Annette Nibley - The Law of Love

artist unknown

 There are two ways of looking at the world we live in. (Well, there are a lot more than two, but I’m just taking these two to illustrate a point.) One way is to think of the world as an appearance in consciousness, of no import, and something I don’t have to concern myself with at all.

The other way to think of the world is as an outpicturing of Love – a manifest version of the glory of the One Love that is All There Is – and therefore something I very much want to concern myself with.

The major difference between the two, in my experience, is that in the first case, the experience of the human being is rendered pointless, and meaningless. That may appeal to a lot of people – it appealed to me for a long time – but ultimately it is life-denying, and can lead to hopelessness and despair.

Life appears! It is glorious that it does. If the glorious All-That-Is appears in manifest form, which it obviously does, it does this out of Love. It itself is only Love, and so the manifestation is its own Self. Does it really want Itself to ignore Its own creation?

LOVE is humming underneath all of this, running it all. It appears as me. It appears as you. It appears as mind. It appears as a world. Love is the machine that is driving all of it. Love makes sense of it all. It’s not an uncreated, imaginary phantom. The world is here, created and sustained by Love.

The bottom line is that we don’t have to worry about what to do, how to handle it all – Love is doing all of it. The pressure is off. We can relax. There is only the Law of Good operating, and all we have to do is reflect this Good through our own thoughts and actions, and watch how the world changes in front of our eyes.

There is a missed opportunity when one says, “I am not the body/mind.” To know love, one must experience it through one’s manifest being. This is the gift of being human – we move from the dark to the light gradually, as we steadily gain more faith in the Law of Love. It is through being human that Love is known.

http://whatneverchanges.com/

 

David Carse - No one here at all

The message of the sutras and the shamans is the same:
the person of understanding is the one who dies before she dies,
who leaves no footprints, who travels no path,
because she knows that as a person, as an entity, she is not.
But who can do this, what self can cease to be?

None, as Wei Wu Wei would say, because none is: it can only happen.
Then there is no one to know but only the knowing,
and all this world is as in a dream or a vision;
only Brilliance beyond light, Love beyond love,
clear knowing pure beauty streaming through these transparent forms
and no one here at all.

 

You can listen selected passages from the audio book "Perfect brillant stillness"

HERE

Or/and

Read as PDF

HERE 

 

 

 

Rabindranath Tagore - It is ever He

"He it is, the innermost one,
who awakens my being with His deep hidden touches.
He it is who puts His enchantment upon these eyes
and joyfully plays on the chords of my heart in varied cadence of pleasure and pain.
He it is who weaves the web of this maya
in evanescent hues of gold and silver, blue and green,
and lets peep out through folds His feet,
at whose touch I forget myself.
Days come and ages pass,
and it is ever He who moves my heart in many a name,
in many a guise, in many a rapture of joy and of sorrow."

 

 

 

l

 Thanks to Carol

 

The Silence of Ramana Maharshi

 On a Shivaratri day, after dinner, 

Bhagavan was reclining on the sofa surrounded by many devotees. 

A Sadhu suggested that, since this was a most auspicious night, 

the meaning of the verse in praise of Dakshinamurti should be made clear. 

Bhagavan gave his approval and all were eagerly waiting for him to say something. 

He simply sat, gazing at us. 

We were gradually absorbed in ever deepening silence, 

which was not disturbed by the clock striking the hour, every hour, until 4 a.m. 

None moved or talked. 

Time and space ceased to exist. 

Bhagavan’s grace kept us at peace and silence for seven hours.
In this silence, Bhagavan taught us the Ultimate, like Dakshinamurti. 

At the stroke of four Bhagavan asked us whether we had understood 

the meaning of the silent teaching. 

Like waves on the infinite ocean of bliss, we fell at Bhagavan’s feet.

    ~ T. K. Sundaresa Iyer, Ramana Smrti Souvenir

T. K. Sundaresa Iyer at the center

source text 

 

Jed McKenna - Spiritual Enlightenment the damnedest thing

 Spiritual  enlightenment  sits  next  to  an empty milk  carton 
on  an orange lunch tray  in a gradeschool cafeteria.
It's lying  in  the grass  in a ditch beside a rusting  hubcap. 
It's  on the button holding  closed the left  cuff of a somewhat important  man's  shirt.
 
Enlightenment  can be found  next  to the elevator on the fourth level  of the airport parking  garage. 

You can ask  your dog  for it,  but  he may  not give  it  to you.

Look for  it  next  to the pen  in the pocket of  the checkout girl's  red vest, But  only  on  Wednesdays.

Enlightenment  is in  the trunk,  behind the  jack. 
You  can hear  it  in  the squeak of a hinge at  the  local  library. 
It's  in the  breeze blowing  unheard  through  an  unseen  tree. 
It's  in the  space after the exhale and  before the  inhale. 

You can find enlightenment  in  church,  in  that  scratch  on the back of the pew  in  front  of you.
 
You can find it  in the desert, just  before the wind picks  up again.

Enlightenment  is  nothing. 
Delusion  is  the greatest  wonder. 

Enlightenment  was  in your coffee cup before you poured in the coffee.
Now it's  in your coffee cup.
Two point two billion years before your coffee cup was created, Enlightenment  was  in your coffee cup.
An hour and fifteen minutes after time  swallows the  universe,  Enlightenment will be  in  your coffee cup
.
You've always  known  where  it  is  because it's exactly  where you left  it. 
How can you  not return to a place you  never left?
You  are  dreaming  that  you  are  unenlightened. 
You are  dreaming that  you are  awake.

The question  is:  Why? 
The answer is:  Why  not? 

PDF HERE

  

Who is Jed McKenna ?

 

Bernadette Roberts - Experiencing the divine

art Yongsung Kim

 One possible way of envisioning the human passage is the following. We think of ourselves as originally emerging from the unknown, from darkness, nothingness or non-existence into the light of consciousness. But as consciousness develops we discover the increasing ability to see in the dark, see into the nothingness or mystery within ourselves and eventually realize that this darkness and nothingness is the divine from which we emerged and with which we are one. Thus we discover that our original darkness IS true light. Midway in this passage, divine light (darkness or unknowing) and the light of consciousness are in balance, with neither outshining the other. But as we move beyond this mid-point, divine light begins to outshine the light of consciousness until, in the end, the light of consciousness goes out and only divine light remains. From this vantage point we look back on the passage and see that although consciousness was the veil that dimmed the light, this dimming was necessary in order to make the human dimension possible. But if consciousness makes human existence possible, it is also not separate from the divine, nor does it completely hide it; on the contrary, consciousness or self is man’s faculty or medium for experiencing the divine — so long as it remains, that is [this is key]. Our passage through consciousness is the gradual return to the divine; we leave the divine unknowingly and in darkness, but we return knowingly and in light.

source