Jed McKenna - Table

 

art John Picking

Quote of the Imaginary Moment by Jed McKenna

~~~

(Jed talking to a seeker)

Jed: “So anyway, the difference isn’t something I have that you don’t, it’s something you believe that I don’t. You think it’s real and I don’t even see it. At this point, I can’t even remember it.”

“And what’s that?”

“Everything. Everything you believe. Everything you’re absolutely certain about. Everything you’d bet your life is true.”  

Curtis knocks on the table. “I’d bet my life this table is true.”  

“Perfect example,” I say. “It would never even occur to me that this table might have reality. I have no thought that even resembles that. I have no context in which such a thought could exist. Reality has no reality for me.”  

“You’re saying there is no table?”  

“I’m saying there is no question of a table.”

He looks at me speculatively for a minute, trying to figure out if I’m really saying that I don’t think the table we’re both leaning on is real.  

“Not just the table. Me? The ocean? Everything?”  

I let him think about it. He puts it together quickly.  “…it sounds like there’s a deeper thing, like there’s more to it than you said.”

I’m impressed.  “Absolutely. Very good. There’s the reality, the truth, but Jed McKenna can’t express it and no reader can grasp it. And that’s why I said in the book, come see for yourself. That’s the only possible response. I know it doesn’t make sense. No one who knew what they were talking about ever said it did. It’s the paradigm gap. Jed McKenna might do a good job talking about the part that can be talked about, but Jed isn’t any more real than this table and he can really only talk about what’s not, not what is.”  

“But something is, right? I mean, like, not nothing?”  

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing is everything.”  

“Like nothing is something?”  

“You got something against nothing?”

“It sounds, kind of, I don’t know, unsatisfying.”  

I laugh again.

---Jed McKenna, from his book, “Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment”

 

https://www.wisefoolpress.com/

 

Thanks to Miranda

 

 
 

John Butler - The answer to every question

 

 From the Preface to ‘Mystic Approaches’:
John Butler

 

    “I wouldn’t call myself a mystic though some say I am. I’m not sure what it means besides “Not this – not that’. Neither (in a conventional sense) am I very religious. “Mystic” conveys to me a wise unknowing of morning mist with only the promise of a day to come. It’s not an intellectual approach defined by man but trusting, waiting, quietly still before each blade of grass, each little bird (Mat.6,26-28) reminding us of higher, nobler government than ours.

    Childhood accustomed me to nature, solitude – a sense of God which needed no explaining. Stillness, beauty, depths of love called my heart back home where it belonged. But life grew out into the world, became possessed and lost the way. By 26 I needed help, so studied meditation.

    This required attending to the moment “Now’, reminding me how much we live not present, here, but absent, lost in past or future – thought, desires and fear. But isn’t that reality? We need to look and see.

    These pages tell a bit of what I saw.”

 

 

https://spiritualunfoldment.co.uk/ 

 

 

Nancy Neithercut - Love song

 

This sea of dreams is a love song
melancholy and sublime
singing itself
into its very arms
holding everything
grasping nothing

there are no sandy beaches
or rocky shores
all harbors are imaginary
as well as deep deep currents
fathomless depths
and endless skies

breathing these very words
these very thoughts
this ocean of love
sings itself
dreams itself
paints itself
into a heart shaped melody
swirling into infinite color
dancing
swirling
streaming
into and through itself

where was I
when was I
when I heard my heart song echoing
on the distant shore?
how many love letters did I send?
how long was I waiting for my lover to return?
how many deep dark nights did I howl at the absent moon?

I was the longing for love
not knowing that is love itself
singing my name
her name
all names
echoes in the dark

I heard my voice
in midnight
blossoming
and it was yours

our heart songs
have no words
are all words
every word spells love
spun in distant shadows
shimmering on the edge of light
and sound
and color

love sings your name
and it sounds like this
and this
and this

can you hear your beautiful
through my lips
I can only find mine
through your beautiful beautiful eyes

we are love's reflection
sparkling gems
wind swept tears
of ocean song

 

 

 Nancy's blog
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At Buddha at the gas pump

David Carse - Perfect Brilliant Stillness

  “There is a sense in which there is no ‘awakening’, no enlightenment, because there is no ‘one’ to awaken. Who would this be? Who is awakened?

“’Me’, david? Of course not: david is a dream character, an idea, a fiction; not the dreamer, and therefore obviously cannot awaken. There is no ‘david’ to do anything, including awaken.

“Or is it ‘Who I Really Am’ that has ‘awakened’; Presence, Awareness, All That Is?

“But of course Awareness has never been asleep, has no need to awaken to anything; Awareness is always already All There Is.

“Clearly then, there is no one to awaken. ‘Awakening’ is only an analogy, a concept, a pointer. The seeker community tends to take it literally, but like most analogies it only takes you so far.

“What has happened is more like this: in the dream, in the case of the dream character ‘david’, All That Is stops pretending that ‘It’ is asleep. What has always been awake lets the misunderstanding that there is someone to be asleep and someone to awaken, fall away.

“That is all. And the dream continues as before. The misunderstanding has fallen away but the misunderstanding was not real anyway, so what has happened? Nothing. The dream character ‘david’ now knows he is only a dream, not ‘real’; knows it is all a dream. But this dream character’s ‘knowing’ is part of the dream, part of the unfolding of the script of the dream for that dream character, and nothing has happened. The dream character goes on being the dream character.” 

 PDF HERE

 

 This book, and the thoughts and concepts expressed here, are not copyrighted. They are not ‘mine.’ Understanding or misunderstanding, interpreting or misinterpreting, quoting or misquoting, using or misusing, appropriating or misappropriating,  may or may not occur. All is Presence, Awareness, in which all apparent thoughts and concepts, events and actions, arise spontaneously.
david carse 2005

 

 

Other books of interest HERE

 

 

 

Jean Klein - You already are

 

art Autumn Skye

 

 

 “The root of all desires is the one desire: to come home, to be at peace.
There may be a moment in life when our compensatory activities,
the accumulation of money, learning and objects, leaves us feeling deeply apathetic.
This can motivate us towards the search for our real nature beyond appearances.
We may find ourselves asking, 'Why am I here? What is life? Who am I?'
Sooner or later any intelligent person asks these questions.
What you are looking for is what you already are, not what you will become.
What you already are is the answer and the source of the question.
In this lies its power of transformation.
It is a present actual fact.
Looking to become something is completely conceptual, merely an idea.
The seeker will discover that he is what he seeks
and that what he seeks is the source of the inquiry.” 

 

 

from "Jean Klein - I Am" 

PDF:

HERE

 

 

Rumi ♡ Endless Love

 

 

 O my Beloved,
I searched both worlds
but never found joy without you.
I have seen many wonders
but never a wonder like you.

I pressed my soul’s ear
against countless doors
But never heard words as sweet as yours.

O what grace you pour upon your servants!
From our view the ocean looks so small!

O Saaqi, sweet sight of my eyes,
I’ve never seen one like you
in all of Persia or Arabia.
Pour the wine that takes me beyond myself,
for this petty existence
brings nothing but fatigue.

You are the endless Love,
You are the heavenly song,
You are the mother and father,
You are the one I will always know.

We are scraps of iron.
Your love is the magnet that draws us near.
Why should I seek?—
All I need do is love. ...

Rest now my soul,
Leave behind your religion
and your empty show of faith.

Remember when you had no religion?
Remember when all you had was Him?

 

 

Tenzin Palmo - Locked inside our brains

 

Our society is very result-oriented, that’s why we are so competitive.
That’s why we are always stressed, because we are always looking at something in the distance.
If you are always looking at the top of the mountain you are climbing,
you cannot be aware of the grass and flowers growing at your feet.
We are always looking ahead, aren’t we?
And then the actual thing, the actual living, passes us by.
We are locked inside our brains, cut off from the present moment,
always centered on something beyond our reach.
We are imagining this mirage of happiness, satisfaction and fulfillment
which will magically appear once this and this and this happens.
But what’s happening right now is “it” and it’s the only “it” we have.
The rest is just fabrication.

 

 

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