Saturday, June 9, 2018

Salvadore Poe - Caring is Human



It's heartbreaking to see what human ignorance is doing in this world. Political and social solutions, while necessary, do not really provide long term, overall change. Maybe there is another, more fundamental way to approach this. The horrors perpetuated by overall human ignorance—the greed, fear, avarice, lust for power, etc.—are stunning. Ignorance simply means—ignorance of your essential free being, and fully believing in the idea of a separate self, which needs to be protected, self-accumulating and dominant at all cost. This separate self is not only the personal self, but the larger societal, cultural, national and religious self as well—all of which are in your mind.

The more I see the horrors of that the more I see the value in the results of genuine inquiry work. Even in a small way, in our relationships and the people around us, this has benefit. It is a much more benign way of being human than the malignancy that belief in ego/self, with its fear, sense of lack, desire for control, envy, greed and all of that, causes. It is much more congruent with overall natural life in general. It is the natural human condition. (Although apparently not the normal human condition.)

When you authentically do inquiry work it is beneficial. You can't change anyone else, but here in your own laboratory of body and mind you can come to know something that is essentially true, and in that knowing, resolve a lot of the pathology and malignancy that is both latent and dormant within your mind. The value of that is obvious.

If real inquiry means anything, it should have benefit. Not just for yourself, but for those around you as well—your family and friend relations, your work relations, etc. If not, who cares? It has very little value otherwise. Once you have come to know your own essential nature of health you realize that this has never really been about you only. You see in your own self, at the micro level, the non-beneficial aspects of your own pathologies, not just for yourself but towards others as well, and realize it is the same, at the macro level, for all of humanity. You are the world, the world is you. And so you see the benefit not only for yourself, but for others as well in resolving the self-based ignorance within you.

This is not a grandiose concept, like we are going to change the world; we can only see what is true in ourselves. I have no idea when, or even if, human ignorance-based malignancy will end. Many people these days claim that there is a general shift of consciousness in that direction. I can't honestly make that claim. There may or may not be more healthy consciousness than before, it is not something that is provable or even, considering the continuing madness going on in the world, apparent. But, we can only deal with ourselves, here and now, by inquiring genuinely in our own minds and discovering that essentially we are healthy and not lacking, and to be finished with the separating and self-aggrandizing belief that cultural ignorance has inculcated in us and that we have simply taken for granted as the way it is.

Know what’s true and truth shall set you free. And in your own freedom you will be more of a space for yourself and others, instead of a battering ram of beliefs, opinions, comparisons, control, fear and need, including the need to be ‘right’—all of which separate and cause both interpersonal and world-wide war.

This is not about dogma, like 'thou shall do this' and 'thou shall not do that'. Nor is it about right behavior or morality. This is not about how to live. I would never suggest how anyone should live; I have no idea. But, in coming to know your free essential being, and in doing so resolve the ignorance in your own mind, the result is naturally a more benign consciousness. Or as I like to say, the natural human condition of health.

Being a human being—and not just ‘awareness’ or some spiritual silliness like that—it is natural to care. The best way to care for the world is to take care of yourself.



 

Friday, June 8, 2018

Jiddu Krishnamurti - Please see the actuality of all this.


 


“What is going to happen in the future? Man has turned his mind towards perfecting more and more technology – computers, better instruments of war, better communication, better means of killing another human being, and so on. His consciousness has moved towards greater technology – right? He’s given his energy in that direction. Our brains are becoming more and more technologically minded, gadgets. We’re not saying you shouldn’t have that, we’re saying that it’s inevitable, that’s what’s happening.

And man has given very little time, energy, thought, in any other direction. He doesn’t say: I am going to find out for myself what I am, why I behave like this, what is beyond all this? We have not given that equal energy or time or vitality to enquire within ourselves, what we are. Is there anything ultimate, beyond all sorrow? Is there any existence without cause? The enquiry of something far greater than all technology, all human thought. You see the picture?

Not in opposition, not as a reaction to that, but man cannot live on technology alone, and its products. One has to go into something that is immeasurable. Please see the actuality of all this.

Suppose you give your time, energy, your capacities, to real enquiry, not accepting belief and all that childish stuff, but deeply enquiring. Enquiry is different from analysis. Enquiry is to observe and pursue that observation. So when one human being does this, you may add to the whole human consciousness a certain quality to it. And if there are a thousand people who are concerned with this, not forming a group and all that kind of silly stuff, but actually giving your whole life to this, then you are adding to the human consciousness a quality of something beyond all words, beyond all thought, beyond all conclusions, something eternal.”

Excerpt from 1st Public Talk in Brockwood Park, 1982



 

John Prendergast - Secrets of the Heart



The heart is a remarkable sensing instrument that is capable of extraordinary intimacy. Yet it is often veiled by psychological conditioning or a simple lack of awareness. It is common to have a very clear mental understanding of nonduality along with tastes of a vast awareness while the depths of the heart remain dormant or blocked. It can lead to a subtle spiritual narcissism and arrogance (I know, you don’t. I’m awake, you’re not.) Exploring the depths of the heart requires great vulnerability. As we are willing to honestly face and experience residual fears of emotional intimacy or abandonment, or desires to be recognized or admired, the heart softens and opens. A felt sense of intrinsic wholeness reveals itself. Love, compassion, and gratitude shine more freely and steadily. As the heart awakens, new dimensions of intimacy unfold. We become more available to relate with others in an essential way. We may also discover a non-personal capacity of the heart to embrace the collective suffering of humanity.





 

Brian Thompson - One life



Life,
is sustained by life.

This,
is living.

We rely upon one another.

There is no living,
outside of the continual process,
of our mutual interdependence;
which co-mingles with our pending,
temporal dissolution.

Life is change.
Life is impermanence.

There is no being without non-being.
From nothing comes something,
and to nothing, all things shall return.

Life requires life,
for without this principle,
no-thing could possibly be.

Life is seen
only through its own reflection.

Our only experience,
is that of ourselves.

There is only one life;
one consciousness, one awareness;
one spirit, one energy;
one source.

One life, being lived through infinite lives,
one life, being lived through infinite manifestations,
one life, as seen through infinite points of view.

One life,
appearing as an ever-flowing stream
of unique reflections.

Despite the infinite phenomena that appears to arise,
and no matter the myriad manifestations that seem to be,
there is only one underlying reality,
and it remains undivided,
empty of independent name or form,
pervading all that Is—and you are That.

One consciousness experiencing itself,
through all that it dreams into being.

Life is simply happening,
and you are That;
the essence in which
this present moment
is now happening.

Be not mistaken;
you are not subject to whatever happens,
for that is merely a conception of the mind,
a mental byproduct of the non-existent past.

What you are,
is the infinite field of awareness,
in which all happenings appear,
but you remain unaffected and free
from whatever form it assumes.

You are the theatre of consciousness,
in which all happenings appear;
remaining free of them all.

You are the knowing
that knows all that is known.

The eternal witness.

And this is the suchness
of our shared Universal Self;
an empty and limitless presence,
in which all of our human
conceptions, perceptions, and sensations
are imagined into being.

In truth,
no-thing can divide us,
regardless of the thoughts
that the mind tends to think
and project onto whatever we perceive.

We, the aware sentient,
are mutually interdependent,
co-arising together,
as a single and harmonious whole.

One life.
One consciousness.
My breath is yours.




 

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Sri Aurobindo - The Silence (1&2)



Ascent [1]

The Silence

Into the Silence, into the Silence,
Arise, O Spirit immortal,
Away from the turning Wheel, breaking the magical Circle.
Ascend, single and deathless:
Care no more for the whispers and the shoutings in the darkness,
Pass from the sphere of the grey and the little,
Leaving the cry and the struggle,
Into the Silence for ever.
Vast and immobile, formless and marvellous,
Higher than Heaven, wider than the universe,
In a pure glory of being,
In a bright stillness of self-seeing,
Communing with a boundlessness voiceless and intimate,
Make thy knowledge too high for thought, thy joy too deep for
emotion;
At rest in the unchanging Light, mute with the wordless self-vision,
Spirit, pass out of thyself; Soul, escape from the clutch of Nature.
All thou hast seen cast from thee, O Witness.
Turn to the Alone and the Absolute, turn to the Eternal:
Be only eternity, peace and silence,
O world-transcending nameless Oneness,
Spirit immortal.



Ascent [2]

Beyond the Silence


Out from the Silence, out from the Silence,
Carrying with thee the ineffable Substance,
Carrying with thee the splendour and wideness,
Ascend, O Spirit immortal.
Assigning to Time its endless meaning,
Blissful enter into the clasp of the Timeless.
Awake in the living Eternal, taken to the bosom of love of the Infinite,
Live self-found in his endless completeness,
Drowned in his joy and his sweetness,
Thy heart close to the heart of the Godhead for ever.
Vast, God-possessing, embraced by the Wonderful,
Lifted by the All-Beautiful into his infinite beauty,
Love shall envelop thee endless and fathomless,
Joy unimaginable, ecstasy illimitable,
Knowledge omnipotent, Might omniscient,
Light without darkness, Truth that is dateless.
One with the Transcendent, calm, universal,
Single and free, yet innumerably living,
All in thyself and thyself in all dwelling,
Act in the world with thy being beyond it.
Soul, exceed life’s boundaries; Spirit, surpass the universe.
Outclimbing the summits of Nature,
Transcending and uplifting the soul of the finite,
Rise with the world in thy bosom,
O Word gathered into the heart of the Ineffable.
One with the Eternal, live in his infinity,
Drowned in the Absolute, found in the Godhead,
Swan of the supreme and spaceless ether wandering winged through the universe,
Spirit immortal.






 

Sunday, June 3, 2018

Hafiz - What Do White Birds Say

 
 



The earth has disappeared beneath my feet,
It fled from all my ecstasy,

Now like a singing air creature
I feel the Rose
Keep opening.

My heart turned to effulgent wings.
When has love not given freedom?
When has adoration not made one free?

A woman broken in tears and sweat
Stands in a field
Watching the sun and me
Trade jokes.

But never would Hafiz laugh
At your blessed labor
Of finding peace.

What do the dancing white birds say
Looking down upon burnt meadows?

All that you think is rain is not.
Behind the veil Hafiz and angels sometimes weep

Because most eyes are rarely glad
And your divine beauty is still too frightened
To unfurl its thousand swaying arms.

The earth has disappeared beneath my feet,
Illusion fled from all my ecstasy.

Now like a radiant sky creature
God keeps opening.

God keeps opening
Inside of Me.



 

Mirabai - Keep your promise



Take my arm
and keep up your promise!
They call you the refugeless refuge,
they call you redeemer of outcasts.
Caught in a riptide
in the sea of becoming,
without your support I am a shipwreck!
You reveal yourself age after age
and free the beggar
from her affliction.

Dark One, Mira is clutching your feet,
at stake is your honor!