in a world totally symbolic
and, therefore, unreal. To break out from this prison of the verbal
mind into reality, one must be able to shift one’s focus from the
word to what it refers to, the thing itself.
The most commonly used word and most pregnant with feel-ings, and ideas is the word ‘I’. Mind tends to include in it anything
and everything, the body as well as the Absolute. In practice it
stands as a pointer to an experience which is direct, immediate
and immensely significant. To be, and to know that one is, is
most important. And to be of interest, a thing must be related to
one’s conscious existence, which is the focal point of every
desire and fear. For, the ultimate aim of every desire is to en-
hance and intensify this sense of existence, while all fear is, in its
essence, the fear of self-extinction.
To delve into the sense of ‘I’ — so real and vital — in order to
reach its source is the core of the Nisarga Yoga. Not being
continuous, the sense of ‘I’ must have a source from which it flows
and to which it returns. This timeless source of conscious being is
what Maharaj calls the self-nature, self-being, swarupa.
As to methods of realizing one’s supreme identity with the
self-being, Maharaj is peculiarly non-committal. He says that
each has his own way to reality, and that there can be no
general rule. But, for all the gateway to reality, by whatever road
one arrives to it, is the sense of ‘I am’. It is through grasping the
full import of the ‘I am’, and going beyond it to its source, that
one can realize the supreme state, which is also the primordial
and the ultimate. The difference between the beginning and the
end lies only in the mind. When the mind is dark or turbulent: the
source is not perceived. When it is clear and luminous, it
becomes a faithful reflection of the source. The source is always
the same — beyond darkness and light, beyond life and depth,
beyond the conscious and the unconscious.
This dwelling on the sense ‘I am’ is the simple, easy and natural
Yoga, the Nisarga Yoga. There is no secrecy in it and no depen-
dence; no preparation is required and no initiation. Whoever is
puzzled by his very existence as a conscious being and ear-
nestly wants to find his own source, can grasp the ever-present
sense of ‘I am’ and dwell on it assiduously and patiently, till the
clouds obscuring the mind dissolve and the heart of being is
seen in all its glory.
The Nisarga Yoga, when persevered in and brought to its
fruition, results in one becoming conscious and active in what
one always was unconsciously and passively. There is no differ-
ence in kind — only in manner — the difference between a lump
of gold and a glorious ornament shaped out of it. Life goes on, but
it is spontaneous and free, meaningful and happy.
Maharaj most lucidly describes this natural, spontaneous
state, but as the man born blind cannot visualize light and col-
ours, so is the unenlightened mind unable to give meaning to
such descriptions. Expressions like dispassionate happiness,
affectionate detachment, timelessness and causelessness of
things and being — they all sound strange and cause no response.
Intuitively we feel they have deep meaning, and they
even create in us a strange longing for the ineffabIe, a forerunner
of things to come, but that is all. As Maharaj puts it: words are
pointers, they show the direction but they will not come along with
us. Truth is the fruit of earnest action, words merely point the way.

Maurice Frydman

Monday, January 21, 2013

Rumi - from "Fountain of Fire"


look at love
how it tangles
with the one fallen in love

look at spirit
how it fuses with earth
giving it new life

why are you so busy
with this or that or good or bad
pay attention to how things blend

why talk about all
the known and the unknown
see how the unknown merges into the known

why think seperately
of this life and the next
when one is born from the last

look at your heart and tongue
one feels but deaf and dumb
the other speaks in words and signs

look at water and fire
earth and wind
enemies and friends all at once

the wolf and the lamb
the lion and the deer
far away yet together

look at the unity of this
spring and winter
manifested in the equinox

you too must mingle my friends
since the earth and the sky
are mingled just for you and me

be like sugarcane
sweet yet silent
don't get mixed up with bitter words

my beloved grows
right out of my own heart
how much more union can there be




Translated by Nader Khalili "Rumi, Fountain of Fire"
Cal-Earth Press, 1994


Sunday, January 20, 2013

Eckhart Tolle : Awareness is Impersonal


Eckhart Tolle with Chris Hebard  Stillness Speaks
Enjoy this gentle and clear dialogue where Eckhart discusses the impersonal sense of awareness in his friendly, accessible way.