John McIntosh - Suffering and Self realization

The seduction of the grand dream is so intense that for most ‘shock’ is required to break the imprisoned God-SELF free enough to recognize that the life they have been living may NOT be real. This is why ‘suffering’ is such a bitter-sweet blessing that eventually humbles the arrogant shield that hides the deep fear the false self always carries. ‘Living’ with simple pain-oriented-suffering has been woven into the fabric of illusions subtly as ‘normal’ and as a result, this further prolongs the long night of dreaming.

All manner of justifications have cloaked the chaos and conflict of the dysfunctional dream world ‘with’ credibility. Cause and effect, karma, righteousness, justice and retribution are among the reasons the sleeping collective consciousness assigns to the imbalanced life of pain-suffering the false self endures. In order to ‘shake’ this delusion from its roots, ‘full-blown and ‘concentrated’ suffering must be experienced. When finally, the false self’s hold over the constricted God-SELF is broken … even temporarily, sufficient Awareness arises that suffering may NOT be necessary, and Attention slowly turns toward ‘surrender’ to ‘What Is’ … which leads inevitably to Self Realization.

As this shift in Awareness happens, pain will remain as long as Consciousness occupies a body, but suffering departs along with the illusion of victim-hood based on the belief in separation.

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St. John of the Cross - The Fountain

How well I know that flowing spring
in black of night.

The eternal fountain is unseen.
How well I know where she has been
in black of night.

I do not know her origin.
None. Yet in her all things begin
in black of night.

I know that nothing is so fair
and earth and firmament drink there
in black of night.

I know that none can wade inside
to find her bright bottomless tide
in black of night.

Her shining never has a blur;
I know that all light comes from her
in black of night.

I know here streams converge and swell
and nourish people, skies and hell
in black of night.

The stream whose birth is in this source
I know has gigantic force
in black of night.

The stream from but these two proceeds
yet neither one, I know, precedes
in black of night.

The eternal fountain is unseen
in living bread that gives us being
in black of night.

She calls on all mankind to start
to drink her water, though in dark,
for black is night.

O living fountain that I crave,
in bread of life I see her flame
in black of night.

 

Vince Flammini - Allow

Allow.

If there was only one word to use as a pointer, this would be a pretty good one...Allow.

Allow whatever is happening right now. Right now! Really. Don't make this an intellectual exercise or, if you are, allow that.

See whatever it is that is registering in sight and allow.
Hear whatever sounds are present right now and allow.
Smell whatever odors are present right now and allow.
Taste whatever flavors are present right now and allow.
Feel whatever sensations are present right now and allow.
Notice whatever thoughts are present right now and allow.
Allow it all.

We fight so much with our own experience. If you notice "fighting with experience" happening, allow that, too.

We work so hard in the search, imagining that there is some other way other than the way it is in this present moment. If that is true for you right now, allow it.

If the film of "I give up; I'll never get it" is playing, allow that.

If there is a lot of thinking/intellectualizing about this article, this search, dropping the "I" - all that malarkey - allow that, too.

If there is agreement or disagreement, passion or neutrality, peace or war, anger or calm, happiness or sadness - allow it all. If there is great desire or no desire at all, allow.

If there is a sense of allowing, a sense of "me" who is allowing and disappointment that there is a sense of "me" still present, allow that, too.

What you are is within and beyond all of that. YOU ARE ALL OF THAT. What you ALREADY ARE is this unobstructed knowing in which all of this ("this" meaning whatever is arising in experience as these words are read RIGHT NOW) happens.

Allow is another word for REST. I know that it seems there is a choice about resting or not, allowing or not. Remember, "resting" and "allowing" are just pointers to what you already are - but there really isn't a choice about it because YOU are already THAT - always have been and always will be. There is nothing you need to "work on" or "try for" or "get under control" or "understand" or "figure out" or "experience" or "rest into" in order to simply BE what YOU ALREADY ARE! And, if that seems too easy and nonsensical, well...do I really need to say it again?

If none of this makes any sense - good.

Allow that, too. 

http://tryresting.blogspot.com/ 

 

Arthur Osborne - There isn’t one!

I was walking along the road when I met
A fool talking fool talk.
“There isn’t one, there isn’t one! How happy
I am that there isn’t one!”
He said, as if it were a song he was singing.
“Isn’t one what?” I asked.
“Isn’t one me,” he said foolishly.
And he walked on looking quite happy.

Arthur Osborne 

Be Still, It Is The Wind That Sings 

Miriam Louisa Simons - Unfindable

Art – Edgar Degas, Woman Seen from Behind, Drying her Hair c. 1905 – 1910

 how a few moments of empty-mind spiked with questions of the unanswerable kind
can deliver you to your effulgent nothingness

I take off my clothes,

lift them to my face,

inhale the fragrance of my skin.

By what alchemy was that unique odour created?

 

I soak in the bath,

submerged to my chin.

Wetness, warmth: what registers these sensations

yet never gets wet?

 

I towel-dry my mop of silver hair.

I marvel that it grows, it falls out;

more grows, automatically.

Can I spin one thread of hair?

 

I trim a toenail.

How does this perfect toe-guard

know how to grow?

Is there a how-to manual for nails (and hair and cells)?

 

My scissors slip.

I watch my bright blood slowly seep,

congeal, clot (or not).

Can I control a clot?

 

I listen to the ambient sounds of my environment.

By what miracle can I hear

the kettle boiling urgently,

and those rowdy Kookaburras?

 

I make coffee and slowly savour the flavour,

asking myself,

(eyes shut)

Where exactly is ‘taste’ located?

 

Then, uninvited, the mother of all questions shows up:

Where’s my world viewed from?

I gaze undistractedly

at my coffee cup.

 

I can’t find a point of perspective.

So then I try to find a viewer.

Can I find a fixed point,

a “me”?

 

Almost 75 years of wondering, checking for myself,

what can I report?

Well, as the saying goes:  All the lights are on but

no one’s home.

 

I imagined myself into existence,

only to find I am unfindable.

What I find is inescapable space.

Space that’s unimagined, and unarguably aware.

 

Space – ceaselessly birthing

all experience in, and as, time,

including this tricky two-step called

BE-ing.

 

Aware space, dancing

as every sensation, feeling, thought,

every belief – questioned or not,

every thing and every no-thing too.

 

And I, hobbled and hollow-boned,

know its fancy footwork as my own.

 

 

Don’t you just love the way a few moments

of empty-mind

spiked with questions of the unanswerable kind

can deliver you to your effulgent nothingness?



– with a deep bow, ml

https://echoesfromemptiness.com/ 

(deep bow from mb to ml)

 

Meister Eckhart - A quiet mind

The most powerful prayer,
one well nigh omnipotent,
and the worthiest work of all
is the outcome of a quiet mind.

The quieter it is
the more powerful,
the worthier, the deeper,
the more telling and more perfect the prayer is.

To the quiet mind all things are possible.
What is a quiet mind?

A quiet mind is one
which nothing weighs on,
nothing worries,
which,
free from ties and from all self-seeking,
is wholly merged into the will of God
and dead to its own. 

 

Jiddu Krishnamurti - The art of meditation

 

"Meditation is one of the greatest arts of life - perhaps the greatest art. Because in the understanding of meditation there is love, and love is not the product of systems, of habits, of following a method. Love cannot be cultivated by thought. Love can perhaps come into being when there is complete silence. And the mind can only be silent when it understands the nature of its own movement, as thought and feeling.

And to understanding that, there can be no condemnation in observing thought and feeling. Meditation can take place when you are sitting in a bus, or walking in the woods full of light and shadows, or listening to the singing birds, or looking at the face of your wife or husband. Meditation is not something apart; it is the understanding of the totality of life in which every form of fragmentation of life has ceased. And also that is to contemplate life, not from a centre, not from your particular idiosyncrasy, tendency, or inclination, but to contemplate the whole movement of life: the misery, the conflict, the confusion, the sorrow, the endless travail of man – to watch that as a total movement. You cannot watch it if there is any form condemnation. Such contemplation is meditation. And you cannot contemplate or meditate if there is no silence.

 There are two things which it is absolutely necessary to find out about: the understanding of space, and the nature of silence.

 We are not talking of the distance between the earth and the moon, but psychological space, the space within. You can observe how little space you have inwardly; we are overcrowded with noise, chattering, endless memories, images, symbols, opinions, knowledge, crammed full of secondhand things. There is no space there at all; therefore there is no freedom.

When one has totally denied the psychological world which man has created for himself, and the psychological structure of society of which we are: the greed, the envy, the brutality, the violence, the jealousies, the hatred; then when you totally deny, you have space and silence. And it is only such a mind that can see what is the immeasurable. Such a mind is a light to itself."

Rabindranath Tagore - The Pilgrims

“Love is the highest bliss that man can attain to,
for through it alone he truly knows 

that he is more than himself, 

and that he is at one with the All.”

Rabindranath Tagore

Love Leading the Pilgrim

 “Man is indeed abroad to satisfy needs which are more to him than food and clothing. He is out to find himself. Man’s history is the history of his journey to the unknown in quest of the realisation of his immortal self – his soul. Through the rise and fall of empires; through the building up gigantic piles of wealth and the ruthless scattering of them upon the dust; through the creation of vast bodies of symbols that give shape to his dreams and aspirations, and the casting of them away like the playthings of an outworn infancy; through his forging of magic keys with which to unlock the mysteries of creation, and through his throwing away of this labour of ages to go back to his workshop and work up afresh some new form; yes, through it all man is marching from epoch to epoch towards the fullest realisation of his soul, – the soul which is greater than the things man accumulates, the deeds he accomplishes, the theories he builds; the soul whose onward course is never checked by death or dissolution.

  Man’s mistakes and failures have by no means been trifling or small, they have strewn his path with colossal ruins; his sufferings have been immense, like birth-pangs for a giant child; they are the prelude of a fulfilment whose scope is infinite. Man has gone through and is still undergoing martyrdoms in various ways, and his institutions are the altars he has built whereto he brings his daily sacrifices, marvellous in kind and stupendous in quantity. All this would be absolutely unmeaning and unbearable if all along he did not feel that deepest joy of the soul within him, which tries its divine strength by suffering and proves its exhaustless riches by renunciation.

Yes, they are coming, the pilgrims, one and all – coming to their true inheritance of the world; they are ever broadening their consciousness, ever seeking a higher and higher unity, ever approaching nearer to the one central Truth which is all-comprehensive.”

Rabindranath Tagore-with Mohandas Gandhi and Kasturba Gandhi at Shantiniketan-British-India-1940

Read a very nice post:

 The Heart of Tagore

HERE 

ॐ