Friday, April 6, 2018

Joan Tollifson - The apparent trap




I got this message recently: “As humans we sometimes fall into the trap of taking things personally even though there is no ‘person’ in ultimate reality. We know this but occasionally we can't help but feel some hurt or pain within whenever we encounter someone or something ‘negative’. It's like we are on auto pilot due to conditioning and negative programs that were ingrained in us. Could you say something about this?”

Feeling hurt or pain is natural. It’s part of being alive. It happens. As for taking things personally, just to SEE this habitual movement of the mind as it happens is already the freedom from it. Awareness is already impersonal and free, as is everything that happens, including this habit of taking things personally. Seen for what it is, this habit loses its power and believability.

We think in terms of “negative” and “positive” feelings, events, programs, etc., but is reality actually divided up in this way? Can we really separate the light and the dark? In conceptual thought, we can. But that’s the map-world, which is an abstraction, and we so easily mistake the map for the territory. If attention moves away from thinking and instead feels into the bare (sensory, energetic, non-conceptual) living actuality of what we are calling "hurt" or "pain" or “taking something personally,” it’s very different from the label or the story or the explanation. In the living reality, there is no problem, no self, no obstacle, no goal.

In reality, “we” don’t actually fall into any trap—that very conceptual notion or story is itself the apparent trap—and nothing is really trapped. We discover this not by believing it as a comforting idea, but by feeling into our actual direct, immediate, present moment experiencing, just as it is—whether thought is labeling that experience “positive” or “negative,” “trapped” or “free.” Go beyond these labels into the felt-reality itself—the energy, the sensations, the awaring presence being and beholding it all. And then see, who is trapped? Is there a trap or anyone to be trapped in it?

Consciousness hypnotizes itself, creates and falls into its own traps, and wakes up. It does it all. In the story told by thought, which is also consciousness appearing as thought and storyline, “I” (the apparently separate person) fall into an apparently real trap and lose sight of the wholeness that I actually am, and this is all a very real and serious problem that must be fixed. But this is all a story, and even this story and the apparent “losing sight” within it is all a movement of wholeness like a wave on the ocean.

As apparent human beings, we are all conditioned organisms. EVERYTHING we think or imagine or feel or do is a happening of the whole universe. Some of it seems very deliberate and intentional and willful and premeditated, and some of it seems like the knee-jerk reactions of an unconscious auto-pilot, but ALL of it is an impersonal movement of the whole, a waving of the vast ocean of existence.

Nothing is really the problem that we think it is. Our apparent bondage and imperfection don’t actually exist in the ways we think they do. The effort to be permanently free of delusion, or permanently free of hurt or pain or so-called “mistakes” is hopeless, and yet even this efforting is nothing other than the impersonal and perfectly natural waving of the ocean.

And let’s be clear that “impersonal” doesn’t mean detached and dissociated. It doesn’t mean denying the relative reality of what we call a person—it simply means recognizing that the person is like a wave on the ocean—a fluid, ever-changing, inseparable movement of the whole. In another sense, we could say that EVERYTHING is personal! It’s all right here, utterly immediate, what I am. There is no other.



 


Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Jiddu Krishnamurti - The Endless Space Where Thought Cannot Enter




"In the space which thought creates around itself there is no love. This space divides man from man, and in it is all the becoming, the battle of life, the agony, and fear.

Meditation is the ending of this space, the ending of the me. Then relationship has quite a different meaning, for in that space which is not made by thought, the other does not exist, for you do not exist. Meditation then is not the pursuit of some vision, however sanctified by tradition. Rather it is the endless space where thought cannot enter. To us, the little space made by thought around itself, which is the me, is extremely important, for this is all the mind knows, identifying itself with everything that is in that space. And the fear of "not being" is born in that space. But in meditation, when this is understood, the mind can enter into a dimension of space where action is inaction.

We do not know what love is, for in the space by thought around itself as the me, love is the conflict of the me and the not-me. This conflict, this torture is not love. Thought is the very denial of love, and it cannot enter into that space where the me is not. In that space is the benediction which man seeks and cannot find. He seeks it within the frontiers of thought, and thought destroys the ecstasy of this benediction."



Tuesday, April 3, 2018

H. Thurman - I alertly rest my soul




I abandon all that I think I am,
All that I hope to be,
All that I believe I possess.
I let go of the past.
I withdrawal my grasping hand from the future.
And in the great silence of the moment,
I alertly rest my soul.



 

Naomi Stone - O Beloved




 O Beloved! You are the flowering of All Beauty
the depth of every sea and the crest of every wave..
You are the Light of the sun and moon and every star..
the Breath of every breath..
the Heart of every heart..the Soul of every soul

You are the secret whispering in the dancing wind..

You are the divine embrace that sweeps me into the
magnificent flowing Spirit that lives eternally..
the life-giving essence that sweetens the air
with the fragrance of every flower…
the scent of life..the glow of every lover…
the innocence of every child..
the purity of deep surrendering…

You are the peace of every being..

You are the dream..the hope..the truth..the vision
of imagination..the manifestation of life itself..

You are the integrity and warmth of Friendship…
the tears of tenderness…the dance of creation…

You are the sacrament of every moment…

the Presence that moves my days..and nights..
the glory of every morning..
the mystery creating all possibility..

You are the God of every religion..
the expression of faith that sustains me..
the bewildering sweetness of every kiss..
the arms open to every embrace..the pulsing rhythm
empowering the growth of the universe..
the deep uncreated space beyond time..

You are the creative power of all existence..
the majesty of every mountain..the music of every song…

you are the graceful lift of every wing..
the wonder that incites all growth..
the uniqueness of every face..of every shape and form..
the pure silence and rising birth of all renewal..
the belovedness of every longing..

If I were to write all that you are..I would
write to the end of time and begin again
in every beginning…

You are the highest..deepest…and most
glorious Love I will ever experience..

You are the most exalting feeling..
the lightning and laughter
and the highest Joy..

O Beloved..I was born to sing to You..
to love You..to share the gift of You..
You are the Love of every life..
O my Beloved..my Beloved..
You are my Everything….



Some of  Freydoon Rassouli's paintings

from Rassouli facebook
http://www.rassouli.com/  

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Monday, April 2, 2018



“If you would only fix your gaze upon me, you know that, established in the Heart, my gaze is ever fixed upon you.”

Sri Ramana Maharshi