Friday, March 26, 2021

Joan Tollifson - Meditation: What Is It?

 

art Lewis Smart

 

The word meditation is used to mean many very different things. Because of that, I always hesitate to use the word at all. But as I mean it, meditation is nondual, meaning no meditator at the center of it, no observer, no one standing apart from what is. In this kind of meditation, there is no technique, no method, no goal, no intended result, no purpose, no prescribed form. It is marvelously useless, and can happen in any location, in any posture, formally or informally.
In my sense of it, meditation simply means being present here and now. It isn’t about getting into any particular state, getting rid of anything, or having some kind of transformative insight or experience. It accepts everything and clings to nothing. It is the natural activity of awareness.
Meditation might be described as a movement of curiosity and wonder, like a baby exploring the world, or a lover exploring the beloved, a movement in which lover and beloved are not one, not two. Meditation might be described as devotion—not to a guru or a god—but devotion to what is, a kind of unconditional love that allows everything to be just as it is. It might be described as enjoyment of what is, enjoyment of being.
It’s true that it may apparently bring many rewards (e.g., clarity about how the mind operates and how suffering happens; calming of the nervous system; direct discovery of the fluid, interdependent, ungraspable and indivisible nature of reality; direct recognition of the boundless Here-Now that is immovable and ever-present; increased ability to be present with unpleasant experiences; and so on), but these are not goals. There is no such thing as “good meditation” and “bad meditation.”
Meditation is open, free, unconstrained. It is nonconceptual, based in sensing and awaring, in simple being, not in thinking and analyzing. Of course, thought  may (and almost certainly will) arise, but it is not the primary mode. Meditation invites a dropping away of the grasping-seeking mind and the habitual tendency to dwell in the conceptual map-world, inviting instead a falling open to the nonconceptual actuality of this moment.
Meditation is ultimately not knowing what meditation is. It is fresh and new in every moment. 

 



https://www.joantollifson.com/

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Ibn'Arabi - No other than He.

 


He is now as He was.
He is the One without oneness
and the Single without singleness….
He is the very existence of the First
and the very existence of the Last,
and the very existence of the Outward
and the very existence of the Inward.
So there is no first nor last, nor outward
nor inward, except Him,
without these becoming Him or is becoming them….
By Himself He sees Himself, and
by Himself He knows Himself.
None sees Him other than He,
and none perceives Him other than He.
His veil, that is phenomenal existence,
is a part of His oneness;
nothing veils other than He.
His veil is only the concealment of His existence in His oneness.
None sees Him other than He, no sent Prophet,
nor saint made perfect, nor angel
brought nigh know Him.
His Prophet is He, and His sending is He,
and His word is He.
He sent Himself with Himself to Himself….
There is no other and there is no existence other than He.

 


 

Thursday, March 25, 2021

Larisa Getselevich - Life itself, pulsating you


 


When the veil of delusion and affection falls,
that has grown together with the face/body,
it can almost feel like pain, seemingly very real,
but it bursts and disappears along with
the discovered empty shell of all ideas about “self”.
The light pours itself out, blinding forever,
and there is only it, the all-pervading, flowing,
iridescent light, neither inside nor outside,
but spilling instead of everything, at the same moment
when there is a seemingly persistent concern
for building and protecting a plastic Lego castle of never existed “I”.
The heart sinks in wondrous awe,
and you discover that sparkling liveliness
of life itself, pulsating you.

 

 


 

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