Chuck Surface - When “This” and “That” have Vanished

“Thou art That” they say.
“That” within which all perceptions arise.
“Neti, neti.” they say.
Not this, not this... but only That.

Such a compassionate lie, a loving deceit.
For thou art not simply That, but This, as well.
Both, and neither, of course.
For where does “This”, that I Am, begin and end?

That which is revealed when identity with form vanishes,
When “you” dissolve like a salt doll into the Ocean of Being,
And Vanish into and as the Unalloyed Ecstasy of Heaven,
Is not simply the vapid descriptions so often proffered.

Not simply peace, love, truth, beauty, joy, or happiness. Not simply psychological, emotional, or energetic quiescence,
Not simply feeling yourself as "That" within which all arises,
Not simply feeling yourself expanded as all that arises within “That”.

There are no words to express the Unalloyed Ecstasy of Being.
It can only be spoken, Heart to Heart, where Silent, Unmoving Shiva,
Bursts, Singing, into the Dance of Creation,
Where one Hears Silence, and Moves in Stillness.

Formless Shiva is manifest Shakti,
Heaven Shines into, and as, Earth,
Lover and Beloved are One,
And formless Atman Shines, unobscured, into and as, Creation. 

When “This” and “That” have Vanished,
When you can dance with the sirens,
Without wrecking upon the rocks of Maya,
Then follow the Perfume, oh Shiva, to your Beloved Shakti.

There, where She arises from You, as You,
Where Lover and Beloved become One…
Die there, unto Life, at the Beginning and End of all things,
And Live as the Absolute, Unalloyed, Ecstasy of Pure Being.

http://www.gardenofthebeloved.com/ 

'Sailor' Bob Adamson - Immediacy

"Truth or Reality cannot be stored, cannot be amassed--it does not accumulate. The value of any insight, understanding, or realisation can only be in the ever-fresh presence of the moment.

Yesterday's realisation is not a bit of good. Now it is dead. Now it has lost it's vitality.

It is useless to try and cling to or hold onto an insight, an understanding, or a realisation, for only in it's movement can there be the enabling of ever-fresh and new insights of Truth or Reality to appear.

The idea of enlightenment or self-realisation as a onetime event or a lasting and permanent state or experience is an erroneous concept.

Understand-ING or know-ING is alive in the immediacy which can never be negated.

The emphasis is on the activity of know-ING which is going on as the immediacy now--not the dead concept 'I understand' or 'I know'".

 

http://www.sailorbobadamson.com/

Anna de Noailles - The Heart

Art Gaelle Boissonard

The Heart
Anna de Noailles

My heart, hung with fragrant ivy and vines,
You are a garden where all four seasons
Holding new boxwood and clusters of currant
Dance on the lawn with cones from the pines.

- Beneath the gnarled pear trees, crowns freshly renewed,
You are the slope that looks over the sea,
Wild with delight at the singing when morning arrives
Whilst, on a bitter mint sprig, a cicada is glued.

- You are a steep valley ; where nature
Carpets your space and your depths
With delicate moss and grass with new tenure.

- You are, in your humble scent of the country,
The merry pasture and flourishing orchard
Where happy are herds though pigeons lament,
Grazing on honeysuckle or preening their plumage.

- And you are also, my grave and passionate heart,
Warm, capacious and with a life prudently furnished,
Full of wine, honey, flour and rice,
Opened to the perfume of seasons as well as the hour,
Where human tenderness lives and is nourished.

Translation: © David Paley

 ✿•*¨`*•.༺♥༻ .•*¨`*•✿ 

Le cœur
Anna de Noailles

Mon cœur tendu de lierre odorant et de treilles,
Vous êtes un jardin où les quatre saisons
Tenant du buis nouveau, des grappes de groseilles
Et des pommes de pin, dansent sur le gazon.

- Sous les poiriers noueux couverts de feuilles vives
Vous êtes le coteau qui regarde la mer,
Ivre d'ouïr chanter, quand le matin arrive,
La cigale collée au brin de menthe amer.

- Vous êtes un vallon escarpé ; la nature
Tapisse votre espace et votre profondeur
De mousse délicate et de fraîche verdure.

- Vous êtes dans votre humble et pastorale odeur
Le verger fleurissant et le gai pâturage
Où les joyeux troupeaux et les pigeons dolents
Broutent le chèvrefeuille ou lissent leur plumage.

- Et vous êtes aussi, cœur grave et violent,
La chaude, spacieuse et prudente demeure
Pleine de vins, de miel, de farine et de riz,
Ouverte au bon parfum des saisons et des heures,
Où la tendresse humaine habite et se nourrit. 

Mary Oliver - Some Questions You Might Want to Ask

Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?
Who has it, and who doesn’t?
I keep looking around me.
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?
What about the grass?

Jean klein - The self is always present

picture Julian Hrankov

Q. Often you speak about the ‘I am,’ the silence beyond thought. By what means is this state attained, and why is it worth seeking?

JK: It is “attained,” as you say, when you see that there is nothing to attain. What you are fundamentally is not an object to attain. In all attaining you find objects. What you are is the ultimate subject, objectless consciousness, the subject of all possible objects. There is nothing worth seeking. One day you may see that the seeker is the sought; the seeker is what it is looking for. It is only an ambitious mind that looks desperately around in ignorance. A clear innocent mind is always open, constantly available to grace.

Q. But in your talks and books you use the expression ‘truth-seeker,’ so there must be some kind of seeking

.

JK: Our profound desire is to be and this desire comes from being, itself. When you give all your love, all your intelligence and earnestness to this desire it brings you to what you most desire: desirelessness. Desire is the shadow which, if you follow it, brings you to its substance. But you must give all your love to it or you remain with only the shadow desire. A real truth-seeker is impelled by Truth itself. The momentum comes from Truth. All other attainment belongs to the mind, to ideas, to aspirations.

Q. Many teachers of Eastern thought seem to call for the renunciation of all desire and ambition. But for the world to function, for buildings to get built, crops to be harvested, discoveries to be made, someone has to have a vision, a plan, and the drive to turn the vision into reality. And the same would seem to be true in regard to personal or spiritual growth. Aren’t desire and ambition necessary to some extent?

JK: There is nothing wrong with desire, but it must be clear, have gone through discrimination. An ambitious mind is a blind mind. Only a clear and informed mind is open to the ultimate. It is a false notion that in order to function efficiently and harmoniously we need ambition, goals and so on. Correct functioning comes out of the facts of the situation itself. It is not we who find the solution, but the situation which offers its solution. So the important thing is to become fully acquainted with the facts, the real circumstances, and you cannot see the facts when you live from the personal, fractional point of view. In looking at a situation without judgment or preconceived ideas, the situation is free to unfold. You cannot impose a vision because the person has no vision. You must wait for the vision to come to you. This waiting without waiting is our real nature, openness, where there is no more doership.

Q. Is this not a passive state?

JK: Not at all. There is doing, but no longer a doer. You are passive only in that you do not impose old patterns, ideas, opinions, judgments, in short, yourself. When “you” are absent, what remains is alert presence. Within this alert presence all occurs.

Q. Advaita stresses the unity of subject and object, of perceiver and perceived. In trying to understand this concept, one comes face to face with the question: Who am I? Because if I and the world are identical, there is no such thing as the individual. Right? This is a terrifying thought.

JK: Terrifying to whom?

Q. Sometimes one has the feeling that life is a play unfolding, and we are like the audience watching the performance. It makes the idea of effort seem pointless. Is there any validity to this feeling?

JK: Yes. Don’t interfere with the play or create a psychological relationship with the happenings. Remain a silent admirer. Don’t take yourself for a doer, let it be done. When you interfere as a doer you interrupt the doing.

Q. Is there a moment when illumination strikes and one is changed forever, or does it gradually develop? Or is the whole idea of illumination or enlightenment false?

JK: First ask who is there to be bound or to be freed? Who is there to be illuminated? Enlightenment is only when you see there is nobody to be illuminated. When you see you are the total absence it is the most striking moment in your life. In this moment you are the ultimate presence but not presence as an object. This insight is instantaneous but its consequences are in space and time.

Q. Do you mean that the integration of the insight on the psychosomatic plane takes place in space and time?

JK: Yes, because we live in space and time. All appearances are in space and time, but the sudden insight of our absence is out of space and time. So, find out what never changes in you, what is timeless in you.

Q. Is the insight forever or does conditioning come back?

JK: The insight is forever, but it is important that this insight is established on every level of existence. After the insight life goes on, but now every circumstance is a pointer to the ultimate. You see your conditioning endocrine, cultural, language and so on very clearly, but you are no longer bound to them. You face them from the ultimate and they point to the ultimate.

Q. Is the earnest seeker ultimately any better off than the person who is blissfully ignorant of spiritual matters?

JK: The self is always present. The only difference is that one ignores it and another is it. What we are fundamentally is waiting for us. There is no effort needed to attain our real nature. We can never go to it; we can only be available to it, taken by it. It is our nearest.

There is no way to be still; Being Stillness is the way. The way is no-way … Stillness.

 The ease of Being PDF

Meher Baba - Infinite Indivisible Ocean

There is no scope for separateness in the vastness of the Infinite Ocean of Oneness. How then can there be any room for individuality in indivisibility? In the indivisible unlimited Ocean of Reality, how can there be scope for each drop that has fully awakened to Reality to individually proclaim: I am the Ocean!

The moment the drop has been stirred to consciousness, it isolates itself into a separate entity and acquires an individuality, a false I-Am-ness. This awakened ‘I’ is enveloped in falseness that grows with every step of its increased consciousness in proportion to its field of impressions and expression. This falseness that at first helps the drop to establish in individuality in the Indivisible Ocean, becomes the perpetual hindrance that keeps the drop from knowing itself as the Ocean. The ‘I’ has to get rid of the falseness before it can realize Who it is in reality.

At the end of the journey, when at long last the Goal is reached by the grace of the Perfect Master, this falseness is entirely removed and the ‘I’ alone remains with its supreme Self-knowledge – saying, my falseness is gone – I am God!

Thus, when each individual drop sheds its false awareness of being other than the Ocean, it proclaims itself as being the Infinite Indivisible Ocean. At the instant its falseness, its very own falseness is removed, the drop asserts its Infinite Individuality. It then consciously and continuously experiences  for all time as being without a second: the Almighty, Infinite and indivisible Paramatma. This is the I-am-God state. This is how every Atma, from the instant its consciousness is unburdened of falseness (i.e., impressions) for all time, asserts itself as Paramatma, God Absolute.

from The Everything and the Nothing

Download PDF HERE

David Whyte - The Lightest Touch

Good poetry begins with
the lightest touch,
a breeze arriving from nowhere,
a whispered healing arrival,
a word in your ear,
a settling into things,
then like a hand in the dark
it arrests the whole body,
steeling you for revelation.

In the silence that follows
a great line
you can feel Lazarus
deep inside
even the laziest, most deathly afraid
part of you,
lift up his hands and walk toward the light.

  -- David Whyte
     from Everything is Waiting for You
     ©2003 Many Rivers Press 

 

 

http://www.davidwhyte.com/ 

 

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Anamika - A clear view

photo Giorgos Tsamakdsa

This message can never be understood with words.

 
It is not an intellectual grasping.

 
It is in fact the end  of all grasping of all wanting to get of wanting to understand 

 
The end of trying  to reach something somewhere some place some state

 

And it is the end of the feeling that something is wrong or missing or of lack of something out of place

 
It is arriving home. A place we lost sight of looking for something else.

 
The search and the grasping, the looking for completion and fulfillment are inherent to being identified with the contracted energy we have mistakenly called me.

 
The place we never left is the true sense of I which shines already through the stories which thoughts and emotions are spinning.

 
This place which is a placeless place, home,   is our felt sense of who we are.

 
And on top of this open emptiness has accumulated over the years layer after layer of labels, conditioning ideas, beliefs which because we give them credence,  have condensed into an energetic construction.

 
A clear view will reveal this erroneous assumption.

 
Oneness looking for Itself 

Potshots 

Chuck Surface - A fellow Vagabond

Oh, make no mistake,
There is no "enlightened" or "awakened" one here,
Only a fellow Vagabond, like you.

Any seeming assertions,
Stated with seeming certainty,
Are only questions in disguise, certainly.

For Here, though the Heart is Illumined through Grace,
There is no "Knowledge" or "understanding",
Of this Great Mystery.

It's not that the Mind has been denigrated,
Or relegated by the Heart as irrelevant.
The poor fellow is simply... irremediably... Stymied.

There are times when the Unknowing,
Is more than he can bear,
And he collapses into the Heart's open arms.

Tears are shed, many sighs,
And ancient ages of frustration tearfully poured out,
To one sympathetic, but unable to see the problem.

In time, sobs diminish to whimpers,
A long sigh... a deep breath...
And the Mind's quest for knowledge is joined anew.

Ah, but he's fooling no one.
The Futility of "Knowing" is known.
Alas, the poor fellow simply is as he is.

Heart and Mind...
The Heart, drunk on The Beloved's Wine, Full and Complete.
The Mind, though intoxicated through proximity...

Always Wondering. 

There is no problem in this,
As it's all in the nature of things,
All as God Wills it.

 www.GardenOfTheBeloved.com

Taya Malakian - Flame

there a depth in you.
a hidden place where your soul holds your heart.
your mind has told you to protect its
soft, flickering light
from the wind and from the breath of others-
who might snuff out this tender flame.
yet this is not a simple candle
that burns inside your chest.
it is a chain of suns
that exceeds the number of years
that you will walk on this earth.

there is nothing to protect,

nothing that could contain the power
locked between your breasts.
there is not darkness in your depths
but a powerful heat, a fire storm
beyond comprehension.
and since the mind cannot comprehend this
it tells you a story of a tiny light that must be
defended, that must not be seen by the eyes of others.
but the heart, held by the expanse of the soul,
waits patiently for you to awake from
this simple dream and ignite the world
with your light.

Taya Malakian site
  http://www.tiffanaya.com/

Luke Storms - Preparation

picture H.Koppdelaney

Here is something entirely new

not relying on memory or

stories I have about myself.



A watching, from moment to moment

with a thread of something finer.



Accepting the coarse: tasting it,

observing the commentary, and the reactions that

pass like trains below a bridge.

Let them go.

Come back to this body

that is vibrant and alive.



Who am I?

I don’t know.



Profoundly relaxed.



A larger view comes into focus and

I am no longer divided.

I become receptive to a quality that

hovers above us like a sun pouring down.

An opening reveals itself,

Functioning like an antennae

that allows a different current to pass through.



It’s not about the “me” or the “you.”

We become mirrors, in which

we see and we are seen.

In giving ourselves

to this unthinkable now,

A seed of community is born.

http://lukestorms.com/

D,T.Suzuki - Zen is a floating cloud…unattached.

Photo Alex Algo

We have never lost Paradise, but human consciousness tells us we have lost it and that we have to regain it.  But in fact, Paradise has never been lost, Paradise is never to be therefore regained.   We are in Eden, just as we are now.

Be, and at the same time, not be.  To be or not to be, but then, to be and not to be.  Both at the same time.  The best thing is to be living, and yet not living.  Dying yet not dying.  That is the object of Zen discipline.

Zen is a floating cloud…unattached.

What characterizes Zen is this: simplicity and sincerity, and freedom.  This is the one most important.  Real freedom to see things in their “suchness,” I would say.  That is freedom.

Sometimes so-called facts are not so important.  But what scholars call imaginations or legends, they are more important in the study of human nature.

Zen masters tell us that the answer is in the question itself, you look into your question yourself.  My answer only leads you farther away from the question.

Who are you to ask that question?

–Daisetsu Teitarō Suzuki (October 18th,1870 - July 12th,1966)

Adyashanti - "How You Treat Others"

Spiritual people often want unconditional support and understanding from their friends, family, and mates, but all too often seem blind to their own shortcomings when it comes to the amount of unconditional support and understanding that they give to others. I have seen many spiritual people become obsessed with how unspiritual others are and assume an arrogant and superior attitude while completely missing the fact that they themselves are not nearly as spiritually enlightened as they would like to think they are.

Enlightenment can be measured by how compassionately and wisely you interact with others—with all others, not just those who support you in the way that you want. How you interact with those who do not support you shows how enlightened you really are.

As long as you perceive that anyone is holding you back, you have not taken full responsibility for your own liberation. Liberation means that you stand free of making demands on others and life to make you happy. When you discover yourself to be nothing but Freedom, you stop setting up conditions and requirements that need to be satisfied in order for you to be happy.

It is in the absolute surrender of all conditions and requirements that Liberation is discovered to be who and what you are. Then the love and wisdom that flows out of you has a liberating effect on others. The biggest challenge for most spiritual seekers is to surrender their self importance, and see the emptiness of their own personal story. It is your personal story that you need to awaken from in order to be free.

To give up being either ignorant or enlightened is the mark of liberation and allows you to treat others as your Self. What I am describing is the birth of true Love.

© 1998 by Adyashanti. All rights reserved. 

 Adyashanti