Nisargadatta Maharaj - Break the shell from within

Q: Is there no such thing as free will? Am I not free to desire?

M: Oh no, you are compelled to desire. In Hinduism the very idea of free will is non-existent, so there is no word for it. Will is commitment, fixation, bondage.

Q: I am free to choose my limitations.

M: You must be free first. To be free in the world you must be free of the world. Otherwise your past decides for you and your future. Between what had happened and what must happen you are caught. Call it destiny or karma, but never -- freedom. First return to your true being and then act from the heart of love.

Q: Within the manifested what is the stamp of the unmanifested?

M: There is none. The moment you begin to look for the stamp of the unmanifested, the manifested dissolves. If you try to understand the unmanifested with the mind, you at once go beyond the mind, like when you stir the fire with a wooden stick, you burn the stick. Use the mind to investigate the manifested. Be like the chick that pecks at the shell. Speculating about life outside the shell would have been of little use to it, but pecking at the shell breaks the shell from within and liberates the chick. Similarly, break the mind from within by investigation and exposure of its contradictions and absurdities.



Nisargadatta Maharaj
Excerpt from “I AM THAT”
Chapter 72. What is Pure, Unalloyed, Unattached is Real
© 1973 by Nisargadatta Maharaj

I AM THAT

Barbara Wikle - Sit comfortably with who you are

art vincent wiegand

Sit with yourself in comfort,
Of who it is you are.
Feel the magic inside of you,
Be at peace and one with all.

Listen to the sounds of nature,
They are who they are,
Enjoy the gifts they have,
In the sounds they express,
With love.

Smell the smells,
All around you,
Breath in all the scents that are,
Enveloped in the forest,
Happy to share with all.

There is the magic,
That being at peace where you are,
Being in the moment,
And engulfing it all.

Let it go deep inside you,
And wrap around your Soul,
There is no reason to move,
Just be at peace where you are. 

Barbara Wikle June 25, 2015

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Amata Natasha Goldie - In Search Of The Flowers For Your Garden

art Mahmoud Farshchian

Out of the stillness arose a deep soul cry
That echoed into the eternal depths of Silence,

“Oh, how I long to find the flower-garden of my Beloved”

Stillness, and then,
Silence spoke:

“Weep and let these tears become
The nectar that draws her to you,
Let the depth of your soul search in the silence
For the beauty of your heart,
Be just as you are in your unchanging wholeness
And celebrate your uniqueness,
Shoot forth your focussed intent
To the all-understanding and all-providing
Universe of infinite dreams,
And rest in immoveable knowingness
That your Beloved soul-mate shall be drawn to you,
As the waters are drawn to the shore
By the embrace of the moon”

© Amata Natasha Goldie – All rights reserved

 

 art Rassouli

https://ashramoftheethers.wordpress.com/

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Rumi's Language of Silence and Love

Rumi's Language of Silence and Love___________
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The mystic, Jalalludin Rumi, saw the world both in its material and spiritual aspects, as a multipolar world — full of opposites that sometimes complemented each other and at other times, clashed. What Rumi taught us was to understand these inherent contradictions and harmonise them. "The life of this world is nothing but the harmony of opposites", he said.

The way to find harmony is not to get bogged down in the chicanery of words or in the hair-splitting of philosophies. The way to achieve it is through the language of silence. "When the lips are silent, the heart has a hundred tongues", says Rumi: "Listen! Clam up your mouth and be silent like an oyster shell, for that tongue of yours is the enemy of the soul, my friend".

Through silence, Rumi reaches a level of consciousness where he loses all his mundane identities. This is not an easy or pleasant experience. When an individual loses his historical identity, the loss is keenly felt at first. That is why Rumi cries plaintively "What shall I do, O Muslims, I do not know who I am?

I am neither Christian, Jew, Infidel, nor Muslim! I am from neither the East, nor West. I hail not from the land or from the sea. I am not from the land of India or China, Bulgaria or Saqsin, nor Iraq or Khorasan". Having lost his mundane identity, Rumi has attained a higher supra-existence, for he says "I have shed duality, and see the two worlds as one.

I seek One, I know One, I see One, I read One". It is in this shedding of duality that one is able to reconcile the opposites — sulh-e-azdad — and find the harmonious music of the spheres: "To look at the ocean, beyond the spray, to look at the essence, beyond the words".

Rumi wrote his Mathnawi, his poems, in memory of his master Shams Tabriz. The Mathnawi is nothing but a paraphrase of the Qur'an, and equally a paraphrase of the Gita and the Gospels.

In one of his ecstatic moments, he said: "I have sucked the marrow from the Qur'an, and the bones I have thrown..." Rumi had no respect for squabbling scholastics who lost sight of the spirituality of the Qur'an, and indulged themselves in splitting hairs about the words of the scriptures.

Nor did he have any patience with philosophers. "Paradise is populated by a majority of simple folk those who kept themselves away from the mischief of philosophy".

Rumi's message is to rise above mundane identities, go beyond ritualism and scholasticism, beyond hypocrisy and the mischief of philosophy, and breaking the shackles of words to reach a state where we can say with him, "Beyond belief and unbelief lies a vast ocean. I wander carefree in that clime".

The path to reach that clime is through Love. And what is Love? Rumi despairs of defining Love. "However much I might try to expound or explain Love, when I come to Love itself, I am ashamed of my explanations... Love alone can explain the mysteries of Love".

text source  D'ali Atash

Adyashanti - Exit this dream

“If you prefer smoke over fire
then get up now and leave.
For I do not intend to perfume
your mind’s clothing
with more sooty knowledge.

No, I have something else in mind.
Today I hold a flame in my left hand
and a sword in my right.
There will be no damage control today.

For God is in a mood
to plunder your riches and
fling you nakedly
into such breathtaking poverty
that all that will be left of you
will be a tendency to shine.

So don’t just sit around this flame
choking on your mind.
For this is no campfire song
to mindlessly mantra yourself to sleep with.

Jump now into the space
between thoughts
and exit this dream
before I burn the damn place down.“

https://www.adyashanti.org/

Anam Thubten - There is nobody there

"So why are we not awakened right now?
What force holds us back from awakening to the ultimate truth?
It often seems that there are huge obstacles.
But when we look into our consciousness and simply ask what is holding us back,
we don’t really find anything. We don’t find a devil with two horns holding us back…
There is nothing outside of our consciousness holding us back from being awake right now. There are no real blocks, no hindrances…
“There are no obstacles. Nothing is holding us back from awakening…
We are the only one not allowing ourselves to be free.
We are the only one who can set ourselves free.
We are the one who imprisons and we are the one who liberates.
When we accept that responsibility we have finally gained spiritual maturity…
“If we are still wondering how to awaken,
I suggest that we meditate now and then and focus on the following question:
‘What is holding me back from realizing my true nature, my Buddha Nature?’
This is a very powerful inquiry…This is one of my favorite meditations
because it always takes me to the place where I cannot blame anybody
or anything for my lack of awakening.

“When we open our hearts and let go of all our theories and speculations,
when we are not distracted even by spiritual fantasies,
when we simply and wholeheartedly and courageously inquire into what is holding us back, that is all we need to do…
We can’t find any answer because there is nobody there.
There is nothing holding us back.”




–Anam Thubten, from his wonderful book No Self, No Problem: Awakening to Our True Nature

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Alison Nappi - The Creative Divine

art  Daniaarts

The Creative Divine
is not something over which
you may claim ownership.

It is not a horse to be bridled,
you cannot intimidate it
you cannot beat it into
submission
as you have been.

Its love is wildness:
stars falling so fast from the sky
that they catch fire
and singe the blindness
from your eyes.

Its breath is the wind that fills
lungs struggling to exhale.
It will fill you until your joints ache
from the stress of being stretched
beyond your former nature.

It will catch you like a kite
and fly you past the invisible barriers
of your unknowing.

The Creative Divine
will cause great storms.
It will toss you from your ship
and feed you to the sirens.

It will lure you to a cave
guarded by a dragon
whose been sleeping there
since the world was
magic and lightening.

Yes, the Creative Divine
will teach you many things,
the most important being:
your immortality.

http://www.writewithspirit.com/

Beatrice of Nazareth - Moved by Love

“It happens sometimes that a sweet and joyful love is awakened in the heart and swells like a great wave through the soul by itself without any effort at all on our part. One is so powerfully moved by love, so passionately drawn up into love, so strongly taken by love, so tenderly embraced and utterly mastered by love that she surrenders herself entirely to its power. In this embrace the soul experiences directly the radiance of the Divine, a wonderful bliss, pure freedom, ecstatic sweetness, complete overpowering by love, a waterfall of ineffable delight. She feels that all her senses are sacred and she is so totally engulfed by love and so deeply immersed in love that she is one with love, and will never cease to be love. For the beauty of love has clothed her, the power of love has submerged her, the holiness of love has consumed her, the greatness of love has so sublimely drawn her into herself that she will always love and do nothing but acts of love.”

Read more HERE

Jeff Foster - On beauty

Beauty is not there in what you see, it's in how you see.

There is a vast field of possibility, where your presence meets the presence of the 'other'. 

Yet there are not two presences, only one, just as fire never truly divides.

Beauty is not contained, see, but spills out through every crack and crevice in reality, gushing like an unstoppable river. 

There are no others here; you are meeting yourself.

See beautifully, then, and the world around you is suddenly beautiful. 

Your seeing changes everything. 

And leaves everything perfectly unchanged.

Be fully yourself, know that you are alive, 

and let your natural beauty shine.

 

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http://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/