Robert Adams - Self Inquiry

The question is always asked in this respect, if it's necessary to do sadhana in order to awaken?
Is it necessary to spend years in yoga techniques and pranayama, breathing exercises, to sit in meditation,
to think of certain things, to pray?
Is all this necessary?
What do you think?
Who can tell me?
It's not necessary, but it sure is helpful.
That's actually a good answer.

My question is, therefore, to whom is it helpful?
Who is getting satisfaction from sadhana?
Only your ego.
It is true to an extent you're subduing your ego, but you and I know many people who've been doing sadhana for a hundred years and nothing happened. As a matter of fact some of you even become worse. It's paradoxical. For some people it causes them to move ahead. But it's still all in relative terms, and as we all know by now, relative terms do not exist.

So for whom is sadhana?
Again it's for the mind and the ego.
If you think it's helping, by all means continue.
But remember I said, "If you think it's helping".
If you stop thinking you do not have to do any sadhana.
I suppose sadhana is necessary as long as
you believe you are the mind and the body.
Again, after all, who is doing the spiritual disciplines?
Does the Self need to do that?
Does consciousness need to do discipline?
Does absolute reality need discipline?
What needs discipline? The mind and the body.
Therefore the more you are attached to the mind and body the more you have to do sadhana.
Does that make sense?
Sadly, yes.

So I won't say to you, "Stop doing it", due to the fact that many of you have a strong connection with your body and your mind.
As long as you do I suppose sadhana makes you sort of quiet for a while and gives you it's own experience of a sort of peace that doesn't last too long. It causes samadhi for some people, nirvikalpa samadhi. But if you're an aspiring Jnani,
what's the purpose of sadhana?

You simply ask yourself, "Who needs to do this? I do.
What is this 'I'?
This personal 'I', where did it come from?
How did it get here?
Who gave it birth?"
As you ask yourself these questions, that is your sadhana.
That's all you need to do.
But you continue doing this 24 hours a day.
That's what it means by 'praying without ceasing'.

As you meet the challenges of the day you keep asking yourself, "To whom does this come? Who is feeling this condition? Who is going through this situation? Who feels emotional?" As you keep doing this all day long, you will find that you become more peaceful, you become happy and your life becomes better.
That's really the only sadhana you need.

But of course if you cannot do that then you have to do whatever you have to do.
Whatever helps you, that's what you have to do.
I suppose that's why it says that Jnana Marga, atma-vichara, is for the mature soul, one who can do this regularly, without reverting back to Hatha Yoga or Raja Yoga, any of the Yogas.
They all have their place, but self-inquiry is the royal way.
It's the short cut.
But it's up to you.
It's your choice.

And of course self-inquiry is merely to quiet the mind.
It's a fast method to quiet the mind.
For when you ask, "To whom does this come?
It comes to me", and you hold on to that me by inquiring,
"Who am I?
What is I?" and saying "I-I" to yourself, "I-I", the mind becomes quieter and quieter.
The deeper you go within yourself the quieter you become.
And that's your sadhana.
That's all you have to do.

 http://www.robertadamsinfinityinstitute.org/

Susanne Marie - Freedom Within the Known

   

When realization first takes place, there is a distinct separation that occurs between form and the formless. The formless wakes up out of identification with form and realizes once again what it is. Even though in truth one cannot separate out truth, or divide it up, as truth is one great whole, (just like when we separate out the egg yolk from the whites of an egg, the egg will always be an egg), the mind benefits from seeing the difference. What are we in truth without the formless being glued in identification to form?

The formless, or absolute, or awareness/consciousness, whatever name you wish to give it, when it realizes what it is apart from form and becomes self-aware, it sees that it is not stuck in identifying with content, that it is free of content. Content is one half of what God is, and the formless nature is the other half. Together they make up one great whole. Being aware of both at once is what is called realization. The mind has the capacity to hold the paradox of duality within it. The way that mind is trained to operate, is to divide and to see itself (including the body), as a separate entity. This of course is totally a valid part of being able to operate and survive. And there is nothing wrong per se with it. What hurts is the obvious suffering (the thoughts and feelings of feeling inadequate and unworthy), that come out of feeling separate.

Psychological suffering arises out of the minds ability to self-reflect which creates the sense of having a continuous loop of feeling like we are a separate being (an ‘I’), from our environment. Often of course, many of us wait until we are suffering tremendously from the experience of separation before we bother to take a good look at what the mechanism is behind suffering and wanting a solution. Spirituality when used in this way can be incredibly useful and even scientific to a degree. Scientific in the sense that by placing attention on the one who is looking, the one who is noticing rather than just on what is being seen, gives results. The result coming from the mind (which is consciousness), separating out its identification with form and seeing what it is in truth made of, that it is the space within which content rises and falls rather than the stuff itself. This is extremely liberating.

So first there is the turn within to the absolute nature of consciousness, to freedom from the known (taken from Krishnamurti’s book title), and then there is the return back into content, whereby content/form gets to be seen as the other half of the equation. In the return phase, the known gets to be seen for what it is, that it is God in form, that it is consciousness dancing, that it is love in action, and that it is the Self. And still it is such a great mystery! The understanding that is gained is not solely intellectual, and even though it can be called an understanding, it is really a knowing. The knowing arises out of true revelation, that what we call emptiness and fullness, the form and the formless, are all inextricably interwoven into One whole fabric of Being.

There is a wisdom of how this understanding is gained within consciousness, and often it seems that what comes first is the awakening out of the dream, the dream of imagining that we are a somebody, and that what we are lies outside of ourselves. The sticky nature of content needs to be un-glued in order to see correctly. Many traditions point to this and offer practices of how to see that we are in truth spirit, God, or the Self. What isn’t spoken about so much, in the old traditions, is the return phase, of the re-entry into form and the living embodiment of what that looks and feels like in the human. Consciousness keeps evolving in its own understanding of what it is, and we are that awareness forever waking up to itself and what it’s own capacity for self-awareness can bring. What gets to be seen in the end, is that freedom is inherent within all conditional states, that nothing is ever lost in the so-called dream, and that presence is contained and made up of all content.

http://transformationthroughpresence.org/

Mystic Meandering - Ever Emerging Love...

The Love that “emerges” from the Inner Heart
when the Inner Sanctuary opens
has no “object”
of its
 Love -
no “other.”

This Love does not see another
 as “other” than

 ItSelf…

THIS Love just LOVES…
Love – loving

A Causeless Love

My first glimpse left me in awe
of its Vastness…
its Clarity…
its Lovingness…

This Love doesn’t love
”because of” - - -

It loves without reason

It is Primordial Love
Unconditioned
Untouched

It loves “just because” ~
because it IS Love…


Love beyond comprehension…
Love beyond “love”…

How could one possibly
comprehend the
limitless,
unbounded,
uncontained
Love
that
just

Is
~
~
~

Effluent Love
flowing from ItSelf

E
   n
d
   l
    e
      s
    s
l
  y

It is not an object called “love”
or an attribute that “I”
can achieve or attain…

But is the pure,
perpetual

GLOW

of
Effulgent Love

Self-sustaining
 Brilliance

from      the
Heart of Hearts
Self-Generating
Ever Emerging

L     E

O V

♥

Mystic Meandering

Feb. 5, 2015

 

http://mysticmeandering.blogspot.gr/ 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paul Hedderman - The Escape To Everywhere

Consciousness is going through the doors of the senses and meeting itself here. The mental process then claims it: I am the one seeing, doing, etc. It's my body.

If your attention left the mental process, if you weren't so addicted to the idea of being a self, if your attention could entertain, "Possibly I'm not this that I'm so absorbed in and as," you would see there is no need to get out of self because there was never a self to be in. Sensations of the body are hijacked by the mental process which spins out a story of feelings about you. About what was you and what is going to be you. Then the thoughts reinforce that. Obsessing over self all day.

We are saddled with the proscribed way of looking called self-centeredness. Everything is perceived as to how it pertains to me. The thing to do is to turn the light on it to see that all there is, is subject; there is no object called me as a subject. There's just subjectivity. That's the truth. Then enlightenment and all these goals become non-goals, because you realize there is nothing to seek.

You already know what the game is like when you're identified as the body. Now you might see how it goes when you're not. The narration about the journey is the heaviness. You'll see the solution by the problem's absence. When that narration is dismissed you realize, "That's what I was suffering from!"

 Authored by Paul Hedderman

http://www.zenbitchslap.com/ 

Daniel Miller - The Rose

And upon a day,
while walking among the flowers of his teacher's garden,   
did the child speak unto the Mystic:

"Some men claim that this life
is the darkness of a curse,
and a punishment to be endured
for all our wicked ways.
Oh Mystic, what say you of life ?"

And the Mystic answered:

"I say that life is neither a curse nor a punishment,
But a rose filled with the beauty of desire.

The stem of the rose is your life upon this earth,
The thorns, painful lessons you bring unto
yourself, that you might learn.
The leaves are those joys that enter
your life with the tenderness of an unseen Love.

Curse not the sorrow of your thorns,
for the deeper they cut unto the heart of
your being, the greener the leaves of joy shall be.

The tiny bud is your soul, waiting to
bloom with the truth of God among its petals.
Slowly will your flower unfold,
that you might not become lost
within the fragrance of its secret.

And when the rose is at the height of its beauty,
Shall you not see the pureness of God
smiling from the very center of your Being ?"

~~~~~~~~~~

 by © Daniel Miller from Song Of The Mystic:

Eppi Sukhu - Love's Leela

Love, how wondrous Thou art
in this game of forgetting and remembering
where the practice of remembrance that is the skill to finding Thee
is itself Love as art Thou, even when Thou art masked to me.

I mask myself after having gazed upon Your face for shame;
Thou hast never left my side.
Throughout all tribulations Thou hast carried me in your arms,
and yet I know this vast Love that Thou art
is the Essence of myself, and I see that I Love others
just the same.

Through Love, I know they are completely One with Thee.
Through Love, I know they are One with me, as Thou art.
I bask then, in the greatness of the Love that hasn't ever left my side.

I remember that we are One.

 http://www.blissfulself.com/FAQ.htm

Amata Natasha Goldie - You are Divine (The Golden Thread Book)

~ Divinity meeting divinity for the first time since birth ~

Do you realize your divinity? Do you see the truth of your soul? Do you recognize the essence of YOU? You are Divine!

When we quieten our minds, still our bodies and connect with the ever present silence of our inner essence, we connect to the Divine. In connecting to the Divine we begin to hear the whispers of our soul in ways we may never have heard before. We may have ignored the etheric tap on our shoulder guiding us to follow a passion, an urge, a calling, an intuitive direction. The mind is often so strong and all powerful, so busy directing us through our everyday reality that the voice of our soul is drowned out. The voice of our soul harbours the truth of who we are.

How can we discover who we are without listening to that inner whisper? How do we connect with our truth, with our soul?

We can connect with our soul’s truth in many ways. Let your mind and thoughts stop, slow down and become still. Enter the stillness of meditation and connect with your soul. Breathe.

Just a few minutes of stillness a day is a wondrous daily ritual that will infuse your life with the richness of living your dharma.

We can do this through meditation, yoga and through any number of spiritual practices that are free from dogma. Do not worry about filling the mind with more information of the ‘how to’ and the ‘shoulds’ of a particular practice. Simply sit quietly and close your eyes. You may feel guided to set the space energetically and light candles but the important thing is to be still. Sit in complete silence, let the mind quieten, let it free itself of all its perpetual thoughts and focus on your breath. Feel the warmth of your heart beating, feel your solar plexus centre rising and falling with each breath, and now, sense the presence within.

Sense the vastness within, feel this presence, connect with it. It is ready to welcome you home to Source, to your true self, to your soul’s longing to be embraced. Feel the warmth of your soul’s embrace as you open yourself to yourself.

~ Divinity meeting divinity for the first time since birth ~

It is a moment to rejoice in the profound sacredness of your reconnection.
It is a moment to honour and be in gratitude.

Your soul’s initial small whisper of recognition will, with regular visiting, grow to a magnificent song. This song will guide you and direct you throughout life. It is the voice of your soul, connecting with your divine essence. In this connection you are allowing life to move through you in a state of guidance and divine grace. Living a life of grace is a life of effortless flow, in tune with the masterful wonder of creation. This wonder of creation is expressing itself in its magnificence through you, through the voice of your soul.

Living every day of your existence, empowered with the truth of your soul, is fulfilling your soul’s higher calling, your divine potential and is the path that transforms all suffering into true happiness and freedom.

Celebrate your Divinity!

https://thegoldenthreadauthor.wordpress.com/ 

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Golden-Thread-Book/300451140007764?pnref=lhc 

https://www.facebook.com/amata.goldie 

 

About Amata Natasha Goldie

Author, Poet, Natural Health Practitioner, Artist, Lover of Life......Living The Golden Thread!!!!!! Amata was born in the UK in 1971 and immigrated to Australia in 1973. She travelled extensively, living and working overseas for several years, before settling back in Australia. Her Arts and Humanitarian background has its origins in her embodied creativity and compassion for all living things. She has worked in the health industry in Natural Medicine for over ten years, where she exhibits an intuitive natural gift in healing, coupled with an intrinsic driving force to help others. Amata holds qualifications in Fine Art, Arts Management, English Literature, Philosophy, Body Therapies and Small Business. She has written extensive collections of spiritual poetry, prose, soul affirmations and heart-felt anecdotes for greeting cards. Her writings reach to the core of humanity and aim to uplift the soul with the timeless experiences of love, joy and celebration of the uniqueness that is embodied within each of us. Her poems have received outstanding acclaim by an online global audience of poetry lovers. Her first published poetry collection in audio and book will be available by 2015. Amata is an author, poet, natural health practitioner, artist and lover of life. She is passionate about catalysing the highest potential in humanity and is dedicated to living a life that facilitates growth in others, in service to humanity, the animal kingdom.

View all posts by Amata Natasha Goldie →

 

http://www.amazon.com/The-Golden-Thread-Living-Life-ebook/dp/B00LNF9CGO

Jiddu Krishnamurti - Seek your own deliverance

"There is only reality, the supreme without a second. 

There is only one humanity and one righteousness, 

and the way to its realization does not lie through any other path, 

through any other person save through yourself. 

Seek your own deliverance, and then you will deliver the world 

 from its confusion and conflict, its sorrow and antagonism. 

For you are the world, and your problem is the world's problem. 

If you are clinging to your beliefs, to your petty gods, to your nationality, 

to your possessions, to your leaders, then you will create a world of confusion and conflict, 

of sects, of racial and religious prejudices, of economic and ideological frontiers, 

ever leading to separation,breeding ill will, multiplying catastrophes."

Naomi Stone - The indwelling Spirit

art Rassouli

And I will give you a new heart, a new spirit within, to be with you all of your days. My dear ones, I will be with you always. My thoughts are not your thoughts,
and my ways are not your ways, but I will come to you, and you will know me.

There are mysterious dimensions
of this world
of which we will never
know the secrets or be able to explain
in a way that all will understand
for we are not given
the divine wisdom
to claim to know how
the Spirit of Love
will come to dwell within
each one of us
to move and guide
our hearts

The Beloved has many faces
and there is nowhere
the unseen Spirit cannot go
and no heart
that cannot be
touched and moved
by the greatness of love
that seeks you

Countless great ones have
walked before us
sharing their stories
leaving their guidance
singing their songs
dancing their glorious dances
and when
the lightness of Spirit
moves within us
quietly seeking
to bring
new life to our hearts
we long to sing and share
the beauty
embracing us
and tell the world

The Spirit moves invisibly
like the wind
tenderly touching
each heart
through its own unique
longing
for love
and friendship

Each encounter is a mystery
that awakens something
deep within
that changes us
forever
giving us a taste
of sweetness
that creates an opening
to a new way of life
that we have never known before

A breeze
like a whispering sigh
opens our minds
and hearts and souls
awakening the beauty
of spirit
created within us
and we feel the gaze
of eyes that see who we are
as no one has ever seen us before

A fountain of grace
pours over and through us
transforming
and touching and inviting
us to blossom
into a flowering
expression
of grace
and unfolding of the bud
that longs to bloom
and we feel the breath
of spring
that anoints us
with the beauty of a love
that is more than love
and more than anyone can
truly express

Words fall so short
of what we feel
so all across the world
we sing
we cry our tears of Joy
and we dance
we pray
and we celebrate
and create
a little corner
that we call home
hidden within our hearts

The Spirit of the Friend
swells and expands
within us
giving us more
than we have ever dreamed
and we feel
what it means
to love and to be seen
and known
as we were created
to be

 https://newoma.wordpress.com/

Symeon the New Theologian - Boundless mercy

By what boundless mercy, my Savior,
have you allowed me to become a member of your body?
Me, the unclean, the defiled, the prodigal.
How is it that you have clothed me
in the brilliant garment,
radiant with the splendor of immortality,
that turns all my members into light?
Your body, immaculate and divine,
is all radiant with the fire of your divinity,
with which it is ineffably joined and combined.
This is the gift you have given me, my God:
that this mortal and shabby frame
has become one with your immaculate body
and that my blood has mingled
with your blood.
I know, too,
that I have been made one with your divinity
and have become your own most pure body,
a brilliant member, transparently lucid,
luminous and holy.
I see the beauty of it all, I can gaze on the radiance.
I have become a reflection of the light of your grace.

Farid ud-Din Attar - Mystics

 

 

The sun can only be seen by the light
of the sun. The more a man or woman knows,
the greater the bewilderment, the closer
to the sun the more dazzled, until a point
is reached where one no longer is.

A mystic knows without knowledge, without
intuition or information, without contemplation
or description or revelation. Mystics
are not themselves. They do not exist
in selves. They move as they are moved,
talk as words come, see with sight
that enters their eyes. I met a woman
once and asked her where love had led her.
"Fool, there's no destination to arrive at.
Loved one and lover and love are infinite."

Angela of Foligno - the One who Is

Even if at times I can still experience outwardly some little sadness and joy, nonetheless there is in my soul a chamber in which no joy, sadness, or enjoyment from any virtue, or delight over anything that can be named, enters. 

This is where the All Good, which is not any particular good, resides, and it is so much the All Good that there is no other good. Although I blaspheme by speaking about it -- and I speak about it so badly because I cannot find words to express it -- I nonetheless affirm that in this manifestation of God I discover the complete truth. 

 In it, I understand and possess the complete truth that is in heaven and in hell, in the entire world, in every place, in all things, in every enjoyment in heaven and in every creature. And I see all this is so truly and certainly that no one could convince me otherwise.

 Even if the whole world were to tell me otherwise, I would laugh it to scorn. Furthermore, I saw the One who is and how he is the being of all creatures. I also saw how he made me capable of understanding those realities I have just spoken about better than when I saw them in that darkness which used to delight me so.

Moreover, in that state I see myself as alone with God, totally cleansed, totally sanctified, totally true, totally upright, totally certain, totally celestial in him. And when I am in that state, I do not remember anything else…

Bab'Aziz - The prince who contemplated his Soul

 

 But where is this gathering?
- I don't know, my little angel.
But do the others know?
- No, they don't know either.
How can you go to a gathering
without knowing where it is?
- It suffices to walk, just walk.
Those who are invited
will find the way.

- quoted from Bab 'Aziz

Antonio Machado - Last Night As I Was Sleeping

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart. 

Jeff Foster - The Dance

art Ram Onkar

We never rehearsed this
We are a mess

We tremble and perspire
We step on each other’s toes

Sometimes we go out of tune
And forget our lines

But at least this is real
At least we are not half-alive

Buried under the weight of some image
We never believed in anyway

I will always take this imperfect dance
Over no dance at all

http://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/ 

Chuck Surface - Into the Wilderness.

When I found myself without belief,
I Surrendered to knowing Nothing,
And learned to Love the Wilderness,
Though the mind continued to Wonder endlessly.

And when the mind could no longer bear,
The Crushing Immensity of Not Knowing,
I was moved by Compassion for it,
And sought a path of Wisdom.

But I found myself unable to live,
In villages laid out this way and that,
Walled about with "knowledge" of the Unknowable...

And walked again into the Wilderness.

~~~

When I found myself without faith,
I Surrendered to being Adrift,
In an Ocean of Solitude,
And learned to Love the Rudderless Way.

And when the Heart could not bear,
The Depth and Breadth of that Solitude,
I was moved by Compassion for it,
And sought a path with Heart.

But I found myself unable to live,
In villages laid out this way and that,
Walled about with "devotion" as each defined it...

And walked again into the Wilderness.

~~~

Heart and mind have Surrendered,
To this Wilderness Life,
To Not Knowing,
To Love Shining without object.

When the mind cannot bear,
The Crushing Immensity of Not Knowing,
It no longer twists and turns as one obsessed,
But gasps, Dissolute, in Wonder.

When the Heart cannot bear,
The Depth and Breadth of Solitude,
It no longer seeks another,
But falling into itself, gasps in Ecstasy...

As I walk again into the Wilderness.

www.GardenOfTheBeloved.com
www.facebook.com/InTheGardenOfTheBeloved