Leo Hartong - Who Is Watching the Show?

When a schoolteacher writes "I" on a blackboard
and asks the students what they see,
most of them will answer that they see the word "I."
It's rare for someone to say "I see a blackboard with 'I' written on it."
Just as the relatively huge blackboard is ignored
in favor of a single letter, we ignore the Awareness
that is the permanent background to all phenomena.
We tend to ignore this in the same way
that we forget the screen on which a movie is projected.
It is the unchanging characteristic in all the movies we watch,
but it never gets involved in the movie, as such.
The movie may depict an ocean, a long winding road,
a murder, or a forest fire; but the screen will not get wet,
move from place to place, bleed, or burn.
Likewise, Awareness remains pure and unaffected by its content.

Awareness is the consistent characteristic in and behind all experience,
yet it is also that which most easily escapes our attention.
Attention is not the same as Awareness.
Our brain is designed in such a way that giving attention to something
automatically implies ignoring something else.
We see the stars and ignore the space;
we read this text and ignore the page;
we see the movie and ignore the screen;
yet it is obvious that the ignored space, page, and screen
are as fundamental to our observations as the stars,
the text, and the movie, which hold our attention.
This is an important point, as the mechanics of attention
often get confused with Awareness.
Attention works through noticing something in contrast to something that's ignored, while Awareness is the non-dual space that sustains both the noticed and the ignored. Attention may require effort; Awareness simply is.
Everything that comes up is contained in and embraced by this Awareness,
including objects perceived as "out there"
(rocks, cars, other sentient beings)
and emotions, thoughts, and feelings experienced as "in here."
In this sense, Awareness is as much in the body-mind
as the body-mind is in Awareness.
Compare it to a clay pot, which contains space
and at the same time is contained by space.
Breaking the pot will not affect this space. 

http://www.awakeningtothedream.com/ 

from the book

 

Ella Wheeler Wilcox - Illusion

image  Intao

 God and I in space alone
And nobody else in view.
“And where are the people, O Lord!” I said.
“The earth below and the sky o’erhead
And the dead whom once I knew?”

“That was a dream,” God smiled and said,
“A dream that seemed to be true,
There were no people, living or dead,
There was no earth and no sky o’erhead
There was only Myself–and you.”

“Why do I feel no fear,” I asked,
“Meeting you here in this way,
For I have sinned I know full well,
And there is heaven and there is hell,
And is this the judgment day?”

“Nay, those were dreams,” the great God said,
“Dreams that have ceased to be.
There are no such things as fear or sin,
There is no you–you have never been–
There is nothing at all but Me.”

 

 

 "Yet so strong was the urge that I arose, went to my desk, and took up my pen and began to write. I was perfectly conscious, yet my mortal brain certainly had nothing to do with what my pen wrote down. It was as if some one thought for me. I watched my hand form the words with interest, as I would have watched a friend write. This is the poem which came under those peculiar conditions. It is the only experience of the kind which ever befell me. And oddly enough, it is the only one of my thousands of verses which I was ever able completely memorize and never forget. Whoever wrote it through me helps me to recall it."

 

 

source text 

Chuck Surface - Possessed by Love…

You start out not believing,
That anything so Beautiful could really exist.
She seems a fairy tale, imagined by the religious,
By the simple-minded, wounded and damaged,
In desperate need of emotional healing,
Willing to to believe in anything...

If it only alleviates their pain.

It seems incomprehensible, implausible,
To one so rational and empirically-minded,
That the experience of Heaven, within,
Is anything more than a hypnotic trance,
Born of fanatical deprivation and fantastical imagination,
Simply a psycho-physiological anomaly.

And who can blame you, given the lunacy of religion?

Then one day, oddly enough, seeking to die,
Not through physical harm, but through will alone,
You come to the wholly unexpected Experience of yourself,
As the absence of space, time, objects, and... yourself,
And yet, Alive, as.. what word could you possibly use...
Heaven; not a place, but...

The Unalloyed Ecstasy of Pure Unmanifest Existence.

And when space, time, objects, and you return,
You are left inextricably perplexed, for the rest of your life,
For in a sense, the absence of you, was You,
While in another, you were not, nor had you ever been,
For there was no time, past, future... or present,
And no space in which a you could exist or perceive.

And yet... You were.

"How can you remember an experience,
When "you" were not present?" they ask.
And you cannot explain.
And this troubles your mind,
For you are a rational, empirical man,
Having experienced, empirically, the empirically implausible.

And so you are ushered into the world of Divine Madness.

Ushered into madness even further by the fact,
Disconcerting to the mind, but Celebrated by the Heart,
That you never completely return from... Heaven,
That within your Heart (why the Heart, you wonder),
Is an Ineffably Sublime Intoxication, a touch,
Not simply of peace, happiness, and joy...

But the Orgasmic Ecstasy you knew in Heaven.

She is ever there, awaiting the return of wandering Attention,
Waiting like The Beloved for your outer fascination to end,
And for Attention to return, at last, to Her Arms;
Her Perfume, always Intoxicating, both mind and Heart,
In moments both sacred, and "profane",
Awaiting to embrace you, into Dissolution and Bliss.

Your Heart has become the Gate, the Wellspring of Heaven,
Here in the Dream of space, time, and manifestation,
The Garden of The Beloved, Her Tavern, within.
To this Heart, no questions arise, no dilemma perturbs,
No desire arises to "know", or "understand", or articulate,
For All is Fulfilled...

All is Fulfilled.

In the mind... the temple of rationality and empiricism,
There the scholars, the academics within you debate,
What was that, that happened on the day of your Death?
What is this... this... Presence, as much a part of you, now,
As your breath, your heartbeat... alive now, within you,
As the very Aliveness that You Are?

But no answers come; no answers will ever come,
Only a chaos of concepts, theories, and conjecture,
As useless as pictures of Wine and Perfume,
And... this is just as well, for the mind, poor fellow,
Is far too Intoxicated, far too Dissolute,
To make any sense of anything at all.

You start out not believing,
That anything so Beautiful could really exist.
It seems incomprehensible, implausible.
To one so rational, so empirically-minded,
And then you die, yet Live,
Returning… Possessed by Love…

But still... still... “knowing” Nothing.

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

Dada Gavand - The Sanctuary of Silence

You cannot meet God through the mind,
nor experience the timeless through time.
Thought cannot touch the transient.
Only with freedom from thought
and from mental cravings and ambitions
does the energy become
whole, tranquil and pure.
Such inner purity and humility
will invite the hidden divinity.
The pure consolidated energy,
with its silence and fullness within,
awaits in readiness to meet the divine,
to experience that which is beyond the mind.
There across the region of time
beyond the frontiers of the mind,
within the sanctuary of silence,
resides the supreme intelligence,
your Lord, the timeless divine.

A Tribute to Dadaji

  Here

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Matt Licata - The beloved

art Alphonse Mucha

 The beloved is mad crazy in love with you, but may never fit your historical requirements and ideas about what this actually means, about the true implications of having a beloved in your life. She has appeared as your tour guide into the secret areas of your body. If you follow her, your world will become unraveled, you will be taken behind the scenes where the relative world is being organized. The beloved sees you as you are and this is terrifying. In his presence, you are beheld as the majesty that you are, but this is unbearable. You come face to face with the greatest fear that you’ve ever known, but have never been able to articulate: that you are loved. For when you are truly loved, when you are entirely seen, when you are fully held, it is the end of your world as you know it. You will never be the same. You will never again be able to pretend that you are other than perfect and precious as you are. And this is terrifying.

You long to be loved, to be seen, to be held, but please know that the implications of this are immense; they are cosmic in proportion. To allow yourself to be loved in this way a part of you must die. Everything you thought you weren’t must be surrendered. You must let go of the stories of the unlovable one, the awakened one, the special one, the imperfect one, the flawed one, and the lonely one. Love wishes to reveal your nakedness, to remove your clothing, and to burn away all that is false and less than whole within you. What you are is a raging firestorm of creativity, sensuality, openness, warmth, and kindness.

Love will never stop until you know this.

If you will allow her or him, the beloved will show you the infinite ways that your heart is at risk of breaking open in any moment, and never, ever being put back together again. She will plead with you to let it all go, to fall on the ground, and to allow yourself to fall apart, so she can show you that you were never, ever together to begin with. He will reveal to you that this raw, tender, vulnerable open heart that you feel beating inside you—right here and right now—that this is your gift to the world.

http://www.mattlicataphd.com/ 

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Mystic Meandering - Echoes of "The Nameless..."

The Silence of the Great Void,
where “The Nameless” dwells – Formless,
bathes the manifest world
in Infinite Cosmic Waves
of Grace…

We are echoes of
”The Nameless”,
the Face that lights our face -
inseparable…
You can feel it in the Great Silence -
the undulating pulsation of Life within,
reverberating through Form…

The Infinite Cosmic Emptiness
echoes Its Light into Form,
and we are birthed ~
from the Cosmic Heart,
Loved beyond measure,
held in Infinite, rippling waves
of Love ~ ~ ~

When we know this – instinctively -
in our being,
we will heal…
individually,
collectively
and
globally


Be still…
Turn your face to “The Nameless.”
Recognize your wholeness
in the Great Silence…

 

Mystic Meandering
Oct. 2015

 

 

 

 

http://mysticmeandering.blogspot.gr/ 

Rainer Maria Rilke - Be the mystery

image Marta Bevacqua

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.


Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.


In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.


And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.